Do you allow yourself to be violated in any way – physically, emotionally, verbally, sexually – to avoid rejection?

Do you allow others’ anger or bullying to control you into doing what they want?

Do you do everything yourself, never asking others for help?

How often do you end up feeling unappreciated, unseen, not valued? How much of this is a reflection of how you treat yourself?

If your own feelings and needs are invisible to yourself, they will end up being invisible to others. It is not realistic to constantly put yourself aside and then expect others to value and respect you. Anytime you tolerate uncaring or disrespectful behavior in others to avoid conflict, you are training others to see you as invisible, to not care about your feelings and needs.

If you have been allowing yourself to be invisible for a long time, it is a real challenge to start to care about yourself. You need to be willing to go through a difficult period of feeling others’ anger and resentment. After all, you trained them for years to not have to care about you or see you, and now you are changing rules. They won’t like it, but they will eventually respect you for it. You will also discover in process of caring about yourself who really cares about you and who has just been using you. Those people who really care about you will eventually applaud your self-care, while those who were just using you will go away or be constantly angry with you for changing.

It takes great courage to shift from invisibility to being seen and valued. It takes great courage to be willing to lose others rather than continue to lose yourself. Yet, like with Ellen, your very life may depend upon it. Hopefully, you will not wait until you are ill or feel alone and cast aside by others to start to become visible to yourself.

It must start with yourself – with learning to tune into, acknowledge, value, and take loving action for yourself regarding your own feelings and needs. It means moving into personal responsibility for your own feelings and needs rather than taking care of everyone else in hopes they will eventually take care of you. If you are ever going to feel cared for and loved, it has to start with you caring about and being loving to yourself!

He coined term “lateral thinking” and set about developing clear, visual ways to enhance way we think. He uses image of a car. Just because you’re in a good, quality car does not mean you are a good driver. You must learn how to drive. Some people are better than others, but everyone can acquire a reasonable amount of skill. You must have desire to learn and spend time practicing. Once you become good at it, it’s easy and enjoyable.

De Bono believes that good thinkers aren’t born—they’re made. He says there are two dangerous fallacies: that if you’re intelligent, you don’t need to do anything about your thinking, and that if you have a more humble intelligence level, there’s nothing you can do about your thinking.

De Bono inspires us to develop a broad view. The broader your knowledge base, better your thinking. De Bono actually came up with phrase, “think outside box”--but don’t hold that against him! It remains a clear image and a permanent part of our language because it immediately conveys concept of stepping out of our regular patterns.

Do your own lateral thinking to see where it leads. When you find yourself stuck in your thoughts-of-the-day cycle, go wide. Jump track. Consciously take your thoughts in a new direction.

Decide on a certain cue—say, whenever you look in mirror and notice wrinkles or gray hair—and instead of your usual “I’m-getting-so-old” lament, picture yourself with white hair and crinkly eyes. Imagine things you’ll be doing when you’re old. Escape into a reverie of dreams you see coming true and loving friends and family surrounding you. Stop dreading process and focus on that brilliant 85-year-old who will be amazing and amusing everyone.

Your bones need lateral motion, and so does your brain. You can walk for miles and miles, but unless you add some sideways action, you’re grinding your hipbones in their sockets. Linear thought will get you where you think you want to go, but you will have missed out on tremendous opportunities for gaining perspective.

You’re going to keep on thinking until day you die. Why not be a bit intentional about it? Pick your cue, and engage in a full-on effort to replace a repetitive thought cycle with an interesting new twist.

Take your brain out to dance in this daring new direction. Flex and stretch it at every opportunity. Feel it becoming more limber, supple, and—why not?—sexy.

Cha-cha-cha, Grandma!