A Friend Indeed

“The only way to have a friend is to be one.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Another important pillar of having a life that feels like you belong and are loved is having friends.  There’s nothing like a close friend who appreciates you with all your flaws, and with whom you can have a wonderful time doing anything or nothing, to help you feel like all is right with the world.  Unlike with family, we have choice in who we will align ourselves with in friendship from the time that we are children.  While this can allow for more generally comfortable, easy and supportive relationships than those we may have with family members, this may not be so if we don’t have natural talent in relating to others.  For many people, the world of friendships can seem bewildering to navigate and fraught with peril.  Engaging may not seem worth the risk.  And yet, without close friends, loneliness is virtually inevitable.

As with many other aspects of life, we rarely get direct instruction on how to foster friendships.  We’re expected to pick this up through osmosis, which is not the most helpful approach when we’re small, vulnerable, and have no idea what to do, and no one else does either.  Many of us have painful memories of difficult experiences with other children, who tend to be pathologically honest, are often thoughtless and come across as mean, and who often start experimenting early with hierarchy and power games.  Most of us remember betrayals that led us to approach the process of making friends with more caution, at least for a time.  Some people will choose to opt out of the process altogether after these stings, depending on how painful they were and how frequently they occurred.  Success depends on our natural ability to fit in and persist in resiliently failing forward until we, and those around us, develop some actual skill in relationships.

Often when we’re younger it’s easier to create strong bonds with others, because we spend so much time in close proximity with so many other people during our years in school.  Time and shared ups and downs help to draw us closer with others.  As we get older and live farther away from some of the friends we made in youth, and as life gets busier and more complicated, it can be hard to hold onto those relationships.  Long-distance friendship skills are a different ball of wax, and several degrees of difficulty harder to maintain.  It can also be harder to make new friends as adults, since we have a lot less time on our hands than we used to, and we’ve reached the time of life when it’s likely that we’re focusing on our own pursuits and passions, whether those be work, family, dating, or other extracurricular activities.  If we don’t encounter others we take a liking to in the course of work, hobbies, or religious/spiritual devotions, it’s going to take work to find friends elsewhere.

Men may have a more difficult time than women with making new friends at all ages, particularly in Western culture, because of the way that they are socialized.  Men are taught to be active, always doing and solving and tinkering with projects; there is a prevalent image of the hero as a lone cowboy who doesn’t need anyone else because he can handle everything just fine all on his own.  There is often a drive to establish hierarchy in relationships between men, which can keep them locked into specific roles.  In general, boys tend to make friends through proximity; they are less encouraged to learn complex manners, be nice to everyone, and sacrifice their own comfort for the feelings of others.  While many women learn to overbalance toward unhealthy self-sacrifice, they do tend to get more practice in observing, understanding, and caring for others, which may make it easier for them to quickly bond with someone else in a way that men may not have built the patience for.   These are gross generalizations, and each friendship will be the unique product of the interplay between two individuals who may not fit into any established stereotypes.  I do think it’s important, though, to acknowledge the extra challenges men may face here. Recent studies have shown that loneliness causes the production of stress hormones in the body, and a stressed body is more likely to develop a host of chronic illnesses.  It’s a matter of health that we learn to create more satisfying friendships, and it’s worth working on social skills required to build and maintain friendships even if it’s uncomfortable at first.  It’s also worth thinking through the stereotypes you were taught, and making your own decisions about who you will become.

So what are the essential skills involved in friendship?  Here are a few to consider, though you can doubtless think of more:

• Acceptance.  If you were to do nothing but criticize another, they would be unlikely to enjoy spending any time with you at all.  Your willingness to accept a friend as good enough just as they are allows them to relax and feel safe to be themselves with you. They will share more of themselves with you, and understanding will grow between you.
• Loyalty.  If you’re not able to stand behind your friend even when they act out of character, make a mistake, or are going through a difficult time in which they have little to give, you are likely to grow apart.
• Encouragement.  Find ways to listen to what your friend wants for themselves and offer your support, through words or deeds; celebrate what goes right for them, even if you feel moments of envy, so they know you’re invested in their success. 
• Compassion.  Work to understand how your friend feels.  No relationship can have much depth without a sense of mutual compassion and care.
• Generosity.  Be willing to give your time, love, and support (in a way that works for you too, of course).
• Honesty.  If you aren’t willing to be open with another about what’s true for you, there will be a wall between you.  If you aren’t willing to hear what’s true for them, they will end up feeling frustrated.  The best expression of honesty is combined in equal measure with kindness.  “Brutal honesty” is a display of lack of effort and consideration—after all, do you enjoy being treated with brutality by others?  I thought not!
• Fun.  While sometimes it helps to pour out our worries and woes to a friend, if you aren’t willing to let those go and allow yourself to have a good time with your friend, you’ll be missing out on one of the best things about friendship.  Everyone likes to have fun in different ways, but you can cultivate some sense of fun with each friend.  (If you can’t, then you’re probably not a good match.)
• Appreciation.  If you don’t genuinely appreciate your friend’s mix of unique qualities and feel enthusiasm for their company, they will eventually notice.  It feels a lot better to be around someone who clearly likes you than it does to spend time with someone who is non-committal and blasé.

Whether or not you’re currently good at these skills, growing more comfortable with them is time well spent.  Decide to think about one of them each week or month as you go about your social interactions, and notice how you and others display them; experiment with how you can use some of the same techniques you’ve observed, or improve your expression of the ones you’re already familiar with.  These are all skills we practice for a lifetime, and there’s no such thing as perfect.  Just get in there and work on how you can do a better job than you have in the past.  We are social creatures, and any improvements to your relationships will improve the overall quality of your life.

Thicker than Water

“A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”

— George Bernard Shaw

Having reviewed the most basic needs in Maslowe’s hierarchy, we now move into examining love and belongingness needs.  Once we have satisfied the physiological needs necessary for survival, and successfully created an adequate sense of safety, the theory goes, we will long for love, affection, and a sense of belonging with family, friends, and other social contacts such as those we make through work and religious affiliations.  The family is the first set of social contacts we have in life, so we’ll start there; the relationships we build at home will lay the foundations for the habits, beliefs and expectations of a lifetime.  The experiences we have at home when we’re young will resonate throughout the rest of our experience in ways both pleasant and upsetting, such that no matter where we are in our development, we are likely to be contending with the memories of these formative times.

It is a natural human desire to feel loved by one’s nearest relations.  We yearn to feel that we’re valued and have a place in the family structure.  And yet, there is just so much that can go wrong here!  My mother always said that when you have more than one child, you notice that they just come out different.  I know I’ve noticed in the course of making friends in life, and growing to understand them more deeply as an adult, that people can be much more different from me than I would have thought possible when I was younger.  We don’t choose our family members, and depending on the luck of the draw, we can find them baffling and endlessly frustrating.  Despite the fact that we all want very much, on some level, to give and receive love, the true connections that make this possible are often missed as though we’re out-of-control freight trains speeding through the night, driven by conductors behind locked doors.  And yet, our family will have more opportunity to know us better than most others ever will.  This can all create webs of complex dynamics that defy resolution.  It takes an enormous amount of work sometimes to move beyond their ability to continually press our buttons.  After all, they co-created those buttons.

“Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”

— Cary Grant

Every person I’ve ever spoken to who has become a parent has echoed the sentiment that one can never be really ready to have children—it’s such a deeply challenging experience that it cannot be adequately communicated, and that’s probably for the best.  If anyone fully understood the reality beforehand, they’d be unlikely to do it, and the human race might be in trouble!  Given that, it shouldn’t be surprising that most of us feel dissatisfied with some of what we experienced at home.  Most people get no useful instruction in the art of parenthood.  They make it up as they go, and the younger they are when they embark on this adventure, the less likely they are to have worked out the recipe for their own peace and happiness beforehand.  One cannot pass on what one doesn’t have.

“The other night I ate at a real nice family restaurant. Every table had an argument going.”

— George Carlin

To complicate matters, Nature seems to have set up human development to support the most rapid possible learning of the young in order to ensure their survival.  In Spontaneous Evolution, Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman note that until we’ve reached the age of six, our brains are most often in either delta (sleeping/unconscious) or theta (imagination/reverie) states, meaning that they are basically operating in a hypnotic trance.  Children this young are unable to analyze the information and programming coming at them from all sides.  They just absorb it directly into the subconscious for good or ill.  This helps them to quickly get up to speed with the requirements of their environment, but it also makes it possible for anything they observe to be written into their deepest psychology.  I find this to be a stunning revelation, and an incredibly strong argument for bringing the most awareness and care you can to your interactions with children—you are, quite literally, creating their worldview with your input into their experience.  Sadly, most people have no idea that children are quite this undefended, and children become products of carelessness.  Later, when we’re old enough to reason and make decisions for ourselves, we can clear out the jumble of unsupportive programming and experiences, but most of us have a lot of detritus to deal with, and the process of sorting through it is not fun.  That’s why we often avoid it and just live with the original stuff!

Giving and receiving love in the context of family dynamics often requires complex skills and a great deal of maturity.  Doing this well can be one of the greatest challenges we face in life.  Since the desire for love and belonging in the family is not going anywhere, one of the foundations of a happy life is to continue trying to rise to the call of what is necessary in your case to improve your relationships with family over time.  One of the skills we all need to build in order to do this is the ability to take over as parents to ourselves; this is an essential element in the development of real maturity.  We must learn to give to ourselves what we wish we had gotten from our own parents, whatever nurturing and care was missing in our early days, so that we can feel less needy in the presence of family in the moment.  In order to do this well, it is necessary to find a way to accept and let go of the past, which is a tall order for many, I know, especially for those who experiences trauma at the hands of close family members.  I’ll write more on how to do that in later posts.  It’s also necessary to become emotionally observant enough, as well as courageous enough, to learn when you need to create boundaries, speak up for yourself, and bring behaviors that are problematic for you to the attention of family members if you want to improve relationships that are challenging.  There is a world of books written on the development of these skills, and no shortage of professionals who can assist you with instruction, perspective, and coaching here using any number of great methodologies and tools.  As galling as it can be to have to do all this work, if you want to live a truly happy life, I think you’ll find it’s necessary, and it does get easier as you learn.   You deserve a happy life that’s full of love, connection, and harmony, and your family members deserve the chance to be in loving relationship with you.  However far the distance may seem that you need to travel, just start with a small step, and start building momentum.  

The Way Toward Heath

“I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.”

— Joyce Meyer

In the pursuit of a life that feels safe and secure, health is an extremely important topic.  Few things can be such a distraction from a life lived on our own terms as physical pain or disease, or emotional or mental pain and dysfunction.  Tending to our health is not as simple as building walls around our property or choosing our friends wisely (though these things may have their complexities).  I would have to say that there is more misinformation and confusion around what sustains health than in virtually any other area of inquiry I can think of.  Most of us are disheartened by the sheer volume of contradictions we encounter as we do our best to take care of ourselves and our families, and the fear-mongering rhetoric designed to sell us things pertaining to our health.  There is more information available than ever before in history, but no clear consensus on what works, and we are in danger of becoming overwhelmed and giving up entirely on having the experience of balance and vitality we’re after.

Many of us did experience vibrant health as children.  If so, we have a memory of what that felt like, at least.  We know what the best-case scenario is, and we can try to recreate and support it with our best efforts.  Those of us who didn’t may feel that the quest to gain it has about as much chance of success as a search for a legendary pirate’s treasure chest.  How can you find something you’re not even sure is really possible?  More on this later.  But chances are, if you’re out of your teens, that you may have encountered some sort of health challenge, whether that’s an old injury that just never healed quite right or a chronic issue that you haven’t been fully able to resolve.

Once we’ve had this experience of an unwanted problem that interrupts our physical, mental, or emotional functioning, fear of what the future may hold often creeps in.  After all, if this could blindside us, what else is in store in this life?  If the body can betray us in this way, how can we ever trust it again?  Of course, we may have been taught to have an adversarial relationship with our bodies before there was ever injury or meaningful illness in our lives.  We learn early from our families and communities about what our bodies do, what they mean, what we can expect from them.  If we see people around us suffering and feeling disempowered about maintaining and renewing health, then we come to believe that the body is fragile, and that our health is already eroding with each birthday.  We hear messages about how as we get older, aches, pains, and illness are inevitable.  Aging starts to sound like a bad deal for us, something to dread.  Does this sound to you like a helpful mindset for living in successful partnership with your body, mind, and emotions? 

If you notice that you have negative beliefs about your ability to enjoy health, working to be healthy, or taking appropriate care of your mind, body, emotions, and spirit, what can you do about that?  As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, admitting you have a problem is the first step.  Once you’re aware that there are conditions in place in yourself that you don’t prefer, congratulations!  You are now in a position to do something about it.  While these beliefs remain unconscious and unexamined, your life is likely to proceed in much the same familiar direction.  Becoming aware of disempowering beliefs can be painful and frightening, as this tends to stir up uncomfortable memories and the emotions that go with them.  This is where it might be a good idea to get help from someone more experienced, whether that’s a psychologist, a spiritual counselor, a coach, or a book about someone else who went through something similar and can give helpful guidance.  There is enough evidence now about the very real effect that our thoughts, beliefs and emotional states have on our long-term health that we should all be taking these into account and finding new ways to optimize them if we’re serious about supporting lifelong health.

Vast numbers of books have been written, and will continue to be, about the mechanics of what you MUST do to create and maintain health.  I am not going to enter the fray here by trying to give you some seven-step process to perpetual perfection.  As someone with some experience in dealing with chronic physical pain from different sources over the course of years, I feel that the most important thing I can add to the collective pool of knowledge is that we are each unique.  There is no one-size-fits-all solution.  I give you permission now to stop looking for it.  Now, before you wail in despair that managing your own health without a formal education in medicine is too large a project for you to be taking on, let me ask you, how does it feel to be clueless about how to maintain your health?  What if you could, little by little over time, learn what your body needs until you felt your energy, harmony, and confidence beginning to overflow?

The truth is, of course, that you can.  This doesn’t happen overnight, but if you decide that it’s what you want, and start thinking in this way, you will start compiling information that will help you in your quest.  You’ll start to notice that you feel better when you eat certain foods, sleep for a certain amount of hours starting and ending at certain times, do certain kinds of physical activity.  You’ll notice that you have more energy after spending time with certain people and less after spending time with others; some activities are more energizing, others more draining.  What most of us feel best with is the creation of balance, such that you intersperse these so that you never end a day feeling too drained, and you always add in some things that energize and uplift you to keep you going.  If you’re going to eat things you know aren’t good for you, at least you learn to balance that with making sure you get some high-quality nutrition into your body every day.  It’s the noticing and the intention to support your own health that will begin to swing your trajectory in a wide arc, over time, into an entirely new direction.  Those two things have more power than you might believe.  They don’t seem like the solution to anything when you’re desperate and in pain, but they are the long-term solution to finding what you need in order to thrive.  Most of us do our best to ignore pain signals from our bodies, minds, and emotions in favor of remaining functional, because this is what we’re taught to do.  We think there’s no point in dwelling on the negative or opening up to the experience of what the pain has to tell us because we haven’t considered that there might be wisdom there.  If you have a helpful technique to use, often there is, and it’s not necessarily hard to find (ahem…Tapping…or meditation or journaling or any number of others).  As you have some success in observing, implementing small changes, and feeling positive results, it will be easier to keep activating that intent to continue learning and implementing your way to vigorous health.

If you’ve never had the experience of health that you want, or it’s been a long time since you have, and you’re feeling disappointed and pessimistic, you will need to work on your ability to trust—trust that the world is large enough to contain the ideas and guidance you want, trust that you are capable of learning and growing, and trust your body to communicate to you when you are doing something right and when you may be contributing negatively to the issue at hand.  Read stories or watch movies about others who have triumphed in any situation for inspiration.  Allow yourself to relax for at least a few minutes a day and imagine how good it will feel to, well, feel good; really allow yourself to enjoy the experience of imagining this.  Enlist the support of others in reminding you of problems you’ve solved in the past, and all the fine qualities you have that can help you in moving forward this time.  Make sure you’re bringing some humor into your life by listening to one of the many brilliant comedians working today, spending time with someone who makes you laugh, or doing anything that tickles your funny bone.  Humor is essential to getting through hard times, and has profound healing powers of its own.

If you want to speed up you progress, then, as with anything, it’s a great idea to go do some research on what people who are considered to be successful in this arena have to offer.  Read stories about others who have had similar challenges to yours, or who are just passionate about health and sharing what they’ve learned.  Search for experts in relevant medical fields.  Find local health practitioners, including natural health experts like nutritionists and acupuncturists, who are highly rated online and seek their expertise.  Just remember that you are not everyone else.  What has worked for many others may not work for you, and vice versa.  If you’re really after health security, you’ll need to commit to firing up a lifelong curiosity about how to support your health as you continue to balance all the other areas of your life.

I wish I could say that I have all the answers and I can make it easy for you from this day forward to maintain glowing good health throughout your life.  I believe that the truth is that you are the only one who can chart the appropriate path to this goal, but there is support available for you every step of the way.  No one else could do this for you even if they wanted to, because the responsibility for the choices you make every day will always rest with you.  I think you’ll find that over time, as you grow to trust in your ability to care for yourself successfully, you’ll enjoy the ability to make your own choices and strike your own balance as a privilege.  The process will cease to be so overwhelming and become more satisfying, and you will become a source of information and guidance for others.  With no disrespect to the wisdom inherent in the Star Trek franchise, I say that I think that in today’s world the healthy functioning of the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual unit is really still the final frontier, practically speaking.  Most of us aren’t ready to move beyond this challenge into the realm of space—currently an inspiring, fantastical, glorious avoidance of the fact that we’re not even able to get our basic selves together!  We still have so much to learn about doing a decent job of being healthy humans on this planet.  This is a challenge that’s worthy of us too.  By all means, let’s keep dreaming big, but let’s also do the work to buoy ourselves up long enough to get to our biggest goals by attending to the unglamorous bits too.  May you have the most radiant health this week, this month, this life!  Feel free to comment below on anything you find to be a particularly helpful part of your own health regimen for the benefit of others.

There's No Place Like Home, Part II

“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

— Maya Angelou

In the last blog, we examined the importance of your feelings of safety from the outside world while you're at home. This week, we'll talk about maintaining a safe, secure environment inside the home, which is just as vital to your health and happiness for all the same reasons.  There are two aspects of safety we’ll touch on, both physical and emotional safety; both need attention if we are to feel that we are truly free to reach confidently for the things we most desire out of life.

When we're spending time in at home, in the space that's supposed to be just for us, we deserve to feel supported, loved, understood, and protected.  We live in environments that we ourselves have created in our imperfect image—we are constantly confronted with the choices that have made it what it is; we've made these choices over time, sometimes without even realizing that we're doing it.  The countless small decisions of the past add up to an effect that we feel every time we open the door.  Let’s take a few moments to consider what you’ve established and whether you feel good about it.  For instance, do you feel comfortable with how being at home generally feels to you?  With the way you spend your time there?  With the others who populate the world of your home? If not, you have the power to modify the conditions inside your home to improve your comfort and safety.

The louder of the two aspects of safety is the physical—if you feel like your safety is in jeopardy because someone close to you is violent and may potentially harm you physically, this will tend to be very obvious to you, very upsetting and hard to ignore.  That’s as it should be!  Someone who can’t even treat you with the respect required to refrain from hurting you outwardly does not belong anyone near you.  Unfortunately, there are many reasons why we sometimes put up with behavior from others that is completely inappropriate.  Those may include that this person is a family member, and we can’t just choose not to be related to them anymore (it can seem unthinkable to cut someone out of your life who has been such a long-standing part of your life.)  It may be that we love and care for this person, even feel that we understand them, and so we wish to be a loving influence in their lives.  It may be that we fear change and are afraid to be alone.  Whatever the reason you might give, there is a lot of great information out there in the world on dealing with abusive relationships, and while I certainly hope that you’re not a part of anything that looks like this, if you are, there is help for you.  I encourage you to go find it.  No one should have to live in fear for their physical safety.

On a slightly different note, it is also possible to feel physically threatened by a pet that lives with you.  Sometimes it’s necessary to be honest with yourself and admit that a pet that seemed like a good idea at one time is not conducive to your happiness and safety any longer.  This can be very difficult for some of the same reasons as described above regarding threatening people.  Our pets are family to many of us, and recognizing that a relationship with one isn’t healthy and taking action to correct the situation can be extremely painful.  However, it may be easier to change/”train” a pet than a human, so if this is your issue, you may want to look into getting professional help with the animal’s behavior.  You’ll still need to be ready to make a new choice if the relationship feels threatening after your best efforts.  Your safety, again, should come first.

In order to create an environment that really feels safe and secure from the inside, we must also consider the emotional quality of our relationships with people, as they are at the core of our home's overall effect on us.  If you feel that those who figure importantly in your time at home are likely to attack you, your choices, your character, you are not going to be able to enjoy the sense of harmony from which you can be at your best, see clearly, have good ideas, and live a high-functioning life.

·      Most importantly, who gets to live in your personal space with you? As anyone who has ever had a bad, or even just incompatible, roommate knows, this affects so many areas of daily life.  If someone in our space is at cross purposes with us, it can seem like the whole world is opposing our every move!  On the other hand, if you enjoy the people you live with, you get to experience a sense that life is more fun because you’re not alone; you get to feel that others are looking out for you and the home base you share.  Ideally, those you live with love and support you in such a way that you feel seen and accepted for who you are when you're around them.  If this in not what you generally feel at home, you are dealing with unnecessary stress and dissonance, and you can improve your happiness dramatically by giving some thought to the situation and taking appropriate corrective action.

·      Who visits regularly?  Who else you allow into your space with regularity also has a lot of bearing on how you will feel at home.  If you’re allowing people into your personal space who don’t seem to be on your side, people who are judgmental, selfish, or overly demanding, you will begin to feel that you cannot relax even at home.  It will be hard to rest and enjoy downtime there.  Again, you are inviting stress into your experience that could be eliminated through the establishment of some better rules about how you use your home.

·      Who calls your home number and expects you to pick up the phone?  You train others to expect your time and attention by demonstrating when you’re available to them, as well as, in this case, giving out your digits in the first place.  If you’re in the habit of giving away all your time and energy to others over the phone when you’re at home, this is another way in which you may be creating a home environment that doesn’t feel safe, calm, and supportive to you.  While I’m not suggesting that you should act like a hermit and refuse to talk to anyone once you’re home, I do think it’s important to make sure you get some time to yourself regularly that’s free of unwelcome demands.  You decide what time you will give to your community of friends and family, and must make sure you communicate what time is off limits.

·      Who has a key and can let themselves in?  This level of trust belongs only with those you know you can trust no matter what, and it pays to be very selective on this count. 

If a relationship with a family member or other roommate is not supportive to you, and you want to restore your feelings of safety, you'll need to find a way to communicate your experience and ask for changes.  This is an area in which we tend to be woefully uneducated, and the idea of confronting others about what’s not working can be frightening because we’re not confident that we can lead the situation to a helpful resolution.  There are many excellent books available on building your communication skills, and I highly recommend that you make it a priority to brush up on them if you ever have trouble talking to people in your life about important subjects—and who doesn’t, really?  One of the books I like to recommend is Crucial Conversations, by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzler, because it deals specifically with isolating the bad habits we usually fall into when attempting to communicate important content and finding ways to break out of them.  I think that communication skills are a critic necessity for living a happy life, and I encourage you to consider yourself a lifelong learner here.  Being able to accurately and confidently express yourself makes it possible to achieve so much more in your life.  You deserve to be able to handle whatever comes up with other people in the most constructive way possible.

Beyond verbal discussion, there may come a time when you need to set some boundaries and enforce them in order to create a sense of lasting safety for yourself.  Again, many of us have not been trained in confidently discerning and putting into place the boundaries we need.  If you are in a situation that feels bad to you, particularly at home, and you don’t see a way to resolve it, you’ll need to find an advisor to help you find a way through.  A smart, balanced friend or family member or a professional counselor of some kind can help you to see the situation more clearly and find the course of action that is most appropriate for you.

Taking some time to review how safe you feel at home, both physically and emotionally, is extremely important to the overall quality of your life.  It’s very difficult to be your best self if you don’t feel that you have a place to be in your downtime that is basically supportive and peaceful for you.  Please allow yourself to really consider this and see if anything stands out to you as needing your attention.  Confronting these issues can be most uncomfortable, but is well worth it in the long run.  Proving to yourself that you can improve this aspect of your life will improve your confidence in yourself and your ability to improve other areas of your life as well. 

There's No Place Like Home

“He is happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Sometimes daily life can seem like it's all about just trying to keep ourselves and our families clean and fed.  Certain periods of our lives may need to be very much about those things—for instance, when we first move out on our own after our schooling (everything from cleaning to paying bills is new and takes conscious effort), or when there are young children in the house (who need a great deal of time, energy, and care).  But there are times, hopefully, when we have more energy and focus available for pursuing projects for the sake of interest, self-improvement, career marketability, or creative expression and enjoyment.  In order to have the stability to apply ourselves in satisfying ways to these projects, we need to handle a few other things than just physical needs.  After we've satisfied our most basic needs, our old friend Abraham Maslow posits that we need to feel safe in order to keep progressing.  There are several important areas to consider as we attempt to care for ourselves at this level, all of which are important in allowing us to move forward in life with enough confidence to achieve more than just staying alive every day.  

The first one I want to address is the home.  Humans are uniquely evolved animals, but animals nonetheless; we crave a retreat that can keep us warm and dry as well as safe from marauding predators.  This may not be something you think about consciously all that often.  It’s something you no doubt assess in some way when looking for a new place to live, and you may give it some thought in the first few weeks after moving into a new home, but after that you may find that you drop into a routine and take your safety somewhat for granted.  While I’m not suggesting that you encourage yourself to be paranoid, I am going to ask you to think about whether there is anything about your home base that you feel uncomfortable about.  Perhaps every now and then you have a thought about how you wish there was more light in a certain area outside, or a better lock on your door, and you experience a low-level sense of fear about something you haven't yet defined.  If you find that there is something like this that comes up for you, consider that you may be wasting some energy on these worries that would be far better applied to the things you’d prefer to be spending your time on.

Most of us do not realize how much mental, emotional, and physical energy we waste on worrying about things that are in our power to easily change.  The things that touch on our sense of physical security affect us on the level of our animal selves, and this level is instinctive.  When it feels threatened, we go into “fight or flight” mode, which means that our bodies rev up an array of chemicals to help us prepare for running away from danger at top speed, or for combating the enemy, real or imagined.  The body reacts the same way in either case, as it can’t tell the difference between thought and reality.  In his book The Biology of Belief, Bruce Lipton details how when we’re in the fight or flight response, blood rushes away from the organs and toward the extremities to fully enable movement, and the organs slow their processes; that means that the body is using energy, but not creating much of it from the resources at hand.  The immune system also is greatly disabled in favor of the emergency chemical response.  And the center of conscious mental activity, the forebrain, slows in favor of the instinctive hindbrain, because reflex is faster to respond than reason; by boosting the hindbrain’s activity, the brain joins in to help the body survive while the state of emergency persists.  While all of this is happening, the body can’t engage in may of its normal activities, including growth processes that repair damage.  This overdrive cycle greatly contributes to physical problems over time if it gets activated too often—and in modern life, with its hectic pace and constant demands, this is often the case.

If you could halt or slow this exhausting cycle by choosing to address a few things at home, such as adding a brighter light bulb or springing for a better lock, or even just hanging thicker curtains in the bedroom so it feels more private, why not make that a priority and give yourself more ease on a daily basis?  These things may seem small, but they can add up over time.  We’ll be looking at other ways to feel secure in future blogs, but in the meantime, just give a thought to how you could make your home feel more relaxing by addressing anything about it that makes you feel nervous or unnecessarily vulnerable.  These small changes need not cost much, and they can yield far more than the value you invest.

To Sleep, Perchance To Dream

“Sleep is the best meditation.”

— The Dalai Lama

Sleep.  S-l-e-e…huh, what?  Were you saying something?

I know, this is not a sexy topic.  Let’s see if we can make it a bit more cloak and dagger, then:  Did you know that extreme sleep deprivation might even be able to kill a human?  I guess it makes sense if you really think about it, but I remember that the first time I heard this, I was taken aback.  I'm guessing that I now have your attention!

According to the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, “…animals deprived entirely of sleep lose all immune function and die in just a matter of weeks,” so it seems likely to smart people who study this topic extensively that the same fate might await a human deprived of all sleep.  However, the messages we usually hear in everyday life in Western culture suggest that there’s something wrong with us if we need more than a few hours of sleep.  When we’re obviously tired, people make fun of us, rib us about too many nights on the town, act like we’re being whiny little babies, imply that we should be able to man up and walk it off.  There are many factors that can contribute to sleep disturbances, but it can seem self-indulgent to spend time working out what crops up here.  After all, everyone has trouble sleeping sometimes, right?  Is that really a big deal?

Modern life has become a race to get more done, produce more tangible results to prove our worth (which is considered from a very “yang” perspective—what have you done, what can you brag about, how hard are you working?)  We’re unlikely to get much notice or credit for trying to create a balanced lifestyle that sustains time with family and friends and our health, and longevity—unless the attainment of six-pack abs is involved!  While we certainly can choose to live by these standards and leave the popular mindset unconsidered, the updated science tells us that sleep is absolutely necessary to our proper physical and mental functioning.

Inadequate sleep is associated with the following, for example:

• Inflammation, which contributes to issues like high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, and strokes
   
• Impaired memory, attention span and learning
   
• Decreased emotional stability; tendency toward irritability and depression
   
• Less access to creativity
   
• Diminished athletic ability and stamina, as well as reaction times and the ability to make good
  decisions while driving a vehicle
   
• Loss of muscle mass rather than fat while dieting, as well as increased appetite
   
• Increased stress hormone levels
   
• Decreased synchronization of organ systems
   
• Inability of the brain to process and organize our life experiences (neural consolidation)
   
• In the extreme, hallucinations and paranoia, and even brain damage

Not good at all!  The Same Harvard Web site linked above has this to say about sleep and mortality rates: “Data from three large cross-sectional epidemiological studies reveal that sleeping five hours or less per night increased mortality risk from all causes by roughly 15 percent.”  Also not good.  Ignoring the implications of your sleep life is clearly not the brightest thing to do!

Now, while I think that there are examples of high-functioning people throughout history, such as Mozart, Da Vinci, and Margaret Thatcher, who are reported to have slept surprisingly little, you’ll also note that these people had a very strong, passionate sense of purpose in life.  If you’re not currently living a life fueled by passion and purpose, you’re likely unable to hook into the incredible drive it would likely take to sleep for Da Vinci’s reported two whole hours per day.  There are also physical factors that will contribute to our needs; there's at least one gene that has been found to influence how much sleep an individual will require.  Especially given the toxic chemicals that are all around us these days and the pace of modern life, I think that most of us are fooling ourselves when we pretend we don’t need seven to eight hours per night on average.

On the other hand, I’m willing to acknowledge that societal rhythms that mirror the progression of daylight have kept us from experimentation with non-traditional ideas as far as sleep patterns.  For some, a polyphasic sleep model, in which frequent naps replace a single block of sleep, may actually work quite well; for some, two blocks of four-hour sleep might do the trick; when I was in college, for instance, I found that sleeping for several hours in the early evening followed by a period of homework and then getting more sleep really boosted my productivity and positive attitude about getting my work done.  I still find that a mid-afternoon siesta can be really helpful when I want to stay productive all throughout the day.  There are some fun infographics out there, like this one showing what famous historical figures have done with their sleep patterns that might give you some ideas if your work arrangement allows you to experiment.  Ultimately, I think sleep is one of those areas in which the most successful plan for each person might be a highly individualized one.  It’s worth doing some work to figure out how to maximize its restorative function in your routine. 

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the maintenance of adequate yin energy, to which sleep is a big contributor, is understood to be the body’s potential, its ability to create the stuff of your body, like blood and bone, and restore it as necessary.  It’s the ability to stay grounded in reality that balances a hyperactive mind, which the majority of us have in the living of the modern lifestyle.  The equilibrium required between both means that you can’t just run everything on yang energy, which is about activity and doing things with your body and mind.  That will burn you out and shorten your life span in this system of thought, and science is bearing this out.  In cultures that spend very little time in calming activities like meditation and quiet time alone while awake, sleep is one of the only things that we do regularly to build yin energy, especially since most of us don't do a great job with nutrition, another of the main sources of yin.

If you are someone who often feels drowsy or impatient, or is already exhibiting diseases that are influenced by lack of sleep, here are some factors to consider in improving this crucial part of your life:

• Make sure that your bedroom is a restful, clean, pleasant space that feels safe.  You should be able to enjoy being in it, and remove distractions and visual and auditory reminders to get things done.  Don’t work in this space.  Keep it for sleep and intimacy only.
   
• Your bedroom should be dark at night, as light hitting your eyes and skin while you sleep signals the body that it’s time to be awake.
   
• You might want to add a white noise machine or air filter that emits a gentle, constant sound.
   
• Keep your cell phone, computer, Blackberry, and other electronics elsewhere while you sleep.
   
• Develop a wind-down ritual so that you’re going to sleep at the same time each day, like doing some light stretching or breathing exercises, or some enjoyable reading in bed. 
   
• Wake up at the same time each day as well, expanding the amount of time you sleep on a daily basis until you don’t feel the need to “catch up” on the weekends. 
   
• Your body temperature is supposed to drop at night, so don’t exercise or take a hot shower or bath right before you want to sleep.  Allow for a cool-down period and lower the room temperature so you’re not too hot.  I also find that I'm more likely to have nightmares if I'm too warm while sleeping.
   
• If you do have trouble getting back to sleep during the night, don’t lie there feeling anxious about it.  Get up and do something relaxing like some more reading or listening to calming music until you’re drowsy again.  EFT (Tapping) is also great for helping you to relax, unwind, and get back to sleep.
   
• Don’t consume caffeine or nicotine past the early afternoon.  And while alcoholic beverages can help you relax into sleep, they can also disturb the second half of your sleep cycle.  Take note of whether this might be happening for you.
   
• Don’t eat a big meal right before bed.  The digestive process makes it hard for the body to sleep deeply.
   
• If you have a pet that is active at night, consider keeping it out of the bedroom while you’re sleeping.
   
• If you have health challenges that interfere with sleep, do what you can to address them.  If those challenges mean that you need extra sleep in order to heal and restore yourself, make it a priority to get it.
  
  I hope you can see how important it is to achieve a healthy sleep routine for you and your specific needs.  Try not to let anyone else decide for you what you need (unless you have serious issues with your sleep, in which case professional advice on your particular situation may be invaluable).  Instead, experiment and really pay attention to what works for you.  The reward will be more energy, clarity of mind, calmer emotions, enhanced creativity, and more vibrant health.  Hey, maybe this is sexy after all.

Welcome to So Much Happier!

“To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.”

— Oscar Wilde

If you've been alive for more than a few years, you've probably noticed that this world is a messy place in which nothing ever goes quietly and obediently according to plan.  If you want to do anything but trudge through life in a groove of endless repetition, you will be contending with the chaos of factors too numerous to count in an intimate, challenging, often frustrating tango.  It's unavoidable. But how we dance is what makes us the people we are and determines our potential, who we can be.  Do we practice our repertoire of steps with dedicated determination and call our creativity up from the depths to give birth to crafty new steps?  Do we throw ourselves into the dance with our whole selves despite adversity and inevitable heartbreak?  Do we remain committed to partnering the ephemeral when we've been dropped on the hard floor from a high, fast-spinning lift?  Or do we let the pain ground us, turn off the spirit of fire within in order to live a life of greater comfort in which we feel vaguely lost and conflicted?

We retain the choice to attempt to live fully, zestfully, expressively, attempting to be the most ourselves we can in every moment; even if there are serious impediments holding us back, such as illness, limited resources, etc., we can still make this our intent.  Or we can abdicate our effort, put our passion on the back burner, batten down the hatches, and let life just spin us as it will and try to endure.  A lot of us end up in this survival mode a lot more often than we’d prefer.  After all, life on planet Earth is challenging, and we all get overwhelmed at times.  Most of us have been ill prepared for life as an adult in important ways, whether in important practical skills such as how to budget, pay bills in an organized fashion, cook, or clean, or in social skills like comfortably meeting new people, making small talk, communicating effectively, negotiating, and resolving disputes.  There can be so much in the way of our smooth functioning in these everyday necessities that it feels like we can never be free to live a life that feels like it’s truly ours.  But the case is never hopeless unless we decide that it is.

Your time on this planet is limited.  Are you really living it?  Are you making progress toward things that matter to you on a deep personal level?  Even if it’s very slow progress, you still get credit here!  If you’re not, are you willing to stay out on the floor and keep trying new steps until you find ways through or around impediments?  Are you willing to exert effort to make your life into a better expression of your unique talents and potential?

If so, I’ll be offering you ideas, resources, and thoughts on your process here in this blog.  But we’re in this together.  I’ve been working for years on projects that have given me insights to share, but no one has all the answers.  When we support each other with the best we have to offer, we can make leaps forward that we would never be able to achieve alone.  To me, that’s the most exciting thing in the world.  I want to help empower you to have more of what you want and be more of your best self so that you can go out and delight and empower others.  When we all do that, that’s when life really becomes fun.

In his novel Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins writes that there are really only two mantras, “Yum” and “Yuck.”  Will you affirm the “Yum” in life and in yourself enough to commit to harnessing your passion constructively?  Will you live with death-defying courage even in the face of difficulty and confusion, knowing that this is the only way to stay open to the unfolding of a better life?  Choose wisely today, and every day. You deserve to live a life of joy and gratitude. I look forward to sharing your journey, and supporting it in whatever way I can so that you can continue to discover more, be more, become more.  Let’s do this.