3D: Daily Dose of Discernment: 2003-4

by Kevin FitzMaurice

Read Daily Dose of Discernment to Discover--How To Develop AwarenessHow To Increase Your Mental CapabilityHow To Exercise and Improve Your MindHow To Exercise and Improve Your ThinkingHow To Increase Insight through DiscernmentUp for a Challenge?If you like to think about a wide variety of ideas and issues, this book is for you.If you like to discover new perspectives and outlooks, this book is for you.If you like to have your thinking challenged, this book is for you.If you enjoy wit and a play on words, this book is for you.Read and Enjoy!Themes and TopicsThe themes and topics of quotations professional mental-health counseling, self-help, General Semantics, Eastern psychology, philosophy, and other topics often in no particular order.Various issues of interest to the author are also addressed, such coping, ego, identity, performance, psychological, scientific, skill, social, spiritual, talent, and various other issues related to human sensing, feeling, thinking, and behaving.The focus varies from year to year, month to month, and day to day.Read and Enjoy!Focused IssuesOccasionally, the author "gets on a kick" and sticks with a topic or issue for one or more days in a row.A specific focus might be on the nature of wisdom or how roles and professions get caught in ego games.Read and Enjoy!Daily QuotationsThe series was started at the request and suggestion of some of Mr. Fitzmaurice's counseling clients.This series of daily quotations began in June 2003 and has been ongoing since that time.Check the author's website for the latest kevinfitzmaurice.com.This first book of the quotations includes the partial first year (2003) and the first full year (2004).When a year of postings becomes a book, that year is removed from the website because the postings have been edited and modified.The quotations are typically a group of five (or sometimes six) consecutive statements on or about the same theme or topic.This repetition is considered conducive to learning and finding different insights and perspectives on the same issue, theme, or topic.Read and Enjoy!Change Means What?It is essential to understand the usage of the word "change" in this book.Change is considered an impossibility for psychological entities such as thoughts, feelings, and sensations.However, sometimes, the book recommends change or describes how to change.This is consistent because change can have the meaning of transforming into something else, which is wrong for psychological usage.And change can also have the meaning of switching to something else, which is right for psychological usage.You do not change your dog into a cat.You can change from having a dog to having a cat.You change your shirt by switching to a different shirt, not by mutating your current shirt into another shirt. Switch, not change.

335 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 30, 2012

About the author

Be it as a person's counselor or as a founding member of facilities for the homeless, Kevin Everett FitzMaurice, M.S., NCC, CCMHC, LPC, seeks to make others' lives better by helping others improve how they function. As a volunteer, he supports community services to improve others' living conditions. As a counselor, he "counsels" in the traditional sense: advising, directing, and nudging--or pushing--others into facing and resolving their issues.
Mr. FitzMaurice has a variety of formal and advanced training in counseling, which includes Addictions Counseling, Family Therapy, advanced Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), Transactional Analysis (TA), and over 1300 hours of diverse training for continuing education units (CEUs). To make the best use of that extensive training, he takes an integrative approach, grounding himself in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and using the other theories to build upon that one core theory, rather than focusing on multiple theories and mastering none of them.
After more than twenty years in counseling, Mr. FitzMaurice has worked four years in the substance abuse field, directed two community mental health programs, and spent fourteen years counseling in private practice. In that time, he has refined many principles for and methods of counseling. He now puts those principles and methods into book form to share them with a wider audience, so more people can benefit than he can reach in person. Currently, he has more than twenty books written, most of which are available worldwide as e-books from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Google, Kobo, and Apple.
The philosophical odyssey of Mr. FitzMaurice began in the late '60s. It has remained a mostly self-taught pursuit, with little formal training or education in philosophy. The odyssey started with Western philosophy and a study of pragmatism and atheism. For example, he read every work of Nietzsche that had been translated into English at that time. From there, he moved to the study of Zen, Buddhism, Hinduism, and a misguided experimentation with psychedelics to achieve states of superconsciousness. He continued into Eastern philosophy, pursuing Taoism and J. Krishnamurti. Next came a study of Christianity that started with seven readings of the Old Testament and nine readings of the New Testament from cover to cover, followed by a formal study of Western psychology. The ongoing influences for FitzMaurice's thinking continue to be Christianity, General Semantics, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and an Eastern combination of J. Krishnamurti, Taoism, and Zen.
Academic Credentials: Master of Science (M.S.) in guidance and counseling, with a specialization in agency counseling, from the University of Nebraska. Associate of applied science in human services - chemical dependency counseling (with honors), from Metropolitan Community College.
National Certifications: National Certified Counselor (NCC); Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor (CCMHC); Family Certification in REBT; Primary Certification in REBT; and Advanced Certification in REBT.
State Licensure: Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in Oregon; Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) in Iowa; Licensed Independent Mental Health Practitioner (LIMHP) in Nebraska.
Community Service: One of the original founders of the Francis House, Siena House, and Stephen Center homeless facilities still in operation in Nebraska. Supporter of the following charities: OxFam America, Amnesty International USA, Habitat for Humanity, and Green Peace.