Dr. Paul Jenkins

Apr 02

How to Agree on Effective Rules When You Have Different Values

By DrPaul M-Power

Is it possible for couples with different values to agree on effective rules for their children? Yes! When couples simplify and seek to understand each other. Let’s start with the good news: Differences make us relevant and interesting to each other. Think about it, if you and your partner were exactly the same, one of you would be unnecessary. (Let’s not go there.) The good news is also the bad news: Differences create conflicts. (You already knew that.) There are different values, different preferences, different backgrounds, different cultures and different upbringings. These create conflicts, but they also help us to bring something unique to the relationship. Don’t try to replicate the exact culture of just one of the family backgrounds. The two of you have come together to create this new family that includes parts of each of what makes you you. As long as we are bent on keeping…

Mar 24

Love0

The Hope Class Encore

By DrPaul M-Power

Hope: (verb) want something to happen or be the case. Sounds simple enough. Yet, I hear people say they don’t have any hope. And this disturbs me. Because this world needs hope. Almost everything that has been invented or created in this world has been because of hope. Someone hoped to be able to ship goods across the United States faster than horse and buggy. Someone hoped to be able to cure polio and a number of other diseases. Someone hoped to create a masterpiece that would inspire other artists. Personally, I have hoped for an education, for a wife and family, to write a book, to be a speaker, for the opportunity to be a grandpa. I think of what is not happening in people’s lives because they have given up hope and it makes me sad. You can have hope, no matter what hurdles you have in your…

Mar 17

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This is Better Than Luck

By DrPaul M-Power

The Luck of the Irish St. Patrick’s Day has a lot of fun traditions. Wear green so you don’t get pinched. Eat corned beef and cabbage. (I don’t mind the green frosted sugar cookies either). Discover the pot of gold at the end of every rainbow. Find a leprechaun and they have to grant a wish for their release. And, I have been down on my knees more than once searching for the elusive 4-leaf clover. Most of these traditions are associated with luck, and the Irish are sometimes called a lucky people. They seem to be able to land on their feet when adversity comes or make the best of very unfortunate circumstances. More than one Irish immigrant had adversity heaped on them when they came to America and many were not beaten down but rose above. They are a resilient people. They don’t give up when times get…

Feb 24

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Three Magical Letters

By DrPaul M-Power

Three ordinary letters when placed in the right order can cause a paradigm shift of monumental proportions. Y E T As in, “I can’t do that!” -or- “I can’t do that, yet.” “I’m not good enough!” -or- “I’m not good enough, yet.” “This doesn’t work!” -or- “This doesn’t work, yet.” Can you feel the difference? One is closure, the other is open ended. One is a statement, the other has possibility lurking in the pause. We are given permission to acknowledge we have some work to do AND it creates excitement in thinking about future possibilities that will motivate us. Play with it for a minute and see what it does for you. Do you know where I was reminded of this recently? In a child’s book, The Magical Yet by Angela DiTerlizzi. And she is so right. There are so…

Feb 18

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The Possibility

By DrPaul M-Power

Often when I meet people they aren’t at the best place they have ever been in their lives. They may have been beaten down by another person, circumstances, the economy, or themselves. Regardless, they often feel that they have tried EVERYTHING. In fact, they tell me they have. There is nothing else for them to do. And I ask them to hold open the possibility that there is something else. There is a possibility that a different way to think exists and that can take them out of the place they feel they are stuck in. It is what is available at Live On Purpose Central, our membership site. Check it out and see if there is a possibility for you in the place where you are stuck. DrPaul

Jan 17

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Positive and Negative Emotions Can’t Co-Exist

By DrPaul M-Power

Have you noticed how some things can’t exist together? They are both exist, but they can’t inhabit the same space at the same time. Take light and darkness for example. The light may be dim, but there is still light. We can’t place all the light in one part of a room. It is the same with our thoughts. Napoleon Hill said, “Positive and negative emotions cannot occupy the mind at the same time. One or the other must dominate. It is your responsibility to make sure that positive emotions constitute the dominating influence of your mind.” For most people this means some cognitive work. For most people default is down and that means negative thoughts. When we begin to think negative thoughts, we have to consciously replace them with positive thoughts. It isn’t enough to get rid of the negative thoughts. Your brain cannot be empty. We call that…

Jan 13

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Forgiveness, What it Is and What it Isn’t

By DrPaul M-Power

The comment went something like this, “I like the majority of what you say, but I just cannot agree with you on forgiveness. Can you honestly expect someone to forgive their abuser? That is just not o.k. Understanding what forgiveness is and what it isn’t will help us to see why we would choose to forgive someone who has hurt us. First of all, let’s understand what forgiveness is not. It is NOT saying that what was done is o.k. Abuse should not be tolerated or condoned. It is not o.k. The abuser should be held responsible for their actions. Steps need to be taken to get the abused party in a safe place. One where they will not be abused and can hopefully begin to build relationships where trust is a valued principle. This doesn’t happen instantaneously. It is a journey, it takes time. Just because the abuse has stopped doesn’t…

Jan 06

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Address the Elephant in the Room

By DrPaul M-Power

It happens in marriages; it happens in families. It happens at work, school and in your community. Problems. There are always problems. News alert: There will always be problems… If you see them as problems. In my book, Pathological Positivity, I talk about “propportunities.” Instead of seeing a problem, see an opportunity. Changing the name gets our minds working. We know that words are just words. Words get their power when we attach meaning to them. Problem. The attached meaning is negative, bad, something we want to avoid. Opportunity. The chance to do something. We get to decide the action we will take. Problems seem like they happen to us, without our consent. We become passive and it is easy to slip into victim mode. Opportunities are something we buy into and therefore our chances of handling them in a successful way increase. We also gain valuable personal development when we solve…

Jan 05

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Happy New Year 2022

By DrPaul M-Power

In my Merry Christmas Email (and I hope you all had a Merry Christmas), I talked about The Feeling of Christmas. The Feeling is something I write about in Chapter 3 of my book, Pathological Positivity. The Feeling is a universally sought-after emotional state. We seek love, why? To have The Feeling. We seek money, why? To have The Feeling we get from the value we placed on obtaining money. We seek goals, why? To get The Feeling associated with obtaining the goal. We all want The Feeling that life is good. But, sometimes we just don’t know how to get there. And that is o.k. because there are tools and knowledge you can learn to guide your journey to The Feeling. At Live On Purpose we have made many changes this year to get these tools and knowledge into your hands to help you feel The Feeling more often…

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