MoodRaiser.com

Using Meditation to Improve Your Marriage

2012-01-27T18:17:00.000-08:00

DURING A CONVERSATION with your spouse, when your heartrate rises over 100 beats per minute, you are no longer reasonable. After decades of experiments with couples, this is one of the conclusions of John Gottman, a researcher at the University of Washington.

I'm sure you've already discovered that the more upset you are, the less reasonable you are. That is, you hold onto your position more firmly and more rigidly, and you are less open to information or other points of view. Your position becomes more and more absolute and one-sided the more upset you get.

But 100 beats per minute is not very high. I invite you to check your heart rate during the next argument with your spouse. I have done this and was surprised to discover that when I felt only a little upset my heart rate was 120 beats per minute!

Now of course if you continue trying to "discuss matters" with your spouse while being unreasonable, it is very difficult to resolve anything. An escalation of the anger is a more likely result, leading to hurt feelings, a drop in affection, and so on.

That's where meditation can really make a difference. Experiments have shown that people who meditate regularly don't get as upset during arguments and get over it more quickly. Specifically, their heart rate doesn't rise as high and returns to normal more quickly. That means they don't spend as much time in the "unreasonable zone."

That means during disagreements with their spouses, they would spend less time saying things they'll regret later and there will be less hard feelings between them. And that is good for their marraige and good for their mood.

You don't have to meditate very long to see a change. If you're interested in trying the experiment yourself, here's how to meditate: Gently Returning.

HOW to Relax and Be Yourself

2012-01-22T01:12:00.000-08:00

IN LEWIS ANDREWS' excellent book, To Thine Own Self Be True, he says, "To the extent we compromise our integrity to make an attractive image of ourselves, we lose contact with our natural enthusiasm. We become contrived, artificial… bored."

I thought that was rather interesting and then I went on about my business.

But one day I realized how it works. Trying to make an attractive image is not as unusual or rare as I thought. We do it a lot. People expect you to be something in particular, and you expect yourself to act a certain way also — often. The trouble with that is: It leaves you with no flexibility, no freedom, and thus no enthusiasm for living.

People used to comment on my attitude — I was so cheerful and full of life so often. After my first book was published, people began to expect me to be in a great mood all the time. After all, I wrote a book on how to improve your attitude.

I didn't want to disappoint them. I wanted them to think well of me and my book. I wanted to prove the stuff was good. But every moment I spent trying to live up to an image ruined my attitude. It sapped my enthusiasm. It was stressful and it made me resentful of those people for their unrealistic expectations of me. That's when Andrew's meaning hit home. When you try to live up to an image, he said, it kills your natural enthusiasm for living.

After I realized that, I deliberately started doing what I wanted, and had the determination to make sure I didn't do anything to live up to someone else's expectations. And you know what? I was in a great mood. That very day, for the first time in a long time, someone commented on my great attitude.

Opera singer Rise Stevens had a lot of poise and confidence on stage, but she wasn't comfortable hanging around with others. "My discomfort came from trying to be something I was not," she said, "a star in the drawing room as well as on stage. If a clever person made a joke, I tried to top it — and failed. I pretended to be familiar with subjects I knew nothing of…"

But then she had a personal revelation. She says, "I realized that I simply wasn't a wit or an intellectual and that I could succeed only as myself. I began listening and asking questions at parties instead of trying to impress the guests. When I spoke, I tried to contribute, not to shine. Almost at once I started feeling new warmth in my social contacts. They liked the real me better."

Whenever you feel yourself harden into a fixed persona, break out! Whenever you lack natural enthusiasm for living, find out where you're trying to live up to someone's expectation (including your own) and break out of it. Start creating your life again right from that point, as an artist would take down a painted canvas and put up a new blank one.

The price you'll pay is that you will, in fact, disappoint people more often. And you aways have the choice: Live up to someone's expectations or have a natural enthusiasm for living. Choose one and then the other for awhile, just to get a feel for the difference in results. Eventually you'll settle on freeing yourself from trying to live up to an image and you'll relax and be yourself.

Don't try to live up to an image.

Calm Relationships Are Good For Your Mood

2012-01-15T15:18:00.000-08:00

EMPATHY FOR OTHERS requires a minimum level of calm in yourself. To take an extreme example, if you are hanging off the top ledge of a fifty-story building and someone starts telling you their problems, you don't have much empathy, do you? And in a more mundane situations, when you're scared or upset or simply stressed out, your empathy for others isn't as high as it would be if you were relaxed.

And it is true in the other direction too: When you are calmer than you usually are, your empathy for others is higher than normal.

And empathy is a fundamental element in creating and maintaining great relationships. Empathy is what allows you to really connect with people. Empathy is being able to feel how another person feels, to share the experience with them, to see the world through their eyes. It is the most important state of mind you can cultivate in yourself for the pursuit of closeness.

And having a calm body and mind really helps. Experiments have shown this to be the case, and your everyday experience confirms it.

The surest way to calm your body is with what Herbert Benson called the relaxation response, a physical response you can create in yourself very easily. When you hold one word or phrase in your mind for a period of time, you become calmer — and that greater calm lasts for several hours afterward. Here how to produce the relaxation response:

1. Choose one word or phrase to hold in mind.

2. Decide ahead of time how long you will go. Ten minutes is a good length of time. Twenty minutes is best.

3. Get in a quiet place and sit down. Don't lie down. Close your eyes and think the word or phrase. Just hold it gently in your mind. It doesn't matter if you have other thoughts.

4. Your mind will wander away. After awhile, you'll realize you aren't holding your word or phrase in your mind at all any more. When you notice this, simply return to thinking your word or phrase.

5. When your time is up, open your eyes.

Don't do this with a forcing effort. For a few minutes, let go of your planning, your worries, your ideas, or the conversations you might have had or will be having. The relaxation response is a refuge — an island of peace in an ocean of stressful thoughts.

Your increased calm gives you more empathy for people, which changes the way you interact, which improves your connections with people, which improves your health.

All you need to do is sit quietly and hold a simple word or phrase in your mind with your eyes closed for twenty minutes.

Something really surprising happens when you do this simple exercise. The simplicity of your thoughts somehow calms your mind and body. The physical changes are dramatic. Blood pressure drops. Stress hormone levels drop. Your heart slows down. Muscle tension fades away. And some of these effects last for many hours.

Try it. It is incredibly boring sometimes, but ironically, that might be what is so wonderful about it. Just like excitement and fear are almost the same thing, depending on your acceptance or rejection of what's happening, boredom and peace are almost the same thing, depending on your acceptance or rejection of what's happening.

Think of a feeling of calmness as one end of a sliding scale. Calm is on one end; agitation is on the other. Or to put it more extremely: We're talking about a sliding scale with deep serenity on one end and hysterical freakout at the other.

The main thing to remember is that agitation is the malady. Calm is the remedy.

The more agitated you are, the more difficult it is for other people to have a good relationship with you. When we say someone has a "bad attitude," we are just referring to some form of agitation. Stress is agitation. Upset is agitation. Irritable is agitation. Worry is agitation. Anger is agitation. Impatience and intolerance are agitation. When you see it this way, you can easily see why calmness is so vitally important.

When you want to create better relationships, calmness is the most important attribute you can cultivate in yourself. Calmness is the gateway to love, kindness, and affection. Calmness enhances relationships.

You're a better listener when you're calm. When you can listen calmly, thoughtfully, intently, the person really gets heard.

And you're a better speaker when you're calm. When you feel relaxed and secure, it's easier to let your guard down. It's easier to know what you're feeling and easier to say what you're feeling.

Calmness supports sanity (good listening, thoughtful responses to events, sound decisions, etc.).

Agitation does not support sanity.

One thing is sure: The calmness you can cultivate will enhance your relationships.

So think about this next time you want to feel better or be in a better mood. One of the most important influencing factors on your mood is how good your relationships are. In other words, how close you feel with the important people in your life.

If you want to be in a better mood, get closer to people. And the first place to start is to feel calmer and more relaxed. The relaxation response can get you there quickly and reliably.

Herbert Benson wrote an excellent book about how to become more relaxed: The Relaxation Response. I recommend it.

Meaningful Moodraiser

2012-01-05T16:01:00.000-08:00

When something happens and you have a negative reaction, it is because of what you think the event means.

If someone gives you a dirty look, you might feel sad because you think it means they don’t like you any more. But what you think it means is only one possibility. The meaning of the event occurred to you automatically, and it's not necessarily the best thing you could come up with if you really thought about it.

What else could it mean?

That's the key question. Ask yourself, and keep asking, "What else could it mean?" Think of some alternatives and often it will change the way you feel.

When you are upset and you want to feel less upset, this is a great question to ask yourself. Ellen Langer, the researcher and author of Mindfulness, says a key to mindfulness is to question old mindsets. You have thought in certain ways for a long time and it has produced a kind of mindlessness.

To question those ways of thinking opens you up to new possibilities. The question, “What else could it mean?” can help.

When someone is diagnosed with a malignant tumor, says Langer, some people immediately sink into depression because they have the mindset that cancer is powerful and they are helpless to stop it.

But that mindset is not the only possible way to think about cancer, it is certainly not the best one, and it isn’t the most accurate one, either.

Ask yourself often, especially when something happens you think is bad, “Is that the only way to see it?”

Try to come up with different possible ways you could view the same situation.

Really it’s a dumb question. No matter how you’re looking at the situation, it is never the only possible point of view. Probably a better question would be, “What other way could I look at this?”

Or notice what you think the event means, and ask yourself what else it could mean.

Sit down with paper and pen and spend an hour coming up with different points of view you could take on the same event. That’ll shake you out of your automatic, upsetting opinion.

Now look at your list. What do you think is the most sensible point of view? Which one would help you handle the situation the best? Which one would your best friend think is the best point of view?

You can use this question with smaller events too, and you can do it on the fly. If someone treats you with less respect than usual, and you feel a little bothered by it, ask yourself what you think it means.

For example, "I think it means she is mad at me for some reason."

Now ask yourself what else it could mean. For example, "Maybe she is tired. Maybe she drank too much coffee today. Maybe she is jealous because I look so good today. Maybe she is pregnant and has morning sickness."

It only takes a minute or so to come up with some alternative meanings. And when you do, it will change the way you feel about it. You won't feel as bothered. It is a simple method that takes very little effort, but it has a real impact on your mood.

Read more: Feel Bad Less Often

How To Feel More Lighthearted

2011-12-27T17:42:00.000-08:00

A FRIEND OF MINE just got back from Lesotho, a small country in Africa, where he spent two years in the Peace Corps. He told me the people there thought all Americans were rich. As far as he was concerned, he was a poor college student. He’d never thought of himself as rich. We Americans don’t usually think that way because we’re used to our level of wealth. But compared with the people in Lesotho and with many places on Earth, we are rich.

A king of an empire only a thousand years ago was poor compared to a modern American. You and I have services and possessions completely incomparable to the kings: microwave ovens, TVs, phones, medical technology, paved roads and cars to drive on them, hot showers, running water, flushing toilets, MP3 players, and it goes on and on. We’re rich, but we hardly ever think so because human beings have a natural tendency to feel unsatisfied, discontented, to always want more no matter how much we have. It’s true for the people in Lesotho and it’s true for you and me.

U.S. citizens have become progressively wealthier through the years. The average citizen in 1953 had access to 153 electronic appliances. In twenty years, it increased to about 400. The median size of a new home built in 1949 was 1100 square feet. By 1993 it had grown to 2060 square feet. A person in the U.S. on average, owns twice as many cars now as people did in 1950. We’re wealthy! But not very many of us feel wealthy.

The truth is: No matter how far you come, it is never enough. No matter where you arrive, it soon becomes the status quo and loses the thrill, and pretty soon your sights go out to something better. It’s human nature.

We’re all in the same boat. We’re all naturally greedy. We all continually escalate our desires above what we have. It’s as natural as breathing.

But just because something is natural, doesn’t mean it’s good or that you’re helpless against it. This is an important point. It’s natural to have sexual desires. But that doesn’t mean you can jump on everybody you feel attracted to and just apologize later: “Sorry, I couldn’t help it. Sex drive, you know. Biological.” No. We control our natural sexual desires.

In the same way, we can control our natural greed. And I don’t mean merely controlling greedy behavior, but actually controlling the feeling of dissatisfaction.

Before the end of this article, I’ll tell you what you can do about it, but first I want you to grasp the full scope of the problem. Your greed has an impact on every area of your life. You’re greedy about your relationships. You want your lover to be perfect. You’re greedy about your money. No matter how much you make right now, a little more would be better. You’re greedy about your food, your time, your possessions, your pleasures. You would prefer to feel good all the time. You want everybody to treat you with respect. You always want more than you have, and sometimes you feel unhappy about it.

To make matters worse, you also feel pushed and pressured by your own greed. It feels like you must do this and you should do that, but all you’re doing is trying to satisfy your own desires — you want to get a promotion or earn more money or whatever. Your desires feel like needs, but most of them aren’t. They are what you might call “false needs.”

Let’s say you want to be the next CEO of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, and you’re excited about your goal. You feel good about it. But a few weeks later, you feel stressed by it. What happened?

Your perfectly innocent desire has turned into a false need. As long as it’s simply a desire, the goal — or any goal you want — can be stimulating and fun and inspiring and motivating and a whole bunch of other pleasant feelings. But when you have to put together a resume, and you think you should get it in the mail as soon as possible, and you need to make it perfect, the goal is a drag: it brings you down, lowers your mood and it’s not good for your health.

When you’re fully aware you don’t need to accomplish your goals but only want to, you have energy, good health, and your enthusiasm influences people who can help you.

Desire brings you up and drives you forward with pleasure. Greed brings you down and stresses you out.

When I was a kid, I had to pull weeds in our lawn. There was some kind of “devil” weed (at least, that’s what my dad called it) that kept growing in the grass, and Dad was determined to prevent this evil from taking over the neighborhood. So, come summertime, my brother and sister and I were sent forth to conquer. Our mission: To seek out and pull up the weed with the red leaves. Summers were hot in Nevada. I hated that chore.

Next door to us lived the O’Rourks. They also had the evil weed growing on their lawn, and my best friend, Tommy, had to pull weeds too. Sometimes we had a scheduling conflict: I was ready to play, but he was pulling weeds. I often helped him so he could finish sooner. I noticed that pulling the weeds from the lawn next door was much more fun than pulling them in my own yard, and I even knew why: because I didn’t have to do it. When it was his lawn, it was an option for me, and I did it because I wanted to. The physical task was identical. But mentally, the task was quite different.

Of course you can’t really do this with your job: “I don’t have to go to work. I want to go to work.” You wouldn’t fool anyone with that one, especially yourself. But there are some elements you can influence that may improve your attitude toward any source of stress. We’ll give you a technique here and then look at how it works using some examples.

Use the following technique only when you have a feeling of dysphoria (dysphoria is anger, anxiety or depression, mild or intense). If you’re feeling great, leave yourself alone and enjoy it. This isn’t “positive thinking.” It’s more like “anti-negative thinking.” Use it only when you feel negative. The technique is a series of questions you ask yourself:

1. “What do I want?”
2. “Do I need it to survive?
3. “What would happen if I didn’t get it?”
4. “Do I want to keep the goal, give up on it, or replace it with a new or modified goal?”

This technique will work with any kind of false need — in your job, your relationships, your body goals, etc.

Let’s see how it works. Imagine you’re in an argument with someone close to you. You’re feeling a negative emotion (anger) and you want to use this technique. So you need to have a dialog with yourself.

Can you have a dialog in your head while carrying on a conversation with someone else? Probably not. Especially not when the discussion is heated. After a lot of practice under easier conditions, maybe you’ll be able to do it, but not now. So take a walk or excuse yourself. Say you need a little time to think, and go into another room. And to make it even easier (which I suggest), get a pad of paper and a pen and write down the questions and your answers. Here’s how it might go:

Q: What do I want?

A: I want to make my point. I have a valid point to make, and I want to make it.

Q: Do I need it to survive?

A: No. I won’t die if I can’t make my point.

Q: What would happen if I didn’t make my point?

A: Probably the argument would lose its fierceness.

Q: Now that I’ve thought this through a little, what do I want? Do I still want to make my point? Do I want to give it up? Or do I want to make a new goal?

A: I don’t want to make my point, at least not in this way, and not now. I want to set a new goal: I want to listen.

These questions take the need out of it if it truly isn’t a need. In our hypothetical situation, you go back to listen to the person you were arguing with, and you keep listening until the other is through talking. You’ll probably understand her or him better, and it may change the point you wanted so much to make. Or perhaps you’ll get into better communication and you’ll be able to make your point without anger.

This is a time-consuming process at first. But after doing it a few times, it starts to go quickly. When you’re good enough, you can probably do it in a few seconds while in the middle of the argument, and your partner will gape in wonder at your self-control!

THIS TECHNIQUE ALSO WORKS when you’re striving for a goal and the goal becomes an unhappy burden. Put yourself through the same questions. When you get to the last one, seriously consider giving up on your goal, because if the goal isn’t giving you any joy, what’s the point? You aren’t here long enough to fritter away your precious years on misery.

You might be thinking, “But my goal is not just to give me joy. I’m trying to send my kid through college,” or “I’ve got to pay the mortgage.” If that’s what you’re thinking, you’re in the trap right now and you don’t know it! You don’t have to send your kid to college, and you don’t need to keep your house. You could let your child earn her own way through college — and she might develop a stronger sense of self-reliance because of it. You could move to an apartment and give up yard-work forever. I’m not saying you should do these things, but you could. And knowing you could, knowing that those are only desires of yours, goals you set, will give you a different feeling toward those goals, just like the difference between pulling weeds in my lawn versus Tommy’s lawn.

You have the option: You can choose to keep your goal, or you can change your mind. It’s up to you. If you decide you want to keep the goal, it will be fresh in your mind that you want it, and you’ll feel differently about it. It’s a mental maneuver, and it’ll change the way you feel.

It doesn’t make any difference to say to yourself, “I don’t need this, I want it,” in order to “make yourself” feel better about it. Saying the words, “I want this,” doesn’t affect you much. Knowing you have the option to give it up and deciding not to do so is what makes the difference. That’s why you ask those questions and answer them sincerely. You don’t need to pump yourself up or believe something you don’t believe.

What gives this process power is taking away the falsity. You take away the goal during the questions. The goal is not real. It doesn’t exist. You made it up. You decided to accomplish it. The pressure to accomplish it is in your head, not in reality. When you remove the goal, it changes the way you feel about it.

Sometimes you’ll ask those questions and you’ll realize you really don’t want to make your point or be the CEO of Ben & Jerry’s. And that’s great. You’ll get a fresh opportunity to create a goal that’ll give you some pleasure instead of misery or stress or boredom.

The same point applies in the reading of this web site. You might feel a desire to practice an idea presented here so you can feel better more often. I’m hoping you will. But you may later feel burdened by it — as if you have an obligation to become happier. You don’t. You don’t have to become more successful. You don’t have to look good or lose weight or get rich or feel good. You don’t have to do much to survive, at least here in America. Your mother may not approve, but you don’t have to make her happy either.

You may want some of these things, however. You can figure that out for yourself. But you’ll feel better more often if you keep in mind that you want to do them; you don’t have to.

It’s perfectly natural to think your life should be better than it is. It’s perfectly natural, and perfectly counterproductive. It causes more dysphoria than is necessary. Realize that your desires are only desires that you chose and you’ll feel much better and work toward your desires more effectively.

And when you realize you have a desire that cannot be attained, you can give it up and replace it with a different desire. You’re in charge of this. You’re not the victim of your own desires. You can choose what goal to reach for. You can choose goals that’ll give you the most enjoyment to pursue, and you can keep yourself aware that it’s your game so you can get maximum enjoyment from it. And by doing so, you can voluntarily fill your life with a bearable lightness of being.

The principle:
Ask yourself: Do you really need it?
Do you really have to?
Or is it only a preference?

Imagine a Single Celebration that Includes Everybody

2011-12-21T00:43:00.000-08:00

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 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 was 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.

Filling Your Spouse's Love Tank

2011-12-20T13:52:00.000-08:00

ONE OF THE best moods you can have is feeling loved. In Gary Chapman's book, The Five Love Languages, he says when you can speak your spouse's love language, you fill their "love tank." They feel loved and it puts them in a great mood. And when their tank is full, they want to fill your tank (putting you in a great mood).

But when their tank is empty, when they don't feel loved, they don't want to do much for you. People are giving when they feel loved. And much less so when they don't.

This "love tank" analogy is a fairly accurate description of the effect of oxytocin (a hormone produced in the brain giving you feelings of trust and good will). When your oxytocin level is high, you feel loving. You want to touch and be touched. When it's low, you don't feel loving, and you don't want to touch or be touched.

You fill the tank by raising oxytocin. Speaking your spouse's love language can really help. In other words, one good way to be in a great mood is to fill your spouse's love tank by finding out what your spouse's love language is, and "speaking" that language so your spouse really feels loved. What you put out in this way will come back to you in kind. Speaking your spouse's love language is a gift. Give in this way, and you will receive in abundance.

Find out more about how to raise oxytocin here: Peace, Love, and Oxytocin.

Find out what the five love languages are: Language of Love.

How to Reframe What Seems to be a Negative Event

2011-12-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

ON AMAZON.COM, there are 26 reviews of my book. Most of them are positive, but three of them are negative. And of course, because of my brain’s negative bias, the negative ones stick out in my mind and have much more emotional impact than all the other positive reviews combined.

I have been using three reframes for this and they work so well I am not bothered by the negative reviews. In fact, I’m actually glad they are there.

There is a difference between “trying to think positive” or “putting a positive spin” on something and actually reframing it. You can tell if you have a genuine reframe if your feelings change. I really, honestly do not feel any negative feelings from these critical reviews. If I still did, then I would know I’m just trying to talk myself into something I really don’t believe. Here are my three reframes:

1. I get to find out what is not good about my book, and since I plan on writing more books, it could be useful information.

2. A few bad reviews helps people make a better decision about buying my book, which should in theory prevent people who wouldn’t like it from buying it, thus improving my reviews over time.

3. The few bad reviews keep a buyer’s expectations from soaring too high. If a potential customer only read the positive reviews, she might think Self-Help Stuff That Works is the answer to all the world’s problems, and it isn’t. Not only that, but the bad reviews all criticize the same thing, and it is one of the things that the positive reviews almost all praise: That the chapters are short. The people who criticized it wanted something more in-depth. The ones who praised it like the fact that the chapters are brief, to the point, and practical. By having both reviews on there, a potential buyer can make a better, more informed decision.

In other words, about the bad reviews, I can genuinely say: “That’s good!”

I created these reframes deliberately. When I first read those reviews, I felt bad. It was kind of upsetting. My feelings were hurt.

So I sat down and wrote as many reframes as I could in a half hour. I set a timer and made myself continue to come up with reframes until the timer went off.

Then I looked through them. Most of them were not very good and some of them were downright stupid, but the three above made sense to me and changed the way I felt about the reviews.

That's a good method for reframing. Make a long list. In you effort to come up with reframes, you'll come up with good ones and bad ones, but some of the bad ones will give you ideas that will help you come up with good ones. How's that for a reframe of the dumb ideas?

Don't judge your reframes until you're done coming up with them. Then look through them and see if any seem like sensible ways to look at the situation. Circle the ones that make sense, or write them on a separate piece of paper and post them somewhere. Let the new ways of thinking sink in and see if they makes a difference.

And if you think of it, come back here and leave a comment letting us know what worked for you and what didn't. Thank you.

Read more: Seeing The Same Thing a Different Way

Bringing Extended Family Relationships Closer

2011-12-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

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.

Inspiration With Movies

2011-11-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

ONE OF the most wonderful positive emotions you can experience is inspiration. That is, having a goal, feeling that you can accomplish it, and feeling excited about the prospect.

A good way to feel inspired is to watch a movie, especially a true story, about someone overcoming obstacles to accomplish an important goal.

When you're watching a movie like this, you can experience it as a metaphor for your own life. You can imagine that the obstacles the hero in the movie overcomes are like the obstacles you will overcome.

And it can help you put your own difficulties in perspective. You have obstacles to overcome, and of course they loom large. Sometimes they may seem insurmountable. But when you see a true story of someone overcoming much more intimidating obstacles, it puts your own in perspective. It makes your goal seem more attainable. It makes you feel that if they can overcome those obstacles, surely you can overcome yours. That's partly what makes these movies inspiring.

Once such movie is Lorenzo's Oil. It's a true story about two parents overcoming tremendous obstacles to accomplish the goal of keeping their son alive. Very powerful.

Other true, inspiring movies I recommend are: Rudy, October Sky, Door to Door, and Antwone Fisher. Watching inspiring movies is a relaxing way to lift your spirits.

Read the story of Lorenzo's Oil.

Reading Fiction Improves Relationships (and Improves Your Mood)

2011-11-24T23:37:00.000-08:00

In an interesting new study, researchers found that reading fictional stories will increase your empathy for others, improve your ability to see things from another's point of view, raise your social awareness, and make you more open to new experiences.

All these results improve the quality of relationships, which is, of course, one of the most important generators of good moods.

Reading fiction gets its power from your emotional connection to the characters in the story. While reading, you temporarily set aside your own point of view and goals and take on the goals and point of view of the characters in the story. This functions as a kind of training. "Just as computer simulations have helped us understand perception, learning and thinking," writes Keith Oatley, "stories are simulations of a kind that can help readers understand not just the characters in books but human character in general."

In another article, Oatley wrote, "In fiction...we are able to understand characters' actions from their interior point of view, by entering into their situations and minds, rather than the more exterior view of them that we usually have. And it turns out that psychologically there is a big difference between these two points of view. We usually take the exterior view of others, but that's too limited."

In addition to the long-term benefits, the process of reading stories is also relaxing and enjoyable. Reading is one of the most reliable ways to produce flow — a psychological state that positively influences your mood (read more about that here).

So reading fiction can improve your mood immediately, and then improve it again in a different way with its long term effect.

Reading books has gone out of fashion, especially in the last ten years, and especially among college-age people. It is probably not a coincidence that another study has shown a thirty-year decline in empathy in college-age people, "with an especially steep drop in the past ten years," says Jamil Zaki in a Scientific American article published earlier this year.

There is no need for this to happen to you. You can improve your relationships and be happier using this simple tool: Reading fiction.

Make Every Day Thanksgiving

2011-11-18T12:26:00.000-08:00

WHEN YOU NOTICE and appreciate good things about other people, it improves your mood and the moods of the people around you, whether you're at home or at work. You get to live in a more pleasant environment.

You know that already. But it's hard to remember, isn't it? So try this trick:

At the beginning of your day, or even right now, put five pennies in your left pocket. Now try to find something nice to say about someone (something you actually think is true), either to their face or behind their back, and every time you do, move one penny to your right pocket. Try to move all five today.

You may be surprised at the extended consequences of this simple action.

Read more.

You Can Improve Your Sense Of Humor (I'm Not Kidding)

2011-11-11T13:58:00.000-08:00

When you want to improve your mood, try asking yourself this question: "What's funny about this?" In order to find something funny, you have to change your perspective — a very good move to make when you’re not feeling good.

If you’re feeling bad, it won’t be easy to come up with an answer to this question, but when you do, it can often change the way you feel very effectively. Not only that, once you’ve found something funny about it, every time you think about the situation, you almost can’t help but think of what’s funny about it again, constantly softening your negative feelings about it.

This isn't a trivial question, and the ability to find the humor in a grim situation isn't a trivial skill. It makes you more capable of withstanding and competently dealing with difficult situations. When they study survivors of POW camps, one of the characteristics of survivors is they can see what’s funny about the situation. They're not clowns. They aren't laughing hysterically. But they can see the dark humor where it is.

For example, Gerald Coffee was a POW in Vietnam. His captors treated him with unbelievable brutality. At one point he was taken to a “shower.” He hadn’t bathed at all in three months. This shower was littered with garbage. It was small and the walls were covered with slime. The water came out of a rusty pipe and only trickled out. And it was cold.

As he was trying to wash off, he felt depressed. He hadn’t held up under torture as well as he expected of himself. His head was down and he felt tired and sad and deeply disappointed in himself.

Then he looked up and saw someone had scratched a message on the wall that said, “Smile, you’re on Candid Camera!”

Coffee laughed out loud. The message was so out of place, it was funny. But Coffee also laughed because, he says, he appreciated so much “the beautiful guy who had mustered the moxie to rise above his own dejection and frustration and pain and guilt to inscribe a line of encouragement to those who would come after him.”

Al Siebert, author of Survivor Personality, says that a good sense of humor helps survivors cope. “Mental efficiency is directly related to a person’s general level of emotional arousal,” he says. “People are less able to solve problems and make precise, coordinated movements when strongly worked up. Laughing reduces tension to more moderate levels and efficiency improves.”

That's probably the best thing about humor: It instantly and dramatically relieves tension. And relaxation makes it easier to think clearly.

In experiments, researchers have found a little humor improves your cleverness. Imagine someone gives you a box of tacks, a candle, and some matches and tells you to stick the candle to a cork board in such a way that the candle doesn’t drip wax onto the floor below. Can you do it? Whether or not you can do it, Alice M. Isen and her colleagues found, might depend on whether or not you’ve just seen the humor in something.

Before they were given the problem to solve, students were shown either a comedy film of bloopers or a film on math (which was not funny at all).

After watching the math film, 20% of the students successfully solved the problem. But 75% of the students who watched the comedy film were able to do it. (The solution, by the way, is to pour the tacks out of the box and tack the box to the board, and then putting the candle on the box.)

Isen said, “Research suggests that positive memories are more extensive and are more interconnected than are negative ones so being happy may cue you into a larger and richer cognitive context, and that could significantly affect your creativity.”

Humor, of course, is good for relationships. Laughing together is a great bonding experience. It helps you like each other, and funny people are generally liked more than humorless people. They are liked more and also perceived differently.

According to a survey of recent business school graduates by Wayne Decker, PhD (a professor of management at Maryland’s Salisbury State University) women executives are considered more competent if they have a sense of humor. This coincides with previous studies showing male managers also get higher capability ratings from their underlings.

Employees rate managers with a sense of humor as 1) more effective at getting things done, and 2) more concerned about the employees’ well-being.

A good sense of humor can make a real difference. Laughing and being in a good mood can help you solve problems, can make you more ingenious, and can make you more effective in the world.

PAINKILLER

Rosemary Cogan, PhD, at Texas Tech University, already knew that when people are trained to relax, they become more able to handle pain and discomfort. She decided to find out if laughter could do that too.

She and her colleagues split volunteers into into four groups. One group listened to a tape of the comedian Lily Tomlin for twenty minutes, another group listened to a twenty-minute relaxation tape, another group listened to a lecture on ethics, and the fourth group didn’t listen to anything.

Then the researchers measured the volunteers’ threshold of pain by putting them on a medieval rack and sticking nails into their arms. Not really. They measured their pain threshold by putting a blood pressure cuff around one arm and continuing to inflate it until it was uncomfortable, and then simply measuring the amount of pressure on the dial at that point.

Two groups had the highest pain thresholds: Those listening to Lily Tomlin, and those who heard the relaxation tape.

In other words, humor actually makes you measurably tougher. It makes something painful less painful.

STRESS, HUMOR, AND HONEST ABE

Humor is an excellent (and healthy) way to deal with stress. When Abraham Lincoln was in office, you can hardly imagine a more stressful place to be for a deeply-feeling man than the White House during the Civil War. Luckily, Lincoln had a first-rate sense of humor. He had spent his whole life developing it.

When he was an attorney, Lincoln told a clerk a funny story, and the clerk laughed out loud in court. The judge called “order in the court” and said to Lincoln, “This must be stopped. Mr. Lincoln, you are constantly disturbing this court with your stories.”

Then the judge told the clerk, “You may fine yourself $5.00.” The clerk apologized but said the story was worth the five bucks. A few minutes later, the judge called the clerk over and asked, “What was that story Lincoln told you?” When the clerk told him the story, the judge couldn’t help it — he laughed out loud too. He told the clerk, “Remit your fine.”

Once someone asked Lincoln how many soldiers the Confederates had in the field, Lincoln replied, “Twelve hundred thousand.”

The astonished questioner gasped. How can that be? Lincoln said, “No doubt of it — twelve hundred thousand. You see, all our generals, every time they get whipped, they tell me that the enemy outnumbered them at least three to one, and I must believe them. We have four hundred thousand men in the field, and three times four equals twelve. Twelve hundred thousand men, no doubt about it.” He could see the humor in just about anything. That takes practice.

While some people didn’t appreciate his sense of humor and thought it was out of place for the President of the United States during those grave and dreadful times of war, Lincoln liked his sense of humor, and had an intuitive sense of its value to his sanity and health.

In 1862, during a special session of his closest advisers, Lincoln read aloud from an article by the humorist Artemus Ward, and had a good laugh, but when he looked around, not one of them was even smiling. They obviously disapproved of his frivolity.

“Why don’t you laugh?” he said, “With the fearful strain that is upon me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.”

There was a story going around that Lincoln really liked. It seems two Quaker women were comparing the president of the Confederate states with Lincoln. “I think Jefferson will succeed,” said one, “because he is a praying man.”

“But so is Abraham a praying man,” retorted the other.

“Yes,” said the first, “but the Lord will think Abraham is joking.”

One of my favorite quips Lincoln made was his opinion of a book: “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”

ZEN AND THE ART OF CRACKING UP

In some forms of Zen training, the student is given a koan. A koan is a question or a story that is puzzling in some way. For example, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” The discipline is to stay with the koan until you “get” it. Sometimes this takes months, even years.

When the students are monks living in a monastery, they stay with the koan while they eat, sleep, cook, clean, and also they spend time in intense periods several times a day doing nothing but hanging out with that koan (zazen, or sitting meditation).

The student stays with the koan intensely, wrestling with it, fighting with it, trying to look at it from different angles, trying to “figure it out,” allowing it to be there, and so on. Intensely. They say that it is like swallowing the moon, and it gets stuck half way down. The frustration can stay at a high pitch for a long time.

And then something happens. The student gets it. Often this is a full-blown “awakening” and the student is never the same again.

Now I have a koan for you, Grasshopper.

When you have a problem upsetting you or bringing you down, ask yourself, “How can I see this as funny?”

Choose something right now. Pick one problem upsetting you. Or something that usually brings you down when you think about it. How can you see it as funny?

You're probably not going to get any answers right away.

Hang out with the question until you “get it.” Ask yourself the question and keep asking it, and go through the frustration of not coming up with anything until finally you can, in fact, see something funny about it. Not only will your feelings about that particular thing lighten up, but your general ability to see the humor in your life will improve as well.

A good sense of humor is a trait we all admire, but very few cultivate.

Here’s the big trade secret of the famous comedians: A good sense of humor takes practice. It takes thought.

Jack Benny said his father wanted him to become a great violinist, but Jack always practiced the easy parts. His dad always told him, “To be a success in anything, you must practice the hard parts.”

“Music was hard work for me,” wrote Jack, “even though I hadn’t really been applying Father’s advice.” Jack Benny was playing the violin for vaudeville acts. Then he did a little vaudeville show by himself, playing the violin and throwing in a joke or two, which got some laughs. “Now, I reasoned, if I could entertain an audience by just breezing out on the stage, a comedian. Ah, but I soon discovered that telling jokes was not a breeze after all. Sometimes you could throw a punch line away, other times you had to ride it hard. A pause could set up a joke — or bury it. Timing was the key. In short, there were skills to be mastered in comedy, just as there had been in music. And there were many hard parts to be mastered in comedy, just as there had been in music.”

It looks so natural and spontaneous when comedians stand up there and make us laugh. You want to know why? Because they practiced making it look spontaneous and natural. A funny line is funnier when it seems spontaneous.

Now admittedly, many comedians are good at making off-the-cuff comments that are funny (and those comments are significantly more funny when we know they are extemporaneous), but even that is a skill that took practice.

You may never be that good at it. That’s okay. There’s no need to be perfect, or even the best. A little more humor is worthwhile. And you don’t have to stop your life or go to humor school or in any way use up time to learn to see the humor in things.

JUST START DOING IT

When you’re talking to people, if it’s appropriate, try to say something funny.

“But,” you might protest, “what if it doesn’t work?”

“No big deal," I would answer. "Even well-honed professional comedians bomb with jokes. You win some, you lose some, but you keep on putting it out there, learning from your mistakes.”

“But that’ll be embarrassing. People will think I’m a fool.”

“It doesn’t really matter to your listeners if it doesn’t matter to you. Of course if your face turns red or you start crying, it will bother them that your comment wasn’t funny. But if you mentally shrug your shoulders and go on, so will they.”

“Okay,” you might say, “I’ll keep making attempts at saying something funny.”

But I'm not done with you. “Sometimes it's not appropriate to say it. But you can still think something funny, and I suggest you do it often. Imagine what you might say that would make someone laugh about what's going on. You have a lot of material to work with, and you don’t even have to open your mouth.”

“What do you mean?”

“You have opportunities every day to train yourself to look at the side of life that amuses and makes you laugh, or at least produces a little smile.”

“When I’m feeling blue?”

“Whenever. You can do it when you’re feeling fine or when something has just miffed you. Either way, it’s good practice. Anytime your mind is idle, you can practice.”

“How, exactly," you ask, "do I practice?”

“Ask yourself, How could I see this as funny? Keep trying on different perspectives.”

“Different perspectives?”

“Yes. Try on the perspective of your favorite comedian. In fact, that's another thing you can do to help you see humor in circumstance: Listen to comedians. Lot's of humorous recordings are available digitally. And then when you've got something bringing you down, ask yourself what your favorite comedian might do with your situation? How would they describe it to an audience in a way that gets a laugh. Imagine a comedy team coming up with a skit based on your situation. What might they do? What would they make fun of? What would they exaggerate? Or try a perspective of you in the future.”

“You mean, looking back on this and laughing?”

“Exactly. Look from the perspective of you as a ninety year-old, telling your pals about your situation in a way that’s funny. What could you say about it, or how could you say it that makes them laugh?”

Ask it again and again: How could I see this as funny? Keep looking. Don't give up.

A lot of time, while you’re pondering this question, it’s not funny. Or fun. That’s okay. As anyone knows who has learned to play the piano, you have to play scales. Over and over again. It’s tedious and boring. Not fun. But when play something well — especially a song you like — it is very much fun indeed. But you can’t get there without the non-fun part.

Same with humor. So keep plugging away at it. Ask the question and keep asking it, and over time you’ll get better and better at seeing what’s funny about things.

Does this sound like work? It is.

But remember, you get benefits all along the way. You become more clever in solving problems, you feel less pain, you relieve stress, you feel better.

It raises your mood, now and in the long haul too.

USE YOUR FACE

The actual expression on your face might make it easier or harder to see what’s funny. This idea comes from an experiment by Fritz Strack, a psychologist at Mannheim University in Germany. He told people he was going to test their physical skills. Then he showed them a series of cartoons and told them to rate the cartoons’ funniness. But he told them to hold a pen in their mouth while they did it. Half of them were told to hold it between their lips; the other half, between their teeth.

The ones with the pen between their teeth rated the cartoons as funnier.

Apparently, when they held the pen between their lips, they couldn’t smile, but when it was between their teeth, they were forced to smile the whole time, and that physical change in their facial expression changed how funny something was.

Keep this in mind and use it. When you're trying to think of something funny, if nobody is looking, put an amused look on your face. It actually helps.

If you keep asking the question, you'll find ways to improve your success rate. You’ll become more flexible about your perspective; it’ll be easier to change perspectives (because that’s one of the ways to find the humor). There are subskills about humor you’ll learn along the way, so you’ll be learning an ability to see humor — not only in any specific instance you’ve practiced with, but in general. The skill will be there, and can be used on any situation life may throw your way.

And what will happen? You'll be more effective in the world, you'll be more creative at solving problems, it'll improve your relationships with people, and you’ll be happier.

Probiotics Might Raise Your Mood

2011-11-05T14:35:00.000-07:00

IN A RECENT study, mice were cured of depression and anxiety with probiotics. The study reminded me of an earlier experiment done with humans showing that people who took probiotic supplements felt less stressed and had less anxiety and depression than people who had taken a placebo.

In the more recent study, researchers took normal mice, which are usually fairly timid (staying close to walls when they explore, and being reluctant to walk in the open). They fed half the mice a brew containing a particular strain of gut bacteria — Lactobacillus rhamnosus (a strain found in some yogurts and probiotic supplements) — and the mice became less timid; they explored more freely.

And when the researchers put the mice under stress (by plunging them in water, for example), the “probiotic mice” were less stressed than normal mice (the stress hormones in their blood didn’t rise as much in response to the stress). You can read more details about the study here and here.

But the researchers wondered how a bacteria in the gut could alter the mice “psychologically.” So they cut the vagus nerve — the bundle of nerve fibers that connect the guts and the brain — and sure enough, this stopped the positive effects of the probiotics.

So somehow the bacteria did something to the mice guts that sent a signal to the brain, causing the mice to feel (or at least behave) less anxious and depressed, and to produce less stress hormones.

Probiotics are also good for your immune system, can help prevent gum disease and cavities, and might lower your risks of cancer and heart disease. Read more about how you can use probiotics to improve your health and mood here: Why Are Probiotics Good For You?

Take Action: Move Your Money

2011-11-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

WHEN SOMETHING bothers you, if you can do anything about it, your mood is likely to rise. Many people are justifiably angry at the fatcats who made the decisions that caused The Great Recession but who personally made enormous profits in the process, and that large banks accepted bailout money from taxpayers but used it only to further their own interests, often at the expense of taxpayers.

But the "Move Your Money" movement is promoting something that each of us can DO about it: Move your money from the guilty banks to local banks and credit unions. Taking such a constructive action will improve your mood. You'll feel better knowing you have done something about the injustice.

For more information (including an easy way to find community banks), go to Move Your Money.

Watch the video below. It is 4 minutes and 11 seconds long. And please share it with others (another constructive action you can take).

Which One Of These Will Boost Your Mood The Most?

2011-10-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

Peter Naish, a researcher at Open University, wanted to find out what raises someone's mood. He measured different kinds of changes in his volunteers' moods: Changes in how relaxed they felt, how calm they felt, how alert and bright they felt, and so on. He even measured how valued they felt. And he added all these up to produce a "happiness score."

His volunteers tried a variety of common things people do to improve their mood. This is the list he used:

1. eat a chocolate snack
2. drink some alcohol
3. watch TV
4. look at personal photos
5. listen to music

Most people like all of these, and use them occasionally to boost their moods.

There was one item on the list that worked a lot better than any of the others. Can you guess which one it was? I would have guessed everyone is different, and for me it would probably be listening to music. But results of studies are often surprising and counterintuitive. Our intuition sometimes isn't very good.

The music and the chocolate didn't really change the subjects' moods very much. That was surprising. The alcohol and TV each gave people a 1% rise in their happiness score. But the clear winner was looking at personal photos. It gave people, on average, an 11% rise in their mood. It worked far better than anything else.

While turning on the TV or having a beer might be easier, there's a way to make looking at photos at least as easy: It's a free program called gPhotoShow. Go to their web site and download their program, which becomes one of the screensavers on your computer. You tell it what file to use and it will show the photos in that file as a slide show. I've been using it for years, and I love it. Google also has a free program that does essentially the same thing. Click on the smiling woman's photo above to find out about it.

How often do you sit down and go through photo albums? As much as I enjoy it, I never get around to it. But when my keyboard is idle, my screensaver starts showing photos and displays them randomly, so over a period of several months, I see almost all of them. It reminds me of good times I've had, and people I love.

Just last night, Klassy (my wife) and I were kicking back talking, and my screensaver came on. We ended up watching it for awhile and talking about the different pictures, and it really did lift our moods.

Not only does it lift your mood a lot more than watching TV, but if you're looking at the screensaver with someone else, you can talk and connect while you're watching the slide show (something you can't do as well while watching TV) and connecting with someone you love is probably the best mood-booster there is.

Read about another, similar thing you can do to raise your mood.

Raise Your Mood With An Easy Question

2011-10-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

I SOMETIMES get discouraged in this publishing business. Like any other business, it has its ups and downs, and sometimes my emotions go up and down with it. My wife, Klassy Evans, gave me a very simple suggestion awhile back that really helps. She said, "Whenever you feel discouraged, think of something you're grateful for."

I've done it many times now, and every time it is surprisingly easy to think of something I'm grateful for, and it makes me feel better every time.

I've read the studies on gratitude, but I've always thought of it as a project. It seems like work. I feel like I "should" sit down and write in a journal for a specified length of time, or try to write down a specified number of things I feel grateful for. That's how they do it in the experiments, but of course that's because it's an experiment. They have to test quantifiable, measurable tasks in an experiment. That doesn't mean I have to.

And as I found out, generating a little gratitude works well on the fly and in my head just as well as it does writing it down in a journal. It's not a chore at all — just a simple question to ask myself. It only takes a few moments (just long enough to think of something). And as soon as I think of something, I feel noticeably better.

I've found that if the first thing I think of doesn't raise my mood enough, I can easily ask myself what else I'm grateful for.

You and I naturally have our attention on our goals and what we'd like to attain in the future, and the mind naturally compares our goals to what we have now. It compares what we have with what we want to have. That's motivating sometimes, but it can also make you feel demoralized or frustrated.

It is equally legitimate — and ought to get equal billing — to think about what you have (compared to others or compared to your past), or what you have gained, or what you are just plain glad about.

Try it the next time you feel discouraged or frustrated. Ask yourself, "What one thing am I grateful for?" And see what happens. It's a simple, all-purpose moodraiser you can keep in your back pocket and use the hell out of.

When you do, you'll be happier.

Learn more about how comparisons alter how you feel: Change The Way You Feel By Changing One Simple Thing You Already Do In Your Mind.

Altruism Truism

2011-10-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

IN AN ARTICLE entitled If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural, the author says we've got it all wrong. Being kind or generous or altruistic isn't something painful or difficult or something that requires you to force yourself to be unselfish. We've gotten the wrong impression because our parents made us share our toys and religions tell us to love our enemies.

Being kind and generous and altruistic is natural and pleasurable, and the effort people have spent persuading us to be good to others has turned something enjoyable into a chore.

You don't have to be stuck with that point of view, however. What you can do instead is focus on the rewards, the pleasure, the happiness, and the good feelings that your acts of kindness can give you. In other words, you can look at opportunities to be generous or giving or altruistic as moments of happiness you could be enjoying. You can stop looking at them as something you "should" do.

People are basically good. I know there are sociopaths in the world, and they may not be good in any sense of the word. But normal, healthy people, however they may be behaving at the moment, have within them a built-in reward system that gives them pleasure when they perform acts of kindness, random or otherwise, for their fellow humans (or other animals).

How can this help you raise your mood? Simple. If you've been thinking you "should" be kind to others, and you make yourself do it (or feel guilty for not doing it) you can give all that up. Change the way you think about it. Remind yourself that kindness toward others is a source of happiness for you. You don't have to do it. You "shouldn't" do it. But if you want to feel good, you'll definitely want to do it.

This change in your perspective will make your acts of kindness more enjoyable for you, and encourage you to do more, which will make you feel good more often. And oddly enough, the recipient of your kindness will be happier too. Think about it. Would you rather someone did something for you because they enjoyed it or because they felt they should?

Change your perspective about helping others, and everyone wins.

Do You Work With Someone You Don't Like?

2011-10-09T14:46:00.000-07:00

When you have to work with someone or spend time with someone who makes you mad or irritates you, ponder this question: What could I like about this person? The question may seem repugnant at first, but it will help you counteract your brain’s natural negative bias.

Once you've decided you don't like someone, you automatically notice all the things about them you don't like, and you overlook things you do like about them. You're not doing this deliberately, of course, but it happens naturally and automatically.

If you think about something you like about the person, however, you don’t feel as much negative emotion when dealing with them, and you can deal with them more effectively.

I'm not talking about gritting your teeth and forcing yourself to be nice to someone. If you take a little time, you’ll find some things you genuinely like about the person. And when you genuinely like something about someone, you have a genuinely nicer feeling toward them. Ponder this question once in awhile. It will help you create and maintain that feeling.

One caveat here is: Some people are actually dangerous. One to four percent of the population are sociopaths who don’t care about you, who are incapable of normal human empathy, who will use and abuse you, and who cannot change. Do not try to find things you like about these people.

But chances are, the person who irritates you is not a sociopath and it would make a difference to ask yourself occasionally what you genuinely like about them.

Another good question along the same lines is: What does that person do (that I don’t like) that I have also done?

A third technique was expressed succinctly by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “If we could read the secret history of our enemies,” he wrote, “we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

I just finished reading the book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and I found a good example of what Longfellow was talking about.

Before Lincoln ran for president, he was a small-time attorney. One day he was invited to participate in an important trial. He was to be co-counsel for the prosecution with a distinguished attorney named George Harding. Harding wanted Lincoln because the judge deciding the case knew Lincoln and liked him.

After Harding hired Lincoln, the case was moved to another city (with a different judge) so Harding hired a different co-counsel, Edwin Stanton. Lincoln didn’t know about the change, so he kept working on the case. But Harding and Stanton ignored and shunned Lincoln, at one point referring to him as a long-armed ape.

Stanton did not want Lincoln involved in the case, and Stanton made this painfully clear. Stanton avoided him at mealtimes, letting Lincoln eat alone even though the two attorneys ate and stayed at the same hotel. Stanton never asked Lincoln to even show him the considerable amount of work Lincoln had already done for the case.

As I was reading this, I thought Stanton was clearly a rude, mean person. Stanton insulted and humiliated Lincoln.

A little later in the book, I learned more about Stanton, and he had enough sorrow and suffering in his life to disarm all my hostility.

Earlier in his life, Stanton had been married and was deeply in love. He was happier than he’d ever been. They had two children together. Then one tragedy after another tore his world apart. First their daughter died of scarlet fever. While he was still reeling from that heartbreak, Stanton’s wife died of bilious fever.

Stanton almost went insane with grief. Stanton’s sister came to live with him, and she said he often wandered through the house at night sobbing, and screaming, “Where is Mary!?”

A little while later, a fever damaged the brain of Stanton’s younger brother. He was “unhinged” and purposefully cut his own neck with a sharp instrument and bled to death, spraying blood all over the room, even up to the ceiling.

His brother’s gruesome suicide was the last straw. Before these tragedies, Stanton was a cheerful man, full of goodwill toward others. From that point on, and for the rest of his life, Stanton was glum and grumpy. And sometimes rude.

I imagined losing my child, my wife, and my younger brother. Suddenly, I didn’t resent Stanton for his rudeness to Lincoln. I felt sorry for him and sympathized with the unendurable anguish he must have suffered. I believe that’s what Longfellow was talking about.

There is only one problem with Longfellow’s very sensible outlook — we don’t very often find out the secret history of our enemies. Maybe the point is to give people the benefit of the doubt. If someone treats you poorly, you can reasonably assume they have sorrow and suffering enough to disarm your hostility, and you’ll probably be right. And even if you’re not, you have saved yourself a little suffering. It is less painful to feel sympathy than to feel anger.

Summary:

When you are stuck working with someone you don't like, try one or more of these:

1. Ask yourself, "What could I like about this person?"

2. Ask yourself, "What do they do (that I don't like) that I have also done?"

3. Assume the person has had sorrow and suffering in their personal history, and act accordingly.

How To Feel Happier In The Long Run By Doing What Doesn't Come Naturally

2011-09-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when I read something good, I copy it and post it. I have a bulletin board for just that purpose, and I always have something new on the board to re-read (and hopefully eventually sink in). One such nugget I've had around a long time is a page from the book, The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate.

The basic premise of the book is that some people will only feel loved if they are physically touched, while for others a hug doesn't do much but it really makes them feel loved when someone says it. The author, Gary Chapman, identifies five different "love languages:" physical touch, acts of service, receiving gifts, words of affirmation, and quality time. Read more about it here: Language Of Love.

The page I copied and have posted on my bulletin board so many times is about a conversation Chapman has with one of his clients. The client basically says, "Yes, I understand that my spouse's love language is physical touch, but I was never hugged as a child and it's not my language. I'm not a toucher."

I love Chapman's response: "Do you have two hands?" He instructs the client to put his hands together and then imagine his spouse in between. "I'll bet if you hug your spouse three thousand times," he says, "it will begin to feel more comfortable."

Comfort isn't the point, anyway. Love is a verb. It's something you do. Specifically, it's something you do for someone else. We do things all day long that don't come "naturally." And we do it because we want the result. We do it because it's worthwhile.

One of the most important things you can do to raise your mood in the long run is improve the quality of your most important relationships. Do something that brings you closer. Do something that makes you feel more affection for each other. Do something for the other person. And ideally, do something that the other person will really appreciate.

What a wife will appreciate may not be what comes naturally for the husband. It doesn't matter. Does he love her? Does he want her to know and feel his love? Then he should think in terms of what she will appreciate rather than what he would appreciate if she did it for him.

After awhile, it will come more naturally for him, and he may eventually even like it. But that's not as important as it seems.

Think of someone you love. Think of one specific person. Have they ever requested something that you have ignored? Have they ever hinted at something they would like, but since you aren't interested, you have shined it on? You could make a huge difference in your relationship to reconsider. Do a little of what doesn't come naturally and see what happens. It could make both of you happier.

Relieve City Stress

2011-09-16T12:55:00.000-07:00

MEDITATION can compensate or substitute for the deep peace one gets 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. It is the environment the human organism is evolved to deal with. Change it to buildings and cars and strangers and time pressure and polyester and lots of extra mental and emotional stimulation from music and television, and the organism — your body and mind — is out of its element. And it reacts by gearing up. Cortisol and adrenaline start flowing and 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 in between, the body would have the opportunity to settle down again and rejuvenate in a natural setting.

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

If you don't get enough peace, 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 will need to compensate for your unnatural situation. Meditation is what you need. Meditate and you fulfill your requirement for calm. And what do you know? All kinds of healthy side-effects (reductions of the symptoms of stress) show that those symptoms were from a lack 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.

Read more: Everything Goes Better With Relaxation.

Metaphors Can Make You Happy

2011-09-09T13:06:00.000-07:00

In an article in the Positive Psychology News Daily, David Pollay interviewed Clara Font, a 107 year-old woman with a great attitude. During the interview, Clara says two things in passing, but she says them as statements of fact. They are metaphors she lives by:

1. Life is a gift.

2. Every day is an opportunity.

Each one of these ways of looking at life are comparison reframes. Life is a gift compared to dying or suffering the horror of someone you love dying, for example. But life doesn't feel like a gift if you compare your life to some ideal like being a millionaire with no problems.

If you looked at your own life with the perspective (through the frame) of those two statements, you would find it raises your mood. Try it.

In other words, say to yourself, "Life is a gift." And then answer the question, "In what ways is life a gift?" Once you start thinking about it, the answers are numerous and they all stem from comparing your situation to something worse. Situations worse than yours are easy to come up with.

Several times today, say one of those statements to yourself and think about how it is true. I'd love to hear what happens (write to me at adam@youmeworks.com).

You are alive. You might as well enjoy that fact, and using Clara's two metaphors can help.

Read more here:

Comparisons

Are You The One?

Resources For Feeling Good

2011-09-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

I have another web site, and I've had it for about 12 years now. Over time I've been able to see which features of the site are used the most, and I'd like to share two of them with you. One is a fun thing to turn others onto, called "Bite-Size Tastes." They are very short items with titles that evoke curiosity. Here are a a couple of examples:

Enhance the quality of your life using a technique developed in one of Hitler's concentration camps.

How can you improve your health without spending money or breaking a sweat?

This page is something you can share with people who don't normally read self-help stuff, and it might might make them interested in reading more.

The other resource is to help you in your ongoing and noble quest for a better mood. And I call it noble because while miserable people may see your quest for a better mood as selfish or self-indulgent, you know moods are contagious. And when you are in a better mood, people around you will feel better too. It's good for everyone.

Anyway, back on track: The name of this second resource is "Immediate Relief." It is a list of negative emotions or troublesome situations, and each one is a link to take you to a short article that will help you rise up out of that particular negative feeling or circumstance. Pretty handy.

Check them out:

Bite-Size Tastes

Immediate Relief

Craving Carbohydrates

2011-08-26T12:30:00.000-07:00

I've been watching Man Versus Wild and I've noticed no matter what wild environment he's in, he always finds more protein than carbohydrates. He finds it relatively easy to find protein to eat, and very difficult to find any carbs to eat.

Our ancestors for millions of years of our evolution were in similar environments, and not until the invention of agriculture would carbohydrates become abundant.

But agriculture was only a brief moment ago in evolutionary time, so the brain mechanisms causing our cravings are not adapted to our current situation (a constant availability of abundant carbs).

In other words, our bodies and brains are assuming protein is our mainstay, so when our brains want to make more serotonin, we crave carbs, not protein.

Anyway, as I said in the article, What Goes In, we have a simple rule to follow that doesn't require counting calories or weighing food or keeping track of grams of protein: Always mix carbs and protein in every meal (and in every snack) and you'll be getting the maximum amount of tryptophan into your brain. Your brain will have what it needs to make enough serotonin, so you'll feel better more often and you won't have an unnaturally voracious appetite.

All the research is fine and dandy, but the real test that counts is the one in your own life. Give it a shot and find out what happens.

What Goes In

2011-08-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Tryptophan is an amino acid (a kind of protein) your brain uses to make serotonin, and in experiments, more tryptophan in the blood causes more serotonin in the brain. What does it matter? Well, if you don't have enough serotonin, it can make you depressed and irritable. This is especially important for women ("Women have much less serotonin in their brains than men," says this article from MIT).

Almost all good sources of protein have many different amino acids, including tryptophan, so it shouldn't be a problem to get enough tryptophan, right? Unfortunately, the other amino acids compete with tryptophan to get into the brain.

But if you eat some carbohydrates with your protein, the insulin your body releases in response to carbohydrates takes the competing proteins out of your bloodstream, which allows more tryptophan to get into your brain.

If you eat meals containing nothing but protein, your serotonin level will be low (too much competition so not much tryptophan can get into your brain). If you eat nothing but carbs, you won't have any tryptophan (it's a protein), so your serotonin level will be low. If you drink a sugary beverage, you have put calories into your body and missed an opportunity to make serotonin. If you eat a fruit snack and nothing else, you missed another opportunity. But if you always mix protein and carbs together in every meal, you will get the maximum tryptophan into your brain, so you'll have enough serotonin, and that will help you feel good.

A nice side-effect is that a higher serotonin level suppresses your appetite. A low serotonin level makes people crave carbohydrates. Isn't that interesting? This means if you eat nothing but protein, you will crave carbs. But if you eat only carbs you will still crave carbs because you're actually craving the tryptophan you need to raise your serotonin. It's as if your body assumes the protein will be there, so it only craves carbs. But carbs won't do it. Mix some good quality protein in there (and good quality carbs too while you're at it) and you have the best chance of being slim and happy.