Some of you will remember the 1999 “Sunscreen Song” released by Baz Luhrmann, officially entitled “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”.

For those of you that don’t remember, Luhrmann was the director of the 1996 film adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes, Pete Postlethwaite, Harold Perrineau Jr (Michael from Lost), and an impressive supporting & cameo cast.

The lyrics for the song came from an essay entitled “Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young” by Mary Schmich, and published in June 1997 in Schmich’s Chicago Tribune column.  The music was taken from a track on Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet soundtrack, using Quindon Tarver’s version of “Everybody’s Free”.  Tarver also recorded a version of Prince’s “When Doves Cry”.

The Song

Here’s the song all the fuss is about.  It’s good to listen to the words, or better still watch the video, follow the pictures, then have a read over the lyrics below and properly digest them.

This song was the key factor to me first becoming interested and consciously aware of positive thinking and the benfits of a good mental approach.

Lyrics to the essay/song

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ‘99: Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they’ve faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you can imagine.

Don’t worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blind side you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t know.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else’s.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it or of what other other people think of it. It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.

Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And then you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. Respect your elders.

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.

Don’t mess too much with your hair or by the time you’re 40 it will look like 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.

Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more that it’s worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.

And here’s Mary Schmich’s Chicago Tribune column that started it all: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-schmich-sunscreen-column,0,4054576.column

Quite a powerful and profound item, and I feel it’s still as important today as it was in 1997.  What are your thoughts?

It’s inevitable that one day we will all experience the upset of being told that someone close to us is seriously ill and may not survive. It’s natural for when that time comes, we’ll completely change character for a period of time before settling back to our normal routine. Everything that we hold true as morals and principles and traits may well start to fall away from us as we question everything that we once held true. This is perfectly normal – you’ve just had a massive shock to your routine and systems. Whilst our mortality is an inevitable fact, we still don’t properly accept or understand it until someone close is affected.

Even if you’re prepared for it, the true implications probably won’t sink in until the day actually arrives. I know this is true with me. I’ve probably had one of the worst weeks of my life and I’m not saying that lightly. This week alone I attended a funeral on Tuesday, on Wednesday my grandad was diagnosed with having cancer, and there was another family funeral on Friday. I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s not the greatest week one could have!

Clearly I’m distrought at all of this news, and it’s a terrible time for all of the family and a massive energy drain. Despite all of this, I remain positive and as upbeat as possible through these hard times. I won’t lie; I’m extremely upset and frustrated – maybe even at times angry and bitter at nature – and want to ask why nature has dealt such a cruel blow when things were all going so smoothly… but by the same token I’m content in the knowledge that I’ve been given a kick to push for even more from myself and that the family will be brought together in unison. It’s a real push-pull of emotions and it can be incredibly difficult to manage and maintain positive focus.

So given the series of trauma and my natural reactions, how have I managed to keep going and gain some positives and write this article?

In a few short words: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques, and lots of faith and trust in my own capacity to deal with life’s challenges.

I’ve been using two key techniques that we use in Neuro-Linguistic Programming which are commonly used for conflict resolution and phobias. Surely enough, dealing with bereavement is connected with our fear of loss and change, whilst we are in conflict with our own feelings about how we should deal with the situation. I’m sure that if you’ve dealt with bereavement you will have rapidly changed your mood and been upbeat one minute, then feeling guilty and low the next.

This is a perfectly normal reaction and is absolutely fine. It can often be an ease on your emotions to adopt a few mental management techniques. For my own benefit, I’ve found that one of the most supportive techniques that you can apply is the technique:

Perceptual Positions to deal with serious illness and bereavement or the death of a loved one

1. Put yourself into your own perspective and play out what’s happening in the present. See, hear, and feel everything that’s happening. This is an emotionally intense time for you, so it may be difficult at first to truly connect. Experience what’s really happening around you, and how it makes you feel. Be aware of exactly how you’re feeling and how your body language, words, and emotions are affecting the current situation.
2. Now put yourself into the position of the person that you’re emotional or mourning for. Picture the scene from their perspective. How do they feel? How do your reactions affect them? What do you need to do to make their experience of the situation better? What are they telling you to do? If they were fit and healthy what would they be telling you to do?
3. Thirdly, put yourself in the position of a third person. Someone that you admire. Ideally an outsider with no direct emotional link to the situation. This could be someone in your personal life that you admire or respect, or it could be a famous person. Whoever it is, it should be someone that you respect and admire. See the current scene played out from their eyes. How do they interpret your actions? How would they do things differently? What would you need to change to please this person of respect? What would they be saying to you that would enforce a change inside of you?
4. Now sit back and evaluate what you have learned. From what you have learned, what would need to change to make this new behaviour possible? Would this new behaviour be of benefit to you and those around you? Would these changes make the situation better to deal with? Are there any negative implications of this new behaviour?
5. If you are not entirely happy with your new position, repeat the process and substitute the unfavourable experiences for new refined and improved ones. Keep repeating the process until you are happy that you have a formula that will be of benefit to you. Remember that your old behaviour did once serve you, however it is now time to let go and adopt this new approach which will make your experience more positive and will help those around you to benefit also.
6. Once you are comfortable with this change, go back into playing out the scene from your own perspective, but this time act it out with your new, better serving, manageable approach. How does this new approach feel? Is it right? Does it serve you better than your old behaviour? If so, try to repeat the process of seeing the new approach twice a day until it’s firmly embedded in your mind. Play it out so that no other eventuality is possible and you’re able to conduct yourself in this way for real. It will soon become as much a part of your reality as anything else and will in time feel natural and right.

Upon completing the process, you will have a greater capacity to take a little bit of the edge off the pain and intensity, or even detach from the intensity of the situation completely. Sure enough you will still feel some upset, however you’ll be much better equipped to deal with the situation and pull through it stronger and more resilient.

There is certainly honour in dealing with illness and bereavement in this way, and there can be no feelings of disrespect in your mind. I know it’s often hard to “act like normal” because it appears as though you’re not being respectful, but in truth we’re only ever mourning for our own loss. The most important thing is to stay strong and maintain a good support network whilst using the above technique to manage your emotions.

If you would like to try an alternative technique, I will soon publish another article outlining a technique which enables you to break from the intensity of the situation by interpreting the scene it as though you are watching it from the outside. It’s a technique used in NLP usually to cure fears and phobias, and I’ve found it to transfer perfectly into situations of loss and upset. You will effectively cut out a lot of the emotional attachment that doesn’t serve you productively. We’re all human, so you’ll still have emotional attachment, but this technique will help you to manage your emotions and get more positivity and quality time out of the unfortunate situation. I will share this technique with you in the coming days – for now I must support my family!

EDIT 7th July 2009: Since writing this article, my grandfather has sadly passed away. He died peacefully in his sleep. Thank you to everybody for your kind words of condolence.