Wisdom for the Weekend #1

I've decided to take the weekends off, but I don't want to leave my patients without something to get them through two whole days without me.

This weekend, I'd like to give everyone the tools to do a rational assessment of a relationship in their life. This is so we can get past all that emotional baggage that keeps us from having an accurate sense of just what a person means to us and will therefore enable us to either realize if we are under or over-valuating said relationship and allow us to act accordingly. So, get out a piece of paper and a pen and we'll do a little cost benefit analysis with the relationship of your choice.

The relationship I chose is the one I have with our family dog, Sadie Dog. To be honest, I have a love/hate/don't like/bothered by relationship with Sadie. A lot of times I am angry at the fact that I have to deal with the dog, which I feel doesn't make any real contribution to the family. So, I set up a Pros and Cons list of my relationship with Sadie to get a statistically accurate portrait of our relationship.

The instructions for setting up this chart are these. You must have an equal number of positive and negative items on the list. Any number you choose is fine. When your list is finished, rate the importance of each item from 1 to 5 for the positives and -1 to -5 for the negatives. Add up the numbers.

Below is my Cost Benefit Analysis of my relationship with Sadie Dog:


The outcome of this was honestly a total surprise to me. A assumed that the cons column would lose by at least fifteen points and would give me the impetus to git rid of the dog while the family was at the store. I guess Sadie is a lot more cost effective than I thought. I guess it's the kind of thing where once you come to the conclusion that something is bad, you can get locked into that frame of mind, regardless of what the evidence really is.

You have a good weekend, I'm'a go give my doggie a treat.

Jason Adair The Unlicensed Therapist