As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted be a writer. But I was always aware – perhaps because my father gave up his career as a writer for the steady income of teaching – that it was not going to be easy.

I took several courses in writing in college and graduate school, but my degrees were in English Literature, in case the writing dream didn’t pan out. I wrote a bit the next year while I made a living as a bartender, and I wrote a bit more from 1975 to 1977 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa. I earned a meager living by teaching English at the University of Chad, but I wasn’t making a nickel from my writing.

I landed my first job as a professional writer for a business monthly called African Business & Trade. Why Leo Welt, the owner of the publishing company, hired me, I’ll never understand. I knew a few things about Africa. But I knew virtually nothing about business. I didn’t even understand the meaning of the word “trade.” (I’m not kidding!)

Despite what I imagined as lucid prose, my writing wasn’t wowing the subscribers to African Business & Trade. In fact, most of the responses we were getting from readers were criticisms of my ignorance and complaints about the naivety of my ideas. No kudos for my diction and style.

With Number One Son in the oven, I didn’t have the luxury to ignore these Philistines and go on honing my “craft.” I needed those weekly paychecks to pay the bills. So, I swallowed my pride and began to learn about… African business and trade!

I was accidentally drawn into an area of knowledge I never intended to study. And as I studied and learned, I discovered that writing about business and trade was a lot more interesting than I had imagined. I bent into it, and eventually became the writer I was being paid to be. Reader feedback turned positive. Renewal income went up. By the end of my second year, I had been promoted to Editor in Chief of all the company’s publications. I wrote essays on doing business in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China. I even wrote my first published book: Information Beijing.

That landed me a job with a much larger publishing company in Florida, with greater prospects for me and my family and continued opportunities for developing my knowledge of writing. Including writing advertising copy.

I became a junior partner a year later, and ran the business as it grew from revenues of barely $1 million to $135 million in seven years. I attempted retirement when I was 39 and returned to work as a consultant and partner in another publishing company. Their revenues grew from $8 million to $100 million in about 7 years, and then to $500 million, and eventually broke the billion-dollar ceiling.

I played many roles in my career. One I always enjoyed was teaching what I had learned about the art and science of direct response copywriting. I give interviews about it now and then on podcasts for entrepreneurs, marketers, and copywriters. Click here to watch one I did recently.

What I Believe: About Group Decision-Making

Making good decisions is very difficult. And making good group decisions is even more difficult. That’s because it requires thinking. It requires moving the mind against the grain of conventionality. It mandates rigorous and constant self-criticism. And the questioning of every thought that feels right and comfortable.

I believe that most people spend very little time thinking. Really thinking. Instead, they busy their brains with unexamined facts and the undigested opinions of others.

Quick test: If your thoughts adhere consistently to any doctrine, ideology, or philosophy, you are not thinking.

Huh?

I receive a regular stream of mail and email from readers. Too many to answer individually, but not too many to read. About 10% of them are funny. Ha-ha funny. Another 10% are funny. Peculiar funny. Like this one from BK, in response to Wednesday’s post about “spoiled brats”…

“Jordan Peterson is a jackass. I give my child everything – everything she wants – because I want her to have what I never did.”

As Professor Peterson would say, “Well, BK, good luck with that!”

 And this one from GG…

“Hey Mark… There’s a small misspelling at the end of your Feb. 14 piece on Understanding the Buyer Brain. You wrote: ‘Do you see what I’m saying here? This feels like an important insight to me. I’m not sure, though, if I’ve explained it well. Let me know if you GROK this.’”

 I wasn’t 100% sure of the spelling of “grok” when I typed it in, so I checked it out online to make sure I got it right. I guess GG didn’t.

And this one from SD (versions of which I get about once a week, particularly on social media)…

“I’ve been a big fan for a long time. I’m starting a business. I was thinking maybe you’d like to mentor me.”

When I first began receiving such invitations, I was so flattered I wrote longish replies, explaining that I had like three full-time jobs and so sorry… After I tired of that, I’d reply by saying maybe, but my fee for mentoring was a million dollars down plus 50% of the business. When someone actually accepted those terms, I gave up being snarky. Now I reply with a single smiley face and go dark afterwards.

How Not to Raise Spoiled Brats 

I believe children grow up to be what their parents want them to be.

When my children were young, I wanted them to be good at everything they did – school, sports, music lessons, etc. And they did a reasonable job of that. But when they became young adults, I wanted something very different for them. I wanted them to be independent (financially and emotionally) and kind.

I believe that, as parents, our first two obligations are to make our children respectful of adults and children their own age. By building on these good habits, we can then focus on helping them become both independent and also kind. Independent so they can succeed in life when we are not there for them. And kind because we want them to grow into adults we can both like and admire.

I believe, further, that we cannot help our children become independent and kind by indulging them in whatever they want. Nor can we help them by befriending them. A good parent is a parent, which means setting reasonable expectations and firm boundaries.

Jordan Peterson has much to say on this topic. Click here for one of his thoughts on the challenges of raising children – in this case, on the consequences of overprotecting them.

My Revolutionary Indulgence Diet

At my age, I shouldn’t worry about how I look. It’s futile and undignified. And yet, I do.

When I’m feeling fat, I tell myself that my weight doesn’t matter. So long as I am fit and healthy, I should be happy. But I don’t like feeling fat. I know that from how I clothe myself at the beach. Above 220, I wear a shirt. Always. From 210 to 220, I will reluctantly take it off and suck in my belly. Below 210, I want to disrobe.

After 20 years of trying and failing at the weight-loss game, I gave up.

But then, several weeks ago, I woke up with an idea.

I had been telling myself that I was too busy to diet. Too stressed to take on more stress. That had been my excuse for indulging in three bad habits that were almost certainly contributing to my struggle with weight: drinking alcohol, eating starch, and smoking cigars.

I didn’t feel the need to eliminate any of them entirely or permanently. But I knew it would be good to cut back. So, here’s what I decided to do: Rather than attempting to cut out or cut down on these three vices, I’d resist only one of them each day. And here’s the genius part: I would give myself permission to completely indulge in the other two.

On no-alcohol days, I can eat starches and smoke. On no-smoke days, I can eat starches and drink. On no-starch days, I can smoke and drink. On my no-alcohol days, for example, I not only give myself permission to eat pasta and smoke cigars, I allow myself to eat myself sick and smoke my tongue off.

In other words, I don’t think about what I can’t do. I relish what I can do.

I realize how mad this sounds. But it seems to be working. In three weeks, I’ve lost 10 pounds, which is the “right” amount of weight loss for someone my size. But what I’m happiest about is how easy this system is to follow. Since the day I started it, I haven’t cheated once. Because I’m focusing on the two bad habits I can indulge in, the giving-up part is easy.

I’ll keep you informed on how it’s going. In the meantime, don’t try this without consulting with your doctor. And perhaps your therapist.

What I Believe: About Wars

Proxy wars don’t work: Since the US military industrial complex was established after WWII, its lobbyists, in collusion with Congress, have kept America in nearly continuous wars (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) for 70 years. None of these, we know now, were about defending our borders, let alone defending our principles or anything else. They were proxy wars, which can be put into place without Congressional approval, and the accounting for them can be easily obscured. None of these wars made America any safer. None made her any stronger. All of them, however, were massively expensive – both in terms of dollars and lives.

Neither do ideological wars:  In 1964, President Johnson initiated another kind of war – the ideological war. His was the war against poverty. Since then, we’ve had the war against drugs, the war on terror, and, most recently, the war against COVID. Like military wars, these wars have been costly and ineffective.

Here’s something you don’t know about me. I once worked as a maid.

For several months in my late teens, I took a job working evenings for an employment agency. The job was cleaning offices. It was dull and tedious, but I secretly enjoyed it. Like Molly, the simple-minded protagonist of Nita Prose’s The Maid (see “Worth Reading,” below), I enjoyed restoring those human habitats to “perfection.”

And of the many duties of an office maid, the one I enjoyed the most was the one that I should have enjoyed the least: cleaning the bathrooms. I can give you two answers as to why that was.

First, because the pleasure I got from cleaning was dependent on the difference between the before and after. And bathrooms provide the greatest contrast.

Second, as the oldest boy in a family of eight children, my Saturday chore was to clean our one-and-a-half baths. I once complained about this degrading chore being mine and not my siblings. To which my mother replied, “But, Mark. There is no one that can clean a bathroom like you.”

Looking back at that now, I believe she was humoring me. But as a seven- or eight-year-old, I took it as a compliment. (I’ve always been a sucker for compliments.)

About 10 years ago, I had my first experience with depression. Not sadness. Not extreme sadness. But severe depression, the life-threatening kind.

That first experience was a nightmare that lasted for three days, but felt like three years. At every waking moment, I was suicidal. It was not triggered by anything I could identify. It was not about this or that cause. It was about severe mental pain.

About five or six years ago, I had my second experience. That one was just as intense, but lasted twice as long. It kept me in a bed in a hotel room for more than a week. It nearly killed me.

Before those two episodes, I thought I knew what depression was. I would have defined it as a persistent state of sadness. Feelings of gloominess. A lack of ambition. An attitude of “Why bother?” These were feelings I’d had many times before.

And because I had always been able to pull myself up from such doldrums, I thought of depression as a form of mental frailty – a tendency to self-nurture negative feelings, coming from a habit of thinking too much about oneself.

Now I know that there is a world of difference between that sort of  “depression” and what I now think of as “true” or “deep” or “severe” depression, the much rarer kind I experienced. The difference, in fact, is so great that I believe it is misleading and hurtful to call both of them by the same name.

 Feeling lousy and unmotivated… not wanting to get out of bed. If those are symptoms of depression, they are symptoms of what I would call “healthy” depression – i.e., the symptoms everyone experiences from time to time and pulls or pushes themselves out of them.

Severe depression – the kind I’m talking about here – is not just about feelings, but thoughts and functionality, too. I believe it is biologically based, not a mental weakness that the mental health industry has designated as a mental disorder to increase their revenues. Severe depression may be triggered by thoughts or memories or feelings, or it may have no cause. It may be simply an inexplicable change in brain chemistry, like having an extended bad hallucinogenic trip.

It’s not my intention to define it. For all I know, adequate distinctions and definitions already exist. For today, I want to talk about something I did as I slowly emerged from that second experience that was very helpful to me, to K, and to several others with whom I’ve shared it.

The 10 Stages of Mental Health and Happiness 

As I emerged from that second bout of severe depression, I began a journal, recording my recovery with an OCD attention to detail. I made entries into my journal about every three hours. I recorded not only what I was doing and eating, how I was sleeping, and how I “felt” at each three-hour interval, but also my thoughts, actions, and activities, and how well I was able to think and communicate and perform tasks.

Thus, my journal became a document I could use to understand what I was going through. It helped me understand, for one thing, that my thoughts, feelings, and functionality were always in a state of mild flux. There were ups and downs, even if they were subtle. This was an exciting discovery for me, because it meant that, however badly I was doing, there was chance of at least some relief. And when the pain is severe, even some relief is a great help.

To make note of those fluctuations, I began rating my thoughts, feelings, and functionality on a scale of 1 to 10. This helped me notice differences I might not have been able to notice before.

After some months of keeping my “brain health” journal, I shared it with K, who was justifiably worried and confused about what had happened to me.

Sharing it with her was a good move. It gave us a way to talk about the illness in a way we both understood. And since then, I’ve come out of the closet about my depression to an increasingly wider group of people. I have also shared my system with a psychiatrist and psychologist that were treating me. And they have used it to treat other patients of theirs.

What I like most about this system is that it solves a problem most of us have when speaking about depression: the impulse to describe the experience in terms of feelings. As in, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how bad does it feel?”

This tendency to focus too much on feelings was even true with the professionals I worked with at the time. Almost all of their questions were about either the severity of the feelings themselves or how they might have been triggered in my subconscious mind.

These conversations were – from the outset – unsatisfactory. I knew, instinctively, that I had to find a more objective way to talk about what I had experienced. Unless the conversation was more exacting, the solution – if there was one – would be impossible to find.

And that’s how my obsessive documentation saved me. In reviewing and cross-referencing the hundreds of pages I had written, I was able to see that my depression manifested itself in three specific ways. How I was feeling. How I was thinking. And how I was functioning, in terms of comprehension, communication, and performing tasks.

I also noted that these three aspects of my experience changed in lockstep with one another. When I was feeling very bad, I was also thinking unclearly and functioning poorly. When I was feeling good, I thought clearly and performed well. In retrospect, that seems obvious. But it turned out to be very helpful. It meant that I could create a rating system that could accurately and comprehensively “rank” my mental health.

What I came up with was a 10-point system, with the top and bottom levels imagined, since I had no experience of either. Level 10 was perfect euphoria – perfection of feeling, thought, and function. Level 1 was total pain – the unbearable pain just before suicide. In between were all the gradations that I was going to track.

As I began to track them, I began to notice some other interesting things. For example:

* I was rarely at the same exact level throughout an entire day. My rankings changed to some degree, even if nothing else changed. Sometimes I’d feel a little better. Sometimes I’d feel a little worse.

* If my circumstances changed or I changed something I was doing, my rankings could change more dramatically. It was possible, for example, to move from a 6.5 to a 7 in an hour, or from a 6 to an 8.5 in a day.

* The range of change varied depending on my starting level.  If I were in the lower levels (below 5), it was difficult to move up more than a single point in a day. However, if I started at a 6, I could get to an 8 or an 8.5.

Most importantly, perhaps, I discovered that the effectiveness of therapeutic options varied greatly depending on my level.

Meditation, for example, was helpful at Level 6 or above. As were ice baths, exercise, and a host of other popular antidepressant strategies. But at Level 5, these things had little to no effect, if I could even get myself to do them. Below Level 5, I simply couldn’t.

In analyzing my ability to function at various levels, I  noted all sorts of additional things. I found, for example, that I could read with comprehension at Level 5, but not at 4.

By including functionality in my rating system, I was able to make it into something that I could not only use to communicate clearly with others, but that others could use. I had created a language and a calculus about depression that was reliable, objective, and universal.

The 10 Levels 

The Bottom 3: Blackness, muteness, incomprehension, severely limited functionality 

 Level 1 (Triple Black) – This is the stage just before suicide. As I said, I have not experienced it, but I imagine it to be like this: You are in extreme pain. And terrified. The pain is so bad you feel you cannot live another moment. Death is not scary. It is welcome. And you have, by some stroke of luck, the ability to take it.

Level 2 (Double Black) – You are physically exhausted. Your body aches. You are in what seems like unbearable mental pain. But you bear it. You can barely move. And you cannot think. Instead of cognition, a blur of fearful thoughts run constantly through your mind. You cannot speak. Not even the shortest sentence. And when others speak to you, you cannot understand what they are saying. You want to slip into unconsciousness.

Level 3 (Black) – You are physically and mentally exhausted. You cannot think coherently. The thoughts you have are nonsensical and disturbing. You cannot speak except to express your basic needs. You want to be left alone, or, at best, in the company of someone that is mute but attends to your basic needs. You cannot read. You cannot write. You cannot watch TV. You find it difficult to look others in the eyes. You can do some limited mental activities, like playing solitaire. But you cannot play games that require thinking, such as chess, poker, or bridge. And you cannot do any form of exercise. Each minute feels like an hour of suffering. You long for unconsciousness.

Levels 4 and 5: Impaired comprehension and minimal functionality 

Level 4 (Dark Gray) – You are physically and mentally exhausted. You wake up feeling anxious and sad. You can get up from your bed to go to the bathroom and to eat, but you cannot leave the house. Any effort beyond that seems insurmountable. Your mind keeps gravitating towards dark thoughts and feelings. You can understand it when someone speaks to you, but you don’t care about what is being said. You can watch TV, but you cannot enjoy it. You can read, but you cannot keep track of what you are reading.

Level 5 (Gray) – You wake up feeling deeply sad and tired. You have the energy to get out of bed, to dress, and to go out into the world, but you don’t want to. You can speak and you can listen with comprehension, but you don’t care to speak and don’t care about anything that is said to you. You can watch TV and you can read, but without interest. You can push yourself to go outside, go to work, and even attend social events. But when you are in the presence of others, you don’t have the ability to engage in any meaningful way. Nor can you hide your depression. However hard you try to fake a normal mood, you fail. Others are constantly asking you what is wrong. You can work, but your output is minimal and mediocre, at best. You recognize that you feel considerably better than you did when you were at Level 4, but you are fearful that you may drop back down and become dysfunctional again.

Levels 6 and 7: Sad to Neutral

Level 6 (Light Gray) – You wake up with a minimum amount of energy. You feel sad. You feel anxious. You have no ambition. There is a faint disturbance in the background of your mind. But you are not afraid of what you have to do – your work, your exercise, and even your social obligations – because you are hopeful that you will soon start feeling better. And so, you head out into your day, doing what you normally do, and putting on a good face. A big difference between Level 5 and Level 6 (perhaps the defining difference) is that you push yourself to act “normal” and fool those around you into seeing you as normal. You can function normally, but not optimally.

Level 7 (Neutral) – You wake up feeling fine. Not super-charged, but with reasonable energy and ready to go. Your thinking is clear. Your judgement feels sound. You are confident, but not overconfident. And you can function at a good to very good level, regardless of what you are doing. You assume that you will feel this well all day, and you usually do. This is the level of most mentally healthy people most of the time. I think of it as the invisible level, because you are not conscious of your mood or your feelings when you are in the 7s. It’s just you.

Levels 8 and 9: Positive feelings, creative thoughts, and a high level of functionality 

Level 8 (Blue) – You wake up energized and eager to get on with the day. You are happy to work, and you work at a very productive level. Brilliant new ideas are popping into your head. Reading is rewarding. TV is entertaining. You are happy to exercise, and you exercise with vigor. You enjoy the company of others, and look forward to social obligations. You are willing – eager – to take on new responsibilities and you feel optimistic about your future. In the higher ranges of Level 8 (8.5 to 8.9), your enthusiasm and self-confidence may negatively affect your judgement.

Level 9 (Yellow Fire) – You feel great, physically and mentally. You think, literally, “It’s so good to be alive!” You want to do more of everything in your life – work, hobbies, sporting activities, social engagements, etc. You feel confident that you can succeed at everything and that good things will come to you. You have no worries or doubts. You are feeling so good that you maybe be insensitive to and even offensive to others. If you don’t check yourself, you will likely get yourself into trouble of some kind.

Level 10: Euphorically dysfunctional 

Level 10 (White Fire) – This, again, is a level I’m imagining, since I have never experienced it. You are on cloud nine. If there is a heaven, this is what it must feel like. Your state of well-being is so elevated that you do not, perhaps because you cannot, do anything but lie down and enjoy it.

When I first developed this system, it had 10 degrees and I was using just 10 degrees. But as time passed, that was too blunt a metric to represent changes I could detect during the course of the day. So, I doubled the marks by adding half points: 5.5, 6.5, and so on. Eventually, I felt like I could distinguish my levels more precisely than even that, so now I use a full decimal system. I can’t say that I can notice a difference between single decimal points, but I do feel that I can distinguish between, say, 6.8 and 7.0, or 7.8 and 8.0.

In discussing depression with professionals, reading about it, and from observation, I believe that mentally healthy people spend their days within a range of about 6.5 to 8.5.

Most people rarely drop below Level 6. For them, Level 6 feels like depression. But for someone who has experienced the 2s and 3s, it is – and feels – mentally healthy.

A notable difference between Level 5 and Level 6 is that, at 6, you can hide your feelings from others. You can fake it. At 5, you cannot. However hard you try, people will be asking you, “What’s wrong?”

Some mentally healthy people occasionally drop into the 5s. And the symptoms of Level 5 are such that one could be said to be clinically depressed at that stage. I’m not arguing with that. Except to say that most of the time, when mentally healthy people hit the 5s, they emerge from them quickly and without medication.

Levels 2,3 and 4 are very deep and very serious. I would consider them life-threatening – like one might consider some stages of cancer life-threatening. At these levels, none of the popular, self-initiated therapies work. At Level 4, you cannot do most of the recommended therapies for depression. It is only with Levels 5 and 6 that they can help. If you are below Level 4, the only thing that can help you is a change in your biochemistry, whether that happens through drugs or some spontaneous, natural quirk in your hormone system.

I’ll talk more about what I’ve discovered about therapies for depression another time. For the moment, I hope my rating system will be helpful for you or someone you know.

Interesting

8 Famous People That Battled Depression 

1. Isaac Newton
2. Franz Kafka
3. Vincent Van Gogh
4. Abraham Lincoln
5. Georgia O’Keeffe
6. Sigmund Freud
7. Ludwig Von Beethoven
8. Winston Churchill

So, You Haven’t Been to Rancho Santana Yet?

Here’s What You Are Missing…

I’ve spent most of my career in what I think of as “the idea business” – writing and publishing books, newsletters, and now blogs and podcasts on such far ranging subjects as investing, natural health, entrepreneurship, marketing, literature, and history.

But on the side, I’ve done other things, including all sorts of real estate projects. I’ve been a partner and/or investor in single-family houses, apartments, hotels and motels, housing developments in the US and abroad, warehouses, and other commercial properties.

But there is one project I take special pride in: Rancho Santana.

Rancho Santana began nearly 25 years ago. At that time, we were (still are) publishing a monthly newsletter called International Living (IL). It provided information and advice on living and retiring overseas, and had a substantial (1 million+) readership.

Every year, IL would publish a series of “Best” awards. There were several categories, including “Best Value.” And year after year, Nicaragua (of all places) was at or near the top of the list because of its natural beauty, friendly population, and dirt-cheap property values.

So, one day (for reasons I’ll explain some other time), the principals of the business impulsively decided that it would be a great idea to buy some property near a beach in Nicaragua and sell off lots to our subscribers.

Despite publishing IL for many years, we knew only a bit about developing property overseas, and even less about Nicaragua. But we were young and foolish and our ignorance wasn’t going to stop us. To make a long and sometimes insane story short, we plowed through the obstacles and somehow made it happen.

Today, Rancho Santana is an award-winning, five-star luxury resort and residential community tucked into nearly 3,000 acres of rolling hills touching down on five beautiful beaches. We have three excellent restaurants, an art gallery, a game room, a cigar room, and miles of hiking, bike riding, and horseback riding trails. There is also an amazing spa, a yoga platform overlooking the ocean, and much more.

Here are some of the recent awards we’ve won:

* The Best Family Hotel for 2021 – Kiwi Collection’s 2021 Hotel Awards

* Top Resort Hotels of the World 2021 –  Travel + Leisure’s 500

* Top 10 Resorts in Central America 2020 – Travel + Leisure

* Top 5 Resorts in Central America 2020 –  Condé Nast Traveler

* Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards 2019 – The World’s Best Hotels and Resorts for Families

If you’d like to consider a visit, check out Rancho Santana’s website here.