Catch It If You Can-And The Good News is You Can!

It seems that happiness is not merely a function of individual experience or choice, but is also a property of groups of people, in other words a collective phenomenon. It turns out that it is contagious. This is wonderful news with huge implications. It means we can all be carriers. They say misery loves company, but the same may be even more true of happiness. According to a study published by the British Medical Journal, scientists from Harvard University and UC San Diego showed that happiness spreads readily through social networks of family members, friends and neighbors. They found a “statistical relationship not just between your happiness and your friends' happiness, but between your happiness and your friends' friends' friends' happiness."

Knowing someone who is happy makes you 15.3% more likely to be happy yourself, the study found. A happy friend of a friend increases your odds of happiness by 9.8%, and even your neighbor's sister's friend can give you a 5.6% boost. There you have it: Three degrees of separation.

"Your emotional state depends not just on actions and choices that you make, but also on actions and choices of other people, many of which you don't even know," said Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis, a physician and medical sociologist at Harvard who co-wrote the study. Go here to read more about this study, and then make a resolution for the New Year to be a “happiness carrier.”
http://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20081204/happiness-is-contagious

I CAN!

I Cancel All Negativity!

Make this your new mantra, and there will be nothing but smooth sailing ahead.

Of course many of you might say, “That is easier said than done!” And that statement itself would be continuing with a negative pattern of thinking. It implies that it is not easy to stay positive in every aspect of living.

The truth is that it is easy once you decide to make a conscious effort toward reprogramming your brain. One way to do that is to get in the habit of asking yourself every time you utter a sentence or have a thought if it was a positive or negative statement or thought. If your thought was negative then say, “cancel, cancel” to yourself either silently or out loud as a tangible way to modify your behavior. Yes, I am serious. While you are standing in line at Starbucks judging the person in front of you for no apparent reason, stop, take self responsibility and say, “cancel, cancel.” It requires some slowing down of the mental processes and some honest and deliberate evaluation, and that is all there is to it. Voila!

Granted, it doesn’t happen overnight, but with persistent effort and dedication to refocusing and changing your thoughts, you can cultivate a new way of looking at and reacting to life, and there will be improvement in every aspect of your existence. You will have more vitality, more laughter, more fun, more prosperity, and more joy.

Just remember your new mantra: I CAN! (I CANCEL ALL NEGATIVITY.)

And if you need a little nudge to get you started on your new path to positivity, check out this site for some inspiring and uplifting quotes: http://www.quotegarden.com/attitude.html

Good Advice

While the euphoria and jubilance that soared onto the world’s stage the evening of November 4th is still in the air, I would urge everyone to go to this site: http//www.theroot.com/id/48726

There you will read a moving letter to Barack Obama from Alice B. Walker, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “The Color Purple.” Ms. Walker also coined the word "womanist" for African American feminism: “‘Womanist’ is to ‘Feminist’ as purple is to lavender.” Here’s a wonderful line from The Color Purple: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it”..

While Ms. Walker’s letter to the President Elect gets right to the heart of the profundity of this historical moment in time when a black person has been elected to the highest office in the land, it also contains good counsel for us all, and that is to cultivate happiness in our own lives. She reminds him to please remember to relax happily in his new role, so that we can relax too. She tells him that success is really an inside job that is within the reach of us all and it isn’t achieved in the acquisition of objects and fame. It is being at home and comfortable in one’s own skin. She tells him that he did not create the mess the world is in, and that in this most difficult role that fate has delegated to him, to please seek balance and take time to enjoy his family. The whole world is watching, and if he can stay centered and at peace he will serve as a role model for us all, and that in itself is a great service to humanity.

Her reminder is a cue to us all that preservation of the soul is our salvation and our sanity, and that our smiles are a reflection of our souls’ condition.

She closes her letter with a phrase that just lingers with me,
“We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

Thank You

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is "thank you," it will be enough. -- Meister Eckhardt

This is the month for gathering our friends and family to feast and express thanksgiving, so I thought it would be appropriate to give a little nudge to remind ourselves to say “thank you” as a matter of course throughout our days. It is such an easy gesture and it almost always uplifts its recipient so the question is, “Do we do say thank you enough?” Is it in your own natural way of being? Are you grateful?

William Arthur Ward expressed it eloquently: “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.”

And though it may take a few minutes of our time, why not write a little note of thanks to someone who least expects it? Just imagine how much pleasure can be given with that simple act?

A little advice: If you thank someone and they brush it off as no big deal please take the next step to say, “Well ,it made a difference to me so thank you again.”

Here’s a lovely lecture to get you motivated. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/laura_trice_suggests_we_all_say_thank_you.html

Free AND Easy

What could possibly be free and easy in today’s economically stressful times? Not only is it free and easy, it will make you happier and healthier. Can you guess what the answer is?

Smiling! Not only does a smile make you more appealing and approachable, studies have shown it can lower your blood pressure and improve your immune system. And the irony is that even if we don’t feel happy, and a smile is the last thing we feel like doing, the quickest way to reverse those unhappy feelings is to smile. Just like the song says: “Smile, though your heart is breaking…….”

Still not in the mood to smile? Here is a joke that just might give you a kick start and get you grinning. And after that happens, go to the end of the blog and check out the test to see if you can tell a genuine smile from a fake smile.

While attending a “Marriage Encounter Weekend” Walter and his wife, Ann, listened to the instructor declare,

“It is essential that husbands and wives know the things that are important to each other.”

He then addressed the men in the audience and challenged them with the following question, “Can you name and describe your wife’s favorite flower?”

Walter leaned over, touched Ann’s arm gently, “Pillsbury, All-Purpose, isn’t it?”

Thus so began Walter’s life of celibacy.

Are you smiling yet? Good. Now check out the test to see if you can spot the fake smile: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/

VIVA LA DIFFERENCES

A person's greatest need is to be significant, accepted unconditionally, to really matter to someone else. It is so easy, especially now, to get caught up in the blame game. It's SO much easier to blame someone else for our lot in life but our self integrity rises when we put the blame back to where it really belongs, on ourselves. If it is change you want, start within.

Instead of complaining about the differences between men and women, let’s celebrate them. Yes, we’ve all heard that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, but we also know that we complement each other in so many ways. And let’s face it, we want to be mated. It’s built into our hard wiring. That is God's little joke in my opinion.

So why not appreciate each other’s differences instead of trying to make them into our clones? And how do we do that you might ask? We need to change our expectations of how our mates SHOULD look, SHOULD act, SHOULD think, SHOULD dress, SHOULD etc., etc. We can “SHOULD” our partners to an early grave, but will it make us any happier? Of course not. Quite the opposite.

If we just allow our mates to be who they are, and look for and find the reasons to celebrate their differences, we’ll all benefit in the long run. It’s not that complicated. There is no greater gift than allowing people to be their authentic selves.

Of course we can still grumble a little silently to ourselves on occasion. After all, we wouldn’t want to take away all the fun.

For Diane Ford’s humorous views on the differences between men and women check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSwT744azR4

Right on-Dr. Phil!

I have to confess that I’m not a Dr. Phil devotee. In fact, I’ve never watched his show, but today a friend who had been complaining for some time about her husband and who had even gone so far as to suggest that she had made the worst mistake of her life by entering into a marriage contract with him, suddenly and unexpectedly changed her tune. She walked into my office grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat, and when I asked her what could possibly have provoked that look of bliss, her answer was simply: “Dr. Phil. He’s amazing!.”

Now this is a very active and involved woman, so I was quite surprised to hear those words coming out of her mouth. As far as I know, she rarely watches television, so it never occurred to me that she would have called on Dr. Phil to solve her marital woes, but this is precisely what she did. And she informed me that it would behoove me to be charitable about this wise man and check him out myself. She even suggested that I might get a few pointers for my clients.

So, being an open minded (but I must confess, skeptical, woman) I looked at his web site, and was delighted to find some real wisdom about making a marriage work. He has a list of relationship rules that are pointed and actually quite profound. For anyone struggling with female/male issues (and who doesn’t?), this link will provide some bullet points worth memorizing and following. Check them out for yourself. These are keepers.
http://drphil.com/articles/article/53

And thanks, Dr. Phil, for putting that smile back on my friend’s face.