Moodraiser

Raise Your Mood By Relaxing Your Mind

2013-05-17T14:59:00.001-07:00

Work and relaxation make music together. They are the up and the down, the yin and the yang, the rhythm of a good life.

Relaxation is good for you. Over the past 40 years, a tremendous amount of research has been done on relaxation and meditation, and the findings are truly amazing. Relaxation can lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels, help prevent heart disease, relieve or even prevent headaches, reduce pain, help control hypertension, help you sleep better and cure insomnia, alleviate panic attacks, improve your ability to come up with creative solutions to problems, increase your memory and ability to learn, improve your energy level, improve your self-esteem, reduce depression, improve your relationships and your health, and make you feel better in general.

But the kind of relaxation these folks studied was not what most of us mean when we say, “Yeah, I had a relaxing weekend.” They were studying a more concentrated, more profound form of relaxation, and you cannot get it watching TV.

The relaxation that produces those results requires you to relax your mind as well as your body.

One of the major players in that research is a medical doctor named Herbert Benson. He coined the term “relaxation response,” which is what he calls the natural, physical changes that take place when people meditate or relax profoundly. It’s the antidote and flip-side of the “fight-or-flight response” — the adrenaline-pumping reaction we get to dangerous, threatening or stressful situations.

Benson’s first experiments were on practitioners of TM (Transcendental Meditation), a form of “mantra” meditation. A mantra is a word or phrase repeated over and over to oneself. If this is done with a passive, non-forcing attitude, it changes your body. Heartbeat and metabolism slow down, the level of blood-lactate goes down, and the electrical pulsing of your brain slows down and becomes more rhythmic.

Benson found you can repeat other words besides the Indian mantra given to students of TM and it produces the same changes. Some forms of Yogic and Zen meditation also produce the same changes. So do Autogenic Training and Progressive Relaxation.

And when you relax like that for twenty minutes once or twice a day, all kinds of good things happen to your body. It’s extremely healthy and it feels good. It’s psychologically healthy. It’s the antidote to stress.

People who relax like that have a less intense reaction to stressful situations, and they recover from them faster than people who don’t. In other words, instead of a person’s heartbeat going from, say, 70 to 120 beats per minute during an argument and returning to 70 in an hour, it might go from 70 to only 100 beats per minute, and return to 70 in a half hour. That kind of change is healthy for your body and good for your relationships and gosh darn it, it’s just more fun! Stress is unpleasant.

When blood-lactate levels drop during relaxation, it stays down afterwards. This is one reason you feel so good afterwards. Blood-lactate has something to do with anxiety. When you measure the blood-lactate level of someone who feels anxious, you’ll find a lot of it. When you give someone a shot of lactate intravenously, they suddenly feel anxious. A certain percentage of people will have an immediate panic attack.

I could go on and on — the amount of research on this subject is extensive — but I’m going to give you a technique you can use to produce the relaxation response for yourself. It works very well, and it’s all you need.

But keep in mind there are hundreds of ways to produce the relaxation response, and if you don’t like this one, there are plenty more to choose from. This one is basic, however, and will produce the relaxation response we’re looking for. Here it is:

How to Relax

1. Get into a comfortable position and close your eyes. Take a few deep breaths. Relax.

2. Repeat some word or short phrase over and over to yourself.

3. When you notice yourself thinking about something else, gently start repeating your word or phrase again.

4. When you think your time is up, open your eyes and look at the clock. If you aren’t done yet, close your eyes and keep repeating.

Repeat your word or phrase fast or slow — whatever is best for you. You can repeat it to the rhythm of your breath or not — whatever you like.

The most important part of the process is Step 3. Biofeedback research has confirmed peoples’ personal experience: Trying doesn't help. People in biofeedback training who try to lower their blood pressure are the only ones who can’t do it. When you try to concentrate or try to relax, you won’t be able to. You need a passive, let-it-happen kind of attitude.

Your mind will often wander from your repeated word or phrase. No need to be bothered by that. Just bring your mind back to your repeated word or phrase. Over and over again.

It’s the process of doing this that’s good for you — not some end state or goal you reach.

Drifting off and noticing it and bringing your mind back to your repeated phrase is the process. And it’s this process that gives you all the benefits.

The attitude to have is a combination of persistence and acceptance. You persist in repeating your word and you accept it when your mind wanders, but you still persist in repeating your word again, while accepting that you wander off.

Most of the studies were done on people who did this kind of relaxation 15-20 minutes, once or twice a day, so that’s what I recommend. Put a clock where you can see it.

By the time the 15 or 20 minutes are over, you’re usually going to feel very relaxed, which is why I don’t recommend you set an alarm or buzzer to tell you your time is up. It can jar you, and that’s the opposite of the relaxation response.

Don’t expect anything. Sometimes you’ll feel deeply relaxed and almost blissful afterwards, sometimes you won’t. It’s a good session either way. Sometimes your mind will drift, sometimes it won’t. It’s a good session either way. And sometimes you’ll just fall asleep, and that just means you probably didn’t get enough sleep the night before. Even that’s okay: naps are good for you too.

Since you can pretty much repeat anything you want and it will work, I suggest you repeat something that has some meaning for you. The shorter, the better. Soft sounds — M’s and N’s and Sh’s — work better (are more relaxing) than hard sounds: K’s and P’s and Q’s.

During the relaxation response, your brainwaves slow down and become more steady and rhythmic. These are called “alpha” and “theta” brainwaves. There’s a good deal of evidence that we are more suggestible in those states than in our normal waking state (a “beta” brainwave pattern). Since you’re already in this suggestible state when you relax, you can (and might as well) make use of it by giving yourself suggestions.

The word or phrase you repeat can be a suggestion, and/or at the end, when you’re still relaxed with your eyes closed and your time is up, you can take a minute or two and give yourself some positive suggestions. For example: “When I open my eyes, I’ll feel refreshed and alert,” or, “Tonight I will have a dream that will give me an idea for a solution to a problem.”

You might as well take advantage of your suggestibility while you have it.

That’s all there is to it. It takes a little time, but it’s worth it. This is something that not only has long-term benefits, but also feels good in the short-term.

If you'd like to read more, I recommend Benson's book, The Relaxation Response.

But that's not all. Relaxing yourself makes the world a better place. You make a scientifically-verifiable difference to your family, friends, and the world at large by relaxing yourself regularly.

Experiments by psychologist Gary Schwartz showed that people who relax regularly have lower anxiety levels and fewer psychological problems.

Regular relaxation also improves your ability to pick up subtle perceptual cues and increases your empathy. And research by Ronald Riggio, Ph.D., proved what our everyday experience tells us: moods and attitudes are contagious.

Add these findings together and it means that if you relaxed regularly you would be better at resolving conflict with people; you’d be able to come together with people more harmoniously to reach compromises that are good for everyone. The world needs more people like that.

And since moods are contagious and since relaxing regularly puts you in a better mood and makes you more calm and relaxed, the people around you will also be in a better mood and be more calm and relaxed, which is good for them like it’s good for you.

You can help your children and your spouse and your friends and your co-workers be healthier, happier and have better relationships just by relaxing yourself.

Everything goes better with relaxation. Work. Relationships. Sex. Social interaction. Talking with children. Relaxation is good.

It’s an old Chinese saying that if you want to change the world, change your government, and if you want to change your government, change your family, and if you want to change your family, change yourself. You can make a step in that direction by relaxing.

Thinking About Your Own Death

2013-05-12T22:54:00.001-07:00

If you ever feel distressed thinking about your own mortality, you may be able to ease your troubled mind by taking Tylenol. Strange but true. In a recent study, researchers at the University of British Columbia first got people thinking about their own eventual death. Those who were given a Tylenol before the start of the experiment felt much less disturbed than those who were given a placebo.

Daniel Randles, the author of the study, said, "We think that Tylenol is blocking existential unease in the same way it prevents pain, because a similar neurological process is responsible for both types of distress."

I personally feel I benefit from occasionally pondering my own impermanence. But if it ever seems too much to deal with, we can always ease our minds with a couple of Tylenol. And if you have a friend dealing with this difficult psychological issue, here's something you can offer that might help.

Shift Your Thinking Creatively With One Simple Question

2013-05-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

YALE PSYCHOLOGIST Alan E. Kazdin did an experiment with kids suffering from "conduct disorder" — young people prone to violence, vandalism, truancy, and hostility.

Many things have been tried over the years but not much has been successful. How do you change a problem child into a healthy, happy, productive youngster? Theories abound. Results are rare.

Kazdin tried something unusual. He trained the troublemaking kids and their parents how to think up options for handling situations, and to come up with different ways of interpreting situations — other ways besides using hostility.

The result: Troublemaking was significantly reduced.

When the only response you have is hostility, that's what you do, regardless of whether it gets you the results you're after. Kazdin trained these people essentially to ask themselves, What else? The parents and their kids learned to say to themselves before they responded to something, "Okay, I could do that (what I've always done), but what else could I do?" He taught them to think of new options they hadn't thought of before.

And also he taught them to ask, "What else could it mean?" When someone bumped into them, for example, instead of immediately interpreting it as a hostile attack or a threat, they learned to ask themselves, "Okay, it might mean that, but what else could it mean?"

It seems a simple solution to a difficult problem. But it's harder than you'd think. Our minds are designed to streamline our mental processes. Asking "what else" makes the decision-process more complex. So it takes some deliberate effort to turn your mind to the task of coming up with alternative ideas.

This method is useful in many different ways. As I'm writing this, it's really cold outside, and even though a little while ago I had the heater turned up and my feet covered, my feet were still as cold as ice. Turning the heater up and covering my feet were obvious solutions. But, I asked myself, what else might work? What else could I do?

When you ask yourself a question, it awakens a part of your brain that answers questions. Ask a question, and your mind seems to search through all the things you've heard or know, and it often comes up with something.

I remembered my wife once telling me, "If your hands are cold, cover your head." She used to live in Lake Tahoe, and she learned a thing or two about dealing with cold weather. I grew up in Southern California and didn't know much about it.

So a little while ago I put a wool hat on. My feet aren't cold any more.

What else? It's such a valuable question. It's especially useful when you've been doing something a certain way for a long time. I'm always surprised when someone comes up with a new way to do something that's been done for a long time, because it makes me think, "Now why didn't I think of that?" Once you see the new way, it seems kind of obvious. But it took somebody asking "what else" to come up with it.

"Unaware of Mind's effect in patterning and enslaving their lives," wrote William Bartley III, "people live in a state of waking sleep, in a state of enchantment, of mesmerism, most of the time. Every day, in every way, they become more and more the way they have always been."

A couple of days ago I saw measuring spoons, but rather than having a separate spoon for teaspoons and tablespoons and halves and fourths, it was a single spoon with one end of the cupped part capable of sliding back and fourth, making the cup bigger or smaller, and there were lines on it for teaspoon and half teaspoon, etc. Why didn't I think of that? Because I didn't ask, "What else could measure teaspoons besides the measuring spoon I'm so familiar with?"

DO SOMETHING ELSE

"What else?" is an especially practical question when what you usually do doesn't work very well. Besides getting miffed when a certain person makes certain kinds of remarks, what else could you do? You can do a certain task grudgingly, but how else could you do it? What other ways could you go about it? In what other ways could you think about it? When you interact with your teenager, and you both end up angry, ask yourself, "What else could I do?" What other approaches or responses can you think up besides what you normally do?

Here's a good rule: If what you're doing isn't working, do something else.

Of course, you don't want to go with something just because it's different, because in point of fact, the new idea might be worse.

Creativity is the process of thinking up new ideas and then rejecting most of them. But those are two processes, and the parts of your brains involved in each are different, so they can't really be done at the same time. In other words, when you're thinking up alternatives, don't judge the ideas for their merits at the same time. Let your mind go. Let it come up with crazy ideas, off the wall angles, impossible notions. This stretches your mind beyond the limits within which your thinking has been confined. Out of that loosened-up state of mind, a truly original idea and sometimes a perfect solution can suddenly become obvious. You just couldn't see it before because you were unknowingly confining your thinking about that subject within certain parameters.

Think up ideas, and keep thinking them up until you get a good one. And if it's important enough, and you have the time, keep thinking up ideas, keep asking "what else" and see if you can come up with an even better one.

The best way to characterize "thinking" is as a dialog. Consider thinking as a dialog with yourself. I know that if it is with yourself it's supposed to be called a monologue, but thinking isn't done very well as a monologue because there is nothing to provoke the thoughts further. A monologue is an expression of an already-decided thought. Dialog can create something new.

Have a thought and then criticize it and you have a dialog. Come up with an idea and then ask, "What else?" and you have dialog, and that's where good thinking happens.

"Well, my in-laws are coming over," says Pete to himself, "and they always drive me nuts. Maybe I'll just not say anything."

If Pete stops there, his monologue has created one idea. But this time he has a dialog with himself, and so he becomes more creative. "Yes, I could try that," he says to himself, "but what else might work?"

"What else might work for what? I guess I need a goal if I want to think up an idea to solve it. I need to know what I'm trying to accomplish."

"I want to feel happy even when they are here."

"Do I feel happy when I say nothing?"

"No. I've tried that before. It's not much fun. It's a little better than being annoyed, but I'm definitely not happy."

"So what else could I do?"

"Since I want to be happy, I should do what makes me happy. I really enjoy playing my new video game. Maybe I can enlist one of them to play with me."

"Good idea. But I'm not going to stop there. What else could I do?"

"I like talking about politics. I could make that my theme for the night. I could turn every conversation to the subject of politics."

"That's a good one. What else could I do?"

And so on. The more Pete asks, the more he'll get. Some of his ideas will be goofy or won't work very well, but thinking is like good photography: You take several rolls and get rid of almost all of them. You'll have maybe two or three good ones, but they were worth all the waste.

That's how creativity works. You generate lots of ideas and throw out most of them. But in generating so many, you have more to choose from, so your chances of getting a better one improve as the number of ideas increases. And the way to get many ideas is to keep asking, "What else?"

Confession and Repentance

2013-04-27T01:06:00.000-07:00

The two oldest known self-help techniques in the world are confession and repentance. Before you can change, you must be able to admit (at least to yourself) what you're doing that isn't good. Before you can be honest with another, you have to at least admit the truth to yourself. Or to someone you trust. That's confession.

Repentance means a change of heart. Up until now you've been doing whatever you've been doing and justifying it or excusing it in some way. Repentance is no longer making excuses. It means admitting you no longer want to live that way. Repentance is a change in values. It means something else is now more important to you than the rewards you got from the old way.

After confession and repentance, you're in a position to honestly change your life.

This is not a superficial technique. If you're ready to change something that has not yielded before to more casual attempts, take the time and speak to yourself or someone you trust with complete candor. What are your flaws? What character defect is keeping your life stuck and causing problems? That's confession.

And what values do you have that keep that character defect in place? Are they really what you value most? Think about it. Answer truthfully. What do you value more? That's repentance. Ask these questions of yourself. Take the time and be honest.

This method can not only solve your difficult problem, it can simultaneously solve many others as a side effect. It can also lead to a wonderful feeling of aliveness.

Environmental Controls

2013-04-05T13:18:00.000-07:00

The people you associate with have the biggest influence.

We are influenced by our environment. There is no denying that. But it is equally true that we have some influence over our environment. We can alter it to improve its influence on us.

For example, tonight, you plan on watching a movie. You can choose any movie you want. How will you choose? If you are controlling your environment so it has a positive effect on your attitude, you'll choose movies that uplift you, inspire you, enrich you, or make you laugh. You will tend to avoid movies that overstimulate your adrenal glands. You'll avoid movies that give you nightmares or make you feel anxious.

When you watch a movie, it effects your emotions. Your body produces chemicals that circulate in your blood for awhile. If you watch a suspenseful movie, it is designed to produce anxiety in you. Those stress chemicals are still circulating in your blood even after the movie is over, and those feelings effect your perspective on the world, at least for a little while. And images from the movie will spontaneously come to mind for many hours afterwards. That's bad enough, but do it often enough and it can actually change your worldview.

The same holds true for music. Listen to music that has a positive effect on your attitude. Don't listen to what you merely like. What you like is only one criteria. Use more criteria than that to make your decisions. Be more selective. Increase your standards. Do you eat nothing but cookies and cake simply because you like them? No. You have more criteria for eating food than that. You want your food to taste good, but you also want it to be good for your health. Listen to music you like, but that also has a positive effect on your feelings, and has positive words. Read and listen to books that leave you feeling stronger or happier or more motivated.

Forget about newspapers and television news. For more on that, read Profit of Doom.

Same goes with the people in your life. Start choosing who you spend time with based on how that person will influence your attitude. Increase the time you spend with people who consistently improve your attitude, your feeling of confidence, your motivation to accomplish your goals, etc., and spend less time with people who weaken your confidence, make you feel defeated (however subtly) or worried or frustrated or angry, etc.

The movies you watch, the music you listen to, the friends you hang out with — these are only a few of the elements of your environment you are capable of influencing. The list is a long one. What about the smell of your environment? What about how it looks? How clean it is? What decorates the walls? You could post a picture of a national tragedy or an inspirational saying, or anything in between, and it will have an affect on you. What about the desktop of your computer? Keep looking and you'll find many areas of your environment that you can control that will influence you.

To some degree, you are the effect of your environment. But it goes both ways. Your environment can also, to some degree, be changed by your actions. So take actions that make your environment create a good effect on you. Use what power you have.

Beyond Mood Raising

2013-03-30T15:09:00.000-07:00

"Man is by nature a productive organism. When he ceases his productivity — whether he is producing a pail or a poem, an industry or an ideology — his life begins to lose its meaning. Though he may be finally buried twenty years after his death, the person who has no raison d'être is not really alive. He is merely the ghost of who he once was or might have become."

- Allen Wiesen, psychologist

Good News For Earth

2013-03-25T23:53:00.002-07:00

If you're concerned about global warming or worried about so much of the earth turning to desert, the video below should raise your mood for a long time. It's a 23-minute TED talk by a man who has been studying the process of "desertification" for his entire career. And he has discovered a solution — a surprising, counterintuitive solution.

The solution has been tried in several places (you'll see the before and after photos) and it does, in fact, reverse the process of desertification, restoring life to the land. You've got to check this out, share it with all your friends, and help make this process widely known:

Bloom Where You're Planted

2013-03-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

ONE MORNING a sixteen-year-old boy was kidnapped from his house by a band of knife-wielding thugs and taken to another country, there to be sold as a slave. The year was 401 a.d.

He was made a shepherd. Slaves were not allowed to wear clothes, so he was often dangerously cold and frequently on the verge of starvation. He spent months at a time without seeing another human being — a severe psychological torture.

But this greatest of difficulties was transformed into the greatest of blessings because it gave him an opportunity not many get in a lifetime. Long lengths of solitude have been used by people all through history to meditate, to learn to control the mind and to explore the depths of feeling and thought to a degree impossible in the hubbub of normal life.

He wasn’t looking for such an “opportunity,” but he got it anyway. He had never been a religious person, but to hold himself together and take his mind off the pain, he began to pray, so much that “...in one day,” he wrote later, “I would say as many as a hundred prayers and after dark nearly as many again...I would wake and pray before daybreak — through snow, frost, and rain....”

This young man, at the onset of his manhood, got a “raw deal.” But therein lies the lesson. Nobody gets a perfect life. The question is not “What could I have done if I’d gotten a better life?” but rather “What can I do with the life I’ve got?”

How can you take your personality, your circumstances, your upbringing, the time and place you live in, and make something extraordinary out of it? What can you do with what you’ve got?

The young slave prayed. He didn’t have much else available to do, so he did what he could with all his might. And after six years of praying, he heard a voice in his sleep say that his prayers would be answered: He was going home. He sat bolt upright and the voice said, “Look, your ship is ready.”

He was a long way from the ocean, but he started walking. After two hundred miles, he came to the ocean and there was a ship, preparing to leave for Britain, his homeland. Somehow he got aboard the ship and went home to reunite with his family.

But he had changed. The sixteen-year-old boy had become a holy man. He had visions. He heard the voices of the people from the island he had left — Ireland — calling him back. The voices were persistent, and he eventually left his family to become ordained as a priest and a bishop with the intention of returning to Ireland and converting the Irish to Christianity.

At the time, the Irish were fierce, illiterate, Iron-Age people. For over eleven hundred years, the Roman Empire had been spreading its civilizing influence from Africa to Britain, but Rome never conquered Ireland.

The people of Ireland warred constantly. They made human sacrifices of prisoners of war and sacrificed newborns to the gods of the harvest. They hung the skulls of their enemies on their belts as ornaments.

Our slave-boy-turned-bishop decided to make these people literate and peaceful. Braving dangers and obstacles of tremendous magnitude, he actually succeeded! By the end of his life, Ireland was Christian. Slavery had ceased entirely. Wars were much less frequent, and literacy was spreading.

How did he do it? He began by teaching people to read — starting with the Bible. Students eventually became teachers and went to other parts of the island to create new places of learning, and wherever they went, they brought the know-how to turn sheepskin into paper and paper into books.

Copying books became the major religious activity of that country. The Irish had a long-standing love of words, and it expressed itself to the full when they became literate. Monks spent their lives copying books: the Bible, the lives of saints, and the works accumulated by the Roman culture — Latin, Greek, and Hebrew books, grammars, the works of Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, Homer, Greek philosophy, math, geometry, astronomy.

In fact, because so many books were being copied, they were saved, because as Ireland was being civilized, the Roman Empire was falling apart. Libraries disappeared in Europe. Books were no longer copied (except in the city of Rome itself), and children were no longer taught to read. The civilization that had been built up over eleven centuries disintegrated. This was the beginning of the Dark Ages.

Because our slave-boy-turned-bishop transformed his suffering into a mission, civilization itself, in the form of literature and the accumulated knowledge contained in that literature, was saved and not lost during that time of darkness. He was named a saint, the famous Saint Patrick. You can read the full and fascinating story if you like in the excellent book How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill.

“Very interesting,” you might say, “but what does that have to do with me?”

Well...you are also in some circumstances or other, and it’s not all peaches and cream, is it? There’s some stuff you don’t like — maybe something about your circumstances, perhaps, or maybe some events that occurred in your childhood.

But here you are, with that past, with these circumstances, with the things you consider less than ideal. What are you going to do with them? If those circumstances have made you uniquely qualified for some contribution, what would it be?

You may not know the answer to that question right now, but keep in mind that the circumstances you think only spell misery may contain the seeds of something profoundly Good. Assume that’s true, and the assumption will begin to gather evidence until your misery is transformed, as Saint Patrick’s suffering was, from a raw deal to the perfect preparation for something better.

This is a chapter from the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works.

If Only We Could See Like This

2013-03-10T00:22:00.000-08:00

Watch the video below showing what it would be like if we could "read the secret history of our enemies" as Longfellow put it. The video is four minutes, twenty-five seconds long and may just change the way you see the strangers in your life today.

How To Eliminate Unnatural Stress

2013-02-17T22:46:00.000-08:00

MEDITATION CAN COMPENSATE or substitute for the tranquility you would experience in a natural setting (like being in the woods, in the mountains, or on a deserted beach). The sounds and appearance of natural settings are soothing and comfortable. A natural environment is, of course, the environment we have evolved to live in.

Change a human being's environment to buildings and cars and strangers and time pressure and polyester and lots of extra mental and emotional stimulation from music and television, and your body is out of its element. And it reacts by feeling stressed. Cortisol and adrenaline start flowing. And they keep flowing without a break.

In a natural setting, it would not be all peace and harmony, of course. There would be times of great danger, of fear and anger. But those moments would be brief. And in between, the body would have the opportunity to settle down again and rejuvenate.

That's what meditation provides for a city-dweller. Meditation is a way to compensate for the unnatural setting we live in. And it works.

If you don't get enough moments of calm, you suffer. Stress has a thousand ways of showing up. And each one of those ways can be seen as a symptom of a "calmness deficiency." Like a vitamin C deficiency, the body can cope for awhile, but then the deficiency starts to show its negative impact.

If you can't take plenty of walks in the woods, or if you don't live near a quiet desert, or if you don't live out in the wilderness, you can compensate for your unnatural situation (and fulfill your need for a feeling of calmness) with meditation.

A lot of research has been done on the stress-reducing effect of meditation. Read more about that here. The results of the experiments show plainly that the symptoms of stress were caused by an insufficient number of moments of calmness and peace.

You don't have to be peaceful all the time to satisfy your need for calm. You just need enough of it. Daily meditation can provide that for you.

Learn how to meditate here: Gently Returning.

Goals Bring Out Your Best

2013-02-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

EVEN IF YOU HAVE a large, overarching purpose, you can only take action in this very moment. It is an excellent practice to try to keep in mind one clear purpose for what you're doing now. And the question, "What is my purpose here?" can really straighten up and clarify your mind and your actions.

For example, if you are criticizing someone, ask yourself, "What am I after?" You may find what you're really after is to make the other person feel bad or punish them for something they did. That is an automatic, genetically-driven (and usually counterproductive) purpose.

In other words, you didn't really consciously choose to pursue that goal. It happened without you.

But now that you've asked the question, "What is my purpose here?" you can choose. You can think about what you really want in this situation. You may decide what you really want is that the person doesn't do it again. Then you'd have a clear purpose and a clear path for action — without games, without negative feelings. All you'd have is a simple request: "Please don't do that again."

Make it a regular practice to ask yourself what you want right now. What is your goal here in this situation? What are you after? What are you aiming for? Be clear, always and consciously, about what your purpose is in this very moment. It is effective. It is therapeutic. It is healthy. And it will make you more productive.

One key to a strong sense of purpose is the practice of focusing only on what you want. When your mind wanders to other things, bring your focus back. Again and again. Your mind is very easily taken off track, so you have to keep noticing your attention has wandered and keep bringing your focus back to your purpose.

When your mind starts worrying about problems that might happen, bring your mind back to your concrete assignment. When your attention becomes fixed on what you don't want (and it will), turn your attention to what you do want.

There isn't one "right" purpose which you must find and follow. Any (constructive) purpose is better than no purpose and some are better than others. Some are good for now, but not good if pursued too long. The important thing is that you like your purpose, feel it is important, and have a good level of accomplishment along that line.

A question that can help you have a good level of accomplishment is: "What is my purpose here?" Ask it often. Throughout your day today, try to ask it of yourself ten times to see how useful this question can be.

Connect With People to Reduce Anxiety

2013-01-26T16:25:00.000-08:00

WHEN YOU FEEL anxious fairly often, it tends to isolate you socially. Even surrounded by people, even with a lot of acquaintances, you can feel isolated. And the feeling of isolation tends to increase your feelings of anxiety or stress.

One reason is because feeling connected to others is soothing, and if you are not connecting, you are missing out on a very good way to feel calmer and more relaxed. Feeling close is very relaxing. It is a powerful anxiety-reducer. In surveys that ask people what kind of things improve their mood the best, the most common answers all involve interacting with people.

One very good step toward eliminating a feeling of isolation and increasing your feelings of connection is to increase your people-skills.

The two most practical books I've ever come across on the fine art of dealing with people are Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends & Influence People and Les Giblin's How to Have Confidence and Power in Dealing with People. They said a lot and they said it well. But I have a few more things to add.

Both of those books emphasize using the techniques to get what you want, and they could be used in a way that does not bring you closer to people. But they can also be used to increase your comfort and connection with people. And when that is your intention, the methods in those two books work very well indeed.

How do you go about increasing your skills? Simple: Get one of those books and read it. Pick two or three skills and work on them in all your interactions.

What do I mean "work on them?" I'll give you an example from Dale Carnegie's class. He was a master of practicality — he got people using the principles, not just reading about them. In his class, which is about public speaking, one of the books you get is How to Win Friends & Influence People. The class meets once a week, and every member of the class gets up and speaks for two minutes twice every week. One of those speeches is on a principle from the book. Carnegie's book ends each chapter with a short principle you can easily remember and apply.

So the teacher assigns a principle, and the class members are told to apply that principle at least once in the coming week and then tell the audience about it the next week.

Since you need to have something to say the following week, you try applying the principle where you can, maybe two or three times to make sure you get a good story to tell. Trying it out, you see how well it works, and you tend to keep using some of the principles from then on. It's a clever system.

What is a people-skill? What am I talking about? I mean basic things like using a person's name when you're talking to her, or noticing something you like about her and telling her you like it, or learning to draw her out in a conversation by asking good questions and showing interest. Those are three people-skills.

In How to Win Friends & Influence People you'll find a bunch of them. Read through a book like that and choose one or two or three you think would really help you if you practiced it, and practice them until they start to feel natural. Then find a couple more, etc.

I think most people conceive of people-skills as a way to persuade people, manipulating their emotions to get them to do what you want. But that doesn't usually reduce anxiety to use people-skills that way. It often increases anxiety.

Let us conceive that the purpose of practicing people-skills is to bring you and others closer together. To cultivate affection, others for you and you for others.

And whenever you get close to people, the process involves moving from relatively superficial conversations to more meaningful conversations as you get to know each other. The people-skills in Carnegie's and Giblin's books are perfect for helping you cross that gap. They are the skills that help you turn a stranger into a friend or lover, if you use those skills with honesty and integrity.

And as you get closer to people, your mood will rise and your anxiety and feelings of isolation will begin to disappear, and you are on your way to a better life.

The 7 Principles of Strong Friendships

2013-01-18T15:54:00.000-08:00

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN the movie, Rudy? It's the true story of a young man who has one all-time dream — to play football for Notre Dame. He has dreamed of it since he was a little kid. When Rudy is a young adult, he is working in a steel mill with his best friend, Pete. They've been best friends since childhood. In once scene, it's Rudy's birthday, and Pete gives him a Notre Dame letterman jacket.

"This is fantastic," says Rudy, "Pete, where did you find this?"

"I was in Gary and I saw it in this surplus store," says Pete, "and I said, 'That's gotta be yours!'"

Rudy is obviously affected by having a tangible representation of his dream. "This is unbelievable." He puts the jacket on. "Pete, I don't know how I'm ever going to thank you…How's it look?"

Pete looks him in the eye and says with full conviction, "You were born to wear that jacket."

Rudy had always wanted to play for Notre Dame, but he wasn't big and he wasn't fast. He didn't have much athletic ability. He also had dyslexia (which he didn't know yet), so his grades weren't good, and his family didn't have the money to send him to college. So to all outward appearances, he didn't have a chance of ever even attending Notre Dame, much less playing on their football team.

Rudy looks at his jacket. Then he looks at Pete and says, "You're the only one who ever took me serious, Pete."

It is a moving scene and an excellent demonstration of a strong bond between friends.

When you take away everything insignificant, the bond of deep friendship between two people is really what makes life truly meaningful. When people think their life is over, almost everyone has the same thought. It's not about money or problems or who is right and who is wrong; it's not about politics or philosophy. All is stripped away except the single most important value, the one that made this trip worth the trouble.

Viktor Frankl wrote about his experience one morning as he marched through the snow, starving, severely abused, not knowing if or when he would ever see a normal life, and then he thought of his wife. He didn't even know if she was alive. He saw her in his mind's eye. He saw her smile at him and he was transfixed. He wrote:

"For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire…I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved."

I've read many accounts of people in extreme life-or-death circumstances, and always, when a person thinks it's all over, the one thought they have in their mind is of the person they are closest to, whether it is their spouse or child or parent or best friend. The closest bonds we have are the highest value we attain.

And you can create these close bonds. And I mean create. You can take steps that allow it to develop, or you can do things that impede its development.

You can't create the bond of strong friendship with just anyone. Some people are irrevocably incompatible. But you can make a mere friendship deepen into a profound bond, and you can do it with the following principles:

1. Work together for a purpose. A truly meaningful bond will emanate out of a strong purpose. The two of you will share a purpose, or one of you will have a purpose the other supports and believes in. Strong friendship goes beyond casual friends, and purpose is the central reason it does.

2. Believe in your friend. When Stephen King was a laundry worker with a dream to be a writer, he wrote several novels that were all rejected by publishers and agents. All that work for nothing! He didn't even get personal rejections. He got form letters. It was pretty disheartening.

As he started to work on his fourth novel, demoralization set in. He'd been spending every spare cent sending manuscripts to agents and publishers. There were bills to pay and all this writing was obviously getting him nowhere. He was spending his nights and weekends typing and typing and typing, and for what?

So one night he threw away the manuscript he was working on. But his wife was a true comrade. She believed in him so the next day she pulled the manuscript from the trash and said, "You shouldn't be quitting. Not when you're so close."

He went back to punching out fifteen hundred words a day. Without much feeling of hope, he sent off the manuscript when he finished, and this time, he struck gold. The manuscript was Carrie. It sold five million copies and was made into a hit movie.

Believe in your friend.

3. Be loyal. The act of loyalty intensifies the bond. Be clear what I'm saying here. I'm not saying that when you have a very close bond, you will feel more loyal, although you very well might. I'm saying the act of loyalty itself makes you closer.

When I first began dating Klassy, who is now my wife, a member of my family shunned her. I remained on friendly terms with that family member, which was a demonstration of disloyalty I will never repeat. It was wrong. If you are true to someone, be true. Defend them in their absence. Stand by them in times of trouble. Speak well of them behind their back. Act in their best interests when nobody is looking or if everybody is looking. This is loyalty, and it is a choice, an act of will, and that's what makes it valuable.

4. Fulfill trust. You have the option to commit your time or your resources or your effort. You can decide to commit or not. And when you commit yourself, you then have another option: whether or not to honor that commitment. A truly meaningful bond can develop when you consistently choose to commit yourself and when you consistently choose to fulfill your friend's trust in moments of temptation. You will become a better person for the discipline to do it, and your bond will grow stronger. Trust is powerful, but it can easily be destroyed. Protect that trust with all your might.

5. Speak the truth. In the introduction to Russell Gough's Character Is Destiny, he writes, "For Aristotle, the truest friendship is far more than mere companionship, mutual hobbies, and a common network of acquaintances. Friends in the highest sense of the term are those who make a conscientious effort to take ethics and personal character seriously and inspire each other to be better — in thought, in action, in life."

Obviously, your friend cannot know you if you haven't been honest. An important part of the satisfying closeness you feel is your feeling that you are known, and if you're hiding something, you know you aren't completely known by your friend, and that will prevent you from feeling close.

6. Happily make sacrifices for your comrade. Before Earnest Shackleton made his legendary British expedition on the Endurance, he tried and failed to be the first to reach the South Pole. On that earlier trek, one of his crew was Frank Wild, who became Shackleton's indispensable second-in-command on the Endurance.

On this earlier journey, the four-man crew made it to within two hundred miles of the Pole, but had to turn back. As it was, they barely made it back alive. The trip back was horrendous. They were pushed almost beyond human limits. At one point, Frank Wild was suffering from dysentery and their food supplies were dangerously low. Wild wrote this in his journal:

"Shackleton privately forced upon me his own breakfast biscuit, and would have given me another tonight had I allowed him. I do not suppose that anyone else in the world can thoroughly realize how much generosity and sympathy was shown by this: I do, and by God I shall never forget it. Thousands of pounds would not have bought that one biscuit."

One of the most significant acts of friendship is sacrifice — willing sacrifice, the kind where you happily give up something. Oddly enough, this act gives a sense of meaning to life that nothing else does.

7. The fewer you have, the more powerful the bond. To really develop an extraordinary uniting force with someone, you will spend lots of time with the person. For you to get to know each other, you cannot simply fax your resume. It takes time. And if you are simultaneously trying to nurture four other friendships, you cannot bond as deeply with them. There isn't enough time in the day.

Friendship is different from acquaintanceship. It goes further than merely entertaining each other. Friendship is manifested in action, not just in talk. It is teaming up with someone, not just hanging out with them. It takes time, and the more comrades you have, the less depth you will have with any one of them.

A recent study at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research demonstrates this principle. They found that women with a smaller number of friends were more content with their lives than those with a larger group of friends. Of course. The more friends you have, the more superficial those friendships are by necessity. It's a limitation of time.

If you would like a more profound bond, concentrate on a very few or just one, and forge it into something powerful.

THESE ARE THE SEVEN principles of strong friendships. If you have a true friend, you really have something. It will give your life a profound strength and love and meaningfulness and contentment that you just can't get from any other source.

To create a powerful bond with someone:

1. Work together for a purpose.
2. Believe in your friend.
3. Be loyal.
4. Fulfill their trust.
5. Speak the truth.
6. Happily make sacrifices for your friend.
7. Cultivate very few friends, or only one.

Easing Anxiety With Honesty

2013-01-11T14:12:00.001-08:00

WHEN I WAS A KID, I saw some pencils at a flea market. Nobody was looking so I grabbed some and stuck them in my back pocket. Somebody saw me and said, "Hey that kid just stole some pencils!" I took off running, and a large, scary-looking man chased after me. I ran to my grandmother, who was at the flea market with me.

She straightened it out and I gave back the pencils. I was ashamed. I had suffered fear. And had to live with my grandmother's disappointment for awhile after that. And for what? For some pencils?

If you do something that makes you feel guilty or anxious about getting caught, even if you can justify your actions, you ought to stop doing it. That's a no-brainer. Think about the physical consequences — the disruption of your peace of mind, the extra adrenaline you have to endure flowing around in your bloodstream. It's not worth it. Whatever you're doing that you think is wrong, stop it. Give your nervous system a break.

Anything you do that gives you a sneaky feeling — no matter how small — is a target for your scrutiny. Is it worth it? Or is it another way that greed is making you miserable?

I'm not getting down on you. We all have a greedy streak — it's part of our biological nature. We may not have much choice about whether we feel it, but we do have a choice about how we respond to it.

Is the end-product of that sneaky activity really so great? Does it make you happy? Even if you could become rich and famous with sneaky activities, would you want to endure feeling guilty or afraid of getting caught? Would it be worth it? You know it wouldn't. And if you wouldn't want to endure those unpleasant feelings with such a great payoff, do you really want to endure those feelings with the paltry payoff you'd get for something much smaller? Ponder these questions whenever you consider doing something you don't want to get caught doing.

What if I'd gotten away with stealing the pencils? I'd have had to make sure my mom and grandmother didn't see them. I'd have probably walked around the rest of the day at the flea market feeling nervous. And for what? Some stupid pencils. I already had a pencil. How many pencils does one kid need?

The same principle holds with anything else. Whatever you are greedily trying to get away with (if anything, and if not, good for you), it isn't worth it, especially if you are prone to anxiety. Take it easy on yourself and fly right. You'll feel better. I'm not talking from on high. I'm not talking from the perspective of right and wrong. I can easily conceive of situations where I would fully approve of stealing. But probably not in your circumstances or mine. I'm talking about it from the perspective that you ought to make yourself feel as good as you can, and being sneaky or feeling guilty doesn't feel good.

One common way to be sneaky is deceiving people. Not only does deception cause you extra anxiety, but if someone finds out, you lose their trust. Paul Harvey tells the true story of baggage handlers at an airline who looked inside an animal carrier to find a dead dog. They were afraid they might be blamed, so in a panic, they told the owner that her dog had been sent to the wrong airport and that they would try to retrieve it for her.

They then looked in animal welfare agencies for a live dog that looked like the dead dog. And eventually they found one.

So they put the live dog in the animal carrier and delivered it to the woman, but as soon as she saw it, she said, "That's not my dog! My dog is dead; I was bringing it home for burial."

DREAD AND INTEGRITY

When I was learning to speak to groups, I did something that made me more comfortable. The most important change I made was a greater degree of integrity. Somewhere along the way I realized that what I was dreading most about being in front of an audience was: I was afraid I would lose my integrity. I was trying to get the audience to respect me rather than being myself. I was trying to impress them rather than being myself. That effort to impress caused me to be phony. I lost my integrity. And losing your integrity is painful. It is something that ought to be dreaded…and avoided!

As I became more willing to be myself and stop trying to impress the audience, my dread diminished. When I say "being myself" I really mean "not being something other than myself," because being my honest self doesn't involve doing anything. It really consists of not doing things like trying to get people to like me, or trying to impress people, or trying to prove something, or pretending to have more knowledge than I really do. Those are all doing. Being myself is accomplished by not doing those things.

The lesson for you is: When you feel dread — when you feel anxiety anticipating an event — check to see if you feel you cannot be yourself. And check to see if you are really correct about that. Maybe there is some degree of pretense you could drop. Maybe you could be your honest self and it would work out okay. Maybe there is some way you could do it so that you enjoyed it, so it was something you wanted to do, so you did it in a way you would really like to do it, or so you said what you wanted to say the way you wanted to say it.

To handle the dread and fear, stop suppressing your integrity.

CONGRUENCY EXERCISE

I once listened to an audio program that had a mental exercise on it. You did the exercise with your eyes closed. It was an exercise in "congruency," which is Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) jargon for "integrity," and may actually be a better word for it. Congruency is when all of you is lined up, when no parts of you object to what you're doing. Someone who is not congruent might be, for example, someone who is saying, "I feel fine," but is looking down, looking haggard and worried and shaking his head "no" while he said it. His words and his body language don't match up — they are incongruent.

Anyway, the exercise went like this: I was supposed to remember a few times when I felt some inner conflict. I remembered when someone asked me to go somewhere with them and I agreed, but part of me agreed out of obligation and part of me wished I hadn't said yes. Another time was being nice to someone I actually didn't like. And so on.

During the exercise, I had time to think up these examples, and then the instructions told me to really feel what it felt like to experience that inner conflict. It was a way to get a good impression of what incongruency feels like to me.

Then I was to remember times I felt one hundred percent congruent. I recalled somebody asking me for something and I said yes, and fully meant yes — all parts of me said yes in full agreement. Another time I received a gift I totally loved and said so. Part of the exercise was to really feel what it felt like to feel congruent.

Then I was instructed to compare the two experiences. What did congruency feel like? What did incongruency feel like? And what was the difference?

It was very distinct. In all the incongruent situations, I felt a tense, unpleasant sensation in my middle. In all the congruent experiences, I felt good all over. No part of my body felt any better than any other.

Lewis Andrews, the author of an excellent book called To Thine Own Self Be True, was still young and going through therapist-training, which required he go through therapy himself, and one day while he was talking about a problem, Andrews justified a white lie he planned on telling. The therapist responded, "Do you really want to do this to yourself?" Lewis didn't understand. "Don't you realize," the therapist explained, "that by trying to manipulate somebody else you're only going to hurt yourself."

"Maybe," responded Lewis, "if you believe in some kind of afterlife justice…"

"No, no!" said the therapist, "I'm talking about right now, what you're going to feel today!"

Wrote Lewis, "Lying, if I took the trouble to be aware of it, was really a terrible psychological state. My vision dimmed, my pulse quickened anxiously, and there was a noticeable loss of contact with the outside world, all this in addition to any long-term physical effects of such stress."

He went on, "Indeed, the more I experimented with disciplining my deceitful impulses in the days and months that followed — forsaking the temptation to manipulate other peoples' feelings and stating my real intentions without the usual rationalizations — the more confident and peaceful I began to feel."

The psychology professor, John Skowronski, showed people written reports of a person's behavior. He discovered something interesting about the way we judge each other. Skowronski found that if I made a mistake, for example, all I would need to do is a single intelligent action to dispel your judgment that I was stupid.

But if I do something unethical, in order to dispel your judgment that I was an immoral person, I would have to do three very honorable actions (like being offered a large amount of hush money by a nuclear power plant, and refusing it).

So when you feel anxious about doing something unethical, your anxiety is actually a good response based on reality: It is dangerous to do something immoral. If people find out about it, it could destroy your reputation in their eyes forever.

RESEARCH FACTS

Just in case you are not convinced yet, and feel that a little white lie here and there is okay and fudging a little on your income tax is your duty as a citizen, check out a few research tidbits:

1. Julian Rotter, a researcher at the University of Connecticut, compared the social lives of habitually honest people with those who agreed with statements like, "You have to hide your feelings from others," and "You can't afford to be honest." Rotter discovered that honest people tend to attract trustworthy, truthful, and supportive people into their lives. Less honest people tend to attract disloyal, unreliable, and evasive people into their lives.

2. In a survey of 425 psychologists, family counselors, psychiatrists, and social workers (people who have daily experience dealing with the problems people face), 96% thought that becoming more "open, genuine, and honest" was an essential requirement for mental health.

3. James Pennebaker of Southern Methodist University, in research funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, found that people who habitually withhold information about themselves (especially traumatic events) are more susceptible to contagious diseases than people who are more open.

4. In a study by Bella DePaulo and her colleages at the University of Virginia, they found that people average one or two lies a day. Their motivation most often was to make themselves appear smarter, kinder, or more gregarious — or to try to make things go their way. In other words, the most common reason they lied was to make themselves look good or to manipulate others. Most of the lying was done to strangers:

77% to strangers
48% to acquaintances
46% to mothers
34% to lovers
28% to friends

HONESTY WORKS

Honesty will reduce anxiety and stress in the long run, but the consideration of whether or not to be honest goes beyond the consequences of this particular communication. Do you try to be good? If so, why would you avoid being honest? And if you do selfish, exploitative things, the concern about whether or not to be honest is moot. What you need to do is live your life so you can be honest. Here are some ideas on honesty to help you:

There is a reason why the needle jumps on a lie detector. Lying is stressful.

How can you be honest until you know how you feel and what you truly want? This self-knowledge requires solitude — time away from others, time by yourself to think without the influence of other people.

Timing is important. Sometimes restraining yourself is the best thing. You'll have to decide by taking time to think.

Keeping silent is better than lying in almost all cases.

And some people will use your honesty against you. Silence is the best option for those people.

To someone who has betrayed your confidence before, you can say, "I'd rather not talk about that."

Sometimes you'll pay a price for your honesty. You have to decide whether it's worth it.

Honesty does not mean giving up your very important psychological right to privacy. It doesn't mean you have to reveal everything about yourself to anyone who asks.

Deceitfulness and lying make life stressful and keep you from being close to people.

Most people, at some level, know when you're lying. They won't trust you, and you won't trust yourself.

Lewis Andrews said, "Honest people exude something special from inside that others trust."

Usually, the only people who tolerate deceitfulness for any length of time are deceivers.

The basic level of honesty is "not lying or misleading." The next level, for those with whom you want to be close, is openness. Not lying or misleading is for everyone. Being open is for close relationships.

You have the right to think. Often people try to force you to say something you don't want to say, and under pressure, you lie — almost accidentally. When you feel that pressure, you have the right to say you'll think about it and get back to them.

Dishonesty is a way to manipulate people's feelings and hide your true intentions. Who would want to live that way? Is it fun? Does it make life more enjoyable? Does it help you sleep well at night?

It untangles your life to be honest.

An honest life needs no deceit.

Honesty is necessary to be close.

You can't relax and be yourself if you're pretending and hiding.

In a study by John Gottman, he found in the short term "nice" newlyweds were happier, but in the long term, honest newlyweds were happier.

In a close relationship, honesty can cause conflict, but it's not confusing, and problems can be solved. You can't solve a problem if you don't know what it's about. The heart of a persistent problem is something unsaid. Lack of openness causes confusion. Honesty helps things improve over time.

When you're honest, people can sense it and they trust you.

Whenever I focus on being honest — not pretending, openly saying what I want and feel — I become a better, happier, more relaxed person, and I feel closer to people.

Living an honest life makes it a lot easier to have a good relationship, to feel good about yourself and good about your life, and easier to succeed and feel secure at work.

The commitment to not misrepresent yourself — not try to impress or look good — that commitment to be your honest self lowers stress.

Read more: How to Relax and Be Yourself.

Fasting Is Good For Your Health

2013-01-04T15:26:00.000-08:00

I HAVE FASTED for three days (twice). I have fasted quite a few times for just one day and once for two days. And even though fasting is sometimes difficult, it has improved my mood overall, and the research seems to indicate it improved my health too.

A recent study found that those who fasted one day per month were 40 percent less likely to have clogged arteries. That's a pretty big difference.

Almost always, if something is good for your health, it's also good for your mood, and this is no exception. If you've never tried it, I recommend a simple one-day fast.

Do it on a day off (you may not feel very energetic). Don't eat anything at all from the time you get up in the morning until the following morning. Don't drink anything except water, and drink plenty of water. You will be thirsty. Don't do a lot of strenuous activity. Just take it easy and relax, but keep yourself busy on tasks that don't require a lot of physical energy.

If you normally drink coffee, stop drinking it a few days before your fast so you are over your withdrawals before you begin fasting.

At times, fasting doesn't feel good, but it is surprisingly easy, even for someone like me who usually never even considers skipping a meal. Occasionally throughout a fasting day, you'll feel really hungry. And then it goes away and you get involved in what you're doing and forget about food.

The most amazing thing is how much time you have when you're fasting. A day without food seems twice as long, and not because you're suffering. It's because food preparation and eating the food takes a lot of time.

Anyway, I recommend it. You'll appreciate food more in the days following a fast, you'll be in a better mood, and you'll be healthier.

Peace on Earth, Goodwill Toward Women and Men

2012-12-24T13:14:00.000-08:00

Earnest people throughout history have expressed the goal of attaining peace on earth. Many methods have been proposed and tried, but not many of those ideas have been practical. But in an interview with Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, I heard her say something that made me think of one possible way to make some actual headway toward the goal of "peace on earth."

She said if more people knew about sociopaths, there would be less war in the world.

She was dead serious, and I think she may be right. We could bring about a more peaceful world by making an understanding of sociopaths widespread. Consider these facts:

1. According to the famous Milgram experiments, 65 percent of people follow the orders of an authority.

2. Sociopaths want to win. They seek control. They are excellent manipulators. They don't care who gets hurt. They don't care who lives or dies.

3. They sometimes make it to positions of power, sometimes even becoming the leader of a country. And they do what sociopaths do: They take advantage, they get away with whatever they can, and when they are in a position of strength, they sometimes invade or threaten other countries, causing war.

If more people knew the characteristics of a sociopath, more people would identify them for what they are before they gain too much authority and power. Fewer sociopaths would make it to positions of authority.

Result: Fewer wars.

There would be less horror and misery in the world.

The truth is, even though it is a common belief that "man is a violent species," we are not. But when sociopaths gain positions of supreme authority and start wars, 65 percent will obey authority, and most of the rest will be fooled and manipulated into supporting the cause (or locked up or executed).

The result is war. Most people who actually fight in wars feel terrible about what they experience. They don't want to kill or hurt other human beings. They feel they have to (to save their country, to save the people they love, to stop a dictator from taking over the world, to save their fellow soldiers in the battle, etc.).

But the point is, the only reason sociopaths are able to get away with as much as they do is because most people are so ignorant about sociopaths. Not very many people know about the existence of such a thing as "common, everyday sociopaths." And even if they do, they don't know the easily-identifiable characteristics of a sociopath. They don't know how to spot them.

If you do, you can share your knowledge with others. If you don't, you can learn about it here. Then you can share what you've learned far and wide and in every way you can. And urge everyone you know to help you spread the knowledge.

Ask people, "Did you know there are sociopaths among us?" Ask people of they know what a sociopath is. Ask people, "Did you know one in fifty people is a sociopath?" Ask these questions with people you know and talk about it. Most people don't know, and at the very least, it makes for interesting conversation. Ask people, "Did you know there is no known therapy for sociopaths? And in fact, therapy usually makes them worse because it helps them get better at manipulating people?" Ask people if they know how to spot a sociopath.

Learn about sociopaths and teach the others in your life about it. This will give you a long-range sense of purpose, which will raise your mood. But this simple thing could also change the course of history. You could help bring the cherished dream of humanity closer to reality.

Imagine a Single Celebration that Includes Everybody

2012-12-21T01:38:00.000-08:00

IN THE NORTHERN hemisphere, the summer solstice marks the longest day of the year and on that day until the winter solstice, the days get progressively shorter. The winter solstice is the moment when the days begin to get longer again. Just the reverse is true in the southern hemisphere, but the two solstices themselves occur at exactly the same moment for everyone on earth.

The origin of the word "solstice" is the Latin solstitium from "sol" meaning sun and "-stitium" meaning a stoppage. Observing the sun over time, you can see the sun rising further and further to the south until the winter solstice when it slows and stops and then reverses.

The winter solstice in the northern hemisphere is close to the same time as Christmas, and many of our Christmas traditions originated from the days before Christianity, when the solstice was celebrated. Traditions for celebrating the end of shorter days and the beginning of longer days (winter solstice) have been practiced around the world for many thousands of years.

At Stonehenge on the British Isles, for example, the huge stones are arranged in such a way that they frame the setting sun on the day of winter solstice. The ancient Brits had a tradition of tying apples to the branches of oak trees in the dead of winter to affirm that summer would come again. The Celts put mistletoe on their altars.

The ancient Romans celebrated the winter solstice by giving gifts. And they feasted for a week. Servants traded places with their masters — the masters serving their servants during the feast. They also had a tradition during winter solstice of bringing evergreens indoors.

In Scandinavian countries, the sun disappears in the dead of winter. In the far north, it disappears for as long as 35 days. The ancient people of the far north had a tradition of feasting when the dark days were over and the sun once again shone on the horizon. They celebrated with what they called a Yuletide festival. They feasted in a long hall while a Yule log burned in the fireplace. They thought of mistletoe as sacred. Kissing under mistletoe was a fertility ritual. Holly berries were considered to be the food of the gods.

The solstice celebrations were officially replaced with Christian ceremonies during Roman times as a way of overtaking the ancient traditions, even though Jesus wasn't really born in December. It was a political act. December 25th used to be the solstice with the old calendar. It usually happens on December 21st with the modern calendar.

But the Christian usurping of the celebration was a long time ago. It's water under the bridge and really at this point, who cares? We could start fresh and celebrate the solstice instead of (or in addition to) our other celebrations. We could celebrate the turning of the season. We could celebrate longer and warmer days ahead.

We could keep our celebrations, but change the date, and that way more people could celebrate together. People of different customs could celebrate their customs but also celebrate the solstice with all people.

The solstice has nothing to do with religion, race, or nationality. Every one of us relies on the sun for our warmth, our sunlight, and our food. We rely on the sun for life. The time and date of the solstice can be accurately determined and it occurs at the same moment everywhere on earth.

The solstice might some day become an international holiday. This could be the beginning of something wonderful — a point of unification, a place of agreement, a universal tradition.

You can begin this year by celebrating the solstice in even a small way. Take any of the traditions normally associated with the holiday season and do some part of it on the solstice. Give a gift. Eat a feast. Be kinder to your fellow human beings. Invite people of all faiths to your home to celebrate the end of the longest night and the beginning of longer days. The celebration of the solstice in your own home could actually and concretely work for peace on earth and goodwill toward all women and men.

I wish you a Merry Solstice.

Change Your Feelings by Changing HOW You Think (Rather Than WHAT You Think)

2012-12-16T16:45:00.000-08:00

A BRANCH OF PSYCHOLOGY called neurolinguistic programming has made an interesting and useful discovery: You can change the way you imagine or remember things without changing what you imagine, and it will change your feelings.

For example, if a visual memory makes you sad whenever you think about it, you can make that mental picture smaller and dimmer, and when you do, the memory won’t make you as sad. Since you haven’t changed the content of the memory, you haven’t lost any information. You’ve simply made it less painful.

When you visually remember a pleasant memory, you can make the picture more colorful and the memory will give you even more intense good feelings. You can make your pictures of the future brighter, wider, deeper, or you can bring the images closer. Changes like these will make you feel different — even when you leave the content of the picture the same.

These are general guidelines. You’ll need to experiment for yourself to find out what will work for a particular image. For a few people, making an exciting picture brighter makes the feelings less intense. And for some kinds of pictures, increasing the brightness would cause the feelings to become less intense — for example, a romantic memory.

What is true for visual images also applies to the way you talk to yourself. For example, if you have trouble motivating yourself, try changing the tone of voice you use when you speak to yourself. Some people order themselves around. The voice they use to talk to themselves is harsh and commanding. Listening to yourself being bossy can have the same effect as listening to someone else being bossy: It can make you want to rebel. Change your tone to friendly or seductive, and you might feel more motivated.

When you tell yourself, “I can do it,” fill your internal voice with enthusiasm and back it up with inspiring music. The possibilities are virtually endless.

The important thing to understand is that the way you code your inner world has an impact, and you have quite a bit of control over that coding. You can change it deliberately. When you do, it will change your feelings, which will change your actions, which will change the world around you.

This is a chapter from the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works.

When You've Tried And Failed Again And Again And You Feel Like Giving Up Because You Think Your Goal Can Never Happen, Read This

2012-12-09T02:16:00.000-08:00

PAUL ROKICH is my hero. When Paul was a boy growing up in Utah, he happened to live near an old copper smelter, and the sulfur dioxide that poured out of the refinery had made a desolate wasteland out of what used to be a beautiful forest.

When a young visitor one day looked at this wasteland and saw that there was nothing living there — no animals, no trees, no grass, no bushes, no birds...nothing but fourteen thousand acres of black and barren land that even smelled bad — well, this kid looked at the land and said, “This place is crummy.” Paul knocked him down. He felt insulted. But he looked around him and something happened inside him. He made a decision: Paul Rokich vowed that some day he would bring back the life to this land.

Many years later Paul was in the area, and he went to the smelter office. He asked if they had any plans to bring the trees back. The answer was “No.” He asked if they would let him try to bring the trees back. Again, the answer was “No.” They didn’t want him on their land. He realized he needed to be more knowledgeable before anyone would listen to him, so he went to college to study botany.

At the college he met a professor who was an expert in Utah’s ecology. Unfortunately, this expert told Paul that the wasteland he wanted to bring back was beyond hope. He was told that his goal was foolish because even if he planted trees, and even if they grew, the wind would only blow the seeds forty feet per year, and that’s all you’d get because there weren’t any birds or squirrels to spread the seeds, and the seeds from those trees would need another thirty years before they started producing seeds of their own. Therefore, it would take approximately twenty thousand years to revegetate that six-square-mile piece of earth. His teachers told him it would be a waste of his life to try to do it. It just couldn’t be done.

So he tried to go on with his life. He got a job operating heavy equipment, got married, and had some kids. But his dream would not die. He kept studying up on the subject, and he kept thinking about it. And then one night he got up and took some action. He did what he could with what he had. This was an important turning point. As Samuel Johnson wrote, “It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote. In the same manner, present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges.” Paul stopped busying his mind in extensive ranges and looked at what opportunities for attainable good were right in front of him. Under the cover of darkness, he sneaked out into the wasteland with a backpack full of seedlings and started planting. For seven hours he planted seedlings. He did it again a week later.

And every week, he made his secret journey into the wasteland and planted trees and shrubs and grass. But most of it died.

For fifteen years he did this. When a whole valley of his fir seedlings burned to the ground because of a careless sheep-herder, Paul broke down and wept. Then he got up and kept planting.

Freezing winds and blistering heat, landslides and floods and fires destroyed his work time and time again. But he kept planting. One night he found a highway crew had come and taken tons of dirt for a road grade, and all the plants he had painstakingly planted in that area were gone. But he just kept planting.

Week after week, year after year he kept at it, against the opinion of the authorities, against the trespassing laws, against the devastation of road crews, against the wind and rain and heat...even against plain common sense. He just kept planting.

Slowly, very slowly, things began to take root. Then gophers appeared. Then rabbits. Then porcupines.

The old copper smelter eventually gave him permission, and later, as times were changing and there was political pressure to clean up the environment, the company actually hired Paul to do what he was already doing, and they provided him with machinery and crews to work with. Progress accelerated. Now the place is fourteen thousand acres of trees and grass and bushes, rich with elk and eagles, and Paul Rokich has received almost every environmental award Utah has.

He says, “I thought that if I got this started, when I was dead and gone people would come and see it. I never thought I’d live to see it myself!”

It took him until his hair turned white, but he managed to keep that impossible vow he made to himself as a child.

What was it you wanted to do that you thought was impossible? Paul’s story sure gives a perspective on things, doesn’t it?

The way you get something accomplished in this world is to just keep planting. Just keep working. Just keep plugging away at it one day at a time for a long time, no matter who criticizes you, no matter how long it takes, no matter how many times you fall. Get back up again. And just keep planting.

This is a chapter from the book, Self-Help Stuff That Works.

Good Mood Fundamentals

2012-11-27T23:58:00.000-08:00

I POSED MYSELF the question: "Of all the things I know that are practical and really help improve my mood and make me more effective in the world, what principles are the most solid and effective? If I could only apply three main principles, which ones would I apply? Which ones are the most reliable?" Here's what I came up with:

1. Purpose Focus
Constantly bring your attention back to your purpose. At any given time, be clear what your purpose is for the task you are engaged in. Know what you are aiming at. As much as possible, make your purposes something you want rather than something you feel you should do. And focus your attention on what you want rather than what you don't want. Spend time thinking and planning about your purpose. And spend a lot of time working toward that purpose.

2. Anti-Negativity
Aggressively criticize your negative thoughts. Don't try to be positive; try to be accurate. It is easier to do this on paper than in your head for many reasons. Use the 22 virus definitions from the antivirus for your mind to give you an idea of how to criticize your thoughts. But you don't really need anything other than the will to criticize your own negativity. Find mistakes in your pessimistic thoughts. Dig into your negative assumptions and find the errors. This can and will make a huge difference in your mood over time.

3. Self-Coaching
Talk to yourself in a way that creates motivation and a strong determination to take intelligent action. Deliberately take over your stream of thought. Use mottos and slogans. Practice thinking things; use repetition to make the new thoughts familiar and comfortable and natural. Talk to yourself in a way that creates or intensifies your motivation.

You'll see these three principles woven throughout the pages of MoodRaiser.com. Whenever I find something that really works, it almost always involves one of these elements. There are other things that help, of course, but I've found it extremely useful to have chopped it down into the most simple and basic elements, and these are the ones I've found to be the most reliably helpful, applied in an almost unlimited number of ways.

If you already know the principles and apply them, then use MoodRaiser.com to boost your conviction and motivation to keep on doing what you already know works. If you know the material but don't apply it, then let this site motivate you to get to work. And if you come across something new here, that's great too. But whatever you do in your life, keep to the basics — the simple, the practical, and the effective. Here's why.

How to Have a Good Time With Your Family for the Holidays Even if Some of Them Drive You Crazy

2012-11-21T01:44:00.000-08:00

ONE VERY good way of dealing with a predictably stressful situation is to prepare beforehand to respond differently than you normally do.

In an article in the New York Times about how to handle holiday family stress, the author gives this example:

Dr. Bulik told the story of a patient whose mother scolded her for not eating her homemade cookies. “You don’t like my cookies?” she asked. As a result, the daughter relented and took a cookie. But when she then reached for a second, her mother scolded her again. “Do you really think you need another one?” she asked her.

It's the kind of stuff that drives you crazy at the holidays, right? But at the end of the article, there is a good example of doing something about it, preparing ahead of time:

Betsy, a high school teacher in Boston, said she had longstanding issues with her mother-in-law, some of which began after she underwent a Caesarean section. After the delivery, her mother-in-law, a slim woman, brought her only light lunches of lettuce salad, even though she was famished after nursing her baby.

Betsy said her cousin also complained of holiday meal tension with her own family, so the two devised a strategy to help each other cope. Each made bingo cards, but instead of numbers, the squares were filled in with some of the negative phrases they expected to hear during the meal, like “That outfit is interesting” or “Your children won’t sit still.” As comments were made at the separate family celebrations, each woman would mark her card.

“Whoever fills up a bingo row first,” Betsy said, “sneaks off to call the other and say, ‘Bingo!’”

If you normally find it stressful to hang out with certain members of your family, try something new.

Read more about how to come up with new responses: Everyday Creativity

Bringing Extended Family Relationships Closer

2012-11-21T01:43:00.000-08:00

IN TIMES PAST, and even now in some parts of the world, each member of a family had their fate tied up with the other members of the family. They all had to pull together or the survival of all of them was in danger. They shared a purpose. They all shared a very concrete, in-your-face-from-dawn-to-dusk purpose: Survival. And they shared the purpose with each other but not with "outsiders" because the family was husband, wife and kids, and maybe also parents of husband or wife. Sometimes siblings. They all lived together and relied on each other and so shared the same fate.

There were things to do. Urgent, necessary things. And of course, while human beings are accomplishing necessary things, they will also talk to each other and form relationships. And unified, coordinated effort can have a bonding affect between people.

This historical reality is where we get our reverence for "family." Why is family so sacred? The reverence we have for family is a remnant from the past when conditions were different. The realities have changed, but our underlying belief system hasn't been updated.

You'll often see two people who survived an ordeal or fought in a war or even went through boot camp together forty years ago still treat each other like good friends. For a short time they shared a real purpose, and that experience is so rare in our modern world, it shines like a beacon through the years, brighter and clearer than all the comparatively superficial relationships those people have had in the last forty years.

Purpose is essential. It is the core of a relationship. Without it, there is no real bond. There may be superficial interaction, there may be social intercourse, there may be mutual entertainment. But that is nowhere near a real relationship — a relationship based on, centered around, and springing from a shared purpose.

Times have changed. Most families don't have to pull together to survive. In fact, most families couldn't think of a unifying purpose if they had to. I don't mean "carrying on the family name." That's not a real purpose. A purpose is something you have to strive for. It isn't something that happens as a matter of course. These days, the purposes of the individual members of families tend to be diverse and unrelated. Their purposes are unrelated.

But a real relationship with someone means your purposes are related.

Politicians and preachers are always complaining gravely about the "disintegration of the family" in America. Probably the greatest cause is our affluence, which hardly seems like something to whine about. There are no necessities that bind us with our blood relations — no urgent, concrete things that need to be accomplished together. That's what relationships are made of at the root, and so we don't really have relationships with our relatives. We go through the motions of relating, but it is empty. We can tell there's something wrong with it, but can't quite put our finger on it.

During the Great Depression, many families were put back into a survival situation, and they bonded closely. Their fates were tied together.

When a group of people put out effort for the day and it all adds together to make mutual survival, you can eat dinner together and socialize and there will be relationships, because your purposes are related. But when you just eat together without the tied-together purpose, something is missing. Something is lacking: No joined effort toward a shared purpose. What's missing is the real basis of true relationship.

Often in today's world, people sometimes feel closer to the people they work with than they do their own spouses. They share purpose with their workmates. If spouses aren't working together to accomplish a shared goal they both feel is important, they don't really have much of a relationship, and they usually don't know what's missing. The relationship itself (its health, its well-being) cannot be the shared purpose, because its health and well-being depend on a purpose outside the relationship.

So if you want to feel closer to the people in your family, find or create important purposes you hold in common with them, and make those purposes the central focus of your relationships.

Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation White Hot

2012-11-18T14:12:00.002-08:00

Feeling motivated is an especially good mood. When you feel upbeat, energetic and fully alive because you're so motivated, it is one of the best moods you can experience.

Do you think motivation is either something you have or you don't? Did you know you can do things that will cultivate your own motivation? Find out how in my new book, Cultivating Fire.

While it's true that sometimes you are naturally motivated, especially immediately after deciding on a goal, it is also true that you can take actions that nourish and encourage a feeling of motivation — or you can let the feeling of motivation do what it naturally does most of the time: fade away.

Motivation is a tremendous power. A highly motivated person can accomplish seemingly impossible things. In this tiny book, you will learn how to stoke your inner fire — how to get and keep your motivation burning white hot. This not only makes you more capable of accomplishment, but it makes life more fun.

Would you like to see what you are really capable of? Intense motivation can unleash it.

How to Reduce Suffering and Feel Good More Often

2012-11-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

BUDDHISM EMPHASIZES non-attachment as a "way of liberation." Non-attachment is a way to rid your life of unnecessary unhappiness. It's a way to become happier. And it works. But how?

To see how it works, let's first look at how attachment creates moments of unhappiness that are completely unnecessary. The main source of the unhappiness is the ideas we hold. Human beings get attached to ideas — ideas about who they are, what's the best way to live, ideas about what other people should be like, and so on — and our attachment to those ideas causes most of our day-to-day suffering.

I know it seems like the circumstances and reality cause your suffering, and it seems that other people really should act differently, and if they did we wouldn't suffer as much. But it is our ideas about reality that causes the suffering, not the reality itself.

When you change your ideas about something, it changes the way you feel about it.

Of course, I'm not talking about physical pain. If someone hits you, it is the punch that causes the pain. But suffering or unhappiness can be caused by your own thoughts about the person who hit you long after the pain from the punch has gone away. So the method I am about to explain may not be very effective for handling physical pain. But it does work with unhappiness and anxiety. And it works very, very well.

Buddhism has been around for a long time, but that doesn't make it worth anything. A lot of stuff that's been handed down for thousands of years is worthless nonsense. Just because something is ancient doesn't make it automatically good or bad.

But once in awhile some ancient knowledge turns out to be right on the mark, and this is one of those. If you could become non-attached to the ideas in your head, you'd be blissfully happy just sitting there doing nothing more than breathing. No kidding.

Of course that's not easy, and that's why not many of us have been able to do it. But the better you are at unattaching yourself from an idea, the happier and less stressed you will be. Gains in this area make a big difference.

Those people spending years meditating in Zen monasteries for ten hours a day are doing what? They're learning to catch themselves attaching to an idea and they are learning to detach. That's it. That's all they're doing. Do it enough and you're enlightened.

But you can practice it without sitting down and crossing your legs. You can do it anytime during the day. And the best time to do it (the time when it will make the most difference to your happiness) is when you're experiencing some form of stress.

You can also do it when you meditate. As you begin repeating your mantra or paying attention to your breath, your mind will wander. Your mind will drift to another subject, and you won't want to come back to the "boring" task of thinking a mantra. This is why meditation is good practice in non-attachment, because to do something boring, you have to become unattached to the ideas about boredom, suffering, discomfort, entertainment, what's interesting, and so on.

When you're meditating and you get lost in a little imaginary conversation with someone, and then you realize you have stopped focusing on your mantra, you don't want to stop imagining this conversation right in the middle of it. You're attached to the conversation. But you pull your attention away from it (detach) and return to your mantra. Over and over again.

You do the same thing with your beliefs every day. You are attached — you cling with intensity — to the ideas you hold. And you don't want to let go of them. And so you hang on, and you suffer.

As a matter of fact, all you have to do is pay attention when you feel stress. At the moment of stress, there is a 99.9% chance you are clinging to an idea. Ask yourself, What idea am I clinging to?

Think about it. There is one. If you are stressed, there is an idea you are holding onto.

Then ask yourself, Is it worth the stress? Is it worth the stress to hang on to the idea? About 80% of the time, it won't be, and you can let the idea go. I don't mean try to forget the idea. I mean just don't cling to it. It's just an idea.

For example, I went for a hike today. I injured both my knees a few months ago, and I have been slowly rehabilitating them. I miss running hard. I miss that great feeling afterwards. So I'm in a hurry to heal up. The problem is, healing doesn't speed up just because I'm in a hurry.

So as I was hiking, I was pushing myself out of impatience, and it hurt. But I didn't want to go slow, so I kept pushing myself. Then it occurred to me I was feeling stress. I felt impatient and frustrated.

So I asked myself the question, What idea am I clinging to? The answer was obvious: I want to heal as soon as possible.

Next question: Is it worth the stress? In this case (as in most cases) no it wasn't. I doubt if it was helping me heal faster anyway. And it was not enjoyable. Here I was walking, more mobile than I've been in a long time, and I wasn't enjoying it. I was pushing myself.

So I said to myself, Okay, that's it. Even if this did heal me up a little faster, it's not worth it. I let it go. My frustration went away. And I slowed down.

I didn't have to slow down much before the pain in my knees went away, and I had an enjoyable hike after that. I'm sure it did me good, and now that I've become somewhat detached from my idea about hurrying my healing, it's easier to consider the possibility that pushing myself might actually slow my healing. I don't know if that's true, but I can see now it's quite possibly true, and it isn't an idea I had been able to consider when I was attached to the "heal fast" idea.

My suffering, my frustration, had been caused by an idea. I assumed it was caused by the objective conditions. I took for granted that my frustration was caused by the injury and the damper that injury put on my mobility. But my unhappiness was actually caused by my attachment to the idea that I must heal up faster than I was healing.

Here's a verse from the Dhammapada (a book of sayings usually attributed to Buddha):

The craving of a person who lives heedlessly
Grows like a maluva creeper.
He moves from beyond to beyond,
Like a monkey, in a forest, wishing for fruit.

Whomsoever in the world
This childish entangled craving overcomes,
His sorrows grow,
Like birana grass, well rained upon.

But whosoever in the world
Overcomes this childish craving, hard to get beyond,
From him, sorrows fall away,
Like drops of water from a lotus leaf.

This is poetry, and it is obviously Eastern, but it says something important: Greed makes people unhappy. Craving makes people unhappy. Greed and craving are simply the process of holding onto ideas. And clinging to ideas causes sorrow and unhappiness. You realize, of course, that you do this, right? All of us do it.

Once in awhile something happens to some people and they get a chance to realize this great truth. Some people get it when they are diagnosed with cancer. Or a parent dies.

In the book, Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea, Steven Callahan wrote with great poignancy on this truth. Callahan was sailing across the Atlantic alone when his boat struck something and sank. He was set adrift on a rubber life raft for seventy-six days of difficult struggle.

In a calm moment between storms and shark attacks, he gets the chance to drink some water, which he rations very carefully because he doesn't have very much. In these moments of peace, he wrote,

"deprivation seems a strange sort of gift. I find food in a couple hours of fishing each day, and I seek shelter in a rubber tent. How unnecessarily complicated my past life seems. For the first time, I clearly see a vast difference between human needs and human wants. Before this voyage, I always had what I needed — food, shelter, clothing, and companionship — yet I was often dissatisfied when I didn't get everything I wanted, when people didn't meet my expectations, when a goal was thwarted, or when I couldn't acquire some material goody. My plight has given me a strange kind of wealth, the most important kind. I value each moment that is not spent in pain, desperation, hunger, thirst, or loneliness."

This is wisdom. And pretty much everyone knows it. But our biology drives us to pursue acquisition anyway.

When Thor Hyradal (author of Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific in a Raft) was young, he went to live with nature on an island in the South Pacific, just him and his girlfriend. On the little boat that took them to a remote island, the captain of the boat told Hyradal about the islanders and their lust for material goodies: "It's all crazy, but they want it like everybody else. I detest our own civilization; that's why I'm here. Yet I spread it from island to island. They want it, once they have a taste of it…"

The captain seemed exasperated. "Why do they want sewing-machines and tricycles," he exclaimed, "or underclothing and canned salmon? They don't need any of it…The needs increase. The expenditure. Then they have to work although they hate it. To earn money they don't need."

The native peoples had lived a kind of life many of us yearn for. They lived in beautiful surroundings. They had an abundance of natural sources of food. They had to spend very little of their time "working" for a living. And as long as the temptations of civilization weren't available, they were happy.

But then they saw things they wanted. The wanting created their unhappiness.

avoid avoiding

I told all this once to a friend of mine, Richard, and he had a question: "When I ask the second question, Is it worth the stress? and the answer is no, then what? My mind will have nowhere to go."

That's a good question because when you discover yourself clinging to an idea and you know it's causing you stress, you won't want to cling to the idea any more. So far so good, but if you try to avoid thinking about something, that thought will come up more often than if you don't try to resist thinking about it. There are a lot of experiments showing this to be the case.

The more you try to suppress a thought, the more obsessional the thought becomes. Trying to avoid it makes it impossible to get away from.

So my answer to Richard was: "Get your mind interested in something else. Your mind is in some ways like a little kid. Have you ever seen what parents do when little Johnny wants to chew on the tablecloth?"

"Yes," he said, "They hand him a toy or do something that puts his attention on something else."

"Right. And if what they divert his attention to captures his interest, he forgets all about the tablecloth. We haven't changed much since we were kids. The same thing works now."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, instead of grabbing the tablecloth out of your mouth, so to speak, and having your mind throw a fit, hand it a toy: Tag a slogan onto the end of it."

"Like what?" asked Richard, now looking pensive, "Are some better for this than others?"

"Yes. Slogans that put your mind on a purpose are best. Stay on track, for example. Or a good question: What is my goal here? Or simply state your purpose and start getting to work on it"

In other words, do not try. Do not use force. Don't try to force the idea you've been clinging to out of your mind, or try to "let it go."

Force itself is a form of clinging, and just causes more stress.

One of the things you learn when you're meditating is that the mind concentrates best when you do not try. Researchers using biofeedback equipment to train people to lower their blood pressure find that the only people who can't do it are those who try really hard.

Your mind works best relaxed. So you repeat your mantra, and you will find your mind drifts. When you notice it, you gently bring your mind back to repeating the mantra.

If you use effort, your mind will wander even more. You cannot concentrate by using strong effort.

Now bring the ability you've learned in meditation to the situation that's causing you stress.

When you have something you're clinging to and it's causing you stress, use your purpose as a kind of mantra. Keep gently bringing your mind back to your purpose. When you find it wanders, bring it back again. And again, and again. But each time without any force or effort.

It is a subtle skill, but you will learn it with practice. If you don't learn it fast enough, do not try to force yourself to learn it faster, because that'll take you further from it.

There is a phenomenon in chemistry called dilatancy. It occurs when certain kinds of fluids react to pressure. The more pressure you put on the liquid, the more it solidifies. In other words, you can easily stir it slowly, but when you try to stir it quickly, it becomes very difficult to stir at all.

Some things in life work like that. The harder you push, the less you gain. Here we have one of those. When you try not to think of something, you will think of it all the more. But when you don't worry about it and get involved in something else, your mind lets go of what it was thinking about easily.

accomplishment

The question always comes up: Won't the practice of non-attachment prevent you from accomplishing your goals? This is an important question. It is often pointed out by successful people that they were "driven" to succeed, that they had a burning desire, that the goal had become a necessity. They are obviously describing a solid attachment to an idea: I must succeed.

While someone can surely accomplish something with attachment, it is not necessary, and it's a rather stressful way of going about it. Listen to what Gandhi said about this. He was a man who knew something about accomplishment. He accomplished what no one thought was possible. He said,

"He who is ever brooding over the result, often loses nerve in the performance of duty. He becomes impatient and then gives vent to anger and begins to do unworthy things; he jumps from action to action, never remaining faithful to any. He who broods over results is like a man given to the objects of the senses; he is ever distracted, he says good-bye to all scruples, everything is right in his estimation and he therefore resorts to means fair and foul to attain his end."

Gandhi is saying that not only does a lack of clinging not hinder accomplishment, it actually makes you more effective! And less likely to do something you'll regret later.

Looking back at the example of my knee pain, my attachment to healing caused impatience and probably slowed down my rehabilitation efforts — thus making my efforts at healing less effective.

"Brooding over results" is a form of "clinging to the idea" (the idea that I need this to turn out well). And clinging like that causes unhappiness.

Worse still, the clinging doesn't even improve your chances of success. You can create a goal for no other reason than because having a game to play is more enjoyable than having no game, and you can pursue that goal, calmly and happily through delays and setbacks and failures.

And your calm, steadfast doggedness will help you make more progress toward your goal than intense feelings of frustration and defeatism when delays and setbacks and failures come your way.

So the answer to the question is: No, this method will not keep you from accomplishing your goals. In fact, it will make you more able to accomplish them.

Now let me summarize: When you feel stress, find out what idea you're clinging to and ask yourself if it's worth the stress. If it isn't, let the idea go. Do not force it out of your mind or try to not think about it. Instead, get your mind thinking about something else.

By becoming less stressed in this way you will be more effective in accomplishing your goals, and you will suffer less and feel good more often.

Make Mundane Tasks More Enjoyable

2012-11-09T17:05:00.000-08:00

BOREDOM MIGHT seem like a minor problem, but it is fairly widespread and a significant source of problems. Boredom is a low, debilitating state somewhat similar to depression. And because it is negative and unpleasant, it is probably not good for health or relationships.

Common responses to boredom often cause people to do all manner of stupid, self-defeating, counterproductive things. Making boring tasks less boring is a worthy goal.

Most people in most situations don't have to be stuck feeling bored, even if they are doing things they find boring. There are quite a few things a person can try to make their tasks more enjoyable. This is my list of things I've found effective:

1. Make the task more challenging. Sometimes I can simply speed up, and it makes the task more challenging (and takes less time). You can't do this with all things, but it's great for the kind of physical tasks that don't require careful movements.

Moving more quickly is just one possible way of increasing the challenge. Doing a better job, or doing the task more efficiently (less wasted movement, more organized), or listening to a lecture on CD while working — all of these can add a more challenging element to a dull task.

2. Use a comparison reframe. The human mind naturally and quite automatically compares our circumstances to something else — usually something better. In other words, "This task is boring compared to going out to dinner with my spouse or watching a great movie." Which is true.

But it is ALSO true that this task is really FUN compared to starving to death, running for your life in terror, or dying of some horrible disease.

Yes, you may be saying, that's certainly true, but...

And I say, "But nothing. It is true. And it is equally valid (and more justifiable) to compare your task to something much worse than to compare it with something better. And when you do, instantly the task is less irksome.

You can make a comparision reframe any time you wish, and it always works, never wears out, and (unfortunately) never lasts for long. But then again, a good meal doesn't last long either and that never stopped us from eating!

3. Make a game out of your task. Set up some kind of target. For example, let's say you're grocery shopping, which normally you find boring. This time, however, you make a game out of finding bargains. You try to get everything on your shopping list while at the same time trying to beat your record of saving money.

At the bottom of the receipt, let's say it says, "You saved $29.50." That's your best record so far. Your game is to try to beat that record. Automatically a task is less boring when it has become a game.

There is nothing inherently fascinating about running back and forth or putting a ball into a circular piece of metal. But add some rules and goals, and basketball can be very fun and not at all boring. Why? Because those rules and goals make it a game. Set some goals and boundaries for your task and see if you can make it into a game.

4. Have a strong purpose in life. With a clear, important purpose, everything in your life is less boring, including what most people consider boring chores.

When you feel you are going somewhere, and when you feel your goal is important, it casts a new and vibrant feel onto a lot more moments of your life.

You may already have an important mission but have forgotten it, or maybe you have just not thought about it in awhile. It is very common to get bogged down in (boring) details after pursuing a goal for awhile. The significance of the goal is lost in the day-to-day effort to accomplish the many steps that need to be accomplished, as well as all the other mundane but necessary tasks of maintenance and survival.

Fairly often, it is important to step back and remember what you're doing and WHY. Remember its importance. It makes a difference.

And if you don't feel you have an important purpose, finding one should now become your most important purpose, and you should pursue it with commitment. It will transform the quality of your life. No kidding.

5. Recognize your choice in the matter. Almost everything you do is actually optional. And yet almost everything you do FEELS like something you HAVE to do. And there is a huge difference emotionally between doing the exact same thing, but knowing you WANT to do it, versus feeling you HAVE to do it.

But you and the rest of our culture have done a very good job of convincing you of all the things you HAVE to have, do, or be. Yet almost none of them are really a MUST.

On the other hand, most of them are something you really would CHOOSE to do if you had to choose them over again. For example, I feel like I "have to" exercise. But I really don't. That one is pretty obvious. But I also feel like I have to own a car, so I have to maintain the car and pay the insurance, etc.

But I really don't HAVE TO have a car. I really don't. And neither do you.

However, I really WANT to have a car, and while I am thinking of it this way, the maintenance on the car doesn't seem quite so distasteful and I feel less grumbly about doing it.

This one is not a cure-all, but it helps, and it is the truth.

6. Meditate every day. Meditation is a mental-training exercise that has been associated with some religions, but the exercise itself is not religious and needs no religious associations to do it perfectly.

An enormous amount of research has been done on meditation and it is, without a doubt, one of the best things you can do for your health and sense of well-being.

But for our purposes here, it is something that can make your everyday boring tasks significantly less boring. For one thing, it calms the inner agitation, the inner feeling of impatience that is at the heart of the experience of boredom.

Another important side-effect of meditation is the simple contrast between meditation and normal everyday boring tasks. What is normally considered a boring task is much more interesting than the unbelievably boring task of sitting there with your eyes closed repeating a single word over and over. The contrast between the two is vivid. After meditating, even very boring tasks are not boring at all.

But you also get a kind of psychological training when you meditate — the process trains you to find even this ultimate boring task endlessly fascinating and challenging. And that training spills over into the rest of your life.

THOSE ARE MY top five suggestions. I also suggest you choose the one that most appeals to you at the moment and really give it a good try.