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With the return of fall comes the return to various forms of public and private education.  If the former, it means the students need to pack heat to get through the more immediate challenges of survival in the school year.  And if the latter, it means the students are wealthy enough to afford drugs to get them through the more cerebral challenges: such as coping with their inner angst and ennui about whether or not learning has any purpose in the grander scheme of things.

Thankfully, self-help and motivational speaking has a role to play in keeping everybody on track for a fully-actualized school year, during which they can get the most out of their lesson plans.  And, my tips are in handy list form, so you don’t have to read that much to get the key information you need: just like when you hit up Wikipedia instead of actually consulting the required text book for your course!

MR. PAUL MAUL’S TOP TEN TIPS FOR BACK TO SCHOOL EMPOW-WOW-ERMENT!

1. Parents! Now that summer is over, make sure to draft up a quarterly wall calendar of regimented activities for your children to adhere to during the school year, including designated times for homework, bedtime, after-school activities, sports and play dates.  Not only does this handy schedule prevent your kids from straying into destructive leisure activities like hanging out with friends, listening to music or being introduced to a gateway drug, it will also form them into the hard-wired automatons incapable of imagination and creativity that they will need to be to survive in the jungle of corporate America..
2. College students, remember that interacting on Facebook and Twitter all day is a viable alternative to engaging in your school’s curriculum.  After all, it is probably your friends who will end up getting you a job in the real world, and not your knowledge of the collapse of the freaking Ottoman Empire..
3. High school students, remember that interacting on Facebook and Twitter all day is a viable alternative to engaging in your school’s curriculum.  After all, it is  your friends who will determine whether or not your are cool or an outcast during these four years of peer pressure-dictated hell, and not your reading comprehension scores on To Kill a Freaking Mockingbird. Even if you do get to read it on a Kindle.
4. Junior high school students, remember that interacting on Facebook and Twitter all day is a viable alternative to engaging in your school’s curriculum.  After all, it is your own response to your rapidly approaching adolescence and hormonal upheaval that will determine your level of happiness during this crucial stage in your development,  and not your grasp of Pre-freaking-Algebra.
5. Kids, if you are plagued by a school bully, behave like Gandhi or Jesus and practice non-violence. This will confound the bully to such an extent that he will stop short of drawing blood while pummeling you.
6. Teachers, make your new incoming class of youngsters feel welcome by telling them that the Pledge of Allegiance is a fascist tradition and that we should all become Luddites and godless Socialists like our President who wasn’t even born here.
7. Parents, it is natural for your child to be nervous about the first day of school.  Make sure to emphasize the positive aspects of starting another school year, such as reuniting with old friends, or being gone for seven hours a day so daddy and mommy can finally get back to some regular pre-work humping.
8. Students, it is up to you to monitor the fat and sugar content in your school lunches.  Good luck with that.
9. Develop good study habits.  Just remember you will be called a pussy and most likely ostracized.
10. Never forget that the key to success in life is inextricably linked to staying in school and completing your education. Unless you choose a life of crime, in which case you might do fairly well without it.

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Got back to school tips of your own?

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It’s summertime!  And Paul Maul’s list of self-help friendly activities has returned…freshly-updated with an all-new summer reading list and an even more vitriolic spin on theme parks!  So, whether you’re spending quality time with your significant other, your kids or just yourself, here’s a rollicking list of activities to help you make self-help part of your busy summer agenda!

1. VISIT A THEME PARK!

Theme parks can be a veritable petri dish of simmering family dysfunction (as well as a veritable petri dish of other families’ simmering viral infections), and as such they provide the perfect breeding ground for lessons in healthy selfdom.  For example, use the 90 minutes spent waiting in a sweltering line just to experience a two-minute ride involving a ten-second plunge toward your possible extinction to meditate and be still. Try not to focus on wishing you were anywhere else, including inside an unmaintenanced porta-potty at a mid-August outdoor jazz festival.  Soon, you’ll come to an inner peace and momentarily forget that this cripplingly mundane so-called adventure you’ve signed off on is costing you more than a year of cable, and that’s before the twenty bucks per head you have to drop on a bread bowl full of melted cheese at the cavalierly-named “restaurant” which is actually the only place to eat within six miles of the parking lot.

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2. GO CAMPING!

Need some perspective on how good you’ve got it?  Nothing brings a family together like the futility of trying to get water to a decent boil on a portable stove just so you can wolf down a meal of dehydrated eggs and faux bacon between wishing you could have a decent shower and didn’t have to dig a hole to crap in.

3. CATCH UP ON YOUR SUMMER READING!

www.jenniferyoung.com

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Horror giant Dean Koontz offers another chapter in his Frankenstein series; then there’s Go the F*ck To Sleep, the charming children’s book for adults about wishing your little monster would doze off already, and Ann Coulter has a new book called Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America so there are all sorts of ways to read about freakish and/or annoying creatures while you sit and increase your risk of skin diseases.

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4. SEE A FREE SYMPHONY CONCERT!

So many cities offer free outdoor entertainment at this time of year, so get some air and get some culture, too.  It’s a great way to calm those jangled nerves and lower stress.  Just make sure you go with someone who doesn’t have a stick up their ass about classical music, because they will get really pissed if you fall asleep, which you will undoubtedly do.  And yet, they brought along the picnic basket full of fatty foods and wine,  so what did they expect?

5. HIT THE BEACH!

Confront those body-image issues head-on by proudly stripping down to a Speed-O or bikini without bothering to do six weeks at the health club to get in shape.  If people you don’t even know can’t stand the sight of you without perfectly toned muscles or a six-pack, they can go put their heads in the sand!  Be proud of who you are!  We’re all going to the same place in the end! (I mean we’re all going to die, not that we’re all going to the beach.   Just a little timeless wisdom.)

How will you stay emotionally healthy this summer?

Why, there’s all sorts of Paul Maul self-help lunacy. Check out some more!

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Enlightenment. Everybody wants it. And everybody else thinks they can tell you how to get it. Well, not me. I can certainly guide you to any level of empow-WOW-erment you would like to reach, but enlightenment is a transcendence of the material world that even I have not mastered. However, my work in the faux self-help industry has made me aware enough to spot the warning signs of dangerously low levels of enlightenment, and so I list them here for your instruction and, I  hope, your benefit.

TEN SIGNS YOU ARE NOT YET ENLIGHTENED

1. You think Deepak Chopra is a bulk food item at Costco.
2. Giving up all judgment of yourself and others would leave you with way too much free time.
3. When asked to contemplate your ‘essence,’ you can only come up with a vague image of swirling, noxious gases.
   
4. Achieving perfect emotional balance seems about as likely to you as actually landing a job through LinkedIn.
5. Being still, quiet and simply aware of the energy of your breathing makes you want to rip off your own face.
6. You have to ask if it’s okay to get hammered before you meditate.
7. You think the Law of Attraction can only kick in when you’re naked.
8. Similarly, the notion of self-love usually involves your right hand.
9. Trees freak you out.
   
10. You are convinced that the simple act of forgiving all those who have done you great wrongs will deprive you of the deeply satisfying and rather elaborate, almost Rube Goldberg-influenced revenge fantasies that bring you such profound inner peace.

How did you score?  If you have experienced any of these unsettling feelings, it could be an indicator of your rather tragic lack of even the tiniest smidgen of enlightenment.  Or, after all is said and done, it may just mean that you’re human. Well, almost.

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Boy, bloggers get some amazingly bizarre spam.  And what do most of them do? Send it to the trash bin. Well, your faithful seeker-outer of the more disreputable aspects of human nature is not that short-sighted.  Mr. Paul Maul knows that you expect more from him, and that you have come to rely on his discerning eye for finding startling glimpses into our tortured psyches.  And if these glimpses also happen to be just flat out WTF funny, so much the better.

As with the previous collection of spam highlights, these are verbatim, unedited, word-for-word comments as they appeared in my inbox.  The commentary below each one is also unexpurgated; although it happens to be mine.  Enjoy the show!

From SolarPanelHomes:

“johny depp, I reckon he is the most talented male actor ever. although Pirates of the Caribbean At World’s End is the worst!”

SolarPanelHomes, I like how you subtly express your disdain for Mr. Depp by not only misspelling his name but typing it in lower case letters.  Snap!

From Watch Cooling Automatic Ice:

“Action is the proper berry of knowledge.”

Why thank you, Watch Cooling, I will apply this useful motto to my own life…as soon as I figure out what the f*ck you are talking about!

From Wii Homebrew:

“I have a disk stuck in my wii and it won’t eject, i can play the game thats stuck…..it attemps to eject it when you press the eject button but it won’t come out,”

Dude, if your disc insertion is anything like your spelling and punctuation, that thing is going to be stuck in there for a long, long time.

From Little Girl Dresses:

“Hello, found your website accidentally doing a search on the internet however I?ll certainly be coming back. ? How do i have confidence in God whenever only a week ago I got my tongue caught in the roller of an electrical typewriter?”

Um…can’t help you there, LGD.

From Home Builders:

“I really liked this post. You explain this topic very well. When hiring home contractors it is important to select a trusted name in construction. Experienced and efficient staff should strive for excellence and pay close attention to every detail of your home.”

Thank you. You write compliments very nicely. The important thing when disguising your compliment as spam is to suddenly and clumsily begin your product pitch a millisecond after you heap praise upon the blogger.

From Dirty Hobby:

“Numerous men and women that personal a truck use it a good deal for operate relevant situations, if this sounds like you then you could have the variety of job that needs you to do a lot of dirty perform, which means operating in all types of weather, rain or shine. Your truck will most likely get dirty on the within and outside with mud. This is why it is essential that you have flooring mats in your truck to hold your carpet from getting dirty or stained. It is surely worth the investment to acquire some substantial high quality flooring mats.”

I might be off-base here, Dirty Hobby, but you aren’t talking about trucks or floor mats at all, are you?

From Invest Guide:

“Sexy writing, got me what I needed – thx!

Oh, my dear, sweet Jesus, I don’t want to know.

Want more classic Paul Maul irreverence? Check it out!

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We motivational speakers are always looking for great new ways to avoid the butt clench-inducing term affirmation. We know that it sends anyone who has his or her bullsh*t meter set at even half effectiveness bolting out of the room faster than if they’d been asked to watch a year’s worth of Oprah episodes back to back on Tivo.

But, we in the self-help industry are nothing if not devious manipulative resourceful, and so we have become adept at finding ways to get our audiences to the same place they would get with an affirmation by gently bullsh*tting tricking guiding them into an affirmation-like state from which they can explore their God-given right to empow-WOW-erment!

This is a technique I employed last year at this time and it seemed to yield quite effective results for the eight people who got back to me on it.  The idea is you start the new year by pretending it has already ended.  Then, from that perspective of looking back at the sheer opportunity you were given to start afresh, you imagine what you would like to have accomplished.  In other words, you don’t reassess, you pre-assess!  (Jeez, I just noticed that if you take the last ‘s’ out of that word it spells “asses.” But that is neither here nor there.)

So imagine: the year is over and you are reflecting upon the goals you set in 2011.  How did that work out for you?  Read through some of the pledges below and see how you scored this year. And find out whether or not you can look back on 2011 with a sense of pride and accomplishment!

2011 END OF YEAR RESOLUTION CHECKLIST

HAVE I…?

1. Greeted each and every day with a smile no matter how much I felt like a douchebag doing it?
2. Realized that I am not on this planet to live in fear and scarcity, except maybe I am so what the hell?
3. Gone after my dreams, no matter how silly or spat upon by the people I love they may be, up yours every one of you life-sucking vampires you will pay for your derision of my inner beauty?
4. Asked the universe for financial abundance, with the nagging suspicion that the universe has much more important things to deal with than the fact that I should never have agreed to freaking balloon payments?
5. Not beat myself up even though I enjoy the living crap out of it?
6. Given my time freely to others once I am caught up on Season 1 of Terriers?
7. Prioritized family over adequate mental health?
8. Fully accepted the fact that my very existence is a special, individual miracle that has happened approximately 7 billion times so far?
9. Taken time out of each day for 2.6 seconds of quiet because more than that will make me want to chew off my own head?
10. Known instinctively that the right action for any situation will reveal itself to me just in time to put my clothes back on?
    

Well, then, as you look back on the year that was, can you honestly say you implemented some or all of these empow-WOW-ering affirmations things?  I hope so, because it will mean that you were part of a great, great year!  If you have any other highlights from having looked back in advance on  your 2011, feel free to let me know.  Happy New You Year!

Enjoy more self-help posts, lists and pseudo-wisdom by clicking here!

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It’s the time of the season.  Change is in the air.  Do not be afraid.  For in the world of the empow-WOW-ered individual, this is opportunity itself, opening up like a lotus flower or some other strained metaphor that helps indicate renewal.  Let these delightful haiku poems guide you into the latest cycle of growth and self-improvement as ushered in by the fall equinox..

PAUL MAUL’S MOTIVATIONAL HAIKUS FOR AUTUMN

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1.

The air is now crisp

I am still at the same job

Kill myself?  Not yet.

2.

Soon, pumpkin carving

Jeez, it gets dark at, like, four

Depressed?  Not me, dude.

3.

Leaves have hit the ground

Dead now, like my troubled mind

Fuck yeah, I’m fine, man.

4.

Before fall is through:

Thanksgiving; family!  Oh

I came from these freaks.

5.

Evening, a wind

A sweater worn once again

Kill myself?  Not yet.

Well, I certainly you hope you found some great self-improvement takeaways in these inspirational mottos done in a style that invokes ancient, timeless wisdom, whether or not it is actually there.

If you have some inspiring thoughts that fit the 5-7-5 paradigm, post a comment.

Upwards!

Paul

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Letting feelings out is all well and good in therapy sessions or support groups or in a Blu-Ray of The Notebook, but let’s get real: life is hard enough without having to be obligated to open the floodgates every time you realize you truly care about the people stupid enough to count you among their loved ones.  We all put in long, hard days and most of them conclude with summoning just enough will to microwave some fettuccine Alfredo and scarf it down while getting to our Tivo of Burn Notice.  It is just not possible to confront on a daily basis the fact that we would crumble without the abiding affection of those we hold dear.  It’s Oprah overload.

Yet, common courtesy requires us to contact these selfsame people on a fairly regular basis, and the last thing we need is to be reduced to a puddle just thinking about what they mean to us.  Thankfully, nature has provided an age-old remedy for this dreaded onrush of deep feeling.  And that remedy is “ya.”   Replacing “you” with “ya” as one closes out any correspondence or conversation is crisp, convenient shorthand for: “you mean the world to me and my heart swells with bittersweet fondness at the very thought of your existence—however, if I so much as attempt to actually say this I will implode like the bespectacled Nazi at the end of the first Raiders.”

This is particularly convenient for men, especially siblings, who are about as accustomed to “opening up” as a chair.

Example: “Miss ya, bro.”

Sometimes, the diminutive “ya” can actually provide an opening for the person being addressed to move directly into the full “you,” with the unspoken agreement that though the frightening word was used, it was only in response to the previous use of “ya.”

Example: “Miss ya, bro.”  “Miss you too, bro.”

It goes without saying that employing “ya” instead of “you” also on most occasions bypasses the troublesome pronoun “I”: a particularly unwanted word in the quest to avoid intimacy. Nowhere is this fact more glaringly apparent than in the timeworn tradition evidenced in the classic “love ya!” versus the daunting, nay frightening “I love you.”

“Ya” is also really useful to those involved in an unrequited romance.  Okay, so she hasn’t given you a single indication that you will ever taste the sweet nectar of her adoration, so what harm is there in closing out an email with a quick “love ya?”  No harm at all is the answer to that question.

Conversely, ladies may sign off a response to an unwanted suitor with a “love ya” as a not-very-subtle-but-completely-socially-acceptable way of saying “don’t love you, never will.”

Family members of all stripes can and should make regular use of the all-purpose “Thinking of ya!” as they communicate to sons, daughters, cousins, even wives or husbands.  And notice how the added exclamation point can provide an extra layer of emotional distancing!  “I’m thinking of you, but in a kind of offhand, don’t worry about it way!”  For an even greater don’t-think-for-a-moment-that-I-care grace note, take the ‘g’ off the end of the word ‘thinking’ and add a crisp, informal apostrophe (‘thinkin’ of ya!).

These are just a few of the ways you can cope with your own pitiful (but utterly understandable) lack of desire to “go there,” as well as more fully grasp the motivations of other loved ones who also don’t want to “go there.”  For “going there” means a sudden, unchecked outpouring of thoughts long held in check, and ones that could make you a blubbering idiot within a millisecond.  And God knows we can’t have that.  Now get back to work, everybody.  Lovin’ ya!

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If only some of the promises we expect of our personal hygiene products could be applied to our personal lives.

Ever since somebody came up with the idea that the more blades you put in a razor the more of your beard it can shave, personal hygiene products have made some pretty remarkable claims.  There’s time-release deodorants, whitening toothpastes and age-defying moisturizers.

As a culture, we seem to assign our products the helpful, positive, even mentoring roles we are too emotionally unavailable to supply for each other.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the gazillion different kinds of shampoo and the various promises they make regarding a better life through hair.   You have to hand it to shampoo in general: this is the industry that sold us the whole “lather, rinse, repeat” thing.  An industrious way indeed to get us to use twice as much of their product than necessary with every shower!   Here, then, is a look at the way shampoos lead by example when it comes to positive self-help messaging.  No more tears, people!

VOLUMIZING SHAMPOO

I’m not even sure ‘volumizing’ was a word before the existence of hair care products, since all the definitions of the term I found mention hair as a reference point.  But let’s consider how a little psychological ‘volumizing’ can aid us in our quest for personal wholeness.  If you apply a product to your head in the hopes of making your locks appear fuller, more alive, more touchable, why not consider ‘volumizing’ your own approach to the way you live your life? Expand your mind to let in new ideas (fuller), give in to the urge to celebrate another day of existence (more alive) and let real affection in by not putting up walls that keep people out either emotionally or physically (touchable).

SHAMPOO LIFE LESSON #1 – Jesus, we’ll spend money to help our hair have a richer, fuller more approachable existence, but we won’t  frickin’ step up to do it for ourselves?

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CLARIFYING SHAMPOO

Everyone knows we have to get clear on what is holding us back internally before we can progress in our relationships, in our careers, or simply in our own personal growth-ness.

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SHAMPOO LIFE LESSON #2 – If we are moved enough to ‘clarify’ our damn hair, what’s holding us back from clarifying our issues?

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ANTI-BREAKAGE SHAMPOO

Obviously, it fills one’s heart with dread to think that part of one’s hair could be, God forbid, broken.  And we will take any step we can to make sure that our tresses remain intact.

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SHAMPOO LIFE LESSON #3 – If we put as much thought into keeping ourselves from breaking as we put into keeping our hair from breaking, perhaps we wouldn’t need Dr. Phil to tear us a new one so often..

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FUDGE TORTURE TONIC SHAMPOO?

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SHAMPOO LIFE LESSON #4 – No comment.

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Through the ages, we’ve been fortunate to have received many timeless messages about success and what it takes to achieve it.  Ralph Waldo Emerson told us:

“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children…to leave the world a better place…to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

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And the great cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead observed:

“I personally measure success in terms of the contributions an individual makes to her or his fellow human beings.”

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But only one great icon of success has the stones to say what it’s really about.

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Take it away, Tony !

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CLICK HERE FOR: A HEALTHY APPROACH TO SUCCESS FROM TONY ROBBINS

(It’s out of sync, but more than worth the glitches.)

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