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Can Optimism Improve Your Mood?

2009-11-09T18:37:00.000-08:00

IN THE LAST THIRTY YEARS, research into our thinking patterns and their influence on our moods has brought us to an understanding far beyond the positive thinking pioneers of a hundred years ago.

There’s an age-old battle between pessimists and optimists. Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Pessimists say it’s half-empty and only starry-eyed dreamers would think otherwise. Optimists say it’s half-full and you put yourself in a bad mood unnecessarily to think otherwise.

In the last forty years of research, cognitive scientists have gathered enough evidence to say who has a more legitimate point of view. A pessimist and an optimist can argue with more fact and less opinion these days. Here’s how a conversation might go...

SHERRY AND NICK WALKED along the road. It was autumn. Small gusts of wind were knocking leaves off the trees ahead of them. “I’ve never felt so sure of anything in my whole life,” said Sherry, “This new business is the opportunity I’ve been looking for!”

“You shouldn’t be too optimistic,” said Nick. He looked serious.

Sherry seemed startled out of her reverie. “Why not?”

“Because you’re just setting yourself up for failure and disappointment.” He said it as if it was the most obvious thing there was. “If you get all pumped-up and things don’t work out, you might deeply disappointed, maybe even depressed.”

“How could I get depressed?” She’s surprised. “If I hit a setback, I’ll change my approach and keep trying. There’s no such thing as failure. Only temporary setbacks. The only way I could fail is to give up, and I’m not going to give up.”

“But what if you never succeeded? What if you kept living on hope your whole life and ended up a failure? What good is optimism then?”

“Well, what’s the alternative, Nick? Think about it. What’s better than optimism? Being unhappy? Never really trying anything challenging because you’re afraid of disappointment? The alternative to optimism is pessimism and pessimism is the road to depression.”

“Maybe you don’t have to be on either extreme, Sherry. Did you ever think of that? Or do you think optimism is better than the middle-ground?”

“I know it is. Optimistic people are happier, healthier, and more successful.”

“Who says?”

“Lots of studies have been done on this. And that’s what they found out. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy: If you think you have a chance, you’ll keep trying. And if you keep trying, of course, you keep increasing your chances. But if you don’t think you have a chance in hell, you won’t even start, so of course, you can’t possibly succeed. If you hit a setback and think it’s a small, temporary thing, you’ll try to fix it or get past it. If you think it’s huge and permanent, you might just give up right there.”

Nick has been a pessimist all his life, but he never thought of himself as a pessimist. He considered himself a “realist.” This conversation is getting to him. He doesn’t know why, but it feels like a cherished religious faith is being attacked. “But,” he pleads, “if you’re too optimistic, you won’t see the bad news coming your way. Pessimistic people actually see reality more accurately. There are some studies that prove that too!”

“Your right. Pessimists see reality more accurately, are more miserable, not as healthy and don’t make as much money. Even if I never dropped into a pessimistic mood — and I do once in awhile — but even if I never thought about what could go wrong, optimism would still be the best way to go through life.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because what difference does it make if you avoid more bad stuff in life if, at the same time, you end up avoiding most of the good stuff too? And you have to admit, if you aren’t happy, healthy or successful, you’ve missed most of the good stuff in life. It’s kind of a second-rate booby-prize to say, “Yes, but I see things more accurately.”

They walked on in silence for a long time. A leaf floated gently down and landed on Nick’s shoulder, balanced there for a second, and fell behind him. He never noticed. Finally he said, “Maybe you have a point. But I don’t think I could become optimistic. I’ve been pessimistic my whole life. I don’t think I could change.”

“That’s kind of pessimistic of you, isn’t it?” says Sherry, laughing.

Nick gets the irony of it and smiles. “I guess that could become one of those self-fulfilling prophecies,” he says.

“Sounds like it to me,” says Sherry, putting her arm over his shoulder.

“Maybe I should just give it a try anyway.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“Hey, you know what? I feel a little better already!”

They walk off into the sunset. Music rises to inspirational tones. Nick and Sherry both feel confident that things are going to start getting better from here on out.

The End.

OPTIMISM WORKS. It’s a practical, realistic approach to dealing with life's inevitable setbacks. It works better than pessimism. The facts are in. Optimism won.

Does It Ruin Your Mood To Be Authentic?

2009-10-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

IF YOU'VE BEEN AROUND for fifty years or so, and if you interact with people 15 to 30 years old, you have probably noticed a marked trend away from the phony "putting on a happy face" you saw so much as a child. It is becoming more and more common for people to have given up trying to fool others into thinking they're happy and feeling good when they're not.

I think this is a good trend. It is a trend away from fake smiles and fake bubbliness and toward authenticity and honesty. It is a trend away from worrying about what others may think and toward relying on what you think. Emerson called this Self-Reliance.

There is a drawback to this trend, however. I will explain the drawback in a minute, but first read this experiment from an article on humor:

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

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

"Apparently, when they held the pen between their lips, they couldn't smile, but when it was between their teeth, they were forced to smile the whole time, and that physical change in their facial expression changed how funny something was. Interesting. And it might have some usefulness to you in your quest to see things as funny."

In another article, this one about developing an attitude that will help you accomplish goals, you find out about two more experiments along the same lines:

"The researcher Patricia Ruselli did an experiment that went like this: The subject was brought in and told to watch a slide presentation designed to produce sadness. Half the subjects were told to frown while they watched it. The other half were told not to frown.

"For several hours afterwards, the people who frowned felt more depressed than the people who didn't frown...

"Another bit of evidence comes from a pilot study that found when people were injected with Botox to get rid of furrowed brows, it improved their mood, showing in particular, decreases in symptoms of depression. Even when your facial expression is changed with a paralyzing toxin, it can alter your emotional state.

"The point of all this is for you to realize that when you change your facial expression, you change your feelings."

The drawback I see from the trend toward authenticity is more bad moods. Here's how it works: Something makes you feel less than happy. You honestly frown or purse your lips or whatever. And then that outward and honest expression of your negative state makes you more likely to be in a bad mood longer, to find things less humorous, etc.

Does this mean you have a choice between being genuine and natural or being an artificial, back-slapping, glad-handing, insincere but happier person? I don't think so. Like many other things, this issue is not a black-and-white, all-or-nothing problem. Thinking of it in those terms is another significant cause of bad moods, oddly enough, but that's another story (read more about that here).

The distinction missing here is your intention. The reason you do something has a big effect on your mood. For example, you can smile at someone in order to fool them into thinking you're happy when you're not. That's one reason to smile. But that's obviously not the only reason possible. You can smile as a gift. You can smile simply to experiment with the effect of smiling on your mood.

The first smile will probably give you a bad feeling. Being fake for self-serving reasons feels bad, even if the physical act of turning up your lips might improve your mood in the longer run. But the second two reasons for smiling would allow you to have the improved mood without the sour taste in your mouth from being phony. Your intention matters a lot.

Being authentic can improve your mood if it's done right. It can contribute to a genuine and heartfelt enthusiasm for living. (Read more about that here.) Pay attention to the look on your face, the way you move your body, even the way you breathe. All these can have an impact on your mood. Do it for the right reasons, and you can have your integrity and feel good too.

Read more: A Simple Way To Change How You Feel.

Good Sleep For Good Moods

2009-10-24T22:49:00.000-07:00

I FOUND one of the shortest, most practical, most complete articles on sleep I've ever seen, published by InteliHealth, a solid, authoritative source. Here's the article:

6 Reasons For Good Sleep

You'll find six compelling reasons for making sleep a priority, and you'll get seven excellent tips on how to get better sleep.

I'll give you a condensed version of the article: Get enough sleep. That means seven to nine hours a night — whatever is enough to allow you to wake up feeling refreshed and to stay awake and alert the whole day. Getting enough sleep is a good idea for these six reasons:

1. You will remember things better and it will enhance your ability to solve problems.

2. You will find it easier to lose weight. Your body naturally produces leptin when you get enough sleep (a hormone that suppresses your appetite).

3. You'll be less likely to die in a car crash. People who don't get enough sleep tend to fall asleep for short periods when they're driving — just for seconds at a time, but that's enough to cause an accident.

4. Getting enough sleep will help you stay in a better mood, and your mood has consequences. You will do better work and get along with people better if you are in a better mood. And better work and better relationships have significant long-term consequences.

5. Your cardiovascular system will be healthier, so you're likely to live longer.

6. Your immune system will be more powerful. You're less likely to get sick if you regularly get enough sleep.

If you have trouble getting enough good quality sleep, read the tips in the article (go here to read it). If you want to be healthy and stay in a good mood, one of the most important fundamentals is to get enough good quality sleep.

Read more: Sleep Is Not For Sissies

Read more about the value of fundamentals: Beginner's Mind

This Recession Is Good For Your Health

2009-10-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

THERE MAY be plenty of bad things about this recession, but it may have at least one very good side: Evidence is strong that bad economic times are good for your health. Read more about this result here:

Scientific American article

MSNBC article

Yahoo News article

University of Michigan article

Bad news may sell better, but good news is better for you. Read more good news here: Good News.

World Smile Day

2009-10-02T01:52:00.000-07:00

ONE VERY good way to raise your mood is to raise someone else's mood. This is a way to raise your mood that's available to you almost anywhere and almost anytime.

Today is the first Friday in October. And the first Friday of every October is World Smile Day, a celebration created by Harvey Ball, the man who invented the original "smiley face" back in 1963.

To celebrate this day, all you have to do is make someone smile today. And notice how it improves your mood when you do.

Gaining Perspective Deliberately

2009-06-26T02:30:00.000-07:00

IN THE MOVIE, The Game, Michael Douglas plays Nick Van Orton, the wealthy son of a wealthy man. The story begins when Nick’s brother (Sean Penn) gives Nick a birthday present: A life-changing experience, sort of like a personal-growth workshop, except it doesn’t take place in a classroom — it takes place in your life, and you never know who is an actor and what is real. The game is especially tailored to you and you never know what is staged and what isn’t.

The creators of the game make Nick’s well-ordered life completely fall apart. All the things he identifies with — his money, his calmness, his place in society — are taken away from him. His life is destroyed one piece at a time.

When Nick tries to find out if this is all part of the game, it appears the company was a big scam, stole all his money, and left town. They very realistically give Nick the impression they took him for everything he’s worth. He lost his mansion, his credit cards, his Swiss bank accounts. He was penniless.

While all this is going on, we (the people watching the movie) really don’t know what the truth is, and we see Nick going through all these miserable experiences and on the one hand we’re seeing it as anybody would — just miserable experiences and nothing more — and at the same time we are half-viewing it with the question, “I wonder if this is the perfect experience to teach him to be happier?” Because we realize these experiences are teaching him against his will to care more about people, to appreciate what he had, and for the first time in the movie, we feel he is actually engaged in his life. He looked deeply bored with his predictable life before the game started.

He was a snob who lived in a bubble and didn’t really experience real life or real connections with regular people. He needed nobody. But now he has no money, and he has to rely on the kindness of a waitress in order to get something to eat.

Is this a humbling experience, a potentially life-changing experience for Nick? Or is it merely misfortune? We, the viewers, really don’t know until the end of the movie.

Watching the movie was a great demonstration of a profound fact: That the same experience can be seen in at least two different ways, both of them equally valid. One way of looking at it only makes you miserable without any benefit. The other one helps you learn to be a better person, to have better values, and to be happier.

And of course, the thinking viewer will also eventually realize while watching the movie, that all of life is like this.

Someone might get an ulcer, and that is clearly just a hassle and he has to take medication that gives him dry mouth or whatever...or... this is an indicator-beacon that says change your life — the way you live your life produces too much stress.

With the first viewpoint, he just feels frustrated and that probably just makes his ulcer worse. The ulcer itself becomes another stressful thing to add to all the other stressful stuff in his life.

With the second viewpoint, he may feel motivated to change his life in ways that’ll make him feel better. The second viewpoint, the better one, the one that doesn’t come naturally to anybody but the most buoyant optimists, is a reframe.

The point of view you have about something is like a frame around a painting. You can take a painting and put it in an old beat-up frame and it looks like trash. Or you could put it in a fancy, museum-style frame, and it would have an entirely different feel.

Reframing means seeing the same situation in a different way. It means to see the same picture through a different lens. It means to see the same event in a different context. It means interpreting a situation a different way — in a way that makes things better. It means reinterpreting an event in a way that helps you feel better and get more done.

We automatically see (interpret, understand) the events in our lives in a certain way. You found out in Antivirus For Your Mind that it really helps to scrutinize the way you naturally explain setbacks and find mistakes in your explanations. You look at your explanations and ask, “Is it true?”

But sometimes you can’t answer that question. Either you don’t know or the answer cannot be known at all. That’s a good place to use reframing.

You must explain events. If you don’t do it deliberately, your brain will do it automatically. What explanation should you use? When you don’t know whether an explanation is true or false, what criteria should you use?

The only intelligent criteria to use in that case is, “How helpful is it?” Does your explanation help you feel better and get more done, or does it hinder you?

If you find your interpretation isn’t either true or false (either you can’t find out or there is no objective way to decide), and you find out it is definitely not helpful, unfortunately, you can’t just leave it at that. You have to come up with another interpretation. Your mind will not allow “no explanation.”

Your explanation can certainly be provisional — good until something better comes along, like a scientific theory — but you’d better choose your best explanation or your brain will do it for you.

Learn how this can best be done: Grow Stronger With a Good Reframe.

Free Hugs

2009-06-18T16:18:00.000-07:00

SOMEONE anonymously left a link to the video below on the article Peace, Love, and Oxytocin. I watched it, and the video raised my mood. I hope it does the same for you and everyone you share it with.

Doing Less More Often Gets More Done

2009-06-03T13:30:00.000-07:00

Making progress is good for your mood. In the following article, Klassy Evans, the editor of Self-Help Stuff That Works, explains a way of thinking that can help you make progress:

I USED TO NEGLECT my fingernails. I would garden and fix and repair things and move boxes of books for our business, and all these activities damaged my nails. But I ignored it. My nails got fairly well mangled. Then I tried to make up for lost time by giving too hard of an effort, which left and my cuticles red, and made ridges on my nails.

It was like I was angry at them. I attacked them. I pushed them back too hard in my impatience and they tore a tiny bit. Or I pulled off little pieces of dried skin and sometimes it took a piece of good skin with it, so I got little red hangnails. In other words, when they finally looked so bad I just had to give myself a manicure, I overdid it. I tried to fix the damage from my own neglect. But not in a gentle way.

I lived my life that way, too.

One morning I was looking at my nails, and I thought about something my dear friend, Bonnie, had told me. She'd always had beautiful cuticles. One day I asked her how she did it. She said she didn’t do anything. They just grew that way. Her nails are smooth. Her cuticles soft and even. Hmmmm. When I let my nails go, they don’t look like that, so I pressed her a bit more. Then she said, "I really don't do anything to my nails except gently push the cuticles back." I think the key word here is gentle.

Another woman I know (she’s a manicurist) told me the best cuticles she sees are on women who push back their cuticles when they’re done with the dishes.

So, I got my fingertips wet. Then I got out an old soft cotton napkin and very gently cleaned my nails, just a little bit. It was so gentle it seemed like I was being a pansy. But it worked pretty well. They looked surprisingly better when I was done.

Gentle action had gotten less done, but it was a pleasant process and I had obviously done nothing to harm them.

It felt odd to baby myself like that. It felt sort of silly. I’m used to the more masculine approach to life I got from my dad: Do what needs to be done and it doesn’t matter how you feel about it. I’ve been “getting my nails done” like a battle. But I learned to take care of my nails more like a farmer caring for the land.

Battles are often necessary, but they're temporary and harsh. It's not a good way to take care of a body that seems to need daily care. My cuticles and nails are much better off when I do a tiny bit of gentle care each day rather than an intense hour of care to make up for the week or two of neglect.

To accomplish things, both kinds of action are necessary. I think traditionally, men tend to accomplish great things with intense effort; women tend to accomplish great things with constant, gentle pressure. You can’t raise a child or raise a crop by infrequent, intense efforts, just like you can’t work out only one day a week. The body needs to move, but an all-out effort for six hours on a Saturday won't work. Your body wants daily exertion. It wants — and needs — regular movement.

I had taken on my dad's attitude. He was kind of proud of how much he could take. My neglected nails were a way of saying: "See how busy I am, how hard I’m working? I’m not some silly girlie-girl, always worrying about her nails."

This is true for me in so many ways. Is it true for you too? Are you too tough with yourself? Too harsh? Awhile ago I was thinking that I often try to take on too much because I know I’m capable of doing that much, even though I may not be up to it at the moment. This is like going to the gym to lift weights and knowing I’m capable of doing sixty pounds on some machine, but right now I can only do about 30. The way to build a muscle is often trying to do a bit more than you feel you can, but sometimes it's not a good idea to force yourself to do 60, even though the body has done it in the past or could do it in the future. It's best to do what I can do. Even if that seems really “light weight.”

This "male" take on life — that you must give it your all — has its place. But it also causes unnecessary harm if applied to things that grow (like children, crops, muscles, and even habits). Gentle, steady, regular efforts are not weak. A small plant can break through a concrete driveway just by gently pressing upward day after day after day, a little on a little.

This lesson is universal. Would you have more power in your life — and less pain and damage — if you were a little less harsh and forceful with yourself and more gentle?

By doing less more often, would you accomplish more? What if you did what little you can every day you can? What if you didn't worry about how hard you worked out, but focused instead on how regularly you worked out?

It's worth a look. Doing less more often can get more done.

Just One Thing For Health

2009-05-26T01:52:00.000-07:00

YOU HAVE control over your mood to an astonishing degree. Anything from taking a nap to having a snack to antivirusing your mind can make you feel better in a very short time.

Some people are hesitant to improve their mood. People have told me before, “that’s just the way I feel right now,” and imply that if they were to try to change their mood it would be dishonest. Hogwash. They clearly haven’t thought that one through. Your mood changes like the weather. You are not your moods any more than you are the water that moves through your body.

It would be similar to saying, “My body just stinks. That’s the way I smell right now,” and that is your reason for not showering. As if showering would be dishonest. It’s just stupid. If you don’t want to put out any effort to feel better just because it feels better, then think about doing it for your better health. Or do it because it will improve the moods of those around you. Or because it makes you more effective in dealing with people. There are many good reasons to improve your mood and no good reason to continue in a bad mood when you can easily change it.

One man told me it bothered him that when he was at work and he was in a bad mood, his co-workers didn’t like it. “I feel like I’m obligated to pretend to feel good when I don’t.”

“What makes you think you’re obligated,” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he sighed, “they try to cheer me up, or they give me a bad time about being grumpy, or they get short-tempered with me like they’re mad at me for not feeling good.”

“That’s interesting,” I said. “I remember reading a study on charisma. They had three people in a room just sit there. One of them was naturally charismatic, and the other two were not. They were told to just sit there and not say anything for a little while. At the end of that short time, without saying a word, the moods of the two less-charismatic people had moved toward the mood of the charismatic person.”

He looked puzzled.

“In other words,” I explained, “They tested the moods of all three before and after sitting in the room together. Let’s say the charismatic person was feeling irritable beforehand. Maybe one of the other people was feeling cheerful. After sitting in the room, the cheerful (but uncharismatic) person was more irritable.

“All I’m saying is that moods are contagious, and that is especially so when someone is charismatic, like yourself. So probably when you’re in a bad mood, it starts ruining the mood of the people around you and they are resisting that.”

“What, so I’m responsible for their moods now?” He didn’t seem to happy about this.

“There is some good and bad to just about anything. When you’re charismatic, it’s great because you make friends easily, people like you, you're more persuasive, you have more influence on others, and so on. But on the other hand, people pay more attention to your moods and that may seem like a burden, but it is nothing more than being in a position of leadership. Charisma is a power. And like the uncle in Spiderman said, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’”

He laughed but he got the point too. And I hope you do too.

Whatever the cause of your mood, it is almost always true that you can do something about it. If you feel stressed, you can meditate or do some aerobic exercise. If you feel like you have no energy you could have a cup of coffee or go for a walk or take a nap. If you feel angry, you could use the antivirus for the mind or write in a diary or talk to a friend. If you feel lonely, you could reach out and communicate with someone or read a good book on relationships. For more ideas, check out The Top Ten Ways To Raise Your Mood.

Ask yourself how you can improve your mood at the moment, and keep asking until you come up with some good answers, and then pick one and do it.

When you want to improve your mood, simply ask the question: What’s one healthy thing I could do today to feel better?

The Moodraising Effect of Constitutionals

2009-05-24T15:06:00.000-07:00

ABOVE ALL," wrote the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, “do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts....”

Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, went so far as to say “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

A walk taken regularly for the sake of one’s well-being is called a constitutional. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were in good company. Gandhi, Darwin, Emerson, and many creative (and long-lived) people throughout history took constitutionals often. You can too. Here’s how to have a good one:

Walk at a pace that’s easy and pleasant. Don’t make your constitutionals do double duty as an exercise program. A constitutional is closer to meditation, but it’s not a “discipline.” It’s more like a vacation, and that’s exactly the attitude to have.

Bring a little pocket-sized notebook and a pen, but don’t try to get ideas. Of course, you’ll sometimes think of things you want to remember. Taking notes is a way to free your mind — once your idea is down on paper, you’re free to forget about it for the moment.

Walk for longer than fifteen minutes. A half hour to an hour is good. You need to do it long enough to let your mind relax. This is a temporary vacation from our compulsion to do, and it needs to be long enough to have an effect.

ON A WALK, you get a fresh perspective; you can find solutions to problems; you look at things more clearly. You become calmer, saner and healthier. It’s easier to think because, 1) you have the time to think, 2) there’s nothing else you need to attend to, and 3) your brain is getting more oxygen.

This way of taking a walk is aptly named: It’s good for your constitution — your overall well-being, body and mind. You have a right to some quiet time to yourself, so exercise your right. A haven of peace and sanity awaits you...only a few steps away.

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

A Fountain of Youth

2009-05-04T00:33:00.000-07:00

FEELING SLIM and healthy is good for your mood. The following is an article by Klassy Evans about one powerful way to improve your health.

THROUGHOUT the millions of years of our evolution, life has not provided our species with food in the abundance we enjoy in the free world today. Most of us have never in all our lives gone even one day without food.

And that is very unnatural.

Oddly enough, our bodies aren’t capable of dealing with it. The development of agriculture and a steady food supply is relatively recent, and our bodies have not evolved any adaptations to this new condition of plenty. So our desire for sweets and calorie rich foods — a desire that has helped us survive — now is our downfall. The free world is becoming obese. We eat several times a day, day after day after day. Non-stop.

The non-stop part is the real problem. It was necessary in our evolutionary past to eat all the sweet stuff we could find. It was good to eat all the meat you could eat when you killed an animal. Nearly all mammals — from your dog to lions — wolf down dinner. Eat as much as you can as fast as you can. Store as much fat as you can because tomorrow you may not have anything to eat.

Until recently, people have always gone through lean times. Your ancestors often went days without enough food. Some of them went weeks and even months without enough food. And the only ones who survived were those who were fat enough. You body wants to put on fat. Fat equals life itself when you don’t have any fruits to eat or game to kill. The only people who lived through the lean times were those whose bodies had stored the most fat.

Your body wants to store fat so you crave high caloric foods. This is a really good thing — as long as you go through lean times.

But now you don’t ever go even a day without food. It’s probably a big deal to even miss a dinner. And THAT is the real problem. It’s not so much that you over-eat: It’s that we don’t go through lean times.

But you can. You can add lean times to your life. Deliberately. Go without food for a day. It’s called fasting. Try it. Don’t eat anything tomorrow. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Just drink water and lots of it. Not one bite of anything.

What will happen? Well, let me tell you about some lions and some mice. There were some lions in a zoo and they were getting out of shape and listless. Their health wasn’t the best. So they decided to feed them every other day instead of every day. Same amount of food, but they let them gorge one day and then receive absolutely nothing the next. It’s closer to the way they live in the wild.

And what happened with this feast-or-famine feeding style? It was really good for the lions. Their health improved. The lean times were good for their health.

I say lean times are good for our health too.

They also have been testing mice and when they feed them every other day, they live longer and stay younger looking longer, better coats, higher levels of activity from those mice that eat every day.

There’s something about not eating that is very very good for mammals. Lean times are somehow essential to good health. Our bodies apparently do a lot of good work when they're not busy digesting food.

You see, your body has to not only digest your food and break it down into usable parts, but also it must manufacture what you need out of those parts. But it can’t do both at the same time. And digesting food always comes first (you can't leave food rotting in the guts).

So, as long as your body is busy digesting food, it isn’t producing the hormones and assembling the proteins you need to repair tissue. The time it normally does this is at night when you fast because you’re asleep. And the other time it does it is during periods of little or no food.

Keep in mind that more of the hormones you need to stay in a good mood are manufactured during the night if you go to bed with an empty stomach.

That means there are two things you can do to have better health. First, go to sleep with an empty stomach. Stop eating three hours or so before you go to bed. That way, when you fall off to sleep your body can spend all eight hours of sleep rejuvenating your tissues instead of digesting your dinner.

When you go to sleep on an empty stomach, you get a lot more rest and rejuvenation. And I want you to note I did not say "go to sleep hungry." There’s a time after you eat when you’re stomach is empty but you don’t feel hungry yet. That’s the state you’re after.

By the way, another good thing about going to bed with an empty stomach is it reduces heartburn.

The second thing you can do to improve your health is to make sure you endure some lean times. You need to fast.

How often? Well, some volunteers agreed to eat every other day like the lions and mice. And you guessed it: It improved their health and even though they were told to eat twice as much food on the days they ate, they still lost weight.

When it comes to mammals, apparently we’re at our best living a feast-or-famine life. We have a healthier body and less body fat. Such a deal!

Now, do you need to fast every other day? No. You would be extremely health if you did, but you don’t have to go that far. You will get improvement from any amount you can do. Go without any food tomorrow and you will be healthier for doing it. Go without food once a week has even more benefit. I decided to go without food two days a week. I chose Mondays and Fridays because they are very busy days for me and I’ve found it’s almost a blessing to not have to stop and eat. And, when I want to eat, having something to do that needs to be done helps me think about something besides my desire for food.

I personally find fasting peaceful. Yes, sometimes I feel hungry, but a glass of water helps a lot and the hunger fades. It just comes in waves. It is NOT a constant feeling.

I think the first time you go without food it feels rather scary. There’s a feeling something really bad will happen if you don’t have enough food. But nothing bad happens. I go about my life not really aware I’m fasting. I walk around town doing my errands or ride my bike. I don’t feel faint. I don’t pass out from exertion. Once I even did a very strenuous hike to the top of a mountain, though I felt like I didn’t have my normal oomph. I still was able to do it. The Apaches used to go for several days without food when they were riding hard and didn’t have time to stop and kill game and cook it. They thought nothing of it.

If you’re healthy, you can go a day without food. In fact, your body would love to have a day without having to digest anything. You can’t wash the floors when the room is full of guests.

I’ve been fasting Monday and Friday. And it has changed my life. For one thing: I’m losing weight. I find it much easier to not eat than to watch what I eat. Much easier. There’s no trying to control my appetite by stopping once I’m eating, which I find difficult. It is just easier to not get started. Besides, everything I see will still be there tomorrow. I can eat it then. Not really a big deal. There are so many benefits to fasting — like a lot of extra time — that not eating is actually sort of fun.

I feel free of it all when I fast. I don’t have to figure out what to eat or go shopping for food. I don’t have to cook anything all day long. I don’t have to clean any dishes. Plus, the day is free of meal interruptions. I can keep doing what I’m doing and don’t have to stop for lunch or dinner. It makes for productive, satisfying days.

What has surprised me is I’m not twice as hungry the next day. Most people must have some of this response because even the volunteers who were told to try to eat twice as much on the food days just couldn’t seem to do it, so they lost weight even though they weren’t try to.

There is also another benefit to all this. On the days I eat, I’ve stopped worrying about overeating. It doesn’t matter much any more. I can relax. I can eat what I want. Well, I eat good food, nutritious food, but I’ve stopped being so concerned about how much I eat and shifted my attention over to making sure I fast enough.

The problem the developed countries are having with obesity isn’t so much because we’re overeating. The problem is we are underfasting. And if you will concentrate on increasing your fasting time, first by going to bed empty so you make the most of your nightly fast, and second by imposing at least a weekly fast, then you will be giving your body what it so desperately needs: A little famine.

By the way, periods of famine actually improve not only your physical health, but your mental health as well. When they deliberately starved volunteers during WWII to simulate the starvation that many people in Europe were enduring and how best to recuperate from that, they found that even though these men had become skin and bones, when they recovered their weight, they were actually healthier than they’d been. Blood pressure was lower. Depression and anxiety was lower. These people were truly better off for their period of starvation. It did not damage their health like you’d think such a horrific experience of months of starvation would do. The body evolved to count on lean times. It was such a regular occurrence in the evolution of human beings, primates, mammals, and probably as far back as single-celled animals, that our bodies are actually harmed by the LACK of lean times.

Fasting is every bit as important to your health as exercise and stretching and eating the right foods.

And one last comment: Eating every other day increases your life. You will live longer if you fast. And those years will be much better years. You'll be healthier. You'll feel better.

Try it. For the next month instead of trying to eat less, just fast more. That’s all. Just go without eating for one whole day. And do it again and again. Even as much as every other day.

Once you’ve seen how good it is for you, consider fasting for longer. Investigate fasting. It’s the closest thing we have to a fountain of youth.

Poor Listening Has Real Consequences

2009-04-16T15:05:00.000-07:00

BRANT BURLESON, a researcher at Purdue University, says the scientific evidence is strong that if your mate is upset, and you are listening to her or him ineptly:

1. it can make your mate feel worse

2. it can make your mate more upset

3. it can inhibit your mate's ability to effectively solve her or his problem

4. it can encourage an unhealthy dependence on you as a listener

5. it can raise her or his level of stress

6. it can make your relationship less stable

7. it can make her or him less satisfied with your relationship

8. and it might even be bad for your mate's health

Whether or not you are a competent listener has real consequences. Being able to listen well when your mate is having troubles may be the most helpful thing you can learn to do for her or him. It helps your mate become calmer and happier and helps her or him handle problems better. This is very good for your mood.

Research shows most people who try to listen fail to do it well. People with good intentions, people who want to help their friends and mates don't know how to do it, and their friends and mates are not helped and can actually be harmed by their incompetence. Good intentions are not enough. A person having troubles and talking to the average listener won't walk away better off and that's a shame. A good opportunity has been missed because of a lack of know-how. An opportunity to make the world a better place and truly help someone in need has been missed by ineptitude.

Lucky for your mate, the knowledge you are about to discover (when you read this article) will allow you to seize those opportunities. You will be able to translate your desire to help into effective listening that produces real benefits for your mate and friends. And for that, I salute you!

Improve Your Mood By Making More Money

2009-04-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

WHETHER YOU OWN YOUR OWN company or work for someone else, you can earn more than you now earn. The first question to ask yourself is “Am I providing a product or service that is both wanted and needed?” When the answer is yes, you can earn more money by increasing either the quality or the quantity of your service.

The hardest part of increasing your service is thinking up ways to do it. Sure, if you work faster and put in more hours, you will increase your service. And if you take more care and pay more attention to your work, you will certainly increase the quality. Those are obvious. But there will come a time when these things cannot be increased any more: There are only twenty-four hours in a day, there are physical limits to how fast you can move, and you can give no more attention to your work once you are giving it all your attention.

But it is possible to think of other ways to increase your service. It will only take some thinking. Sit down ten different times in the next month and each time think up three different ways you could increase your service. Allow your imagination to go wild. At the end of the month, pick the best one and do it.

Another thing you can do to increase your earnings is to read books and listen to audio programs related to your line of work, your health, or your ability to deal with people. Learn more about these three topics and it will help you earn more.

The first subject to study is the specific area or industry you work in. Every field has a history. How did it start? Who were the principle originators? And that’s just the beginning. The libraries and bookstores are full of books and audio programs and DVDs on every conceivable subject. Study not only background, but also information that will make you better at your job. Take night classes. Listen to audio programs in your car. Educate yourself. As you learn, you become more of an expert. Generally speaking, the more of an expert you are in your field, the more useful you are. And the more useful you are, the more money you can make.

Learning ways to increase your level of health will help you in two ways: First, your level of energy is closely tied to your level of health, and you can do more work with a high energy level. Second, when you have better health, you tend to have better relationships with people. Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to be nice to people when you feel like hell? Our health affects our moods, and our moods affect our relationships with others. And people who get along well with others, according to the research, make more money than those who don’t. Their relationships are better with their bosses and with their assistants. They get more cooperation and consideration. In the long run, this adds up to more money.

Which brings us to the third area to study: people. As far as I can tell, there is no final attainment in this area. I’ve been actively improving my ability to deal with people for about thirty-two years now (and I was pretty good when I started), and I’m nowhere near as good as I could be. In other words, I can profitably continue to improve my ability to deal with people for the rest of my life, and I’ll bet the same is true for you.

Learn about your line of work, read up on how to maintain good health, and constantly practice the fine art of dealing with people. These are lifetime studies. And do the hard work of thinking up ways to increase the quantity and quality of the service you provide. Do these things and you will earn more money.

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

Chale Chalo

2009-04-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

ONE WAY to improve your mood is to watch an uplifting movie. The video below is from an Indian movie about a remote village during the time of the British occupation. Each village was required to give a portion of their crops to the local raja. The portion was called the "lagaan."

A man from one of the local villages grew angry at the unfair practice of the raja of taking their crops during a drought and making them starve, but in his rashness, he wagered with the raja — the rash guy's village would play cricket against the British team. If the villagers won, they would not have to pay the lagaan. But if they lost, they had to pay double, which would mean famine. People would die.

The whole village turned against the rash guy. What had he done? He had seriously endangered them all.

And yet, if they had to pay even this year's lagaan, they would suffer and starve anyway. One by one the villagers joined the rash one in his quest to learn to play cricket so they could win their freedom from the lagaan. Eventually a team was formed, and they began physical conditioning to prepare themselves for the game.

The scene below takes place soon after the village has gotten behind Mr. Rash and preparation has begun in earnest. They sing a song in the clip and I think it's inspiring. The movie was inspiring too. It's called Lagaan - Once Upon a Time in India. I don't usually like watching movies with subtitles, but I loved this one. "Chale chalo" means "come on, let's go, get a move on."

Here are the lyrics to the song, translated into English:

Say it again and again, speak, friend, yes!
May victory be ours, may defeat be theirs, yes!

Chorus:

May no one triumph over us!
Come, let's go, get a move on!
May those who oppose us be obliterated! Come on, let's go!

No matter whether darkness spreads over us;
let's go, get a move on!
Let no one stop along the road; come on, let's go!
The pointing finger of accusation broke and shattered
when our five fingers came together and made a fist!

May our unity only strengthen!
Come, let's go, get a move on!
No matter how much someone might distract you, come on, let's go!

Chorus:

No one will stop you now, no one will get in your way!
Break all the bonds that hold you back!
What have you gained by being weak? You tell me!
We'll never endure misfortune; we'll play
in such a way that the enemy will be defeated!

Take the road of courage, now!
We'll shake this earth, we'll show everyone
the difference between a king and a slave.
We'll overwhelm the earth; we'll tell you right now
what kind of people we are!

Say it again and again, speak, friend, yes!
May victory be ours, may defeat be theirs, yes!
May no fear enter our hearts now!
Come, let's go, get a move on!

May every fetter snap apart now; come on, let's go!
Just keep marching, no panting, no shuddering;
you're on the path now, voyager!
Don't let the snake of exhaustion sink its fangs into you now!

He who is your ruler is a tyrant!
He has wrought destruction!
His home is in the west; he shall not settle here!
We'll shake this earth; we'll show everyone
the difference between a king and a slave
We'll overcome this earth; we'll tell you right now
what kind of people we are!

What must be, let it be, no matter! Come on, let's go!
May you never bow your head again! Come on, let's go!

Chorus:

Again and again, yes!
Say it, friend, yes!
May victory be ours,
may defeat be theirs, yes!
It broke and shattered,
the pointing finger of accusation!
When our five fingers came together,
they made a fist!

Technology For Personal Change

2009-03-27T17:52:00.001-07:00

HAVE YOU EVER heard a good piece of advice or come to a good realization only to forget about it a week later? Sure you have. I just found a great little online tool that helps me keep my insights in mind long enough for them to do some good. It's called Resnooze.

You type in whatever you want, and then tell it how often you want to get that in your email inbox, and click on the button "Resnooze myself" and that's it. Every day or every week or every month, your message will be delivered to you via email, for as long as you wish for free.

I use it all the time now. I think you might like it: Resnooze.

For more help with making changes permanent, check out articles here: How To Make Lasting Changes In Your Life.

Dealing With Conflict In Relationships

2009-03-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

JOHN GOTTMAN, A RESEARCHER at the University of Washington and the author of The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships, has studied married couples for over 25 years. He discovered that when two people argue, the content of their argument is pretty much irrelevant. The most important aspect of a conflict is the process the two people are using to communicate.

If you think about it, this is really the opposite of what we normally consider important during an argument. When you're in the middle of it, the content — the actual topic of your argument — seems to be the most important part of the discussion.

Let me be extra clear about this. When Richard and Kim argue about whether or not to use spanking as a punishment for their child, whether or not Richard is right or uses sound reasoning is not as important as how much he interrupts Kim.

The process, the way you argue will determine how well the issue is resolved. Focus more on the way you argue than on what you're arguing about. Specifically, if you conduct your argument in the way described below, a conflict can be resolved quickly and with minimal hurt feelings.

1. Listen without interrupting. During an argument it is natural to interrupt. But people need to be able to finish their sentences. People need to be heard and understood. When they're not, they tend to get frustrated. Resolutions then become more difficult to achieve.

2. Acknowledge the good. During a conflict, it is fairly common to ignore anything positive. But you do appreciate a great deal about the person you are talking with, and some of what you appreciate is relevant to the topic you're discussing. And the two of you do in fact have many points of agreement. It's helpful to acknowledge those during the argument. It helps keep emotions from escalating, and it keeps your own point of view from becoming too narrowly one-sided.

3. Turn criticisms into requests before they leave your mouth. Instead of mentioning what the other person has done wrong (inciting defensiveness), talk about what you would like the person to do in the future. You're basically saying the same thing but in a less painful, more constructive way. A nice clean request is something real to deal with, something out in the future that can be promised. Things in that past are already done. They are final. And talking about them usually only produces regret, shame, defensiveness, or depression. None of these are productive emotions. A sincere request often produces determination to fulfill it — a very productive emotion.

Follow these three guidelines and your argument can move (relatively) painlessly toward resolution, regardless of whether the content of your discussion is keeping the toothpaste cap on the tube or getting a divorce. Concentrate on good process and it will see you through.

We need rules to follow during conflict. In our courtrooms, in congress, even in business meetings, they have rules. Most organizations use Robert's Rules of Order. These are the parameters within which the discussion can take place, and it allows progress to be made. Otherwise, whenever conflict is taking place, which it does often in those contexts, things would quickly devolve into shouting matches. They have rules to prevent that. And that's what you need in your close relationships: Rules of order. It allows progress to be made.

conflicting points of view

In a study by researchers at Ohio State University, 90 newly-married couples were asked to discuss the most important subjects about which they disagreed. Later, the researchers watched videotapes of these discussions and rated their arguing style on measures of positive or negative behaviors. In the positive range, they looked for:

agreeing with spouse's point
accepting responsibility
suggesting a compromise

On the negative end, they looked for:

withdrawing
blaming
criticizing

Before and after the discussion, levels of immune function and blood pressure were measured. The immune function dropped in everyone some, but for those with the negative arguing style, it dropped considerably more. Blood pressure increased more for the negative fighters too.

This divides arguing behaviors into two kinds: positive and negative. The positive behaviors are productive, help the situation move toward resolution, and produce less anger and defensiveness. The negative behaviors are destructive, move the situation away from resolution, and produce more anger and defensiveness. To make things go better in an argument, simply resist the temptation to do the negative ones and try to do more of the positive ones.

Heated arguments with your spouse are not merely miserable; they are bad for your health. Researchers took a hundred married people with mild hypertension and over a period of three years they gave them questionnaires about their relationships. For those in good marriages, their blood pressure went down. For those in bad marriages, their blood pressure readings increased over the three years.

Swedish researchers took three hundred women who had been hospitalized for chest pains or heart attacks and did a follow up study on them five years after the hospitalization. Those who were having serious trouble in their marriages were three times more likely to have a second serious heart episode than people who didn't have much upset in their marriage.

A virologist, Ronald Glaser, PhD, an endocrinologist, William Malarkey, MD, and a psychologist, Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, PhD, screened thousands of newlyweds to find ninety couples with perfect records of mental and physical health, and then after a thirty-minute discussion with each couple as they tried to resolve problems related to money, in-laws, or leisure time, the researchers took blood samples. The more "negative fighting behavior" the couples had, the less active their immune system was, as measured by certain clear indicators like natural killer cells that fight tumors and viruses.

The negative fighting behavior the researchers noted included sarcasm, dismissal, disapproval, and general nastiness.

For more motivation to change the way you fight, a study at the University of Washington has shown that when parents attack each others' belief systems — when they are hostile toward each other, when they attack each others' character and feelings — children suffer. Kids whose parents fought that way showed more antisocial behavior. They are psychologically less healthy.

So remember, in an argument, focus on process, not the content of the argument. Focus on these three:

Listen without interrupting.
Acknowledge the good.
Turn criticisms into requests.

And when you are discussing something with someone who has a conflicting point of view, do more of these (positive arguing behaviors):

Suggesting a compromise
Accepting responsibility
Agreeing with a point

Negative arguing behaviors (do less of these):

Blaming
Criticizing
Withdrawing

Feeling Confident With Others

2009-03-05T15:02:00.000-08:00

WITH CONFIDENCE YOU’RE MORE attractive and likable, and you feel better than when you lack confidence. You’ve experienced the truth of that statement many times in your life. But isn’t confidence something you either have or don’t, something you’re either born with or not? Can you deliberately become confident?

I’m confident you can.

You see, if we just use a synonym for confident, the way becomes obvious. One of its synonyms is “certain.” And it is true that you feel confident wherever you have a lot of certainty. Think about it. For a teenage boy who wants to talk to a girl he likes, he may feel very awkward and not confident at all. But if he knew a lot about computers, and she was having a problem with a computer and asked his help, he could help her and feel confident doing so. Why? Because he would know what he was talking about. People feel confident when they are certain.

Therefore, wherever you would like to feel confident, develop more certainty about it. And I don’t mean an attitude of certainty, I mean to develop real honest-to-goodness, actual certainty.

If, for example, you have to get up and speak to a group next week and you don’t feel confident about it, start working to develop some degree of certainty: Talk to the people you need to talk to and find out who will be there and what they are expecting, and then prepare thoroughly. The more you prepare, rehearse, talk about what you will say to your friends, make notes, do research, the more certain you will be and the more confident you will feel.

As another example, a shy person might feel a lack of confidence meeting new people. When she’s introduced, she feels like running away. This is very common. Why? Because a new person is — by definition — unknown. Our shy person is not certain about anything except the person’s name (and if she is too distracted by her nervousness, she’ll quickly lose her certainty about that too).

But surprisingly, even with a person you’ve never met before, you can know with certainty quite a bit about him. And our shy person can increase her certainty and therefore her confidence when dealing with people by:

Learning more about the human nature we all have in common.

Learning more about manners (so you’re certain about what should be done when).

Learning strategies for getting to know someone.

You can learn human nature and manners and strategies so well you have a high degree of certainty about those things. This would add up to more confidence around people — even people you’ve never met before. A good book to start with is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

But there are many ways to gain certainty about people, and each one increases your feeling of confidence a little more. Confidence is not on or off; there are many shades of gray from No Confidence to Absolute Confidence. Any actions you take to increase your level of certainty slides you over a little more toward Absolute Confidence.

Increase your certainty about how to act.

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

Constructive Purposes Are The Key To Good Moods

2009-02-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

"Morita therapists emphasize that it is important to find suitable constructive purposes and hold to them, thus guiding behavior in a positive direction. The other side of that coin is that all behavior, positive or negative, is purposeful. Whatever you do there is an aim to it, a goal toward which the behavior is directed. The goal may be destructive or constructive or mixed. For example, the shy person may avoid social gatherings in order to prevent the feelings of inadequacy and loneliness that he feels in such situations. In a sense Morita guidance asks the client to select constructive purposes and positive ways of achieving them instead of the already purposeful, but destructive behavior. Finding the purpose behind destructive behavior can be a useful undertaking because sometimes the original purpose can also be fulfilled in a positive way."

- David Reynolds
founder of Constructive Living
leading Western authority on Morita and
Naikan therapies, the two most popular
forms of therapy in Japan

Success

2009-02-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

"Frequently, success is what people settle for when they can't think of something noble enough to be worth failing at."

- Laurence Shames

Beyond Mood Raising

2009-02-26T14:55:00.000-08:00

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

- Allen Wiesen, psychologist

Our Deep Need For Purpose

2009-02-25T09:58:00.000-08:00

"The need for meaning in life goes far beyond the mechanical techniques of selecting a goal to be achieved by positive thinking. If a person selects a goal just to satisfy the demands of others he will quickly revert back to self-defeating trap circuits. He will rapidly lose ambition, and though he may try to appear as if he is succeeding in what he is doing, he will feel miserable because he is not really committed to this objective. All the success seminars in the world will not make a potential Mozart or Monet content to be president of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Positive therapy strives to help people acquire a deeply positive orientation to living by enabling them to recover a long-buried dream or to implant firmly the roots of a new one. This need for deep personal meaning has been succinctly expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche: 'He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.' The phenomenon was directly observed by Viktor Frankl in Nazi concentration camps. Those prisoners who had a deeply rooted reason to survive — a meaningful project, a loving family — best withstood that prolonged torture without reverting to counterhuman patterns of behavior."

- Allen Wiesen, psychologist

Simple Goals Improve Your Mood Best

2009-02-20T14:44:00.000-08:00

WHEN A WAITER at a restaurant has one table, he usually isn't stressed at all. He can concentrate and do a good job, and it is no problem. Two tables, okay. Still no problem. Three tables, and he has to start paying attention, because it's like juggling — the more balls you have in the air, the easier it is to drop one. When he gets up to seven or eight tables, it can become very stressful. The juggling of tasks becomes too complex to handle well.

In the same way, the number of purposes you have is directly related to your stress hormone level. Depending on how you handle your goals, a strong sense of purpose can help you manage stress well, or it can make your general stress level much worse.

The problem is that the natural drift for people is toward complication. In other words, if you don't try to do anything about it, your life will get more and more complicated; you will collect more and more purposes. So you have to make a continuous effort to simplify your purposes. Your life will naturally and constantly drift toward complication, just as a rose bush will constantly try to sprawl. You must continually prune. You can't prune once and for all. You have to keep pruning.

For example, the waiter had several goals. He wanted his guests to be happy. He also wanted to get along well with his fellow waiters. And he wanted to please the cooks so interactions with them were pleasant. And, of course, he wanted the managers to be happy with him. And so on. Too many purposes. His attention is scattered in too many directions. If he knew about simplifying purposes, he would have trimmed his purposes down to something manageable: To make the guests pleased with his service. That's enough to concentrate on, and that would keep his tension level lower, because it is manageable.

Manage your purposes. Make a list: What are your most important purposes? Trim the list down to something manageable; something simple enough that you can manage it without stress. Get few enough purposes that it feels good.

Having strong purposes can improve your mood tremendously, but only if you keep your purposes trimmed down enough to feel good.

Be aware that after you trim your purposes, complexity will gradually creep back in. Simplifying your purposes is something you'll need to do once in awhile for the rest of your life.

Keep your purposes strong and clear, simple and heartfelt, and you will find the most powerful source of self-generated happiness that exists in this world. As George Bernard Shaw said, "the true joy in life is being used by a purpose recognized by yourself to be a mighty one." Experience the true joy in life. Be used by a mighty purpose. Find yourself a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment and get to work.

How to Find the Love of Your Life

2009-02-13T23:44:00.000-08:00

IN ORDER TO FIND a love for life, you’ll need to know what your strongest interest is. What really interests you? What do you love to talk about, read about, do, have, play with? If you don’t know the answer to those questions, or if the answers are a bunch of minor interests rather than one major interest, forget about finding a mate until you know what your “passion” is. But once you know that, finding a mate is easy: Pursue your interest and see who shows up.

Let’s say you love sailing. If you want to find someone you’ll love to talk to, you’ll need to find someone as interested in sailing as you are. Otherwise, although the two of you may have a functional relationship, you’ll be living in different worlds. Our deepest purposes and interests are at the heart of who we are.

So join a sailing club, go to sailing classes and races. Pursue your interest. The people you meet in a sailing club are much more likely to be interested in sailing than the people you’d meet in a bar, for example.

The rush of hormones at the beginning of a relationship wears off. Sorry to say it, but it’s true. No matter how attractive someone may be, that initial intense rush eventually dies down. But that’s okay, because there’s a deeper, more satisfying kind of love and attraction: the respect and affection between two people who share a common purpose or interest.

Raising children ends up being the common purpose between many married couples. But if child-raising doesn’t intensely interest both of you, it isn’t a good enough purpose to create and maintain the longtime happiness of a lifemate.

Two things need to be said. First, you’ll never find the “perfect” mate. She or he may seem perfect for a while, but no one can meet every one of your ideals. In fact, some of your ideals are probably mutually exclusive, so meeting all of them is literally impossible. You’ll eventually find faults in anyone because everyone has faults. When you find faults with your mate, remind yourself of that. Quit imagining that there is a perfect person out there somewhere. There isn’t.

Second, even when you’ve found your lifemate, you’ll sometimes be attracted to others. It’s human. It doesn’t mean anything except that you are a biological machine, built to breed. The human species (and every other species on the planet) has a built-in urge to multiply. Stick with your mate and don’t let it be important that others attract you. Your response to yourself can simply be “So what if I’m attracted to someone? It doesn’t mean anything.” Stay true to your mate even when an occasional attraction inclines you temporarily to do otherwise. You’ll be happier and healthier as a result.

You want to find a lifemate? Take up your strongest interest with enthusiasm and see who shows up. After you find the person you’re looking for and the rush of hormones has worn off, accept the fact that your mate isn’t perfect, that nobody is perfect, and remind yourself that it isn’t important that you are occasionally attracted to others. Do this and you can live (pretty darn) happily ever after.

Pursue your interest and remind yourself:
Nobody’s perfect and attraction to others is unimportant.

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

Why Goals Peter Out

2009-02-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

PROBABLY THE biggest killer of purpose is all-or-nothing thinking. "I want to sail around the world," says a young man. But he is married and has a new baby. Obviously he can't go sailing around the world. Or can he? If he's thinking in all-or-nothing terms, he will, of course say "No, I can't go sailing around the world unless I want to be a jerk and leave my wife and child." But that's thinking in one extreme or the other, and life very rarely needs to be so black-or-white.

He wakes up one night with a realization. He has been blinding himself with all-or-nothing thinking! He comes up with a plan. He will set aside twenty dollars a week in a Sailing Fund. As he does better at work, he'll increase that amount. But for now, he uses the money for sailing lessons and boating safety classes and books on celestial navigation, always leaving aside a little to accumulate for the purchase of an actual boat. He learns about boat design.

It takes him three years before he learns enough to decide what design of boat he wants to get. It takes him another year to figure out what course he will chart, what places he will visit, etc. As his son gets older, they go sailing together on rented sailboats. His son learns how to sail. The father teaches him how to reef the sails, how to steer, how to navigate by the stars.

By the time the son is fourteen, the family decides to go for it. They sell their house, buy a sailboat, fill it with supplies, and what do you know? His purpose wasn't silly or impossible after all. It may be, in fact, the highlight of his life.

Another thing that kills dreams or prevents the development of a strong sense of purpose is that interest dies. But here you have to be careful. Did your interest die because you actually lost interest now that you know more about it, or did your interest die because of the way you're explaining setbacks to yourself?

There are certain ways to explain setbacks in your life that will kill your enthusiasm, destroy your interest, and prevent the development of a sense of purpose. If your interest has been killed by a feeling of defeat, you can revive that dormant interest and fill your life with purpose and meaning. (Read more about that here.)

It's important that the goals you seek give you a sense of meaning — that they aren't only about material gain. It's true that any goal is better than no goal, but it's also true that if you have a choice, you ought to choose high-quality goals, goals that will give you a great deal of satisfaction and even meaning.

Susan Krause Whitbourne did a long-term research project, starting in 1966. She saw a particular psychological measurement steadily decline over the years. It's called "ego integrity," which is a composite characteristic having to do with honesty, a sense of connection with others, a sense of wholeness, and a feeling that life has meaning.

Between 1977 and 1988, ego integrity took a universal dive. The life-satisfaction scores were as low as they could go on her measurements. "People got caught up in chasing the materialistic dream," says Whitbourne, "They got recognition for their achievements, yet don't feel that what they are doing matters in the larger scheme of things."

Your enthusiasm for your goals will peter out if you don't set goals with real meaning for you. And they can peter out if you explain setbacks poorly, making mistakes in your explanations like all-or-nothing thinking. You can check your own thinking with this exercise.

Goals can provide you with one of the most reliable sources of good moods. Making sure your enthusiasm doesn't peter out is worth the trouble.

Read more: Good Moods Require Good Goals.

Setting Your Course to Better Moods

2009-01-26T00:31:00.000-08:00

HAVING A STRONG PURPOSE is one of the best sources of good moods you can get. If you don't already have a strong purpose, how do you go about developing one?

A high-quality purpose is more than something you feel you "should" do. That isn't good enough. A good purpose is something you feel a strong desire to do, even feel compelled to do, and something you feel is important — something you think needs to be done and ought to be done because it is right and good. Or something you feel strongly interested in, something that fascinates you and fills you with interest and curiosity, or just plain ecstasy (as demonstrated by the great BB King in the picture).

If nothing comes to mind right now, that's not the end of the conversation. There is no such legitimate answer as, "I don't have one of those." Yes, you do. You may have forgotten it. You may never have dug deeply enough to find it in the first place. But you've got at least one. And all you need is one.

Most likely there was a time when you knew what your purpose was, at least in a general sense, but for one reason or another you discarded it; someone convinced you it was impossible or stupid, or you convinced yourself. It's now as if you've turned your back on it and are looking around saying, "I don't see any purpose I really want." No, of course not. It is behind you, so to speak. You've already picked it up, had it in your hand and then tossed it behind you where you are no longer looking.

Start right now with the assumption that there is a purpose which strongly compels you or strongly interests you, and commit yourself to finding it.

If you don't already have a purpose, now you have one: Finding it. What interests you? What do you like to talk about? What do you daydream about? What do you think needs to be done? What do you think "someone" ought to do? What do you "wish you could do" but know you can't?

A high quality purpose is concrete, challenging, and something you feel is achievable. That's where motivation is. That's where confidence is. That's where ability is formed. That's where the fun is.

In a study at the University of Alabama, researchers found that people who considered their goal difficult but achievable were more motivated — they were more energized and felt their goal was more important — than people who had easy goals or impossible goals.

People who thought their goal was easy weren't as motivated. And people who thought their goal was impossible weren't motivated either. Remember: difficult but achievable. Not achievable in some abstract sense, but something you feel you could achieve. And something you feel challenged by.

John French, Jr., director of the research project, did a study of 2,010 men in twenty-three different jobs, trying to find out which jobs were the most stressful. The study found something surprising. The most stressful jobs were the most boring and unchallenging. These were the jobs that produced the most physical and emotional illness.

Says French, "One of the key factors in job satisfaction is self-utilization — the opportunity to fully utilize your abilities on the job, to be challenged, to develop yourself. Frustration and anxiety over not being challenged can have physically debilitating effects."

A big, challenging goal, if you feel up to it, will awaken the genius within, bring out your latent talents, give you satisfaction, and make the world a better place.

Beethoven's goal was to create music that would "transcend fate." Socrates had a goal to make people happy by making them reasonable and just. These are big goals, but they brought out the best in these people and wrote their names in history.