No Labels Needed

No labels needed can be applied in many ways to different things in life.  We are far too quick to use labels, and that hurts us and humanity.  We are too quick to apply labels of health issues on ourselves, and it holds us back.

I feel fortunate that a therapist cautioned me about applying labels to my life.  She asked me to rethink how I was trying to label my life.  She reasoned that if I applied a label, then I would end up living up to the label.  She was correct, and it was excellent advice.

How are you applying labels to your life or to others?

How High And Mighty We Are

Written By Don Shetterly

It's all those other people out there.  It's the - insert label here - people.  You know, those that don't think like we do!  To this, I can only say, how high and mighty we are!  Yes, I say this with disbelief.

Too many of us think that we have all the answers.  I'm using the collective "we" because I don't want to let anyone off the hook on this blog post.  If it makes anyone feel uncomfortable, I'm perfectly fine with that at this moment.

You see, we label others, and we look down our noses at them.  We see them with contempt.  They are not like us.  They don't believe what we do, think like we do, talk like we talk or live in the way we think they should.  They are mistaken and misled people.  They are wrong.  These people know not what they do!

We look at people with disdain and as if they are the reason for our problems.  We strike out at them trying to correct them into human beings that we can associate with in our day.

After all, we feel we must tell them where they went wrong and just how misguided they are.  We must do this if we want the world to continue on because only we know best.

Then we take to social media to point out just how stupid others are.  They know not what they do, and we are here to tweet and like and post just how wrong they are.  Of course, we are the right ones.  We know best.  We must retweet and share for it is the only way others will know how lost they are.

While this is the way things seem to operate these days in our society, we're really all in this boat together.  While we may think we have the answers and are right in what we say, we're really throwing mud in the face of others.  Our eyes are so darkened that we cannot even begin to see this.

We've lost the way of listening to one other and engaging with each other.  No more do we honor and respect one another, and no it isn't because everyone else does not do this.  We've lost it within ourselves.   Respect for ourselves has vanished.

No longer are we connected to our heart and our mind body.  Instead, we obliterate ourselves with our busy, nonstop, stressful lives.  We pour junk into our guts hoping acting as if it doesn't matter while playing a dangerous game of risk with health treatments that fail to treat the root causes.

We have added so much horror on our days by not dealing with life's issues, but by numbing ourselves every second of the day.  Feelings and emotions are running for cover.  Heart and mind connected thoughts are silent.

If we continue this way, we'll be in a much worse mess than we are now.  We cannot sustain this because it is taking its toll on the human body and the mind.  It is not up to someone else to solve this.  This has to begin with each one of us.  Only we can turn it around in our lives.

While we may think we are high and mighty, in many ways, we are not.  The more we believe that everyone else is the problem, the more we have lost our way.

Stop for a moment.  Look at what you are doing to yourself and the world-at-large.  Leave no stone of discovery unturned.  Look deep and hard within your own mind and body and heart to see what needs the sunshine of truth.

Give up trying to pull the speck out of your brother's eye when you have a log in your own eye.  It is the only way to help anyone is by helping ourselves first.  Otherwise, we are just high and mighty as we continue to destroy the world we live in.

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Blog Post And Images (c) 1/01/18 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required in writing before any part of this blog is reprinted, reworded, transmitted or used in any format. 
• Feel free to share the blog post LINK and a brief summary.  

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TO GMO label or NOT!

Wow, the US Senate finally did something to help protect us from the horrors of our food.  Yep, they went and passed a law about GMO labeling.  Hold on, did they actually pass a good law?  Well, it all depends upon who you want to ask.

If you ask the industry, they are all like smiles and happy and celebrating.  They got their way.  They can claim they did something good for consumers when its about as ridiculous as it gets.  Rather than making it easy to understand, they are making you scan a QR code to see if the product contains GMO ingredients.  Yep, I didn't misspeak.

I'm sure everyone wants to pick up every ingredient and scan the QR code to see what it has in it.  This makes so much sense - NOT!  Why not make it easy to see this.  Why not label it properly.  Oh, that's right, the food industry and their powerful lobbyists don't want you to know.  They love how they manipulate our US Senators - bought and paid for with your own grocery dollars.

I could be wrong of course and maybe they have better motives than it appears.  However, when you hide the ingredients, it doesn't make it a good thing.  Walk in any grocery store and pick up just about any product.  Then, tell me what is in it.  See, it isn't that easy is it?   They just bank on the customer being lazy and not looking at the ingredients anyway.

Have to be a food scientist...

You almost have to be a food scientist these days to even understand what's in the stuff you buy.  Far too many ingredients are not necessary, but hey - they dump them in anyway.  After all, if they can get you to eat a little more of their stuff, what's a little more sugar added in or high fructose corn syrup or many of the other questionable substances that some of us don't want to consume.

Now days, everything has far too much crap in it and we call it food.  Everything seems to be loaded with onion and garlic and for me, that's a difficult issue because those ingredients make me sick.  It doesn't matter to the food industry.  They obliterate the product and then add back spices like onion and garlic so no one knows the difference.

I still remember buying a can of peas and it actually had sugar added.  I wrote to the manufacturer questioning that and of course I got the bogus response that basically made no sense.  They didn't want to answer it because they know if they put sugar in it, people will like it more and buy more.  It has nothing to do with the reasons they try to proclaim.

I personally don't want all the added sugar, high fructose corn syrup and chemical ingredients that they put into food.  More and more, we are making our own stuff and not purchasing these products in the store.  Too many are not healthy for you.

If you aren't reading the ingredients...

If you aren't reading all the ingredients that are in each product, don't even suggest to me that you're eating healthy.  You're buying into all that the food industry wants you to believe.  Take a look at cancer rates and obesity.  Take a look at the record levels of diabetes.  Do you honestly think we are eating healthy in our society?  I'll give you my answer!  No we are not eating healthy.

The food industry loves an uneducated people.  They have hoodwinked the entire country into getting us to think if we look for the "low fat" or "healthy" on the labels, that's all we need to do.  The blindness of the masses.

GMO isn't something our grandparents had to deal with.  GMO is something new that has been done and while I'm sure the legitimate claims could be proven, food was not meant to be adulterated and poisoned with a chemical structure that was far from how it was created.  When you play God with our food, you're sentencing all of us to a life full of disease and poor health.


However, one thing we've done to try and counteract some of this is we have our whole food smoothies every day.  We get the live enzymes and unadulterated vitamins and minerals.  We get the natural phytochemicals and the fiber.  Using the Blendtec blender, our smoothies give our body the ability to absorb these without causing destruction to the food through processing.

Its up to each one of us what we do with the food we consume and how we find health through nutrition or not.  Of course, when they hide the GMO ingredients, it is hard to sometimes know what is in the stuff you eat.  The food industry has tapped into their evil side once again on the GMO labeling, but its hard to expect anything else since they are bought and paid for through their lobbyists and co-conspirators, the US politicians.


It is important to note that at the time I'm writing this, the law has not been passed in the house.  I'm not sure that gives me any comfort that the house will do the right thing.  After all, politicians are just bought and paid for by lobbying dollars.  They can grandstand all they want about how much integrity they have, but lobbying dollars pulls the chair out from under them on the political stage.

Article source:   http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/07/08/485145450/senate-passes-a-gmo-labeling-bill-that-the-food-industry-likes

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Do Labels Hurt Or Help?

Many years ago when I was first recovering and beginning to come to terms with the child sexual abuse I experienced, I kept trying to find labels that applied to me.  In fact at the time, I could have used several labels.

Some of the labels that I could have put on myself included the following

• Conversion Disorder Survivor
• Depression
• Child Sexual Abuse
• Anxiety
• PTSD
• Trauma

There are probably many more that I don't recall or would have to really search for the proper label.  It is my understanding that labels for mental health and other conditions came out of the DSM or the Diagnostics And Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  In fact, Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk talks about this in his book, The Body Keeps The Score.

(click image)

During one point of my recovery from child sexual abuse, I was struggling with porn and adult bookstores and all the 900 numbers that were around in those days.  It got to the point that one month I got my phone bill and wondered how I was ever going to pay the $600 that I owed.  Keep in mind that this was many years ago and $600 was a heck of a lot of money back then (still is today).

In addition to that, I was seeking out the anonymous sex in adult book stores and almost got arrested a couple of times but luck was on my side.  Every weekend, I would exclaim I was not going to go to these places and I would keep exclaiming that up until the point when I walked into one of the booths.

I started to use labels... but she stopped me

As I finally got the nerve up to share this with my therapist, I started to use labels like sex addict and addicted to sex and other things that I thought described me and my behavior.  She stopped me dead in my tracks and urged me to not apply the labels.  Paraphrasing her, she said that if I used the labels, then there would be a much better chance that I would try to live up to the expectations of those labels.

At the time, it seemed confusing.  I didn't see the harm, but I trusted her.  Lo and behold, years later, I understood exactly what she meant.  Where we focus our mind, that is where the body follows.  If I focused on being the label, then I had to evolve a world that fit around that label.  It was a double-edged sword because on one hand it might have been able to help me, but on the other hand it would cut through me like knife in a brawl.

Labels can help...

Labels can help.  I'm not going to deny that because sometimes you need the starting point.  However, if you take the label and put it on as one of your most comfy shirts to wear, then you're entering the danger zone of needing to evolve a world based upon that label.

I'm not sure the DSM helped anyone with mental disorders, but it gave those that help people suffering from mental health issues a way to communicate.  It gave insurance companies a way to bill and classify the problems many face.  Is that helpful?  I'm not sure I am qualified to say.  I can see the pitfalls and dangers of the labels.  I can also see the necessity for this practice.

My final thought in labels hurting or helping you is that be careful with them.  In the early days of recovery and healing, labels can give you stilts to walk through some of the muck.  However, if you're not careful, the stilts begin to swell up from the moisture and soon they will not be lifting you above the muck.

Find ways that use the labels effectively, but not that they hold you back.  So much of this is unconscious and so sometimes it is hard to see that we are doing it.  Just be aware of it and look for ways that the labels become something that you needed, not what you have become.  All of us that have been wounded in life are much more than what was done to us.  Let us honor that part of ourselves.  Let us honor the part that survived and is now making it in life.

If you would like to read more about my own story, check this blog post out 

• Hope And Possibility Through Trauma (click to read)

What's your thoughts?

1. How do you use labels?
2. Do labels hurt or help you?

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Blog Post And Images (c) 2016 by Don Shetterly

• Permission required before any part of this blog post is reprinted, reworded or used in any form. 
• You are welcomed to share the LINK to this blog post.  

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Humanity Is More Than

That's it!  I'm tired of it.  I'm tried of the constant name calling from people regardless of the situation.  We don't discuss things, we just call names and see how sensational we can get in what we put on camera, write on a social media post and share with one another.

Does it surprise you just how messed up this country and world are?  Each of us is to blame because we all go to our corners, spouting our group think and avoiding what really matters in a day of the life we are living.  I don't care which side of the issue you're on, everyone does it!

When you share an article and claim that this person or that person has the right perspective on life in America, yet the article calls the "other side" names or puts labels on them, do you really think the author of that article has the answers?  Are you that caught up in the mass media group think of the day?


Everyone loves to have the answers and they love to share and post on Facebook or Twitter what they agree with.  However, no one wants to stop and just listen to another person about something other than the latest political headline of the day.  We are so caught up in the 10 second soundbite on TV, that we cannot even see the forest for the only tree standing in front of us.

Are Your Nuts Healthy?

Just wondering when the last time you bought some healthy sunflower seeds to munch on as a snack?  Were they healthy nuts, or did they have stuff added to them that you didn't realize?  If you're like I was, I bought some Planters Sunflower Kernels and didn't even pay attention to the ingredients.  After all, who would think they would add so much junk into a natural product.  It seemed like such a simple purchase!

I know, I know - I've said it a million times.  You've got to read the labels, but on something as innocent as sunflower seeds?  Really?  Unfortunately you do, because if you see what I'm looking at right now, you'll most likely be as shocked as I am.

To Check out "What's In Your Pantry" blog post, click this link.

Some of the ingredients in this Planters Dry Roasted Sunflower Kernels include the following ingredients.