Here’s another version of our gratitude journal. It’s from Christine Comaford-Lynch’s Mighty Ventures web site. For those of you who don’t know who she is, Comaford-Lynch is the author of Rules for Renegades: How to Make More Money, Rock Your Career, and Revel in Your Individuality. Not a great book, but not a bad one, either. There are a few nuggets of wisdom in here that make it worth your time to read. One of those nuggets is the Appreciation Bomb. Here’s how it works:

Sit down someplace quiet. List all the things you are grateful for.

Keep listing them,out loud or silently (you can write them if you want) until your eyes tear up with joy. Do not get up or move around until you reach that goal. You’ll be blown away.

So it’s our gratitude journal idea for the impatient. Where the standard gratitude journal relies on a cumulative, accretive process, the Appreciation Bomb, like a bomb, attempts to do its work all at once. I’m not sure it could be done on a daily basis, but when you need some extra help seeing the bright side.

Give it a try.

Make a great day.

For no other reason than it’s pretty good advice, here’s a little tidbit from Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan:

“Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old man asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it. I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactor’s question has meaning now. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, the path is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.”

I’ve been knocking it around my mind a bit. If you were to apply this to your life right now, what would it mean?

Talk amongst yourselves.

Make a great day.

We’ve all been working our gratitude journals, right?

Now that you’ve been doing them for a while, is there anything that you’ve noticed? Rather than making you play 20 Questions, I’ll just tell you. It’s people. Most of those items are about people and what they’ve done for you.

Our attitudes are funny things. When we start to get down on ourselves, we not only stop seeing the good in lives (there’s plenty), but we often isolate ourselves, as well. We isolate by doing exactly the same thing we do with the other good things in our lives. We ignore them. We minimize them. We talk them away. Pretty soon we’re living in a hostile world that doesn’t care. (It sounds pretty pathetic when you say it that way doesn’t it?) Well, we’re going to change things. We’re going to add another tool to inoculate you against your own negativity.

Your assignment is to list the benefactors in your life. Who is a benefactor? A benefactor is anyone who has sent you the wish of love or the simple wish for you to be well and happy. Your list will be made up of the myriad folks who have cared for you in any way at any time, who supported you with either acts or wishes of kindness.

Like the gratitude journal, in which we note anything for which we could possibly be thankful, no matter how small, our journal — let’s call it a benefactors journal — is a place to note anyone who could have at any time in any way met the requirements. Think about your parents’ love and attention, the teacher who reached out and kept you in school, the girl at the coffee shop who always smiles at you and makes you feel welcome, the boss who tipped you off to the new opportunity, the friends who have you over for dinner, and so on. You are surrounded by folks who care about you.

Make your list of benefactors as long as you can. Actively look for instances in which someone shared love and respect for you. Like the items in your gratitude journal, the examples are everywhere — if you take the time to look. Don’t just look for the easy ones. Give everyone credit where it’s due. You’ll find that the most profound effects come from people on your list whom you think are least likely to be on the list. That guy who drives you nuts at work? Remember how last year he tipped you off that the VP was coming by and that you’d better look sharp? That is a benefactor, if only on that one occasion.

The benefactors journal. Try it for a couple of weeks. See if it doesn’t change the way you look at the people around you — and the way you look at yourself. Give it a try.

Make a great day.

Photo: Joe Shablotnik

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
~E.M. Forster

One of the best trips I ever took was to Santa Fe with my daughter and my sister and her family. I was just coming out of the worst of the Dark Period, and I was in much need of a vacation. I hadn’t been to Santa Fe, one of my favorite places, in fourteen years, and I was looking forward to sharing it with my daughter. While making plans, I discovered that our trip would coincide with the peak viewing period for the Perseid meteor shower, during which one can see as many as 60 or more meteors per hour. Santa Fe, at about 7,000 feet and without much ambient light, is great for viewing celestial phenomena like the Perseids. It was going to be a great trip.

And it was. We enjoyed beautiful, sunny days visiting the museums and galleries around the plaza, hiking in the cool shade of the aspens near the ski valley, walking through history at El Rancho de las Golondrinas, and hanging out and enjoying each other’s company. But back at the house each evening, I would settle in — armed with astronomical charts, timetables, and other information — and expectantly await nature’s show, only to find myself staring at the pale gray of an overcast sky. Every day brought the same pattern: clear sunny days followed by completely overcast nights. In an entire week, I didn’t see a single meteor or even a star. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.

When I got back home, friends asked about my trip. How did I tell my friends about that trip, that trip that was, in every way but one, one of the best trips I’ve ever taken? Why, by telling the story of the meteor shower, of course! I spent tons of personal energy thinking and talking about how disappointed I was. “It would have been great. “I had prepared myself with reading and charts…” “I don’t get up there that often…” Blah, Blah, Blah. I spent so much time thinking about that stupid meteor shower that I forgot how wonderful the rest of the trip was.

That wasn’t the first time for me. No, I had a long history of whining about things that didn’t meet my expectations. If I didn’t get exactly what I wanted, I became the biggest complainer ever. It didn’t matter how great things were going. When things weren’t what they were supposed to be, not only did I not like it, but I refused to like it. I was a pain to everyone around me, and I tainted all my experiences with negativity. My inflexibility made my life miserable. Since I had expected everything to meet my expectations, I was continuously disappointed by life.

What about you? Are you so preoccupied with how things were supposed to be that you’ve completely missed the great things that are? How boring our lives would be if we always got what we wanted, and how many great things have happened to us precisely because we didn’t get what we wanted? For example, you interview for a job, but are passed over. Bad. The hiring manager, however, sees something in you and creates another — better — position for you. Good. Or this: You are dragged to a party by friends only to meet the girl/guy of your dreams. It happens all the time. More realistically, you are dragged to that party by friends, don’t meet the girl/guy of your dreams, but have a pretty good time anyway.

You know what? Life can be pretty good if we let it be. This week, let’s let life be pretty good. Let’s stop thinking about what should be or should have been, and pay attention to all the great things that are? Okay?
Make a great day.

I have long understood that I am crankier and more negative when I don’t get regular exercise.  In fact, during the Dark Period, one of my basic rules for holding myself together was to exercise and eat well.  As one who is committed to health and fitness for its own sake, it’s nice to find more and more evidence in support of what I’ve already experienced: exercise improves our state of mind.  Even better, it doesn’t take as much exercise as I thought.

RealAge, a health and wellness site who now sends me regular e-mails apparently because once I took an online test, reports:

In a recent study, a single 30-minute treadmill workout done at moderate intensity eased depression and increased energy levels.

Bravo! We know that a brisk 30-minute walk will do wonders for our hearts and waistlines, but now we also know that it’s good for our heads as well. Our lesson? It doesn’t take too much to vastly improve our lives. You don’t have to join a gym or a support group (although you could). You can Just take a short walk each day.

So lace up those tennies and get out there!

Make a great day.

While reading my favorite high-level, intellectual journal, I came across an article on J.K. Rowling’s depression.

Rowling professes that she experienced a brief bout with depression in 1994, during the time she was struggling to make ends meet for herself and her infant daughter. Her experience with depression made a lasting impact on her and inspired the Dementors that first appear in Prisoner of Azkaban. On depression, Rowling said, “It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad.” Rowling… admits that she contemplated taking her own life back in the early 1990s, after separating from her first husband, Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes.

“We’re talking suicidal thoughts here, we’re not talking ‘I’m a little bit miserable,’ ” Rowling told [an Edinburgh University student magazine].

I love that the Dementers were inspired by her depression. Works for me.  But here’s what caught my eye:

“The funny thing is, I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never,” she says. “I think I’m abnormally shameless on that account because what’s to be ashamed of?”

It’s an odd thing, really. After years of struggling with depression, I look back on that period not with shame, but with pride. I now understand that I went through something unique, something special, and survived. That is quite an accomplishment, and one, I’m learning, only understood by people who’ve experienced it. We’ve been tempered by a fire the intensity of which most people can’t imagine. It’s simply out of their realm of experience.

So what? Are we better than others? No. We’ve just gone through something unusual. I went through an intense breakdown and rebuilding of my dreams, values, self, finances, and relationships — with a dose of death thrown in for flavoring (What an education!). I’d rather have had my life go along swimmingly, but it didn’t. I went through what I went through, just like everybody else.

This year, just like every year, I’ll go through what I go through. I’ll set goals and succeed, and I’ll set goals and fail. I will love and hurt. I will be excited and bored and lonely and social. I’ll be confused and sure. I’ll wish for something better or be happy with what I have. And that’s just fine. As they say, “It’s all good.”

Make a great day.

How many self-help, life-hack websites do you read each day? Each week? Now how many of the great ideas have you actually put into practice? If you read three or four life hack and self-help web sites each day, are you getting better, or are you just consuming the information like potato chips, bite after bite, no longer enjoying the taste, but eating nonetheless?

It’s easy to become so overwhelmed by the amount of good advice out there that you pay attention to none of it. Many of us are caught by the magic promise of the Internet, by its endless pathways of information, each path filled with stimulation and magic and fresh, new ideas. But by compulsively following these paths, we become inured to the impact of each new piece of information so that, rather than absorbing the idea, we let it bounce off us, an in-one-ear-and-out-the-other sort of thing. It’s as if we thought we could learn another language simply by reading a long list the words in that language.

It reminds me of what they taught us in computer classes about the difference between data and information: data is a mountain of facts and figures; information is that data filtered and organized into meaningful chunks. Each post on the life-hack web sites is an attempt to create information from the mass of available data. By reading multiple life-hack sites, we are, in essence, turning that information back into data. What do we get from that?

Hope, I guess. Sites like these represent hope and the possibility of a perfect life. But they also represent a need you have to be more than you are. These sites are useful, but they also can make you feel insecure. Often we assume that there are others out there — the author of the post, perhaps — who are so insanely productive that they approach perfection. Maybe we can absorb all these hacks and become perfect ourselves…

I don’t think so.
Yes, we can improve. Yes, we can be more productive. We do that with focus, by narrowing our concentration and working more intensely with that. Here’s what I want you — and me — to do this week: stop looking at all the tips and ideas that are out there. Pick one or two to implement into your life and give them your all. Do not look at more ideas. Take the time you save reading to work on the things that drove you to those sites in the first place. You’ll probably be more effective (and more relaxed).

Make a great day.
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There is a beautiful practice called loving-kindness. It is a marvelous way to increase your awareness of and compassion for those around you. It will transform how you look at your life, as well.

The essential practice is to wish peace and happiness for yourself. Then you do the same for those you love, those about whom you’re ambivalent, and finally, those whom, for some reason or other, you can’t stand. We do this for individuals, but we can also do this for groups or categories of people (say, political groups).

In the basic practice, you recite a short script for each of the people on your list. One classic script is this:

May you be free from danger.
May you have mental happiness.
May you find physical happiness.
May you have ease of well being

You recite this text for each person, focusing wholly on one person or group while sincerely wishing them well. It will get harder (but better for you) as you move away from yourself and those you love to those you dislike. The scripts may not work for you. They are are too hokey for many people. This is no problem. Simply make up a way to wish everyone well in whatever way works for you.

For those of you who are brave, there is a more advanced technique, a more difficult practice called taking and giving. In taking and giving, we go through same process, but this time our wish is to give that person all our joy and happiness and take on all their pain and sorrow.

This is not an easy practice. To unconditionally wish someone you hate peace and happiness will be very difficult at first. Something inside you will rebel against the process, so you will have to do it many times before it sinks in. Stay with it for a few weeks, and you’ll be glad you did.

I tried this practice during my Dark Period. Each day I would take an early morning five-mile walk around Town Lake in downtown Austin. As I walked I would practice loving-kindness for those in my life — especially for those whom I resented or by whom I felt betrayed. As time went on, I began to “give” all my happiness to each person I passed along the way and to “take” on all their pain and sorrow. I did it for about eight weeks. Two surprising things happened to me. First, I felt much better and less resentful of many in my life. I began to let things go and to lighten up. Second, I found that I was less frightened of people.

This second response was made clear to me one day as I approached an empty bus stop. At the stop was a young man with the demeanor of a criminal, perhaps a gang member. As I passed by I felt slightly threatened, even though the young man had done nothing more than stand and dress a certain way. I began to think about his life and all the things that could possibly create suffering for him right now. I thought about all the things that would make a person feel so strongly the need to rebel. I also began to take on all his pain and give him my happiness. By the time I had walked by him, I no longer felt frightened. All my unease, it turned out, was all created in my head. It was quite an experience.

If you’re going through tough times, especially with other people, or if you find yourself tense or angry because of the actions of one group or another, I urge you to give this a try. It can help you see things from a completely different, less self-centered perspective. It will lighten your load.

Make a great day.

Photo: jam343
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Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.~Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

A couple shares a table at a coffee shop. One drinks black coffee; the other latte. They share one scone, each periodically tearing off a piece to eat. As we draw closer, we start to hear their conversation:

“That’s a great idea! Why don’t you go pick up an application? You can be enrolled for next semester.

“I’d love to, but…I don’t know. It’s been 12 years since high school…”
“So?”
“It’s been a long time. I don’t remember anything. And those will all be smarter than I am.”
“Oh, come on. They’re not any smarter than you. Besides, look at all the things you’ve done since high school. You raised three kids and are doing great in your job. Geez, you’re an office manager.”
“But that’s different.”
“How?”
“You know, school is so different. You have to know so much. And the kids today are smarter than I am.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“And then there’s tuition. It costs so much to go to school. And when would I do the homework?
“I guess you don’t really want to go back to school.”
“Oh, but I do. I want it more than anything!”

How many times have you been involved in a conversation like this one? Your friends encourage you to go after what you told them many times was a dream, and your response is to tell them every reason why it won’t work. It goes back and forth until you finally convince them that you can never achieve your dream. And that’s it: you won the argument. But what kind of victory is that?

One of the worst things we can do is to work to convince others how hopeless our dreams are. Defending our fears by disputing every point made by our friends strengthens those fears much more than merely thinking of them does. Every time we explain why it can’t be done, we create more and more doubt. It then becomes harder and harder for us to take action.

If you find yourself defending your doubts, there are two courses of action you can follow:

Ask yourself if this is really your dream or just a pipe dream, a distraction from the present. Wen we fight against our dreams, it is because there are other factors that we judge to be more important than our dream, even though we may not yet understand what they are. In the dialog above, the person who wants to go to school may not really want to go to school, but thinks that he should go to school. In that case, the motivation for “the dream” isn’t really there because it isn’t really a dream. I want to be a better tennis player, but clearly not enough to go out and practice. Whatever I do instead of practice is clearly more important to me than becoming a better tennis player. I have to understand that for me being a better tennis player would be nice, but isn’t a dream.

If you’re sure that you really want a particular dream, you must train yourself to talk only of its achievement. Deny yourself the right to discuss why it won’t work. Have your friends ask you only questions related to your dream’s accomplishment. What steps need to be taken? What is one thing that you can do this week toward your goal? Those questions are powerful tools to keep you ont the right track.

It’s amazing how the words we utter can help us or hurt us. So speak only words that empower you. You might just amaze yourself.

Make a great day.

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We’ve talked about paying attention to what is working in our lives. We write gratitude journals and success lists to train ourselves to shift our focus off what doesn’t work for us toward what does. Here’s a simple idea from Marci Shimoff’s Happy for No Reason for quickly shifting our thoughts to the positive.

Marci refers to this as leaning into the thought that makes you feel better. It works like this: whenever you find yourself burdened with negative thoughts, find an equally true thought about the situation that makes you feel better — and lean into it.

In her example, suppose you’re working on a project that is very close to deadline. Your stress level rises and you begin to tell yourself, “I’ll never finish this in time.” What happens next? More stress, more negative self talk. Instead, search for some thoughts that are equally true about this situation that would make you feel better, like “I’ve done this before and always finish in time,” or “If I truly get stuck, I can always ask for help.”

What you’re looking for is evidence to counteract the negative chatter going on in your brain, not simply positive affirmations, like repeating “I can get this done in time,” 100 times. We don’t want to fight our negative thoughts with happy talk, we want to overcome them with reasonable argument. Choose to focus on that alternative, positive, argument. Then stick with those thoughts. Lean into them.

This is a trick that you can use on the fly. You biggest difficulty will be to recognize when it’s time to use it and to remember to us when the time comes. Put it on a note card to carry with you. When you feel yourself veering off course, pull out the card and follow the instructions. Simple!

Make a great day.

Photo: Clearly Ambiguous

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