Barbara Sher on Scanners

If you’re like me and people think you’re into “everything” and can’t seem to settle on “any one thing” you need to hear this program and feel brilliant for a change!

LISTEN RIGHT NOW BY CLICKING HERE

Barbara Sher talks about people who are interested in so many things
everyone thinks they’re dilettantes, lightweights & loafers. She thinks
they’re gifted grownups.

I feel like I have found my “people” when Barbara explains what “Scanners” are.  I don’t feel like a loser for being interested in so many things.  When she explains things, I see that I’m actually pretty cool to have such a lovely and curious mind. 

Learn more about being being Scanner and her Scanner retreat in Italy coming up at the end of September.  Just click HERE

Happy Scanning!!!!!

“Just an Inch Past Splat”

In response to the disaboom research: 

We are not very good at predicting how we’ll feel about a given situation until we’re in it.

I remember an article in the New Yorker that talked about the near immediate regret Golden Gate Bridge jumpers, the few that actually lived to talk about it, felt as they left their perch.

From the October 13th 2003 New Yorker:

Survivors often regret their decision in midair, if not before. Ken Baldwin and Kevin Hines both say they hurdled over the railing, afraid that if they stood on the chord they might lose their courage. Baldwin was twenty-eight and severely depressed on the August day in 1985 when he told his wife not to expect him home till late. “I wanted to disappear,” he said. “So the Golden Gate was the spot. I’d heard that the water just sweeps you under.” On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. “I still see my hands coming off the railing,” he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”

Kevin Hines was eighteen when he took a municipal bus to the bridge one day in September, 2000. After treating himself to a last meal of Starbursts and Skittles, he paced back and forth and sobbed on the bridge walkway for half an hour. No one asked him what was wrong. A beautiful German tourist approached, handed him her camera, and asked him to take her picture, which he did. “I was like, ‘Fuck this, nobody cares,’ ” he told me. “So I jumped.” But after he crossed the chord, he recalls, “My first thought was What the hell did I just do? I don’t want to die.”

In the above examples they didn’t know they wanted to live, until just before they were certain they were going to die. How sad then, for someone to think that life is over, or has such little value, because of becoming disabled.  We can not know the gifts that a change in our life experience may bring us until, unfortunately we are having the experience. 

As strange as it might sound to an abled-bodied person, I’ve heard so many disabled and/or cancer thrivers say to me, ”this turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” 

Just at the point that you want to give-up, you need to take one more step.  Take one more step.  it might just be what you need to do to get to where you want to be.  You’ll never know, however, if you give up one step short.  The dog in the following parable, learned this truth the hard way…

 

A story about a dog looking for enlightenment: 

A dog is walking down a hot, dusty road, walking, walking, and walking.  He was to walk until he reached enlightenment.  The dog kept asking, “how much longer do I have to walk?” and the answer from the Buddha was always, “just a little ways longer.”   And so he kept walking, hot and tired and thirsty.  “How much longer” the dog asks again.  “Just a little ways longer,” came the reply.  Well the dog finally is so warn out and so disillusioned he lay down in the middle of the hot and dusty road.  Just as he does, SPLAT…He’s hit by a car and killed.  Now dead, the dog asks the Buddha again, how much longer would I have had to walk to reach enlightenment?

The answer…”Just an inch past splat”

 

 Don’t ever give up.

Disaboom Survey Reveals 52 Percent of Americans Would Rather be Dead Than Disabled

re-print from a July 9th msn money with permission from disaboom

52 percent of Americans would rather die than live with a severe disability, according to a recent national survey commissioned by Disaboom DSBO (www.disaboom.com), the premiere online community for people touched by disability. Disaboom today announced the shocking results in an effort to educate people about why this viewpoint is so tragic.

The survey, launched in an effort to understand America’s perception of disability, asked, “Which would you choose: Living with a severe disability that forever alters your ability to live an independent life, or death?” The survey findings noted significant attitudinal differences based on age, income, geographic location, and level of education.

Highlights of the research include:

Middle-aged Americans were less willing to live with a severe disability than older Americans; 63 percent of people age 35 to 44 chose death over disability versus 50 percent of people 55 to 64 and 56 percent of Americans 65 and older.

People with higher incomes were more likely to choose deathover disability. Among those with household income levels of $75,000 or more, 59 percent chose death, versus those with household incomes of $25,00 or less, of whom 45 percent chose death.

Geographic location affected a person’s choice of death over disability. While only 45 percent of people living in the South chose death, 61 percent of people in the West would rather die than be disabled.

Americans with higher levels of education would rather die than live with a severe disability. Of those with a college education, 57 percent answered that they’d rather die than live with a severe disability, versus 30 percent of respondents who have not completed a high school education.

Dr. Glen House, founder of Disaboom, wants to quash these statistics and is dedicated to changing America’s perception of disability. House, himself a quadriplegic since his 20s, founded Disaboom to create the first interactive online community dedicated to improving the way people with disabilities live their lives. As the first student in a wheelchair to graduate from the University of Washington School of Medicine, the first person to climb 14,110-foot Pikes Peak in a wheelchair, and also a doctor, inventor, extreme sports enthusiast, husband and father, House hopes that Disaboom will spark a paradigm shift in the way America views disability.

“I want to share ways for people to understand that disability isn’t the end of life. It can be a new beginning,” said House. “Disability touches more than 54 million Americans. My goal with Disaboom has been to provide the information, community, and connection that will enable people to pave a path that supports new goals and dreams – and determine the way they will choose to live forward.”

In its effort to engage, educate and encourage people with disabilities, as well as their friends, family and caregivers, Disaboom offers the following resources:

Information: A comprehensive information source for people touched by disability, www.disaboom.comoffers recommendations from medical professionals; articles about disability-related legislation, caregiving and education; listings of accessible products and services; a job bank and hundreds of additional resources to improve the daily lives of people with disabilities.

Community: The online community’s social networking functions allow its users to interact with thousands of others in the disability community. Through discussion forums, blogs, groups and chat rooms, www.disaboom.com allows its members to share experiences, information and support with others, enabling them to overcome obstacles and live forward.

Inspiration: Disaboom provides inspiration and encouragement to its members by highlighting stories of people with disabilities who are living forward –from world-class hand cyclist Alejandro Arbor, who will represent the United States in the 2008 Paralympic Games, to Josh Blue, a comedian with cerebral palsy whose stand-up routines earned him NBC’s Last Comic Standing title in 2006.

For more information about Disaboomor living forward with a disability, visit http://www.disaboom.com.

About Disaboom

Disaboom, Inc. was founded to develop the first interactive online community dedicated to constantly improving the way people with disabilities or functional limitations live their lives. It will also serve as a comprehensive online resource not only for people living withsuch conditions, but also their immediate families and friends, caregivers, recreation and rehabilitation providers, and employers. More than 54 million American adults live with disabilities or functional limitations today in the United States alone. Founded and designed by doctors and fellow disaboomers to meet this community’s specific needs, www.disaboom.com brings together content and tools ranging from specialized health information to social networking to daily living resources, in a single interactive site.

About the Kelton Research Survey

The disaboom.com Survey was conducted by Kelton Research between June 12, 2008 and June 16, 2008 using an email invitation and an onlinesurvey. Quotas are set to ensure reliable and accurate representation of the total population of 1,000 nationally representative Americans ages 18 and over. Results of any sample are subject to sampling variation. The magnitude of the variation is measurable and is affected by the number of interviews and the level of the percentages expressing the results. In this particular study, the chances are 95 in 100 that a survey result does not vary, plus or minus, by more than 3.1 percentage points from the result that would be obtained if interviews had been conducted with all persons in the universe represented by the sample.

 

Disaboom, Inc.
Shannon Fern, 303-433-7020 (Office) or
303-667-3553 (Cell)
sfern@csg-pr.com