http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php The PositiveMind Blog en drlarkin@gotoani.com Copyright 2012 2012-05-15T04:11:47+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/the_shame_spiral_how_not_to_go_there http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/the_shame_spiral_how_not_to_go_there#When:04:11:47Z Shame is the difference between who we pretend to be and who we believe we are at our worst moments of self-doubt and self-punishment.  It is what we hope the neighbors and our parents will never find out and the part that makes us feel like we are frauds.  It’s the “if people only knew” kind of experience. It is its own very special spiral if it goes too far.  “How secret are your secrets?” is what drives this spiral because the secrets we keep end up keeping us. Once shame or secret-keeping gets a start, every time we feel “less than” and are weak the spiral grows.  When we haven’t measured up to a standard that is usually ill-defined, the shame grows and the secret gets layered in a little deeper.  The catch here is that eventually anything we do that is less than perfect can cause us shame because it triggers this inner sense of being a fraud. This is bigger than one or two things you have done that are especially terrible. It’s a process that isn’t healed by private or public confession, which helps only for a while and only on a certain level. This is deeper. There is a difference between EVERYONE’S presenting self –what we show the world-- and the self we believe we are.  At one time or another, there is in all of us this sense of something like, “Oh my god, if they knew the real me.” An accepting spouse and kind and loving priest or minister can help with confession, but it is not the answer to this spiral because it is never “enough.”  Maybe for a while, but it is not the answer. Every time your brain tells you that you are not enough or that you are weak, this spiral builds.  What undoes the spiral?  How do you undo never measuring up or feeling weak or feeling “less than” and presenting yourself to the world as you are and not feeling like a fraud?  The easy, down-pat, therapy, religious, educated answer is “just be yourself.”  Or even better, “just accept yourself as you are.”  Could you just puke if you hear that one more time?  If you believe that you are not enough and that you are weak and should be stronger, that just doesn’t cut the mustard. Does the line “accept yourself as you are,” after you have paid the psychiatrist for the prescription or listened to the minister say it one more time, grate on you enough to go running and screaming into sin? If you feel “shame,” you feel shame.  If you were shamed as a child, and most of us were, you have an even greater propensity to this DownSpiral issue. I am going to give you an answer that seems not to be the answer at all, but I promise you that it is.  A vision for your life heals shame.  How in the world can that be?  A vision is something that is greater than you that drives your life. It’s something you live for. It is the place where something is important enough to you and your place in the world that you take the risks to make it happen.  It is what you do that is important enough that you might fail.  It is something that you have to do, a way you have to live to be you. It undoes shame because you have to take a chance and live on the edge, at least to some degree. We have a particular process that leads to the expression of 5 goals.  If these 5 goals are real and what you really want, they will unleash a vision, if not immediately, in pretty short order. We heal shame by having goals that lead to or are expressive of a vision that is important enough that we take risks to make it happen.  Living with risk and being vulnerable to making what we want happen cuts right through the cowardly spiral of shame.  Shame hides us in fear from what we really want to do with our lives and convinces us that we are not worth our own vision, or that we should live someone else’s vision for our lives. Shame really comes from listening to the “shoulds” and “oughts” of the world around us until we are living according to a standard or measure that is really not ours, even though we have bought into it.  We always fall short of a measure or standard of strength and competence that is not our own measure. You have to take chances to overcome shame.  It isn’t just a matter of “accepting yourself as you are.”  If you don’t have a vision and you don’t have goals, and you don’t’ take chances, how do you ever know who you are enough to accept it? There is one journey out of the spiral of shame and lack of self-esteem.  It is your vision for your own life, lived out in the vulnerability of maybe getting it wrong several times before you get it right.  In the journey, we find our own courage and we discover the only way out of shame.  We are so busy living our lives that we FORGET about shame. If you want self-esteem, do the ESTEEMABLE things that are the right things for you. Be vulnerable, take the risks, take the chances, and live your vision for you. CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) How have you used your personal vision statement to guide you away from the “shame” described in this blog to a greater sense of meaning and personal significance? Tell us your story. 2) “We heal shame by having goals that lead to or are expressive of a vision that is important enough that we take risks to make it happen.  Living with risk and being vulnerable to making what we want happen cuts right through the cowardly spiral of shame.” Discuss the meaning of this for you in light of your FuturePac and Action Steps.   FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY 1) How has your natural sense of a “personal vision” guided you beyond shame and guilt? How has it powered you to greater personal meaning? Tell us your story. UpSpiral Thought, 2012-05-15T04:11:47+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/the_magic_the_disaster http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/the_magic_the_disaster#When:15:55:24Z If you have spent enough time in “flow,” and if you’ve got the idea of “just this” and can turn everyday life into a flow, then you have lived in the territory that allows desire and deeper wantings to emerge.  They bubble up from the time spent in flow for longer and longer periods of time.  This increased sense of wanting and desire has led to “post it” notes, to a flushing out of what you want written on a post-it note.  If those desires are real and true (and some of them won’t be… you just wad them up and throw them away) and when you start to arrange them into 5 categories, they begin to talk back to you.  You begin to have a conversation with your categories and with the arrangement of your notes.  It takes some time, it takes some playing with them. You have to sleep on it and work with them a bit, and maybe add some new ones, but they’ll talk back. When those 5 categories have been completed, if they are a real representation of your desires and wants, they will lead to the formation of goals.  These goals will also talk back and they will lead you to a vision.  Perhaps not right away, but the vision will be there, or it will come. These 5 goals propel you to a vision and that vision has great power.  It is like finding out your strengths and never again being able to say that you don’t know who you are.  This time you can never say that you don’t know where you’re going, that you have no direction.  It’s not necessarily airtight, and it’s definitely malleable and changeable, but what is produced is the sense that you know where you’re going, a sense of direction, of meaning, and purpose.  It is not driven.  It is inspired and it is unfolding.  It’s a start but it has motion, velocity, and passion.  You know who you are and you have a sense of where you are going.  And you have the courage to know that it may well morph and change and become different and even greater.  But it is an enormous door that starts to swing open inside your soul, especially if you have not done anything like this before. A vision heals deep shame and it diverts your tendency to be ornery, aggravating and irritating.  We are a “pain” when we are bored and directionless.  We give others no rest in our discontent with life and we are always trying to rope them into being part of the blame or much more of the solution.  We are just a nuisance.  Even if we are quiet, withdrawn, and alone, we are still a source of worry and anxiety to others because we live in a way that suggests that others should pull us out of this.  We wait to be rescued while denying to ourselves and others that we are. The deeper disaster is that the absence of a vision and the discontent it breeds create a kind of stress that just causes trouble. It irritates. It is a stress that is beyond the usual stressors of life.  And successful people irritate us or they create a slow burn. We certainly don’t encourage them to give us great details of their happily lived lives.  It’s sort of like watching someone sleep soundly who doesn’t deserve it, while you can’t get to sleep to save your life.  You just want to poke at them until they have to wake up and be miserable with you.  This is an exaggerated metaphor but it serves. This kind of stress, rooted in the absence of direction and psychic idleness, creates stress hormones called glucocorticoids.  They do several things.  They enlarge the activity of the amygdala and increase the neuropathic structure surrounding it.  They damage the hippocampus and its relation to memory and they fray the endings of chromosomes, of our DNA, and cause cellular breakdown.  This is the DISASTER.  They increase negative emotions and decrease the potential to feel positive ones. Bored and idle minds cause trouble and irritation in a peaceful world in one way or another, and being directionless is the deepest form of emptiness.  It is not a lack of love.  It is a lack of a sense of direction, of meaning making, and of personal significance that gives some kind of love and receives it in tangible forms of creation.  LOVE, love, love is not the answer. It is what is created in the nature of the vision in one form or another that inevitably carries the fruit of love as its expression of creativity. The magic is the vision that interacts with the rest of creation and carries it forth in one way or another.  The disaster lies in its absence. CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) Share the most current version of your vision statement. Tell us the story of how it developed as a result of your ANI training. And then, tell us how it has evolved and changed. Share your changes and tell us how your ANI training has supported you in refining your vision. FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY Want to learn even more about how being in an UpSpiral of “feeling good” can support you in clarifying what you want in life? Can point you in the direction of defining your personal goals? CLICK HERE and learn how!   UpSpiral Thought, 2012-05-07T15:55:24+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/why_our_weaknesses_change_very_little_why_strengths_soar http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/why_our_weaknesses_change_very_little_why_strengths_soar#When:16:43:57Z Your weaknesses will change very little over a life time.  May be 3-5%.  And that’s if you’re in some kind of on-going support group or specific educational experience with a lot of support. You can spend a lot of time and a lot of money talking about your weaknesses and you never change a thing.  Why would that be the case?  There are 2 good reasons. 1. Your weaknesses are the other end of some strength you have.  They are the “best” of you in reverse.  You can never get rid of the strength that is its other end.  It’s you.  The weakness is an adaptation. 2. You don’t change a weakness unless there is a better way of doing something that gets you a better result and someone gives you hope that you can change and you believe it.  If you don’t have some hope, it leads to little belief. Forget it. Your weaknesses are the other end of some strength you have.  They are the “best” of you in reverse.  You can never get rid of the strength that is its other end.  It’s you. The weakness is an adaptation. You don’t change a weakness unless there is a better way of doing something that gets you a better result and someone gives you hope that you can change and you believe it.  If you don’t have some hope, it leads to little belief. Forget it. Our worry, concern, and concentration on our weaknesses and problems really just hold them in place.  It does the same with our kids.  We’re about as good at changing the negative in ourselves as we are in our friends, spouses, and our kids. It doesn’t work.  You can do all of “the devil made me do it” or “my childhood created this or that” and talk it out forever, but nothing changes until you find a way that works better than the weakness. You weaknesses change very little over a life time. Your strengths are infinitely malleable, and in the process of growing them, they change the reason and nature of your weakness and character flaws.  Grow your strengths.  Reduce your weaknesses. Show a child what his/her strengths are and the weakness no longer fits because they don’t create a solution that is better than the strengths. The same is true for you. Hold up a negative lens on yourself and you will find plenty that’s wrong.  Hold up a positive lens and you will find what is right, and what is right will get you to a higher ground that will enable you to find better ways to be happy than to use your weaknesses, in futility, in order to be happy.  Why do people do the same things that don’t work over and over again?  Because they have learned that there is some minimal payoff or escape (usually some kind addictive behavior.)  And you soon learn that the escape is temporary at best. Learn your strengths, grow your strengths in specific ways, engage them in the tasks of your life, and you become happier.  The use of weaknesses or problem behavior becomes less and less necessary.  It takes some management for a while, but it never takes the focus.  Using the positive lens and growing the positive strength takes the focus.  It is also easier. We just need good support systems to be able to do it.  And it takes time and practice. That is what a coach does.  A coach takes the old way you used to run and tells you that instead of being a long distance runner, you should be a sprinter.  And then the coach shows you how to be the best sprinter, given your strengths.  And then you practice.  As you get results, you forget about long distance running. Your weaknesses change very little over a lifetime, except to get worse.  Your strengths are infinitely malleable with unlimited potential for growth. CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) Summarize the 2 best practices you have developed for integrating your strengths, or for working with clients or group members with their strengths. What's worked best? Tell us in detail what you've done and what you see as the most significant impact. 2) "We’re about as good at changing the negative in ourselves as we are in our friends, spouses, and our kids." Share a personal example of how you've used your knowledge of the research and practice around strengths in personal relationships. What have you done? What has been the impact?  FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY 1) As a parent or family member, how do you see and engage the strengths of your children, relatives, spouse/partner? What tools do you naturally have which allow others to be free to express their strengths in their relationsip with you? Tell us your story. What strengths do you have which support you in this process?  UpSpiral Thought, 2012-05-01T16:43:57+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/imaging_negative_visuals_ie http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/imaging_negative_visuals_ie#When:19:22:28Z It’s a dangerous habit, and it is a learned habit...visualizing negatively what we fear in the future.  We do it so subtly that we don’t realize we do until we are down the path of imagining the worst.  Asking yourself “what is the worst that can happen?” is not a solution. It is a preparation for negative imaging.  Always ask yourself, “what is the best that can happen?” and then work on imagining that. Negative visuals from anxiety, fear, and resentment create division and dysynchrony in the brain.  You are not using the whole brain. You are reducing the integrative, creative, large picture, problem solving capacity of the right brain.  The more you do it, the less you can see the truth.  Visuals hatched in negativity, fear, and anger do not solve problems. They waste precious psychic energy.  When was the last time you got into an idle, unnecessary negative conversation, and a little while later, your brain was racing across the terrain of one negative picture after another?  What was your last toxic conversation?  Are these conversations usually with the same people?  Or do you start them? Negative visualization kicks the brain in the flight/flight and all of the stress hormones are let loose.  You can go through life on physiological high alert when there is really very little going onaround you except in what you have negatively created in your own brain. One of the big effects of negative visuals is that you have difficult with clarity in knowing what you want. Is there a place for imagining negative scenarios to think through negative consequences?  This has always been the argument for the necessity and importance of pessimism, and it’s bogus. “Yes” is the answer, but not from fear, worry and dread.  Not from using half your brain and not from a lack of brain integration.  Not from accessing the larger picture of the creative, restorative, integrative functions of the right hemisphere.  Facing drawbacks and limitations that suggest better alternatives are far better done from strengths and the desire for positive outcomes, not from fear.  This is the thinking that draws upon the right hemisphere.  Fear always finds enemies that never existed in the first place and fights battles and wars that were never necessary.  We have all fought a thousand battles that never happened, while 95% of what we visualized in our worries never occurred largely because we did not stop to get the right hemisphere “larger picture.”  Negative imaging from fear and anxiety disengages the power of the right hemisphere. When you imagine negative things you are decreasing the integration of the brain.  Negative images are produced by the left brain drawing on negative information.  Negative imaging, full of anxiety, fear, dread, and foreboding is not a right hemisphere activity.  The work of the right hemisphere is to get the larger picture, the bigger picture, and the more creative picture.  The right hemisphere integrates the negative processing of the left brain memories and impressions of truth.  I=E Remember this formula: I=E.  “I” is integration and “E” is emotion.  The more negative the emotion, the less the integration of the brain.  The more positive the emotion, the more whole, greater is the integration of the brain.  A lack of brain integration, what we call dysynchrony, creates negative emotion and DownSpiraling.  Solutions seem fewer and fewer, and imminent danger seems greater and greater in a DownSpiral.  We imagine, both individually and collectively, enemies that just don’t exist. Worry and anxiety will do it every time.  Let worry and anxiety be a cue to go to feelings of “peace,” and from a higher more flourishing place in a more integrated brain, look at the situation that you’re wasting psychic energy on by worrying. CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) “Negative visuals from anxiety, fear, and resentment create division and dysynchrony in the brain.  You are not using the whole brain. You are reducing the integrative, creative, large picture, problem solving capacity of the right brain.  The more you do it, the less you can see the truth.” Comment on this blog quote in light of your training with hemispheric memory and functionality. How would you coach a client to realize a more synchronous balance of right and left hemispheres? What tools would you use? FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY 1)  How have you used worry and anxiety as personal cues to go to feelings of peace. love, hope, joy, or gratitude? Tell us your story.   UpSpiral Thought, 2012-04-23T19:22:28+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/worry_anxiety_create_negative_visuals_in_the_brain http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/worry_anxiety_create_negative_visuals_in_the_brain#When:14:58:33Z It is a dangerous habit… visualizing negatively what we see in the future.  And, yet, that is what we do so subtly that we often don’t realize it.  We can get into a negative conversation, and a short time after we walk away, our brain is racing across the terrain of one negative picture after another. Real or not, negative visualization from imagination kicks the brain into flight/flight, and all of the stress hormones are let loose. You can go through life on physiological high alert when there is really very little going on around you, except in what you have negatively created in your own brain. Worry is creating negative pictures of the future.  It creates anxiety, and then the anxiety creates more negative pictures.  We all know the cycle.  But could it be a cue toward the good? Is it possible to make this work for you?  YES, YES, YES.  And if we don’t, it is a stressor that wears away at the very linings of our blood vessels and at the source of what creates disease and illness.  Can we capture it and turn it into good? For sure.  Here’s how. Begin to catch every worry or negative picture of the future and use it as a CUE. Even if you are catastrophizing and making the negative picture bigger and bigger and bigger, you can stop it. Decide that this “worry picture” will be a cue for you to imagine something good.  Start imaging something good that you want in the future.  Keep imagining it.  Imagine it in great detail. Start planning around this event.  Return to this image and refine it and change it as you wish. As you start imaging, you will become aware that you also have to get clearer and clearer about what it is that you are wanting.  Very often anxiety is a sign that we are not in touch with what we are really wanting, that we are not clear.  Of course the fear is, “I’ll be disappointed if it doesn’t happen.”  You will be more anxious and full of worry if you don’t positively image your future than you will be disappointed if you have to change and alter a few times what it is that you really want on the journey of finding out what that really is. The more clearly you imagine the good that you want, the more your brain and your Mind are going to be in the process of moving toward it.  Likewise, the more you worry about something and create those mental pictures, the more you create that or something like it for yourself. Worry is planning the future negatively. Positive imagining is planning the future positively. Your Mind cannot create your well-being in the future unless you are thinking in that direction.  Our personal resources and strengths follow the direction of our intentions, our wishes, our desire, and the mental pictures we carry within us. If you can’t get started, then try this.  When you catch yourself worrying and anxious, find something you appreciate and “behold” it, savor it, enjoy it. Divert your mind and keep diverting your mind until you start to create, in your imagination, something that is beautiful. Olympic athletes are taught to imagine, in their minds, the perfect performance, the perfect run, every turn, and every dive, every split second move, so the intricacies of the Mind can create that reality in their performance. Research was done with basketball players and imaging.  One group actually practiced taking shots and physically working on their free throws.  Another group imaged and visualized making better and better approaches to the basket and shots.  A third group did nothing.  There was little statistical difference between the group that physically practiced and those that actually practiced. Imaging in detail helps the brain and one’s “vibration”create, but the imaging also has to be open to unfold to the next level of creativity.  It is true that the brain broadens and builds in the structures it creates. Inward vision is very close to inward knowing.  We are what we inwardly see. CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) Describe in detail how you have used “mental imaging” as it is presented in this blog. Include a detailed description of your “cue” strategy in dealing with Down Spiraling and personal challenge, including the strengths you use to support yourself in the process of “positive imaging” of the future. 2) Discuss your understanding of the relationship between a high Vibe Core and your experience of negative threat and worry. How do clarity in wanting, belief in its reality, and openness to form and time counteract worry and “negative planning” for your future? FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY 1)  How does this blog speak to your belief about how positive your future can be? What ideas presented in this blog challenge your beliefs about worry? About an optimistic future?  Tell us your story.   UpSpiral Thought, 2012-04-16T14:58:33+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/making_the_choice_for_the_upspiral http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/making_the_choice_for_the_upspiral#When:16:43:34Z This week's blog is an excerpt from Dr. Larkin's new book,  12 New Steps For A New Millenium Order your copy here from Amazon.   Step 2 "Made the decision to stay in an UpSpiral regardless of events outside of us." "What is an UpSpiral?  An UpSpiral is a term that describes ascending and increasing positive emotion that has an energy, and that energy is always increasing. Once you are in the spiral, you can go higher and higher. The top of the spiral is “feeling good.” It is simply feeling good. You can go higher in the spiral to states of bliss and ecstasy, but that is not our goal.  The UpSpiral is characterized by increasingly better positive emotions that lead to a stable sense of “feeling good.”  The energy of the UpSpiral is one that increases health, problem-solving ability, life-satisfaction, well-being, attention, creativity, and intuition. It is a place of optimism and hope. It makes it more possible to play to your strengths. The energy of the spiral pulls you higher in mood and feeling state. You will feel “on top of it,” in control, in charge of your own self, and empowered to be and do the things that make you feel personally significant. The UpSpiral describes increasing positivity being, which includes positive thinking, positive feeling, positive moods, flow, positive planning, visioning and living the well-lived life. In a DownSpiral just the opposite is true. It is the experience that is cumulative, that things are “on top of me.”  It is an experience of an increasing sense of oppression.  The DownSpiral probably starts with some innocent complaining or negativity, which moves to judging someone, then to blaming someone else, then to thinking about who has crossed you, to anger, then to mulling and nursing this feeling of anger. Your face has dropped, there is no smile, your eyes are probably not focused on the outside world, and there is an internalized sense of heaviness. The DownSpiral is different for everyone, but it expects that things are bad and will get worse. It is focused on problems and not solutions. It is filled with worry, dread, and anxiety. Eventually it leads to depression, flat lining, the sense that nothing has any real meaning, and at the bottom there is a sense of despondency and dread.  The DownSpiral is a place of dread and disease.  People who live in the DownSpiral more than the UpSpiral have twice the chance of a heart attack or stroke. If you spend a lot of time “yo-yoing” back and forth between highs and lows, you spend more time in the DownSpiral.  One of the reasons may be that you are easily “overwhelmed.”  It takes only a few things to create the sense of “it’s on top of me.”  People can feel “oppressed” by feeling a little down when they get up, then dropping the toothpaste in the toilet, dropping the soap the third time in the shower, and having to bend over, then spilling the coffee grounds on the counter.  But when you find that there is no coffee creamer, that’s the last straw –the whole day is down the drain. That is simple oppression from cumulative stress, and everyone has it in one way or another.   However, our response to these situations, on the outside of us, does not have to affect us on the inside. The truth is that we are too easily oppressed by things that don’t matter, and we have not learned really good recovering skills when things do go wrong, which they will. We can always make the choices that keep us in an UpSpiral rather than a DownSpiral. People who cannot make that choice are in therapy, and perhaps medicated, to be able to make that choice better or at least not sink further into a DownSpiral.   Aren’t there some events, like grieving a loss, that have to be done in the DownSpiral?  No, there are not. Even grief and loss can be experienced in an UpSpiral of positivity, when it is not clouded with guilt. It simply depends on how we choose to view death and how we grieve the death of another. All of the feelings of love, peace, gratitude, joy and hope especially belong to loss. There may well be feelings of sadness, anger and loss, but they don’t have to be the only feelings. If the focus is on memories of goodness, there can be gratitude. There can be a focus on the things that give us joy. The longer you remain in an UpSpiral and the more practiced you become, and have the agility and mastery of positive emotional states, the more you realize that all of your life can be lived there by your choice. But it takes time and learning and practice. The more you decide that outside events will not determine whether you are in an UpSpiral or a DownSpiral, the more you will be able to do so. Every thought you think and every feeling you feel are affecting the structure of your brain. We are becoming what we think and feel. We are always growing neuropathways according to our experience. In learning to live in an UpSpiral, you are changing the structure of the neuropathways in your brain. They will begin to line up differently. As you develop and use new more powerful neuropathways of positivity, the old ones are going to find themselves in a kind of “neuroplastic war.” The old neuropathways die a slow death.  Literally they are deprived of oxygen and glucose as they cease to be used, and they will fight back to live. Once you encounter the concept that there is an UpSpiral and a DownSpiral, and it can be quantified by your own subjective experience, life is never quite the same in terms of how you view it.  That is because you now have a way of seeing your experience that you didn’t have before. You know whether or not you are in an UpSpiral and you know when you are in a DownSpiral, and are not doing the things you need to do to get out of it and stay out of it. Your choices have been increased by a new way of looking at your own experience. And once you have spent more time in the UpSpiral, you aren’t going to want to be anywhere but there again. You will learn what you need to learn to stay there and you will do what you have to do to be in a better-feeling place that is within your grasp. This is an enormous piece of personal empowerment. You always know that the choice about where you want to be in the UpSpiral is yours, not external events.  Even though there can be things that drag us down, we know we don’t want to stay there." CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) This blog describes a foundational piece of our research and training. Reflecting on your personal journey, what do you consdier to be the TWO most fundamental shifts in your thinking and experience which are the direct result of living in a sustained UpSpiral? Give us a detailed description of both, with examples which illustrate your story. Then go to your copy of 12 New Steps For A New Millenium and read the rest of Step 2, from which this excerpt is taken. FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY 1) As you learn here about the concept of both an UpSpiral and a DownSpiral, how do you see your "natural UpSpiral" at work in your daily life? Hw much do you normally "yo-yo" up and down between the two? What tools do you naturally employ to bring you "up" when you are headed into the DownSpiral? Tell us your story. UpSpiral Thought, 2012-04-09T16:43:34+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/happiness_is http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/happiness_is#When:18:04:50Z   "By happiness I mean a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it." --Mathieu Ricard What is an exceptionally healthy mind?  What marks a high degree of personal synchrony?  One might first argue that we are less reactive, we are less bothered, we are more content. With some things that might be true. Gandhi was not content with British occupation or a caste system.  Mother Theresa was not content with the poorest of the poor dying without dignity.  Martin Luther was not content with bigotry.  Mandela was not content with apartheid.  Pope John XXIII was not content with a church out of step with the world in which it existed, nor a hierarchy unable to relate to that world or to lead it in a profoundly relevant way.  Thriving and flourishing have most to do with the synchrony that comes from goals that are strong enough to lead to a personal vision.  That vision is only as strong as the “meaning” it gives your life.  The meaning you sustain until the very end of your days will supply and provide your sense of personal significance. If you are feeling useless and purposeless in your old-age or in your young-age, it is your own fault.  Those who are younger are as lost and bereft of meaning as some of those who are older. They use it as a crutch for an absence of personal meaning.  If you did not have it when you were younger, the chances are greater that you will not have it when you are older. The rest of the culture continues to promote retirement with its incessant messages that you are starting to decline when AARP sends you its first invitation the day you reach 50.  Such nonsense! Many people believe that they do not have or even need goals because they just let things unfold.  I tell them they are cowards because they do not have goals, and that letting things “unfold” is an excuse for not coming to grips with what they really want. And that’s usually because they genuinely fear that they cannot get it for themselves.  Goals emerge from a keener and keener sense of what we want. That emerges, not so much from what we have failed at and learned from as much as it does from the amount of “flow” in our lives. The amount of the experience of being “one with the music” is what produces our deepest and most profound sense of what is important and what we really want.  Dan Gilbert has not measured this and he should be quiet until he has.  It is a mistake to over-generalize about the future from limited samples and limited notions of self-knowing and draw conclusion on uni-modal statistics. If you have no goals, or think that the ones you have may be fooling you, ask yourself if they are powerful enough to be the well-spring of a vision for your life.  If they are not, rework the goals.  Rework your goals, live more in flow –more one with the music.  How?  Wake up and YOU find the ways.  Don’t know anything about flow?  Read some books about it.  Read some articles about the state of flow and then decide to create it in your life.  Or find out where you already are one with the music, which is likely there, and create some more. Ill-informed and poorly trained coaches will hold you to ill-formed, half-baked goals that will never bring you satisfaction even if you get them fulfilled.  Don’t buy into that and don’t settle for it. Find out where you are “one with the music.”  This takes some experimentation and some looking.  It takes some awareness, and good coaching can help you really rather quickly if you pay attention to a process that does these things. 1. Master sustaining positive emotion on three levels.  Instant, duration, and intense.  Those are three measures of positive emotion.  If you don’t understand that, read my book, Growing the Positive Mind. 2. Get tested, find out what your strengths really are,  and grow them.  Don’t assume what they are. 3. Learn what a flow state is and practice it. 4. Write down everything you want and sort them into 5 categories. 5. Write down five goals that are powerful enough that a vision for your life emerges, whatever your age, from these 5 goals.  If it doesn’t emerge they aren’t your real goals. 6. Do three concrete doable things toward each of those goals every 4 months.  That’s 60 steps for each goal in 5 years.  Make each step simple and doable.  Each step you complete will open another door.  On the way the goal will probably change.  Allow your goals to be malleable.  In five years or sooner, you will reach your goals because you will have allowed them to change as you grow in clarity and intention. 7. These goals reveal a vision. That vision is to do what gives you joy, or meaning, or purpose. You should NEVER be purpose-driven.  You want to be PURPOSE-INSPIRED. You don’t have to save anyone but yourself.  Usually what will save us from meaninglessness and the lack of a sense of personal significance will also save others around us.  We are just that powerful. 8. All of this creates synchrony and that means that you will attract remarkable coincidences along the way.  Miracle-like, serendipitous things that are just, well, they’re god-like.  This is when the real “unfolding” happens, not the “flower child” nonsense.  Things fall into place, you meet the right people, you take the right road at the fork, you just happen to be in the right place at the right time. It happens. This is the happiness that creates the deep sense of flourishing that Ricard hints at.  Thriving is as easy as your decision to create a 3:1 ratio in your life each day.  Weight your life, by your own decision and personal power, to have 3 positives to every negative.  Weight each of your days to be 3 times as positive as it is one time negative, however you learn to do that for you. Get a good coach. We seldom hold ourselves accountable on our own and we need to hear out inner voice through a resounding outer voice of affirmation. CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) With your ANI training as the “lens,” comment on the opebibg quote by Mathieu Ricard.  Summarize its main ideas and connect ANI research to your thoughts. Then give us an example of your personal experience as it is reflected in Ricard’s description. 2) In the course of your ANI training, you drafted a vision statement. How has this tool guided you to greater meaning and personal significance? How has your vision changed? Tell us your story. FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY 1)  There is a widespread popular notion that the life is best enjoyed when it “unfolds.” How do you see the idea in this blog that “letting things unfold” is an excuse for not coming to grips with what you really want, and the fear that you cannot have what you want? Tell us your story. UpSpiral Thought, 2012-04-02T18:04:50+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/flow_desire_the_by_product_of_psychological_capital http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/flow_desire_the_by_product_of_psychological_capital#When:15:17:28Z Knowing what you want can be a difficult proposition.  It gets more difficult the more money you have.  People who have enough money to get most of whatever they want have a more difficult time of naming what they want. It is also true that our desire and wanting trick us, except in one important circumstance.  That circumstance is a high level of psychological capital.  If you are accustomed to a state of flow in your life, pay great attention to the research of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.  If you are a regular up and downspiral yo-yo, Dan Gilbert’s research will keep you fascinated. Psychological capital is one of the by-products of being in a state of flow.  The remarkable state of concentration, focus and attention that increases all kinds of skills also increases our reservoir of positivity.  It is a part of the buffering and amplifying qualities of neuropositivity.  Not only will what is negative not bother us so much and not have as much stickiness to remain, but this reservoir gives rise to our wanting - wanting that is usually diminished by the wet-blanket behavior we have learned and taught ourselves in order to live more safely and avoid risk-taking.  It is here that the brain confabulates what we want and desire. This blog is also about the ANI Facebook post about being a wet-blanket which went up on Sunday evening, March 25. The wet-blanket part of us is that voice in us that tells that “it” just can’t or won’t happen, or that is really very highly unlikely. It is our tendency toward parsimony, which is at the heart of unhealthy aging. Parsimony is becoming increasingly better and good at a few limited things over time, to the point of relying on what is known and safe rather than making the brain encounter and think new things. Flow is the opposite of wet-blanket thinking.  In fact, it lifts the blanket and new possibilities begin to more freely emerge. I have clients who have difficulty defining 5 goals. They are stumped before they really commit themselves to do the sticky notes. That’s wet-blanket conditioning.  It is also a failure to practice classical flow and to work on flow in everyday life.  It is an absence of “just this.”  Classical flow is finding a specific situation that is a match of challenge and skills.  Everyday flow makes any event a challenge to find flow by focusing, as in the “just this” exercise you have learned. (and should be practicing). If you are not experiencing flow in your life, the reservoir that lifts the wet-blanket just won’t let your thinking go there.  You brain is balking at your own creation of newness. Flow loosens us up to what we want, desire, and dream.  It is the parent of possibility thinking. How do you get someone in touch with what they want?  Get them to experience and build flow into their lives.  Flow is expansive and, by its nature, broadens the brain and life.  Flow creates higher and higher levels of intelligence.  It gets the neurons in the brain talking to each other.  It creates inter-connectivity of neuropathways and affects the very structures of reasoning in the brain that are the mould for what is possible. I posted the 5:1 challenge on both the ANI and the NeuroPositive Certificate class Facebook pages. We already know that 3:1 creates thriving and flourishing, but we don’t yet know really what a 5:1 positive to negative day (or lived life) would look like.  One thing, for sure, is that it will contain the capacity to be in flow in everyday life.  You have to invent a 5:1 day and you also have to live in flow in the ordinary parts of the day.  You have to have mastered “just this” and to be vigilant in applying it. So, let’s get to the point. We have wet-blanketed our brains with all of the times that we have told ourselves and others that it can’t be done, or that we can’t do it, or that the good will probably not happen to us.  This keeps us from even being able to dream or to image possibility.  The door has shut before we have realized there is a door to open. Here’s the point. If you want to know what you want, master flow and stay in that state.  It will move you toward the possibility of 5:1 living and it will loosen your power to image and create desire. When you are afraid and when you are not living in an UpSpiral, when you do not know and practice your strengths, your brain will fill in the spaces and trick you into what you think you want and tell you what to want.  The research about how and what we want and desire has not been done with a large and varied enough sample of those who are consistently in an UpSpiral, who live with their strengths, and who keep themselves in a state of flow.  You engineer your life or your life will be engineered for you.  What’s it going to be? CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) “Flow is the opposite of wet-blanket thinking.  In fact, it lifts the blanket and new possibilities begin to more freely emerge.” As a Licensed ANI coach, how has this been true for you? Tell us the story of your greater and more consistent experience of flow as it is described in this blog. 2) “When you are afraid and when you are not living in an UpSpiral, when you do not know and practice your strengths, your brain will fill in the spaces and trick you into what you think you want and tell you what to want.”  How have you seen this truth manifest for you or for your clients/group members? Give us an example. What tools have you used to navigate this challenge? What has been the result? FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY This week, we are pleased to provide you with a link to a fascinating article which describes the elements of classical psychological “flow.” It’s written by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the “father” of flow research. As you read this article, reflect on the elements of flow you have experienced. How can you make a greater part of your everyday life more “flow like?” Enjoy! Here is the link: http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~erinm/Mihaly.html   UpSpiral Thought, 2012-03-26T15:17:28+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/we_live_in_union_with_ourselves_or_we_are_separated http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/we_live_in_union_with_ourselves_or_we_are_separated#When:14:55:37Z If we learn to tune in, it can become apparent when we are living in union with our real selves and when we are living in a state where we are separated from ourselves. It is easy to say that good feels good and that bad feels bad.  If you are living in a union with yourself, you know that very clearly.  If you are separated from that union with yourself, the distinction is not nearly so clear because you aren’t paying attention to the “within.”  Your focus has changed to the “without” on the outside of you in a way that is negative and full of cacophony. (noise, disharmony) Gongs, chimes and harmonious tones are used to create sounds that vibrate and create resonance.  Resonance is another word for being in union with ourselves.  Meditation tries to reduce the resistance in us by helping us to let go of thinking for a time, to increase resonance and the vibration that comes from being One with ourselves.  But stopping the thinking mind is very difficult. We know when we are out of our skins usually only when we have been out of them for a while; we just feel worse and worse.  When we really start to feel bad, we wake up to the reality that something is wrong, and we struggle to find our way back to this elusive state of feeling ok or feeling good. However, the “click” - the signal - that we are separated from ourselves comes much sooner and the resonance or vibration of being in union with ourselves can be elusive. I know when I am one with me.  But it has taken a very long time to cultivate.  Certainly the realization of the five states of the Emotional Gym - gratitude, love, peace, joy and hope - have been great guides.  It has been a great awakening to the realization that these states are at the very core of my being, waiting to be tapped as a major signal of union with myself.  They are no longer states I wait to feel because something on the outside of me has created them.  These states create resonance and the vibration of oneness with my self and the rest of my world. A major step in experiencing this reality of Oneness or Living in Union with your self is the state of “flow.”  It is what I call “moving meditation.”  It is being “one with the music.”  It is essential that we learn how to do “just this,” to focus and to be able to “stay put” in whatever we are doing.  Classical states of flow are described as challenges that match our skill, forgetting the ego, and just letting go to a state of immersion in something that we love.  But all of life can be a “just this” experience.  This “just this” experience is the practice of living in union with yourself or at Oneness. The experience causes brain synchrony. The brain uses less psychic energy and its daily allotment of psychic energy is far better spent.  It is the essence of energy. We separate from ourselves very easily.  The step of separation leads to blaming, fear, anxiety, worry, and dread that starts with not listening for where the click is when you break with yourself.  You know when you are in a conversation and something just clicks off.  You know when fear sets in or that union is there.  Ignore it long enough and a little itch becomes a big rash of discontent. But this week we focus not on the problem of separation, because it is everywhere and because it does absolutely no good to put the focus there. We focus on what to do about it and that is to practice flow, moving meditation, “just this.”  It is the result of having a healthy, strong, vibrant VibeCore.  It is a major chapter and a major step in Growing The NeuroPositive Mind.  You have to build and stay in flow. This state of union with your self is what allows your inner desire to bubble to the top so that you start to be able to know what you want.  Don’t know what you want?  Then you’re separated from yourself and you are not practicing flow.  You are not appreciating your life or anything around you, and you are not practicing flow or “just this.” A good measure of your Oneness emerges from your VibeCore:  knowing what you want with clarity, believing you will get it, and openness to however and whenever that occurs. Everything starts to fit and your experience in the world is one of synchrony –things come our way and happen, they unfold and everything just works.  The sense of this can be as firm as your ability to swallow.  When it isn’t there, nothing seems to go down easily. We choke on this or that piece of life. There is an energy like a low hum that switches on when I am in union with “me.”  I purr and so does my life.  How do you know and recognize when you are in Union with YOU? CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES 1) Summarize your understanding of the research on the major attributes of psychological flow. How have you experienced the delicate balance between engagement of your strengths, the challenge of the task, and loss of ego? Tell us your story. 2) How has your professional ANI training supported the growth of your VibeCore? Which of the 3 dimensions of VibeCore need more focus? What tools do you have to support the growth of this dimension? Give us an example. FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY 1) This blog describes the “just this” experience. What activities in your experience typically bring you to this state? Tell us your story. What natural strengths and talents do you have which sustain this state of focus and flow? 2) “The “click” - the signal - that we are separated from ourselves and the resonance or vibration of being in union with ourselves can be elusive.” What signals do you experience in your life that you are “out of sync” with yourself? How do you use this cue to get back more in line with yourself? How do you see your strengths as a support? Tell us your story.   UpSpiral Thought, 2012-03-19T14:55:37+00:00 http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/your_most_important_career_choice http://www.thepositivemindblog.com/index.php/site/your_most_important_career_choice#When:16:20:43Z Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's No. 2 executive, a remarkably successful wife, mother and soon to be multi-billionaire, has this advice for women:  "The most important career choice you'll make is who you marry.” The person you marry will encourage your strengths and your growth, or will hold you back.  When I work with people who are addicted to getting into relationships, and who are miserable until they are in the next one, or at least have a prospect on the horizon, I ask them to create their bottom-line.  What is the essential thing that must be there, what is the bottom line of getting into a relationship?  What is your bottom-line consideration?  If the other person doesn’t meet at least this bottom-line, it cannot begin to be considered an equal relationship that will later on express itself in equality on many levels.  “Beholding” you does not mean the other worships and adore you. A prince or princess gets old quickly. Many people have to “dry out” from being in relationships to even begin to want to be “beheld” or to begin to know what it means. That bottom line is this.  Does the other person “behold” you?  Are you “beheld” by the other person?  Do they realize who are you?  Do they see YOU?  Do they know YOU?  Do they realize WHO you are?  From there we move to all of the questions that can be asked.  How does a person behave who “beholds” you?  How do they show appreciation and consideration and some “awe” for you in very simple, down-to-earth telling ways?  How do they get inside your head and know you and what you’re like?  Just how tuned in to you are they as opposed to how oblivious?  You really already know, don’t you? When you ask these questions, your gut knows how much another person can be interested in you over and against how much they will likely be much more interested in themselves.  Ask your gut and listen to what it says.  It will tell you very quickly if you are crossing your bottom-line. It will also know when feigned interest is just the attempt to “win” you for the challenge of getting you and then moving on with their own life. I have had clients go and on about a new person they met.  After awhile I stop and ask them, “How did Mr. Wonderful behold you? Were you beheld by him? Tell me how.”  It is often like watching a fish out of water climb back into their own ocean - they start to breathe again and they stop “selling” me. And more importantly, they stop selling themselves a bill of goods, for the sake of finally finding someone. Sometimes they even tell me that he is so committed and passionate and full of conviction and I ask them, “Is it about you?”  Most of the time the passionate ones have causes.  Do you want a woman with a cause or do you want to be her passion?  The one who can “behold” you will best fill their passion in life and you will never feel that you are in the way.  If you have decided that their passion is greater than you, it will be, and you will be in the way. You will come to know that and it is you who will have to accommodate the passion, no matter how elegant or necessary the cause may be.  If you want to do that, do it with your eyes wide open.  My own personal recommendation is that you just be really, really good friends, put your track shoes on, and run in your own direction.  If you do, the one who will behold you WILL FIND YOU.  You will likely be re-tying your shoes, ready to run on, and he will be in your way, but he will behold you and you will know it. Be beheld and don’t be satisfied until you are or you are selling out. The most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry. Just realize that the first person you will marry is yourself.  Your own union with you, the union of your Mind with your “you” is the first marriage.  Dependent upon your relationship to spirituality, you may make the unitive experience with yourself a spiritual journey and Mind as a force that is you and greater than you.  That is a matter of choice, experience and personal culture.  It is a profound marriage, this relationship that you have with your Mind and you.  It does not have to be turned into a religion, but if that helps, go for it. I think we can make a step in that journey very easy.  It is not the whole banana but it gets the skin off and gets us to where the fruit is.  It is you knowing your strengths and being married to them.  Your strengths are first for you to know and to live for yourself in relationship to yourself.  Behold yourself by beholding your strengths.  Then make sure that those you love know your strengths and make very sure that the one you marry on the outside beholds these strengths and is committed to supporting you in growing your own strengths, as they are committed to growing their own.  That is a great place for love to start and an even greater way for love to ripen and age.  Know, behold, and support the growth of the other’s strengths as much as you do your own, but always start from the place of doing it for yourself.  What love!  Such a journey never grows old in the respect and “beholding” of the strengths of another.  There will never be the desire to cheat on this “other,” never a waning of expanding sexual pleasure. Discovery never ends, and two people can grow in union as much as we can grow in union with our own selves. CONTINUING EDUCATION FOR COACHES   1) How have you deepened your connection to your strengths since your initial ANI coach training? What new insights into your strengths have been most significant? How have you used these new insights in your personal work, your work with clients, and your work with your group? Give us several specific examples. 2) This blog discusses creating a relationship “bottom-line.” As a result of knowing and using your strengths, what “bottom-lines” have you developed relative to the relationships in your life? With others? With yourself?  How have your strengths guided you to create and maintain these personal agreements? Tell us your story. FOR OUR LARGER BLOG COMMUNITY   1) Log on to www.authentichappines.org and take the VIA Signature Strengths Test. With these results, what new insights do you have regarding these strengths as “the real you?” Tell us what your top strengths are and how you have seen them play out in how you see yourself as well as your significant relationships.   UpSpiral Thought, 2012-03-12T16:20:43+00:00