So Much Happier Blog
Who's Your Inspiration?
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing—that’s why we recommend it daily.”
Who or what would you change for if the stakes were high? Motivation, which is the willingness to confront challenge and surge toward a specific purpose in the face of uncertainty, can be a tricky beast to harness. If you're struggling with motivation, there are causes you'll need to handle at the root. At the same time, until that work is finished and beyond, there are some hacks that may help you to get through tougher times.
When you're languishing in the "blahs" and you can't seem to want to do anything, the biggest culprits to look toward in today's world are 1) physical needs that aren't being met, which cause a constant energy drain (such as proper nutrition and adequate sleep) and 2) a lack of clarity about what stirs your passion and enthusiasm, or a failure to leverage your passion effectively. Both of these should be thoroughly addressed if you want to reach maximum performance, but here's a shortcut that can act as a booster in the meantime: Figure out who you're drawn to serving and enlist their help in goading yourself into targeted action.
It's amazing how many of us will take action all day long if someone we love needs us, but never take action for ourselves! This is often because of unfortunate beliefs that were instilled in us (such as "To be a good person, I have to put my own desires and needs last") by family or other cultural elements. It can then become sheer habit for you to live out these beliefs, and they may run in the background virtually invisible to you, seemingly a core part of your identity, hard to clearly recognize let alone consciously change. Finding the beliefs that keep you feeling stuck under a mountain of reasons why your life is the way it is, and why you can't have what you want, can be a complicated process, but if you become comfortable with Tapping, it becomes a lot easier! Suddenly you don't have to figure out how to untangle this hopeless ball of string with just your logical mind. Your far-more-powerful subconscious mind starts to get on board when you Tap, and can lead you through a non-linear, but still amazingly effective, process of discovery and release from limited perspectives. If we have a solution to all the overwhelm that keeps us frozen in place, it's much easier to take action in the name of our own goals.
When you want to effect change, first setting up underlying support structures that will create a stable platform on which to anchor your work is a smart strategy. Having healthy exercise routines and mental, emotional, and spiritual practices in place can really help us to be in it for the long run. In addition, finding crafty ways to build your overall motivation and focus is well worth your time so that you have a variety of options on call whenever you just want to lie down and quit! No matter how positive you are, there will be times when you're running up against an obstacle that feels like it might be the last straw. For me, that's usually technology! I do appreciate all the incredible inventions that we have access to in modern life, but when my computer is refusing to talk to my printer for reasons unknown, the thought of spending the afternoon trying to mediate an argument between virtual entities with inscrutable motivations can make me want to climb the curtains. People I get. High-tech machines, not so much.
We're all different, so finding what motivates you will take observation. With some focus over even a week or two, you should be able to isolate a few ideas or activities that really get you excited about life. To find them, ask yourself questions like, "If I could stop time and do absolutely anything I wanted with no consequences for weeks at a time, what would that be?" If you answered "Sleep," then that gives you a clue about what you need in your life to recharge! Imagine that you've had 6 months to a year to just laze about and do nothing, and then try this question again. You'll probably come up with a thing or two that you'd love to do or explore.
Chances are, though, if you're not already adept at motivating yourself with passion, there will be someone else in your life for whom you would get out of bed no matter what. Knowing this is gold! If it's true for you, guess what? You can now enlist that person's help in any number of ways in your efforts toward a goal or a making a new habit stick. Sometimes all it takes is reminding yourself that you're exercising, for example, so you can be healthy for major events in your loved one's life that are still years away. You can also ask them to act as a cheerleader, and give them frequent updates on your progress so they can encourage you regularly. For some people, the idea that their actions affect their pets is a super-potent driver. Those who work with energy in healing practices know that your health, both physical and mental, affects the health of those around you, including that of your companion animals, in both subtle and more overt ways. Helping oneself in order to help a pet can be a very motivating way to commit to change. This is one of those hacks that can boost your motivation when nothing else is working because love is an incredibly powerful force that can be harnessed to impel us into action. As an added bonus, doing things for those you love makes you feel great, as long as you're doing them out an authentic loving spirit and not out of an attempt to control other people or events.
No matter where you are in your journey toward utilizing consistently effective self-motivation skills, you can build toward mastery in this area little bits at a time. Gaining the ability to motivate yourself no matter what's going on takes work over time for sure, but any effort toward building these skills will leave you more empowered and self-aware than before. Waking up to what works for you, and putting what you've noticed to work for you, will help you to build strong habits that will serve you well in the pursuit of all your goals. Pick a suggestion from above and get started! You deserve to feel excited about getting up in the morning, and these will help you get there.
Keeping Hold of Your Heart
“The roots of all goodness lie in the soil of appreciation for goodness.”
Despite the fact that this world gives us access to greater technological advances and opportunities for cooperation and success than ever before in known history, it's also true that it can be an incredibly hard place to live. We all have to keep so many plates spinning at all times, and we're often stretched very thin; so is everyone else. This plus an exploding world population, increased levels of pollution, lower-quality food than what was generally available a few generations ago, etc. etc., can make for a pressure cooker of an experience. Without a steady, committed daily practice of some sort of calming modality such as meditation, mindful breathing, prayer, gratitude journaling, or Tapping, you're likely to be building layers upon layers of stress into your mind and body that will add up to lots of unhappy, unhealthy days.
I'll just take this opportunity to remind you that physical exercise is also a key element in the construction of a life that works. It helps you naturally bust stress and feel happier, it helps your body's overall health in so many ways that you probably already know about, and it keeps you strong and limber so you can enjoy using your body all throughout your days. Sleep is also incredibly important. You know I'm going to keep reminding you about all these things! If you're not minding your body, mind, and spirit each day, you're not living your best life, and I want the absolute best for you. But more than all these, and less possible by far without them, we long for creativity—the creation of new ideas, solutions, and artistic expressions. We might want to create them or just observe and appreciate them, but either way they bring a great deal of zest to life that creates enthusiasm and energy. Therefore, whether you consider yourself a creative person or not, I urge you to find ways to bring more creativity into your routines.
If you're not currently in creation mode, get out there (or stay in!) and consume some creativity that others are offering for your enjoyment. Keep in mind, though, that when you do this, you go on a ride of sorts that someone else has designed. You have a great deal of choice in the kinds of experiences you can elect in this realm, so you should think and choose wisely. Decide what kind of ride would be most helpful to you at this moment. Do you want something thrilling and death-defying to wake you up and add some excitement to your day? Something sweet that will restore your faith in humanity? Something about people who have risen to challenge to become the best in themselves? Something that just makes you laugh until your belly hurts? I personally don't go after experiences based on horror, as I find these to be the opposite of energizing for me, but we're all different. Experiment to find the kinds of experiences you really enjoy riding along for, and then allow yourself to enjoy them regularly. These journeys can be musical, they can involve films or stand-up comedy, visual art, culinary adventures, documentaries, Ted talks or other educational lectures, books, whatever you'd like to try this week. But keeping new experiences rolling in helps keep you from becoming stale or retreating into a smaller life experience than you could be having. Why not avail yourself of everything you have access to?
I came across this list of films that might foster empathy, according to the author, which I found interesting. If there's a quality you're trying to build into a strength, consuming supportive creative products can be a part of your practice toward that end. You can also poll people around you with different tastes to find a list of potential ideas. Even just a few minutes per day spent appreciating the product of someone's creativity can give you a tremendous life and remind you of what's good when there's a whole lot of chaos and madness around you. Find something to sample this week, and feel free to comment with some of your favorites below!
Indulge a Little
“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.”
This is a holiday week in the U.S. and I want to keep it simple, so today I'll just offer a thought or two about the benefits of enjoying the good things in life. Small indulgences can be a part of living a healthy, balanced life and enjoying the ride; life is hard enough without denying ourselves things that bring us joy. This could include putting down the to-do list long enough to watch the sunset, or savoring a glass of wine here and there. It could mean carving out time to read the kind of book made for a hammock and a summer afternoon. In this spirit, I'd like to pass on some positive facts about about my favorite treat, dark chocolate (and of course there may be positive health-related aspects to whatever your own preferred version of indulgence may be, as many things that relieve stress can be considered healthy). This article lays out some of the known boons of small amounts of high-quality chocolate on our health. Here's another article you might find interesting if chocolate is your vice of choice. Keep in mind that you can find bars made with honey, stevia, and other more healthful sweeteners than sugar if that's your concern! Have a wonderful week and enjoy some small indulgence that you love and can enjoy in moderation.
Happiness According to Yale
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
In the last century, much of psychological study was centered on plumbing the depths of neuroses. There's now a corresponding inquiry into what helps us to build and maintain happiness. Currently, one of the most popular courses Yale has ever offered is a course on how to build and maintain happiness, which seems to evidence two things—that today's Ivy League students are pretty stressed out, and that they want to learn another way of operating. Good for them.
Since you're reading this, I suspect you are interested in such things as well! Therefore, I thought I'd share an article in which someone who audited this class gives us a book report on what he learned. It's a tour of the teacher's research on this worthy topic, and while I found myself disagreeing with a few of the points presented here and there, I thought you'd find it valuable and enjoyable to explore. You can even take the full course for free here if you want to. I think that's pretty cool.
Getting Sane about Emotions
“If you don’t think your anxiety, depression, sadness and stress impact your physical health, think again. All of these emotions trigger chemical reactions in your body, which can lead to inflammation and a weakened immune system.”
While I posted something else somewhat like this not long ago, I think it bears repeating that we've been a bit culturally mesmerized by the idea of quick, easy solutions to life problems that deserve our full respect and attention. When we're in any kind of pain, it's so tempting to just silence that discomfort with a pill, a quick fix, a distraction, or by compartmentalizing around the pain. The sensations can be so frightening, and our mental habits so reactive, that we can't handle considering our options long enough to find a possible long-term solution. (I'm not saying that finding short-term relief is a bad thing at all, but using it as a way to numb out warning signals is maybe not the smartest thing to do over the long term.)
And after all, in the absence of good alternatives, this habit makes complete sense. Pain is no fun at all! It feels bad, it drains our energy and will and enthusiasm, it drops a roadblock in front of everything we want to be doing with our time, and we are certainly not taught any practical tools for dealing with it. Instead, we're often fed the line that pain and discomfort are just what it is to be human. Once you've got them, you better get used to them because you're not getting any younger, and you should just stop being such a whiney little baby about it! This attitude is a product of millennia of generations who had extremely limited life expectancy and little access to information about health and healing. The body/mind/spirit can often be astonishingly resilient, but solving any problem takes energy. We have to be willing to invest it. We also have to be willing to stubbornly hold to the belief that there may be solutions out there, even if they don't immediately present themselves. That takes mental discipline, which also takes energy to build.
I find that on the subject of emotional pain, we have very little guidance available, perhaps because emotions don't lend themselves to neat and tidy scientific study. In this article, we have an examination of the most common approach to addressing depression, specifically in the West. Unfortunately that approach tends to leave out much consideration of context, and tries to make an excess of any emotional state about a purely mechanistic chemical process. As a life coach, I find this particularly frustrating, because I find that no part of our lives exists as separate from the rest, and nothing is ever this simple. We tend to have all the same challenges/misconceptions around the other big, unpleasant human emotional experiences, including sadness, grief/loss, anxiety, fear, and anger. None of these exists in a vacuum, and there's usually at least some experiential reason for feeling them. For some, these experiences become more intense, but we can all recognize them as familiar; while the human experience is broad, it's not unique in its sensations. We all have all the basic emotions in common, and they all tend to be produced out of similar experiences. In my Tapping work with groups, I find that this realization actually tends to be quite reassuring for people. We often think we're much more isolated in our pain than we are, but it turns out that even in a small group, there will inevitably be a lot of crossover regarding what's on our minds. With honesty and the support of others, we can find ways forward that are a relief.
I do understand that everyone is unique, and bodies can sometimes malfunction such that someone has a tendency that needs constant intervention. I also know that it can be uncanny how when when we improve life situations that cause misery, physical symptoms can sometimes dramatically improve. Even finding ways to just release some stress and feel a bit better about something unpleasant that hasn't changed at all can help the body to inch toward healing itself. I hope that the way emotional difficulties are dealt with in the future evolves to include a broader, more wholistic approach that allows people more latitude to access multiple approaches. If each person could customize an overall plan that helped her/him to feel more supported and understood, I think our results would be drastically better. My contribution to being the change I wish to see in the world in this area has had to do with seeking out modalities that can gently bend a person's future toward greater balance, and sharing those publicly as best I can. If you feel so moved, I hope you'll do the same. The realm of emotions is one in which we drastically need improvements to become available as evidenced by the number of people acting out their pain with varying degrees of violence toward others. If we can normalize even the desire for people to find better long-term solutions, and start getting information out there about good work that's being done on such things, that will be the beginning of positive change.
Getting Free of the Past
“Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.”
In light of the reported suicides of some very famous and successful people this week, it seems more important than ever to get out whatever information I can about what we know about the pursuit of happiness, and how we can be most effective in it. I'd like to remind everyone about the large-scale CDC study on adverse childhood events and their effects on adult health and happiness that you can find information about here. The story behind it is pretty interesting—a scientist was working with a group of people on weight loss, and was flummoxed about why some people would lose an enormous amount of weight in the confines of a scientific study, but drop out before it was over or then gain it all back very quickly after the study's conclusion. As he looked deeper, this led to startling findings about what types of experiences trigger weight gain and loss. The results are some of the most important information about health you'll probably ever read, but I bet most of you have never even heard of this study.
I hope you'll take a look at those links, but in short, traumatic experiences wreak havoc on physical, mental and emotional health. If you're bothering to read this, that may not seem like a revolutionary statement. Yet the medical community still has not acknowledged, in many ways, that major illnesses are influenced by more than genes and mechanistic chemical reactions within the body. The events of our lives have profound effects on our futures, and who we have the opportunity to become. And even the most rich and famous among us often don't reach out for help or can't find all the help that is available to address the things that hold us all back from our inherent potential. What about those with few resources and many competing responsibilities? We can do better than this.
We can all keep an eye out for those around us who may be struggling and help them connect with information that might help, or just lend a sympathetic ear so that no one in our circle feels alone. We can commit to learning about all the options that exist to help us all spring back from the ways in which life happens. We can all work on instituting some sort of a daily practice that helps to preserve our sanity and make us more of a resource to the world around us, even if this is no part of our career responsibilities. In today's world, it's so easy to feel isolated even in a world teeming with people. Whatever else I'm doing, I hope I help others to know that they are not alone, and help is available all around. You know that I'm a huge proponent of EFT (Tapping) in the quest for health and happiness, but it's just one of many, many helpful modalities. We can all find something that can help us through our next steps, whether it's cognitive therapy, traditional systems of health/medicine from all over the world, or modern blends of numerous techniques used together.
Above all this, we need to destigmatize the work of addressing mental and emotional pain. Experiencing pain of any kind is not shameful, and admitting that you could use help with the aftereffects of difficult life experiences is one of the strongest, most courageous things you can do. Not to mention one of the most effective, because as long as you struggle with daily life, you are denying yourself and the world around you the best results of your inherent brilliance unleashed. Let's stop acting like everyone should be able to just suck it up and handle everything that's ever happened to them alone and in silence. Some kinds of life events are overwhelming. This approach is killing us.
We're going to keep talking about how to get happier, but whatever you do, don't go back to sleep. Please engage with your own needs, your own life, and the others around you, and let's work on growing past this fatal ignorance together. When people find out about all the helpful tools that exist, hope returns and the work of reclaiming desperate, frozen aspects of our complete selves can begin. Balance and happiness may take time to build, but what is a better use of our time than learning these life-saving and quality-of-life-saving skills?
The Health Risks of Loneliness
“A true community is not just about being geographically close to someone or part of the same social web network. It’s about feeling connected and responsible for what happens. Humanity is our ultimate community, and everyone plays a crucial role.”
There is increasing scientific evidence that loneliness is extremely unhealthy. We all know that it feels bad, but it is now apparent that lonely people have worse health outcomes than those who are not plagued by loneliness, often to a striking degree. This article mentions many ways in which the problem presents itself, but one of the most amazing statistics I found in my travels was that chronic loneliness has negative impact that is comparable to smoking about 15 packs of cigarettes a day! Well, when you put it that way, I guess we all need to pay attention!
There can be many reasons for rampant loneliness, as the causes of it are obviously subjective. Some of the main factors may be:
- The pace of modern life, which leaves little time for the kinds of unhurried interactions in which we build feelings of closeness with others
- The fact that we often don't live in close proximity to those we care most about, when in olden days we would have lived in small villages where everyone knew each other, and everyone we knew was physically close
- Young people may experience a great deal of social isolation until they build social skills and find acceptance in a group of friends. This can take much longer than is healthy
- Older people who made friends in school through proximity with others may not have built adequate social skills to continue making friends throughout life. Social skills are generally not specifically taught, so those not naturally talented in this area may struggle for a lifetime
- Because the expression of emotions is still considered taboo in many ways, those in the midst of adversity may retreat inward; admitting to having difficulty could lead to being judged as weak. They then don't receive the healthy support that could help them get through the tough times, which reinforces the experience of loneliness
- Mental and emotional health assistance is still stigmatized, so many who could really use professional health of some kind don't seek it
- Social media, where many get a lot of their interactions these days, can foment nastiness and resentments in public discourse as much as they connect us with creativity and support
Obviously these are just a smattering of the possible causes of modern loneliness, but do any of these sound familiar? Knowing that your long-term health may depend on it, what do you think you might do differently in order to foster deeper, more satisfying relationships? We'll look more at possible solutions going forward, but why not start thinking about ways that you can make the most of the social time you do get?
How can you stay present with the most important people in your life? If you have a choice to make about how to spend time and one of your choices might deepen a friendship, can you choose that one this week? Can you write a note or have a quick conversation with someone about something meaningful to remind both of you of the bond of trust you share? I bet if you just keep thinking about this in the background of your routines, you can find little ways to appreciate and build the relationships you have in small but impactful ways. Relationships are built and nurtured over time, so there's never a better time to start than now. The benefits of growing better habits are and will remain of the utmost importance to the quality of your health and happiness.
Teaching Happiness
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
Many of us struggle with creating happiness, motivation, and fulfillment, in large part because we weren't given the tools to successfully foster these things on a daily basis as part of our schooling. It's never too late to learn, though, and that's what this blog and my work are all about. It was refreshing, then, to read this week about how various governments are beginning to experiment with adding the development of important happiness-related skills to their school methodologies in order to help kids to be healthier mentally and emotionally, and perform better in school. Predictably (I think) it works really well.
Here's a link to the article I read, and I thought I'd just go ahead and pass it along this week. I hope it serves as a reminder that increasing focus on learning things like giving ourselves credit for what we do well, feeling grateful, and empathizing with those around us has real and measurable positive results. What can you do to model these results this week?
Is Now the Best Time for Change?
“Clever people master life; the wise illuminate it and create fresh difficulties. ”
Last week we looked at some of the reasons why it can be difficult to create change in your life. We'll continue the same line of inquiry this week with some information about how our brains function and how we can best set ourselves up for success given their needs and limitations. In his book Your Brain at Work, David Rock lays out the conclusions of a wide array of scientific studies on brain functioning. If you're someone who wants to be highly efficient and productive, you might want to read it yourself, but I'll let you in here on a few ideas it offers that are relevant to this discussion. This is just a quick summary, so some of these concepts may not seem self-explanatory, but the evidence for them is there.
- Completing actions you know how to do on "autopilot" is easy for your body as it doesn't require the expenditure of much energy. Learning new things, on the other hand, is an energy-intensive activity that can quickly drain your brain's reserves
- Even processing new experiences when you're not trying to learn anything at all is taxing. Evolution has encouraged us to be wary of the new because anything unfamiliar might be a threat. Too much newness tends to ramp up our fight/flight/freeze response, which quickly exhausts resources and switches off our reasoning functions
- Dialing down internal distractions, otherwise known as "inhibition," is another demanding task that burns through resources quickly. Deliberately focusing on something to the exclusion of all else takes effort, so you can only do this effectively for a relatively short time before you'll need to take a break to refuel. Rock does not immediately specify, but food, sleep, deep breathing, and exercise all help us to recover from such efforts
- Switching focus back and forth rapidly as we do when multi-tasking is also draining, and doing this decreases our efficiency such that studies show no net gain in efficiency. Multi-tasking takes the same amount of time and energy as doing each task separately because of the efficiency we lose. It also decreases the quality of our work. The only exception to this is when one of the tasks is so ingrained as to be an "autopilot" task for you
- As much as we'd like to think that we can work at full attention all day, studies show that we only get a certain amount of highly effective thinking time per day. This makes it essential to be smart about how we prioritize the most important tasks so they can be addressed during our most energized moments
I hope you're noticing the through-line that when we try to work against our physical needs, we make the likelihood of our success in creating new habits much harder than it has to be. I think there's a reason why so many people find that exercising or adding a daily practice to their lives works better first thing in the morning. Not only do scheduling surprises tend to get in the way less, but we tend to have the most physical/mental resources available to us before the day's onslaught of requests and requirements starts to bombard us and use them up.
How can you start to be more strategic about moving your most important and most demanding tasks to your highest-energy times of day? (Maybe these aren't typically morning for you—we're all different, and you should absolutely notice what works for you most consistently and leverage it for yourself as you continue to learn.) How can you protect these times from random interruptions so that easier tasks only land outside of them? Maybe that means turning off your phone during these periods of more intense work. Maybe that means putting a Do Not Disturb sign on your door so that everyone in your house knows that this is private time. Maybe you'll decide to get up a little earlier so that you can get started on your day when the world is quieter, or wait until after coffee and a healthy breakfast before attempting deep concentration. I encourage you to start thinking about this and experiment with how these principles can help you move more quickly, and with less friction, toward your most exciting goals. Life is busy, but with some intentional planning, we can often carve out more ways to be productive than it might seem if we just blunder through our days putting out fires. And when you find a scheduling pattern that helps, celebrate it! Small victories add up to bigger ones over time.
Can People Change?
“Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the furthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness: a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us. Cynics always say ‘no.’ But saying ‘yes’ begins things. Saying ‘yes’ is how things grow.”
I don't know if you've noticed, but change is often frightening for humans, in part because we're wired for self-protection, and opening to change requires uncertainty; also, it's difficult to envision exactly who we will be on the other side of change, and that's a threat to one's current life and personality—and can be interpreted as a threat to others in the immediate vicinity depending on their beliefs. I think it's out of these concerns that the "This is just who I am/how things are" excuse arises, and it's a goal killer. If you want to achieve anything on your bucket list, avoid giving yourself this "out" at all costs.
Now, I don't mean that you should feel bad about it if this is your first reaction to the idea of change. We all fall back on habitual defenses sometimes, and again, this is a survival mechanism that evolved for the sake of keeping the species alive. But if you hear this coming out of your mouth, just notice. In order to reach your aspirations, you'll need to address this attitude, and your reasons for digging in your heels in the face of the unknown. Fear can be incredibly potent, causing us to freeze even when doing so makes no logical sense, and even sometimes contradicting our deepest values. Yet it isn't totally in control overall. We retain conscious choice over the direction of our lives even when fear seems very big and loud.
When you feel stuck in your current position, fear is calling you to work through your objections because moving forward seems unsafe, and guess what's an amazing tool for helping you to gently calm your jitters about change? Tapping! But you knew that already! Through Tapping, we can much more easily allow the reasons for our fears (usually adverse experiences from the past) to raise their hands and be heard. When we allow these old truths to come to the fore, be expressed, and allowed to dissipate in intensity while we Tap, it's truly amazing how we can suddenly see things quite differently; stepping forward into position to grab new opportunities is not as big a deal as we thought it was just minutes before. Uncertainty feels more manageable, excitement for the new often surges, and we feel a renewed sense of possibility that allows enthusiasm to carry us forward. Once you're in this state, making plans that are both optimistic and reasonably balanced with appropriate self-protection is much easier. Your chances of success skyrocket, particularly when you're practiced enough in this process to repeat it whenever you find it necessary to get unstuck again. When you're your own one-person fear triage team, it's pretty hard to keep you down!
Nobody who has ever wowed the world with a game-changing invention, artistic vision, physical achievement, or other advance has just sat back down and allowed things to stay as they were instead of following their inspiration. Sometimes the road to success is long and strewn with frightening thoughts and symbols that need to be navigated under, over, or around. Nevertheless, growth is almost always possible. Make excuses now and then if they slip out, but then decide again when you've had a chance to think and take action to surface your fears. Fighting them takes a lot more energy than acknowledging, allowing, and transforming them before you swing into action. What have you been fearing and resisting? Maybe it's time to let yourself acknowledge the reasons why so you can address them start the process of forward motion.
How about Some Good News?
“I am in the world feeling my way to light ‘amid the encircling gloom.’”
There are always so many voices trying to tell us that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Some people are addicted to external drama that can prevent them from noticing and dealing with their own back yards. Business interests recognize that fear is a powerful motivator that can increase their profits when it's leveraged to make them seem absolutely necessary. Some people just want to be seen as a savior, someone who has the answers so that others will follow and validate him/her. Whatever the motivations behind them, dealing with all the messages we encounter daily that are filled with bad news can be a real bummer. One of the ways you can regain some of your vitality and enthusiasm is by dialing down or tuning out the volume of those doom-and-gloom messages and finding opportunities to be aware of the ways in which life is good.
Life will always be a mix of dark and light, happy and sad. It's smart to take prudent, practical steps to make ourselves safer and to think ahead about what will be needed in the future, but excessive worrying and stress destroys our happiness. Eventually, it erodes our health too. How about finding a few sources of news stories that make you feel good about your fellow humans and being alive in general? Here's one, for instance, but there are many others. There are also many people out there filling social media feeds with posts that will inspire and energize you. Why not spend a few moments this week searching out a few sources of small joys that you can add to your every day? This week's blog is short. I suggest that you use the extra minutes you might normally have spent reading a longer one to go find some inspiration!
Who Do You Choose?
“So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”
The friends we surround ourselves with are a powerful factor in the quality of our everyday lives. If yours are negative, cynical, and needy, you'll have one kind of experience when you relate to them. If they're bright, enthusiastic, and generous, you'll have another kind of experience. Chances are, your friends are all a mix of many qualities, because humans are messy! The trick is to keep an eye on the balance of your friendships as a whole and make sure it's supportive to you. Each friend and each friendship will be unique, which is part of the magic of relating to another human being. Each friendship will have its own rhythm. You'll want to spend a lot of time around some friends, whereas others you may appreciate best in small doses. Some friends will be so busy at certain times in their lives that you may have to accept a lot of rain checks. Each friendship may have a fairly specific function, as in allowing you to have company in a specific kind of activity, or a conversational partner for discussions around a certain kind of subject. Some may be highly versatile. Having friends who fulfill different roles for you brings a healthy variety of influences into play that can make you a more stable, understanding person.
We've probably all had the friend who we appreciate, but no no one else really likes, and this kind of relationship is fine too. If both parties enjoy each other's company, it's a wonderful thing! Not everyone is going to be your cup of tea, but conversely, your relationships don't have to make sense to everyone else you know, either (as long as the reason no one else "gets" this person is NOT because they're abusive, controlling, or otherwise truly unhealthy for you).
You may have heard the concept popularized in recent years that you become a sort of amalgamation of your closest friends—that you are pulled into the gravity well created by each of their personas to some extent, and your own personality is shaped by theirs over time. That's obviously a generalization, and the extent to which it's true will depend on how much time you spend with each and the malleability of your personality, among other factors, but it's definitely worth thinking about which influences you invite in to your head and heart to roost. Someone can be fun to be around, but leave you feeling guilty or just unsatisfied about the behavior they bring out in you. Some people will tempt you into corners of yourself where you don't want to be. Is this really what you want for yourself? Or would you rather have fun being around someone who draws you forward into being more of what feels like your best self?
It can be illuminating to think about how you make decisions about the friendships you'll invest in. Do you wait for someone to be enthusiastic about you and reach out first, and say yes to everyone? Do you look for someone who makes you laugh till you cry? Shares certain specific values? Is it more of a case-by-case intuitive process for you? I was recently thinking about this myself, and I realized that my friends tend to be people who astonish me (to be clear, in a good way, not in a random or train-wreck sort of way!) I seem to seek out and invest in people who are smart and driven, who are talented or accomplished in ways that challenge and inspire me, because they have strengths I don't. This keeps me fascinated by them, and their points of view; it stretches my ability to see the world through new eyes and recognize the breadth of human experience, which helps to keep my life interesting. It also helps me to cultivate a deeper understanding of others who are different from me. Having recognized this, I plan to tell friends more often about exactly why I value their part in my life so much.
When you think about who your closest friends have been, what do you notice? Which of your values have you prioritized in choosing them? Once you have a better idea of how you make your decisions around friendship, is there an emerging pattern that you need to address? Perhaps there are friendship categories that you'd like to expand. A little reflection here can clarify a plan of action that would make your universe of friendships more whole and satisfying.
In the meantime, who can you tell this week about how much you appreciate them and why? As a bonus, you'll feel some extra satisfaction in focusing on some of the great people in your life, or remembering those who have been a part of it in the past. Friendships are to be savored. We're so lucky when we cross paths with those who can see who we are and love us for it. We're blessed to be able to spend time with people we appreciate and admire.
Energy Psychology
“We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.”
This week, I want to simply recommend an article that covers a history of "energy psychology," (which is a broad umbrella that includes Tapping as well as many other modalities) and how various types of such interventions have been shown effective in trials: Fighting the Fire: Emotions, Evolution, and the Future of Psychology. One of the most interesting takeaways for me is the link between emotional trauma and major diseases, but there are many interesting points made that I thought my readers would find interesting. Take a look and let me know what was most interesting to you!
Stalking the Wild Motivation
“Desire is the key to motivation, but it’s determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal—a commitment to excellence —that will enable you to attain the success you seek.”
Motivation is a tricky animal. Just the concept of it tends to conjure up feelings of overwhelm, fatigue, and sometimes even shame as we remember the times we've tried to whip ourselves into shape in the name of it; many of us have been taught that motivation means harshness, activating our inner drill sergeant to yell repeatedly at us that life is not yet the way we want it, and we don't measure up, so we better get up and march. We think we need to hold on tight to disappointment, self-recrimination, and the knowledge of just how far we are from our goals—otherwise, we'll be lazy, useless people. Right?
Wrong. This is the best wisdom we've come up with over the course of thousands of years of hierarchical thinking and a habitual, homicidal imbalance between masculine- and feminine-energy processing. While this is not the worst effect of this long-term imbalance (not by a long shot), it is definitely counterproductive. It's not that there's no place for the inner drill sergeant, but over-reliance on it to the exclusion of other approaches to motivation will leave you exhausted and dispirited. It will also feed a vicious cycle in which you think the problem is hopelessly you: You're not good enough, you're not capable, you're just lazy, and on and on.
Most people are actually far more motivated by positive feedback than by blame and negativity. Think about it—during the times in your life when you felt most fired up, energized, and active in the pursuit of a goal, was it because others were constantly berating and insulting you, or was it because things were going pretty well already and you felt a charge of optimism and excitement about a positive vision? If you're like most people, the answer is option two.
Natural motivation bubbles up from a wellspring of creativity and optimistic desire within. If you want to nurture it and foster its long-term health, look to divert anything that will disrupt its otherwise perpetual motion: Memories of past difficulties and the negative beliefs about yourself you've formed as a result; others' careless comments or active sniping at your goals that tempt you into destructive cynicism; bad habits that steal your physical vitality; the overwhelming noise and distraction of a busy world. We've examined all of these in previous blogs, so you can look for clues there as to how to minimize these distractions. Staying motivated is mostly about removing inappropriate influences and feeding your creative energy. This is your new job. Learn to love it and become expert at it.
If you find yourself trying to grit and muscle yourself to greater productivity, take a time-out and ask yourself why you don't want to take on your tasks right now. If you can acknowledge the reasons, you can do something about them. Are you grumpy because you skipped a meal and you need to eat something? Is it because you aren't getting any time to work on the things that actually excite you? Are you low on energy because you're sleep deprived? Are you resenting an interaction with someone that keeps playing in your head and distracting you? Are you afraid of failing? Whatever it is, maybe you can take action on it before you proceed. If not, you can at least start thinking about what changes you can make to help yourself out going forward.
The more you clear away what's in the way of your natural enthusiasm, the more you automatically wake up with a pleasant desire for putting in some work toward what you want to create. Sometimes, you'll need to work on reprioritizing and giving your schedule something of a makeover. Sometimes, all you need is a few minutes of daily Tapping to express built-up emotion and relax your body (or meditation, or journaling, or painting, or prayer, or something else expressive and/or relaxing). We sometimes need to do things we don't enjoy in order to live and keep the lights on, but we always have power over how we're thinking and approaching our tasks. As we make more supportive choices, creativity and motivation can thrive.
Stopping the Insanity
“For fast-acting relief try slowing down.”
In recent weeks, we've been touring the kinds of pressure we're all under in living a modern-day life, and there are many! Any time period in history has its challenges, to be sure, and living in these times is far from all bad; we can now benefit from many innovations that dial down the difficulties of just surviving in a way that previous generations could not; in fact, the knowledge that the Internet has made available on virtually all subjects has been a massive game changer that allows us to solve many problems much more quickly and thoroughly. It also allows nearly instant communication around the globe at low cost. This has fostered greater cultural understanding and cooperation than has ever been possible before. But as previously discussed, this new day has its own particular downsides. The pace at which we now live is causing a panoply of problems born of the stress of being pulled in so many directions at once.
So what do we do about this? Most of us know very well that we're stressed out way too much of the time—it feels like there's never enough time. And time is one of the only things we still can't manufacture. It seems like an impasse, a problem that inherently can't be solved.
It's easy to become frantic in trying to keep up with everything and then just lock into autopilot and repeat. This right here, friends, is the status we most need to disrupt. There are solutions that will work for you, but you'll need to proactively stop and take some of that precious time of yours to consider what they might be. Your presence, your intent, your actions, remain incredibly powerful. If you feel hopeless and frantic, it's because you've forgotten about them and become mired in other people's worlds.
The single most useful thing you can do is consider who you are, with all your strengths and weaknesses, and what you truly want at the deepest levels. This can sound like a radical proposal (doesn't this make you selfish, and really, how will it help anyway?) However, it's only by asking these questions that you find where you can be most effective. We all can't be good at everything, and the things we're not good at, or just flat out don't like, drain us of energy and motivation. Doing things we like and are good at, conversely, inspires and energizes us. We're more productive, we're happier and more pleasant to be around, and we can better adapt to challenge when we're not exhausted and dispirited. This is pretty common sense, but it can also seem too simple.
Then, you must take action. How can you support your long-term passions and goals on a day-to-day basis? Marking out time on your calendar for specific activities is also necessary if you're serious about making progress, because if you don't prioritize, you won't end up with any time for your high-importance activities. Further in this direction, decide to start noticing when you're on autopilot and remind yourself that small decisions matter. It may not always be clear what steps will help you to further your goals while still satisfying the important responsibilities you need to maintain, but you have to play if you want to win! When you're learning to tip the balance of your life toward conditions that support you, you will have to learn by doing, so just try something. Others may have helpful ideas for you, but only you know for sure what works for you. Over time, you get better at making good decisions as long as you're staying focused on your goals.
If clarity is your first need, your second is flexibility. It's hard to shake off daily disappointments, annoyances, and unfairness, but if you don't find a way, the changes you want to make will be over before they start. The experiences that life brings us, both good and bad, are extremely vivid, and letting go of the past is both a huge challenge and a necessity for maintaining a happy focus on goals. While there is a lot of information out there on how people stay calm and present in every moment, most of us are not actively taught these skills.
There are many approaches you can take to learning skills in this area. I suggest learning some sort of meditation technique (Tapping counts!), moving your body to stay healthy and generate endorphins, and getting adequate sleep and the best nutrition you can for your personal needs. Doing all of this together will build your ability to be flexible in the face of daily challenges. That may sound like a very tall order if you're currently living each day as a mad dash, but by using your priorities as a guide and making more of your decisions consciously, you can find ways to slowly whittle down the distractions bit by bit. You can reduce the pace at which irrelevant information and demands bombard you and guilt you into acting against your own knowledge about what would be best for you.
Most of us are hampered in our health and happiness by frequent overwhelm. We must take back our decision-making process from the chaos. We all know what it's like to wish for magical, total solutions, but life so rarely hands us those! Counting on one just showing up is a lovely fantasy, but not a good strategy for living the life we desire. With this in mind, what can you do today to make a new, more supportive decision about your tomorrow?