Podcasts about well david

Download Psalm 120-132 We are in the Wisdom Stream reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible. 7streamsmethod.com | @7StreamsMethod | @serenatravis | #7Streams | Donate Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis Lord, You are the one, the Only One who does all these wonderful works on our behalf. It's a testament to your endless love.  Thank you Lord God.  AMEN. We reference 13 Psalms today so don't look away from your Bible yet but keep your Bible in front of you so you can reference what we are talking about as we go through all these gems. 120 - David is feeling the fugitive and is getting exasperated that everywhere he goes people are liars. Liars liars liars. He mentions Meshach; they are a people far north.  He mentions the tents of Kedar; they are nomadic people to the south and east.  David is wanting home and truth and peace. It seems God was making sure David grew 100% weary of wandering among liars. The training is working. This is especially vital because David's entire life is leadership training and leaders must loathe lying or they do not lead rightly. 121 - The Lord is our Protector who keeps us on our feet, He's a security guard 24/7/365.  This is protection from someone who is all powerful and all wise. It was especially touching in the "Diary of Anne Frank" when the family is slipping into dismay from being in hiding so long - they pull out and read Psalm 121. [heavy sigh] 122 - The prayer for Jerusalem captures the excitement of going into God's realm, going to Temple, being among God's people. The joy of it all!  David has obviously secured "Salem" from the Jebusites; It was  Jebus' Salem. It is forever to be called Jeru-Salem. And it a marvelous place to be even now. Husband and I talk about going to church as kids and the people flocking in, the greeting, the sharing time, the music, playing tag in the basement, the friends and VBS and games and stories and the awesome potlucks. They were wondrous days. Well David is as excited as a schoolboy up to Jerusalem 123 - The favor of the Lord will get you farther in a day than a 1,000 days of labor. Be asking for the Lord's favor on your life and watch things get miraculous 124 - When the Lord is on your side / when we are on the Lord's side [and vow to stay there] we escape and become eternally victorious.  God had delivered them from fearful danger. 125 - Trusting the Lord is all that can be trusted. The evil will fall, but the Lord surrounds those who trust Him and He gives them peace. 126 - They had been brought back from captivity in Babylon and they felt like they were dreaming. Compare this Psalm to 137 and things really have changed in their hearts and souls as they are no longer in Babylon. It's certainly wonderful to be home. 127 - Solomon wrote this one and Psalm 72.  Here he is talking about building; something Solomon is quite adept at! He built the Temple, his residences, structures, pools, shelters for his workers, his horses, ad infinitum. He is also bent on teaching people to build homes - not just houses. Because 'family' is the a strong shelter against the elements and the enemies. 128 - This wedding song is by a different writer than Solomon but the theme is an extension of 127.  It talks about healthy boisterous strong families led by God-fearing men with fruitful productive wives. This is what a stalwart nation is built upon. Without this a nation is basically building it's foundation out of sand at the water's edge during low tide ... it will be washed away. 129 - This is a fervent prayer that the enemies of Zion would wither and be starved out and gone! 130 - This cry for mercy is of a soul awaiting redemption. The writer is in penance and truly looking to God alone for restoration. If all people reacted this way to their sins, transgressions, iniquities then no one would be addicted to anything.  This Psalm surely shows a better way back for distressed hearts. 131 - Israel; Believers everywhere, put your hope in the Lord and you will sleep like a baby! 132 - This is a reassertion that David's dynasty will not disappear. It will be eternal regardless of what era of history we find ourselves in. God promises this. The Ark is Present. The Priests are righteous.  David's family is established. There is Provision and abundance, salvation and worship, glory and joy.  Halelujah; praises be to God.

Psalms 49-54 We are in the Wisdom Stream today. Dr. Drake is covering for Serena who is out with laryngitis. We are reading from the Common English Bible this week. 7streamsmethod.com | @7StreamsMethod | @serenatravis | #7Streams | @drakewtravis Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis God we thank you for the strength, courage and we can draw from these Psalms. These are common men you engaged to have them later speak to us. Thank you.  You lived in them. You live in us. Therefore let us be strengthened in the joy of the Lord. Amen Psalm 49 - opens with a herald of "hear ye, hear ye ..."  It's a memo of all hearts, young/old, rich/poor, wise/fool.  These Sons of Korah (the writers) reverence God and fear nothing in this world. The one thing that always wins on this earth; and has the last say is the grave. All are headed there. So of all the things we are to hope in ultimately is that God will redeem and take us to himself. This hope supersedes all hopes. Riches, wisdom, time - the things that most people spend their lives trying to gain are all destined to pass with us.  So look to God for redemption. 50 - Here is another Psalm that was sung in the Temple. It certainly is regal. God does what He does in all His natural glory and magnificent splendor. God speaks and gathers His own. Amid all He does, God is mindful of us. It's like in this Psalm, He is stopping in to assure and encourage us to keep living for Him, remaining thankful, and honoring Him - for He delivers us from trouble. As for the wicked: The total opposite awaits them. The are unteachable, they steal, visit whores, lie, cheat, even bash their own families! They better reckon and walk right or God will tear them to pieces ---> with no one to rescue. 51 - David's soul has hit bottom (though he was at the top of his world). There wasn't an army he couldn't beat, a territory he couldn't attain, he was honored over the known world. Then during some "down time", he stole a man's wife. When he gets rebuked for it, he confesses and repents. We read this story in the history stream last week; II Sam.11&12 . Of all the great things David did, one wise old preacher said, that this prayer, this confession from Ps. 51 was David's greatest move. He wants mercy and a renewed relationship with God. David knows about God's unfailing love and He calls upon that love with all earnestness. David's broken spirit IS his sacrifice to God. This Psalm that David was transparent enough to utter, has been and still is, an inspiration to billions of Believers throughout all time. 52 - David had learned that an Edomite; Doeg had run and told Saul about David's whereabouts and thus Saul resumed his heated chase to find and kill David.  Well David has a word for Doeg-the-tattler and we find it here in Psalm 52.  The setting of this writing was in I Sam. 21:7 and 22:9.  Doeg's presence was incidental but his obvious commitment to Saul over David is found out and is therefore what birthed this harsh word against him. God would ruin Doeg for this, though David would continue to thrive. 53 - Could this Psalm be called "The Tune of The Athiests"?  The Hebrews knew all about this concept that God's goodness is followed or there is no good found anywhere because man on earth does not manufacture goodness. This phrasing is quoted near verbatim in Psalm 14, Paul says these words 1K/yrs later in Romans 3:10-12.  It's the other end of the spectrum from modern-day pagans and New Agers who we may find chanting, "visualize smiles and loving worlds...visualize random kindness!" [poof]  The godless turn out to be hollow and fearful and they end up scattered. 54 - This Psalm, as in #52, is written in response to people giving away David's location to Saul. This time it was the people of Ziph (far SE of Jerusalem). You can brief that at your leisure in I Sam. 26. David's reaction is to call to God (as he always does) to be saved, defended, and heard in his prayers.  The contrast of the lives and spirit of those who are against God and of those who are for God is so stark. David again ends up victorious in triumph.

CEO of Liquid Avatar David Lucatch talks about NFT's. What are they and how do they work? Well David does his best to explain that and how Liquid avatar can help you store those purchases.

It’s time for the finals that David called the midterms that are happening after Christmas break! Donna is having trouble focusing because of David, Steve is having trouble because he’s Steve, Brandon is too busy Branding to study but don’t worry he’ll do great. And David? Well… David needs something to help him focus and stay up through his radio show and thankfully Howard knows just the wrong thing   Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @backtopodcast Email us at backtopodcast@gmail.com Leave us a review on iTunes for a special shout-out at the end of the episode!

The importance of ‘Remembering Well' the sacrifice made by others so that we can be free. Therefore it is a combo of Remembrance Sunday and a communion message based around 1 Cor 11:23-29. the basic structure is what it is to remember? Then from there we remember well when we look back with gratitude, look forward with anticipation and look within to examine ourselves. Recorded during the morning service at West Road Church on Sunday 8th November 2020. If you'd like to find out more, head to www.westroadchurch.org.uk.

The lyrics to the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song Teach Your Children have never rang more true than the did this morning on Alt 949. Jack is a huge fan of TWO TIME Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee David Crosby in bands like The Byrds, CSN, and CSNY (that's Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young for the kids), but he's equally a fan of his off-stage antics and the incredible life he's lead. One of the achievements that Jack is most in awe of, is the 78 year-old Crosby's claim to have rolled over 2.4 MILLION joints in his lifetime. This morning, while scrolling through Twitter, he happened upon the most bizarre impromptu Master Class of 2020, and he couldn't help tell you all about it. What can the Twittersphere learn from David f****ing Crosby? We answered some burning questions this morning on San Diego's Alternative.

Wait.. a podcast about design & tech is talking about the Super Bowl?! Well David and Zach are big sports fans so it's time to talk about sports and more importantly how the big ads, the Super Bowl itself, and even Maroon 5 tie into what we are doing as an agency at Toi. Here is a list of some of the ads we spoke about: https://adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/top-5-creative-super-bowl-commercials/316517/

What if you were gonna die tomorrow? What would you do with this short time you had left? Chill with family? Skydive? Go curse out your boss that made your life a living hell? Well David the rich hermit crab with no family or friends will have to figure this out for himself after returning home from a doctor appointment that didn’t end well. Now at 42 with about 24 hours to live he will have to try to shed his shyness and accomplish one last task before it’s all over. What could that be? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/michael253/support

When you visit the Loop in Chicago, you’ll probably take a picture at the iconic Bean ( actually called Cloud Gate).  If you’re watching the business section in the papers, you’ll see a gigantic new sports complex that’s been constructed in the Pullman neighborhood.   You’ll also see a new Method factory recently constructed, and Whole … Continue reading Episode 017 – Doing Good, and Doing Quite Well: David Doig →

Do you know your fabricator? Meet David Carmody, Division Manager and CID+ at San Diego PCB Design. As a service bureau, San Diego PCB works on a variety of PCB design projects. Learn why David says, “You gotta know who you’re fabbing with” and how he is using DFM Reports to help customers integrate design and assembly in this episode of The OnTrack Podcast. Show Highlights: Memorable designs in telecom space and the development board for Dragon II, a SpaceX project, for the capsule they hope to take to Mars Package on packages, dropping the DDR - removing the burden on the designer Palomar advisory program - student programs for learning PCB design San Diego PCB acquired by Milwaukee Electronics, EMS and Engineering Services DFM report - a “stoplight report” for customers before starting build - customers love it and it fixes issues proactively especially with packaging A lot of engineers don’t know the manufacturing side and DFM reports can help with this “You gotta know who you’re fabbing with”  Will additive manufacturing processes be the answer? The business model remains to be seen. 3D printing - you can’t print copper (yet) Altium User Groups - have Altium in the title but we don’t run them! We’d love to support. Altium User Group in San Diego is very active and supportive. Advice from a Pro: Always keep learning, it will keep you fresh and make work more fun. PCB design isn’t the only practice David has mastered - he’s a martial artist too Links and Resources: David Carmody on Linkedin San Diego Altium Users Group Website San Diego PCB Milwaukee Electronics Tecate, NM Manufacturing Facility   Hi everyone this is Judy Warner with Altium’s OnTrack podcast - welcome back. Once again I have another incredible guest to speak with us today, but before we get started please follow me and connect with me on LinkedIn. I try to share a lot of things relative to engineering and PCB design and on Twitter I'm @AltiumJudy and Altium is on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and if you'd please subscribe and give us some comments so we know what you'd like to hear more about that would be great. So today again we have a great guest which is David Carmody of San Diego PCB David has a new title now: he is the division manager and he also has a CID. So David, welcome and thank you for joining me here at Altium today. So, we've known each other for a little while and I've had the benefit of being over at San Diego PCB and looking over your shoulder to some pretty wild complicated designs. So tell us a little bit about your day-to-day from the perspective of design bureaus and the kind of work that you see? Okay, we do get a lot of different designs, a bunch of varied designs, so we see a lot of military application, we see a lot of new technology - wearable technologies and things like that as well; it is pretty much all over the map though. I mean we get a little bit of anything and everything just because of the the nature of the service entity. A lot of the more upscale - so to speak -designs are the real nanotechnology sort of stuff where we're cramming a ton of the little parts into a board that's less than a half square inch total in size, or we're packing everything into a big housing that has to get heat out somehow because, I mean, we're sending up high output micro processors into into space and there is no airflow so we need to get the heat out in other ways. So there's a lot of that sort of stuff that we do get to see and and play with and and learn from as well. I think San Diego is kind of a neat place to work too because there is a lot of Defense here and there's also call comments and telecoms, and even in our local area, although I'm sure you see work from all over the country? We do we also have kind of some neat things right here in our own backyard. Oh yeah. So across that variety what would you say some of your more memorable designs would be? I was gonna say we do have have some telecom stuff that's gone on and those are those are fun boards just because they've got big processors on them and lots of high-speed lines, things like that. Most memorable, for me personally, would probably be a SpaceX design. I was able to design the development board for the Dragon 2. Oh my gosh!we’re not worthy! Do you mean the dragon heavy that they just launched - the second Falcon that ever went? Yeah the the Dragon 2 which is the capsule that they hope to take to Mars one day. Oh so that that one! Yeah.  I did the development board for that so it's just basically a big processor board with a lot of RF communications on it and things like that and they're breaking out all the other boards from that, and that was a fun project. I got to be a part of that was really cool. Yes, I sold some R4s to them and got to go through that facility a few times so I'm like a weirdo SpaceX geek and then we also sponsor the hyperloop pod teams for universities. So Ben that's helping us here with recording this; he and I got to go up and hang out at SpaceX and see them do that. I saw some of those pictures. So sorry for being so weird but I’m a kinda SpaceX geek. Yes, it’s been fun. We do have a couple of space contracts we've worked directly with NASA and MIT and also with Space Micro so, we've definitely learned our way around the Class 3A specifications and we know that inside and out. Not easy, really dense stuff. So you talked a little bit about the nanotechnology, is that where you sort of see the bleeding edge going? What are the the most challenging designs? I was gonna say the packaging is actually changing quite a bit, we're seeing some things that the packaging is doing that's well, quite frankly, I'm not terribly happy with because it takes away some of our place - but things like package-on packages is coming around. That's really cool technology, I mean, you put down the DSP or the PGA - whatever it happens to be - and then you can drop the DDR right on top of it. There's nothing for us to do; it's purely an assembly process, if that. Wow. So that stuff is definitely interesting and removing a burden, so to speak, on the designer but yeah, then the package size itself is just getting smaller and smaller. We're being pushed into HDI technology more and more often. 0.3 millimeter BGAs are pretty common, 0.4s are all over the place now. I mean even big ones. So the 0.3 three millimeter BGA's are getting common. I've been able to work on things as small as 0.15 millimeter though. So it was a flip chip sort of design where we're pushing the envelope on that thing so it was experimental, and things like that. I don't think they actually ever built it was costly, that whole get up then but that's that the trend we're seeing. Just everyone's pushing the package design more and more all the time. Something I noticed I took a peek at, even though I've known you for a while - I took a peek at your LinkedIn profile. I don't know that I'd ever done that and I like to ask people a lot, how'd you get into this industry? Because most of us didn't start out this way, but we ended up here. So did you start out there? I notice you took courses at Palomar College which is local here, and I don't know if they still do, but they used to have PCB design courses? That they do I'm actually on the Palomar Advisory Committee right now and we're helping to restructure some of that stuff and try to join up a little bit more, their student base through there. They've got a pretty good offering right now to make it better but yeah it's still active and it's it's one of the few places that you can really go for formal education. So it's good that they're there keeping it alive, and not just keeping it alive but updating it. Right, and that's kind of where you started out was it not? It was. Or did you just join them recently as part of the Advisory Committee, or did you start learning design there? I did technically start learning some design there but it was an accident really. [Laughter] See, my point is, we didn't do this on purpose. No absolutely not. Basically I had gone through their program and really gravitated - back then at least - 3d was just emerging. It was all in AutoCAD, there was no such thing as SolidWorks, it was just coming around. So I ended up jumping into AutoCAD 3d mechanical sort of stuff and and did my degree on that and then got on to nothing but waiting list after waiting list. So at that point I was talking to a guy that I was working with, he goes: call my brother in law, he does something in computers. And I talked to this guy, he was a PCB designer at Intel - I'm actually working with him now, we recently hired him, but yeah he's working out in our Arizona office but he gave me some excellent time; never actually met him face to face at the time but he gave me some phone time and told me what to look for, and what this industry had to offer and gave me a couple of places to go after. And I went after both - I ended up getting an offer from both of them, but I liked the smaller business so I took that side of things and spent 12 years back at an ‘unnamed company’ as the Design Manager. Laughter, well not as awesome as Sandy Opie… Well I don't know, it hasn't been a year yet, so San Diego PCB was acquired actually by Milwaukee Electronics right. Yes it’s been about a year and four months now, time flies. So Milwaukee is a really capable EMS shop up in-  remind me? It's Milwaukee. Oh is it Milwaukee! Yes, their primary branch is in Milwaukee - okay this confuses everyone - because we have multiple brands out there now. So our Milwaukee electronics brand has most of our engineering services and the EMS as well there. Up in Canby, Portland Oregon, now that's where we have Screaming Circuits - that is our quick term prototype house and there is also EMS there as well. Most people don't know that but the factory shares the floor for that and then we also have - actually it's also called Milwaukee Electronics - despite that, it's in Tecate Mexico but they've got a huge building down there and they're there literally clawing the mountain out from being behind this building. Right I've seen photos of it, it's really quite lovely, at least the photos are, it looks really modern. It's a very impressive facility. I was able to visit there and I had seen pictures of it when the shop floor was was only 50% filled; that place is full and like I said they're calling out the mountain now behind them, so that they can add on and I think gain about 30% more square footage. Growing like crazy. How has that been, that acquisition, for your customers and for you, there's obviously synergy there between the two firms so how has that been for you? The two companies, the acquisition itself was great, Milwaukee Electronics is a fantastic company to work for. I really enjoy all the people that are there. The synergy has taken some time to get things rolling, but I'm starting to see a little bit of a snowball effect and so we're starting to pick up some momentum to where Screaming Circuits is sending us customers back and we're sending them customers in and we're starting to get a collaborative database of the customers going right now, so that we can take a more active role on that and and really sell to both sides. There's been a little bit of crossover, but like I said, it took probably six months before I saw even the first crossover and right then another one happened, and then another one, but now we're up to where we're getting about at least one customer a week or something like that, that's doing some sort of crossover. so it's definitely building up speed. But it's still going to take a little bit more time. So since our listeners and watchers here will are mostly engineers and PCB designers, what do you think the benefit is to collaborating design to EMS - what are the benefits you think that occur there? When you're collaborating, one of the biggest things that's coming out right now, is basically  DFM report that we've been doing, it's something that I've been doing for years. Say a customer has their own design team, they want me to be a second set of eyes - something like that. I'll go through the design either on a cursory level if you just want me to look at DFM/DFA sort of issues. Do you want me to look at your circuits, do you want me to look at this whole thing - make sure that you placed it correctly? I coined that a ‘stoplight report’ a long time ago, and basically it's just - we give a nice little green note if it's informative only: this looks good it was done right, give a yellow note if, hey you might want to look into this, you might have some potential issues or, hey this part’s hanging off the board edge you're gonna knock it off, this needs a correction before it goes out - and those are obviously the red items - so customers seem to love that. I mean it's really easy, real clear-cut. They can kind of skim through it, hit the items that they want and that is really building up some speed right now with with a few customers because they've had an internal source for a long time. They've been using Screaming Circuits forever, but Screaming Circuits is going: okay you're going into bigger yields, you need to fix these sorts of items - let's fix them ahead of time and that's what we're being utilized to do. That sounds absolutely incredible especially now, because in the marketplace so many engineers are laying out their own boards. They may or may not have time or access to spend a lot of time with their fabricators our assembler, so I think to have that sort of oversight would be very welcome. I don't know if that's what's driving it or just having a second set of eyes what do you think? Probably a bit of both, I mean the engineers obviously get EMI and and EM theory, they do that really well, so they they always lay out the board well for that. But they aren't necessarily the best packagers, most PCB designers are puzzlers so, we do the packaging portion real well that's what we like to play with. But if you’re a good PCB designer you're going to know the EM side and you're also going to know the manufacturing side. A lot of the engineers don't know that, so they don't really look at that. I mean, I've been given boards that were completely routed and they said: rip out all the routing because this guy did it with 6mm vias with a 12mm pad on an 80mm  thick board and so, it's just wrong all the way around. And placement wasn't bad on that… But the aspect ratio is the killer. -and he used decent trace widths, but I mean, the most problematic piece of the board, and he killed it. And like it's a good thing that companies like Altium and other EDA companies make such powerful, great software - but there's no place in the software that says: no, stop dummy,   you can run DRCs or whatever, but it won't necessarily flag it for for DFM if your aspect ratio is off or whatever, unless you've turned those settings on or off I can imagine right? Yes but you can still improperly program DRCs too, you can say: hey I want 1mm holes on this board… I've heard you and Mike Creeden say that a design tool is only as good as the designer.    -yeah you absolutely need that and I mean, someday in the future would it be great to see the tools incorporate that sort of stuff? Yes, but at the same time you’ve got to know how your fab works too… And you don't want to limit yourself either because you could potentially create self-limiting things that are really irritating... -oh yeah. So I think we're gonna just keep giving you powerful tools and you guys have to work it out. Yeah I mean, we can just zoom up and zoom up and, hey that via looks plenty big enough to me, I could put my fist through it, but not in reality. The packaging thing that I was referring to earlier that is just starting to drive this industry just because of big 0.4 millimeter pitch BGA. I'm working with a fabricator that can't quite do the the latest and greatest and all of a sudden that pattern starts to become a challenge that’s almost impossible to break out. Right yeah I don't know where this train’s going… Yup I don't know - it will stop somewhere at some point… I know, I know, except it seems like we just keep creating some breakthrough so I'm keeping my eye on things like additive manufacturing, whatever we could do it 1mm, controlled trace and pull it off but there's no clear front-runner. Yeah, the additive processes are very interesting, haven't seen anyone really start pulling off a business model out of it. The 3d printing technologies is also very interesting but you can't print copper unfortunately, so they can't - yet at least - so there's some major hurdles there too that they have to go through. It'll be interesting. Well I wanted to shift gears a little bit because you, along with your colleague Randy Clemens here in San Diego, run a really solid Altium user group here and for those listeners that don't know this, Altium User Groups, they have our name in the title but we don't run them - they're completely run by the users, for the users they're very democratic and we just lend support and it's something that we've been talking a lot about here, is that we would like to grow the user community and help people launch groups. So can you give us a little bit of background and give us the do's and don'ts maybe, if people that are thinking about starting a local users group from what things have worked, when things maybe haven't worked, and how do we get more people to launch user groups? Just sign up - just for a little background on that - there was a user group that was here for quite a while that was run by Bill Brooks and it had some traction, it was running for quite a while and then either the community or whatever, started to kind of drop off a little bit. Randy and I saw that as a bad thing basically, and we talked to Altium, talked to a few people here, and then put together a general terms for the the group. Randy has always done Google boards, the blog and stuff, so he's very good at that, he's got a pretty major Altium tutorial board actually that's out there. So he took some of that and ported it over and turned it into a San Diego Altium User Group Board, you can just google that: San Diego Altium User Group and you'll find his board. If you sign up you'll get meeting invites so it's really that easy. All of our IP, as it were, is all up there and and I mean fully freely distributable so anyone can go ahead and take that as a template and start porting it over. Randy would probably help if anyone asked to set up or clone a board but Altim is really great on this thing, they're really helping us out, they help promote it you guys are actually doing lunches for us and all of that, so we really, really appreciate all that support. Lunch is a good way to get people out - just feed them and they will come. Exactly, you feed them and they show up. So we were restarting the group, it had a little bit of a slow start and it's kind of typical. I think we had all of three people show up once plus the the huge group of Altium group and San Diego PCB group because we host the location but no I mean our last last attendance was in the 30s somewhere, so it's it's doing real well now. What do you think the benefits are to the users that participate regularly? One of the big things is we always bring Chris Carlson out for new updates and stuff so we can see things as they're coming out. He gave us a wonderful tutorial on 18 not long ago, really to help us all dive into it as as the interphase changed. I thought Randy was gonna eat us alive - he came out he's like yeah bring him - he had a slide deck going, and ‘what about this?’  God bless Chris Carlson, our senior FAE, he addressed most of those things and just said, no Randy we just moved it over here, it's just over there and we tackle most of it. But what I really appreciate is that Chris actually took four things back to our R&D team, and I think that kind of real-time feedback, it helps us make better tools right? And if we make better tools we sell more software, it's not rocket science right? Right and we're happier designers… Right your’e happier and you’re productive and so I think it's a win-win and I think Altium is doing a good job culturally. So say you were in... I don't know... New Hampshire okay, and you knew there was a pretty good-sized design community what would you say the first steps would be to get something going? First of all, probably to clone that board that we've already got… And we will share this, by the way, in the show notes and we'll share that if you want to go take a look at it, because Randy has done a good job of kind of making a charter, it would be a good model to share. -so it's a fairly basic charter but yeah, clone that board, start marketing it against that, call Altium… Me, call me I will help you. -so get them to put it out in a newsletter and a blog or something along those lines so you can start that foot traffic and then invite your buddies, invite your friends and get them to do the same. I interrupted you there, so you said that Chris came out and you got to see the latest and greatest, Chris did a good thing on showing you AD18 - what other kind of benefits do you think the users see over time? I mean we've already kind of hit on the the dynamic feedback and that's obviously great information, but just the user-to-user help is always nice too. I mean I've had people come in with a laptop and and open it up and go, look I'm struggling over here, what the heck do I need to do? What rule do I need to write to make this thing work right? And we can just basically rub shoulders and get things moving and get a workaround if it needs it just to move it along. Well I've been really impressed since I've been down here for about a year now and just seeing the group it's just very active and it seems like a really healthy thing and yeah all I get to do, is use my card and buy you guys lunch and if you want a speaker we’ll send one, if you don't want one we won't interfere so I think that user-to-user and that you guys really get to own it, is sort of a powerful model because it's not like we're going to come down and spring a free sales pitch... Yeah well, Altium doesn't go in they're not salesy. Yeah but we try actually, not to do it. No, it's been fantastic for that. Well I wanted to bring this up because you and Randy spoke at AltiumLive and Randy took a little part of his time speaking to talk about the Altium user groups and I was so surprised! I'm like, well you can spend your time talking about that if you want Randy, but I didn't think there would be that much interest - but I happened to pop in the back door just to see how it was going and people were really engaged and then people came and talked to me after. I think there's kind of a hunger to do it. I'm just wondering... I just wanted you to share with our listeners, if people did want to do it they would see, oh here's some steps to take because I don't know, though, that maybe we've done a really good job of advertising it because we do want to stay out of it, we want to contribute but not inserting ourselves into an organic user’s group. So, thanks for sharing that part. Hm-mm yeah, for the AltiumLive, Lawrence Romine asked Randy to do a little bit of a spiel on that and yeah, there were a lot of people from LA that sounded like they were going to be starting their own, or a couple of them, depending on the demographics or Geographics up there and then there were quite a few out of state as well that that sounded like they wanted to start one. I went to one in Utah, which I guess has been going on for a while. So, I got connected with someone actually at AltiumLive and we ended up connecting and there was like 80 people there to see Ben Jordan talk about AD18, I'm like okay, Wow! 80 - it was huge, but I think that group has been very active and been around for a long time so it wasn't like a new thing and they actually come from Salt Lake and south of there, so it was almost like two combined groups. So anyways, thank you for sharing about that. Any final thoughts? Nothing that I can think of right off the top of my head. Well thank you so much for coming in today… -Thank you You’re a good sport and we really appreciate you in San Diego PCB and thank you for sharing. Oh one thing I wanted to ask you was because the upper-end (age-wise) is starting to kind of age out in the industry and we're getting new ones coming in, what is one - since you're sort of a veteran designer - what is say, one or two pieces of advice that you would give to a young designer? The number one thing I would say is, never stop learning. I mean I got into a rut at one point where I wasn't learning I couldn't stand up on the the current trends, things like that, and that job got to be a drag, it really did because it's - overall - we did the same thing over and over all the time. It's very repetitive, but if you're standing up on the latest trends you always have something else to reach at and something else to go after. Always have the latest way to solve something too, so it just makes the job overall a breeze; makes it a lot easier to do day-to-day and keeps it fun and interesting. Very good. Okay, last question: I said that was the last one but I like my very last, last question - I call this part of the podcast designers after hours okay - so there's people like you and I know in common, like Bill Brooks who started the Alts Music Group. There's the sculptor, I just spoke to Chris Hunrath earlier today, who's a scuba diver. So what do you like to do after hours? Honestly Mike my side is a little sore right now because I did some martial arts last night so that's one of my little best-kept secrets, so to speak, been doing that for a long time done Tan Sido, got a third-degree black belt there, and then migrated over to Kung Fu and have a black sash. Well, remind me to never make you mad! You’re so soft spoken and could kick my butt. [Laughter] Pat's the one that always bounces that around the office but he's honestly the only one I’d ever damage too… [Laughter] That's cool. See, another interesting after hour designer. Well David, thanks again and I know we'll see you soon again. This has been Judy Warner and David Carmody of San Diego PCB. Thank you for joining us today we'll make sure to share our links below and please visit us again next time. Until then, remember to always stay on track.

The way that you think creates the way you feel. If you have great thoughts then no problem, but if your thoughts are a little distorted, then...look out! Wouldn’t it be great if there were an easy way to look at your thoughts...and change them? As it turns out - there is! In today’s conversation we are going to show you how to identify the kinds of thoughts that lead to depression, anxiety, shame, anger, and self-doubt - and talk about the process that you can go through to eliminate those thoughts for good. Our guest is Dr. David Burns, author of the acclaimed bestseller Feeling Good and one of the leading popularizers of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). He is also the creator of TEAM therapy, which takes CBT to the next level. Today, David Burns and I are tackling the topic of “cognitive distortions” - the messed-up thinking that can get you stuck in negative emotions. By the end of today’s episode you’ll not only be able to spot the times when your thinking gets distorted, but you’ll know what to do about it so that you can “feel good”. If you want to listen to our first episode together, where David Burns and I spoke about how to apply his work in relationships (based on his book Feeling Good Together), here is a link to Episode 98: How to Stop Being a Victim - Feeling Good Together - with David Burns And, as always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Resources: Check out Dr. David Burns's website Read David’s classic books, Feeling Good or When Panic Attacks FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide www.neilsattin.com/feelinggood2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with David Burns Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host Neil Sattin. On today's show, we're going to cover ways that your thinking can be distorted. And, by being distorted can impact the way you feel, the way you behave, the way you interact with other people, and basically get in the way of you being an effectively functioning human being. Neil Sattin: I'm talking about cognitive distortions and they've been mentioned a little bit on the show before, but I wanted to take this opportunity to dive deeply into the ways that our thinking can just be messed up. From that messed upness - and no that is not a technical term -  comes all sorts of problems. Neil Sattin: From today's show, what my hope is for you is that you understand these things well enough so that you can spot them happening in your own thinking and perhaps in the thinking and reasoning of those around you. We're going to talk about effective strategies for changing the pattern. Neil Sattin: In order to do that, we have with us today a fortunate return visit from Dr. David Burns who was on the show back in episode 98 where we talked about how to stop being a victim in your relationship. This was an episode that was all based on David's work in a book called Feeling Good Together. Neil Sattin: If you're interested in hearing that, you can go to neilsattin.com/feelinggood. What I wanted to talk about today relates to some of the pioneering work that David did in popularizing cognitive behavioral therapy primarily through his book Feeling Good which has sold millions of copies all over the world and has been prescribed and shown to actually help people with depression simply by reading the book and going through the exercises. Neil Sattin: I'm very excited to have David with us today, we're going to talk about cognitive distortions, we're probably going to touch on TEAM therapy which is his latest evolution that's attacking some of the problems with cognitive behavioral therapy. And hear about some of the amazing results that that's getting and get some insight into how that even works. Neil Sattin: Without any further ado, let us dive right in. David Burns, thank you so much for joining us again here on Relationship Alive. David Burns: Thanks Neil, I'm absolutely delighted to be on your podcast for two reasons. First, I think you're a tremendous host. You know your stuff both technically and you know my background, you do your homework, that's very flattering to me being interviewed, but also you seem to exude a lot of warmth and integrity, just a pleasure to hang out with you a little bit today and your many, many listeners. Neil Sattin: Thank you. Thank you so much. I appreciate your saying that. This stuff is important to me. I'm hoping that this podcast makes a big difference in the world and the way that we do that is through being able to feature amazing work like what you do. I don't want to forget to mention that you also have your own podcast, the Feeling Good Podcast that has amazing insight into the work that you're doing. Neil Sattin: In fact, you record sessions with people so people can actually hear you working with clients and then explaining how you did what you did and also getting direct feedback from the people that you're working with. That's a fascinating show and how many episodes have you put out at this point? David Burns: I think Fabrice and I are up to roughly 60, in the range of 60. One really neat bit of feedback we're getting is that a lot of therapists now are requiring their patients to listen to the Feeling Good podcasts. There's been a lot of research on my book Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and studies have shown that if you just hand the book to someone with moderate to severe depression, 60% of them ... 65% of them will improve dramatically within four weeks. David Burns: That's really, really good news. It's called bibliotherapy or reading therapy, but now we're getting this ... I'm getting the same kind of feedback from people who are listening to the podcasts and saying that just listening to the Feeling Good Podcast had a dramatic effect on their depression or their obsessive compulsive disorder or whatever is bothering them. I'm hoping that that trend will continue. Neil Sattin: Yeah, someone's going to have to study podcastio-therapy. David Burns: Yeah, right. You may be having the same thing Neil on your relationship broadcast from people with troubled relationships following the information and the techniques you're providing and perhaps experiencing genuine improvement in their relationships, greater intimacy and love. Neil Sattin: Absolutely. I'm getting that kind of feedback all the time from listeners and I also hear that therapists, particularly couples therapists are having their clients listen to the show and even sometimes prescribing specific episodes for them to listen to. It feels really good to be able to be an adjunct part of people's progress and therapy. David Burns: Congrats. That's great. That's a real credit to the quality of what you're offering. Neil Sattin: Thank you. Thank you. Well, let's dive in. Enough kudos although it does feel really good, though I guess that doesn't surprise me considering you're the author of Feeling Good. Quick point of clarification. Is it the just handing of the Feeling Good book that has a 60 to 65% improvement rate or did the people actually have to read some of it to get that? David Burns: All they have to do is touch it. The improvement comes through osmosis and many of those who have read it have gotten worse. They don't have good data on that in the studies. It's people coming to a medical center for the treatment of depression and in the original studies, they said that they had to be on a waiting list for four weeks and during the four weeks, read this book. David Burns: Then they continued to test them every week with various depression tests and half the patients went to some kind of control group who were on a waiting list control for four weeks or they gave them some other book to read like Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning and in all of the studies, the patients who were given a copy of Feeling Good, two thirds of them had improved so much within four weeks that they didn't need to have treatment anymore at the medical center. David Burns: They never got antidepressants or psychotherapy. Then they've done follow up, up to two year follow up studies on these patients as well. For the most part, they've continued to do well or even improve more and have not had significant relapses. The alternative groups who got Victor Frankl's book did not show significant improvement or people on waiting list control. David Burns: They were pretty well done studies sponsored by research from ... sponsored by National Institute of Mental Health and other research groups. Forrest Scogin is a clinical psychologist at University of Alabama and he pioneered a lot of these studies, but there have been probably at least a dozen replications of that finding that have been published now with teenagers, with elderly people and with people in between. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I want to just say, your book despite having been published a little while ago now is eminently readable and I did read it a while ago. In fact, I think it was one of the first "self-help books" that I stumbled across probably around when I was graduating from college. In sitting down and revisiting it in preparation for our conversation today, I was just struck by how personable, for a book that's about cognitive behavioral therapy which is something that I think just calling it that probably turns a lot of people off. David Burns: You bet. Neil Sattin: The truth is that reading it through, it just makes so much sense and I love how you bring humor into the subject and in many ways talk about yourself as an author in some of the quizzes around the kind of thoughts that undermine our self-esteem. Anyway, I definitely recommend it. Neil Sattin: If you're not one of the millions of people who have already read it, you should pick it up and if you are, I would suggest picking it up again to just glean again what more is there. We're going to talk about one of the central topics in the book which is how our thinking affects the way we feel. Neil Sattin: Maybe we just start there because that was one place where I even in upon revisiting, I got a little confused and in the past, that's made total sense to me. Yeah of course, I make something mean something and that gives me an emotional response to it which ironically makes me think of Victor Frankl's work. Neil Sattin: At the same time, I know that we have feelings that just our bodies kick in with emotional responses in a split second when something happens. That seems to precede thought. How do you parse that apart in a way that makes sense? David Burns: Well, the basis of cognitive therapy and we've moved on to something new called TEAM therapy or TEAM CBT, but I think the basis of cognitive therapy which as far as it goes it's still pure gold goes back to the Buddha 2,500 years ago and to the Greek philosophers like Epictetus 2,000 years ago that humans are disturbed not by things, but by the views we take of them that you have to interpret an event in a particular way before you can have an emotional reaction to it. David Burns: This thought is so basic that our thoughts create all of our moods. We create our emotional reality at every moment of every day by the way, we interpret things, but that's such a basic idea that many people can't get it or they don't believe it. I had an example of this at my workshop in the east coast recently - I was in a hotel. David Burns: I've had many afflictions myself in my life. I love to treat people with depression or anxiety because whatever they have I could say, "Oh, I've been there myself." I can show you the way out of the woods, but when I was little, I had the fear of heights and then I got over it completely as a teenager through a high school teacher who had me stand on the top of a tall ladder until my fear disappeared and took about 15 minutes and it was dramatically effective. David Burns: Suddenly, my anxiety went from 100 to zero and I was free, but it crept back in because I stopped going up on heights not out avoidance, just I had no reason to and then suddenly I realized it had returned. I was on a hotel on one of these glass elevators and I was going up to the 14th floor and I was looking down into the elevator and I had no emotional reaction whatsoever and it was because I was telling myself and this was automatic I guess, but you're safe. David Burns: However, if there hadn't been that glass there and it would have been the same elevator going up and looking out, I would have been paralyzed with fear and terror and it would have been a total body experience that I can feel in my whole body this extreme terror. That's the first idea that you can't have an emotional reaction without having some kind of thought or interpretation. David Burns: You feel the way you think - your thoughts create all of your moods. After Feeling Good came out, I got a letter from a therapist in Philadelphia. He was a student therapist at the Philadelphia Marriage Counsel I believe and he said he had read my book Feeling Good: How Your Thoughts Create All of Your Moods. David Burns: He said, "Well, that's a great idea, but how can it be true? If you're on a railroad track with a train coming and you're about to get killed, you're going to feel terrified. You don't have to put a thought in your mind, it's just an automatic reaction." He said, "I don't believe your claim that only your thoughts can create your moods." David Burns: I got that letter and I started thinking, I said, "Gosh, what he's saying is so obvious, how could I have missed that when I wrote that book?" I felt embarrassed and ashamed. A couple days after I got that letter, I was in a taxi coming home from the airport and at a certain place on River Road, you go over this railroad track. David Burns: I looked down the railroad track, I saw there was a car driving on the railroad track at about two miles an hour. Bumpety-bumpety-bump. I looked then in the other direction and this is ... Freight trains come through here, they never stop, they come at 65 miles an hour. I saw one about a mile and a half in the other direction. David Burns: I said, "Man, that guy is going to get smashed by the train." I told the taxi driver, "Stop, I got to try to get that guy off the railroad tracks." I ran up and knocked on the window and he rolled down the window and there's this older man there and he said, "Can you please direct me to City Line Avenue?" David Burns: I said, "City Line Avenue is 10 miles in the other direction, but you're on the railroad tracks and there's a train coming. You've got to back up. Back up to get to the road." Because he was beyond the road, where you know how they have a pile of rocks at the railroad tracks, that's where he was and I said, "Back up, I'm going to get you off the railroad tracks." David Burns: He backed up and he kept ... When he got to the road, I said, "Now turn, turn your car." Finally I had them positioned to where just the nose of the car, the front part of the car was over the tracks and I was standing in front of it. Now the train was about maybe 20 seconds from impact and they had their whistle on. David Burns: I was waving my hands like, "Back up, back up. Just back up five feet and it will save you." Instead, the guy started creeping forward very slowly. Neil Sattin: Oh no. David Burns: The train smashed into him at the side of his car at about 60 miles an hour. Neil Sattin: Oh my goodness. David Burns: Actually ripped the car in half. The front compartment was thrown about 30 feet from the tracks. They had their brakes on, the train was skidding to a stop and I ran over again to the driver's compartment and looked in, it was all smashed windows and I thought I'd see a decapitated corpse, but it hit probably an inch behind his head and it hit so fast it had just cut the car in half and he didn't seem to be that injured or anything. David Burns: He looked at me and smiled and said, "Which way exactly did you say now to City Line Avenue?" I said, "You got to be kidding me." I said, "You were just hit by a train." He said, "I was not." He says, "That's ridiculous." I said, "Oh yeah, what happened to the windows of your car?" David Burns: Then he looked and he noticed all the windows were smashed and there was glass all over. Then he says, "Gosh, it looks like somebody broke my windows." I said, "Look, where's the back seat? Where's the back half of your car?" He turned around and he saw the back half of his car was missing. David Burns: He looked at me and he says, "I think you're right. Half of my car seems to have disappeared." He says, "Where is this train?" I said, "Look, it's right there, it's 20 feet from here." Now the conductors were rushing up and the engineers and he looked at me and he says, "This is great." David Burns: I said, "Why is that? Why is this great?" He says, "Well, maybe I can sue." I said, "You'll be lucky if they don't sue you. You were driving down the railroad tracks." I couldn't understand it and at this point, the police cars came, the ambulance, they put him in an ambulance, I gave my story to the police, he looked just fine and they took him to the Bryn Mawr Hospital. David Burns: I was just scratching my head and I got in the taxi, it was just a mile from home, the taxi driver took me the rest of the way home. I was saying, "What in the heck happened?" The next day I was jogging around that same corner, of course, there was all this litter from the car or broken pieces of metal and glass all over the place and there was a younger guy maybe 50 years old or something like that going through the rubble. David Burns: I stopped there and asked him who he was and he says, "My father was almost killed by a train here yesterday and somebody saved his life and I was just checking out the scene." I said, "Well, that was me actually." I said, "I didn't understand it -  he was driving down the railroad track and if I hadn't gotten there, I think he would have been killed." David Burns: I said, "Why was he driving down the railroad track?" He says, "Well, my father has had Alzheimer's disease and he lost his driver's license 10 years ago, but he forgot and after dinner, he snuck out. He grabbed the keys and snuck out, decided to take the car for a drive." Here is the same situation, a train about to kill somebody on a railroad track about to smash into you and I had the thought this guy is in danger he could be killed. David Burns: I was experiencing 100% terror and anxiety and fear, but his thought was different. His thought was, "This is great. I might be able to sue and get a great deal of money." Therefore he was feeling joy and euphoria. Same situation, different thoughts and radically different emotions. David Burns: That's what I mean and that's what the Buddha meant 2,500 years ago when we say that only your thoughts can create your emotions. It's not what happens to you, but the way you think about it that creates every positive and negative emotion. Neil Sattin: Did you ever write back to that person who wrote you? About that train - to tell him what had happened? David Burns: I don't remember it because this was way back in 1980 shortly after the book came out. I probably did because in those days, I was so excited to get a fan letter. I never had any idea that the book would become popular, it didn't hit the best-seller list until eight years after it was published because the publishers wouldn't support it with any marketing or advertising because they thought no one would ever want to read a book on depression. David Burns: When I got a letter in the days before email, I would get so excited and I would try to contact the person and sometimes talk to them for an hour or two on the telephone thinking this might be the only fan I'll ever have. I'm sure I did write back. Neil Sattin: Speaking of that, this might be a good chance to start talking about the cognitive distortions and like the idea that this might be the only fan that you ever have, what are we talking about in terms of now we've established pretty well. The way I think about things is going to determine how I feel. Neil Sattin: Yet, there are these distorted ways of thinking about the world that really have an enormously negative impact on our ability to function and interact. David Burns: This is one of the amazing ideas of cognitive therapy that at first I didn't quite grasp, but the early cognitive therapists like Albert Ellis from New York and then Aaron Beck at University of Pennsylvania who I learned it from were claiming not only do your thoughts create all of your moods, but when you're upset, when you're depressed, when you're anxious, when you feel ashamed or excessively angry or hopeless, not only are those feelings created by your thoughts and not by the circumstances of your life, but those negative thoughts will generally be distorted and illogical so that when you're depressed, you're fooling yourself, you're telling yourself things that simply aren't true and that depression and anxiety are really the world's oldest cons. David Burns: Beck - when I first began learning about cognitive therapy from him when I was a psychiatric resident and postdoctoral fellow, he had about four distortions as I recall and he had big names for them and then I added some to those and I used to talk to my patients about all-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralization and self-blame and the different ones. David Burns: Once, I was having a session with a patient and he said, "Why don't you list your 10 distortions and hand it out to patients?" He said, "It would make it so much easier for us." I thought, "Wow, that is a cool idea." I ran home that night after work and I made the list of the 10 cognitive distortions and that's what led to my book Feeling Good. David Burns: My list of 10 cognitive distortions, it's probably been reproduced in magazines and by therapists all over the world, I would imagine easily millions of times and probably tens of millions of times, but there are 10 distortions. Number one is all-or-nothing thinking, black or white thinking. David Burns: It's where you think about yourself in black or white term, shades of gray don't exist. If you're not a total success, you think that you're a complete failure or you tell yourself you're defective. I gave a workshop with Dr. Beck at one of the professional conferences like the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies, cognitive therapy had just come out and Beck is not a very good public speaker. David Burns: I was a novice also at the time and we had a half day workshop and there were a few hundred therapists there and it was okay, but it wasn't great and they started challenging us because nobody liked the idea of cognitive therapy initially, it was scorned and looked down on. We got defensive and then afterwards Dr. Beck looked at me and said, "David, you look like you're feeling down. What's the problem?" David Burns: I said, "Well, to tell you the truth Dr. Beck, I thought we were below average in this presentation and I'm feeling upset about that." He said, "Oh, well you should, if we were below average, you should thank your lucky stars." I said, "Why should I thank my lucky stars if we were below average?" David Burns: He said, "Because average is the halfway point. By definition, we have to be below average half the time. We can thank our lucky stars we got the below average one out of the way and we look forward to an above average one the next time we present." Suddenly, my discouragement disappeared. David Burns: He was just modeling thinking in shades of gray whereas I had been thinking in black and white terms. All-or-nothing thinking is very common in depression and it's also the cause of all perfectionism - thinking if you're not the greatest, second best or average just is not good enough, it's either the world or nothing, perfection or failure and it creates tremendous problems. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I could see that also coming up in terms of comparisons like if so and so is already doing this thing, I can't possibly do that because it's so and so's domain. As if one person could own the domain for the entire world in any particular area. David Burns: Well yeah, that's another mental trick that we play in ourselves with the distortions I call mental filtering and discounting the positive. You see this all the time when you're feeling inferior and comparing yourself to other people. Mental filter is where you focus on all of your flaws thinking about all of your errors. David Burns: You don't think about what's good about you or what's beautiful about you. I did a TV show finally when the book gained popularity in Cincinnati and it was a morning show and they had a live audience and a band and he was interviewing me. It was exciting for me because it was still the first time I had any media exposure. David Burns: Then after the show, the host said, "Dr. Burns, could I talk to you for a minute?" This often happens to me when I'm on a radio or TV show because the people in the media have tremendous pressures on them and they often also feel that they're not good enough. I said, "Sure. I'd love to. What's the issue?" David Burns: He says, "Well, after every morning show, I get about 350 fan mails, fan letters or calls or whatever." He said, "They are 99.9% positive, but everyday I'll get one critical letter. One critical feedback and I dwell on that one constantly and make myself miserable and ignore all the other positive feedback." That's called mental filter because you filter out the good stuff and you've just focused on your flaws. David Burns: A lot of the people listening to the show right now do that. Then an even bigger mental error is called discounting the positive - when you say that the good things about you don't even count. You may have done this to yourself when someone gives you a compliment, you might tell yourself, "Oh, they're just saying that to be nice to me. They don't really mean it." You discount that positive experience. David Burns: I had a colleague who got upset when he recently won the Nobel prize, one of my college roommates, and the reason he got upset is he said they haven't recognized my best work yet. So those are three of the 10 distortions. Neil Sattin: Yes. One of my favorites I think comes next on your list, at least the list I'm looking at after discounting the positive which is the ways that we jump to conclusions. David Burns: Right. There's two common patterns here, jumping to conclusions that aren't warranted by the facts and mind-reading and fortune-telling are two of the commonest ones. Now, fortune-telling is when you make a prediction about the future, an arbitrary prediction about the future and all anxiety results from fortune-telling, telling yourself that something terrible is about to happen - like when I get on that plane, I just know it will run into turbulence and crash. You feel panic and anxiety. David Burns: Depressed people do fortune-telling as well. Hopelessness results from predicting that things will never change, my problems will never get solved, I'm going to be miserable forever. Almost every depressed patient thinks that way and that's actually why many people with depression commit suicide because they have the illogical belief that their mood will never improve, that they're the one untreatable person. David Burns: Mind-reading is the other common form of jumping to conclusions and this is real common in social anxiety, but Neil, I'm sure you see it in a lot of people with relationship problems. Neil Sattin: Absolutely. David Burns: But mind-reading is where you assume you know how other people are thinking and feeling without any evidence, without any data. I used to struggle with intense social anxiety among my many other fears and phobias that I've had and overcome over the years, but the anxious person - say you're at a social gathering and you think, "Oh, these people won't be interested in what I have to say and they never feel anxious. I'm the only one who feels insecure." David Burns: Then you also may have the thought, "Oh, they can see how anxious I am and they're going to be real turned off by me." Then what happens is that when you start talking to someone, you get really busy worrying about how they're not going to be interested in you. You try to think of something clever or interesting to say while they're talking. David Burns: Then when they're done, instead of repeating what they said and expressing an interest in what they said, you make the little speech you had prepared. That turns the other person off because I think, "Wow, David doesn't seem interested in me. I was just telling him about my son, he was just accepted to Harvard and now he's talking about something else." David Burns: That person pretty quickly loses interest in you and says, "Oh, I have to talk to so and so on the other side of the room." Then you, the shy person get rejected again which is what you thought was going to happen. Although these are distortions, you're thinking in an unrealistic way, they sometimes feel like self-fulfilling prophecies so you don't realize that you're fooling yourself. Neil Sattin: Right, because when you're in it, then you seem to be getting plenty of evidence that it's true. David Burns: Yes, and another form of evidence comes to another distortion. One name I made up called emotional reasoning where you reason from your feelings. You see this in angry interactions, you see that in anxiety and in depression. The depressed patient is giving themselves all these messages like I'm a loser, I'm no good and beating up on yourself and then you feel ashamed and guilty and worthless and inferior and inadequate. David Burns: Then you say, "Well, I feel like a loser, I must really be one." Reasoning from your emotions, thinking your emotions somehow reflect reality. That thought by the way is one we skipped over - overgeneralization. That's number two on the list actually, right after all-or-nothing thinking. David Burns: Overgeneralization, this is a Buddhist thing, really overgeneralization. It's where you generalize to yourself from some specific event. For example, I have a free training for Bay Area psychotherapists every Tuesday evening at Stanford and you don't have to be a Stanford student to come,  I give unlimited free psychotherapy training to therapists who can come to my Tuesday group and any of the listeners or therapists near in the Bay Area on a Tuesday email me and you're welcome to attend my Tuesday training group. David Burns: Then I also have free hikes every Sunday morning and we go out hiking for maybe three and a half hours on the trails around my home and I treat people for free on the hikes. We do training and one of the women on the Sunday hike, I'll keep it vague to protect her identity, but she just had a problem with her boyfriend and they broke up and then she was telling herself, "I'm inadequate ... I'm unlovable" kind of thing. David Burns: "This was my fault and I must have been doing something wrong." You see, when you think like that and most of us do when we're upset, she's generalizing from this event, that it didn't work out with her boyfriend to then this global idea that "I'm inadequate. There's something wrong with me" - as if you had a self that wasn't good enough. David Burns: Then people also say, "I'll be alone forever. I'm unlovable. This is always happening to me." That's all over generalization where you generalize from a negative event and you see it as a never-ending pattern of defeat. You also see it as evidence that you're somehow defective or not good enough than when you're thinking these things, they seem so true - just as believable as the fact that there's skin on your hand. David Burns: You don't realize that you're fooling yourself, the pain that you feel is just incredible. I know that of the many people listening to this show right now, I'm sure you can identify this with this that you've had thoughts like that and you know how real and painful these feelings are. David Burns: It's one of the worst forms of human suffering, but the good news is and we haven't gone around to that, but not only are there fantastic techniques, cognitive therapy techniques that we've been talking about from my book feeling good described in there or my feeling good handbook so that you can overcome these distorted thoughts and get back to joy and self-esteem quickly, but also my group at Stanford over the 10 years, the past 10 years, we've created even more powerful techniques and to help bring about really high speed recovery for people struggling with depression and anxiety. David Burns: The new techniques are way more powerful than the original cognitive therapy although those methods are still fabulous, but maybe we'll have time to talk about some of these. David Burns: But there's more distortions to cover. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Maybe what we could do because I'd love to balance this out and I want to ensure that we cover the other distortions. We have maybe four more. At the same time, maybe let's break from the distortions just to change things up a bit and start entertaining that question of, "Alright, yeah. I relate to some or all that we've even listed so far." Neil Sattin: What are some of the initial steps that someone could talk because where I tend to go with this is like, "Well, these belief patterns like you talked about, "I'm unlovable" as one, those seem to emerge from a place that's immutable. It's something that's really deep in someone's psyche and yet, you're suggesting that there's ways to transform that that are really quick and direct and give someone a felt experience of the truth that's not that thing. David Burns: Yeah, that's right. You can group the techniques into cognitive techniques to crush these distorted thoughts and motivational techniques to get rid of your ... To bring your resistance to change to conscious awareness and melt away the resistance. The patients become incredibly motivated to crush their thoughts. David Burns: An example of the way the cognitive techniques work, what is crucial and this is one of the first things when we first created cognitive therapy in the mid 1970s was to write the negative thoughts on a piece of paper. It's a very humble thing to do, but it can be dramatically effective because then you can look at the list of 10 distortions and immediately, pinpoint the distortions and that makes it much easier to talk back to these disruptive thoughts and poke holes in them. David Burns: I'll give you an example of my own personal life because I've used these techniques myself and if they hadn't worked for me, I never would have become a cognitive therapist and now a TEAM CBT therapist, but when I was a postdoctoral fellow, I used to go to Dr. Beck's weekly seminars and I would present all my most difficult cases and get tips from him on how to treat these people with what was then the rapidly emerging brand new cognitive therapy and it was an exciting time, but one day, I talked to him about a patient that wasn't paying the bill, that I've had a bad session with this patient and asked him for some guidance. David Burns: He actually was pretty critical of the way I had dealt with this patient. I became awfully upset, I got depressed and anxious and I was riding home on the train and my head was filled with negative thoughts and negative feelings. Then when I got home, I told myself, "Well David, you probably better run, go on a long six mile run and get your brain endorphins up so get over your depression" because those were the days when everyone was believing the phony baloney that somehow exercise boosts brain endorphins and will reduce depression. David Burns: I went out on this long run and the longer I ran, the more believable my negative thoughts became. I said, "David, what are you telling yourself?" I said, "Oh, I'm a worthless human being. I have no therapeutic skills, I'm going to be banned from the state of Pennsylvania and they'll take away my medical license, I have no future in psychiatry. I'm a worthless human being, I'm a bad person." Stuff like that. David Burns: It seemed overwhelmingly true. I said, "Are there some distortions in your thoughts David? Look for the distortions like what you tell your patients." I said, "No, there are no distortions in my thoughts. This is just real." I was telling myself it's so weird to hear, you're something like 30 years old or however old I was, 31, it took you all of this time in your life to realize what a horrible loser you are. David Burns: It's as if I had seen the truth for the first time and it was devastating. Then when I got home, I said, "David, why don't you write your thoughts on a piece of paper? That's what you make all of your patients do." I said, "Oh no, no, my thoughts are real, that won't do any good." Then I told myself, "But isn't that the same way you're whining just like your patients whine and resist? And you force them to write their thoughts down on a piece of paper. You tell them they have to do that. Why don't you try that David?" David Burns: I said, "No, no, it wouldn't do any good. I really am a worthless human being. This is true." Then I said, "No David, you're still resisting. Take out a piece of paper and do what you tell your patients to do." I said, "Oh okay, I'll do it just to prove that it won't work." I wrote my thoughts down. Number one, I'm a worthless human being, number two, I have no therapy skill. David Burns: Number three, I screwed up with this patient. Number four, they'll take away my medical license, stuff like that. I wrote down four or five thoughts. Then I said, "Now, are there any distortions?" I looked at my own list of 10 distortions. I said, "Wow, those thoughts are pretty distorted. It's all-or-nothing thinking, black and white thinking like I'm not allowed to make a mistake with a patient. It's overgeneralization, I'm generalizing from the fact that I screwed up with this patient in a session to, "I am a worthless human being," it's fortune-telling, "I have no future in psychiatry." David Burns: Jumping to conclusions, self-blame, hidden "should" statements, that's another distortion. I shouldn't have screwed up, I should always be perfect. It was emotional reasoning, I feel worthless, I must be worthless. I suddenly saw those distortions and then I said, "Now, can I write a positive thought to challenge these negative thoughts?" That's the other part of the exercise. First you write the negative thought, then you identify the distortions, then you write a positive thought. David Burns: The positive thought has to be 100% true. Rationalizations and half truth will never help a human being. I came up with this positive thought. I said, "David, you're just a beginner. You have the right to make mistakes. In fact, even when you're 75 years old years from now, you might be a great therapist, but you'll still make mistakes and learn from them. That's part of the territory." David Burns: "You're absolutely permitted to do that. Instead of beating up on yourself, why don't you talk it over with your patient tomorrow and tell him that you made a mistake and see if you can repair that rupture in your relationship with the patient." All of a sudden, I said, "Is that true?" "Yeah, that thought is 100% true." How much do I believe this rubbish that I'm a worthless human being and all of that and my belief in those negative thoughts went to zero and my negative feelings just disappeared in a flash entirely. I said, "Wow, this shit is pretty good. This really works." Hope you don't have to edit out that word. Neil Sattin: No, that's fine. That's fine. David Burns: Then the next day I saw the patient, I said, "You know Mark, I've been feeling terrible since last session and ashamed because I don't think I treated you right." I was putting pressure on you because of the unpaid balance and I didn't put any emphasis on your suffering and what's going on with you as a human being I just imagine you felt so hurt and angry with me and discouraged and I'm just overjoyed that you came back today rather than dropping out of therapy so we can talk it over and see if we can deepen our relationship. David Burns: He just loved that and we had the best session ever, he gave me perfect empathy scores at the end of the session, but that's just an example from my personal life and I'm sure the people here can relate to that, but I've developed probably 50 or 100 techniques for crushing negative thoughts and I've made it sound easy, but it isn't always easy because you might be very, very trapped in your negative thoughts. David Burns: You might have to try several of the different techniques before you find the one that works for you. I want to be encouraging to the listeners and to therapists who may be listening, but I also don't want to make it sound like something overly simple or overly simplistic because it's really a pretty high-powered, sophisticated type of therapy. David Burns: Fortunately, many people can make it work on their own, but anyway, that's the half of the treatment breakthroughs and that was called the cognitive revolution and my book Feeling Good really helped usher that in when feeling good came out in 1980, cognitive therapy was virtually unknown and they were just a handful of cognitive therapists in the world. David Burns: Now, it's become the most popular form of psychotherapy in the world and the most researched form of psychotherapy in all of the history of psychology and psychiatry. Neil Sattin: I wonder if we could emphasize because I'm thinking about how we talked about the technique for identifying a negative thought, identifying the cognitive distortion or distortions that are happening and just to talk about the importance of actually going through that exercise and writing it down. Neil Sattin: Maybe you could just talk for one more minute about why that part is so important. Why is it important to actually write that stuff down versus to do it in your head? David Burns: I think that the negative, the power of the human mind to be negative is very profound. The negative thoughts are like a snake eating its tail, they go round and round and one leads to the next. David Burns: In the early days, I used to try to do cognitive therapy without the written exercise and to this day, new therapists still try to do that. They think they're too fancy that writing things down is too simplistic or something like that and they're going to be deep and just do verbal, deep stuff with people, but the problem is, the human mind is so clever. David Burns: Each distortion reinforces another one and each negative thought reinforces another one and you go round and round and round. That's why doing it verbally or in your head when you're alone is rarely going to be effective, but when you write the negative thoughts down one at a time and number them with short sentences, that makes it much easier to identify the distortions in them and turn them around. David Burns: There are three rules of thumb. There's an art form to writing them down. Everything is more sophisticated than I make it sound in a brief interview. There's a lot of rules of the game. For example, when you're writing down negative thoughts, you should never put an emotion or an event. David Burns: People have a negative thought like Trisha rejected me and I feel terrible. Well, that's not a negative thought. That's an event. Trisha rejected me and I use a form called the Daily Mood Log and at the top you put the event and then you circle all of your emotions and put how strong they are between zero and a hundred. David Burns: These emotions might be feel guilty, ashamed, lonely, depressed, worthless and then the negative thought would be the interpretation of that event like I must be unlovable, I'll be alone forever. Then those are things that have distortions. A second rule is don't ever put rhetorical questions in the negative thought column. David Burns: If you say something like, "Oh, why am I like this? Why am I so anxious in social situations?" Or "What's wrong with me?" You can't disprove questions so instead you can substitute the hidden claim behind the question which is generally a hidden should statement like I shouldn't be like this or I must be defective because I'm so anxious in social situations or some such thing. David Burns: There are probably one or two other rules of the game and my book When Panic Attacks which is one of my newer books on all the anxiety disorders, Feeling Good is on depression. When Panic Attacks is on all of the different kinds of anxiety. I think the third chapter shows how to fill out the Daily Mood Log and what the rules are to follow to enhance the effectiveness of it so you'll be more likely to have a successful experience. Neil Sattin: Great. The idea is that it's simply by doing this process that the things shift. It's not like there's ... You go through the process and then maybe you would track your mood afterwards and see, "Wow, I'm actually feeling better than I was before" just by simply doing that? David Burns: Well, a lot of people can feel better just by doing it, but the research has shown that two thirds of people just by reading Feeling Good, they can improve a lot in depression, but some people need the help of a therapist and it isn't true that everyone has to do it on your own, sometimes you need another person to get that leverage to pop out of it. David Burns: Another thing that's helpful when you're writing down your negative thoughts is Beck's theory of cognitive specificity. You see, Buddha said our thoughts create our emotions, but Beck took it to the next level and said different patterns of thoughts create different types of emotions. David Burns: If you're feeling guilty, you're probably telling yourself that you're a bad person or that you violated your value system. If you're feeling hopeless, you're definitely telling yourself that things will never change, something like that. I'll be miserable forever. If you're feeling anxious, you're definitely telling yourself something awful is about to happen. David Burns: "When I get on that show with Neil, I'll screw up, my brain will go blank." That type of thing. When you're feeling sad, you're telling yourself... or depressed, that you've lost something central to your self-esteem. When you're feeling angry, you're telling yourself that someone else is a loser that they're treating you unfairly, that they shouldn't be that way. David Burns: These rules can also help individuals pinpoint your negative thoughts. Once you see what the emotions are, then you know the kind of thoughts to look for. One last thing is sometimes people say, "Oh, I don't know what my negative thoughts are." I just say, "We'll just make some up and write them down and number them." David Burns: Then I say, "Are your thoughts like this?" They say, "Oh, that's exactly what I'm thinking." Those are a few tips on refining the part with the negative thoughts. But now we have even more powerful techniques that have evolved in my work with my training and development group at Stanford. Neil Sattin: Yeah, before we talk about those, which I hope we will have time to do - there are a couple of things that jumped out at me. One was as you were describing the distortions that we've already talked about, it popped into my head that this is often at the source of most conflict that happens in couples - that either one person is having distorted thinking or one person is protecting themselves from their own distorted thinking. Neil Sattin: For example, your partner says something and you have this feeling like, "Well, that's not true. I got to defend myself from that accusation." David Burns: That's right yeah. Neil Sattin: You jump into this place of conflict that's all about proving that this negative concept you suddenly are perceiving about yourself isn't true. When that negative concept in and of itself might be an example of you just having a distortion - like for instance, "my partner is mad at me, that must mean they think I'm a horrible human being." David Burns: Yeah, what's huge what you just said, when we're in conflict with people, there's a lot of inner chatter going on in addition to the verbal altercations, the arguing, the escalation, the defensiveness - and some of the distortions will be focused on the other person and some of the distortions will be focused on yourself. David Burns: You see all of the 10 cognitive distortions in relationship conflict, but they have a little bit of a different function I would say. Now, let's say you're angry, Mary is angry at her husband Sam, she's ticked off and then if you look at her thoughts, they have all 10 distortions. David Burns: She'll tell herself things like, she might be thinking, "Oh, he's a loser. All he cares about is himself. The relationship problems are all his fault, he'll never change." That type of thing. You sell all-or-nothing thinking, mind-reading, imagining how he's thinking, you see blame, you see hidden should statements, he shouldn't be like that, he shouldn't feel like that. David Burns: You see discounting the positive, mental filtering, overgeneralization, magnification, minimization. You see all the same 10 distortions. The only difference is that when you're depressed and I can show you that your thoughts about yourself are distorted and that's not true that you're a loser, you're going to love me, the therapist, you're going to appreciate that and you're going to feel better and you're going to feel better and recover from your depression. David Burns: When people are in conflict and we're having distorted thoughts about the other person, we're generally not motivated to challenge those distortions because they make us feel good. We feel morally superior to the other person. I don't generally work with people too much on changing their distortions about others because they don't want to hear it. David Burns: If the therapist finds out that this woman, that her thoughts about her husband are causing her to be upset, not her husband's behavior, and in addition that her thoughts about her husband are all wrong, wrong, wrong, they are all distorted, she'll just fire the therapist and drop out of therapy and she'll have two enemies, her loser of a husband and her loser of a therapist. David Burns: That's why I developed some of the techniques we talked about in the last podcast we did on relationships. I used slightly different strategies, but you're right, those distortions are incredibly positive and the other kind of distortion you have when you're in conflict if someone's criticizing you, again you may start thinking, "This shows that I'm a loser, I'm no good. I should be better than I am. If you're criticizing me, that's a very dangerous and terrible situation." David Burns: By attending to those kind of thoughts that make you feel anxious and ashamed and inferior and guilty and inadequate, then you can modify those and then do much better in the way you communicate with the other person because your ego isn't on the line. An example with me is in my teaching, I always get feedback from every class I do, every student I mentor or supervise from every workshop and I get it right away, I don't get it six months from now, I get it the very day that I'm teaching. David Burns: I get all kinds of criticisms on the feedback forms I've developed even if I have a tremendous teaching seminar, I'll get a lot of criticisms especially if they feel safe to criticize the teacher. I find that if I don't beat myself up with inner dialogue, then I can find the truth in what the student is saying and treat that person with warmth and with respect and with enthusiasm even. David Burns: Then they suddenly really love the way that I've handled their criticism and it leads to a better relationship and that's true between partners or in families as well. That inner dialogue that's where we're targeting ourselves and making ourselves needlessly anxious and defensive and hurt and angry and worthless when we're in conflict with someone - that can be adjusted and modified to really enhance relationships. Neil Sattin: The two distortions that we hadn't really covered yet, you just mentioned them and I thought ... We've mentioned them all at this point, but some of them like blaming, whether it's blaming yourself for a situation or blaming others for a situation, that seems a little self-evident. Neil Sattin: I'm curious if you could talk for a moment about labeling and then also magnification and minimization just because I think those are the two that we listed, but didn't really cover. David Burns: Did we mention shoulds? Neil Sattin: Let's mention them and I think again, that might be something that's a little more understandable for people, but yeah, let's do this. David Burns: Oh yeah, okay. Yup. Well, labeling is just an extreme form of overgeneralization where you say I am a loser or with someone else, "He is a jerk." Where you see yourself or another person as this bad glob so to speak. Instead of focusing on specific behaviors, you're focusing on the self. When you think of yourself as a loser or a hopeless case, it creates tremendous pain. David Burns: When you label someone else as a jerk or a loser, it creates rage and then you'll often treat them in a hostile way and then they treat you in a hostile way and you say, "Oh, I know he was a loser." You don't realize you're involved in a self-fulfilling prophecy and you're creating the other person's, you're contributing to or creating the other person's hostile behavior. David Burns: Magnification or minimization is pretty self-evident - where you're blowing things out of proportion - like procrastinators do that. You think about, "All you have to do, all the filing that you're behind on." It feels like you have to climb Mount Everest and you got overwhelmed and then minimization, you're telling yoruself, "Oh, just working on that for five or 10 minutes would be a drop in the bucket. It wouldn't make a difference." You don't get started on the project. David Burns: We've done those two. The should statement say I think is very subtle and not obvious to people at all that we beat up on ourselves the shoulds and shouldn'ts and oughts and musts and we're saying, "I shouldn't have screwed up, I shouldn't have made that mistake. I should be better than I am."   David Burns: That creates a tremendous amount of suffering and shoulds go back - if you look at the origin in the English dictionary, maybe we did this in our last podcast, I don't recall that if you have one of these thick dictionaries, you'll find the origin of the word should is the Anglo's accent word scolde, S-C-O-L-D-E where you're scolding yourself or another person, where you're saying to your partner, "You shouldn't feel that way." Or, "You shouldn't believe that." David Burns: We see that politically, two people are always blaming someone they're not in agreement with and throwing should statements at them. Albert Ellis has called that the "shouldy" approach to life which is a cheap joke I guess, but it contains a lot of truth. The feminist psychiatrist Karen Horney who actually I think was born in 1890s did beautiful work on shoulds - when my mother, when we moved to Phoenix from Denver, I think my mother got depressed and she read a book by Karen Horney on the Tyranny of the Shoulds, how we give ourselves all these should statements and make us feel like we're not good enough and we're not measuring up to our own expectations and create so much suffering. David Burns: I think that book was very helpful to her and then Albert Ellis in New York saw that, he argued and I think rightly so that most human suffering is the result of the shoulds that we impose on ourselves or the should statements that we impose on others. Neil Sattin: Well, if that's true, then maybe that should be what we take a moment to attack and I'm wondering if you have a powerful crushing technique that works with shoulds whether it's and maybe it would be a little bit different, the ones that we wield against ourselves versus so and so should know or should have done this differently. David Burns: Right. Well, a lot of the overcoming has to do with the mystical, spiritual concept of acceptance, accepting yourself as a flawed human being is really the source of enlightenment, but we fight against acceptance because we think it's like giving in and settling for second best. We continue to beat up on ourselves thinking if we hit ourselves with enough should statements, we'll somehow achieve perfection or greatness or some such thing. David Burns: One thing that I learned from Ellis that has been really helpful to my patients is that there's only three correct uses of the word should in the English language. There's the moral shoulds like the 10 commandments, thou shalt not commit adultery, though shalt not steal or thou shalt not kill. David Burns: There's the laws of the universe should where if I drop a pen right now, it should fall to the earth because of the force of gravity and then there's the legal should. You should not drive down the highway at 90 miles an hour because that's against the law and you'll get a ticket. Now, I had a colleague who came on one of the hikes who has a developmentally challenged child, say a son just to disguise things a little bit and she's from a very high achieving family, Silicon Valley family just to say the least. David Burns: She and her husband are giants, geniuses and then she went to the grammar school for the parent's day and they had all the kids and they have their daughter in some very expensive private school. The kid's pictures were up on the wall and then she saw her son's picture and it was just very primitive compared with the other children who are real high-powered children from high powered families. David Burns: Her son struggles severely and then she saw that and she felt the feeling of shame. Then she told herself, "I should not feel ashamed of my son." That's hitting herself with a should statement which it's like she doesn't have permission to have this emotion and that's what we do to ourselves.   David Burns: That's not a legal should, it's not illegal to feel ashamed of yourself or your son. She then was also of course feeling ashamed of herself. It's not immoral and it doesn't violate the laws of the universe. A simple technique that Ellis suggested and it's so simple it goes in one ear and out the other instead of saying, "I shouldn't, you can just say it would be preferabe if or I would prefer it if or it would be better if." David Burns: You could say it it would be better, it would be preferable if I didn't feel ashamed of my son, but that's the human feeling and probably other parents feel upset with their children, they feel ashamed sometimes of their kids or angry with their kids. It's giving yourself permission to be human and that's called the acceptance paradox. David Burns: The paradox is sometimes when you accept your broken nature, accept your flaws and shortcomings, you transcend them. I've often written that acceptance is the greatest change a human being can make, but it's elusive and Buddha tried to teach this 2,500 years ago when I saw on TV and I don't know if was just a goofy program, but it was on PBS that he had over 100,000 followers in his lifetime and only three achieved enlightenment. David Burns: I think it was frustrating to him and disappointing, but I can see it clearly because what he was teaching was so simple and basic and yet it's hard for us to grasp it and that's why I love doing therapy because we've got powerful new techniques now where I can bring my patients to enlightenment often in a single therapy session if I have more than an hour. David Burns: If I have a two hour session, I can usually complete treatment in about a session and see the patient going from all the self-criticism and self-hatred and misery to actually joy and euphoria. It's one of the greatest experiences a human being can have because when my patient has a transforming experience, then it transforms me at the same time. Neil Sattin: Can you give us a taste of what some of the more powerful new techniques are and how they might work in these circumstances? David Burns: Yeah, they're pretty anti-intuitive and it took me many years of clinical practice before I figured it out and before it dawned on me. I would say very few therapists know how to do this and it's absolutely against the grain of the way therapists have been trained and the general public have been trained to think about depression and anxiety as brain disorders. David Burns: The DSM calls them mental disorders. We've gone in the opposite direction and I'll just make it real quick because we're getting long on people's time here I'm afraid, but when I am working with a person, like last night at my Tuesday group, we were working with a therapist and someone who's in training to become a therapist and she was being very self-critical and telling herself she wasn't smart enough and just beating up on herself and saying that she was defective and she should be better at this and she should this, she shouldn't that. David Burns: She was feeling like 90% depressed and 80% ashamed and intensely anxious. One thing I do before I ... She had all these negative thoughts, "I'm defective" and I don't have the list in my hand, but she had about 17 very self-critical thoughts. After I empathized and my co-therapist was Jill Levitt, a clinical psychologist who I teach with at Stanford and Jill is just a gem, she's fantastically brilliant and kind and compassionate and humble. David Burns: After we empathized with this individual and I'll just keep it vague because most therapists feel exactly the same way so I won't give any identifying details, but we asked this young woman, "Would you like some help today?" With her depression and anxiety. If we had a magic button on the table and she pressed it, all our negative thoughts and feelings would instantly disappear. David Burns: Would she press the magic button? She said, "Oh yeah, that would be wonderful." I guess she's felt this way on and off throughout her life since she was a little girl that she is somehow not good enough. Then we said, "Well, we have no magic button, but we have amazing techniques." But before we use these techniques, maybe we should ask, "What are your negative thoughts and feelings show about you that's beautiful and awesome?" David Burns: Also, "what are some benefits to you in having all of these negative thoughts and feelings?" She was very puzzled by that at first as most therapists are like, "How could there be benefits from having depression? We learn that's some kind of mental disorder or major depressive disorder, dysthymic disorder, all these fancy names pretending that these are mental illnesses of some kind. David Burns: But then she got in the flow, we primed the pump a little bit and she was able to come up with a list of 20 overwhelming benefits to her and beautiful things about her that were revealed by her negative thoughts and feelings. For example, when she says, "I'm defective." She will say, "Well, it shows that I'm honest and accountable. Because I do have many flaws." David Burns: Then a second benefit was "it shows that I have high standards." I was able to say, "Do you have high standards?" She said, "Absolutely." I said, "Have your high standards motivated you to work hard and accomplish a lot?" She says, "Oh yeah, absolutely." That was the third benefit. Then the fourth benefit is her self-criticism showed that she's a humble person. That was the fourth benefit, the fourth beautiful thing it showed about her. David Burns: Then we pointed out that humility is the same as spirituality. Her self-criticism shows that she's a humble and spiritual person and then her sadness showed her passion for what she hopes to achieve which is a role as a therapist and a good therapist and her self-doubt keeps her on her toes and motivates her to work really hard. David Burns: Her suffering shows enhances her compassion for others and her shame shows that she has a good value system, a good moral compass and on and on and on, then we came up with a list of when we got to 20 benefits of her negative thoughts and feelings, then we simply said to her, "Well, maybe we don't want to press that magic button because when your negative thoughts and feelings disappears, then these other good things will disappear as well. Why in the world would you want to do that?" David Burns: We have become the role of her subconscious mind and the therapist is paradoxically arguing for the status quo and not arguing for change. The therapist's attempt to help or change the patient is actually the cause of nearly all therapeutic failur

So last week David Isaac asked for an all drunk Austin show... Well David got his wish...the rest of you, I dunno? I mean if you can stand almost 3 hours of unintelligible ramblings then yeah I guess so. Content wise we chat about King Arthur, the Flash, and GOTGV2. We create a war movie list tournament, and DRUNK rants. Someone may even NOT make it all the way through, can you guess who that might be? Enjoy...maybe...oh and my webcam mic took over halfway through... so I have that going for me... which is nice...

David M. Dye is one of the most common sense and wonderful management and leadership experts I know. We spent one lunch together getting to know each other and became fast friends. While he's much more soft spoken than me (and a better listener), his words all carry a lot of weight with me - and with the organizations he's touched over the years. Today, we share some lively conversation about management and leadership, and his latest book, co-authored with Karin Hurt, Winning Well. I love this book - and the sub-title explains why: A Manager's Guide to Getting Results - Without Losing Your Soul. Made for a great conversation I know you'll enjoy. Connect more with David at http://trailblazeinc.com About David M. Dye David M. Dye is an internationally recognized professional speaker, trainer, and facilitator. He works with leaders, managers, and supervisors who want to lead their team to the top without losing their soul (or mind) in the process. David works with leaders to increase their influence, solve common leadership frustrations, and improve their productivity through people-centered leadership. David founded Trailblaze, Inc., to train leaders who want to build energized, motivated, and productive teams. He believes that leaders at every level can master the essentials of influence, the most critical component of success. Known for his optimism, for making difficult concepts understandable, and for moving leaders to immediate, practical action, David’s workshops, presentations, and seminars help leaders increase their influence, solve common leadership frustrations, and improve productivity through practical leadership inspiration. David is the award winning author of Winning Well: A Manager’s Guide to Getting Results without Losing Your Soul and The Seven Things Your Team Needs to Hear You Say. He is regularly honored as a top leadership expert to follow. You’ve seen him on the pages of the Huffington Post, Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and on radio and television throughout the United States. David is often listed with leadership influencers including Seth Godin, Tom Peters, Kouzes & Posner, and John Maxwell. Connect more with David M. Dye Buy David and Karin's award winning, bestselling book Winning Well Visit David's leadership blog Follow David M. Dye on Twitter

God's intention for His Church in this new year is that we would not only start well, but continue well and finish well - being secure, fulfilled and fruitful in every way! Join us as we consider some important 'opening verses' in God's Word and discover the priorities and choices that will help us succeed in the coming year...

There is a lot of attention on wholeness in parts of the community today. People are more aware of how complex life has become in the 21st century. It seems easy to get thrown out of balance - work/life, diet/exercise, family/couple/social time, etc. Keeping things balanced and maintain (attaining?) a sense of wellbeing can be a challenge. It is fascinating to observe the many different paths people select in search of their wholeness. Who is your go-to person? Who do you listen to when it comes to being whole? How much do you want to be healed?

David Bowie, Musician And Trendsetter There is no doubt that among the history books holding the names of rock legends, the name of David Bowie is up there with the best of them. A man who doesn't just play the game by his own rules, but created the game itself and then ripped up the rules too. He took on the prescribed format of musical output in the early seventies and almost single handedly changed it forever. In this Bowie inspired Join Up Dots biography we take a look at how this unassuming man, born David Robert Jones in Brixton, South London on January 8th 1947, could at first struggle so badly to ignite the flame of success. Mimicking the stars of the day, and stars of yesterday, unable to find his real voice, until stumbling on the very thing that would make him who he is today And that thing was changes, the ability to reinvent himself, and freshen his sound, image and outlook at will, keeping all of us guessing as to his next move for the next forty years. David's start in life was about as normal as a child growing up in the United Kingdom in the 50's could have expected to live. His mother, Margaret Mary worked as a waitress, while his father, Haywood Stenton Jones, from Yorkshire, was a promotions officer for Barnardo's a children charity. Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, where teachers considered him as a gifted and single-minded child, although not with obvious musical genius, and a singing voice only classed as adequate. When David Bowie was a small child he was fascinated by music, and loved nothing more than tuning into the radio stations of the day to hear the scratchy sounds from some distant DJ in a basement far far away like so many other children. But it was when he was thirteen, and encouraged by his older brother Terry, he picked up a saxophone and started making his own sounds that things started becoming more than a hobby. Terry was nine years older, and inspired and influenced the young David greatly, as most older brothers do, exposing him to literature, rock music and the kind of influences that a thirteen year old child growing up in South London would have been unlikely to discover on their own. David at first tried to teach himself the saxophone, but struggled with it, so made the bold decision to phone the top British saxophonist Ronnie Ross, who he had seen play in the West End of London, and asked for lessons. Ronnie charged David £2.00 per lesson, which was more than this soon to be wealthy practicing rock star could hope to afford. But this wouldn't deter, young Davy Jones, and he got himself a job as a butcher's delivery boy to ensure that he had the cash to allow the fortnightly lessons to occur. Unfortunately, although a major part of setting the fledgling rock star on his way to super stardom, with his encouragement and support, David's brother Terry was not to be in his day to day life for long. Suffering with his own personal demons, the family had Terry committed to an institution fearing for his safety. This no doubt had a huge impact on the young David Bowie, and although good in its intention haunted David for a good deal of his life, even becoming the topic of his song “Jump They Say” after Terry's suicide many years later. At the age of sixteen, David Bowie graduated from the technical high school he had attended in Bromley, only memorable for a fight he had with a school friend that left him with eyes different in colour to one another, and got his first job a commercial artist. He joined as a Junior Visualiser /Paste up Artist for the Yorkshire based company Neven D Hirst. This is a fascinating move for David to make, as although he was still playing for bands, and striving to break into music business in the evening, he still followed the path that most of us follow. He left school and set about getting a job. Is there anyway that we can break from the path that has been trod for generations before us? Even if we have greatness desperate to burst out from inside us?. Probably not, but as we see time and time again on Join Up Dots, the ability to keep on pushing against the rules of conformity is what allows the great to become great. Stopping ourselves from following the crowd, that leave school and enter the offices of the world just because they haven't stopped to question why? Well David, did just that and after only five months, knew in his heart of hearts that he had to take control of his life, if his dreams of working as a musician were to come true. The bands he had performed with every night had cemented the belief that he had what it took, not necessarily to achieve the dizzying heights that he later achieved, but at least earning money doing what he loved. Interestingly, crossing his path in these early days was another musician who would also go on to place his name indelibly in the record books, one Jimmy Page the guitarist of David Bowie's band the Manish Boys. Jimmy Paige of course become a global success with one of the most famous rock bands of all time Led Zeppelin. Several singles were recorded and released during this period, but none could have been classed as anything but a learning curve. Allowing the young Bowie to experience a recording studio for the first time and hear his own voice played back to him. Other than working with Jimmy Paige, the only dot on the Join Up Dots timelines that helps us to see the man that he later became, was when when he made the decision to change his name from Davy Jones, and replace his surname with the now recognizable Bowie, after the knife. Davy Jones from the Monkees was riding the crest of the wave, with hits such as “Last Train To Clarksville”, and “Daydream Believer”, and David felt that this could be confusing to the record buying public, and ultimately could hold him back. Did this make a huge difference, who can tell, but it was better than one of his other choices he made: Tom Jones. It was certainly the first indication of the chameleon like character that has since gone on to characterize so much of his later work. After recording, and performing with the bands, Bowie made the decision to go solo, and pursue a career on his own terms. He recorded his first solo album, which sunk without trace. This was a crushing blow for David Bowie, and instead of working harder on the content he was intent to keep delivering to the world, the musician did something quite unexpected…but quite David Bowie like. He decided to take a break from the music world, and headed to Scotland where for a period in 1967 he lived in a Buddhist monastery along with American musician Leonard Cohen. As he says “”I was a terribly earnest Buddhist at the time I had stayed in their monastery and was going through all their exams, and yet I had this feeling that it wasn't right for me. I suddenly realised how close it all was: another month and my head would have been shaved.” So David left, and then even more bizarrely joined a group of mime artists, even starting his own group called Feathers. Although this from the outside seems unusual, as we see on Join Up Dots everyday, a person has to try things that may not seem part of the master plan, to ultimately lead them to where they should be in life. It is during these times, when it may seem haphazard and wasteful that most people absorb different ways of operating. Discovering skills within themselves, that they can utilise later in positions not remotely visible at that time. And that is the case with David Bowie, as the added spirituality and theatricality become more evident in his work, as was displayed in his own classic song “Space Oddity” about a spaceman floating around about the earth. Thanks to the BBC's use of the song for their coverage of the US Moon landing in 1969, David Bowie had his first hit record. With the song hitting the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. What is extremely interesting is the state of mind of David Bowie at the time of writing. The words clearly show an individual lost, and forlorn about the future. No surprise after the failures of his previous musical efforts. “Planet earth is blue and there's nothing I can do” – shows the realization that there's nothing he can do about all of the problems he sees in the world. “Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom? – He's lost communication with those on the ground (i.e. in reality). David Bowie showed a window to his soul. He was not part of his previous life of domesticity in Bromley, and was neither part of the rock star lifestyle that he so craved. Bowie was floating out in Space, on his own. Slowly getting ready for the true moment that David Bowie blasted into our consciousness, and the televisions and radios across the world. In 1973, the career that had stuttered and faltered for the last four years, exploded dramatically into life, as from that position floating above the world David returned to earth. This time not as himself, but the androgynous alien Ziggy Stardust. It signaled the start of the David Bowie fascination. Where was the man, and where was the music? Could one exist without the other? Was the high camp fashion that he displayed on stage the true mark of David Bowie, or a curtain to hide behind, whilst the crowds surged, screamed and fainted in front him. This was glam-rock at its peak, and quite literally anyone around at that time would be compared to the strutting, preening and bi-sexual pre-madonna that was 1973's incarnation of David Bowie. Even megastars such as T-Rex's Marc Bolan, the flamboyant pianist from Middlesex Elton John, and the upwardly climbing Freddie Mercury were nothing, compared to what the world was witnessing with his classic “Starman” and “Ziggy Stardust” David Bowie was no longer floating high above the world on his own. To the teenagers and music buying public, he was the world, and with his backing band The Spiders Of Mars, the world waited with baited breath to see what they would deliver next. And David Bowie delivered…but once again not in the way most expected, or wished for. Instead of setting off on a world-tour, and crushing the charts with new albums and singles, he announced that he was retiring from touring and that Ziggy Stardust and of course the Spiders were no more. As he announced whilst on stage “Of all the shows on the tour, this one will stay with us the longest because not only is this the last show of the tour, but it is the last show we will ever do.” This surprised everyone in the house – not least the members of his band. The hysteria was over almost as soon as it had started. Which looking back, was an amazingly brave decision to make, but one that showed that David Bowie was in control, and knew what was right for his career. Instead of saying “this is what you want, so this is what you'll get”, he quite firmly, and with huge confidence stated “You will get what I want, and when I want to give it to you!” This in no short measure ensured that the mystic that has grown up around David Bowie was started off in the perfect manner. He was not going to give an inch. And we are no doubt glad that he took that stance, as his music was becoming more creative and experimental because of it. He had created the freedom to explore what he was capable off. And so began his personal odyssey from country to country, city to city, playing and recording with such eclectic names as John Lennon, Brian Eno from Roxy Music and even Luther Vandross, It was whilst in New York jamming with John Lennon that the riff which became the iconic Fame was first heard, and led to David Bowie's first American number one. And his later move to Berlin in Germany, harnessed even greater creative imagery and unexpected musical releases with the classic stripped back “Low” and the Eno produced “Heroes”, made whilst he lived in semi seclusion, painting, studying art and recording with Brian Eno. “Heroes” was marketed by RCA with the catchphrase, “There's Old Wave. There's New Wave. And there's David Bowie…” which is very apt, and something that Bowie would have done well to remember in later years. It is true that Bowie likes nothing more than going in quite different directions than what the world expects. Throughout his career he has explored the world of acting from his early roles in “The Man Who Fell To Earth”, through to “Absolute Beginners And “Labyrinth” where he acted beside a series of Jim “The Muppet” Henson's creations, and even a three month run in the Elephant Man on Broadway. None of the roles or performances would be classed as landmarks in his career. In fact many would argue they were just a distraction to where he should have been placing his attention. On his music. The creativity being focused on areas of interest to David, more to his loyal followers. What becomes a truth with David Bowie, is when he appears to move towards the obvious routes to success, he becomes a pale inferior version of himself. Following the global success of the Nile Rodgers produced album “Lets Dance” in 1983, he appeared influenced by the Music of the time. And one thing for sure being in Duran Duran is never going to inspire the same level of performance as working the bars, and studying the architecture in Berlin or other such locations. David Bowie needs to be off the radar, to be truly authentic. He needs to be tapping into the yet to be seen musical movements, instead of being the leader of the popular and current ones. And so for the next few years David Bowie produced work that was neither memorable nor commercially successful in the same way as his earlier successes. He was falling further behind the crowd, and lost between the teenagers now grown up who adored him in the seventies, and the 80's versions focused on Wham, Duran, and Rick Astley. Throughout the next ten years, Bowie's musical career was in decline, with the albums Tin machine and Tin Machine II being commercial and public failures. David Bowie was finished. He had achieved everything that the 13 year old saxophone learning kid could have ever dreamed off and more. He had inspired the world to believe. He had created a new generation of musicians who studied his back catalogue with a religious fervor. He disappeared. Retreating from the limelight, he closed the door on his New York apartment and became David Jones again. Father, husband, music legend, and enjoying retirement. For over ten years, other than a few sightings David Bowie was invisible to the world. We had the memories of past glories and nothing else. But as we have seen throughout the years, Bowie returns stronger when on his own terms. When he is in control to what the world will receive. That is when he delivers, and in 2013 after ten years in the wilderness “The Next Day” David Bowie's 24th album shook the world. The Spaceman, the Clown, The Alien, The Smooth Groover, the enigma that is David Bowie was back where he belongs. In the ears, and stereos of the world. Saying things the way that only David Bowie can. A musician, a mystery, a creative, a leader, a decision maker, a controller, David Bowie has learnt through all the trials and tribulations, the ups and downs what leads to success. And that quite simply is being himself. A lesson that for so many of us is the hardest one to learn.

There is no doubt that among the history books holding the names of rock legends, the name of David Bowie is up there with the best of them. A man who doesn't just play the game by his own rules, but created the game itself and then ripped up the rules too. He took on the prescribed format of musical output in the early seventies and almost single handedly changed it forever. In this Bowie inspired Join Up Dots biography we take a look at how this unassuming man, born David Robert Jones in Brixton, South London on January 8th 1947, could at first struggle so badly to ignite the flame of success. Mimicking the stars of the day, and stars of yesterday, unable to find his real voice, until stumbling on the very thing that would make him who he is today And that thing was changes, the ability to reinvent himself, and freshen his sound, image and outlook at will, keeping all of us guessing as to his next move for the next forty years. David's start in life was about as normal as a child growing up in the United Kingdom in the 50's could have expected to live. His mother, Margaret Mary worked as a waitress, while his father, Haywood Stenton Jones, from Yorkshire, was a promotions officer for Barnardo's a children charity. Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, where teachers considered him as a gifted and single-minded child, although not with obvious musical genius, and a singing voice only classed as adequate. When David Bowie was a small child he was fascinated by music, and loved nothing more than tuning into the radio stations of the day to hear the scratchy sounds from some distant DJ in a basement far far away like so many other children. But it was when he was thirteen, and encouraged by his older brother Terry, he picked up a saxophone and started making his own sounds that things started becoming more than a hobby. Terry was nine years older, and inspired and influenced the young David greatly, as most older brothers do, exposing him to literature, rock music and the kind of influences that a thirteen year old child growing up in South London would have been unlikely to discover on their own. David at first tried to teach himself the saxophone, but struggled with it, so made the bold decision to phone the top British saxophonist Ronnie Ross, who he had seen play in the West End of London, and asked for lessons. Ronnie charged David £2.00 per lesson, which was more than this soon to be wealthy practicing rock star could hope to afford. But this wouldn't deter, young Davy Jones, and he got himself a job as a butcher's delivery boy to ensure that he had the cash to allow the fortnightly lessons to occur. Unfortunately, although a major part of setting the fledgling rock star on his way to super stardom, with his encouragement and support, David's brother Terry was not to be in his day to day life for long. Suffering with his own personal demons, the family had Terry committed to an institution fearing for his safety.David Bowie Young Man This no doubt had a huge impact on the young David Bowie, and although good in its intention haunted David for a good deal of his life, even becoming the topic of his song “Jump They Say” after Terry's suicide many years later. At the age of sixteen, David Bowie graduated from the technical high school he had attended in Bromley, only memorable for a fight he had with a school friend that left him with eyes different in colour to one another, and got his first job a commercial artist. He joined as a Junior Visualiser /Paste up Artist for the Yorkshire based company Neven D Hirst. This is a fascinating move for David to make, as although he was still playing for bands, and striving to break into music business in the evening, he still followed the path that most of us follow. He left school and set about getting a job. Is there anyway that we can break from the path that has been trod for generations before us? Even if we have greatness desperate to burst out from inside us?. Probably not, but as we see time and time again on Join Up Dots, the ability to keep on pushing against the rules of conformity is what allows the great to become great. Stopping ourselves from following the crowd, that leave school and enter the offices of the world just because they haven't stopped to question why? Well David, did just that and after only five months, knew in his heart of hearts that he had to take control of his life, if his dreams of working as a musician were to come true. The bands he had performed with every night had cemented the belief that he had what it took, not necessarily to achieve the dizzying heights that he later achieved, but at least earning money doing what he loved. Interestingly, crossing his path in these early days was another musician who would also go on to place his name indelibly in the record books, one Jimmy Page the guitarist of David Bowie's band the Manish Boys. Jimmy Paige of course become a global success with one of the most famous rock bands of all time Led Zeppelin. Several singles were recorded and released during this period, but none could have been classed as anything but a learning curve. Allowing the young Bowie to experience a recording studio for the first time and hear his own voice played back to him. Other than working with Jimmy Paige, the only dot on the Join Up Dots timelines that helps us to see the man that he later became, was when when he made the decision to change his name from Davy Jones, and replace his surname with the now recognizable Bowie, after the knife. Davy Jones from the Monkees was riding the crest of the wave, with hits such as “Last Train To Clarksville”, and “Daydream Believer”, and David felt that this could be confusing to the record buying public, and ultimately could hold him back. Did this make a huge difference, who can tell, but it was better than one of his other choices he made: Tom Jones. It was certainly the first indication of the chameleon like character that has since gone on to characterize so much of his later work. After recording, and performing with the bands, Bowie made the decision to go solo, and pursue a career on his own terms. He recorded his first solo album, which sunk without trace. This was a crushing blow for David Bowie, and instead of working harder on the content he was intent to keep delivering to the world, the musician did something quite unexpected...but quite David Bowie like. He decided to take a break from the music world, and headed to Scotland where for a period in 1967 he lived in a Buddhist monastery along with American musician Leonard Cohen. As he says “"I was a terribly earnest Buddhist at the time I had stayed in their monastery and was going through all their exams, and yet I had this feeling that it wasn't right for me. I suddenly realised how close it all was: another month and my head would have been shaved." So David left, and then even more bizarrely joined a group of mime artists, even starting his own group called Feathers. Although this from the outside seems unusual, as we see on Join Up Dots everyday, a person has to try things that may not seem part of the master plan, to ultimately lead them to where they should be in life. It is during these times, when it may seem haphazard and wasteful that most people absorb different ways of operating. Discovering skills within themselves, that they can utilise later in positions not remotely visible at that time. And that is the case with David Bowie, as the added spirituality and theatricality become more evident in his work, as was displayed in his own classic song “Space Oddity” about a spaceman floating around about the earth. Thanks to the BBC's use of the song for their coverage of the US Moon landing in 1969, David Bowie had his first hit record. With the song hitting the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. What is extremely interesting is the state of mind of David Bowie at the time of writing. The words clearly show an individual lost, and forlorn about the future. No surprise after the failures of his previous musical efforts. "Planet earth is blue and there's nothing I can do" - shows the realization that there's nothing he can do about all of the problems he sees in the world. "Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you hear me Major Tom? - He's lost communication with those on the ground (i.e. in reality). David Bowie showed a window to his soul. He was not part of his previous life of domesticity in Bromley, and was neither part of the rock star lifestyle that he so craved. Bowie was floating out in Space, on his own. Slowly getting ready for the true moment that David Bowie blasted into our consciousness, and the televisions and radios across the world. In 1973, the career that had stuttered and faltered for the last four years, exploded dramatically into life, as from that position floating above the world David returned to earth. This time not as himself, but the androgynous alien Ziggy Stardust. It signaled the start of the David Bowie fascination. Where was the man, and where was the music? Could one exist without the other? Was the high camp fashion that he displayed on stage the true mark of David Bowie, or a curtain to hide behind, whilst the crowds surged, screamed and fainted in front him. This was glam-rock at its peak, and quite literally anyone around at that time would be compared to the strutting, preening and bi-sexual pre-madonna that was 1973's incarnation of David Bowie. Even megastars such as T-Rex's Marc Bolan, the flamboyant pianist from Middlesex Elton John, and the upwardly climbing Freddie Mercury were nothing, compared to what the world was witnessing with his classic “Starman” and “Ziggy Stardust” David Bowie was no longer floating high above the world on his own. To the teenagers and music buying public, he was the world, and with his backing band The Spiders Of Mars, the world waited with baited breath to see what they would deliver next. And David Bowie delivered...but once again not in the way most expected, or wished for.ziggy-and-the-spiders Instead of setting off on a world-tour, and crushing the charts with new albums and singles, he announced that he was retiring from touring and that Ziggy Stardust and of course the Spiders were no more. As he announced whilst on stage “Of all the shows on the tour, this one will stay with us the longest because not only is this the last show of the tour, but it is the last show we will ever do.” This surprised everyone in the house – not least the members of his band. The hysteria was over almost as soon as it had started. Which looking back, was an amazingly brave decision to make, but one that showed that David Bowie was in control, and knew what was right for his career. Instead of saying “this is what you want, so this is what you'll get”, he quite firmly, and with huge confidence stated “You will get what I want, and when I want to give it to you!” This in no short measure ensured that the mystic that has grown up around David Bowie was started off in the perfect manner. He was not going to give an inch. And we are no doubt glad that he took that stance, as his music was becoming more creative and experimental because of it. He had created the freedom to explore what he was capable off. And so began his personal odyssey from country to country, city to city, playing and recording with such eclectic names as John Lennon, Brian Eno from Roxy Music and even Luther Vandross, It was whilst in New York jamming with John Lennon that the riff which became the iconic Fame was first heard, and led to David Bowie's first American number one. And his later move to Berlin in Germany, harnessed even greater creative imagery and unexpected musical releases with the classic stripped back “Low” and the Eno produced “Heroes”, made whilst he lived in semi seclusion, painting, studying art and recording with Brian Eno. "Heroes" was marketed by RCA with the catchphrase, "There's Old Wave. There's New Wave. And there's David Bowie..." which is very apt, and something that Bowie would have done well to remember in later years. It is true that Bowie likes nothing more than going in quite different directions than what the world expects. Throughout his career he has explored the world of acting from his early roles in “The Man Who Fell To Earth”, through to “Absolute Beginners And “Labyrinth” where he acted beside a series of Jim “The Muppet” Henson's creations, and even a three month run in the Elephant Man on Broadway. None of the roles or performances would be classed as landmarks in his career. In fact many would argue they were just a distraction to where he should have been placing his attention. On his music. The creativity being focused on areas of interest to David, more to his loyal followers. What becomes a truth with David Bowie, is when he appears to move towards the obvious routes to success, he becomes a pale inferior version of himself. Following the global success of the Nile Rodgers produced album “Lets Dance” in 1983, he appeared influenced by the Music of the time. And one thing for sure being in Duran Duran is never going to inspire the same level of performance as working the bars, and studying the architecture in Berlin or other such locations. David Bowie needs to be off the radar, to be truly authentic. He needs to be tapping into the yet to be seen musical movements, instead of being the leader of the popular and current ones. And so for the next few years David Bowie produced work that was neither memorable nor commercially successful in the same way as his earlier successes. He was falling further behind the crowd, and lost between the teenagers now grown up who adored him in the seventies, and the 80's versions focused on Wham, Duran, and Rick Astley. Throughout the next ten years, Bowie's musical career was in decline, with the albums Tin machine and Tin Machine II being commercial and public failures. David Bowie was finished. He had achieved everything that the 13 year old saxophone learning kid could have ever dreamed off and more. He had inspired the world to believe. He had created a new generation of musicians who studied his back catalogue with a religious fervor. He disappeared. Retreating from the limelight, he closed the door on his New York apartment and became David Jones again. Father, husband, music legend, and enjoying retirement. For over ten years, other than a few sightings David Bowie was invisible to the world. We had the memories of past glories and nothing else. But as we have seen throughout the years, Bowie returns stronger when on his own terms. When he is in control to what the world will receive. That is when he delivers, and in 2013 after ten years in the wilderness “The Next Day” David Bowie's 24th album shook the world. The Spaceman, the Clown, The Alien, The Smooth Groover, the enigma that is David Bowie was back where he belongs. In the ears, and stereos of the world. Saying things the way that only David Bowie can. A musician, a mystery, a creative, a leader, a decision maker, a controller, David Bowie has learnt through all the trials and tribulations, the ups and downs what leads to success. And that quite simply is being himself. A lesson that for so many of us is the hardest one to learn.

The Well - David's experience with God was so real it could be tasted. Rev. Dwayne extends a challenge to not just taste life with God---but savor it and share it. Scripture: Psalm 34: 1-8. A reading adapted from Dr. Stephen Estep., another inspired from "A Tree Full of Angels," by Marcrina Wiederkehr, and a final reading adapted from, "Yours Are the Hands of Christ," by James C. Howell.