Beneath the Mask

Beneath the Mask

She had blue skin, 

And so did he. 

He kept it hid 

And so did she. 

They searched for blue 

Their whole life through, 

Then passed right by- 

And never knew.” 

― Shel Silverstein, Every Thing on It

We all wear one, to some extent.  We all hide different pieces of ourselves, disguising our faults and flaws, those things we see as unacceptable and shameful.  At work, we wear a thicker, bigger, tighter mask than we wear anywhere else.  We are told this is what we are supposed to do.  To keep our messy, personal selves to ourselves.  To leave our heart at home.  Our pain.  Our issues.  So we wear a mask and smile and pretend to be perfect, professional, positive, perky and proficient.

But not "people."  We must never be people.  People are flawed.  People have weaknesses.  People have problems.  No.  We are employees.  Assets.  Resources.  Headcount. At work, being a person is verboten. And so, we don our mask...then off to work we go.

There is so much pressure to wear the mask.  Many employers act as if, by sheer will, we can somehow transform ourselves into robotic gladiators who have no weaknesses.  We are expected to be stars.  Superheroes.  So we deny our failings and camouflage our Achilles heel.  We lie about who we are, all while claiming to be honest and transparent.  We feel the pressure to perform; it weighs us down and tortures us with fear of failing.  We bow to the expectations of the powerful.  We tremble in terror when we make a mistake, dreading dire repercussions.  We know...we must be the mask!

But how productive can we be in this restrictive environment, chained by fear, refuting our personhood?  How can this spur creativity and ingenuity?  How can it propel us forward, help us to be our best or to fully achieve?  To learn? To soar?

Though we deny it and hide it and put on a face, we are, indeed, human.  Wearing a mask isn't going to change that fact. It just makes us tired, trying to keep our fake face in place all day.  And so, we become less than who we truly are, selectively leaving vast pieces of ourselves behind hidden in the darkness.

No matter how "normal" people look, living "ordinary" lives, everyone has a story to tell. And maybe, just like you, everyone else is a misfit too.”
―Sanhita Baruah

We all have blue skin.  Imperfections.  Flaws.  Weakness.  We have bad thoughts.  We make stupid decisions.  We do the wrong thing.  Or maybe we do the right thing, but at the wrong time.  We fall flat on our face.  We are broken in many different ways, but we are all broken, at least a little bit.  We have things we do well and things we don't do well at all.  Yes, we are all blue and we think we're the only one because we cling to our masks and insist we aren't, never knowing everyone else is doing the same.

The mask erodes our personality in so many ways. It inhibits our growth and development.  It holds us back, locked away in fear.  It prevents us from taking necessary risks and leaps.  It isolates us.  Imprisons us. Zaps us of energy and fire.

Don't you know that a midnight hour comes when everyone has to take off his mask? Do you think life always lets itself be trifled with? Do you think you can sneak off a little before midnight to escape this?”
― Soren Kierkegaard 

We will never be the very best "us" we can be while pretending to be someone we are not.

We need to look beneath the mask.  Remove it.

I'm not advocating losing control and behaving like children.  Nor do I believe we have to say everything that comes into our head or act on every impulse. Neither do we have to completely, utterly bare our souls.  This is not what it means to toss the mask.

No, removing the mask requires courage and maturity.  It means walking into reality and living there.  Being genuine. Dealing with what is and not what we pretend to be. It means facing our inadequacies and embracing our strengths and talents.  It means taking off our gladiator armor.  Allowing ourselves to be real, unpretentious, flawed people, accepting our humanness, owning our mess.  We still attempt to do great things.  We try to be better. We keep growing. But when we remove the mask, we are no longer afraid to admit we don't know everything, aren't always perfect and can't do it all.  Risky business.  But freeing.

“Like icebergs, people normally expose only a small part of themselves, and generally just the part they wish to show.”
―Nikki Sex, Fate

Removing the mask means we unearth the rest of the iceberg and become whole.

It means, we let ourselves, our real selves, be seen.

It means we accept ourselves for who we are; the extraordinary and the ugly.  It means we may not always have a good day, no matter how hard we work at it.  That we may say something we wish we hadn't and for which we must apologize.  It means we may miss something sometimes. Make mistakes that have to be fixed, even though we tried so hard not to.  Mistakes that make us wonder at our sanity and that cause us to want to beat our head against the wall. But we must not give in to the temptation to beat ourselves up.  Instead, we acknowledge our flaws, forgive ourselves, fix the error and move on, having learned from our failure.  For you see, removing the mask means we are free to be imperfect.  To not always, every second, have our act together.  We can be human. A person.  Even at work.

We are as liquid as the tide.  We ebb and flow.

It also means we accept that others have weaknesses and imperfections. We let them take off their mask.  We allow them to be blue without shaming them.  Or using it against them.

When we aren't required to hide and cower beneath our mask, we are free to fail at times...but also to magnificently succeed.  We are allowed to risk.  To say something stupid that just might turn out to be genius.  We are no longer working in isolation and fear.  Without the masks, we find compassion and commonality.  We cooperate.  Collaborate.  Create.

This allows us to use our energy for greater accomplishments. We are more inspired. We don't have to protect ourselves all the time.  No longer worried about being unmasked, our minds can move on to more productive projects.  We can accomplish greater things because we aren't spending all our energy hiding and covering our blue skin.  We aren't wasting time trying to protect our back.

By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before. ~Edwin Elliot

That's when we discover being blue is not such a horrid thing.  It's a human thing.  A people thing.  And being a "people," even at work...is okay.

We build bridges. Between each other. We accept each other. We work together.

Harder still, we accept ourselves.  All of the pieces of ourselves.

Once we stop rejecting and hiding ourselves away, we can find out who we truly are. We meet the person lurking beneath the mask.  Then, we can discover who we are meant to be, what we are meant to do and where our talents and passions are leading us. We can grow...and soar.  Almost like a superhero.

When we soar, we see more.  Once we are free of our mask, that tiring mask that weighs us down and holds us back, we can help others to see and soar and find freedom too.  This new perspective, this new way of being, of accepting ourselves and others, of living fully and genuinely, changes our entire world.

And when our world changes in such an astounding way, everything, absolutely everything, shifts.  Righting itself.  Finally.

 #buildlittlebridges   #lookbeneaththemask  #bluerocks

Written by

Robin Bond

Health Benefits of Vitamin E for Men and Women

Health Benefits of Vitamin E for Men & Women

Vitamin E is justifiably referred to as the nutrition for sexual passion and has been used for many years by those experiencing impotency problems within the bedroom. However, vitamin E is way more than just that and may act as a preventative with cardiovascular disease, and even fight cancer. Consistent with Harvard, Vitamin E, like vitamin C, is primarily an inhibitor that stops radical cell damage within the body. Radical cells are known to attack an ordinarily functioning system and bring their efficiency down, resulting in problems like depression, weariness, and the feeling of weak bones.

Preventing Diseases: 

Vitamin E works as a natural prevention of artery clogging, atherosclerosis, and general damage to veins inside of your body. Those who have taken Vitamin E for at least two years have seen a twenty to forty percent reduction in their risk for obtaining a coronary heart disease and saw a general decline for a risk in blood clots, with those at higher risk seeing greater benefits.

Additionally, those who took Vitamin E saw a likelihood of seeing their risk for cardiovascular death decline by twenty-four percent and furthermore the decline of cardiac issues by twenty-six percent. Smokers who intake Vitamin E on a regular basis showed to have a thirty-two percent lower risk of just getting prostate cancer, and nearly fifty percent lower risk in dying from prostate cancer. Vitamin E, in specific combination with vitamin C, beta-carotene, and zinc, has shown to lower the likelihood of such diseases as cataracts, AMD, dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS.

Natural Sex Enhancer: 

Vitamin E is most notable for its help in the human productive system where it acts as a natural fat-soluble that works wonderfully with Vitamin C, which can cause the Vitamin E to work even longer. The way that Vitamin E helps in the bed is that Vitamin E acts as a natural blood thinner, since it kills free radical cells to make room for healthy cells, which causes the blood in your veins to move faster. Since your penile gland can only be erect when the blood in your system is flowing to it properly, Vitamin E helps increase the flow to your penile gland. This makes it so that those having problems with erectile dysfunction can become erect more often and those wanting to last longer in the bed will last longer. Additionally, Vitamin E kills the free radicals that cause damage to normal functioning organs, which means those who suffer from premature ejaculation will see that this does not occur as often since the free radical cells damaging the pelvic area are being eliminated.

Just as well, Vitamin E is not just for men, as the vitamin also helps with women suffering from a dry vaginal region or lack of sexual arousal. While in pill form, Vitamin E increases the fluids going to the vaginal region, but as a liquidated form, Vitamin E supplements provides extra stimulation as well as lubrication. Lack of sexual arousal in women often stimulates from a lowering of the hormone Estrogen, which Vitamin E acts as a natural multiplier as seen in studies where the use of Vitamin E showed a massive increase in Estrogen levels.

Written by

Stephen Lapidus

SUPERFOODS FOR SEXUAL PERFORMANCE

SUPERFOODS FOR SEXUAL PERFORMANCE

I have had several feedback from our listeners concerning the previous edition of the discussion. Many ladies said I focused more on the foods that boost the sexual performance of men. I wish to indicate that the food items we discussed previously work equally for women. However because of popular request, I will discuss some food items that boost the sexual performance of women.

1. RED WINE

Red wine has been proven over the years to boost the sex drive of women. Several researches link the consumption of red wine to stronger libido in women. Wine is made from fermented grapes, it has a natural chemical balance. The grapes are fermented without the addition of sugar, acids, enzymes, water or other nutrients. Red wine is also rich in antioxidants that help to reduce aging making you look radiant and younger. A glass or two of red wine is enough to raise your game.

2. CLOVES

For those who may not know what cloves are, they are those spices that look like tiny nails. They are used in making 'sobolo'. In the North they are called 'mosoro'. People use them to spice a variety of food items such as drinks, porridge, meat, fish, etc.

Cloves are no ordinary spices. They have been used to enhance sexual performance in both men and women since ancient times. In men, cloves help to prevent premature ejaculation. They are also used as libido boosters in both men and women.  Cloves are also very high sources of omega-3 fatty acids which are essential for improving cardiovascular health. As I indicated in the previous discussion, a person's sexual health is dependent on the health of their heart and blood vessels.

The sweet aroma of cloves freshen breath and help fight halitosis. Apart from the fact that halitosis is a turn off during sex, emerging researches are linking bad breadth and bleeding gums to erectile dysfunction. Bad breadth can also affect one's self esteem and confidence level.

LET US NOW LOOK AT THOSE FOOD ITEMS THAT CAN KILL YOUR SEXUAL PERFORMANCE.

1. ALCOHOL

Alcohol abuse has been linked to reduction in sexual performance in several studies. Alcohol in itself is a depressant. It also inhibits the body's ability to produce testosterone which is a major sex hormone for both males and females. The irony is that alcohol increases sexual desire but reduces sexual performance. If you want enhance your sexual performance, you need to avoid alcohol abuse.

2. DAIRY PRODUCTS (animal milk, cheese, ice cream)

This may come as shocker to many people but the lactic acid in dairy products can kill your libido. One may ask, what about the calcium and other minerals that diary products provide? Yes animal milk contains a lot of calcium and calcium is linked to sexual health but the fact is animal milk is not the only source of calcium. You may want to resort to lactose free milk if you are concerned about your sexual health. There are several food items that are very healthy sources of calcium. Healthy substitutes for dairy milk are soy milk, tigernut milk, cashew milk. Green leafy vegetables are also very good sources of calcium.

Written by

Fred Amese

What Women Should Expect From a Man During the Courting Process

What Women Should Expect From a Man During the Courting Process

Picking a career and picking a man to spend the rest of your life with can be very similar.  Typically after a bit of thought you decide on a career.  In this example, we will pretend it is finance.  You go to college for four years and major in business with a concentration in finance.  After school you get a job at JP Morgan.  At JP Morgan you give it everything you got, work long hours, and after two years you get promoted.  A year later, maybe you are not getting along with your boss and decide to switch firms.  You get a job at Morgan Stanley.  You once again work long hours.


However, this time you decide maybe finance is not the career for you.  You are tired of the hours, underappreciated work, and wish to do something else.  Now you decide to become a teacher.  You go back to school and get the necessary certifications and try again.   Now you spend 10 years as a teacher and are as happy as can be.  


Now how does this story relate to dating.  Your career is much like your love life.  It is your job to use all the information available to forecast the type of man that will make you happy.  Now you go into the world and try to find that man.  Once you find him, you will date him for awhile to confirm whether this guy is the right one for you.  If he is not the right guy, you will release him back into the dating pool and go find another guy.  Much like choosing your career, knowing exactly what you want is easy for some but for most of us, trial and error, a little luck, and some hard work is going to land you the guy of your dreams.

However, during this course, what should you expect from men? 

1. The man making an effort  - Ex:  Calling you, asking you out, hearing from him more than once a week.
2.  A man willing to wait for sex - If you politely decline sex and he never calls you again, Great it was not meant to be.  If he really likes you, he won't care what activity you are doing, he just wants to do it with you.
3.  No matter how demanding his job is, he will find time to go out with you.  If he won't, maybe dating is not a top priority for him right now.
4. The man typically knowing you are right for him potentially way before you have made up your mind about him - Men make up their mind about a girl very quickly.  Don't be scared off by this, just keep going if he is pursuing you hard, eventually you will catch up. 
5. Introductions to friends/family/ and invitations to events/future plans - If after a 90 days he isn't starting to talk about making plans he is probably is NOT thinking of you as a long term woman for him...

Written by

Mike Goldstein

In Love with an Addict? Why it is a "Good" Thing

In Love with an Addict? Why it is a "Good" Thing

Does your loved one's destructive behavior and continual lies make you feel like you are going crazy? Do you ask yourself daily, or multiple times daily, "Why on earth do I tolerate this person with this addiction?!"Do you feel confused when you experience moments with the addict where you feel joy and see glimmers of hope that things will get better? Sounds like you are in love with an addict.

And, although this might sound crazy, I think it is a "good" thing. Read that last statement again if you need to and notice if you had a reaction to it. Did it make you cringe? If you are someone with an addiction, are you curious why I say that it is a good thing to be in love with you?

Well, it is. I am not saying it is good to be in love with the addiction. That is a different thing. After all, The person you love is NOT their addiction. The addiction; however, is definitely a huge part of their lives and their world; especially their body, mind, and spirit. Every aspect of a person's BEING gets taken over by the illusion of what drugs, alcohol, food, sex, work, financial addiction has to offer.

The "vice(s)" a person ends up using often becomes their reason; their excuse to repeatedly escape the feelings of loneliness, shame, sadness, guilt, pain-physical and/or emotional-etc. This desire to escape is not intentional; the brain's reward center kicks in with dopamine; the "gotta get it" neurotransmitter. The fix becomes more important than any relationship. Relying on this "vice" gives someone who has a history of trauma, shame, depression, sadness, attachment issues, etc, or even curiosity or accident (i.e. porn addiction is impacting children as young as 8 years of age) a reason/excuse to hide from who they truly are- the person you love.

Being in love with an addict means that at some point in your relationship, you saw their potential, along with their talents, intuitiveness, sensitivity, and brilliance. Many times, and understandably so, loved ones forget about these positive attributes, especially as they endure years of lies, deception, betrayal, and pain. I am not saying that because you have seen who this person really is-the "good" in them-that you should stay with them at all costs. It is crucial that partners, spouses, children, loved ones, do what they need to do in order to get/stay healthy, especially since we know that with addiction, the entire family system gets sick. For some, this may mean walking away from the relationship for awhile or forever. However, even if you walk away, it is still ok to love the person in their addiction.

Having healthy boundaries is a strong sign of loving the addict, and it may also feel really foreign. After all, you have probably found yourself enabling them out of fear that they might leave you or even die if you didn't. Setting boundaries can be the biggest form of telling your loved one just how much you care about them. Boundaries mean that because you love this person so much, you are drawing a line in the sand to assist them in getting help, not in dying. An example of a boundary is to no longer give your family member money, or monitoring their accounts, especially if you know they use it to buy drugs, alcohol, sex, gamble, etc. This may feel like policing, however, in the beginning of recovery, this behavioral boundary may prove effective. If the person with the addiction wants recovery, they will likely be open to this type of boundary. After all, it will assist them in being more honest and accountable.

Another way to show that you love your partner via boundaries is to do things for your own recovery. For example, attending therapy and joining a support group. This is a form of influence, not control, and a healthy way of showing your loved one that you too are learning new ways of coping with the addiction. A third boundary may be to limit contact with the person if they are using. If you live with them, limiting contact to a minimum; letting them know you are doing this is key as to not create more conflict than is already in the space.

Finally, and as previously mentioned, leaving for a short while or forever may be the ultimate boundary you practice which may need to be done as a sign of self love as well as loving them. If the relationship gets too toxic and the person with the addiction refuses help, leaving may be the ultimate boundary and act of self and other love.

It is ok to love someone who has an addiction; in fact, I think it is a "good" thing. Demonstrating your love by setting healthy boundaries is a beautiful way to take care of your own needs while insulating you from further pain caused by the addiction.

Remember, you are worth it!

Candice Christiansen

Founder at Namaste Center for Healing