Often when I am presenting at a college or organization, I spend a few minutes working with the participants in a guided exercise to demonstrate the power of our own minds when setting and achieving goals.

Our own attitude – which is approximately 50% genetic and 50% learned behavior – wields a powerful influence.

Our attitude is formed by a thought meeting a feeling, or vice versa. In other words, it is in the interplay between thought and emotion that our full power (for good or for ill) is discovered and unleashed (sort of like pulling the pin out of a hand grenade, or filling a balloon full of helium).

There are two typical pathways by which thought and emotion most frequently tend to meet:

Example A: The mind thinks a thought. That thought produces an emotion.
Example B: The body produces an emotion. The mind thinks a thought about that emotion.

In the intersection where thought meets feeling, or feeling meets thought, decision and action can then occur.

….so you do unto me.

I am not well-versed in religion, Christian or otherwise.

I would never presume to attempt to sermonize, or to assume I fully understand the words of those who do.

But I do know this – if by “the least of these” Jesus was meaning bugs, then I’ve got a LONG way to go to earn my “great human being” stripes.

I cannot seem to help myself. I have so much compassion for animals, children, and most adults. I keep my house neat and see my folks at least once a week on average. My bird lives better than some people do (so do my fish and my houseplants for that matter).

But just TRY being a bug in my household and see how you fare.

Splat. Whack. Smush.

At least I don’t stalk them with those electric zapper paddles like my Dad does. But if I’m being honest, that is just because he hasn’t bought me one yet (I hear it is on order).

Since I’ve moved into this place – a 100 year old historic duplex home in the heart of one of Houston’s most historic districts – I have battled roaches (shudder), fleas, both red and black ants, countless spiders of all colors and sizes, one medium sized rodent and a host of black gnats that think houseplants make mighty fine insect residences.

I was talking with a friend this past weekend about how easily studying nature can take us back to basics.

My friend mentioned how animals are motivated by instinct – the instinct to eat, to rest, to reproduce. Things seem much simpler in the animal kingdom with no pesky frontal lobe to interfere with their instinct-based decisions.

Then again, at the risk of anthropomorphizing (or giving animals qualities that are typically only associated with humans – I had to look that one up) my beloved bird, Pearl, or others in the animal world, how much do we humans really know about what makes animals tick, why they do the things they do, and how they relate?

Not nearly enough, according to a recent Time magazine article. Called “The Science of Animal Friendships”, this article shares information that is both surprising and not so surprising.

I am a bird nut. A bird fanatic. A bird lover extraordinaire.

I think it is extremely fun to spend my free time taking pictures of my bird, Pearl, and then writing about all the cute things she does in the special blog I started for her, Love & Feathers. Sometimes I spend so much time chasing Pearl around with my iPhone camera that I forget I have actual work to do.

This also helps Pearl remember, yet again, why the iPhone is mortal birdie enemy #1.

But pets are such great mentors because they keep us honest. For instance, Pearl now knows that nighttime is neck feather-scratching time. If I do not respond to her first reminder chirps, she will. not. stop. until. I. do.

It does not matter how comfortable I am in whatever part of the house I am hanging out in. My feathered gal’s got nothing but time, and her tiny but powerful birdie lungs never wear out.

Perhaps this is one reason why I am now on my third go-round reading one of my all-time favorite books, Wesley the Owl.

Outside of a few celebrities (Kate Winslet, Jamie Lee Curtis, Adele and Liv Tyler come to mind) who are adamant that they love their curves and plan to maintain them, finding visible role models who genuinely seem to like their bodies is an ongoing challenge.

Which is why sometimes I turn to non-humans for inspiration.

Snowball, Animal Planet star. Photo courtesy of Irena Schulz and Bird Lovers Only (www.birdloversonly.org)

Take Snowball, for instance.

Talk about a positive body image mentor!

Snowball is a young sulfur crested cockatoo.

He was dropped off at the Bird Lovers Only bird shelter by his frustrated former owner, who couldn’t deal with the well-publized “terrible twos” that cockatoos and other large birds often go through.

But Snowball’s owner also left a DVD with the bird, and instructed shelter co-owners Charles & Irena Schulz to make sure to pop it in and watch what happened next.

What happened next was that the couple discovered that Snowball realllllllyyyyy likes the Backstreet Boys.

If you’ve been following “Mentoring & Recovery” for awhile, you’ve probably noticed I write a lot about my bird, Pearl.

Believe it or not, this is not just because she is the smartest, cutest, most entertaining avian on the planet.

Although she is all those things.

It is also because she is the prettiest.

This is not an opinion.

She knows it, and I know it.

And everyone else knows it the moment they meet her.

It’s my birthday today. So I’ve decided to write about my favorite subject – birds.

When I visit a place to speak, I always ask the audience to raise their hand if they have a pet.

For those who don’t, their assignment is to get one.

This is because pets are great for learning healthy self-esteem.

“Oh boy oh boy. I sure am pretty. Pretty, pretty, pretty birdie.”

Let’s take Exhibit A: my pet bird, Pearl.

Pearl is 10 years old this year. Every morning for the past 10 years, Pearl has awoken in exactly the same way. First, I uncover her cage. Next, I open the door and she scurries out. She then makes her way up the side of the cage to the bathroom mirror, conveniently located next to her cage.

Then she looks in the mirror, spies herself, and lets out a loud birdie cat-call. You can almost hear her avian thoughts, “WOW! Pretty pretty PRETTY! I am SO lucky! I get to spend another day with the most beautiful bird in the whole world – ME! Yippee!”

I have to admit, I rarely (if ever) greet myself that way when I first catch sight of myself in that same bathroom mirror in the morning.

I don’t talk about birds as much on this blog as I do in other places where I write. But all that is about to change, because recently, I saw the movie “Rio”.

About a dozen times.

Featuring a tame blue macaw named Blu, the movie is less about its overt plot to mate the last male and female blue macaws together to save the species, and more about the transformative power of relationships to make the unimaginable possible.

In Blu’s case, his issue is flying. He can’t. Or so he thinks. Then Blu gets captured, chained to Jewel, a blue macaw who can fly, and, well, you know what comes next.

Or maybe you don’t.

I was out walking the other day. It was a gorgeous, sunshine-y day. The pavement was nice and dry. The pathway was clear, just me and….wait a minute.

Nope, I wasn’t alone. There were two of us.

The butterfly is in there….somewhere

Me and the little scrunchy, bunchy, wildly unattractive butterfly-to-be.

I knelt down, peered closer.

Where is it? Are we sure – just positive – that it’s in there?

The caterpillar was sure. It just kept scrunching and bunching its way along the path, happy in the not-too-scorching fall sunlight, steadily progressing toward safety and, at some point, transformation.

Now I know that caterpillar-to-butterfly stories are way overdone in recovery communities, and I also am all-too-aware that if I were reading this particular post rather than writing it, I might be yawning and stirring my mouse clicker right about now.

But have you ever stopped to look – I mean really LOOK – at one of those many-legged, aerodynamically-shaped yet unbelievably slow creatures as they scrunch along, making their way towards….somewhere?

I hadn’t.

I have had a series of roommates through the years, none of whom have shared my eating disordered history.

Which meant that they may have differed widely in other areas, but all were fairly uniformly mystified by my frequent bouts of “refrigerator paralysis”.

By this I mean, I would walk into the kitchen because it was time to eat, and I would stand in front of the refrigerator “letting all the cold air out” as my mom used to say…

And absolutely paralyzed by my choices.

Too many choices. We live in a world which gives us too many choices.

We have so many choices that our minds get spoiled, and it is a bad deal indeed when our mind can’t make up its mind about what we are having for dinner that night.