July 21st, 2008 — Change, Living Fully
Have you ever felt like the dog in this picture…a bit overwhelmed?
If so, what did you do to climb out of the situation? What resources did you have? How did you access them?
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately…I don’t feel overwhelmed right now, but I am nervous about the future. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything…the tendency to worry is part of my nature…but just in case my little boat starts sinking, I’m practicing my swimming. It never hurts to keep in shape.
So what am I doing to be proactive instead of feeling helpless? To use the swimming analogy I’m
- Learning to float,
- Keeping myself motivated to practice every day, and
- Developing my skills.
Learning to Float
Learning to float is the first skill we need in swimming. The equivalent in stress management is learning to calm our bodies and our minds so we can act effectively. There are all sorts of ways of doing this, and the one that works best for me is using my StressEraser. I’ve written about the device and about how to slip into the relaxation response in Experimenting with the StressEraser. Whenever I start feeling tense I use the device for a few minutes each day to keep me centered.
Keeping Motivated
The trick of learning any skill is to keep ourselves motivated to practice regularly. I learned to be a good swimmer because I loved playing in the water. I wasn’t working for some future goal, I was enjoying myself. I can’t say I always like being in stressful situations, but I can figure out how to enjoy part of the challenge. The easiest way for me to slip into that attitude is to remember past successes, especially the time my husband and I were both threatened with being downsized at the same time. It was both scary and one of the happiest times of my life, and it taught me some lifelong lessons. What I Learned From Being Downsized:
- Be optimistic and have a sense of humor,
- Always keep learning and growing,
- Be patient and bide your time when it’s appropriate,
- Generate new ideas and opportunities for yourself,
- Enjoy the adventure of life and have friends to share it with.
Developing Skills
In addition to remembering those lessons and lifting my spirits by thinking of that time, I also keep myself on track by integrating the Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People into my life. They’re listed below, after this post. See also yesterday’s post at Transforming Stress,
When Life Is “For the Birds”. Having a sense of humor does help!
I use that list of traits often…there are enough of them so I don’t get bored, and in any given situation I can find at least one that hits home and gives me some constructive action to take. And that’s the secret of stress management, to stay constructive, to be participant in the adventure of life rather than feeling like a helpless victim.
Anyway, that’s what works for me. What about you? How are you learning to swim in life? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People
1. They have a sense of meaning, direction, and purpose. They are value-centered rather than reactive and defensive. They understand that emotions are great sources of energy and motivation but are often poor guides for action. Instead these people use their values as guides.
2. They realize that the quality of our lives depends on how we focus our energy and our attention. They try to align their thoughts and actions with their values. They know how to motivate themselves to take action.
3. They don’t judge themselves or others harshly when things go wrong. They focus on what they want, not on what they don’t want.
4. They are able to tolerate ambiguity, uncertainty, and imperfection. They have a long-range perspective, so they give themselves and others room to grow. They can afford to be resilient, flexible, and creative because they are centered in their values.
5. They are reasonably optimistic and have a sense of humor. Even though they are dedicated to doing things well, they don’t take themselves too seriously.
6. They take responsibility for their mental programming, their emotions, and their actions. If they have ineffective ways of thinking and behaving, they evaluate them and make appropriate changes.
7. They look at adversity as a challenge rather than as a threat. They realize that no matter how the present situation turns out, they will learn and grow from it.
8. They respect themselves and other people. They have a spirit of cooperation, looking for win-win solutions rather than trying to win over other people or ignoring their own wants and needs because of fear.
9. They are grateful for the good things in their lives.
10. They know how to mourn the inevitable losses in life. They know how to let go of things they have no control over.
July 14th, 2008 — Happiness, Introduction, Living Fully
Feelings, failure and finding happiness…that was the topic of Oprah Winfrey’s 2008 Commencement Address at Stanford. Not surprisingly, the talk was both entertaining and inspiring…I heartily recommend either watching the video or reading the transcript. The speech resonated with me because she makes the Cheerful Monk motto come to life:
Stay curious and open to life. No matter what happens, keep learning and growing. Find what you love to do and find a way to share it with others.
Feelings As Our Inner GPS
Oprah first talked about feelings…our inner guidance system, our GPS. She told how when she first started out in broadcasting she tried to emulate Barbara Walters, but it didn’t feel right. It wasn’t until she was fired as co-anchor of the 6 o’clock news and placed on a talk show that her mission in life clicked…she felt at home…this was what she was meant to do.
What do we do when we don’t know what our mission is? …”get still, get very still, until you do know what to do.” That’s not intuitive advice for someone raised in our fast-paced, action-oriented society, but it’s powerful and effective. It reminds me of my favorite time-management book: How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life by Alan Lakein. It was written 25 years ago and its basic advice still rings true: keep asking yourself, “What’s the best use of my time right now?” If that question doesn’t connect you with your inner drive, then you need to figure out what you really care about in life. You need to connect with your passion. I agree with Oprah and Lakein, goals are fine, but only when we’re tuned into our inner motivation. Once we’ve done that, we don’t have to force ourself to work. As Oprah puts it, “So…forget about the fast lane. If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart and success will come to you.”
Dealing With Failure, Finding Happiness
The other two points she talked about, dealing with failure and finding happiness, involve learning from your mistakes and using your gifts to give service to others. Again, she uses examples from her own life…the problems encountered pursuing her dream of teaching girls to be leaders…as well as from the lives of Jane and Leland Stanford. Stanford’s official name is Leland Stanford Junior University. Jane and Leland Stanford founded the university in memory of their only child, who died of typhoid at the age of 15. They didn’t let their grief cut them off from life. Instead they used it as motivation to reach out and help others. And that, for Oprah, is the secret of dealing with setbacks, disappointments and grief…and it’s the secret of happiness: “Don’t live for yourself alone….To be happy, you have to give something back.”
I clearly agree with Oprah. I believe what she’s saying is age-old wisdom, well-tested by time. I also believe it never hurts to hear it again. And I believe it’s especially powerful when we not only hear the words but hear the stories of people, famous and not-so-famous, who have lived those principles.
What about you? What stories do you have to share? Please tell us in the comments section.
Thanks to
Evelyn and
bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.
July 7th, 2008 — Change
bikehikebabe sent me these pictures of a young, hungry bear in her neighbors’ cherry tree:
This bear is a great example of the power of motivation. Mostly bears stay away from people, but when they’re hungry enough they’ll come into back yards looking for food. As you can see from the second picture, they’re not concerned about the damage they create in the process. Hopefully we humans are learning to choose our goals thoughtfully so we don’t destroy our environment and our futures in our pursuit. We have to be careful of unintended consequences.
That reminds me of a story I read in the local paper a few years ago. A man went up into the mountains to hunt wild turkeys. He was sitting under a tree blowing his turkey caller when a mountain lion leaped down on him from the branches above. The man managed to fight the lion off and said he didn’t know who was most shocked, he or the mountain lion. The lion obviously thought he was pouncing on a tasty turkey dinner. And presumably the man never again hid under a tree to blow his turkey caller.
What about you? Have you ever been surprised when you were pursuing a goal? if so, what did you learn from the experience? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
June 30th, 2008 — Following the Path
Stay curious and open to life. No matter what happens keep learning and growing. Find what you love to do and find a way to share it with others.
—Cheerful Monk
He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning.
—Danish quote
Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science
—Albert Einstein
This picture represents what I’m aiming for in life…the joy of learning new skills with no ego attached. The baby has no qualms about asking for help, and it doesn’t bother her that other people can walk “better” than she can. She’s not comparing herself to others or worrying if she’s learning fast enough. Learning to walk isn’t a goal with a deadline, it’s simply something she’s committed to doing. That’s me… I’m committed to lifelong learning, and to doing it with joy. There’s no external reward at the end, it’s the process that counts.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, at the moment I’m learning HTLM, CSS and some WordPress. My stack of resources…mostly in the form of books, but also information from the web…has grown. I don’t feel obligated to read every page of every book…they’re not on a TO DO List. They’re more like a group of friends willing to lend a helping hand when I need one.
So like the little girl in the picture, I’m enjoying my first baby steps. I’m well-supported and savoring the moment…and ready to take the next small step.
What about you? What are you learning at the moment? Are you enjoying it? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks to
traveler for commenting on last week’s post.
June 23rd, 2008 — Following the Path
Pathfindar. Used with permission. Owner reserves all rights.
When this boy saw the dog obstacle course he couldn’t resist trying it himself. He’s a great reminder that obstacles in our paths aren’t necessarily bad … they’re a great way to test and develop our skills. It reminds me of the Zen master Dogen. When asked how he reached enlightenment he answered, “It was just one mistake after another.” And one of my favorite fortunes was, “You have a great capacity for learning from your mistakes. You will learn a great deal today.”
That’s a good summary of what this past week has been like for me … just one mistake after another. Most of those “mistakes” have been mine, but I did spend several hours last weekend trying to figure out why I was having so much trouble accessing my web site. After a lot of detective work and many phone calls it turned out to be an incompatibility between my hosting service and DSL provider. It was a great exercise in staying patient and centered while I narrowed down the problem, then worked on something else while in the fullness of time they resolved it. As Shilpan said in a comment last week, letting go of expectations and having faith and patience is a great source of happiness.
That doesn’t mean we can’t savor the rewards, too. For me those rewards are increased understanding and skill development…for the squirrel in this video it’s peanuts and candy bars. The important thing is to enjoy the obstacle course as well as the reward at the end. To me that’s what real success is.
What about you? How do you feel about the obstacles in your life? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe, David, Darren, Shamelle, Robert, and Shilpan for comments on last week’s post.
June 16th, 2008 — Following the Path
“Don’t fall into the activity trap!”
That was the favorite exhortation of the best boss I ever had. We were a gung-ho group…working long hours, having a great time and getting a lot done. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate all we were doing…he was just warning us it wasn’t enough to be productive. If we didn’t keep our knowledge of our field up-to-date, we would be obsolete in a few years…no matter how much we accomplished.
I’ve been thinking of him a lot the past few weeks. Setting and achieving (more or less) my goal of revising my theme has been heady stuff..I can get addicted to goal achievement. But now it’s time to do the slow plodding of building a solid understanding WordPress and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). That’s not a project that lends itself well to setting goals and deadlines. The subject is complicated enough that one learns by trying things, making mistakes and patiently figuring out what went wrong.
As I contemplate the information I want to assimilate, I’ve decided I could use a role model…and the sloth would be a great one. Sloths are patient creatures. A large part of their diet consists of hard-to-digest leaves, so they spend a lot of time chewing and digesting, chewing and digesting. That’s just what I need to do right now as I tackle my pile of hard-to-digest reading material. If sloths can do it, so can I.
What about you? What are you learning? Is it fun or is some of it hard to digest? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks to Adebola, bikehikebabe, David, Darren and Shilpan for comments on last week’s post.
June 9th, 2008 — Change, Living Fully
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
—J.K. Rowling, in her 2008 Commencement Address at Harvard University
I like challenges. I figure getting into situations which stretch my mind and my resourcefulness is like going to the gym every other day to use the weight machines…it’s just a part of keeping fit. In this rapidly changing world we’re bound to encounter new circumstances to deal with, and our best security is to keep developing our skills. That attitude of lifelong learning is also a great way to feed our souls… to keep feeling fully alive. The trick is to find something that grabs our attention…something challenging enough to give us a feeling of accomplishment, but not so much of a stretch that it feels overwhelming.
That last part has been the real challenge for me the past few weeks. Looking at WordPress templates and style sheets was intimidating until I realized it was just like learning a foreign language. I lived in Germany for six months and France for thirteen, so I’ve had experience with jumping into a new environment with limited knowledge. Some basic grammar and vocabulary is enough to get started. Then a good dictionary, a willingness to learn, and a lot of resourcefulness can turn the situation into an adventure.
So that’s been my approach to revising my WordPress themes. I still have a lot to learn, and I’m certain to run into new problems/”learning opportunities”, but I can do a lot more than I could two weeks ago, and I no longer feel lost. I now have some basic knowledge to build on.
What about you? What are the challenges in your life right now? What are you learning from them? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe, Shilpan, Darren, David, Rachel and Adebola for comments on last week’s post.
June 2nd, 2008 — Happiness, Living Fully
I kept quitting in the face of adversity until I found something I loved doing, after which point all obstacles became surmountable.
—Jim Buckmeister, CEO of Craigslist
It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy…let’s go exploring!
–Calvin to Hobbes
If it ain’t easy, it’s impossible.
—Anonymous
In The Courage to Be Confused. The Courage to Be Patient, yesterday’s post at Transforming Stress, I mentioned that I’m in the process of going into the guts of my themes so I can convert them from three columns to two. No doubt about it..it’s a messy and time-consuming business.
Why am I doing it? Because I want to. I do think three columns is a bit crowded, but the real reason is to become more adept at writing web pages and building blogs. That’s been on my Possibility List for a long time, and I even accumulated a stack of reference books to help. But I work best when I have a project of my own to do, and redesigning my layout is just the incentive I needed.
So suddenly it’s a fun thing to do. I’m not foolish enough to try to do it on my regular sites, so I set up WordPress at another of my domains, creativityandjoy.com, where I can play to my heart’s content. And it is play because I’m having fun trying things as I unravel the mystery of all those funny lines of CSS and PHP, e.g.,
?* A CSS example */
#content{line-height:1.4em;
margin:0 155px 5px;padding:0;}
#contentwide{line-height:1.6em;
margin:0 0 5px 150px;padding:0;}
#content h2,#contentwide h2{font-size:1.3em;
margin:0 0 10px;color:#185dac;line-height:1.2em}
#content h3, #contentwide h3{font-size:1.4em;margin:0 0 8px;}
#content img,#contentwide img{border:1px solid #d0d0d0;
float:left;margin:3px 10px 3px 0;}
It reminds me of a summer many years ago when I taught myself some beginning Greek. I still remember the thrill when all of those little squiggles actually made some sense. Talk about living in a magical world.
I’m still a little kid at heart…I learn best by playing. What about you? Please share your experience in the comments section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe, Shilpan, and Darren for comments on last week’s post.
May 26th, 2008 — Living Fully
arbejde–work (Danish)
glæde–happiness (Danish)
arbejdsglæde–happiness at work (Danish)
Alexander Kjerulf, Chief Happiness Officer, recently wrote a post entitled Of Brits and Danes and Happiness at Work. Alex tells us the Nordic languages, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Icelandic, have a word for happiness at work, but English doesn’t. This fact corresponds to what he noticed when he was working in England recently…the British attitude towards work is completely different from the Danish one. Britons don’t expect to be happy at work, Danes do. Britons don’t value happiness at work, Danes do. So it’s no wonder that a recent University of Cambridge study on happiness concluded that the Danes are the happiest people in Europe, while the British rated 9th.
And, Alex points out, not only are the British less happy, they also work longer hours and are less productive than the Danes. How crazy is that? So Alex issues this challenge to “British companies, managers and employees everywhere”:
Put happiness at work first. Realize once and for all that life’s too short to spend so many hours in jobs that are at best tolerable and at worst hell on earth.
Amen to that, I say! It usually takes a lot of effort and patience…it’s sometimes scary…but I can’t conceive of wasting my life feeling trapped in a job I hate. What about you? How do you feel about work? Do you think it’s something that should bring you joy? If so, what are you doing, or have you done, about it? Please share your experience in the comments section.
Thanks to Robin, David, Shilpan, Shamelle, and Darren for comments on last week’s post.
Related posts: Live Your Own Life, It’s a Magical World.
Related articles on Danes and Happiness: You can be as happy as a Dane, Why Danes are smug.
May 19th, 2008 — Change, Living Fully
A woman, I’ll call her “Joan”, from our local Friends of the Shelter sent a delightful message to the group the other day. She gave an update on the beautiful Rottweiler puppy she adopted from the shelter last November. He’s now a beautiful 60-pound nine-month-old. He’s a wonderful addition to the family…calm, playful, people-oriented and dog-friendly.
He has just one little issue…he wants to be the boss of someone, and he’s chosen her. He wants to tell her when he wants to play and to be fed, and if she doesn’t do what she wants, he chews on her foot, jumps on her and nips. Just a little issue.
And, in fact, the behavioral specialist she took him to says it’s probably easily cured. Don’t scold him or get into a battle of wills. Just quietly take him into another room, preferably with one of his favorite toys, and give him a time out for a bit. He already gets plenty of attention, and reacting to him is positive reinforcement. She’s been trying it and is having good results. And she’s wisely doing that now, when he’s “only” 60 pounds, before he’s full-grown.
Lessons Learned?
So what can we learn from this? For me it’s to remember to keep things in perspective. To remember that we don’t have to be perfect to be lovable. If we’re acting in ways we don’t like, don’t turn it into a moral matter. Just figure out what the payoff for the behavior is, and find a healthier way of satisfying that need. In the Rottweiler’s case, it’s to show him he’s more apt to get attention if he doesn’t try to dominate the woman. For me the big problem years ago was eating junk food, as well as too much of the healthy stuff. The solution wasn’t to mentally beat myself up, it was to find activities that I loved even more than eating. As long as I was dieting I kept thinking about food. The solution was to do something else instead. And a big part of the process was to refuse to stop loving myself just because I had a little issue. Staying loving and nonjudgmental is powerful.
What about you? Have you ever changed some unwanted behaviors? Please share your experience in the comments section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe, Daz, Shauna, Robert and Robin for commenting on last week’s post.
