Motivation Enhancement

The month of September is officially known as Suicide Awareness Month. By chance, as I was driving around taking care of errands, I happened upon a local public broadcasting network, a PBS network, and they were having a radio program about Suicide Awareness Month.

The callers who called in were all critical, pessimistic, and cynical, which started the process in my mind of thinking: There must be a different way.

To give you an illustration, one caller said that it was his experience that when his workplace had a suicide-awareness class, a coworker of his said that he had just left a previous company that, not long before, had held a month-long suicide-awareness class.

This coworker admitted or confessed that, from time to time, he was suicidal. He told the caller on the show that if he had to sit through another suicide-awareness class, he would actually go through with it, and that talking about it was what kept suicide in his mind.

The caller said that a month later, this person actually went through with it.

Now, the host of the radio program became defensive at this point and stressed that, as she put it, statistically, it has been shown that the more people discuss suicide, the rates of suicide go down.

There was another caller. That was one of several phone calls that were broadcast on the show, but every one of them was cynical, and none of them was optimistic. None of them gave any hope.

They focused on the topic of suicide itself. It was completely centered on that. And since the end result of suicide is absolutely nothing good, there was nothing good being discussed on the show.

Now, this, along with some other life experiences that I’ve had recently, has led me to think that there must be a different way.

I belong to a family support group because I have a relative who is currently struggling with health issues, albeit they are not suicidal. But regardless, some of the people in that meeting talk about the fact that a close friend of theirs, or someone they know, is suicidal or has attempted suicide.

One week, the person who was managing the group confessed that she had a friend in Germany who had become obsessed with committing suicide. As she explained it, in Germany, under the right conditions, assisted suicide is legal, but this friend did not qualify.

Everyone in the group tried to say something supportive and positive.

But the next week, at the following meeting that we had, it was conveyed that this person in Germany had died by suicide.

And there’s nothing you can say at the end of that to be supportive and helpful.

It just so happened that my brother had sent me a motivational video from Jordan Peterson, which I watched the first part of. Jordan Peterson stressed that since we’re all going to die anyway, why not put 100% into your life?

Coincidentally, I spoke with someone about other motivational YouTube videos that I want to share as well.

Over time, in my life, I have come across, periodically, gems of wisdom that I feel need to be disseminated in the public sphere.

I believe that we need to have an entirely different way of looking at this problem. I understand that it is a serious problem statistically. It is one of the top causes of death in certain demographics, and that needs to change.

But I think the most effective way of changing that is to change how people think about life.

Now, I’m working on and writing a couple of books. I’m a writer, and one of the books I’m working on makes a case for something called deism.

I think the United States needs to have a revival of deism—a religious revival, or even an atheistic revival.

Both schools of thought about life after death, I believe, can be unhelpful.

There are atheists who are suicidal. There are religious people who are suicidal.

All this research I’m working on will go into my book. I know I’ll have to get the book out as soon as possible. And once it is, it will be offered here on this webpage as an aid.

But currently, there’s enough material to share that can change people’s mindset regarding suicide.

The text that you’re reading right now will be updated and refined as time goes along.

But briefly, I have this to offer.

Number One

Every negative thing that happens in your life can be rethought and recalibrated in your mind to be a positive thing.

Any tragedy that you suffer can be reworked mentally to be a benefit.

Any hardship that you’re going through can make you stronger and better able to handle hardships.

All the experiences you have in your life can help change the world, make it a better place for other people to live, or help other people live better in the world.

Number Two

I find this to be most helpful, and it was told to me by a licensed therapist.

I am not a licensed therapist, and so I urge anyone reading this to seek the support and help of a licensed therapist.

Regardless, let me offer this as best I can.

Human beings have three influential spheres of health. There is your mental health, your emotional health, and your physical health.

As I understand it, it has been proven that working to improve your physical health through diet and exercise will improve your emotional health and your mental health.

Improving your emotional health will help improve your mental health and your physical health.

And improving your mental health will help improve your ability to achieve physical health, as well as your ability to achieve emotional health.

These three spheres of influence that everyone has can be harnessed to improve your ability to look at life in a more positive way.

The purpose of this campaign is to hopefully replace the concept of preventing suicide through labeling it as “suicide prevention.”

Number Three

The third thing I want to say is that it seems to me that, unfortunately, suicide prevention is an industry.

The moment someone calls 911 is the moment a responder is trying to evaluate how close someone is to actually committing suicide in order to get an ambulance to pick someone up and take them to a hospital.

Then, once someone is hospitalized, they also become a patient in a system that is focused on suicide prevention rather than focused on giving positive therapy such that they are no longer even thinking about suicide.

Crisis care and hospitals save lives, and they must always be there for anyone who needs them. But I believe the work of positive, life-affirming thinking needs to begin much earlier, long before a crisis.

My idea is to reach people early, so that far fewer people ever reach the point of needing to dial 988, by offering them tools to recalibrate their life and to look at things in a new way.

And that is why I have created this campaign.

Researchers have long observed that suicide can spread socially. This is called suicide contagion. In 1974, sociologist David Phillips named one form of it the “Werther effect,” after Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Since then, studies have found increases in suicide following heavily publicized suicides and some dramatic portrayals in entertainment. Clusters can also form in schools and communities. The effect is modest compared with other risk factors for suicide, but it is real.

What matters is how suicide is portrayed. Coverage that is sensational, repetitive, or focused on the act itself has been linked to increases. But the research also shows the opposite. Stories of people who faced a crisis and found a way through it have been linked to fewer suicidal thoughts. Researchers call this the “Papageno effect,” after the character in Mozart’s The Magic Flute who is drawn back from despair.

This is the heart of this campaign. If the picture of suicide the public sees most is the act itself, we may be keeping it in front of the very people who are most vulnerable. A picture of purpose, recovery, and joy appears to work in the other direction. That is why we choose to focus on life.

This does not mean silence. If someone you know is struggling, ask them directly, listen, and help them connect with support. Research has found that asking about suicide does not plant the idea, and talking about it may even reduce suicidal thoughts. The point is that the public conversation we all absorb should be about hope and ways forward more than about the act.

Sources

• Phillips, D. P. (1974). The influence of suggestion on suicide. American Sociological Review.
• Niederkrotenthaler et al. (2010). Role of media reports in completed and prevented suicide: Werther v. Papageno effects. British Journal of Psychiatry, 197(3), 234–243.
• Niederkrotenthaler & Till. Suicide and the media: From Werther to Papageno effects, a selective literature review.
• Dazzi et al. (2014). Does asking about suicide and related behaviours induce suicidal ideation? Psychological Medicine.

After I created this initiative and this campaign, I realized that we needed to have a new way of thinking to address the crisis facing the world—the suicide crisis facing the world.

We need to try something new immediately. And that new thing we have to try is to focus on life encouragement rather than suicide prevention.

It is just that simple.

There are plenty of ideas to share, and my goal is to share all of the ideas that support the concept of motivation enhancement rather than suicide prevention.

I’d like to explain why I believe suicide should be considered unthinkable.

Every person is someone’s son or daughter, someone’s brother or sister, someone’s friend. When a life is lost to suicide, the people closest to that person carry the loss, and so do the people closest to them. The hurt can last a lifetime.

The problem I see is that there are two ways of thinking that can make suicide seem justified. I believe both are mistaken.

One belief is that your consciousness survives your physical death. That cannot be so easily confirmed or denied, and it shouldn’t be part of the proverbial equation.

Because if one is convinced that your consciousness survives your physical death, then someone can convince themselves that a loving God will accept them into paradise if they commit suicide.

That’s a wrong way of viewing things because it is not certain that your consciousness does survive your physical death.

On the other hand, absolutely putting your belief system in the idea that death is the absolute end of everything, and thus some kind of ultimate relief from suffering, is also an improper way of thinking.

Because, in a strange way, even if your consciousness does not survive your physical death, you do live on in the memories of those who love you.

Suicide, in that sense, is not the end of the pain in a true and meaningful way. The pain is passed on to the people left behind, and it can stay with them for the rest of their lives.

That is why this campaign is so important: to turn our attention away from suicide itself, toward life, and to rethink everything.

There are countless examples from other deep thinkers who can offer perspectives that can change your life. There are motivational speakers, and there are new ways of thinking that support motivation enhancement, which is the driving force of this campaign.

This campaign is intended to provide a collection of motivational talks, ideas, and perspectives about the meaning of life.

And it’s not just about new, fresh ideas. I’m also thinking of the book by Dale Carnegie called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.

I will post a link to Amazon where visitors can purchase this book, but participants in this campaign are encouraged to add their own words of motivation in the message section.

I anticipate that this campaign will grow as it receives more funding, as I pay for more advertising, and as I reach out to the public—both to people who are in crisis and to people who want to contribute their thoughts, ideas, and discoveries to this campaign.

Money donated to this campaign is used only for this campaign. It will pay for:

• Reaching out to NAMI for input on our educational material.
• Producing the educational material itself.
• Distributing it to NAMI organizations and mental health institutions.
• Advertising, so the campaign reaches the people who need it.

LikableLogic is committed to financial transparency. We will report how this campaign’s funds are spent through a public Candid profile and our annual IRS Form 990, which independent charity evaluators such as Charity Navigator use to rate nonprofits.