Month: June 2025

Disclosure Revisited

I’m thinking about disclosure all over again. The quote is: “You can’t be what you can’t see.” This is why I’ve told my story.

I think whether a person discloses and when they do so comes down to this other maxim: “There’s a time and place for everything.”

Historically no treatment providers have offered persons with mental illnesses advice on how to stand up for ourselves and not get taken advantage of.

Individuals diagnosed with a mental health condition ordinarily do not commit crimes. We are at a 23 percent greater risk of being victims of crimes.

More so because some of us often live in dangerous neighborhoods.

The fact that people living with mental illnesses become victims of crime is why I say: not so fast in disclosing your mental health on the job to coworkers.

I realize that a lot of people with this kind of history would like to tell their coworkers and others. If you ask me it would be OK to do so only if you could respond confidently and with a steel backbone should a coworker you tell try to use the information against you to ruin your reputation or interfere with your job performance.

My friend Robin who told a coworker he had schizophrenia in turn had that coworker tell their supervisor. It cost Robin a promotion he was in line for and then didn’t get.

The fact is too that some of us (I and others I know) choose not to talk about illness and symptoms unless it’s with each other.

When I give speaking engagements I begin for only 5 minutes by talking about what happened to me. Beyond that I focus on real-life strategies for coping with living in recovery today. Positive insights that anyone who struggles can use despite their type of mental illness and its severity.

After doing this over 20 years I know that peers want practical advice not feel-good platitudes or fluff like “If you believe it you can be it!”

In the coming blog entry I will talk more in detail about disclosure in light of a book I read last week.

Rocking Authenticity At Work

This radical idea struck: To write in here about the competitive advantage you have in not conforming.

Albert Einstein was a genius. Was he hanging out at the water cooler all day chatting with colleagues? Likely not.

Danny Rojas the Container Store’s Sr. Manager of Talent Acquisition spoke on this theme in an interview on the Container Store website:

Re: the fallacy of blending into the company culture and the benefit of a DEI ethic:

Rojas thinks that your being different–your individuality–can improve the culture of the company you work at.

How can you and I best add to the dynamic: By remembering that “not conforming” is not a free pass to acting convfrontational with coworkers.

I have a definite idea about the old chestnut of “acting true to yourself.” I believe everyone living on earth in this lifetime is here to experience karma. It’s not the punishment for prior sins. It’s the gaining knowledge of what you didn’t know before–like the evolution of your soul animated in this body and mind.

As not everyone we interact with is pleasant or dandy I think accepting others as they are and letting them be themselves is the key to inhabiting planet Earth with less friction and animosity among those of us with opposing ideologies.

Expecting a person to show up as their authentic self is key. This should be the playbook for interacting with people whose worldview is different from ours:

I accept and affirm how others feel. I make them feel seen and heard. I uphold that they are safe to express what they think and feel in my presence. I honor and celebrate their individuality.

Right. Not everyone else is going to operate this way–and not often likely toward a person living with a disability. Yet this is the ethic I think we should strive for.

At work you’ll rub elbows with the world. Though I failed big time working in the corporate and law offices I credit that early first experience with exposing me to coworkers from different walks of life.

Acceptance should be reciprocal: I allow you to act true to yourself and you allow me to act true to myself.

What about when a person has a mental health issue and they’re employed? Coming up my extended take on disclosure.

Brain Doping

Last week I read on the internet about an alarming trend:

Office workers engage in “brain doping” by taking ADHD pills like Adderall to enhance their performance. The drugs enable these staff members to achieve superhuman output on the job.

Just. Why. Not ever have I been a fan of getting a job in a corporate office. Unless you are like my friend Robin. He obtained an MBA and had a 20-year career in business.

A corporate career might suit you and other followers. I wouldn’t entirely rule out working in an office. Provided management treats employees right.

The fact that people are brain doping on the job shows how insidiously harmful late-stage capitalism is when businesses put profits before people. Then workers put earning money as their reason for working and brain doping. Getting ahead in corporate America should not come at the expense of our sanity.

About two or three years ago a former Amazon office employee published an expose of her time working at that company. The book was titled Exit Interview.

Amazon expects office workers to come in on Saturdays when their managers call them on the phone that morning.

This is unlivable. This is unworkable. The Exit Interview author wrote that after working at Amazon for 12 years she couldn’t recognize herself in the mirror.

In the coming blog entry I’m going to write in more detail about the insanity of businesses–and even non-profits–demanding total allegiance at the expense of our mental and physical health.

I urge followers not to engage in brain doping.

Building a Better World

This is the last entry in the 3-part blog carnival.

Jose Andres and his World Central Kitchen volunteers show up after hurricanes like Maria in Puerto Rico and in conflict zones Feeding the Hungry.

Andres and his crew have done what the Red Cross and U.S. government could not. In the Middle East they built a solid usable jetty. The U.S. spent $300 million building a temporary floating structure nearby that collapsed.

Andres didn’t think he could feed the millions who needed food. His game plan should be replicated by us: Start with one subgoal at a time.

Andres knew that the people living in those other countries were the best experts to tell him what to do when the World Central Kitchen staff showed up.

In fact, Andres is against hosting Zoom meetings to figure out the plan. Meet a person in person is his belief.

Change the Recipe is only 175 pages. It should be bought to refer to time and again for a refresher in hope that a single individual can alleviate the suffering in the world. Each of us can start volunteering in our corner of the world for the cause we’re committed to.

Asking the recipients of help what they need is far better than thinking you know what they need and pre-assembling a care package to give them.

Even before I published Working Assets the career guide I had at least three peers read the manuscript to tell me what they thought of it.

Living life without taking risks is no life to live if you ask me. Andres saw the need that creating World Central Kitchen could fill better than others could fill that need.

This is the key to succeeding: Filling a need your target market has and being the best at what you do.

Breaking Some Eggs

Change the Recipe by Jose Andres talks about how to build a better world by breaking some eggs. In a way breaking the rules by breaking eggs is also the way to get ahead for yourself. In turn each of us should think about breaking those eggs to help others succeed.

Creative minds can achieve more for ourselves by collaborating with others and helping them out along the way. Lifting other individual’s boats rises the tide in our favor too.

In Change the Recipe Jose Andres the chef has a chapter titled Build Longer Tables Not Higher Walls.

The fact that bellicose men rule the world and start wars against each other is not something we should accept as the normal operating business of government.

Andres at the end of this chapter states:

“When you share a meal with someone, or lots of people, you learn more and can help more. And helping people rebuild their lives where they are is far more successful than building walls to keep us apart.”

So-called “migrants” flee their countries and come to America or places like Italy and Greece because civil and other wars have displaced them.

The World Central Kitchen that Jose Andres founded steps in to feed the people where they are. The WCK helps those individuals feed themselves doesn’t just give them a handout.

One brilliant solution Andres had was to make sandwiches when hot stoves weren’t available. Andres bought the sandwich ingredients from a local farmer at a market.

Change the Recipe gives “recipes” for how to build a better world. Each of us one person at a time can contribute mighty effort by “breaking some eggs” in our own way.

The fact that each of us is just one person shouldn’t deter us from trying to build this better world for others and for ourselves too.

Early on in recovery our goal should be bettering ourselves. Then with our feet planted on this ground we can aspire to help others. 

Changing the Recipe

Coming up I’m going to post a 3-entry blog carnival dedicated to a new book published in April that I think everyone should read.

Reading books like Change the Recipe has always been a gift of joy and inspired living for me.

In all ways and from disparate sources I glean the information I can use to better myself. In turn I seek to help readers followers and audience members better themselves by sharing this information.

Maybe my life ethic shouldn’t be a surprise as I obtained a master’s in library and information science decades ago.

Like Mary Oliver asked famously in a quote:

Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Finding out and going and doing what calls out to you could help a person Enjoy Life when they struggle.

I chose to devote my life to public service.

The goal I have for reviewing books in here is to inspire followers that the keys to self-development are right in front of our eyes.

Read on for a review of the latest book that changed my life.