Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.

You're Gonna Have to Serve Somebody

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:13:00 +0000

YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO SERVE SOMEBODY

Dylan sang it and wrote it and in his way he tries to live it. His song, You’re Gonna Have to Serve Somebody, probably has roots that go as far back as the Bible.

You have to serve somebody, even if all you think you’re serving are your own appetites and needs. Even if you’re a bank robber, you’re serving somebody. And if you’re the Ben Affleck character in Town, who is a bank robber, you end up serving somebody other than yourself, anyway, if you’re lucky.

And why not?

What at first may seem like a command, a stricture you have to follow, like taking bitter medicine, probably distasteful at first, but ‘good’ for you in the long run, “You’ve got to serve somebody,” actually offers insightful advice, a brilliant piece of coaching that if implemented in the right spirit can open up the world and make you feel more alive, connected, present, valuable, successful, and yes, even happy.

We are connection-seeking beings, almost every one of us. Connections, solid, deep, and caring have been shown to help a man or woman lead a longer and happier life.

So why not serve and be connected?

Well, you might say, I do that already. I take care of my family. I love them. I guess I serve them and I’m grateful for it.

What about in your job?

What about in your parenting?

What about in your friendships?

What about in all your relationships?

What about when you’re at the checkout counter at Trader Joe’s?

Why not an attitude of service wherever you go and with whomever you’re with?

Of course, we have to be careful of being do-gooders. As Thoreau pointed out, do-gooders, those who consciously go out to do good, are often a pain in the butt. You have to be mindful of what you’re doing and why. But that needn’t stop you from exploring and opening up to a world beyond yourself, a world of other people, available to you when you let others in and consider how you might be of service to them.

Why not take to heart that, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody”?

Not as a doormat, not at the expense of your own needs, and happiness, but as a fulfillment of your purpose as a human being, and as a means to your own growth and happiness.

It seems, to be really happy, we need to be about more than just ourselves.

Me, Me, Me, turns out to be a rather small place to live. And it can get boring.

The more we serve, the bigger our world gets. The more connected we feel to those around us, the more alive we feel. This will be different for each of us. Some of us are more introverted than others, some of us love the grand stage, while others prefer the quiet grove.

No matter. We each have our world and our place to contribute and connect, our place of service. We can serve many who we do not even meet, at least not in person, by our writing, for example. Dylan, though he’s been on tour forever, is, I am told, a rather shy and almost reclusive man when not performing. An acquaintance once met him at a party in Malibu where he lives. Dylan barely spoke a word. And yet his words have served millions.

Dylan believes in music and in songs, the songs that carry the truth of times past and times present. The songs, and he knows more of them probably than any person alive, are his gospel, his sacred texts that tell him about life, love, loss, and the hope of salvation. That’s what he serves, that truth, and the part that he can play in keeping those songs and those timeless truths alive by recording, and performing year after year. He’s serving something larger, something outside himself, something beyond the songs. He must care about people, the people who may hear the songs and may learn from them, and find some truth in them and some comfort.

Bob Marley was the same. He sang his heart out for liberation, for equality, for a life of possibility and hope. During his last concert when he was dying of cancer and he sang, “No Woman, Don’t Cry,” he wasn’t just mouthing words, but living what he believed and what he stood for. Everyone in his band knew he was near the end and that he probably should not be on stage working so hard, but Bob Marley knew, like Bob Dylan knows, that you’ve got to serve somebody. And Marley did so happily, with all his soul, so he could die complete at the age of 36.

I’m in real estate, not a very sexy profession compared to being Bob Dylan or Bob Marley, but it’s the primary way I pay my bills. Up till very recently I compartmentalized it from much of my life and much of who I am. I loved the people. I often love the houses. But somehow I tainted the whole thing because I thought I was doing it for me, because I needed the money. Which was true, but only partly true. It was also true that I genuinely enjoyed the clients, even the difficult ones. I have a playwright’s heart and can love even challenging characters. Yet I was missing something. I was looking at the whole thing slightly in the wrong way.

I realized that I had been looking at my life in slightly the ‘wrong’ way for too long. I was coming from the position of ‘it’s about me’. I often still do, but I’m trying to get better at it.

You might say that’s very convenient, to look at your work as serving others, while it serves you as well. It even sounds a bit Machiavellian, where you make your deeds look like good ones, while the whole time you’re lining your own pockets.

Some people question whether we can truly be altruistic. They say that our good deeds benefit us and that’s the real reason we do them, not to help others, but to help ourselves.

Maybe that’s true, but I’m certain that the happiest people are those who are connected to others and truly do their best to help them. My ninety-year-old mom has a mailman like that. He serves all day long. For years he’s been bringing the mail up the stairs to my mother’s door. He brings her stamps when she needs them. He takes her packages to the post office, puts postage on them, and collects from her the next day. I think he’s the happiest mail person I’ve ever met. And it’s because he serves.

Or does he serve because he’s happy?

I think the service comes first and the happiness follows.

It’s a worthwhile experiment either way. Try serving others a bit more rather than focusing too much on yourself and see how it feels. You may find that “you’re gonna have to serve somebody”, or some thing to be genuinely happy. It could be beauty you serve. It could be the earth. It could be peace. These things connect to people sooner or later.

Try it out for yourself. See what it feels like. Open yourself up to the possibility of more and more service in your life. Think about what this means for a person in real estate, or a mail person, or a coach, or a nurse, or a teacher, or a police officer, or an electrician, or a mechanic.

In your interactions with others try holding an attitude of service.

“How can I help you?”

“What do you need?”

See what it feels like, and let us know.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 680-5572.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com 805/680-5572

What Are You Doing to Live Your Life as Best You Can?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 18:46:00 +0000

I’m in the real estate business, amongst other things, and though we are now at what I believe is the beginning of the end of the real estate meltdown, a lot of people are hurting. I look at foreclosures and notices of default on a daily basis. I see the names of people I know who are behind on their mortgage payments. I see their houses about to be auctioned on the courthouse steps, contractors, realtors, business owners, and others.

I’m impressed with how people press on, with how they deal with their losses, with how they are trying to reinvent themselves. One guy I know, a real salt of the earth kind of guy, made most of his income from setting tile. That got tough, so he opened a deli. That was pretty tough, so he took some classes, hired the right crew, bought a back-hoe and now along with tile he’s doing driveways, walkways, and walls, and he’s getting by.

But it’s not easy.

Another contractor I know is having challenges with his blood pressure. And there has to be many more like him

Though things are getting better, these are not the best of times for a lot of people. If you look at the news and hear what people in Egypt and Tunisia and elsewhere have had to put up with because of corrupt, unfair, and unworkable political and economic situations, you see that your situation is not that bad in comparison.

Yet it’s tough.

People have to cut themselves some slack during the hard times. I hear clients continually berating themselves for having taken out second loans on their homes, and how they wish they hadn’t done that and so forth. This from a guy who still has hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity in his house, and yet he often wants to chide himself for what he could have done, should have done, might have done.

I sometimes find myself in the same situation.

“What was I thinking when I did such and such with my money?” or something to that effect.

I’m fifty-three. Up till recently I never thought about a pension or retiring. I’ve always been an entrepreneur, mostly buying and selling real estate. I always thought I would be able to make all the money I needed in ways that were relatively easy and appealing to me. An electrician client of mine shared that he never had to go out to ask for work before, and that he was always able to pick and choose his jobs. He now finds it very difficult to go out there and ask for work.

Some friends of mine from chiropractic school shared how, “It really sucks. We got used to making more money each year. Our income went up and so did our lifestyle. That’s all changed, now.”

They live in Florida and own property in Michigan, two very hard-hit places.

You have your own stories and you have friends who have their stories, friends with no work, or who are going bankrupt, or have lost their home.

You have to give yourself some credit for hanging in their during the hard times, for holding on, for finding ways to live and get your bills paid, for breathing through months, if not years of unemployment. I know a skilled architect who is happy painting houses and putting in landscaping. The physical pleasure of the work is new to him, but you have to know his heart is longing to get back to the drafting table. But in some ways he’s better than he’s ever been. He’s meeting the challenge of the hard times, some days better than others, but he’s doing it. He, along with many others of us, is having his mettle tested as never before, and surviving, even thriving. And that’s a good feeling.

It’s not easy. I wish it were over, but as long as I can keep on keeping on, I grow and learn. And I like that. To me, that’s a lot of what life is about.

How do you keep the faith? How do you keep breathing? How do you recreate yourself? What are you doing to grow, learn, survive, and thrive?

A client of mine has gone back to school to become a Latin teacher. I’m serious. He loves language, and it seems in top-notch schools there’s a need for Latin teachers. Another client of mine who cut his teeth in the real estate business managing construction projects is retraining for health care management, where there is a need for his skills.

Not everybody is being affected by the downturn in the same way, but there are commonalities. A buddy of mine is doing work on the BP oil spill out in the gulf. He’s a hydrologist, a water specialist, and though his work has been steady throughout the downturn, he still has to deal with his house being worth significantly less than it was a few years. The same is true in all fields, whether you’re a doctor or a high-end attorney. About one in every four households owes more on their house than it’s worth.

I find myself stressed by what’s happening, but I also must confess I like it. I also like hard uphill climbs in the Sierras that make my lungs burn and my thighs ache. These trying times have forced me to reach further into myself. I haven’t had it this hard before, (I still have it way better than most.) and I’m finding the resources and the strength to do what I need to do. I take encouragement and support and inspiration from those around me who are finding ways to reinvent themselves and thrive.

I’m much more appreciative now. One gift I gave my son for Christmas, I didn’t even tell him about. I promised myself I would play chess with him often. And that’s what I’ve done. It wasn’t that it was free, but something about trying financial times made me think about what was really valuable and memorable to me when I was kid.

What I remember after my dad died is that my father’s best friend, my Compare` John Santoro, would sit with me for hours playing the Italian card game Briscola. He never ever let me win, but I didn’t mind because he was treating me like a man, and spending time with me, though I was only seven. In retrospect, he seems to have had the card-playing capacities of a saint. I don’t remember ever winning, but I’ll never forget the two of us playing together.

That’s something money could never buy. I remember that now when I play chess with my son, or sit with my family watching a movie. There was a time I could never fully relax and just sit there laughing at some silly movie with my family. I was too busy. I had things to do, things to learn, important things.

Now, I can’t really think of anything more important or enjoyable than sharing a few hours with Syd, Mateo, Lisa, and Iko. It’s as pleasant as pleasant gets. It’s what life is about, at least as far as I can tell.

I’m the type of guy who can remember, while watching Ironman 2 that we’re living our lives on a speck of moist dust called Earth, hurtling through incomprehensible expanses of space and time, and that my entire life will pass in a flash, and that no matter how widely I travel, I will always be stuck, at least physically, in a very, very tiny corner of this wild universe, but in this context nothing else really seems to make sense other than to do what Jesus and all the other great teachers taught me, which was to love and care for those around me, to be as gentle and as compassionate as I can be, to be tolerant, to learn the ways of my own heart and mind so that I might be free of prejudice, greed, unnecessary suffering, limiting beliefs, anger, fear, sadness, and that I live a life open to the beauty, the mystery, and the sacredness of life, even though my bills are piled high on my desk, and thousands are in the streets in Egypt and elsewhere struggling and yearning for the most basic of freedoms and the most inalienable of rights.

It’s tough, and beautiful. It’s the only life we have, at least for this leg of the journey. So look around. Take heart from those around you. Try to live well and wisely. Give what you have to give to those who could use your help, a smile, a kind word, a game of chess. Live now, while keeping an eye on the eternal.

          And if at all possible, be happy.
          Email me and let me know what's working for you.
          I can be reached at drjohnfluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572. Namaste

DO YOU TAKE RESPONSIBILITY OR REACT LIKE A BILLIARD BALL?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 18:12:00 +0000

It’s another beautiful morning in Santa Barbara. It rained yesterday, but it was wonderful in between the brief downpours. Though it’s January, the rains had an almost tropical quality about them. They came and went and came and went. They were fast and hard. Then it was sunny and windy.

Kind of like life can be some days. One hour you feel like it’s a great sunny day. You’re happy and things are going your way. Next minute psychological clouds gather, the mind darkens, and you’re not even sure what made your mood turn from sunny to cloudy.

Then, something else happens, that you may or may not really notice, and your mood changes again and you’re feeling happy and alive.

Not everyone goes through this everyday, but fluctuating moods are a challenge for many of us, though we may label the moods and deal with them in different ways. Not everybody gets noticeably depressed or unhappy when things don’t go right. Some of us get stressed, or angry, or we move faster, or we eat, surf the net, or distract ourselves in another way. Some of us go for a run, or call a friend, or meditate, rather than having a beer, or a smoke.

Some of us deal with emotions by trying not to have them. This only works to a point. Trying not to have emotions is a little like trying not to sweat or go to the bathroom. It’s not a wise plan for the long run. Heart attacks, ulcers, hemorrhoids—you name it—a whole slew of health problems are related to an ability to handle difficult emotions.

Not having emotions also makes it a little tough to be a satisfying partner, and being emotion-free, like a robot, is probably a good way to have seriously messed-up kids. You hear this when troubled kids say things like, “My dad’s body might have been there, but he was somewhere else.”

To show up as a human being means to show up emotions and all. And we really wouldn’t want it any other way. Psychopaths and sociopaths seem to lack an ability to feel what is going on inside themselves and an inability to feel what is going on in others. And look how wonderfully their lives turn out.

To show up as a human being is to feel and be felt by those around us.

Our emotions, our feelings, have a great deal of intelligence in them. They help us do the right thing. They guide our intuition, which research is starting to show has a lot more going for it than we ever thought. Our emotions connect us and motivate us to do great things. Our emotions add color to life. They make us human.

They can also get us into trouble. That’s why we’re told we have to control our emotions and not let them control us. Emotions like fear make us run when we should stand. Anger makes us lash out when we should listen. Sadness makes us collapse when we need to rise.

This sounds like we are a house divided with good emotions versus bad emotions, with good cops versus bad cops. Emotional intelligence involves more than simply controlling our emotions.

Who’s being ‘emotional’ and who’s doing the controlling, anyway? Are there two people in there? Two personalities?

Can we bring about a bit of unity, which may lead to a bit of harmony and a bit more ease?

The more aware you can be of what’s going on inside you as you ‘react’ emotionally to things, the better. React is the operative word here. Often our anger, our fear, our sadness, is triggered by events, or more precisely, by events and the thoughts we have about those events. This often happens quickly and automatically.

“Of course, I’m angry. The kids aren’t ready.”

We say this as if we’ve stated a law of nature and that our anger necessarily follows our kids’ lateness as necessarily as the planets follow Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation.

So why does your wife get depressed rather than mad when the kids are late? Is there a different law of nature working in her case than in yours?

This example may seem trivial, but it’s not. If you look, you will see many places in your life where you are saying, “I feel this way because…” and then you fill in the blank.

One of the most powerful things you can do to increase your happiness, success, and sexual prowess (Do I still have your attention?) is to take more and more responsibility for your life, including your emotions.

This is a very important step. Your emotions are yours. They are not simply caused by outside events. You are not a billiard ball being hit by another billiard ball that has no choice but to ‘react’ in a certain way. You have many degrees of freedom. You can look at what is going on when something begins to upset you. You can begin to cultivate a space between the action and your reaction. You can, if you want to, if you’re willing to accept the power and the possibility and the responsibility.

Responsibility can be said to mean ‘the ability to respond in a number of different ways.’ If you only have one way of responding, like a struck billiard ball, then you can’t be held responsible.

Is that what you want? To be free of responsibility for your emotions and your actions, like a billiard ball? Or do you want to stand up and take the responsibility and the opportunity to live and act like a human being?

Being human is a wonderful opportunity, but it’s also hard work. Life is often not easy. Most of us do not come pre-programmed with everything we need to live a full and happy life, nor do outside circumstances always work to make our lives safe and fulfilling. Life can be ‘red in tooth and claw’. Many of us are hurt even before we crawl, and have to work hard to find our way.

One of the most powerful moves we can make is to take more and more responsibility for our lives, beginning with our emotions and our reactions. Once we take responsibility, we can begin to learn how we’re built, how we operate, how we react. We can learn to be more aware.

Like building up our bodies, we can build up our ability to feel and be with uncomfortable emotions without reacting. We can learn to see the thoughts and belief systems that keep us imprisoned and restrict our ability to handle challenges. We can challenge those patterns and beliefs and live less reactively.

But for all this to happen, we first have to accept responsibility for our lives. That’s the foundation.

And that’s where most of us give our best excuses.

First things first, take responsibility wherever and whenever you can. That way you give yourself power and dominion over more and more of your life.

Don’t misunderstand me. This is not contrary to a religious or spiritual position that says you need the help of a higher power to fully live your life. Maybe our very existence is only possible because of a sacred energy creating and sustaining all things. Maybe not.

            You get to choose which is true for you and how you will live.
            Or you can choose to live like a billiard ball.
            That's your choice as well.

            I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572

GOOD TALK THERAPY MAY BE BETTER FOR YOU THAN YOU THINK

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 17:50:00 +0000

Talk therapy gets a bad rap. Yackety-yak therapy. Woody Allen poking fun at therapy, therapists, and people like Woody Allen who go to therapy. Penis envy, castration anxiety, Freud and his red couch—they’re just too good not to make fun of.

In the early days, if you underwent psychoanalysis, the granddaddy of talking psychodynamic therapies, you could spend days each week of your adult life on your analyst’s couch talking about a few days from your childhood. How fun!

Now we have cognitive behavior therapy, rational emotive therapy and their cousins, streamlined therapies that get you to look at how and what you think, and change them for the better. There are piles of studies. Insurance companies love these therapies. No need to dwell on the past, no need to go into the stories, no need to look at the hidden motives for why you do certain things, like get divorced all the time, or feel depressed. No reason to dig up dirt. No reason to shed any tears or beat any pillows. No muss, no fuss, no mess.

We love it!

Cognitive therapy, ‘think’ therapy, is the way to go.

Except it’s not so simple.

We’ve learned a lot since Freud.

Some of the things we’ve learned are the techniques of cognitive behavior therapy, which are amazing.

But when it comes to human beings, to who we are, how we behave, what we feel, how we react, and what we believe—and how to change all that for the better—no single way of looking at things, or working with things, will cover all things human.

Turns out that yackety-yak therapy, when done well, is actually really good stuff, even, it seems, better than cognitive behavior therapy, the gold standard for many insurance companies and other data-driven types.

While cognitive behavior therapy has been getting all the favorable press, the data has been quietly piling up in favor of the new and improved versions of talk therapy.

We human beings are a complicated and tricky lot, which is a great thing and makes for great literature and movies, and the luscious stories of the foolish escapades of the rich and famous, but it also makes us genuinely tragic. We can suffer so profoundly, often because of our own actions, because we do not know ourselves, our deeper motives, the nature of our inner conflicts, our forgotten, but still powerful wounds.

We do at times seem like fallen angels, not angels gone to hell, but angels fallen from heaven trying hard to get back there, but we’re not sure how. It’s a tricky business, this mind/body of ours, how it works, how it sees the world, what it knows but can’t speak, and how it is divided against itself by design.

Talk therapy, more properly called psychodynamic therapy, is an attempt to open up the doors to deeper material that a person may be unable to access by himself.

The trained and attuned person listens for the material in the gaps, hears what is not being said, intimates hints of unexpressed emotion, and resonates with the client and begins to ‘feel’ some of what the client is feeling, though possibly not able to say.

It’s not easy work, especially not for the client. That’s why it often takes help to go where she has never gone before, in a way that is not traumatizing.

Let’s make up an example.

A man finds himself at a very difficult place in his life. This is the culmination of many miss-steps he has made over the years. He really seems to have almost intentionally dug himself into a hole, and now he has almost buried himself alive. His life is a shambles.

Why? Why would he do this to himself?

With help, he begins to share the details of his painful childhood. Not only does he share the details, he feels the pain of it, the sadness, the disappointment and the shame. He begins to see, feel and know that much of his self-destructive behavior took place as he was trying not to feel the pain he had been carrying with him all his life.

“Oh yeah, sure”, you might be saying. “I’ve heard this liberal crap before. But show me the meat. That’s why we’ve made fun of you talking types for years, because it doesn’t do any good. Oh, woe-is-me therapy. Enough, already, just get off your butt and do the right thing.”

If only it were that easy. In some sense, that’s what cognitive behavior therapy tries to do in a thoughtful, organized and sustained way: address the issues head-on by challenging the thoughts that lead to the destructive behaviors. Change the thinking and you change the feelings and the behaviors. That’s the theory anyway. Often it’s quite effective, but not always.

Research is now showing that psychodynamic therapy does have the ‘meat’ to show for its efforts. Like the big bad hunter, psychotherapy brings home the meat, the bacon, or the tofu—whichever you prefer.

In a recent research review by Dr. Jonathan Shedler, published in American Psychologist, the well-respected journal of the American Psychological Association, psychodynamic therapy was shown to be very effective in rigorous controlled studies, and its benefits continued to accrue even after the therapy was over.

Research has shown that there’s a lot that goes into making good therapy good. Psychodynamic therapy explores emotions and helps the client feel things she may have been avoiding. She is helped to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ and understand her avoidances. Patterns are looked at and felt. The past is carefully explored, where necessary, to a great degree, the stories, the images, the sounds, the feelings, and the judgments.

It’s in relationship that problems often arise, so exploring the client’s experiences in relationship is important.

The challenge is that we are complex, multi-storied, multifaceted beings, who are often ignorant of much of what is going on in us. Good talk therapists use talk to go beyond talk, to drop into the places where unspoken material lies. The job of the therapist, or good friend, or minister is to help the person ‘hear’ the inner story, to be able to go beyond the barriers of shame, fear, and discomfort, and see, hear, and feel what is going on at a deeper level.

Good talk therapy is not really ‘talk’ as we normally understand it. Just talking about things can be helpful, but only goes so far, because it usually stays close to where the person is comfortable. Good therapy involves going to the uncomfortable, but doing so in ways that are not traumatic.

This process is much more expanded than talking. It involves experiencing sensations, seeing images, feeling into the body, sharing the stories and words without editing or discounting them, and observing the meaning, judgments and commentary that arise from all this. Talking is used to share a report of the process. It’s part of the process, but often not the most important part.

            “Know thyself”, turns out to be good advice, as good as it has ever been. Though we’ve learned a good bit more, and gotten better at helping others to know themselves, knowing yourself is still hard work. But it’s good work, work worth doing, work that can change the course of a life, maybe your life, for the better.
            Namaste.

            I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

WHAT IS YOUR HIGHEST AMBITION?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 17:38:00 +0000

It is very difficult at times to be aware of how many ways we have for making ourselves miserable by our own thoughts and beliefs. So often we structure an argument that begins, “I am unhappy because of “blankety-blank.” And believe that our unhappiness is well founded, justified, almost unavoidable, as if it were a law of physics.

It may be true that times are tough, that someone is sick, that there is no work, that someone has left, that something is wrong. It may be true that we feel tired and stressed and at our wit’s end. It may be true that our gut is in knots and our head aches.

But maybe there’s a way for us to be with whatever is happening, accepting it deeply, that allows for a bit more breathing room and a little more happiness. It has something to do with really accepting ourselves as we are, including how we suffer, and how we make ourselves suffer, and how we view our perceived faults, and how harshly we can sometimes judge what we think we see. It has something to do with loving ourselves just as we are, the whole beautiful mess of a human being we are with our wounds, our shortcomings, our judgments, and our confusion, along with our glory and our magnificence. I think that’s what some people get from Jesus. Jesus opens the door for some people to love themselves and others just as they are. That’s the good part of religion: the love. The love for self and others opens the door to happiness.

“May I love myself just the way I am, suffering and all, imperfections and all.”

Our goal, our mission is to be happy from moment to moment. It’s about being happy, here and now. And to do that, you’ve got have a little love for yourself as well as for everyone else

A lot of people have problems with this. They think happiness is too shallow, that love is for sissies. Happiness is not a good enough goal or a deep enough value. It’s selfish, small. What about my responsibilities? My job? My family? What about injustice? What about war and global warming?

Is anybody going to solve any of these big problems anytime soon? Which is not to say you shouldn’t spend you life working on them. But how does being a miserable son-of-a-gun help you to solve any problems whether personal or global?

The Dalai Lama has a plate full of problems he’s working on, maybe for more than one lifetime if you believe in reincarnation, yet he says happiness is the goal of life. And he appears to be succeeding at it in spite of all the travails he and his people are facing.

So, along with peace, give happiness a chance.

What’s so great about being miserable, anyway? Most miserable people are a pain. Being miserable takes up so much time and energy that miserable people often don’t have anything left over for anyone or anything else. So, do all you can to give up your misery. It may be harsh to hear, but often we hold onto our misery for dear life. Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story, The Oblong Box, where a young man goes down to his death in a maelstrom because he will not let go of the coffin of his deceased wife. It may make for a dramatic story, and who doesn’t like a good story now and then, but we must do all we can to let go of our suffering. Addiction to our own suffering is one of the hardest addictions to break.

I am not discounting the depths of despair and the severity of depression that can afflict us. Some depression is literally gut wrenching, blinding, vomit-spewing, diarrhea-producing depression, a howlingly miserable disease of mind and body. I am not saying it is easy or our fault. I am grateful for the medications, and therapies, and procedures that can help those of us who suffer the most acutely. We must do all we can to live our lives with a sense of peace, gratitude, love and yes, happiness.

Happiness is the goal, right now. Which means we can’t be unhappy about being unhappy when we’re unhappy. Hmmm. When the alarms go off and we begin to feel like crap, we may not know whether we started off by thinking painful thoughts, or whether something started in our body that made us feel badly and then our thoughts aligned with the crappy feeling and became crappy too.

We may not know and it may not matter what came first, the body or the mind. All we know is that we feel like crap. And that’s the point. Stop and stay with that. You fell badly. At this moment, do not get lost in long drawn out cascades of psychic babble that you use to justify why you feel this way.

“Well, you see, it started before I was born. I was in my mother’s…”

Save that for your therapy sessions where you can actually work on it. For now, stay with the feeling of feeling badly. Keep breathing. Observe your body. Look for a way to return to happiness.

This is not trivial or shallow. It’s a lifelong work.

Your mom dies. Are you supposed to feel happy on the spot? No, not unless you hated the old girl for torturing you, and maybe not even then.

So what am I saying you do?

We need to explore what we mean by happiness. It’s not giddiness. It’s not being stoned. It’s not irresponsible.

By happiness we mean a deep sense of acceptance, peace, gratitude, being present to the present moment even when it’s the moment of our mom’s death. Even when tears are rolling down our cheeks and words are stuck in our throat. Happiness pays the bills, takes care of the children, does the work, learns the lessons, supports the relationship, cares about others, knows loss, looks to the future, prays to heaven, and buries the dead.

Happiness knows sadness and knows death is coming.

So, moment to moment, pay attention and enjoy your life. Live in the present. Look around. Let your eyes take in the world and feed you. Bless and be blest. If you start to feel disconnected, sad, lonely, fearful, tight, worried, or just plain shitty, stay focused on that, riveted as if your life depended on it, because it does—at least your happy life does. Don’t move away. Look for the shortest distance back to happiness, back to your centerline. Do not pass GO. Do not get sucked in by ‘problems’.

“Are you saying I have no problems?”

No, I am not saying that. I am saying that being unhappy is the problem we are talking about here and now. Fix that first, and fix it fast, if you can. If you can’t, then stay connected to your suffering. Accept it. Do what you need to do to get back the connection with your life and the present moment, even if the present moment is painful. Go to gratitude. Check in with your body. Deepen your breath. Slow down your pace. Look around and see the world. Look at your negative thinking. Pay attention to what it is saying to you and how it is making you feel. See the limiting irrational beliefs, the harsh conditioning, or the pain of early childhood issues.

Be really heroic. Get up, if you can, and dance. Stretch. Recommit to your work or your relationship. Make that phone call. Tell that girl that you love her, or that she scares you. Tell that friend that your feelings were hurt. Go to that beach and tell your story to the waves. Kneel and kiss the ground. Do what you have to do to re-establish the connection to life and the present. Get back to happy. And don’t knock it. Happy is not stupid.

If God is love, then maybe we can say that the goal of life is to know God, and to know God is to know love, love for ourselves as we are and for the world as it is, in all its mystery, beauty, and sadness.

Love isn’t sad. Love isn’t disconnected. Love is grateful, joyful, alive, and full of possibility. That’s what you want to get back to moment by moment. That’s the prize. Keep your eye on it. It will give you what you need to live your life and solve your problems, even the problems you don’t really have, and the ones you don’t ever really ‘solve.’

We close with a quote by the American monk Thomas Merton that celebrates the transformative power of acceptance and self-love, the foundation of real happiness, and one of our deepest connections to the Sacred.

"Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I
accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself."
— Thomas Merton

I can be reached at drjohnfluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

HAPPINESS: IT'S A TOUGH JOB BUT SOMEBODY'S GOT TO DO IT!

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:45:00 +0000

In today’s New York Times there’s an article about the resurgence of electro-convulsive shock therapy as a treatment for severe depression. Last week, also in the Times, a psychiatrist, Dr. Friedman, wrote an article about insight not being enough to make for a happy life. These two articles illustrate the challenge and opportunity we have for dealing with our problems in a myriad of ways other than the extremes presented in these two articles.

In one article we read that most therapists feel that insight is the cornerstone of healing psychological problems, and is the foundation of a happy life. Dr. Friedman does not agree. Though Dr. Friedman accepts that insight can be helpful, he points out that often insight is not enough, nor is it always necessary.

We know he’s right. Just because we know why we do something or react a certain way, does not mean we can change our behavior or our reactions, though it may make us feel better to know why we do certain things. With traumatic material, knowing what happened and being able to play it over again and again can actually make things worse.

Dr. Friedman shares that he feels good that he can use meds and some talk to alleviate suffering. Happiness, well, Dr. Friedman says, that’s another matter. Happiness, like self-esteem, you have to work for.

And I couldn’t agree with him more, but unlike Dr. Friedman, I feel that professionals can do a great deal to help clients live happier lives and improve their self-esteem.

What can we offer that might help? Dr. Friedman points out a very well researched finding that most forms of therapy seem to do about as good a job as any other form.

What distinguishes good therapy from not-so-good therapy is not the therapy, but the therapist. It ‘s the quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist, coach, teacher, minister, or social worker that makes the difference. As professionals, we can offer a trained ear, and more importantly, a trained heart and mind. Most of us don’t listen very well, not even to ourselves. One of the most powerful things we can do is to learn how to ‘listen’ to ourselves better. I’ll talk more about this later.

The other article offers that in difficult cases ECT can help with very severe depression. Though the treatment remains controversial, ECT can knock out a serious bout of depression and buy the client some time and breathing room while they try to address issues and make life changes and get on a track that does not once again lead to depression.

Clearly, ECT is for extreme cases, and no one is suggesting, otherwise, but we often take for granted the many things we can, and often must do to keep ourselves functional and happy throughout the ups and downs of life.

As Dr. Friedman said, for many of us, happiness takes work. So let’s not forget the basics.

If you want to be happy, start with your foundation: your body. Make sure you get enough exercise every day, especially if you’re prone to depression, anxiety, or moods.

Aerobic exercise may be a better antidepressant than anything you can buy. Make exercise part of your daily routine.

Watch what you put into your body and when. Do not run yourself down by not eating and then collapsing. Watch how much caffeine, sugar, and refined carbohydrates you eat. Notice what happens after meals, especially at midday.

Make sure you get enough sleep. Teenagers are prone to depression if they don’t sleep enough. It may be true for the rest of us.

Get outside, especially during the day when the sun is out. SAD, seasonal affective disorder, is real. Sunlight is the cure.

Meditate every day for at least 15 minutes. There is a lot of research out there that supports the claim that sitting quietly every day for fifteen to forty five minutes, simply letting your mind be quiet, for example, observing your breath, can have many beneficial effects on mind, body, outlook, and mood.

Learn to pay attention to your body, noticing how you breathe, how you hold tension, how you collapse in certain situations. Meditation or mindfulness practice will help you become more aware of how your body is reacting to your life.

Watch what you think and say to yourself. Watch your ‘stinking thinking’.

Watch what you say to yourself as you face challenges. If one thing goes wrong, is everything wrong? If the weather is bad, does that mean the world is against you? Do you take temporary setbacks as evidence that you and/or the world are fatally flawed? If so, there are books, workshops, and practices that can help you change what you say to yourself and increase your happiness and wellbeing. This is powerful stuff and you need to do what you can to make sure that your mental machinery is not grinding you into the ground.

There are daily practices that can help you. Practice gratitude. Take note of and give thanks for the good things in your life. See where the glass is full, not where it’s empty.

Take healthy action in small incremental steps that move you where you want to go.

Help others. It’s a great way to help yourself.

Get out of your head, specifically, your left hemisphere, listen to great music and dance--scary for many of you guys out there, I know.

Be mindful of your body. The philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore, I am.” Many of us fall into the trap of thinking, “I am my thinking.” That’s it. Period. We think thinking is all there is to us. We forget that we don’t simply have a body, but we are a body.

You are not separate from your body. If you were, why would magic mushrooms or prescription drugs radically alter your experience and how you feel? Why would sending electricity through your brain shake you out of depression? Why would exercise make you feel better?

Since you have and are this amazing being with body, mind, and possibly soul,

it makes perfect sense to use the zillions of cells and receptors and nerve endings and synapses to help you live your life.

But to do that you’ve got to slow down a bit and let yourself feel what your body is trying to tell you.

That’s not exactly right.

You’re not smart enough in this area.

Your body couldn’t tell you all that’s going on even if it wanted to. You wouldn’t get it all. Just imagine the overload you would experience if you had to consciously work every muscle and fire every nerve and control every gland necessary for you to successfully chew, swallow, and digest lunch. If you think about it, we’re morons in this area. And yet, when faced with emotional challenges, we deal with them primarily from the neck up, though emotions, by definition, involve motion within our bodies.

So, pay attention to your body when you’re going through difficult times. Notice your breathing, your areas of tightness and discomfort. Do not try to make them do anything, but let yourself feel and experience what is going on.

Silently give a name to what you are experiencing, such as sadness, anger, anxiety, joy, anticipation, or whatever. Really let yourself feel the emotion, the movements and changes and sensations in your body. Pay attention and notice the change. Don’t try to change anything unless you feel it is really sucking you in and bringing you down. If so, then bring in resources that feed you. Breath more deeply. Imagine places and people you know and love that inspire you, make you feel alive, grounded, and present. Let yourself get to a place where you feel a little better. This should show up as a change in breathing or muscle tone. You might yawn or take a deep breath or relax a bit, whatever it is take note of it.

Over time, as you do the work, like the star athlete you are, you will find that you get better and better at dealing with life’s challenges. So good, in fact, that you may find yourself feeling good, and feeling good paves the way for feeling happy.

It’s great that we have meds available to us when we need them, and that in extreme cases things like ECT are available if we need them, but happiness is not to be found there. Happiness, for many of us, requires work, attention, commitment, insight, practice, tools, and good friends. The Dalai Lama said happiness is the purpose of life. That’s because life is tough and being happy throughout the ups and downs is a profound and radical act that takes work and a transformed human being. Maybe being happy is the most important work we can do.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572

TUNISIA, MARTIN LUTHER KING AND MAIN STREET

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 17:50:00 +0000

My heart goes out to the family and friends of Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old fruit vendor who set himself on fire in Tunisia, and set off a series of events that led to the collapse of the government.

Bouazizi’s desperate act has changed the course of history in Tunisia, hopefully for the better, but from a personal point of view, what a tragedy, to reach such a low point in your life that you see no other way to proceed, other than to set yourself on fire and burn yourself to death.

Bouazizi was college educated, but unemployed, except for selling fruit. Because he had no license, the police stopped Mohamed Bouazizi from doing business and took, or stole, his fruit.

That was enough to push Mohamed Bouazizi over the edge, and the rest is history.

I don’t know the details of his situation, but Bouazizi was college educated. Somehow he got enough money together to buy the fruit for his business. It doesn’t sound like he was homeless. There are probably many people in his hometown and throughout Tunisia and the region who were and are much worse off than Mohamed Bouazizi was, but it was Mohamed Bouazizi who broke that day, and did so in a way that could not be ignored, and his countrymen responded.

Here in the U.S. things are nowhere as difficult as they are in Tunisia. Or are they?

I don’t think the actions of the Tucson shooter are a good comparison to those of Mohamed Bouazizi. There is no evidence that Mohamed Bouazizi was mentally ill, nor did he hurt anyone other than himself. One was an act of desperation and, possibly, protest. The other was an act of an unhinged mind.

I think many millions of unemployed or underemployed Americans can imagine how Mohamed Bouazizi must have felt, the sense of frustration, of beating oneself against a wall, of being underutilized—Bouazizi was college-educated, remember—of being mistreated, the feeling of life passing you by.

Please, I am not suggesting that anyone in the United States, or anywhere else, do anything that remotely approximates the horribly painful act of Mohamed Bouazizi. All I’m saying is that we can understand his frustration, and that many of us have felt similar, though hopefully less extreme, emotional pain. Many of us have known moments, even if only fleeting, where we’ve thought to ourselves, “I don’t know if I can do this anymore.”

We human beings are, as is embodied in the Constitution of the United States of America, by our deepest nature, free beings seeking a full expression of life, liberty, and happiness. That’s who we are. We are like water seeking cracks and channels into which we might pour our energies, our capacities, our knowledge, and our expertise, and it can be unbearably painful when we have no effective outlet for expressing our gifts and contributing towards a decent life for ourselves, our families, and our country.

In contradistinction to Mohamad Bouazizi, we have the example of protestors like Nelson Mandela, and our own Martin Luther King, Jr., men of extraordinary ability who could have, in their time, felt thwarted at every turn, even to the point, in Mandela’s case, of being imprisoned for years. Yet they continued to fight day after day, but they fought, not by fighting, but by keeping the vision, and never giving up.

Mandela gave up 27 years of his life to a prison cell, though he does not seem to see it this way, but never gave up his dream. Martin Luther King, Jr. shot dead at age 39, terribly young, had half his life taken away from him, though he probably would not have seen it that way either, but never gave up his dream of a more just and equitable America.

In each of these three cases life offered difficult challenges.

No matter who we are, though our challenges may seem smaller, we have our challenges, nonetheless.

We may be unemployed. We may be ill. We may be frustrated. We may be old. We may be alone, or feel that way. We may be discriminated against.

We know the pain of life, because we’re human, and there’s no way to avoid it.

Someday pain finds us.

How do we deal with it?

Mohamed Bouazizi knew full well how discomforted he felt. And so he acted.

Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. acted too, but not like Bouazizi did. Their protest, their effective actions towards radical change did not require them to kill themselves, nor anyone else, though both were ready to die, if need be.

And as we all know, one did die, though his dream lived on.

We all can’t be a Mandela or a King, nor would most of us want to be a Bouazizi.

The difference, to my mind, is that I view Bouazizi as a man who had come to his end. His act was like that of a man who jumps out the window of a burning building.

He saw no other way out, no way forwards.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think Bouazizi thought his action would make a difference.

He was a man who had given up.

But it was Bouazizi’s pain and frustration, along with that of his countrymen, that inspired the people of Tunisia to move forwards.

Bouazizi was the catalyst, but it remains, as it always does, to the living to make the dream of a more equitable society, or any other dream, in Tunisia or elsewhere, a reality.

Life is in the living.

Some of us will not be able to bear the pain of living for one reason or another. Suicide has been with us for a long time, and will probably be with us always.

But for the rest of us, what do we do with the pain of our lives, no matter where it comes from, whether from inside us or from outside us? Pain, like love; anger, like hope; fear, like courage; sadness, like joy—both the positive and the ‘negative’ emotions—can be fuel for living and for transformation, rather than for collapse and withdrawal.

So, my heart goes out to Mohamed Bouazizi, and to his family and friends, and to all human beings who suffer, wherever they are, whether here in the U.S. or in Tunisia, Pakistan, Africa, or down the street.

And my heart goes out to me, and to you, for though we may not be suffering today, like all human beings, we know suffering. We ask for the strength, the wisdom, the compassion, the insight and the guidance, from wherever it may come, to be able to take all that life offers us, the good and the bad, the joyous and the painful, and like Mandela and King, in our own way, live a life that makes things better for ourselves, our families, our country, and the world.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572

DO WE CREATE OURSELVES BY OUR CHOICES?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:44:00 +0000

At the beginning of her book of poems, Evidence, Mary Oliver quotes Kierkegaard who wrote, “We create ourselves by our choices.”

I find Oliver’s choice interesting. The quote is clear, inspiring—I get it. It sounds contemporary. It’s catchy. You could put it on a greeting card along with a picture of a great blue heron lifting off the silvery surface of an early morning pond. And the card would sell.

We create ourselves by our choices.

Who could argue with that? Yes, yes, I know, we don’t create the body we’re born into, or pick our parents, or our neighborhood, though some people think you do pick where, how, when, and to whom you are born.

The quote is powerful. It captures a great deal. It’s succinct. And yet, like all ideas, it misses so much. If it didn’t, why would Mary Oliver have to write the seventy-five pages of poems that make up Evidence?

Kierkegaard also wrote, "Wonder...is the beginning of all deeper understanding".

Can one make the choice to wonder? I wonder.

Wonder, it seems to me, has a sense of being blown away by something, being blown away by the night sky seen from a mountain-top, for instance, or by seeing the face of your child for the first time.

Wonder strikes us. We don’t strike wonder like we might strike gold. We stumble upon it unexpectedly. We can’t really prepare for it. Wonder catches us unawares. But possibly we can make choices that open the door to wonder. But we can only open the door. We can’t step over the threshold. There’s only so far we can go, because we’re too small, too limited, too time-bound. Wonder is our experience of something that’s bigger than we are.

A few lines of poetry may help us get the feel for what I’m trying to say, since good poetry can open the door for us.

Here are the last lines of the last poem in Mary Oliver’s Evidence:

How did it come to be

that I am no longer young

and the world

that keeps time

in its own way

has just been born?

I don’t have the answers

and anyway I have become suspicious

of such questions,

and as for hope,

that tender advisement,

even that

I’m going to leave behind.

I’m just going to put on

my jacket, my boots,

I’m just going to go out

to sleep

all this night

in some unnamed, flowered corner

of the pasture.

Why? Why go out to sleep all night in some unnamed, but flowered, corner of the pasture? Because that’s how she opens the window to which is beyond her. That’s how she let’s the night in, and the light, and the mystery of the world. She makes the choice to open the window, but what happens after that is not up to her. All she can do is make the choice to be receptive to what comes to find her.

Kierkegaard said, "Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts and I know of no thought so burdensome that one can not walk away from it…"

He ‘walks’ himself into a state of wellbeing. He walks, not thinks, not works, not argues, but walks. He walks, and like Oliver, he lets the world find him and soothe him.

The poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.”

We create ourselves by our choices. But our choices take place in a great mysterious world. Kierkegaard said we are here on sealed orders. There is only so much we can know about who we are, why we are, and where we are. To some degree, we make our choices in the dark. We are limited in what we can know and imagine. We are surrounded by things greater than we’ll ever be.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in The Man Watching

What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights with us is so great!
…
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.

So, go live your life. Make your choices consciously with strength and conviction, but don’t make the world smaller than it is. Make the choice to let in the mystery. Every now and then make the choice to walk away from what you think you know. Go sleep, as Mary Oliver does, in the pasture.

A few more lines from her, and I bid you adieu.

What, in the earth world,

is there not to be amazed by

and to be steadied by

and to cherish?

Oh, my dear heart,

my own dear heart,

full of hesitations,

questions, choice of directions,

Look at the world.

Behold the morning glory,

the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle.

Look at the grass.

Namaste. (The wonder in me bows to the wonder in you.)

I can be reached at http://www.drjohnluca.blogspot.com/ and 805/680-5572

A TRUE KEY TO HAPPINESS

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:43:00 +0000

The world has never been busier trying to be happy than it is right now. We buy. We work. We create. We diet. We exercise. We set goals. We work two jobs. We work three jobs. We get more education. Read more books. Attend more seminars. We leave our kids at daycare. We don’t eat together as a family because we’re so busy. We sit in our cars or in trains for hours as we go to and from work. We despoil the planet.

On and on it goes. We’re like mice on a spinning exercise wheel racing towards happiness.

That must be where we think we’re going, towards happiness, or else why would we do all this stuff? Why would we spend less time with our family and friends, less time in our homes hanging out, less time playing together, less time in the garden, less time chatting aimlessly, less time eating leisurely, and less time simply doing things for no other reason than that we simply enjoy doing them?

Why, in one form or another, do we work so hard?

Yes, you might say, but I enjoy my work. I enjoy it more than anything else.

If that’s true for you, that’s great. You can count yourself amongst the lucky ones, because for the last fifty years the trend has been for decreasing satisfaction with work.

As a matter of fact, studies show that there seems to be decreasing satisfaction with many things.

Throughout the 1950’s, Gallup Poll data showed that the British were happier than they are now. In 1957, for example, 52% of the respondents said they were ‘very happy’ as compared to 36% who say they are ‘very happy’ today.

Interestingly, during the same period of time, from the 1950’s to the present, the average person in Britain has experienced a 200% increase in wealth, but a decrease in happiness.

This kind of data has been collected for many countries around the world. R.D Putnam reports in Bowling Alone that in 1955 44% of Americans enjoyed their working hours more than anything else they did. In 1999, only 16% of Americans could say the same thing.

During the same period, from 1955 to 1999, the country had enjoyed great economic prosperity but it did not make people happier.

Japan has experienced a 500% increase in income over the last 40 years, but the level of happiness has remained unchanged, and may even be showing a slight dip, and that was before the current economic crisis.

For fifteen countries in Europe, the decade ending in 2000 showed either no increase in happiness or a slight decline, though Europe experienced great economic expansion during the decade.

More prosperity, more money, and more success, do not seem to make us happier; in fact, the opposite seems to be true.

Of course, we need enough money to buy food, clothes, shelter, necessities, health care, and the like, but that amount of money is surprisingly low in comparison to our aspirations, which can seemingly be unlimited. And those unlimited aspirations, those attempts to be all you can be, and to have all you can have, is making us less, rather than more happy.

We know this. We’ve heard the saying. Money can’t buy happiness. Or love. And yet we go right on doing just that as we increase our unhappiness and deplete the planet.

Why?

It’s a long, deep, and convoluted story, and not fully understood, but it has something to do with the way we understand things. It has to do with our brains, our wiring, with the fact that we sort of have two brains, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere, and that though both contribute to our view of the world, the views are different and they often clash.

Right now the left hemisphere, what we can call logic central, is in ascendancy. And the right hemisphere, the be-here-now, the go-with-the-flow hemisphere is getting a good whooping from the left hemisphere.

Put simply, we’re out of our right minds and in our left minds, and we’ve lost sight of the things that make us truly happy.

We’ve had our eyes on the prize, or prizes, but it’s been the wrong prize.

You can’t go at happiness directly. You have to go towards the things that you think will make you happy or allow happiness to arise. And the very act of going towards is part of the problem. Goal-directed activity is a very left-brained activity and it can interfere with happiness, because happiness is only here and now, in the moment, if it’s anywhere. As the pace of activity has heated up around the world happiness has gone down and depression has skyrocketed.

So if money and stuff and goal-directed activity don’t make us happy, what does?

Health? You’d think so, but research doesn’t support that.

There could be a number of things, but in his research Robert Putnam found that in the U.S. and around the world happiness is best predicted by, ‘the breadth and depth of one’s social connections.’

That’s it. Now we know where the real ‘prize’ is. It’s in the depth and breadth of our friendships and relationships. It’s in our connections with our family, our friends, and our community.

And how might you increase ‘the breadth and depth’ of your social connections, other than the obvious ways of spending more time and energy in these areas of your life?

Fortunately, that question has been studied by researchers, too.

(As you can see, the left hemisphere is a good thing to have because it helps you do this kind of research. The problem occurs when things get too out of balance, as they seem to be doing during this time in history.)

One key to deepening one’s ability to connect with others is a healthy acceptance of ourselves. And how do we achieve a healthy acceptance of ourselves? By being open and vulnerable. By being honest and present and willing to let go of control, predictability and safety. By being okay just as we are, which means standing still and accepting ourselves as we are, unfinished to-do lists and all.

Herein lies one of the keys to the mystery of why we often find ourselves wrongly going after things like money and possessions that leave us less happy. Money and possessions are about security and control. They’re left-brained activities. It’s how the left brain goes after happiness.

They’re the opposite, in many respects, of vulnerability and openness to whatever happens in the moment, the domain of the right hemisphere. Control, invulnerability, and protected-ness interfere with our ability to develop deep connections with others. They interfere with our ability to cultivate the soil of happiness.

We have to stand still long enough to connect. To stand still, we have to accept our selves and our lives just as they are. As we accept, we open, to ourselves and to those around us. As we open, our connection deepens and broadens. And a smile comes across our face, but we don’t know it, not yet, because happiness has found us, and we haven’t found happiness. We’re happy, so happy that we will only know about it later, when happiness has passed a bit and our left hemisphere can take a look at it and enjoy the afterglow.

So, the next time you notice yourself racing towards things you think will make you happy, stop and realize that you will never be happy till you slow down and connect, first with yourself, and then with whatever and whomever is around you. That connection, not more money or things or achievements, is the foundation of the happiness we seek.

Namaste.
I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com and 805/680-5572

THE POWER OF BEING VULNERABLE AND OPEN

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Sometimes I feel like a sheep in wolf’s clothing. What I mean by that is sometimes I may give the wrong impression to people, people like you who read my work and people who work with me personally, and it may not be totally by accident.

I write this column you’re reading and another like it. I work with individuals who want to improve their lives. Some are doing fine and want coaching to do better. Some are struggling and want to learn skills to help them flourish, and find joy and success in their lives. I lead and co-lead groups. I love the work. I’m good at it.

It’s easy for me to allow you to see that part because that part is strong. That part is societal accepted, encouraged and rewarded.

We’re a society of doers, achievers, and winners. We succeed.

Except of course, when we’re don’t. Which can be often.

Often there’s pain, discouragement, loneliness, fear, confusion, disappointment, and what we judge to be failure, but we want to come off as strong and unafraid, courageous, clear, and effective.

It’s often not easy to reveal oneself, to be honest and vulnerable, to show that side of us we want to hide. For some of us we may want to come as off as wolves, or lions (I’m a guy, remember.) and often we feel like sheep.

Others may come off as sheep, gentle and quiet, and hide a shadow of anger and upset.

Many of us are not good at being genuinely who we are. We hide, even from ourselves. Or at least we try. We feel that when we expose ourselves we open ourselves to pain, suffering and attack. We feel weak, vulnerable, and we don’t like it.

Maybe, at times, I’ve done that in these columns, hidden a bit, come off as knowing more than I do, as feeling more self-directed, contented, and successful than I often feel. The truth is I can struggle with uncertainty, fear, confusion, and moodiness with the best of them.

That’s what I meant by saying I sometimes feel like a sheep in wolf’s clothing. It’s easy for me to show the competent exterior, but it’s hard to allow others, even those close to me, to see my struggles.

I am sharing this because part of the secret to happiness and joy is a sense of belonging, a sense of being worthy of love and connection. And almost paradoxically, what weaves us into a living fabric of connection, worthiness, and belonging is a willingness to being open, to being vulnerable, to being able to stick one’s neck out emotionally, and share the truth about ourselves.

Putting up a front of invulnerability, our attempt to protect ourselves, leaves us feeling isolated, fearful, and vulnerable, the exact opposite of the sense of security and wellbeing we were looking for in the first place.

One of the foundations of a happy, well-lived life is an underlying sense that “I am enough”, but for many of us that’s not so easy to come by. Many of us suffer daily from bouts of “I am not enough” and the pain is enormous. And it’s vulnerability, a willingness to be seen, even by ourselves, just as we are, that opens the door to accepting ourselves as we are and feeling that we are enough.

That’s why I wanted to come clean a bit in this article. I wanted and needed to take some of the medicine I have just described. I was starting to feel like I had to come off in a certain way, that in some respects I had to hide. I was feeling like I needed to know more than I did. I was feeling a bit like I was not enough. And I realized that feeling was coming from not saying certain things, things that were true for me but made me feel vulnerable by saying them, things like struggling, at times, with uncertainty, fear and moodiness.

And you know what? I feel a lot better. And I hope you realize that I would not have taken up your time with an article that I thought was simply about me. I shared about my own experience because how else could I reasonably ask you to share about your’s?

So, take a look at where you are hiding, at where you are coming off as knowing the answers you don’t really know. Take the time to begin to feel the feelings you may be denying.

Don’t think you are the only one who may be hiding, who is putting up a front and paying a heavy price for it.

Dr. Brene` Brown states we are the most obese, most in debt, most medicated cohort in US history.

Why do you think that might be?

And in the political arena, why do you think we’re slinging around so much blame and so much vitriol?

The more we attempt to make uncertain things certain, the more we try to have dead answers to living questions, the more invulnerable we try to feel, the more uncomfortable and disconnected and strident we get.

I hope I’m not coming off as judgmental, or that I’m falling into the very trap I’m describing, talking as if I know more than I do. Check it out for yourself. Notice how you feel, notice how your relationships go as you attempt to hide the truth about yourself, as you refuse to admit that you are afraid, or uncertain, or angry, or sad. See how well it works and whether you feel better afterwards.

To live life fully, you have to take risks and the biggest risk we take is with ourselves, the risk of offering who we are, freckles, warts, and all to the world.

The poet e.e. cummings wrote:

To be nobody but yourself

in a world

which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else

means to fight the hardest battle

which any human being can fight

and never stop fighting.

So, go out and live your life, missteps, wrong turns and all. Be who you are.

And notice that often the well-intentioned person who is trying the hardest in some way to make you like everyone else is you.

Namaste.

I can be reached at 805-680-5572 or drjohnluca@gmail.com.

LIFE IS SHORT WE MUST MOVE VERY SLOWLY

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 19:25:00 +0000

What are we to make of this so-called ‘new’ year? It’s just a bookkeeping trick anyway, isn’t it? It just happens to be the first day of a new year, but really it is just another day.

That’s true enough. To the trees in the neighborhood, and the rocks resting in the park, it’s just another day.

Actually, it’s not. Trees and rocks don’t know squat about time and days and death and all of that. And that’s the point. We are time-bound beings, at least on the level where we live here on earth.

We may talk about the timeless, those of us inclined towards the spiritual, the mystical, the philosophical, but all of us live in time, and we know it. After a certain age, we’re all conscious that the clock is ticking, and though we may not like to think about it, we know what happens when the clock stops and time runs out.

That’s why to some degree or another we psychologically register the beginning of a new year around January 1^st or whatever day begins the calendar we adhere to.

I’ve seen a picture called the Hand of Death. Some people don’t like it. There’s an old woman, lovely, to my mind, with a gentle but old and somewhat skeletal hand reaching towards her, about to touch her left shoulder. It’s the hand of death. To those chased by time, worried that the game will end all too quickly, the drawing is a painful reminder of something we would rather not be reminded of: death is coming.

What a macabre subject to be writing about, you might be saying, especially at the beginning of a new year when we should be setting goals and making plans and diving into life with vision and gusto as we plunge into 2011. (That’s what my last blog, You Can Too Make Commitments That Work, was about.)

Yes, we set goals--I do anyway--and we set course for the new year, and we look back at what we’ve done and how our lives have gone. But I think we need to be careful and attentive.

What are our annual New Year’s resolutions, our commitments, our goals, our plans, in light of the unarguable truth of our death?

If you stay with this for a moment, though you may not like it at first, you may come upon something surprising.

I’m in my fifties, not old, I would like to think, but I am no longer at an age where I feel as if I will live forever. I know now for certain, like I did not when I was younger, that I will die.

And the unexpected thing about that is I am also more in touch with a sense of timelessness than ever before. The awareness of the fact that I will not live forever, that my time is limited, somehow opens me up to a greater appreciation of the present moment in such a way that I have a clearer sense of the timeless quality of life. This is tricky to explain, but I feel like someone who is visiting a place he truly loves and is on the last day of his vacation. He looks around and his eyes take in the place and he breathes in the place in a way that a native of that place might never do. The native has more time, so he can take the place for granted and maybe never look at it deeply, never see it clearly, unlike the man who must leave and knows he may never return.

An awareness of death, of the limited time we have, opens our eyes to the beauty, the depth, the poignancy and the fleeting quality of this place we call home and so often take for granted. Paradoxically, our awareness that our time is limited can slow us down enough so that we can be still long enough and quiet enough to open up to the timelessness of the present moment. We open up and hold, as Blake said, “the world in a grain of sand and see infinity in an hour.”

We live in two worlds. That’s why we have a brain with two separate hemispheres. We live in time. We live in our plans, our work, our goals, and our history.

But we also sense the timeless.

Maybe it’s when we’re out on a quiet walk looking up at the stars or into the eyes of a newborn child, or when we breath deeply into our own mortality that we open up to the timeless mystery of the moment, the ineffable sacredness of existence, and the shock of our being conscious in the world.

It’s the beginning of a new year, time to dream, and plan, and work, and build, and create. Be a force in the world. But also allow yourself to open to the timeless, to that which was here before you arrived and will be here after you are gone. See if you can live your life with the here and now, and with the timeless presence of ancient hills, with eyes that look at the world as if you were 10,000 years old and had never taken a step, but had still learned to watch the flowing river of life with a sense of peace and acceptance and gratitude.

You will never achieve all your goals. You will never do everything on the big to-do list. There will always be another article to write, another walk to take, another conversation to have, another problem to solve, another deal to make.

That’s our life in time. That’s us trying to live fully and deeply. But no matter how hard we try, we will never take it all in, at least not that way. There comes a time when all our getting and gathering comes to a stop.

So, live your life if you can with the awareness of the timeless. Let infinity find you. But to do so, you must have some time, some space, and some opening. You must have the eyes and the heart of the traveler who is in the town square for the last time, knowing that soon he leaves, never to come this way again.

In that last glance, it’s like the traveler looks right through the present moment to the timeless heart of the place, to the heart of all places. It touches him and opens him to the mystery of the ages. In that glance and in that moment he sees more than he ever has in his life, and he feels more alive and more present.

It’s not the place that does it. It’s his eyes that do it to the place. He sees through the place, through the present moment, to all places and all times. And for that moment he lives and is truly thankful for his life.

So, be a traveler in your own place. Have eyes that see deeply and a heart that responds accordingly.

The journey is not to see new places, but to have eyes that see anew.

Be well. Plan, Work. Create. But remember to see the present moment as deeply and as richly as you can, and to do that, you must let yourself be still so that the timeless can find you.

Namaste.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

YOU CAN TOO MAKE NEW YEAR'S COMMITMENTS THAT WORK

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:55:00 +0000

So, this is it, the end of 2010, and the beginning of 2011, but before we leap from one year into the next, let’s take a look back and see what our 2010 looks like. This is in preparation for 2011.

Take some time to look over your year and list some of the good things you made happen.

Oftentimes, we don’t do this and feel that we haven’t done much, or anything, but if you take the time to look, you will see that you did quite a bit.

Did you go to the gym more often than in the past? Did you improve your golf game or your ability to bike long distances? Did you deepen your relationship with someone? Did you weather the financial storm of 2010 with a better attitude than you might have in the past? Did you take on a new job? Learn a new skill? Improve your diet? Your attitude? Your relationships? Your living situation? Did you stretch in any way? Reach out to someone or something new? Help anyone, including yourself and your family? Go on an adventure with the family? Take care of business, somehow?

How did you deliver in 2010?

It’s important to not restrict yourself to only one area such as finances. Do not reduce yourself to homo economicus who tallies his or her life solely in terms of dollars and cents. Remember love, friendship, and mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. It may be helpful to review your year looking at the broad categories of career, finances, family, personal growth, leisure, adventure, legacy and charitable work.

It can be a little scary to write down what you’ve done, because your critic wants to get in there and tell you how little you’ve actually done. But that’s the very reason to do it: to stop the critic in its tracks.

Oftentimes, we think the way to get ourselves to get anything done is to criticize ourselves, to whip ourselves like unwilling horses; we forget that a spoon of sugar and a carrot are often a better way to get any horse to do the right thing.

So, give yourself the scary gift of listing some of what you’ve done this past year. Acknowledge yourself. (Which can also be scary.) Share it with a friend or family member. (Which can be even scarier.)

I would be honored if you would share what you've done with me via email. As encouragement, I will list a dozen or so things that I helped make happen in 2010 that I am happy about and grateful for.

Started a blog and posted over 50 articles.

Secured a weekly online column at the Independent, and a different column at the Noozhawk.

I asked Lisa to marry me.

Sold off unprofitable real estate and solidified our financial position.

Started a second men’s group.

Worked with clients privately and in small workshops to help them live the lives they want.

Wrote a rough draft of a self-help book.

Meditated every day.

Went on a number of adventures with the family, including taking my 90-year-old mom to New York, and my son backpacking in the Sierras.

Finished another year of Somatic Experiencing training.

Attended workshops at UCLA and elsewhere.

Co-led two men’s retreats.

Was a good dad to my four children, a good friend, and a good partner.

Now, it’s your turn. Make a list of a dozen things or so that you made happen in 2010 that you are happy about. Take in what you’ve done. Let yourself feel empowered by how you’ve lived this past year.

Stay positive. Do not go into “yeah, but” mode where your critic wants to shower you with the dung of how you ‘should’ve, could’ve, and would’ve’ done better. The power of this exercise is to silence the critic and take in and be grateful for all that you’ve been able to do this past year.

That's part one.

Now, for the second part.

Let yourself feel the energy and satisfaction of what you’ve done this past year. Let it empower you. Now envision what the next year might hold in store for you. What would you like to make happen?

Oscar Wilde wrote, “New Year’s resolutions go in one year and out the other.”

We all know that so many of our resolutions go by the wayside, but it is also true that we are much more likely to do something if we commit to doing so. I, for example, meditated haphazardly for over thirty years, some days doing it, some days not. Sometimes a month would pass and I wouldn’t meditate. A little more than two years ago, before a group of men, I committed to meditating every day. I’ve done so ever since.

Making a commitment, especially to a group, can be very empowering. I made a commitment last year to two local papers to write at least two articles per week, and I’ve done so every week since then.

What commitments do you want to make for the coming year? Do you want to exercise more? Do you want to reach out to others and deepen your relationships? Do you want to write, sing, dance, or play? Do you want to pray more? Apply for a new job? Learn a new skill? Practice gratitude and acceptance for things just as they are, including yourself?

Whatever it is, go for it.

Here are some of mine:

I commit to finishing my book this year and sending it out to publishers and agents.

I commit to finishing the classes for my fifth graduate degree.

I commit to hiking Evolution Basin next summer with Lisa.

I commit to deepening my relationship with my children by being there for them on a daily and weekly basis throughout the year, for example, by talking with them, texting them, visiting them, taking them to the library, playing games with them, and sharing meals with them.

I could go on, but that’s what I have the courage for right now.

What about you?

Go public with your commitments. I would appreciate it if you would send them to me. Think about your commitments carefully. You are committing to them. They are not just dreams, wishes, or nebulous goals. Be specific. Be realistic. Set time limits. Be thoughtful about your choices. You are saying you are going to do them.

If you are interested I am offering a workshop on Saturday, January 22^nd, 2011 for setting goals and making commitments for the year. We’ll explore what is at the root of your choices and expose any resistance you might be having. Research has shown that it takes about 10 weeks or so for people to get established in new habits or to change old ones, so I’m offering follow-up classes that will meet each week for ten weeks on Tuesday evenings from 5-6:30.

So, list some of what you’ve done this past year, then stick your neck out and make some commitments for the coming year. Enjoy. And give thanks. And Happy New Year to You and Yours!

Namaste.
I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572

HOW MANY FAILURES DOES IT TAKE TO BE A SUCCESS?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 22:37:00 +0000

You may have read or heard some of these before, but like good green vegetables, you probably can’t get too many of them in your mental diet. I find them refreshing and encouraging, inspiring and amusing. They help me breathe a sigh of relief, and they lighten my load. They free me up when I start wanting to feel sorry for myself. They help put life in perspective. They help prevent whining.

Henry Ford had five businesses that failed before he started a successful car business.

RH Macy had seven failed businesses before he opened Macy’s department store.

Soichiro Honda applied for a job as an engineer with Toyota, was rejected, and was unemployed for months before starting Honda Motor Company.

Akio Morita, founder of Sony, designed a rice cooker as his first product. It burned rice and was a total flop.

Colonel Sanders had his chicken recipe rejected hundreds of times before he opened Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of imagination.

Lucille Ball was considered very unpromising by her drama teachers and was advised to look for another line of work. Early in her career she was considered a B actress, at best.

Most of Emily Dickenson’s poems remained in her desk drawer during her lifetime.

Helen Keller, well, you know about her.

John Lennon was dyslexic (dyslexia: has a hard time with words. Ha!).

Einstein was considered slow as a child.

He didn’t speak till he was four.

He couldn’t get a job at any university at the time he wrote four of the most important physics papers ever written by anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Darwin’s father was very unimpressed with his young son’s intellectual abilities. (Way to go, dad!)

Isaac Newton failed at running the family farm before his uncle sent him to Cambridge.

In his day, Socrates was labeled an immoral corruptor of youth.

Edison failed at least a 1000, if not 10,000 times, designing a damned light bulb that would work.

The Wright Brothers suffered numerous failed attempts at making a plane that would fly, which only made their depression worse.

Mark Victor Hansen went bankrupt and wanted to kill himself before starting The Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books with Jack Canfield that sold over 100 million copies.

Lincoln suffered from depression and failed throughout his life, until he didn’t.

Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade. He went walking the black dog, his code words for depression, quite often.

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a television reporter, since she was unfit for t.v.

Harry Truman went bankrupt before becoming president.

Jerry Seinfeld froze during his first performance and was booed off stage.

Fred Astaire: “Can’t act, can’t sing, can dance a little,” comments from his first audition.

Hollywood studios initially rejected Charlie Chaplin as too nonsensical.

After his first film, executives told Harrison Ford he didn’t have what it takes to be a star.

Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime, to a friend, for not much money.

Beethoven’s teachers thought he was hopeless.

A crowd ran the composer Igor Stravinsky out of town after his debut performance.

Mozart was dismissed from his position as a court musician.

Jack London’s first story was rejected over 500 times.

During his lifetime, Claude Monet was mocked as an artist.

Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times, so he threw it in the trash.

Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC film school.

Charles Schultz was turned down for a job by Walt Disney. Schultz later created Peanuts.

27 Publishers turned down Dr. Seuss’s first book.

“The colossus of independence”, John Adams, second president of the United States, “who was learned beyond all but a few,” suffered from self-doubt.

Elvis Presley was told to go back to truck driving.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

And so on.

The lesson I walk away with from these examples is that most of us are not failing enough. We’re playing it safe. We’re picking up our toys and sulking off to our rooms before we’ve even given the game our best shot, and then our next, and our next, and our next until we break through to the place where we are gifting the world with what we have to offer.

Another word for a failure is a mistake. A mistake is a mis-take, a shot that didn’t take, a shot that didn’t quite make it into the basket. So take a shot, and then another, and then another. Learn something each time, like Edison did, like Lucille Ball did. Miss as many shots as it takes until you start sinking them, because that’s what it takes, even if you’re Michael Jordan, Lucille Ball, or Abraham Lincoln.

            So go out there and fall on your face. Get it over with. Do it again and again.
            If you really want to live, you’ve got to fail. If you really want to learn how to shot, you’ve got to go out there and miss a few shots—or a few thousand shots.
            There’s no other way.
            But there is a way.
            So get on the court and keep playing.
            And enjoy the game.

For coaching or SE sessions please contact me at 805/680-5572 or drjohnluca@gmail.com

JUST WANTED TO SAY 'THANKS'

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 17:46:00 +0000

It’s that time of the year. December 21^st, the shortest day of the year has come and gone. The New Year is approaching, and the season of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and Christmas is upon us. Firstly, I want to say thanks to everyone and everything for help and support, for gifts seen and unseen.

There are a bunch of people out there I need to thank, because, garbage doesn’t pile up in front of my house but gets carted away and somehow dealt with intelligently. I want to thank the men and women who make that miracle happen.

Last I checked, my house has clean running water. I want to thank whoever is responsible for that. My family and I greatly appreciate it.

Oh yeah, and the people at Trader Joe’s and Ralph’s, I’d like to thank them for having all this amazing stuff on hand, fresh, clean, friendly, so that my family, friends, and I could have wonderful things to eat during the holidays.

It was a pain at times to do all that Christmas shopping, and there wasn’t as much money as years passed, but, my gosh, what a complaint to be blessed with! I get to complain about having too much shopping to do for my family, friends, and loved ones. Please forgive me for complaining. I want to thank all those responsible for me having such a thing to complain about.

For a few days it rained like a son-of-a-gun, but someone—obviously a whole group of someones—had planned for this and so the torrents of water were not much problem. And with all the wind and rain and fallen tree branches, I barely noticed a flicker from the lights in my house. I want to thank the men and women who make that kind of thing happen so seamlessly.

And the gas, thanks for the gas that magically gets piped into my house so my vintage 1940’s stove can be fired up and we can cook all that great food I mentioned earlier.

Heat, can’t forget heat, the gas that flows to my house kept my house toasty warm during those wet, windy days. Thanks for the heat.

And in the midst of it I caught a cold. Poor me. But I had herbal tea, vitamin C, aspirin, soup, and a comfortable bed. I want to say thank you to all the people I will never meet who made it possible for me to have a pretty bad cold with such ease and comfort and without serious risk of getting pneumonia or dying. I always knew if things got really out of hand I could run down to the med center and get antibiotics if I needed them. I want to thank the local docs and nurses who I knew were out there if I needed them.

I want to thank all those people at all those disease control centers around the world who track outbreaks wherever they are and try to deal with them rapidly and intelligently so that we don’t once again have tens of millions of people dying from the flu like we did early last century in this country and around the world.

I want to thank the wine makers out in the valley, the farmers who grow and sell such wonderful food in the local farmers market, the masters of the baked good, the people who design all the window displays and put up the lights and decorate the shops and public places in my town and all the towns and cities around the world.

I want to thank those make things beautiful. I want to thank those who teach, those who raise children well, those who inform, those who care, those who work for justice, those who protect, those who study, those who learn new things, those who preserve old things worth preserving, those who amuse us, those who surprise us, those who transform us, those who remind us of the sacred, those who inspire us.

I want to thank the plumbers and the electricians and the handymen and handywomen, the makers and the builders, the maintainers, the cleaners, the sweepers, the sanitation guys and women. I want to thank the doctors and the lawyers, yes, the lawyers, the ones who keep the system straight even with all its kinks.

I want to thank those who pray. I want to thank those who sing. I want to thank those who dance, those who write, those who paint, those who film, those who photograph.

I want to thank them all.

I want to thank you, for everything, from the bottom of my heart, for sharing, for caring, for teaching, for appreciating, for being there, for the laughs, for the insights, for the friendship, for the help, for the mutual life we co-create here on this wonderful crazy planet.

May you find many things and many people to be thankful for. May you be thankful for yourself, for who you are, and for what you’ve been able to give. May you be your own greatest fan, appreciative of your gifts and your insights and your contributions, grateful for the love, kindness and service you have been able to show others.

            So, go out there, do your best. I know the Holiday Season can be hard in ways, but shine your light. Give as much thanks as you can and make it as wonderful and joyous a holiday as you can. Give us the gift of you. And again, thanks for everything.
            All the best, John

            I can be reached at drjohnfluca@gmail.com and 805/680-5572.

WHAT ARE FACEBOOK AND MARK ZUCKERBERG UP TO?

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 18:22:00 +0000

It didn’t come out so clearly in the movie, The Social Network, but it does come through strong and clear in the book, The Facebook Effect: Mark Zuckerberg is a man on a mission. His mission is not to make a zillion dollars. He’s already done that and has repeatedly refused to cash in his chips and walk away with enough money to make him the richest kid on the block.
In 2004, Zuckerberg was twenty, Facebook was 4 months old, and a financier offered to buy the company for $10 million.

In 2006, Zuckerberg pretty much walked away from a deal for Facebook worth close to $800 million. His sister remembers Mark Zuckerberg saying at that time, “This is a lot of money. This could be really life-changing for a lot of people who work for me. But we have so much more opportunity to change the world than this. I don’t think I’d be doing right by anyone to take this money.”

Facebook is long passed being valued in the millions. Based on prices for privately traded shares of its stock, Facebook could presently be worth more than $50 billion dollars. Zuckerberg, who is now twenty-six, owns about 24% of the company. His share could be worth more than $10 billion, but, to some degree, it seems Mark Zuckerberg could care less about the value of the company, though controlling the company is non-negotiable for him.

One of Facebook’s longest serving executives, Kevin Colleran, stated that the reason for Facebook’s success was, “Mark is not motivated by money.”

A vice president, Chris Cox said, “Mark would rather see our business fail in an attempt to do what is right and to do something great and meaningful, than be a big, lame company.”

Zuckerberg has stated repeatedly over the years, “It’s not about the money.”

And his actions support his claim. In 2006, when Viacom, parent of MTV, wanted to buy Facebook, the highest number bandied about was $2 billion.

“Why don’t you just sell to us?” a Viacom executive asked him. “You’d be very wealthy.”

“You just saw my apartment,” Zuckerberg replied. “I don’t really need any money.”

Zuckerberg’s apartment was a modest one-bedroom with a mattress on the floor and books scattered in piles throughout his room.

It really wasn’t about the money. It was about the vision.

Though the movie, The Social Network, and the book it was based on, cast a shadow on Mark Zuckerberg, it is absolutely clear that nobody but Zuckerberg made Facebook what it is today.

Like Apple has been inseparable from Steve Jobs, Facebook is inseparable from Mark Zuckerberg.

Of course he’s made mistakes along the way, but to think of Zuckerberg as anything less than one of the most driven, focused, forward-thinking visionaries of his generation is to underestimate one of the brightest young men alive. At twenty-six, he is at the helm of a company, a utility, as he likes to call it, that serves 500,000,000 people around the globe, and counting.

Zuckerberg is a man on a mission called Facebook. All along the way, when others wanted to sell out or make more money with Facebook advertising, author David Kirkpatrick notes, Zuckerberg, “steadfastly refused to compromise his vision.”

For Zuckerberg, it was always about building the service Facebook could provide. His vision is that Facebook will help people to communicate and will empower the individual. His vision is about connecting the entire world. Zuckerberg understood that the value of a network grows as more people are served by that network. The logical conclusion is that the most valuable network is one that can serve all the world’s people. That’s where Zuckerberg is going. His vision is the whole world. And before you laugh, remember, that in six years, at the ripe old age of 26, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have close to 10% of the world’s people using their service.

Zuckerberg has stated repeatedly, “We’re going to change the world.”

And, he says, “I think we can make the world a more open place.”

His goal is to make people comfortable with ‘radical transparency’, a dramatic shift away from what we were formerly comfortable with concerning issues of personal privacy. The idea is that technology is so ubiquitous and personal information so readily available that there is in effect no place to hide. The absence of hiding places is a good thing to Zuckerberg. He feels it leads to an increase in integrity. He may still be young and idealistic, but his vision is that people will become more honest and more transparent as they realize that they are no longer able to lead double or triple lives with secrets in unopened closets.

Again, he may be young and idealistic, but Zuckerberg and his gang are changing the world.

“The question I ask myself like almost every day is “Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing? …Unless I feel like I’m working on the most important problem that I can help with, then I’m not going to feel good about how I’m spending my time. And that’s what this company is.”

            That's the question Zuckerberg asks himself, "Am I doing the most important thing I could be doing?"
           Not a bad question to ask yourself now and again. Namaste.

             I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

A LIFE LESSON FROM PHYSICIST STEPHEN HAWKING

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:28:00 +0000

I just watched a TED video (see link below) of the physicist Stephen Hawking. Carl Sagan said, “In the spring of 1974…Stephen Hawking was a legend even then.”

Many of you know that Stephen Hawking is one of the world’s foremost living physicists, author of A Brief History of Time, and A Briefer History of Time. He was until recently the Lucasian Professor of Physics at Cambridge University, England, a position once held by Sir Isaac Newton.

Steven Hawking also has Lou Gehrig’s Disease, Amotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, which has left him confined to a wheelchair for many years. The pronounced muscular degeneration caused by the disease has left him barely able to move and unable to speak. He must now use a computer setup that tracks his eye movements and allows him to pick out words from a screen by blinking to compose his thoughts. When he is finished, a computerized voice speaks for him.

For the TED video, Dr Hawking had prepared a speech that was spoken through his computer. The computer does not amplify his voice. Steven Hawking can no longer speak at all. He can barely move.

When the talk was over, Chris Anderson, the host of TED, asked Dr. Hawking the following question.

“Dr. Hawking, based on your current understanding, do you think we are alone in the Milky Way Galaxy as a civilization of our intelligence or higher?”

“I

think

quite

likely

that

are

the

only

civilization

within

several

hundred

light years,

otherwise we would have heard radio waves. The alternative is that civilizations don’t last very long or destroy themselves.”

It took Steven Hawking, one of the most brilliant scientific minds on the planet, SEVEN MINUTES to give a thirty-five-word answer to a question he already knew the answer to.

That’s an average of five words per minute.

That’s one word every 12 seconds.

Take one minute, just one, to see what that feels like.

Look at your watch.

Take a full minute, 12 seconds per word, and say,

“I

alive.

Thank

you.”

That's what Steven Hawking, staggering intellect, world-reknowned theoretical physicist, and possibly the longest living survivor of amotrophic lateral sclerosis has to do

with

every

single

word

speaks

writes.

            By the way, a light year is about six trillion miles.
            That's 6,000,000,000,000 miles.
            A few hundred light years is a very long way to have to go to find someone in the galaxy who is as smart and as gifted as you are.
            It might be good to remember that now and then.
            And rave on.
            Stephen does.

           You can hear Stephen Hawking by going to:
            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjBIsp8mS-c

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572. Namaste.

IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE YOUR CHILDREN CHANGE YOURSELF

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:55:00 +0000

You go to a workshop, or you schedule an appointment for a therapist, or you do something about working with issues from your past, issues stemming from your childhood relationship with your mom and dad. If you do any of these things, most likely you are a woman. Men often have a harder time with this sort of thing than women do. If you’re what some consider a real guy, then you’re certain this psychological stuff is for sissies, is a total waste of time, or worse. If you are not inclined towards self-help, meditation, therapy and that sort of thing, then you may characterize those who are so inclined as navel-gazers wasting their time and energy.

“The past is past,” you may say.

Your thoughts on the situation may be captured by the bumper sticker that says, “We all come from dysfunctional families. Get over it.”

We all know people who make us want to pull our hair out because they never get over the past, never stop telling the same story, never stop playing the victim, and never stop blaming the same people for their problems no matter how much therapy they get and how many workshops they attend.

“Get over it,” is pretty good advice, if you can genuinely get over it; ‘it’ being the negative stuff from your childhood.

But we need to be careful before we discount those who are trying to work through their childhood relationship issues with their parents, just as we must be very careful before we assume that we have successfully dealt with the issues from our own childhood.

There is a great deal at stake here.

For years, researchers Mary Main and Eric Hesse at UC Berkeley have been studying how children behave in what is known in the research literature as the Strange Situation, a research setting where a child from 3-18 months of age is observed as their mother or primary caretaker leaves and then returns under varying conditions involving a stranger in the room.

From the observations, the researchers determine an attachment style for the child. The important finding is that the results from this observation of the child in the Strange Situation strongly predict how prone the child will later be to psychological difficulties.

To repeat, the findings from observing the child in the Strange Situation will strongly correlate with the presence or absence of psychological difficulties later in life.

If you are a parent, or soon to be a parent, or a teacher, or anyone interested in the well-being of children, then this research is very important for you and the children in your life.

You may be asking a very important question, “What determines how a baby will respond to the Strange Situation, and is there anything we as parents and teachers and concerned adults can do about it?”

The work of Mary Main and Erik Hesse is again important for answering this question. For over twenty years these researchers have been developing and refining the use of the Adult Attachment Interview, a series of questions that must be administered and coded, or scored, by a highly trained professional.

The AAI, the Adult Attachment Interview, is administered to an adult, not to a child, and then scored. The adult’s results on the AAI will have a very significant bearing on how the baby of that adult will perform in the Strange Situation, and the baby’s behavior during the Strange Situation has a very strong bearing on how the baby will fare later in life when faced with psychological challenges.

An adult’s results on the AAI have very important consequences for the mental wellbeing of his or her children.

“What,” you may be asking, “is the Adult Attachment Interview? What does the AAI ask? What is it trying to discover?”

The AAI is designed to ‘trick your unconscious’ and determine whether you have successfully resolved the challenges from your childhood relationship with your parents or primary caregivers.

Before you run off screaming “Ah, the unconscious! Psychobabble! Give me a break! I thought Freud and the unconscious were dead and buried,” consider that the AAI has been researched for over twenty years with hundreds of studies confirming its value as a predictor of how a child will behave under the conditions of the Strange Situation, and the Strange Situation predicts how a child will likely respond to psychological challenges later in life.

The AAI has been administered and scored for over 10,000 people. There are hundreds and hundreds of studies looking at the AAI and the Strange Situation. The results are in, and the evidence is very strong.

An adult who is administered the AAI and categorized as not having successfully worked through their childhood relationship with their parents will have a child who is more likely to need help with psychological issues later in life.

How many adults, on average, does the research find have not successfully resolved their childhood relationship to their parents?

About 20% --that’s one out of five of us.

I must make something clear. The AAI is a research instrument that must be administered by trained and experienced testers. It will not be easy for you to run out and get the AAI administered to you or your partner as it would be administered and coded in a research setting.

Going through the Adult Attachment Interview is not my point. My point is that one of the best things you can do for your child’s mental health is to make sure you have worked through your childhood issues.

The challenge is that even if you want to, you may not be the best judge of whether or not you have worked through your own issues. In research settings, parents are often observed to be unconscious of the behaviors that are negatively impacting their children.

If you are serious about seeing if you have material that you need to work on, you can look at how your child is behaving.

You can look at how you fare in relationships even before a child comes into your life.

You can go to workshops or to therapy, just like those people you may have once made fun of.

If you’re a guy, you can join a men’s group. (I am very familiar with this, so contact me if you need to know more.)

A good therapist should be able to help you find the areas where you have not dealt with unresolved issues from your childhood.

I know for some of you all this may sound like as much fun as having a tooth pulled, but consider the research findings.

If you want to have mentally healthy children, you need to make sure you have made peace with your own childhood.

If you have children and you want them to change, you may need to change first.

Research shows that with help and effort people change, and those changes benefit our children. Though you may have thought that working on stuff from your past was selfish, silly, useless, indulgent, not for real guys or strong women, and very uncool, it may be the best and most important gift you can give your children and yourself.
             Happy Holidays. And all the best.
             I can be reached at johnfluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572

JOHN LENNON REMEMBERED

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 18:55:00 +0000

If you were alive and old enough in December of 1980, you probably remember where you were when you heard the news.

“John Lennon was shot and killed tonight outside his home on the Upper West Side of New York City.”

At least it was a madman who did it, killed John Lennon, of all people.

When I was eleven, a few years after my father’s death, I’m a Loser, the Beatles hit written by John Lennon, became one of my most cherished songs.

Alone in our apartment, I would sing along at the top of my lungs as tears trickled down my cheek, “I’m a loser. And I lost someone who’s near to me…”

John Lennon was born October 9^th, 1940 while a World War II bombing raid was in progress.

His mother couldn’t handle raising him. He was raised by his aunt Mimi.

He was expelled from school for misbehaving when he was five years old.

I’m a Loser, Nowhere Man, and Help are biographical songs based on John Lennon’s personal experience.

He saw his father for the first time in 17 years in 1964.

“All art is pain expressing itself,” he once said.

He kept a light on while he slept because he didn’t like the dark.

Without glasses he was legally blind.

Supposedly he was dyslexic.

“Part of me suspects that I am a loser, and the other part thinks I am God Almighty.”

He may have been a petty thief, enjoying a bit of shoplifting now and again, when he was a teenager.

He ate very little after a reporter labeled him the ‘fat Beatle’.

He didn’t like his voice and often asked his producers to change how he sounded on recordings.

“My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.”

In 1970 John and Yoko checked into a hospital for wealthy addicts.

“Temperatures rising, fever is high, can’t see no future…can’t see no sky,” is a lyric from his song Cold Turkey.

John Lennon signed his autograph for Mark Chapman six hours before Chapman shot and killed him on December 8^th, 1980 at around 10:50 p.m.

“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”

John Lennon wrote Imagine, which is now the official song of the human rights organization Amnesty International.

Along with Paul McCartney, John Lennon is considered one of the most influential songwriters of the 20^th century.

“I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.”

The Beatles have sold an estimated 1,000,000,000 plus records worldwide. Sales continue to go strong.

“And we all shine on, like the moon, the stars, and the sun…”

Remember John. Do what you have to do, though it’s not always easy. And shine on.

Namaste.
I can be reached for coaching at drjohnfluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

THIS HOLIDAY SEASON GIVE US THE GIFT OF YOU

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:42:00 +0000

So it’s Christmas time, Hanukah time, the Holiday Season, a time of giving and receiving brightly wrapped gifts with ribbons and bows, all sorts of gifts from large to small, mundane gifts like screwdrivers and exotic gifts like $100 an ounce truffles, but what about giving the gift of yourself?

As we get older, for many of us, that seems harder and harder to do. Over time we seem to hold back more and more. We seem to close up and harden. Oftentimes, this process of closing up and fitting in begins when we’re in school, and continues throughout our work life where we think we need to keep ourselves in line, fit in and do our work so our employers, colleagues, customers and clients will be happy with us, and we’ll get paid. As the years go by we play it safer and safer all the time.

Not all of us, but most of us, hold back one or another of our gifts. We withhold our love, or our passion, or our enthusiasm, or our ideas, or our smile, or our laughter, or our creativity and artistry, our commitment, or our dreams.

How many of us consider ourselves artists by the time we’re fifty, and who wasn’t an artist in kindergarten? How much of ourselves we give up as the years go by if we’re not careful. How many of our gifts lie dormant within us waiting to be shared?

My idea, this Holiday Season, is to begin to share your gifts more and more throughout the year.

“What,” you may be asking, “is he talking about? What gifts?”

And that’s where you begin. You need to ask yourself some questions and consider their answers seriously.

What are my gifts? How do I share them? How do I hold them back?

Why? Am I afraid? Too tired? Too unemployed? Too serious?

What price have I paid for not sharing my gifts?

How can I share my gifts more fully?

Will I?

Before you can give your gifts to anyone else, you have to give them to yourself. You have to own the fact that you have gifts worth giving and that you want to give them.

And this can be hard.

“I have no gifts,” you might be saying, “and even if I did, why would I share them with you or anyone else? Bah, humbug.”

If you feel this way, and we all do to some extent, there’s probably a reason. Things didn’t go as you had planned. Something was taken from you. Someone laughed or tossed aside some part of you that you offered as a gift, so you closed up shop.

“That hurt. I’m not doing that again. Thank you, very much.”

With each of life’s cuts we scar a bit and close up more. In the process we lose sight of our gifts, of who we are and what we have to offer. We withhold our gifts and we suffer. We start to become more like Scrooge, and less like ourselves.

Dylan wrote, “He who is not busy being born is busy dying.”

One way we die is by withholding our gifts. Giving of ourselves keeps us young and alive. As we birth our next gift, we give birth to ourselves.

You may be saying this guy is smoking dope or something stronger, but check it out. Who’s alive and who’s dead? The givers or the horders? The generous souls or the misers?

Look at where you are dying. There’s probably a gift you are withholding, or feel unable to give.

That’s it, you might say. It’s not that I don’t want to give it, but I don’t have anyone to receive it. Or I don’t know how to give it. Or if I put it out there, I might not be recognized for it. Worse still, they might laugh and reject it. It might not be good enough.

No one said it was going to be easy, but what’s your alternative? Are you going to figure out a way to share your gifts, or are you going to withhold them? Are you going to be busy being born, or busy dying?

Often, it’s our dreams we withhold the most, because that’s where we can really hurt. Better forget about dreams, but our buried dreams can be seen in the lines on our faces, and in our tired bodies. No one sees them better than our children and others who love us, and often they carry much of the weight. And this weight can seem heavier during this Holiday Season than at any other time.

In the real world many dreams do not come true, at least not how you first dreamt them, but that doesn’t mean you need to have no dreams, no hope, and nothing new. You mature and learn to work with what you have. Your dreams of singing on Broadway turn into the reality of singing at a local senior citizen’s home. Your dreams of writing the great American novel become the blog you write. Your dreams of becoming the next Jacques Cousteau become your weekend walks on the beach exploring the tidepools with your kids, and volunteering at the Sea Center.

You don’t shrivel up, you rave on, where and how you can. You don’t just look for the work that is your passion; you bring your passion to your work wherever you work. You show up like an artist at the restaurant where you cook, and people can feel it and come back. You run plumbing lines that would make Michelangelo proud.

At work and at play, (There might not be a significant difference for the most successful amongst us.) the happiest and most successful people are those who show up and share their gifts most fully. This is true whether you’re a lawyer, plumber, builder, teacher, real estate agent, restauranteur, winemaker, artist, or stockbroker.

It’s harsh, but death is coming. Do you want it to come sooner or later?

You have to choose. You have to do the hard work of putting yourself fully into your life as best you can.

Remember, it’s gifts you are giving. It’s not about you. It’s about something or someone outside youself.

We all have gifts to give. We can smile. We can care. We can listen. We can encourage. We can love. We can create. We can help. We can praise. We can share. We can support. We can acknowledge. We can ask. We can teach. We can learn. We can give. We can receive. We can sing. We can lead. We can follow. We can be open. We can hold. We can envision. We can celebrate. We can create. We can dance. We can design. We can cook. We can offer excellent service. We can mean it. We can do our best. We can forgive. We can remember.

We really can do all these things and infinitely more.

So, it’s Christmas, it’s Hanukah, it’s the Festival of Lights, it’s the Holiday Season. Give what really matters. Come home to yourself. Celebrate the gifts you find there, and then share with the rest of us.

Happy Holidays.
I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com and 805/680-5572

HOW GOOD WAS I? COMPARING YOURSELF INTO A FUNK

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 19:30:00 +0000

It’s been a hard few days, I must confess. Not sure why. I think it’s the economy. People are struggling. I feel under-utilized. My circuits jammed on me. I had a meltdown. Found myself very frustrated. Negative. Physically upset with a headache that wouldn’t respond to meditation or medication.

Who wants to hear about a helping professional and life coach having a trying few days?

“I have enough of those, myself,” I can hear you saying, “I don’t need to hear about yours.”

I was worried. How could I write something that might help someone else when I can’t keep myself from feeling this way?

I felt like a bit of a sham.

I sometimes envy people who seem to glide through life, like the old James Bond, seemingly without a sensitive, self-reflective moment of doubt, worry, weakness, or a bit of despondency.

Do those people really exist? They might, and bully for them. Oh, I have my days, and even my weeks and months, when things are just going swimmingly and everything is great with the world, days when I could probably kick 007’s butt.

Then there are, what I call, the ‘drowning’ days, days when I have to work hard to keep from sinking. And though they’ve gotten fewer and further apart and less severe, I still have my drowning days. That’s how it is.

I know there are billions who have to struggle. Maybe everyone struggles, sometimes, and James Bond is a big fat liar. He leaves out the parts where he’s lonely, and worries about that arthritic shoulder and, well, sometimes, even with a beautiful woman, he just doesn’t seem, well, as solid down there as he once was.

Know what I mean?

Sure you do.

Anti-depressants, anxiety medication, joints, pints, and kegs are sold by the boatload each hour to help us get through the tough work of being a human being.

Maybe that’s what it’s all about: how you make it through the tough times, how you behave, how you show up, how you keep going.

Do you get your work done, the real work of living? Can you keep loving those around you, lending a helping hand and a listening heart? Can you forgive yourself when you fall so that you can get up stronger and more quickly?

The Prophet Mohammed said, “There will always be times tougher than these.”
The Buddha said suffering is part of the world.

So, it’s all about how you handle the tough times. How you learn from them. How you take responsibility and action. How you move on.

The tough times will always be with us.

But why do I compare myself to others, even James Bond, or to myself on better days?

It was the teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti who first showed me the damage we cause by comparing. I can hear his high distinctive voice with his British-Indian accent and I can see his raised finger as he admonished his listeners, “Never to compare.”

What would a mind be like if it were never to compare, but to simply be with itself just as it is from moment to moment?

There is a Buddhist practice of labeling our thoughts and feelings as they are happening. You experience a thought and you label it, “thinking,” for instance. You feel an emotion, and you label it, “fear”, and so on.

But that already has a separation between the part of you that is experiencing the emotion or thought, and the part that is labeling it.

It seems you have to compare your experience to something else to be able to know it is fear, or anger, or desire, or joy.

You have to compare it before you can label it.

But what if you could never compare?

Wow.

But what did I do just then? Did I compare my good-old comparing self to some amazing me who might someday never compare?

What a drag, because obviously you can’t use comparison as a way to get to a point in your life where you no longer compare, just like you can’t go north by going south.

Never to compare, and to go on doing your work and living your life from moment to moment. What would that be like?

But if I don’t compare, you might ask, how will I know how I’m doing?

Why does it matter? Why do you need to know how you are doing? Who will tell you? How will you keep score? What will it mean?

Of course you might use a scale to see how your weight is doing, and things like that, but you would not use anything to tell you how you were doing. That’s the kind of comparison we’re talking about, not whether this box of cereal is a better deal than that box. Never to compare your self with anyone and anything, but to simply be yourself from moment to moment.

What would that be like?

I don’t know, but I do know the pain of comparison. That I know. Comparison has often made me miserable.

There’s an old eastern teaching that says, “You suffer because you spend 99% of your time thinking about your self, but there isn’t one.”

I think comparison gives rise to the self. When you are not comparing, but just being and doing in the moment, it’s like you, your self, are not there. You forget about yourself and simply drop into life. When you’re really happy, you don’t know about it in the moment, because you’re so in the thick of your happiness. It’s only afterwards, when it’s over a little bit, that you can compare and notice how happy you were. You have to come out of your happiness a bit to even know that you’re happy.
It’s like a great orgasm. In the middle of it, you’re gone. That’s what we love about it. Great sex or lovemaking is one of the best ways to get out of your own head so that you’re not there for a while.

And then, of course, we return and say, “Wow, that was great. Can we do that again?” It's amazing how good it feels to have your doors blown off for awhile so that you're gone, even if only for a moment or two.

Check it out for yourself. Observe how comparing serves you and hurts you. Let me know what you think.

So, there it is. I wrote it. My commitment is two articles per week and this is article number two. That’s all I can tell you. You put one foot in front of the other, eyes open, mind quiet or mind in turmoil, you do what you can to keep walking the walk. You walk through fear, confusion, doubt, worry, moodiness, and even depression. You walk like you’re on some great mission like Frodo, in Lord of the Rings, because you are. You are walking the path of your one and only life—at least till you get to heaven or you reincarnate.

Namaste.
I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

SAYING NO, SAYING YES, AND CHANGING YOUR LIFE

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 18:46:00 +0000

For some, Monday morning is a hard day. For others, it’s Tuesday, or Thursday, or maybe Sunday. Any morning can be especially hard if you’re unemployed or under-employed. It can be especially hard if you’re unemployed and over fifty. I’ve read that many unemployed men over 55 are not expected to ever work again, even though they want to and need to.

What’s up with that?

If you’re expected to live to be 80 or so, and you’re now 55 and unemployed, that’s 25 years of being an unemployed monumental pain to yourself and everyone around you.

Of course, we may find that unemployed men and women just don’t live that long, and that will solve the problem.

Well, my response to that is, “To hell with that.”

Now, I know that strikes a different tone for a guy like me, at least in writing. Usually, I’m a touchy-feely, let’s talk calmly, understanding-the-other-guy’s-point-of-view, kind of guy.

Not today.

Today, my attitude is, “To hell with that.”

I say this quietly, not stridently. I’m not shouting it out my second floor window like Albert Finney in Network, who screamed, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take it anymore.”

A lot of us are getting our butts kicked, one way or another, by the changes in the American and global economy. While one-third of Americans can’t pay their mortgages, corporations have their most profitable quarter ever, and an Andy Warhol painting sells for a record-breaking 71 million dollars.

To those inclined politically, I say continue to fight the good fight to get this country more equitable, and to re-direct some of the cash that relentlessly and dangerously keeps floating to the top of the economic pie where it accumulates in the portfolios and bank accounts of the ever more wealthy top 1% of the population.

But here, I’m not talking only to the political types. I’m talking to the rest of us who have to do our best while the machine whirs away, sometimes grinding us down as we go about our daily business.

There are many empowering emotions. Just a few days ago we celebrated Thanksgiving, and I, along with a host of others, put out a few words in praise of gratitude.

But that was yesterday.

Today I feel the need to offer a few words in praise of attitude, the attitude captured by the words, “To hell with that.’

I can hear some of you now. “Oh, John, please watch your tone, and your language. You’re starting to sound like one of them.”

Them, being those people who get upset and make loud noises that make finding solutions even more difficult.

I’m not offering, “To hell with that,” as an addition to the noise.

“To hell with that”, is a strong way of saying ‘no’ to what we don’t want, and “yes” to something else.

The ‘yes’ part is crucial.

Mother Teresa embodied the, “To hell with that,” attitude towards the idea that the poor always suffered and there wasn’t anything she or anyone else could do about it.

She said, “To hell with that,” rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

How about Martin Luther King Jr.?

What was his attitude towards, “The Negro in America would never have rights and opportunities equal to those of Whites”?

And what did he do about it?

What about Gandhi?

Can you hear a little of the, “To hell with that,” attitude spoken with love, but with the strength and conviction of shifting tectonic plates?

We all need a bit of that, “To hell with that,” attitude sometimes.

But attitude can get us only so far. After attitude comes the hard of work of making things better.

I heard a very insightful person say that to live effectively you need to be able to take your life in your hands like a crisp apple, bite it, break off a piece and chew.

What’s the energy that helps us do that?

That’s what I’m calling the, “To hell with that,” energy.

There’s the energy of inertia, the resistance that says, “No, you won’t work again. No, you will not solve that problem. No, you will not write that book, or get that job, or overcome that illness, or make that contribution. No. No. No.”

Then there’s, “To hell with that.”

“To hell with that,” is Yes. Yes. Yes.

Or it’s just feckless noise.

To those who say we are down for the count, we have to say, ”To hell with that.”

“To hell with that depression.”

“To hell with that anger.”

“To hell with that stuff about the glory days of the past.”

“To hell with that stuff about Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers, and Socialists.”

I’ve got work to do. Decisions to make. Things to learn. People to meet.

Life itself is nothing but an epochs-long struggle with inertia and resistance, a counter-force to increasing disorder.

Life is one big, TO HELL WITH THAT, to decay, death, and nothingness.

You need gratitude, but sometimes you need a little attitude.

“You can never find peace and liberation from the suffering created by your own mind.”

Can you hear the Buddha’s response to that?

            Maybe, if Buddha were from Brooklyn rather than from India, instead of chanting “OM,” we’d be chanting, ever so slowly, but clearly, “To hell with that.”
            Namaste.
            I can be reached at drjohnfluca@gmail.com. Or 805/680-5572.

THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THANKSGIVING

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 16:34:00 +0000

This one has to be about Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. Though it wasn’t my favorite back when I was more of a bah humbug kind of a guy. Fortunately, that was then.

Of all the things I have to be grateful for, I am especially grateful for my deepening sense of gratitude.

I am thankful that I am thankful.

I am not trying to be cute here. I know too well the self-inflicted misery of an attitude of not enough in the midst of plenty.

So often we think if we just had that then we would be happy, and then we would have something to be grateful for.

But it’s gratitude that opens the door to happiness, not the other way around. Gratitude allows happiness to find us.

I, for one, have never found an end to my desires. What about you? And we all know what happens when we get what we want: often we want more, we want different. We get unhappy.

Gratitude breaks the unhappiness cycle.

Gratitude is an acceptance and an appreciation for things just as they are, including ourselves.

Gratitude is a sigh of relief. With gratitude you can feel your shoulders relax and your heart open.

“Thank you for everything.”

If we can say that and mean it, it’s like tasting the timeless beauty and perfection of the world as it is, right here, right now, even if just for a moment.

It’s pretty cool. And pretty profound.

It opens you to the possibilities of your life as it is. It makes you happy to be who you are, where you are.

And it’s a choice. Gratitude is a choice. Either it’s a gift we choose to give ourselves and those around us, or it’s something we choose to withhold.

Nothing can make us grateful, except ourselves. It’s up to us.

We could make a case for gratitude. We could list all the things you have to be grateful for, like your eyes—if you are blessed to have eyes that work reasonably well—but the blind often do very well, and are quite happy, without being able to see. Thank you very much. Paraplegics and even quadriplegics often do well, even with their physical limitations.

Yet others are unhappy without these challenges, like I can be.

So, once again, we see that gratitude is a choice. It doesn’t depend on our circumstances. It depends on us.

Grateful? Ungrateful?

You choose. Right here, right now. What’s it going to be?

Like everything else, you learn gratitude by practicing. Every day, you practice. Sound familiar?

You find yourself going negative fast? You reach for a little gratitude.

Crap hits the fan? You look up, take a breath, and give thanks for the blue sky and the white clouds. You give thanks you’re still standing. You give thanks you can still remember your name.

If someone is really mean and miserable, you give thanks that you are not always around people like that.

And you power on.

You can repeat simple affirmations.

“May my heart be filled with gratitude for my life.”

You can take gratitude breaks throughout the day just because you want to.

I’m grateful for my kids. I’m grateful for my job. I’m grateful that woman smiled.

I give thanks for love.

I give thanks for this remarkable planet.

I give thanks, even for my struggles, because they give me something to push against.

I give thanks for the food I will eat today, for the people I will get to talk with, for the chair I will sit in, and I wish for others all the comforts and satisfactions I have.

And I give thanks for the holiday of Thanksgiving which celebrates one of the most powerful and transformative gifts I can give to myself and those I love, the gift of gratitude.

Enjoy. Give thanks. And spread the wealth.

Namaste.

NEAL YOUNG AND EMINEM SHARE SOME SECRETS

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 18:35:00 +0000

Whoever you are and whatever you’re up to, you know when you set about to do something new, whether it’s write a new piece, go to a new class, talk to a new client, start that exercise program, or learn something new, especially if it pushes against your boundaries, you know resistance is lurking, resistance that hides in that tightness in your gut, in that irresistible urge to clean the refrigerator, in that seductive call of a bar of chocolate, or the allure of that nasty website.

Here I am writing, as a dozen little itches, distractions, thoughts, desires, judgments and genies try to draw me away and keep from doing my work this morning.

“Why are you doing this?” they ask me. “No one will listen. It won’t make a difference. It won’t be any good. It’s been done already. Who are you to do this work anyway? Don’t you need to go do something more productive that will make more money?”

Resistance will try to make you forget what you are doing and why. You have to pull yourself back to the center where your work and your life are waiting for you.

I saw an amazing interview with Neal Young on the Charlie Rose show—Neal Young from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, who wrote Ohio, Southern Man, and has been rockin’ in the free world for over 40 years.

Day in and day out, married to the same woman, suffering from epilepsy, father of kids with cerebral palsy, Neal plays on.

Neal Young explained to Charlie Rose that everyone who knows him, knows that when Neal hears the ‘call’, unless there’s a life or death reason not to, he’s going to answer it.

Tired. Having fun. Down. Busy. Worried. Guilty. Afraid. None of it is going to stop Neal Young from heeding the call to go write that music and those lyrics.

It was a gift, he explained. It had been, not given to him, but offered to him. He had accepted. Now it was his responsibility to show up.

That was the deal. He’s given his life to this thing, and it has given him his life.

I imagine some of you are saying, damn, I wish I were Neal Young. Where’s my muse? I wish I were called like Neal Young to write a song, or a poem, or to paint, or to sculpt, or take a photograph, or to design a product, or create a business, or choreograph a dance, or code a cool I-phone app, or run an amazing experiment, or think of a new line of work, or called to come up with a novel solution to a problem.

I’d give anything. Just please call me!

Like former President Clinton, I can feel your pain, but, sorry, I don’t believe you.

You have heard the call. We all have. More than once, but you didn’t heed it. You were too busy, too tired, too afraid, too something. And now, you think you don’t hear it anymore.

But it’s there. The whole universe is bursting with the call. No matter where you look, there is change and creation. You are part and parcel of a God-refined creation machine. There’s destruction and decay, too, but you have to destroy some of the old to make way for the new. Destroying the old, that’s the part that scares us.

In Rolling Stone, Eminem shared that fear was one thing that made him do so many damn drugs in the past, fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of being too connected to all those adoring fans. One of the most successful musicians alive has to face fear and anxiety.

Neal and Eminem have to face their demons before they can answer the call. So do you, and so do I, if we hope to do our work.

The particulars are going to be different for each of us, but once you get the inkling of the direction of your contribution, whether it’s to make your job more meaningful, to write that poem, or to be more present to those children, you’ve got to show up every day like Neal. Commit. Get professional. Get your crap out of the way. Sit down, stand up, go in, go out, whatever answering the call looks like to you, do it everyday—at least every workday.

Act like you hear the call even when you think you don’t. Keep doing your work. Keep showing up. The call is there, like leaves rustling in the wind. If you’re not paying attention, you won’t hear it. In doing the work, the call becomes clearer.

You don’t wait. You act. You don’t clean the refrigerator. You don’t call that friend. You sit down and you write. You go out and take those pictures. You learn that skill. You send out that resume. You go to that exercise class. Even with nineteen kids, four husbands, and eight cakes baking, you do what has to be done. And you keep doing it. Why? Because your life depends on it, just like Neal’s life and Eminem's life depend on it.

So, learn your craft, which includes studying the ways of your own mind and personality. Observe the deviousness of your excuses, the disabling power of your limiting beliefs and self-criticism. Observe your broken-heartedness over the past. Forgive yourself for things done and not done. Get out of your own way.

Your life is calling you, right here, right now, to be who you are.

And that’s pretty exciting, and damn frightening.

“My God, if I could just be fully and completely who I am, it would be like heaven. But what if I fail? What if they laugh? What if they ignore me?”

That’s fear we have to face, step by courageous step, as we work to become who we are called to be. And we do it knowing we will never be fully who we are. We’re too much of a mystery for that. The best we can hope for is to be a living part of a universe that is a becoming more than it is a thing, more of a dance than a sculpture. There’s no end to it.

So, where is your place in the great dance? What music do you hear? Who are your partners? What is your instrument?

Whatever it is, be open to it. Work to find it. Do what you can.

Listen. Do you hear it? Your life is calling.

Namaste. I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

MICHAEL VICK SUCCESS LESSONS

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 02:34:00 +0000

If you’re a sports fan, or live above ground, you probably know the story of the NFL quarterback, Michael Vick, who was thrown out of the NFL a few years ago and sent to United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth for breeding, fighting, and ultimately killing dogs. I was not familiar with the details of Vick’s story until after last Monday night’s football game when Vick played what some consider to be the best game played by a quarterback in NFL history

When the Atlanta Falcons first signed him, Vick was the most highly paid player in the NFL. He was described as ‘electrifying.’ His ten-year contract was worth $130 million dollars.

The guy could throw, and the guy could run. I mean he could really throw, and he could really run. When you see footage of his running game, you feel sorry for the defensive team. Vick could outmaneuver half a dozen guys like the Roadrunner could outmaneuver Wiley Coyote, a pile of dynamite, a shotgun, and an avalanche. Vick made his opponents look like they were on drugs. With his wild life-style, and his showing-up-last and leaving-first attitude towards practice, you could imagine some people might have wished the cocky s.o.b. would be brought down.

But, like in a Shakespearean Tragedy, it was Vick who brought himself down.

Dog fighting, of all things. Beating dogs. Electrocuting dogs. Shooting dogs. Eight dogs were found buried on Vick’s farm in Virginia where he ran a dog-fighting operation. Some dogs had been hung. Some had been drowned after surviving being hung. It was bad.

His fans, his family, his team, and the league were shocked and outraged.

People said he was a psychopath, a freak, a sick savage.

“My whole life was a lie,” Vick would say later.

He was thrown out of the NFL. He lost his contract. He went bankrupt. He sat in Leavenworth prison for two years.

But he came back. After spending two years in prison and losing everything he had, Michael Vick worked his way back into society. He became a spokesman for the Humane Society. He repeatedly accepted responsibility for what he had done, and said he was sorry. He was given a second chance. He was signed by the Philadelphia Eagles, and last Monday night Michael Vick quarterbacked a fifty-nine-point game that started with him throwing an 88-yard touchdown pass on the first play.

“Whom do you blame for all this?” he was asked on Sixty Minutes after he got out of prison.

“I blame myself,” he said.

In prison, he said he felt shame, guilt, and he said he cried.

“You cried?” he was asked. “Yes,” Vick answered. “I cried. For what I did to those animals, for what I did to my family. I let them down…when I think about it…it sickens me to my stomach.”

When asked if it was losing his contract and being thrown out of the NFL that he was most sorry for, Vick responded, “I deserved to lose everything. I lied to everybody. I was a living example of what not to do.”

In another interview, his former head coach, Jim Mora, asked him, “Did I miss something? Was there something I could have done?”

Vick shook his head and answered, “No. The best thing for me…crazy as it may seem, was getting shipped off to Kansas [to prison]. I wasn’t going to change. My mom tried…Nobody could have done anything to change my situation, except the Man upstairs, who was seeing it and said, “Listen, before this goes any further, I’m going to have to take all of this away from you for awhile. And you’re going to have to get your priorities in order, but you gonna have to sit over there [in prison] to get it done. And that’s what happened.”

On Monday night, November 14, 2010, Michael Vick played one of the best games in NFL history. I, for one, hope Vick is telling the truth, and that he really learned his lesson, and that he is truly sorry for the savagery he showed those dogs, and for his other crimes and mistakes.

Though he had seen his first dog-fight when he was eight years old, Vick said, “I was twenty-five, twenty-six years old at the time, a man, old enough to be responsible for my decisions.”

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I want to believe that his outer game is a reflection of his inner game, that the Michael Vick we saw on the field Monday night was proof of the man inside. I want to believe in second chances, and third chances.

We could sit here and debate what’s really going on inside Vick’s head. Is he really sorry? Does he get it? Has he changed?

As the saying goes, only God, and maybe Vick’s hairdresser, knows for sure.

I want to believe the guy, because that way I can learn from him.

You’re given amazing gifts in this life, no matter who you are. Do not take them for granted.

Take responsibility. If you make a mistake, own it, but don’t kill yourself over it. Even if it takes you a few tries to get it right.

Learn from your mistakes. Like Vick, you can make your biggest mistake the biggest learning experience of your life.

Learn, don’t wank. “I deserved to have it all taken away from me.”

Get real. “My whole life was a lie.”

Work with what you’ve got. A few years spent in the slammer is not the best way to become the best quarterback in the NFL, except in Vick’s case, it was.

When you’re knocked down, especially by your own actions, get up.

Be honest. Be vulnerable. Go deep.

Look for the bigger picture. Find the meaning and the lesson in what happened.

And be grateful.

Vick looks like a new man. His game is better than ever. He’s got a family. He’s working hard. The leeches, who were supposed to be his friends, are gone, so are the wild parties. On Sixty Minutes, Vick said he ‘cried’. This is the same guy who a few years ago was getting his rocks off watching dogs killing each other. Vick chose to see what had happened to him as being much bigger and much more important than the $130 million dollars he lost and the two years he spent in jail. He chose to learn and find meaning from what happened.

Time will tell if this is the real Michael Vick. I hope so, because I want to keep watching the guy. I want to keep learning from him. Damn, if Michael Vick keeps it together he may even turn me into a football fan.

I can be reached for personal coaching, etc. at drjohnluca@gmail.com.

BEFRIEND YOUR DRAGON: OVERCOME FEAR AND RESISTANCE

noreply@blogger.com (Dr. John Luca, M.A., D.C.) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 22:32:00 +0000

Seth Godin, marketing guru, author of Linchpin, wrote a blog entitled “I Think Laziness Has Changed”. Seth sees that, where once physical labor was demanded from us, now our work, if it’s to be vital and alive, demands that we do the emotional labor needed to overcome our fears and resistances so that we can be productive and creative.

“You’re hiding out,” Godin says, “because you’re afraid of expending emotional labor. This is great news, because it’s much easier to become brave about extending yourself than it is to become strong enough to haul an eighty pound canoe”

Sorry, but I disagree. For many people, it’s much easier to become physically strong than it is to become emotionally strong. That’s why physical labor is easy to find, and therefore cheap, in comparison to emotional labor and the emotional intelligence needed to do vital, creative work in a rapidly changing world.

Look at how challenging many of us find it to change ourselves, to overcome our fears or the story we carry. Yet life may be nothing more than a fantastic opportunity to work through our fears and resistances so we can express more fully who we are.

I want to offer something for overcoming fear that is usually not discussed, and is a big part of my coaching practice.

We often deal with fear and other difficult emotions only from the neck up, and that’s a problem.

Oftentimes, even very insightful advice boils down to, “Just do it.”

Just make that phone call.

Just put your butt in the seat and write that book.

Just get that product to market.

It’s amazing advice and very powerful, but what about all the times you just can’t seem to get yourself to do it? What about all the times you want to go east and you just can’t seem to stop yourself from going west?

In spite of your best efforts, you go right ahead and do what you don’t want to do, and you feel like a failure for doing so.

If you really want to go east, then why can’t you resist going west?

It’s because you’re ignoring a big part of you. You’re ignoring your dragon, and the dragon doesn’t like to be ignored.

We often think we’re nothing but our thoughts, nothing but our frontal lobes and neo-cortex where we think and plan all day long. But there’s a dragon living in the lower regions of our brain running much of the show. It’s old, similar to the brain of a lizard, and based in primal emotions like fear and anger, but when you wrestle with lizard brain it feels like you’re wrestling with a damn powerful, fire-breathing dragon, and not a four-inch-long chameleon.

There are two very powerful tools to overcome the resistance of the dragon. One is to have an inspiring vision that calls you forwards, whether it’s to write that book, fix that relationship, make that move to a new city, or to take that non-profit to the next level, a vision that gives you the energy, the commitment, and the power to do what you need to do.

The second tool is to stop fighting the dragon, or ignoring it. You need to become present and aware of what your body is doing as you begin the work of dealing with difficult feelings or emotions. That change in your breathing is the dragon starting to awaken, so is that constriction in your chest, or that tightening in your throat or your butt.

Maybe your feet are tapping, or your palms are warm, or you have crossed your arms. Whatever it is, it is your limbic brain, the dragon, responding, usually with fear, to the threats of the new project, the new relationship, or the new possibility.

Pay close attention to the body. Don’t get lost in your head, in your words, in your arguments, or in your attempts to cover up your fear or explain it away. Just stay put and get a good look at the dragon.

And keep breathing. Keep gazing around the room. If the physical distress gets too powerful, remember a time and a place where you felt more fully alive. Maybe it was your child’s first birthday, or hiking down the Grand Canyon. You’re not looking away from whatever difficult emotion is coming up, but you’re bringing in resources to support you while you get a better look at the snorting son-of-a-dragon who you could swear is breathing fire down your neck. You are doing the emotional labor necessary to tame your dragon, so you can do the creative, challenging work of living.

Dealing with fear and resistance requires the will of “just do it”, but it also requires imagination, and the ability to stay with the feelings in the body, which is where the emotions come from.

As you practice this, you will observe that your body has multiple intelligences and ways to find balance and healing. Your body and your dragon will begin to settle down. This is an art and a skill, like riding a bike. You get better with practice. What else is new?

So, go do your work. Begin that project, but as you do, do it with all the resources available to you. Do it with your emotional brain, your dragon brain, working with you, rather than against you. Get the dragon to lie down in its lair, not by slaying it, but by befriending it. You do that by paying your emotional brain its due. And what your emotional brain wants is to know what’s going on, and that things are safe. The way you let dragon brain know things are safe is by letting it look around and giving it the time to really see, feel, and experience what is going on in the body, without your thoughts getting in the way, either with negative thinking, or with commands.

Just do it! Is not always a helpful way to speak to a dragon.

Let it feel and experience in and through the body.

Is there tightness? What does that tightness feel like?

Is it hot, cold, electric, tingly, watery, or dizzying?

Where do you feel it? How do you feel it?

Take some time to do this. If you’re like most of us, you will be a bit handicapped. You will find yourself thinking and interpreting. But keep at it. If it gets to be too much, take deeper breathes, bring up comforting images and memories, and slow it way down so you can process what’s going on. This is not about thinking, but about simply letting the body feel what it needs to feel. That will give the dragon what it needs to settle down. Do less rather than more. Come back again later, or tomorrow, but don’t give up.

In this way you will help the dragon feel safe and to lie down. Then you will have more freedom to do what you want to do. You will, over time, increase your ability to, “Just do it.” And your life will be richer and more fulfilling.

Now go do your work, and be prepared. If you start to push at your borders, trying to expand your limits or comfort zone, the dragon will awaken. That’s its job. You will never slay the dragon, nor should you. The dragon is part of you, and so is its fire. It has warned you of danger. It has kept you alive. It remembers to keep you breathing when you forget. It’s part of your many intelligences. It just doesn’t live upstairs in the house of words and thoughts, but it lives in the body of feelings, images, and stories.

The dragon is an extraordinary ally, so why would you venture into strange territory alone when you can ride a dragon into victory?

Just asking.

Namaste.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com and 805/680-5572.