Belief Makers

Thank you readers
The A New Option Blog has flourished this year in a way unexpected by me when I started our little initiative in February. Your consistent support, readership, comments, enthusiasm and excitement about our joint effort have crafted this blog into what it is today. So thank you for helping to create a friendly place to openly explore thoughtful, inspirational and diverse thoughts and ideas!

Thank you Authors!
This A New Option Blog would not be what it is today if it were not for the wonderful input of the 2009 authors Mark Tuomenoksa, Jeannene Christie, Kathy DeCastro, Julie Sando, Mark Kaufman, Rita Gendelman, Joy Vigh Strand, Faith Clarke, Barbara Balla, Chris Kisling, Brian Ellis and Paul Bos. I am so grateful to have been able to read and share your inspirational thoughts through this blog. Everyone of you has expanded yourself by exploring new horizons thought your writing and I wish for you the drive and initiative to do new things and expand yourself in unique ways for a long time to come. I love that we together are creating a future of creativity and color and unexpected developments, all without knowing where we are going exactly.

Thank You Growth Opportunities
I hope you will join me in this gratitude towards all the growth opportunities we created this year. Every experience was special and one to celebrate. Thank you my friends, family, readers and any one else I met this year for your love and support. Thank you for your criticism and authenticity. Thank you for the moments of in-authenticity, lies, mis-communication and discomfort we created together. You have been an inspiration. You have helped me grow and I hope you have given yourself a same kind of experience. I also want to express my gratitude for all other internal and external factors that gave inspiration to craft myself in unique new ways in 2009.

A New Option Blog During 2009
When I started the blog, my idea was to write one or two blog articles a week and then post some small thoughtful things at other times, to help you be inspired. But it became clear that the readers of this blog wanted something more than just little quotes. You readers love provocative thoughtful articles that you can digest over time. You want to read things that start discussions and create new options for your thought processes. That's what got us to where we are today. Daily inspirational material that piled up with such speed that we even decided to create a book out of it called Adventures in Happiness.

We have had a consistent growth in our readership over 2009, and 65% of our readers this year has been coming back for more and more and more... Wow, this is amazing!

Our growth has been noticed by Google, whose analytic statistics say that your readership has grown this A New Option blog to what Google calls "an established blog site".

According to Google, we now have readers in more than 90 countries. Our biggest readership is in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Poland, Sweden, Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine, United Kingdom and the United States. It's so wonderful to see that people are so inspired to come back over and over, even when the English language might be a challenge. Google tells us that a lot of you use the wonderful services of Google Translate to make sure you get the nuances of the written articles. Who would have expected that we would have a regular reader in Kingston, Jamaica or in the Ukraine? I never imagined that we would be writing to you regular readers in Lahore and Karachi, Pakistan. How wonderful!

All our readers, I want to thank you once more for making 2009 a truly fun and inspirational year.

A New Option in 2010
A New Option will be going strong in 2010. We have a great team, and we are planning to do lots of new things in the New Year. We will go on providing you with daily articles, and we will start new initiatives.

What do you want?
This blog was created with you in our minds, and while creating our 2010 plans, we would love to hear what your wants are for A New Option. Why do you come to this site? What do you like? What would you like to see different? How are you going to participate?

Here some of the ways in which I can help shape the blog for 2010.

1. Give us feedback below this post, or by sending an email to iris@lifetransitioncounselor.com, so we can use your input in our 2010 plans.
2. Come to the site regularly, read the articles and participate in our discussions by commenting on the articles.
3. Write articles yourself. Even if you can only commit to one or two articles in 2010, pick one or more dates and send me a New Year’s email (iris@lifetransitioncounselor.com) with your intention and the dates. I would love to help you get your thoughts and ideas into an article.
4. Tell us what you like to read. Do you have a favorite writer that you would like to see more articles from? Do you like specific topics?
5. Invite your friends to read this blog too! This way you can expand the materials found in these articles and help you create a inspirational group of supportive people around you with whom you can discuss new ideas.
6. Do you have ideas for initiatives for this blog and want to help put these ideas in place. I would love to hear from you.

Labels: all blogs, inspiration, intentions, iris tuomenoksa

We've been having so much fun over the past week with this right-brain/left-brain stuff. As Sree pointed out, all this is just a model; it's not how we operate, it's just a way of thinking about how we operate. Still, models can prove quite useful in facilitating insight as long as we don't start making them true.

Over the past couple of days, I've run into several people who have been enjoying this little exploration and who particularly related to some of Iris' right-brained experiences: her sense of being overwhelmed... her feeling she's not good enough... her not knowing what to do next... her feeling stuck and unable to get started... and so on.

The Right-Brained Mark Kaufman
Last night as Kat and I were talking about all this right-brain/left-brain stuff, we talked about our friend Mark Kaufman. Kat remarked that the place where Mark seems to get stuck is when he tries to analyze things before acting.

I said, "Wait, Mark doesn't do analysis. He simply moves with how he's feeling. He's definitely right-brained on that front."

Kat pointed out that Mark spends a lot of time not doing because he's thinking about what to do and wanting to get it right.

So, then it occurred to me that it's not about Mark doing right brain in lieu of left brain. Mark does do left brain; he's just not very good at it. Once he starts analyzing, it's kind of like my dad driving a car; his accident-to-drive ratio exceeds one.

The Left-Brained Musician
Then I thought about our friend Scott who recently joined No Room for Jello playing trumpet and bass. Scott is a left-brain guy. He wants all the music written down so that he can practice and learn it. He wants to know the form to all the songs. He likes everything to be structured and predictable. He can experience true panic if he is left to the wiles of his right-brain.

He's not good at right-brained music.

In the end, there's no such thing as people who are either right-brained or left-brained by nature. We all operate on a spectrum that moves from structured, epistemological thought to unstructured, ontological thought. Each of is operates at different points on that spectrum depending on our situation.

So, if you find yourself stuck, the question is not one of whether or not you're right-brained or left. The question is one of knowing your strengths and weaknesses, building on your strengths and shoring up our weaknesses.

Step One: Know your strengths and your weaknesses
Knowing what you're good at and what you're not so good at is an important part of growth and change. Sounds easy, right? Unfortunately, oftentimes we downplay our strengths and pump up our chests about areas in which we're actually fairly weak. I believe this is largely due to how we have come to understand concepts such as humility and pride.

In his book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis presents many aspects of Christianity from the perspective of a senior demon (Screwtape) instructing a junior demon (Wormwood) in the art of tempting and enslaving a soul (the patient). In chapter XIV, Screwtape provides Wormwood guidance on the use of humility.

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility... Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe [his] talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. . . By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools.

And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.

The Enemy [God] wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall.

So, accurately assess your strengths and weaknesses from the perspective of a dis-interested observer. Your strengths and weakness don't mean anything about you.

Step Two: In the moment, lean on your strengths
An accurate assessment of your strengths and weaknesses can provide immediate benefit in getting unstuck. Tight and difficult situations are not the best ones in which to try to shore up your weaknesses. Instead, those are the times to rely on your strengths.

If you're really bad at analysis, and you're in a crisis, stop trying to think your way through it and go with your gut. Or ask for help from someone who is good at analysis.

If you're strong at analysis, forget your gut and go with your left-brained analytical side.

For example, if you're lost in the middle of nowhere and about to run out of gas, lean on your strengths. If you're good with maps and analysis, then forget about your intuition getting you there. Stop the car, pull out the map, and figure out where to go. If you can't read a map to save your life, then stop looking at the map hoping that the answer will pop out of it. Relax your breathing and get in touch with your sense of where you are and what to do.

Step Three: Over the long haul, shore up your weaknesses
Now here's the tricky part. Over time, as we lean on our strengths, the disparity between our strengths and weaknesses grows, reinforcing the belief that we simply can't do whatever it is we're not good at. In particular, if your strengths are bringing you success, then it can be difficult to shore up your weaknesses.

Shawshanked by Your Strengths
In many instances, this can lead to institutionalization of sorts. For example, I know many people with whom I've worked in large corporations, who would not know what to do with themselves if they were to leave the company they're with, let alone the corporate environment generally. They've been Shawshanked by their strengths, a kind of corporate evolutionary process, a survival of the fittest. In this case, fit has to do with the strengths required to deal with the idiosyncrasies of the specific company. The development of these strengths typically implies the non-development of strengths in areas not required to succeed within that company.

The result is someone who is immanently qualified in their company's environment, but only that environment. This works, as long as you never need to function anywhere else.

This phenomenon is not limited to corporations. Over time, as we lean on our strengths we begin to straight-jacket ourselves into a specific lifestyle and environment.

The key to avoiding this kind of self-imposed institutionalization is to shore up your weaknesses before you need them as strengths.

Transform Weaknesses to Strengths
Based on your list from step one, identify the weaknesses that would best serve you as strengths. For the moment, forget about general categories such as analysis or intuition; instead, look at specific examples.

Rather than considering your general capacity to make decisions, look at how long it takes you to order from a menu and work on improving your menu-to-ordering time.

If you're bad at analysis (easy to spot, you get stuck trying to figure out what to do), then grab one of your kids math books and start working through story problems with him or her. (You can ask him or her for help. It will be fun!)

Can't read a map, then start using a map to get to places that you already know how to get to. Lack a sense of direction, then start taking random drives based on your intuition at times that you don't have to be anywhere (just keep a GPS or cell phone with you).

Rounding Out Your Life
For most of us, it takes a life changing catalytic experience to force us to build strengths in areas where we are weak. However, knowing that weaknesses are just strengths that we haven't yet developed can change how we approach them. Transforming our weaknesses into strengths because we've decided to can open opportunities that we never would have experienced otherwise.

So, what's your greatest strength? How do you rely on it? What weakness have you created as a result of relying on that strength? Would you like to change that?

Have a strong Tuesday!

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

In the 90's I was a big fan of Tori Amos. For the ones who don't know Tori Amos, one of her big hits was a song called "Me and a gun". It was a song about how she was raped in the rear of a car, and for her writing the song was a way to get out of being a victim of what had happened. The line I remember most from the song was "But I haven't seen Barbados, so I must get out of this".

I didn't know where Barbados was - and for some reason I didn't look it up. I imagined that it was a tropical island somewhere in the pacific. I pictured beautiful beaches, palm trees and sun; the sea turquoise blue and the wind soft. Thinking of this picture of the island I could feel the warm sand between my toes as I walked towards the sea...

I decided that I wanted to go to Barbados. I imagined that going to Barbados was "out of my reach"; something that I would never be rich able to do. So I didn't even look it up. For a long time I didn't realize that it was in the Caribbean and not in the pacific!

Time passed and so did the music. I moved on to listened to Heather Nova, Joni Mitchell, Suzanne Vega, Lisa Ekdahl. There are so many women singing angry songs about how they used to be victims, and I loved all of them!

Last year I met my old pen pal. When we were teenagers we wrote long letters to each other about what happened in our lives. Mostly about the boys we were in love with but too afraid to approach, or about how our parents had been so unfair. This was long before I became a fan of Tori Amos.

It turns out that my old pen pal never heard about Tori Amos, but guess what: she did live a few years at Barbados. To her Barbados is also a dream: she loves the beaches, the people, the music, the nature, and she has some great memories of Barbados. Now we are dreaming of Barbados together!

She wants to go back and I want to go for the first time. And this time I'm actually determined: I will go! Why? Because I'm prepared to die! Not that I'm ill or have any reason to believe that I will die anytime in the near future, but I have come to a place in my life, where I feel happy and I feel that there is nothing more that I need in my life. There are things that I want, and I'm perfectly happy pursuing what I want.



Writing this I am wondering about the difference between wanting to go and wanting to go back. I used to have a lot of things I wanted to go back to: being fit, being married (not to the same man though), having a house, being a manager, being with old friends...



Now I don't want to go back. I still want to be fit, but I'm going towards being fit. Not in the same way as I used to do it, but in a way which works for me. I want to see Barbados, and I'm closer now: I know where it is. And I have more knowledge: I've seen pictures, learned about the seasons and when to go...



I wonder how often we hold dreams without knowing how to find them at the map. I have done dialogues with people who say they want to "work with people", but they do not seem to know what that actually means to them. One example was a man who worked as a manager, but who didn't believe that motivating his employees was part of "working with people".

So how clear are you about your motivations? If you have an addiction, do you know why? Do you know what you'll miss if you let go of it? Do you know what you want to get instead? Do you want to be happier? What does it mean? What are you doing to get there?
Can you describe the details of how to get there? Can you draw a picture of how it looks once you've reached your destination?

I believe that going to Barbados will mean that I don't have anything I have to get through before I can start living my life. I don't have to be thinner, fitter or happier. I can live my life right now! I can go to Barbados first thing in the New Year.

Do you wanna join me?

Labels: adventures in happiness, all blogs, joy vigh strand, wants

Our minds are wondrous instruments, and mine is quite amazing I must say! Over the years I have started to understand so much more about myself and how I function, but there is still so much more to learn and discover. My beautiful mind inspires me to figure out and understand more about why and what I think in each moment, and what external and internal experiences are influencing my thought processes.

If you read my article from the other day about feeling overwhelmed, you know that I discovered, that my feelings of being overwhelmed seem to appear after I haven't taken the best care of my physical body. When my body is trying to get the poisons out that I fed it by eating pizza or lasagna, or when my body is processing the extra amount of sugars or cheese I ate during my excessive celebrations of life, my brain responds by having less enthusiasm to tackle other projects at the same time.

Having been in this state of going in and out of physical detox during the last two weeks, I have had lots of opportunities to use myself as a study object and to wonder about the miraculously interesting thought processes I had and the actions I took (or not!). I have concluded that my intoxication creates the perfect environment to function from my right brain, which brings excitement and challenges!

A Chance to Observe
The other day I had dinner with Mark, Kat and Alexander (see Teflon's article "In A Word"). I felt like I was in the middle of a Broadway play where the two multiple-personality-identities (Iris Left Brain and Iris Right Brain) were trying to discuss life's pleasantries at the kitchen table with Kat and me as the audience. I finally had a chance to observe extreme examples of the two personalities that seem to be me. Two personalities, both with very different qualities and seated in a different belief systems with different worldviews, talking with one another at the same table.

OK, just for clarification, I do not believe I am more than one person. Still, I clearly act and respond differently in different moments. Over the past few days, I have been exploring the possibility that it has to do with which side of my brain I'm most using in that moment.


Iris Left Brain
Iris Left Brain is always active, always has a thousand ideas, is always looking for new things to do and explore, and is never bored. She adapts easily to new situations. Iris Left Brain loves a challenge to create new things. She figures things out quickly and can articulate her solutions clearly and concisely. For Iris Left Brain, everything is structured and clear. She easily makes sense of her world and is content with activities that she undertakes.

Iris Left Brain also gets depressed and uncomfortable when having to wait or being passive. Iris Left brain is independent-minded and stubborn, but with that comes stability and reliability.

Iris Right Brain
Iris Right Brain is creative and writes beautiful songs in minutes; she may then dismiss those songs as awful a few minutes later. Iris Right Brain can open her computer to look up something specific on the Internet and then spend hours browsing who knows what. She finds the journey more important and satisfying than getting things done quickly. This Iris goes with the flow, dislikes planning, is disorganized and gets overwhelmed with too many things on her plate.

Iris Right Brain wants to hear that she is loved and wants (needs?) to be supported. She is insecure, jealous and unpredictable. For her, the world just one big experience and difficult to explain. Not being able to find the right words, Iris Right Brain is often quiet.

Right and Left Collide
I sing and play djembe with No Room for Jello, a band that regularly performs here in the Berkshires. Playing drums and performing with a band is not something I had done before 2009, so I decided to jump in and do it. This was the perfect opportunity for Iris Left Brain who believes that practice is fun and makes you better. She is very satisfied with the results so far and loves the time she spends creating music.

The other night, some of Iris' No Room for Jello band mates performed with beautiful young singer who was simply amazing. The music was wonderful! Iris Right Brain, who believes that singing is a gift from god and not something that you simply develop, thought to herself, "Wow, this singer is really good. What I do is crap! My band mates are too nice to tell me that I am S**T. Who am I kidding? I should quit singing and do something else instead!"

Iris Right Brain felt ashamed for insanely thinking that she could reach for the moon. She just wanted to quit.

Left Brain/Right Brain Research

Over the past week, as I've processed this experience, I flipped back and forth from Iris Right Brain to Iris Left Brain (including all the opposed behaviors and feelings) depending on my blood sugar and other factors (yet to be determined). So I started looking up information on this left-/right-brain phenomenon.

If you find this interesting, I recommend that you read an article on www.viewzone.com. It explains how each side of our brains processes stimuli differently and how you can tell which side is the dominant one. The link for the page is http://www.viewzone.com/bicam.html.

Left and Right as Partners
Most of you know my love for attitudinal dialogues. In effect, dialogues are a way of letting your logical, structured left brain help your creative, unstructured right brain process emotions and feelings. The exercise is wonderful at clearing your mind and it really works for me... unless, that is, if I am so far into my right brain that I completely resist any help from my left. The feelings and emotions are so "big" that I don't want to let them go!

Mark and I were playing with hypotheses about why our right and left brains process emotions so differently.

One of them is that my right brain seems to process everything as it comes. If I feel something, then I associate it with whatever is happening in that moment. For example, the other night, I was feeling insecure and uncomfortable while hearing this wonderful music. My right brain puts two and two together and gets, "I feel like crap because I can't sing!" It then proceeds to make this bigger and bigger and bigger.

On the other hand, my left brain, being nicely structured, doesn't depend on everything occurring at once. I can feel insecure and uncomfortable while hearing this wonderful music and think, "Wow, look how having eaten all this terrible food over the past week is making me feel upset and jealous of this really great singer, rather than feeling inspired!"

For my right brain, it's all scrambled information; it feels big and overwhelming. For my left, it's all structured and feels, well, structured.

The whole concept is a very interesting and new to me. For now, I have at least come up with a temporary solution. When I feel overwhelmed by these constant and completely opposite messages I'm sending myself, I simply tell myself: "Please ignore." or "Skip please!"

Then, I get myself something to eat and drink, or I do a workout. Then, when I'm ready, I can take time explore what's happening and take action on the outcome.

I hope you like these explorations. If not: Please ignore. Skip please!

Labels: empowerment, iris tuomenoksa, philosophy

Labels: autism, mark kaufman

T'was the night before Thanksgiving, just a few weeks ago. Iris and I sat in the kitchen awaiting the arrival of our dear friend Mark Kaufman who had planned on leaving Brooklyn at noon or so and arriving in the Berkshires by three. Throughout the afternoon Mark had phoned to let us know that he hadn't left yet. More specifically, around one or so he was still in bed, and so on.

Now, at 8:00 PM, Mark called to let us know that he had picked up the lox and bagels, but felt too tired to drive to the Berkshires. He would be coming up in the morning along with a Thanksgiving breakfast straight from Brooklyn. Astutely, Iris asked Mark, "At what time do plan on being here. I'd like to know so that I can prepare everything else."

Mark announced, "I'm going to roll out of bed at 5:30AM and get on the road by 6:00. I should be at your place by 8:30."

The next morning, as we opened our eyes to greet the day, Iris rolled over, looked me in the eye and asked, "Should we start cooking or should we plan on Mark actually getting here?"

What Do You Think Happened?
If I were a man who played the odds, the answer would be simple, but instead I said, "Let's wait and see."

At 8:30AM I looked out the window and what to my wandering eyes should appear, but a battered old minivan with a somewhat more than little old driver. Mark walked proudly into the house with a side of lox and a bagful of fresh bagels exactly when he had said he would.

As we began preparing everything else, the phone rang. It was Kat. In response to my little story of Mark's trip to the Berkshires, she pronounced, "It's a Thanksgiving miracle!"

This morning is Christmas. As Iris and I stirred in bed, I started thinking about miracles. What makes something a miracle? Why and how do miracles happen? How can you create a miracle?

I decided that a miracle is simply an occurrence that you would hope for, but would never expect: a desired outcome that goes beyond reason and probability.

That being the case, if I wanted to create more miracles in my life, how would I go about it?


Step 1: Identify Your Miracle
The starting place would be identifying those things in my life that I truly desire, but consider improbable or even impossible. It could be finding a partner who is just right for me. It might be recovering my child from Autism. It might be becoming physically fit. It might be becoming and artist or musician. Whatever it is, miracles start with identifying what it is we truly desire, but consider to be out of reach.

Step 2: Envision Your Miracle
OK, if you know what it is you want for your miracle, the next step is to envision it. The best way to build a vision is to make it as vivid and real as possible, and to do it in a concrete way. For example, don't simply hold it in your mind, but instead, tell someone your vision, write it down, paint a picture of it. Whatever way you can make your vision as real and vivid and concrete as possible, do that.

Also, don't hold back in your vision. Nothing is off limits. If you want to play music, imagine playing in the world's best venue with the entire band and a crowd of adoring fans. If you want to recover your child from Autism, imagine him walking down the aisle at his wedding arm-in-arm with his bride and surrounded by all his friends. Make your vision big and unlimited.

Step 3: Big Vision, Small Steps
Step 3 is both the easiest and the most difficult. When it comes to creating miracles, we tend to gravitate to the parts that we can't figure out or don't have the capacity for. If your miracle is running a marathon, you might jump to running a mile every day. If your miracle is playing music, you might go to a club to hear a great performer and overwhelm yourself with their skills and your inability to play as well. If your miracle is a child who can relate to others, you might jump to getting him to speak or behave well with peers.

The problem is that it's so easy to overwhelm ourselves with the things that we can't do, that we miss the things that we can do. Further, it's usually the case that we can't do the things that we can't do simply because we haven't done the things that we can.

So, if your goal is running a marathon, perhaps the best first step is simply to become more active in any way that feels good. Perhaps just walking to the store instead of driving.

If your goal is playing guitar, perhaps the best first step is to, well, buy a guitar.

If your goal is a child who can fully relate to world around him, perhaps the best place to start is with the things in his world to which he does relate.

The reason that these first steps are so hard is that we often tell ourselves that they're too small, that they're insignificant, that we'll never get there at that rate. We judge the things we can do thereby eclipsing the things we can't.

In the end, big miracles rest on a foundation of thousands of tiny mico-miracles each of which stretches us and our situations just a bit further. Great miracle makers no that there is no such thing as an insignificant step.

Happy Christmas!
Christmas being a time for miracles and all, it might be a great time to start your next one. As you gather with family and friends, share what you would like to see as your next miracle. Paint your visions for one another and make them big! You might even take a first step with a micro miracle or two.

From the intergalactic headquarters of the A New Option Blog, I wish you the humble beginnings of many future Christmas miracles.

Labels: empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy, relationships

Last night we had dinner with two of sweetest people on the planet, Kat and Alexander.

One of the things I love about Alexander and Kat as a couple is that they defy the stereo-typical gender-biased role models of right- and left-brainededenss. On the one hand, Kat is the left-brained, logical, epistemologically-oriented partner and Alexander is the right-brained, emotive, ontologically-oriented partner.

Communicating Economically
Kat and I work together all the time. The nature of our work and the rate at which we're working requires us to communicate clearly, efficiently and effectively; otherwise, we end up not actually accomplishing what we meant to accomplish or taking a lot longer to do so than would have been necessary. When we talk, we try to use words precisely and will often stop each other if we're uncertain of what the other meant by a specific word.

Alexander and I don't work together, but see each other frequently in the coffee shop or when the four of us get together for fun. The nature of our communication is completely different. Nonetheless, as we talk, I interact with Alexander in a manner similar to how I interact with Kat. I'll interrupt him when he uses a word that I don't understand or which doesn't make sense to me in the context of what he's saying.

Whereas the model works really well when talking with Kat, it doesn't work at all when talking with Alexander. The frequency and duration of my interruptions tends to make it difficult to maintain a conversational thread. Last night was no exception, so around midnight I began pondering the whole situation to see how I could do better, and then around five this morning, I picked up where I left off.

As I pondered, I came up with some realizations about myself, about Alexander and about how I relate to the world around me.

Words Matter
First, I delight in words. I enjoy exploring the subtle semantic differences between this one and that. I love translating abstract concepts into concise, precisely articulated descriptions that make the concepts clear and accessible. I have a deep appreciation for their power to communicate and to move people. I work diligently to gain mastery of their use.

Second, I believe that many of the challenges that we face today can be directly tied to sloppy use of words. I'm pretty sure that I've had this belief for a long time, but it really surfaced for me over the last eight hours or so.

One of the things that's great about computer languages (formal languages) is that, in order to work, they suffer no ambiguity. Everything you write in software must be precise and represent exactly what you intend because the computer has no capacity to interpret what you meant; it can only do what you said.

On the other hand, human languages (natural languages) tend towards ambiguity. This is not so much an artifact of the languages themselves, but of how we humans use language. Whereas with a computer, the writer has no choice but to be precise, with humans we often count on the capacity of the listener to interpret our meaning. So, we get sloppy.

This not only poses challenges in interpersonal relationships, but also in any systems that we build. For example, consider our legal systems and the volume of laws that we create. In some cases, the laws are created to accommodate situations that are truly new. More often, they're created to close a loophole created by an ambiguous statement; one that can be interpreted differently than intended.

I believe that the proliferation of bloated bureaucratic systems can be traced back to poor command of and the subsequent breakdown of language.

Third, for me, speaking is a skill not unlike playing music. It's not something that you just do or don't do. It's something that you can practice and develop. As you get better at it, you can hang out with other practitioners and jam. You can get better and better and better and enjoy it more deeply and meaningfully as you do.

Words Are Worthless
So, as I pondered why I was being so ineffective at communicating with Alexander, it occurred to me that my beliefs about and experience of words were getting in the way. I also realized that this phenomenon was not limited to my speaking with Alexander.

First, I now realize that people often select words based on how they sound which may or may not have anything to do with what they mean. For example, last night Alexander used the word exponential to describe the rate at which a specific phenomenon was growing. I paused to ask him if he actually meant exponential or if he meant a high rate of linear or multiplicative growth. Alexander replied that he meant exponential-linear growth.

Exponential-linear being an oxymoron, I pressed on for clarity and specificity that didn't actually exist. Now, a few hours later, I realize that by exponential, Alexander simply meant really fast and increasingly faster which in the context of the conversation was good enough. Precision wasn't important and it occurs to me that, in the vernacular, Alexander's definition is probably what most people mean when they say exponential.

Second, I now realize that, due to my bias for words, I often miss that people aren't speaking in order to convey a concept, but instead are speaking simply to emote or to convey a feeling or experience. It's not about clarity and accuracy of the communication, but instead, about projecting experience through sound.

Since I have this bias towards understanding exactly what it is that the other person is saying, I totally miss that they're not actually trying to say anything. The words are being put into space to express how they feel or what they experienced. A quantitative word might be used simply to convey the general magnitude or the importance of an experience, but not a specific value.

Third, I have such a strong bias towards understanding things that I've gotten to the point where I can't fathom not wanting to understand things. I've also intimately associated understanding something with being able to clearly articulate it. To me, saying that you understand something but just can't explain it indicates that you actually don't understand it. I've made this definitional.

This morning I've concluded that this may not be the best MO when communicating with people who say, "I understand it, I just can't explain it."

What I Learned
In the end, my desire to communicate clearly and specifically and my deeply rooted beliefs about how to do that, can be completely limit my capacity to communicate.

It occurs to me that this may be a phenomenon that we can experience as practitioners of any discipline. Doctors, due to their dedication and experience in medicine may miss options and opportunities to heal. Lawyers may miss opportunities to create legal systems that work. On and on...

Anyway, that's what's on my mind. Not sure if I communicated that well, but I feel better.

Thanks for listening.

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy, relationships

written by Julie Sando

It seems as though stress levels can be higher around the holidays. This surely is the case around my family. There are deadlines we set ourselves up for, expectations to make sure we do all the things we want to do, etc.

Labels: breathe, julie sando

The other day I tried to set up an appointment with a friend who answered that she would rather meet in January because she was doing overwhelmed right now. We agreed that we will get together in the New Year, but her comment tickled something in my brain and I have been thinking about the concept of being overwhelmed since.

This time of the year a lot of us are doing overwhelmed. I recognize in myself that, over the past two weeks, I have been giving myself the feeling of being a bit overwhelmed; this is really funny because the last two weeks are really not that much different than the previous eight weeks. So what happened?

Beliefs, beliefs, beliefs...
Looking at the concept of overwhelmedness, I started to realize that I have beliefs about being overwhelmed. For example: when overwhelmed, it is good to take a break and to get some good sleep. And this one: doing new things is sometimes overwhelming! Another example is: if you don't take a break once in a while you will overwhelm yourself.

I also carry the belief that you do overwhelmed once in a while; it is something that is here and then gone the next moment, not something that persists like depression.

The Cycle of Being Overwhelmed
Then I started thinking, "hey what does it actually mean to be overwhelmed?"

For me it means that I need a break. However, needing to take a break doesn't tell me what it is that I need to take a break from. Nonetheless, instead of questioning what it is that I need a break from, my response is to simply take a break.

After a good night sleep, my being overwhelmed disappears for a while. Then, somewhere, I start doing overwhelmed again! So I repeat the whole cycle.

After a while, if one night of sleep doesn't work anymore, I might decide that two nights will do. After a while, if two nights doesn't do, then a week.

Of course, I'm doing all this because I feel overwhelmed. In the end, I have no clue as to whether or not the cause of my being overwhelmed is lack of sleep; I haven't been specific. Further, while working on my sleep (to get rid of this feeling of overwhelmedness) , I am not doing the things I normally would be doing. My regular activities are piling up, which is kinda, well... overwhelming!

There are Always Signals
Saturday (which is normally the one day I do not work), I scheduled different work things to do. In the afternoon, I scheduled phone calls that I had been delaying a bit because of some intense intestinal pains I had resulting from food I had eaten earlier in the week. I was bouncing around trying to find a way to get myself comfortable enough to do the calls. Mark said, "Why don't you take a hot bath and see if the warm water helps your intestines to relax. You can make the calls later today?"

Within half an hour of Mark's suggestion, I surrendered myself and went into the bath. While my muscles relaxed, the intestinal pains mostly disappeared and I gave myself over to the moment of relaxation and reflection. Later in the day, I made my phone calls with pleasure and I felt great! I was focused and enthusiastic.
What I Learned
I do overwhelmed when my body is uncomfortable. My body gets uncomfortable when I haven't been working out or when I eat things that are not digested well by my system. I have been traveling lately and when traveling, I often eat whatever is around instead of taking care of my body! I also don't work out.

So, now I realize that my being overwhelmed has nothing to do with the amount of sleep I have, but everything to do with a healthy diet and regular workout.

Knowing why I do overwhelmed is really useful. Instead of hauling water to the sea (getting more sleep when I already have enough), I can start focusing on the real causes of my being overwhelmed. Way more useful.

Labels: all blogs, iris tuomenoksa, overwhelmed, philosophy

I love Christmas. I love everything about Christmas. Baking cookies, buying gifts, decorating the tree, watching Frosty the Snowman for the hundredth time and most of all, spending time with the people I love. I love how the beautiful lights decorating homes sparkle in the snow and throw magic into the air for everyone to grab. How many of you are grabbing some of that magic this year?

The sparkle of Christmas lights has always been magic for me. Late last night as I drove home from a weekend of baking cookies at Mom's with Aly snoring peacefully in the back seat, there was magic all around me. It started as mom, Aly, and I experienced the most amazing sunset I have ever seen. Ribbons of blue, purple, orange and pink, wrapped around the snow covered hills as we watched in awe from the picture window. As the sun set, lights of magic began to sparkle brightly everywhere. I drove home surrounded in magic and began to cry tears of joy as I thought about all the love I have in my life. I created an experience for myself while I drove that included sights, sounds and smells from Christmases past with particular memories of my grandparents. This will be the first Christmas that all my grandparents will be celebrating with us only in spirit. I could taste the peanut butter rice crispie treats covered in chocolate that I only ate once a year at my Meme's house and I could feel the velour of the outfits my grandmother loved to wear. Even now as I write this blog, I can hear french Chritmas carol's playing ever so softly in the background of family chatter.

As I pulled into our street, the magic exploded as the lights Dave put on our new home that hadn't been working lit up the entire neighborhood. As I walked into the house, I was greeted by David who was happily singing Frosty the Snowman. As we went to bed, David said "goodnight, I love you" and the magic continued. For a child who we were told may never speak, he spoke words of magic last night. Love and happiness to all of you this holiday season. Enjoy the magic in your lives!
Love, Kathy

Another really fun discussion I had with my dad over Thanksgiving had to do with the importance of people's motivations and integrity. The subject of our discussion was a friend (or former friend depending on your perspective) whom I considered to be a great teacher and someone from whom the planet had benefited significantly, but whose personal dealings with people and business ethics leave something to be desired from my perspective.

My dad had decided that the latter canceled the former, i.e., you can't be a great thus-and-such and simultaneously be ill-intended, or unethical, or lacking in integrity, or self-justified, etc. For my dad, a person's motivations are paramount. Therefore, the teacher, whom even my dad had once lauded, was now not even a good teacher, nor was he ever.

And we were off and running.

What Do I Care?
My response to my dad was that I wasn't particularly concerned about a person's motivations, or ethics or integrity, only their actions, and particularly, the results those actions yielded. Of particular annoyance to my dad was the fact that I was only concerned about the actions and results insofar as they were directly experienced by or directly affected me. I find that forming an opinion about someone based on hearsay is almost always a losing proposition. I also prefer not to take offense for actions directed at me, let alone for those directed at someone else.

In the end, if someone offered to paint my house, I would consider the quality and reliability of her work and the price. I wouldn't really be concerned about the quality or reliability of her as a person. Nor would I be particularly concerned about the quality of the work she had done for others. Just what she would do for me.

Weighing the Evidence
Now you may say at this point, "Wait! Doesn't the quality of the work done before provide a strong indication of the what I might expect!"

And the answer would be, "Yes, and no."

Previous actions can indeed provide a strong indication of what a person might do in the future, but they're not a guarantee. Further, deciding what a person will do in the future based exclusively on what they've done in the past with others completely discounts your own impact on the situation. So, just because a person previously performed poorly doesn't mandate that they're a hopeless cause. It may just require a little better management on your part.

Motivation as a Causal Factor
My dad wasn't buying any of it. So, I said, what if we were to find out that Einstein had been an immoral, philandering, self-gratifying bastard? Would you toss out relativity as a concept? What if Newton had been an axe-murderer? Would you give up on gravity?

My dad's response was, "If Einstein had been completely ill-intended and immoral, he couldn't have conceived of relativity."

Hmmm... Interesting point. My dad had implied a causal (not casual) relationship between intention and performance: well-intended and moral people with integrity perform better than ill-intended and immoral people.

One could certainly site the current state of world finance as an example of the performance benefits of ill-intended people. The political world is ripe with illustrations of the effects of people whose primary concern is re-election.

My dad's theory certainly appears to have merit. By extension, one might suggest that quality and performance are inversely proportional to degree of ill-intention, i.e., the more ill-intended the person, the less capable the person. (We didn't go the other way as my dad could site many well-intended people who can't do crap.)

God Bless that Bastard Einstein
"OK", I said, "Let's go with that! Let's say that Einstein, being a misanthropic creep, never had the capacity to conceive of relativity? What if he actually stole the idea from someone else and then marketed it better? In fact, what if Einstein's misanthropy blinded him to science, but enabled him as a shameless self-promoter? Then, what do you do with relativity?"

"On the flip side, what if the guy who actually did come up with relativity were so unconcerned about recognition, that, having conceived of it, he wrote it in his notebook, placed it on a shelf and moved on to the next interesting problem? Perhaps none of us would ever have heard: e=mc²? "

"In this case, we could be thankful for both Einstein and the other guy. Then we could view that bastard Einstein's misanthropic self-promotion as a valuable quality that had no relevance to the concept of relativity, yet benefited us all."

This is the point in the conversation where Mark K usually says, "Is Iris around?"

My dad simply said that he didn't want to talk about this anymore.

Loving Shameless Self-promoters
Of course, we never really know another person's motivations and intentions. (With all the questions I ask people, I often wonder if people know their own motivations and intentions.) All we have in the end is our experience of another's actions and we can deem them as beneficial and useful... or not. Someone might be a completely self-aggrandizing, misanthropic cretin who doesn't give a hoot about anyone but himself, and still be helpful to me.

Further, although we're taught over and again that we can predict someone's future behaviors based on their past behaviors, we'd be in a pretty sorry state if that were always the case. None of us would ever change. Perhaps this is the reason so many of us move on in life (to new situations and new people) before making significant changes in ourselves. We simply can't overcome the inertia of other people's beliefs about us, so we find other people who will believe in us.

Finally, when we imbue our heroes with extraordinary moral character or competence in other areas of expertise, we set them up for a fall.

What About You?
What do you think? Can someone be simultaneously ill-intended or "lacking in character" and great at something else? Can they be creeps with others and still be wonderful with you? If so, what do you do with them? How do you navigate the apparent contradiction?

Are there people in your life whom you've written off due to past performance? Perhaps you've never voiced it as such, but you simply expect less from them than from others? Have you (subtly or explicitly) been written off? Have you written yourself off?

Do you imbue great teachers, leaders, friends, family members, celebrities with other characteristics and strengths that may have nothing to do with who they are? What are you satisfying in yourself by doing so?

Would love to know what you guys think!

Happy Sunday!
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

My boyfriend and I went Christmas shopping. It was the second time we went shopping for Christmas presents and both times we ended up with loads of stuff for us, along with some for our loved ones. We love to treat ourselves!

When we went into a very cute shop with home decoration things in it, I saw a fridge magnet saying, "Let go!"

I produced an anxious feeling in my tummy, as this is not something that has been easy for me to do. My inner thoughts screamed, "Letting go means being totally out of control, and I have to control everything to feel safe!"

So I thought this would be perfect for me. I would buy the magnet and put it on the fridge to remind me many times during the day when I am at home.

Floating Happy Bubble
After meeting my magnet, I started thinking about letting go. Out of experience and observation I know that we tend to believe that if they would let go of our beliefs that are keeping us in line (our drive to succeed, our commitments, our worries and anxiety, our wanting to be in control, our unhappiness), we would end up floating happy bubbles doing nothing at all.

How amazing that we are scared to be happy because we believe that we wouldn't do anything.

Everything Seems Easy When You’re Happy
I also thought of the times when I feel truly happy. In spite of beliefs that I need to hang on tightly to motivate myself, at those times I am totally motivated to do things and everything seems easier. I am joyful, my day is more colorful, I have amazing interaction with the people around me, I can focus better and I can inspire the ones around me to also choose happiness.

Dying from Happiness
Letting go my unhappiness producing beliefs was difficult for a long time because I believed that if I were happy I would die. Over time I created proof that disproves this belief. I have been happy many times, I have let loads of beliefs go and I am definitely still here!

I realize that I also believed that life is a school where I have to complete different tasks and when I will be done I will leave school. The goal is to graduate and get home to God. To graduate, I can't be happy (see my belief above); I need to be unhappy to live and learn my lessons and do my tests. Isn't it amazing what stuff we can make up about life. Does it really have to be this complicated or can we live simply happily?

Happy People are Weird!
Sometimes I believe that if I were happy all the time, I would be such a weird person that nobody would love me or want to be with me. I would just not fit in. But actually, since becoming more and more happy, I am finding more people who are on the same path and I am able to share my experiences with them. We are so good at scaring ourselves into unhappiness!

Letting Go of Expectations Works
Expectations are another area for me where I often practice letting go. In my job working with autistic children, I expect so much from the children I work with, but well... they don’t always do it.

Ok, ok, I am just joking! The Son-Rise Program is the place where expectations are left outside the door. This creates an amazing environment for the children that helps them blossom into wonderful flowers in the smoothest ways. When we start expecting, we start pushing or pulling and the other person tends to get stubborn or push back. And this is so true outside of the playroom, too.

Letting Go is Magic!
Magic happens when we let go! It is so amazing, many times almost in the instant we relax and say goodbye to our expectations, the other person does what we want him/her to do, immediately. Once a Son-Rise dad was telling us a story of his child not wanting to wear clothes. He and his wife were working with him to encourage him to wear clothes for a long time, but he just did not want to do it. One night they decided to be OK with their son not wearing clothes and the next morning he got dressed!

Isn’t that amazing? We work ourselves up, get unhappy to get others to do things, and the easiest and most pleasant way is actually when we feel relaxed and trust that it will all work out the best way.

The bonus is that we can be happy the whole time, before it works out, after it works out, and even if it doesn't work out!

So, let go... let go... let gooooo...

Labels: all blogs, barbara balla, philosophy, son-rise

Who are you? Although appealing, I'm not asking from an existential perspective, but instead from the perspective of the people around you, the people in your life.

Now the question probably has many answers based on the perspective of the observer. Your partner... your parents... your children... your coworkers... your boss... your neighbors... your band-mates... your fellow worshipers... the guy that sells you coffee in the morning... would all likely answer at least a bit differently, or perhaps, quite differently.

And then again, maybe not.

The Office Holiday Party
This time of year, many of us get to participate in a wonderfully rich experience called the office holiday party. The office holiday party is wonderful because it provides an opportunity to get to know people in ways that they might not otherwise be known. People tend to relax a bit, drink a bit and let down their hair, so to speak.

Many office parties include "significant others" which can serve as the pyscho-social equivalent of a sub-atomic particle-collider. It's amazing how different the perspectives of coworkers can be from those of a life partner. In an office holiday, you often get to see what happens when two strongly formed perspectives intersect at the same point.

The other night, I was invited to a holiday party for one of the companies with which I consult. Although it was a spouse-free party, it still was really fun to get to talk to people and ask them questions in an environment where they seemed more amenable to actually answering them, not just politely nodding and moving on, or responding with an I-don't-know. On Wednesday night, people were really thinking about and considering what they were saying.

It was delicious. I learned more about people in the space of just a couple of hours than I'd learned in twelve months. In many cases, I walked out with a completely different perspective than I'd walked in with. People who typically seemed a bit standoffish and distant, were open and engaging. People who normally seemed all-about-business, displayed deep interest in a variety of activities that had nothing to do with business. Managers who had appeared arbitrary and disconnected in their decisions, showed a deep sense of caring about what they were doing and the people who worked for them.

As Iris and I drove home yesterday, I thought about the disparity between the people I saw at the party and the people whom I would normally see in the office. I liked the people at the party much better. It's not that the people in the office are not likable; it's just that they don't even compare to the people who were at the party.

How Many People Can I Be?
Back in 2002, I participated in my first program at the Option Institute. It's called Radical Authenticity. To this day, I would suggest that, if you were to participate in only one program, make it Radical Authenticity.

For me, Radical Authenticity is not about lying or not lying, it's not about obfuscation or openness; it's about being consistent inside and out, and being exactly who you are independent of the situation.

By 2001, I was a least twenty different people depending on the situation. I had an almost chameleon-like capacity to morph myself to suit myself to the circumstances. I had founded an Internet security company raising $53M in venture capital over 18 months. I had a whole persona that went with doing business. Even that had different versions depending on whether I was working with the money guys, or the marketing guys, or the sales guys or the technical guys.

I had another persona for home where my kids were getting to their late teens and early twenties. And I had yet others for my parents, one for each. (People could tell when I was talking on the phone with my mom who was from South Carolina because I suddenly spoke southern; my dad doesn't speak southern). I had started racing mountain bikes with a bunch of people who were down-to-earth working-stiffs; so I had a totally-not-a-suit personality.

I can remember lamenting to myself, "I wish there were someone in my life with whom I could just be myself!"

Radical Convergence
Radical Authenticity helped me to change all that; and it wasn't a slow drawn-out process. A couple of weeks ago at Thanksgiving, my daughter Eila who now seems quite pleased with the transformation recalled thinking that I had been brainwashed or joined a cult; I had gone away for the week one person, and had come back someone completely different. Of course, the different person was just me.

Some people didn't know what to make of me. Some really liked who I was. Others really didn't. I loved it.

It was so much easier to be one person than twenty; so much less work; so much more fun.

I became more curious about people, who they were and why they were. I started asking the obvious questions that people often avoid regardless of circumstances. If someone seemed upset, whether it was at dinner or in a business meeting (where others might be ignoring their manner), I would ask them about it. I became the same person whether talking to an executive or junior staff member, whether talking to a scholar or a drop-out, whether talking to a client or a supplier, whether talking with my kids or my dad (my mom had passed away by then).

At a significant-other-friendly holiday gathering a few years ago, Rich Jerry, one of the software guys I was working with, leaned over to Iris and asked, "Is he really like this all the time?"

Iris responded, "Yeah. All the time."

He then asked, "So, when Mark tells me that he really wants to hear what I think, he really means it?"

Iris replied, "Yup!"

How Many People Are You?
So, how does this all work for you? Are you one person, consistent inside and out, independent of circumstances? Or, are you different things to different people?

If you are different things to different people, who are you? With whom? Why? How's it working for you? Do you resonate with the chameleon's lament of wishing you could just be yourself?

As we dive into the midst of this holiday season, whether it's an office holiday party or a family gathering, who are you going to be? Will you morph yourself into the person everyone expects? Or will you let go of all that?

To be clear, being consistent inside and out regardless of situation can be habit forming and not everyone will cheer you on. But in the end, the people who do cheer you on will mean it.

Who will you be today?

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Today, while driving home from gymnastics with the kids, I decided to avoid the highway.  This was just a hunch, a feeling.  I just remembered entering the highway on many occasions, staring at the traffic, and wishing that I knew another way home.

Learning can look less efficient
As I drove by the entrance to the highway, I didn't know what to do next.  I did have a GPS, but as you know, the GPS will try to get me back on the most logical path, in this case, the highway.  I had to ignore the GPS, follow my nose, take a turn here and there that the GPS suggested, until I saw a road that looked familiar.  "I know where this is!"  I thought.  This was North Ave, but much farther up than I had ever driven before.  Just to solidify the connections that were forming in my mind, I continued to ignore the GPS, drove along North Ave until I saw the familiar spots, then drove confidently all the way home.  An 18 minute journey became 35 minutes.  I learnt something new.

I'm learning to knit.  I get to learn so many things alongside our children in our homeschool.  Knitting is just one.  I decided to knit Zachary a scarf as my first knitting project.  At the rate I'm going, I may never knit again.  It is sooo slow!  I would have been much further along with the scarf if I had decided to crochet it, something I have been able to do since the age of nine.  Currently, with knitting, I'm clumsily going along, almost stabing myself with the needles, asking my eight year old daughter to help me, to show me a stitch, etc.  I am transitioning from conscious incompetence to conscious competence.  She thinks I'll be done with the scarf in February.  She might be right....

I'm realizing that I love to learn.  Once I've decided to be curious, I thoroughly enjoy the process of grappling with something, figuring it out and increasing my level of competence.  This is especially true if I think I'm going to have to explain the process to anyone else.  Sometimes that somebody else is ME.  I can't tell you how many times I have been able to apply learning in one area to another challenging situation.  My belief that I'm learning something that is possibly useful in the future helps protect me from labeling my experiences as inefficient and tedious.

But that's fine for when I'm not in a hurry!
Today was an easy example.  I was in no particular rush to get home.  I had the luxury of exploring.  It's somewhat more difficult for me when I'm focussed on a particular destination, trying to get there in the most efficient manner possible.  Then, the various occurances that look like obstacles aren't so intriguing.  I'm not the least curious about the possibilities in these new experiences.  So often, my focus on a particular outcome, and a particular procedure for achieving that outcome, shuts me down from the endless learning opportunities and applications in the present moment.

My mantra for this past year has been to 'slow down'.  That helps me to quickly get into a 'present' frame of mind.  When I'm present, I'm open to the posibility that there may be other procedures that will get to my desired outcome, and other outcomes that I may find desirable.  Whether I am being focussed and efficient, or meandering around smelling the flowers, I can be mindful of the generosity of the universe and the infinite possibilities present in any moment.

P.S. Speaking of being present, it's still not too late to get your holiday presents (a bad pun, I know) and support my fundraiser to help a family affected by autism.  Go to http://www.fclarke.ordermygift.com/ or contact me (faithclarke@gmail.com).  I can create an e-gift, which is a redeemable link to an item, or set of items that your recepient would choose from. No worries about shipping it on time.

Labels: competence, faith clarke, learning, present

Yesterday morning, as Iris and I sat in the living room talking with friends who had just popped by, we got on the subject marriage and children. In this case, it wasn't about getting married and having children, it was about guiding adult children on getting married.

One friend had a niece who had been swept off her feet by a man of the world so to the speak. He'd thoughtfully and creatively crafted every date to be a new and wonderful experience. He'd ensured that she received a steady stream of flowers, notes and gifts at unexpected moments and in unexpected places. He'd charmed and romanced her. She fell in love...

Now that they're married, all that has changed. All the creativity and energy that went into courting is no longer part of his MO. His attention to detail and control of every little aspect of dates that made them so wonderful now manifests itself in the need to control every aspect of home life. Since he makes a great deal of money and doesn't want her working, she doesn't. She's abandoned the passions of her youth to keep a meticulous house and raise a perfect family.

What's Your Advice?
As my friend told her story, she asked, "How do you guide your kids so that they don't end up in situations like this?"

We talked about how most relationships start with attraction and then try to reconcile a disparity in wants. We talked about taking a try-before-you-buy approach to marriage since everyday living is quite different than romantic getaways. We talked about not getting married at all.

As we talked about all this, we segued to the question, "What makes a partner a great partner?"

Amidst all the answers, one that really stuck with me is, "What makes a partner great is how he or she enables me in my desires and passions and how he or she brings out greatness in me."

The Best Thing Ever
This morning, I thought about being a great partner. How do you become one? Then it occurred to me that one model would be to strive to be the best thing that ever happened to the other person. Doing this subsumes so many other things. To be the best thing ever requires you to be completely aware of your partner, who they are, what they want and how they operate. To do this, you must learn not to stop judging what your partner wants, but to start judging it as great, wonderful, beautiful. To do this requires you to provide time, space and support for your partner's pursuits, not to simply step out of the way.

Now, I'm not suggesting that you morph yourself into someone you're not do so. Don't do that. However, considering the difference between who you are now and who you would be as the best thing ever might be a key indicator as to whether or not your relationship has legs.

A Custom Fit
The best thing ever comes in all shapes and sizes. My best thing ever might be someone else's total nightmare.

For example, for me, the best thing ever is someone who is confident, who likes to think, who's independent and confident, who is curious about anything and everything, who doesn't operate on 'shoulds', who's not afraid to fail, who loves what I love, who's active and energetic, who's optimistic and passionate, who doesn't take things personally, who's not dramatic or needy.

On the other hand, I know a lot of guys who prefer someone who needs them, who doesn't challenge their authority, who has a strong moral compass (shoulds), who does take things personally (they would call it caring), who doesn't constantly flirt with new ideas and concepts, who doesn't have their head in the clouds (overly optimistic or flaky).

There's definitely no one-size-fits all here.

Becoming the Best Thing Ever
It's a relatively easy exercise to come up with what the best thing ever means to you. How do you become the best thing ever for your partner?

One place to start might be rating yourself on you best-thing-everness. Here are some (highly-biased) questions that might help you in your evaluation. Please feel free to come up with your own.

1. Overall, do your interactions leave your partner feeling more energized, positive, and optimistic or less? Are you an energy adder or an energy drainer?
   
2. Do you know what your partner's passions and interests are? What are they?
   
3. Assuming that you know what your partner's passions and interests are, do you actively limit his or her pursuit of them, take a passive stance, or actively enable them?
4. Do you know your partners wants and desires, likes and dislikes? What are they?
   
5. Assuming you know the answers to #4, are the majority of your wants and your partner's wants reciprocal (e.g., I like to cook/she likes to eat), parallel (we both like to ski) or at odds (he likes to cuddle at night, I like my space)?
   
6. Now that you're in a relationship, does your partner do more of what she or he loves, less of what she or he loves, or the same amount?
7. In conversations, what percentage of the time do you listen to your partner, and what percentage do you talk?
   
8. Are you your partner's best friend? If so, how does that look? If not, why not?
   
9. When your partner is upset or angry, are you able to listen to him without taking things being said personally, or does his venting turn into an argument?
   

Getting Started
In the end, all this is more art than science, but it starts with a simple awareness of "am I a good thing... a bad thing... the best thing... the worst thing... that ever happened in my partner's life?"

Then you can start tuning it up with questions that are applicable to your situation. Am I energy source or an energy drain? Am I passion enabler or dis-abler? Am I needy and controlling, or empowering and freeing? Am I a source of confidence and optimism, or of doubt and pessimism? (By the way, if you have hangups about words like good, bad, best, worst, you can substitute any scale you want for best to worst: most useful to least useful, net positive to net negative energy, whatever works for you.)

With all this in mind, then you might kick things off by walking up to your partner this morning and saying, "Hey, I've decided that I want to become the best thing that ever happened to you! Can you help me with that?"

Then start talking about your wants and desires, your likes and dislikes, your passions and interests. Determine where you're aligned and where you're not. Identify places where you want to change. Then, daily set an intention to be the best thing ever for you partner.

Have the best Wednesday ever!

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, relationships

"Call me by my true name" is the title of a collection of poems written by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who has been a great inspiration to me. Whenever I see the title of the book I ask myself the question: Who am I? What is the name I want to use for myself? I want to be Joy, and sometimes Joyce.

Create more Joy
Four years ago during my first program at the Option Institute I started to call myself Joy. This because I wanted to invite more joy in my life. And it worked! Somehow it became easier for me to change my thoughts and behaviors when I changed my name. I started to meet new people with personal qualities I really, really appreciate. And I can say that it's been a great journey, and I am so excited about where I am today.

New people I meet know me as Joy, and I have created lots of new friends whom automatically call me Joy. Kids normally also call me Joy. It might be that they are used to take names in their games or maybe they are just used to respect other people’s requests. It is my experience is that kids are great advocates: they'll keep correcting their parents and grandparents if needed!

Labels: all blogs, beliefs, joy vigh strand, philosophy

I love the ideas that Iris put forth in her blog yesterday, Control or Be Controlled. After batting around ideas with Iris and then reading her blog, a lot of things fell into place for me conceptually.

Briefly, Iris put forth the premise that, contrary to the opinions you'll normally see voiced here on the A New Option Blog, there are indeed people who can control other people's thoughts, feelings and actions. However, their capacity for control is qualified; it only works when they interact with people who are willing to be controlled. Still, from the standpoint of an outside observer, person a appears to control person b.

Building Evidence
But wait, there's a bit more here and this is where it gets really interesting. Over time, person a's need to be in control results in his surrounding himself exclusively with people who are willing to be controlled. Commensurately, over time, the evidence that person a can control others increases.

So, for example, if you're a super nano-management control freak, over time you'll end up exclusively with employees who are willing to be nano-managed. You'll either fire the others or they'll quit. You might have transient exceptions to this, but they'll be ephemeral at best.

In the end, without unnatural effort, you'll just have supplicants.

Note: One caveat here is other influencing factors. You might have people who normally wouldn't suffer nano-management, but you've provided them other motivators such as disproportionate compensation, promises of future reward, nepotism, etc.

What Did You Expect?
Now here's the really funny part. For years, I've encountered nano-managers who've complained that they just can't seem to find really good people any more. They always end up with weak minded, uncreative people who lack energy, resourcefulness and confidence.

Well duh!

Of course, this phenomenon isn't limited to control-freakin' nano-managers. For example, if you're someone who always resists and/or gets defensive around strongly-opinionated, powerful people who think clearly and present strong arguments for what they believe, would you be surprised that you eventually end up surrounded by people who are wimpy? If you're someone who flies off the handle or gets really dramatic over bad news, why be surprised when everyone around you is inauthentic.

Compatibility Modes
Then it occurred to me that any personal characteristic or trait or skill has a an associated mode of compatibility: reciprocal, parallel or incompatible. I'm making this up as I go along, so the words may change over time, but here's the idea.

Parallel Mode: Parallel mode simply means people with a certain characteristic, skill or trait attract others with the same characteristic, skill, or trait. For example, skilled musicians tend to spend a lot of time with other skilled musicians. Marathoners tend to train with other marathoners. Strong, confident people tend to be attracted to other strong and confident people. (This last one bears some explanation that I'll provide in a minute).

Reciprocal Mode: Reciprocal mode implies a complementary, yin/yang relationship between traits. For example, controlling people tend find people who want to be controlled. Needy people tend to find need-to-be-needed people. Great teachers end up with great students. Strong confident people also tend to attract weaker, less confident people. (So, some traits can operate in either reciprocal or parallel mode).

Some reciprocal traits are symbiotic in nature, they feed off each other in a needy way. Others are more synergistic in nature, the strength of the combination exceeds the sum of its parts.

Incompatibility Mode: Then there are some traits that don't abide other traits, or even the same trait in others. Controllers don't last long with other controllers or with others who won't be controlled. People who are cordial tend not to suffer people who are authentic. High energy people tend not to spend a great deal of time with lethargic people and so on.

Of course, each of us exhibits a combination of these modes. You can have highly skilled, controlling musicians who lack confidence and you can have poorly skilled, easy going musicians who exude confidence. Also, there are always mitigating factors such as where and to whom you were born, if you really need the money, higher purpose, etc.

Still, if you were to take the time to look at your most dominant traits and then map each of them to a mode of compatibility, I bet that you would find the people in your life are the ones who either reciprocate or have parallel traits.

Not All Is As It Appears
An important thing to note is that some traits are easily confused. For example, there is a difference between strong people and strong-willed people. Strong people are confident and easy in their strength, they don't need to control or be accepted or recognized. Strong-willed people tend to control, seek recognition and dismiss people who disagree with them; their bigness is fear based; they lack confidence.

Another example is easy-going and apathetic. There are people who, because they don't react strongly to situations, can appear apathetic, when in fact they're just not dramatic.

Applied Compatibility Mode
So often, Iris and I encounter people who say, "I wish I could get more people into my life who... are more interested in important issues... who are more authentic and willing to engage... who are passionate about what they do... who are positive and upbeat, not downers... who want to talk about more than the weather or their latest acquisition... who are interesting."

Perhaps you've said something like this from time to time. Well, if you buy into any of my compatibility mode theory, you may want to start with you.

Can't seem to attract strong, independently-minded people? Perhaps, you're someone who exhibits a lot of drama, or need to control, or lots of judgments?

Can't seem to attract interesting people who really want to talk? Perhaps you're someone who never asks others questions?

Wish that your life were full of passionate, energetic, creative types? To what degree do you exude passion, energy and creativity?

Chemistry at Work
None of us is static in our traits, either across time or in the moment. There are combinations of people who bring out other traits in each other, an interpersonal chemistry so to speak. A great skier with no interest in teaching can become an amazing teacher when suddenly surrounded by skilled skiers with a passion to learn. A quiet, withdrawn, introvert can become a non-stop talker when he encounters a non-judgmental listener who persists in asking questions.

So, who have you attracted into your life? Are they who you want in your life? How have you attracted them? Are there others whom you would like to attract? What would you change to attract them?

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy, relationships

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.
Henry Ford

Yesterday, writing this article, I got really, really stuck. I was developing a new idea and every time I got to the part of the article that explained the idea, I decided that my theory didn't make sense! And so I started over, and over, and over...

Then around midnight, I went to Mark and asked him to listen to what I had written so far to see if he could help me along again. Long story short: I had decided that my thoughts were too convoluted and unclear to make it into this article today!

Labels: all blogs, control, iris tuomenoksa

My friend Kat (Houghton) has an uncanny ability to to transform dry research studies into meaningful, digestible and actionable concepts. She routinely bridges the gaps between physiology and psychology, between science and daily living, between thinking and doing. Over the last few months, thanks to her abilities, passion and hard work , I've learned more about how we humans operate than I have my whole life. In particular, I've learned more about how I operate.

Sensory Systems and ADD
For example, I now have a clue about my Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). Over the years, I've discovered that I can stay focused and keep my ADD in check if I workout vigorously a couple hours per day, drink a lot of caffeinated beverages, play loud beat-laden music and while playing an action movie on the TV. I could never understand how all this worked. Much to the chagrin of anyone living with me, neither could they.

Now, thanks to Kat, I understand it all has to do with the physiology of my sensory systems (sight, hearing, touch, sense of balance) and their state of arousal (the level of input that is required get them up and running). It turns out that my sensory systems nominally operate at a low state of arousal craving stimulation and input.

In the absence of a lot of sensory stimuli, when I haven't regulated myself with workouts or caffeine or Adderall, I tend to get distracted, fidget and fly from thought to thought to thought. Much to the annoyance of others, I tend to focus on the most provocative aspects of what has been said as it increases the energy level, rate and volume of the conversation. It's as though my mind were a big hydro-electric dam that overheats when there's not enough water passing through it. In lieu of the water flow provided by my sensory systems, my mind starts to manufacturer its own water.

(By the way, in a sort of cosmic joke, Iris operates at the opposite end of the sensory spectrum. All the stuff I do to focus get's her totally distracted.)

Under Control
For years, I tried to manage all this simply by controlling myself and how I acted, e.g. forcing myself to sit in a library and concentrate for hours at a time. Slowly I discovered ways of regulating my systems, not knowing that that was what I was doing (Faith I guess this would be an example of Unconscious Competence). I'd work out religiously, I'd drink espresso late at night to calm down, I'd fill my time with the most challenging and engaging activities I could find, I'd flood my environment with stimuli.

When I discovered the Option philosophy, I listened to Bears' Twelve Lecture Series repeatedly often playing it in the background as I worked. I studied the Power Dialogues book so much that I could recite many of the example Dialogues from memory. Through all this and lots of practice, I learned to manage my ADD in the moment by taking a snapshot of my current beliefs, analyzing them, and then deciding what to do with them.

At one point, I started playing with creating the effect of Adderall by thinking about it. I'd get up early in the morning and slip downstairs before anyone else woke up, sit down on the couch, pop an Adderall, close my eyes and then become completely aware of how my body responded. Later in the day after the Adderall wore off, I'd see if I could give my body the same experience by imagining it. I slowly learned to recreate the same experience without the Adderall. For me, it was similar to how I play piano. If I can hear something, I can play it, no written music required. So, I listened to my body on Adderall and learned to play it.

So Many Options
The beauty in this is that I've learned not one, but hundreds of things that work. However, I used to have a lot of judgments about good ways to manage ADD and bad ones. I would put things like changing my beliefs, playing Adderall by ear, working out, and doing challenging work into the good category, and things like loud music, medication, provoking others in conversation into the bad category.

As a result of judging some methods as good and others as bad, I would often deny myself the most useful and beneficial alternatives. All because I should be able to do it some other way. Nowadays, I go with what I know in the moment. If working out is an option cool. If the easiest thing to do right now is pop a pill, then pop I will. If I have the time and space to meditate myself into a non-ADD state, that's great. The wonderful part is that, by opening myself to all the options, I almost never experience ADD. It's really nice.

Missing the Obvious
I have so many wonderful people in my life who struggle with their own versions of ADD and who often deny themselves the most useful solution because they should be able to... do it themselves... do it without medication... do it cold turkey... do it some other way... do it by changing their beliefs... and so on.

For example, Iris has a rather volatile blood sugar system that can lead to commensurately volatile behaviors. I've gotten so I can spot the early warning signs before things get completely out of hand. As Iris' blood sugar dips and she morphs from sweet, talkative and engaged to distracted and less talkative, to quiet and unfocused, to short and pissy to downright angry. We used to address all this by Dialoguing. How are you feeling? Why are you feeling that? And so on. It could get, well, dangerous.

Now, we rather than Dialoguing our way through it, we just get her something to eat.

You Know What to Do!
I believe that oftentimes, when we feel stuck in a situation (depression, fear and anxiety, self-doubt, excess weight, poor condition), it's because we're overlooking, ignoring or pushing aside the most obvious solutions. We do this because we decide that obvious solutions are not good or they're too simple, or because we don't like them, or they're to difficult, or because there's got to be a better way.

For example, let's say you're an overworked, overweight parent flirting with depression. A really amazing solution would be taking your child out for a walk everyday. Pushing a stroller, walking hand-in-hand, observing the world around you, talking. It simultaneously solves gazillions of challenges: spending time together, sharing experiences, firing up your cardiovascular system, increasing your serotonin levels.

And yet, I can hear the litany of reasons why mom or dad might not do it. It's too hot. It's too cold. If I'm going to exercise, I want to really exercise. My child's schedule is too full already. I'm in no shape to walk that far. The list is as long as we are creative. And yet, were mom or dad simply to start walking with their child every day, for whatever time or distance they could go, remarkable changes would start to happen.

What simple solutions are sitting right in front of you staring you in the face? Why do you dismiss them? Are you ready to do what you know to do?

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

I mentioned the ANTS last time, didn't I? The Automatic Negative ThoughtS? So I got to thinking about the word 'automatic'. The freedictionary.com says automatic is Acting or done without volition or conscious control; involuntary.

Labels: all blogs, control, empowerment, faith clarke

One of the things I've always been really, really, really bad at is knowing when to quit. There are many times in my life when I've been the 'last man standing': not in the sense of a caged wrestling match, but in the sense of the last person believing that whatever we were working on could still work. Long after everyone had given up and gone home, I'd still be at it.

Now, this would be fine if, in the end, I had always failed. But unfortunately I've found that irrational and insanely optimistic perseverance can work. It doesn't work all the time, nor most of the time, nor lots of times. In fact, it barely works some of the time. But even that is enough for me to continue.

If only perseverance beyond reason never worked, then I wouldn't have this challenge.

Why is it a challenge? Well, it's a challenge because everything we do, every person we invest in, every hour we spend on a given project, is something else that we haven't done, some other person in whom we haven't invested, some project on which we haven't spent an hour. It's a "zero-sum game", so to speak. So, knowing when to drop one thing and pick up another is kind of important.

Don't be a Quitter!
My problem in particular has to do with judgments I hold around "quitting" or "giving up" or "surrendering". I grew up with a mom who taught me that, as long as there's something more you can do, then you should do it. To a large extent, I still buy into that belief.

I see so many people who make half-hearted efforts at something and then claim that they've done all that they can, and I judge them. I think to myself, "They've done all they can? That's patently untrue! I can think of twenty things that they haven't yet tried! They're lying! They're quitters!"

In fact, I've never encountered a situation in which I couldn't think of something else that might work. Just never happens. Moreover, my creativity and tenacity seems to be proportionate to the degree of challenge; the harder the problem, the more creative and persistent I become.

Sigh... So the question is, "When do you give up?"

Collecting the Last Toll
I have a friend who once, observing my frustration with my tenacity and perseverance said, "Imagine that you're a toll collector working on the Mass Pike. Hour after hour there are cars coming your way. You're getting tired, but you're determined that you won't quit until you've collected the last toll!"

As I considered his statement, everything I was doing seemed a bit silly. Obviously, you can always collect just one more toll before going home, and then another, and then another, and then another. Going on simply because you can seems a bit silly.

You get tired. You go home. You come back the next day. Seems simple.

But what about decisions where you don't come back the next day?

Breaking Up is Hard to Do
Tonight, I was talking with a friend who'd recently ended a relationship. He'd really poured himself into it, giving everything he had. He really loved the woman he was with, but she had so many challenges with accepting that he loved her, so many issues with jealously and anger, that he saw now path through. In the end, he decided that they weren't going to get to a place where he and she would both be happy. So he ended it.

As we talked, he would wonder aloud regarding what else he might have done. Because he's creative and smart, he could come up with at least five potential solutions for every challenge. It's endless.

How You Know When?
So how do you decide when enough is enough? When is it time to throw in the towel, to move on, to try something new? Do you convince yourself that you've done all you can? If so, is that really ever true? In a relationship, do you decide that the other person will never change? Perhaps you never try in the first place? Are you an "it'll never work" type?

Of course, the obvious answer to knowing when to quit is, "When I want to!" However, my guess is that most of us would never answer "Why did you quit" with "I quit simply because I wanted to."

When it comes to quitting, it seems that we need to justify our actions and decisions. Isn't it bizarre?

So, what's your process? What's your algorithm? How do you know? I'd love to hear from you.

Relentlessly, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

The importance of the vestibular system and its proper development cannot be emphasized enough. The vestibular system plays a critical role in our ability to be able to stand up right while safely and effectively moving through space. It is one of the very first systems to develop in utero and is fundamental to all future physical development. As human beings we are able to relate to the pull of gravity via the vestibular system and thus have power over our bodies and the surrounding physical environment.

The vestibular system as it pertains to all of the other systems in our brain plays a very similar role like a conductor to an orchestra. It is considered to be the orchestrator because it has its "fingers" or in other words neurological connections to all the other parts of the brain. Therefore all the other sensory systems (ex. touch, ears, eyes, proprioception- as it relates to body map, position, muscle force) must first match up with the messages of the vestibular systems upon taking further actions in order to function effectively.

All learning in the first fifteen months of life is centered on the vestibular system development. Our ability to maintain a sense of balance while sitting, walking, running, jumping; be able to tell a difference between specific sounds of a letter; and thus understand the different words that create our language; be able to use our eyes in relationship to the movement of our bodies is highly dependent on the proper functioning of the vestibular system.

Several factors may contribute to the disturbances in the vestibular system such as:

• Frequent ear infections
• Allergies
• Having been "shaken" as an infant
• Over growth of yeast
• Congenital birth defects
• Viral infections
• Lack of movement exposure in early stages of life

Children whose vestibular system is underdeveloped often become over-active or under- active thus have difficulty to focus, concentrate or pay attention. One of the major functions of the vestibular system is to be able to keep an appropriate level of alertness and organization in order to be ready for learning.

Labels: all blogs, autism, rita gendelman, vestibular system

It Started Like So Many Other Blogs
I mentioned the other day that, as my dad and I were talking over Thanksgiving, he expressed what I would call hatred towards certain political leaders. After he read my blog, he said, "I don't 'hate' anyone. I just don't like what they're doing!"

I responded, "Dad, you might not call it 'hate', but you certainly seem to hold great disdain animosity for the people you were talking about."

In the end, my dad held his ground that he didn't "hate" anyone.

What Does Hate Mean?
So, this morning I looked up "hate" and found:

hate: to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest: to hate the enemy; to hate bigotry

The synonyms of 'hate' are plentiful: loathe, execrate, despise, abhor, detest, intense dislike, aversion toward, and on and on.

The dictionary (dictionary.reference.com) had just one antonym: love.

Empowering a Word
Now, having grown up with a conservative Christian background, I can well remember being taught that we were never to 'hate' anyone. We were taught to 'love' the sinner, but 'hate' the sin. I can remember once running out of the Sunday school class room chasing a friend who had grabbed my books and run away with them. I tripped and fell on some steps and called out after him, "I hate you!"

All this took place right in front of my horrified mom, who quickly explained that we should never 'hate' anyone and that we should definitely never say 'I hate you' in church.

Now, what happens when we're told that we're never, ever supposed to do thus-and-such? Well, one of the things that we humans tend to do is to start calling thus-and-such, this-or-that wherever possible. You know, "I'm not lying, I'm just leaving out some information", or, "He's not ugly, he just looks different", or, "I don't hate so-and-so, I just don't really care for him."

We judge the word so strongly that over time, we don't actually see any of our actions as being characteristic of the word. The effect is to keep the action (or emotion) and lose the word.

Clarifying Empowered Words
So, as I stood by the sink washing dishes this morning, I thought to myself, "Hmm..., all these internal word games make discussing whether or not someone hates or lies or steals a pretty unproductive conversation. Even if we can get down to specific actions, we'll still end up calling them something else."

Then it occurred to me that this effect is perhaps an artifact of moving away from things versus moving towards their opposite. When we move away from actions, thoughts or feelings that we don't want, we judge them as bad or negative. Our judgment in turn creates a filter by which we start to see them less clearly. On the other hand, when we move towards actions, thoughts and feelings we do want, we also judge them, but we judge them positively. Our judgments create filters, but they're ones of attraction and positiveness.

Back to Not Hating
From a practical perspective, if I want to not hate someone, or not hate generally, then the most useful approach would be to actively love and to define hate as not loving. This has two really cool side effects:

1. Because many of us hold the concept of "love" in high regard and because many of us hold high standards for what it means to love, it's very easy for us to see when we're not loving. Certainly much easier to see than when we are hating.
2. Even if we still want to use the moving-away-from operational model, having a clear and easy-to-spot definition of "hate" (i.e., not loving) lets us tap into the full power of our moving-away-from motivations.

And Then Everything Changes!
Imagine how much differently we would behave if instead of not lying, we were going to always tell the complete, honest truth. Not doing so would be, lying.

Imagine if, rather than not being fearful, we were always going to be... ummm... err... what is the opposite of fearless? I mean, courage is in spite of fear. Well...

Imagine if, rather than not hating, we were always going to actively and passionately love. Not doing so would be hating.

How would that change your world?

Love, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

David has learned a new technique that has proven to be quite effective. I call it "using emotion to get what he wants". Others call it crying. What is so fascinating is that most children learn this technique quite early and depending on how well it works, continue to use it very strategically for the rest of their lives. David, who just turned six, is just starting to experiment with the idea. I am excited about this experimentation as it demonstrates that he is now learning and taking social cues from others, a challenge for most children with autism. I am most excited that his role model is his seven year old sister Aly who perfected the art of using emotions at a very young age.

Our team has spent a lot of time lately discussing the crying and everyone has a different perspective. I have learned through this process that heightened emotion is incredibly effective because it has stiurred up a myriad of emotions on our team. Although technically we have all been highly trained to not respond to the crying we are all responding in our own way. I am actually quite intrigued by the idea that we thought we were trained to not respond to begin with. Of course there are different ways of responding based on our beliefs and some responses may be more helpful than others but we are always responding.

So, where am I going with this? With all of this talking about crying and my recent interaction with David which went something like this: mom "why are you crying?" David "why are you crying?" mom "I am not crying why are you crying?" David "I am not crying why are you crying?" (for those of you not familiar with autism, repeating language is common in language development and typically happens before language becomes more spontaneous, it is sometimes called echolalia) I have really been reflecting about how we all use emotion to get what we want. I was most inspired by the combination of my conversation with David and a conversation I had with a few members on our team about when David was crying with REAL TEARS. I had to chuckle about the use of this phrase. When I asked people what they meant by REAL TEARS they all said, "you know when he is really crying verses when he is just trying to get something".

So, David doesn't think he is crying, he is wondering why we are crying, and others are deciding David's crying intentions for him and responding based on their beliefs about real tears verses fake tears. How fascinating! If all of this is true, we are teaching David how to magnify his emotions to ensure that we all belive his tears are real since the "realness" is what is getting him what he wants. WOW! How often do we do this in our lives? Think of things in your life or others that have been magnified to ensure people believe they are real. I would bet most people with stress and anxiety "disorders" started out with a little bit of complication in their lives but the little complication didn't get them the "rest" they needed but once they had a psycholigist, prosac, and a label, WOW, now it is real and people will pay attention. Or the people who go to anger management classes because they intensify their anger to make sure people know they are really mad. Here is a question: Does intensifying negetive emotion really work? Although I know I do this, I am now realizing that it never works for me. I intensify "overwhelm" hoping that others will do more so I don't have to "do everything". The truth is, I don't "do everything" and magnifying overwhelm has just gotten me more tired.

Experiment with me this holiday season. Magnify the good emotions of love, gratitude and happiness and see if it is more effective in getting you what you want!

Love to all,
Kathy

The other day, while talking with Mark K and my dad, Lee (I think I could write a million blogs based on discussions with these two individually, but together they're an inspirational smorgasbord), Mark said something like, "Well, I don't really care what you think!"

At that point, in a rare moment of agreement, Lee and I looked at each other knowingly both saying, "Wow, he's really concerned about what I/you think!"

One thing I've noticed is that people who really don't care about what other people think never actually say, "I don't care what you think!" The phrase is a bit of an oxymoron; if you didn't really care, why would you say it? (Now, I know that some of you who have said it are thinking, "Well, I said it because...", but just go with me on this.)

What is Caring?
For me, in an practical or operational sense, when we talk about caring, we usually mean that we've attached some portion of our happiness to the object of our caring. Operationally, we make the opposite of caring apathy and we often see not caring as bad. How can you not care about thus-and-such!

In some ways, we intimately associate caring with wanting. When we want something, we care about it. When we don't want something, we don't care about it. The experiences are often inseparable. We fire up our caring to go after what we want. When we give up, we decide that we don't care any more.

Why Care?
We care because it works. Attaching our happiness to the outcome of what we're doing is highly motivational. We set our sites on a new goal (graduating from college, getting a great job, being promoted, helping our special child, losing weight), and we start "caring" about it. Our care gets up and running. In most instances, the more we care, the harder we try.

Caring really works... until it doesn't.

And then it snaps back like a giant rubber band stretched nearly to the point of breaking and then released. Our caring flips from inspiring to depressing. The more we cared (the more we attached our happiness to the outcome), the bigger the bang.

But there's more.

Long before our caring boomerangs back at us, it starts coloring our vision. It begins to influence our decisions. Our integrity (consistency between what we say we believe and what we actually do) ebbs away. In some cases, caring (caring about causes or helping others) makes us self-righteous and indignant. In others it justifies actions that we would normally consider questionable. Our caring leads us to construct dichotomies (either/or situations).

Caring is a double-edged sword that can either empower and undermine us and our efforts: usually both.

What's the Alternative?
Whether or not we would articulate it, I think most of us have the belief that there's no alternative to the caring dilemma. We think, "If I didn't care about something, I'd never do anything about it!"

What if that weren't true?

Consider a small child playing with a stack of blocks: no goal in mind, no concept of metrics or quality, just playing with the blocks because he's curious, he's interested, he wants to. As children, we seem quite capable of pursuing any number of activities simply because we enjoy them. However, we're taught early on that we have to "care" about what we're doing. We have to do a good job cleaning our rooms. If we don't do well in school... If we don't take thus-and-such seriously...

What if you could fully invest yourself into an activity without caring about the outcome? Is it hard to imagine. Can you be passionate and not care at the same time?

Educated by the Left
A few years ago, I had fairly severe carpal tunnel and tendonitis in my right hand, wrist and elbow; so I decided to start doing everything left handed.

Writing and mousing with my left hand was a completely different experience than with my right. Because I wasn't experienced or facile with my left hand, I paid much more attention to the actual process of writing: how I held the pen, whether I wanted to move my fingers or wrist, my posture and position. I started enjoying the process of writing, not the creative process, but the physicality of putting pen to paper. It felt like fluidly skiing down a challenging mountain. It was fun.

Whereas writing with my right hand had become completely utilitarian (a way to get from point a to point b), writing with my left was an experience unto itself.

One day, I took two pens and wrote simultaneously with both hands letting my right hand mimic my left. As I did so, my right hand experience changed. I gripped the pen less tightly. I slowed down a bit. I relaxed my elbow and my shoulder. I let my right hand "enjoy" writing.

And guess what? I didn't experience any pain!

Passion with a Loose Grip
I think that many of us live our lives like my right hand; we let where we're going dominate how we get there because we care about getting there. The result is emotional tendinitis and carpal tunnel. We believe that, if we didn't care (focus or even cling to the outcome), we wouldn't do what we needed to do. Somehow we wouldn't take care of ourselves and others.

At the same time, caring cripples us.

Perhaps it's time to change that. Are the aspects of your life where you care so much about the destination that you've lost your passion and love for the process of getting there? What are they? If you could regain that passion and love for the "what" of what you're doing, would you? What if doing so meant, not caring?

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Sometimes I like to stop and check how I changed over time.

This Friday was a great opportunity. We had the company's Christmas party. This is a very popular tradition. Basically you eat, drink, have fun, and hopefully nobody will remember afterwards what you did!

We call it "Christmas lunch". It is a “dinner”, but in the tradition of a Danish Christmas lunch, which means:

Appetizers
Herrings (and other fish) and with this you have a lot of "Snaps" and Christmas beer
Diner
different dishes based on pork and duck (greasy heavy food) and more snaps and Christmas beer
Dessert
cheese - snaps (you are now to full to have more beers)
...and more dessert
"ris a l'amande" - the game is for one of us to find the one not cut almond, hidden in one of the puddings

Snaps is a strong alcohol made on potatoes and which has some cummen added - you might have to be Danish or Finnish to tell the difference between snaps and Vodka. The tradition is that if anyone says cheers everybody at the table will empty their glass of snaps.
Christmas beer is a beer only produced at this time of year, and it’s stronger than normal beer.
"ris a l'amande" - which is a rice pudding with almonds and cherry sauce (and one not cut almond, to be found in one of the puddings by us)

Yes, I changed #1
My first "challenge" was that half of our table was empty. We were supposed to sit with the agents. These are sales people who are normally not at the office, so we don't know each other very well.

The sales people had all gathered at two other tables and the ones who came late were placed with us. And after my table was first quite empty, later it was populated with men who had spent hours getting drunk during the dinner.

It's not that Danish people always gets drunk. For many people this is the only time of the year. I guess they just want to see themselves as young and reckless; at least for a night! For many people this night is the night you say the things you usually don't say, or just the night you act crazy.

I've gotten so used to saying what's on my mind that I don't save it for this one special day a year, so you can put me in the second category! And so I had decided to enjoy my table company and it turned out that I was so good at acting crazy that some people believed that I had been following the drinking tradition! I only drank one strong beer and a few light beer and then tap water, but I was having crazy fun!

Yes, I changed #2
I'm working for a company owned by a British company, and the head of the Scandinavia part is Swedish. The Danish employees of the company regularly joke about the "Scandinavian strategy" implemented into our company: it is trying to imply in Denmark what worked in Sweden ten years ago.
This is probably why they booked a Swedish band that was popular at the summer party in Sweden; regardless of the traditions at Danish Christmas parties.

The music was nice but colleagues started to complain about it. For example: “Only one of three singers is singing as much out of tune as I do!”

After listening for a few seconds to the music and the people around me I took a decision: "I want to have fun. Listening to the music and my colleagues will not provide me with the typical atmosphere of a Christmas party”. So while others were entertaining themselves by complaining about the music, I started dancing with one of the secretaries.

Yes, I changed #3
When someone joined me happily and talked about having wanted another music during dinner, I supported his or her view. When someone was complaining about the Swedish invasion (and some of the Swedish employees literally did use these words) they would smile when I would respond: "Nothing new. We always have to try what they are doing in Sweden. And in spite of the initiatives that do not have the same effect in Denmark, we still are able to create the best results, so it is not going to keep me from having fun.”

Differences
This might be a shock to people outside Scandinavia (it even is to many Scandinavian managers):

It might be that

• Scandinavian people LOVE each other when we meet anywhere in the world, and
• we all pay high taxes and want the state to pay for education, hospitals etc, and
• in general we are highly educated and highly independent individuals
• We are all starting Christmas early (the 24th)

But

• we do not share the same kind of humor, and
• we do not have the same way of working.
• we don't eat the same kind of meals for Christmas!

Yes, I changed #4
After the Danish dinner and the Swedish music, there was a band. And it turned out to be a Danish band that didn't play ABBA or other Swedish hits, but stayed mainly with wonderful American and Canadian tunes.

I love dancing, so I decided that I wanted to dance some more. This might have sounded easy to most people, but I have a history of back pains, which has not always been comparable with dancing. I had my back adjusted the day before the party and I woke up the same morning with pain as a reaction to the adjustment. So I had done an extra treatment the same morning and taken some painkillers.

Labels: acceptance, all blogs, joy vigh strand, wants

1. You can't keep this up, what if Jaedon is changing again and this becomes a permanent part of life?  
2. Can you have a good attitude about this?  
3. And you want more kids???  No wonder your husband thinks that idea is crazy!  You aren't even coping with the 3 you have...  

Labels: autism, faith clarke, panic

After my many discussions with Mark K and my dad (Lee) over the Thanksgiving weekend, I thought it might be fun to write the happiness (or unhappiness) corollary to the Miss Management Pageant which I've entitled Shortcuts to Unhappiness.

If you have a strong commitment to and strive for unhappiness, please know that proper and regular application of these simple and easy-to-do techniques can lead to sustainable and high quality depression and anxiety. If you're someone who wants to become happier, please know that regular application of these simple and easy-to-do techniques can lead to sustainable and high-quality depression and anxiety.

1. Attribute everything you do to either genetics or environment
   There's nothing so fundamentally disabling and dis-empowering as attributing everything that we do to either our upbringing and environment, or to our genes. If you want to keep challenges in your life like worry or fear or jealousy or anger or anxiety, simply pronounce, "It's just who I am!"
   
   If you're struggling with addiction, take comfort in knowing that there's nothing you can do about it. You're genetically predisposed to overeating or drinking excessively. You're just wired that way. It's just your lot.
   
   
2. Remind yourself and others that optim-istic is not real-istic
   Whenever you encounter someone who is sickeningly optimistic, write them off as a flake and remind yourself that you're not pessimistic, you're a realist. Optimism just sets us up for disappointment. It's better to never try than to try and than to have tried and lost.
   
   
3. Avoid meaningless activity
   A common theme among happy people is that they are active people. The specific activity doesn't matter as much as the being active part; it can be climbing mountains or washing dishes or walking around the block with your kid. Simply knowing that activity can improve your outlook on life, could pose a significant threat to your unhappiness. No worries! Simply dismiss anything that you're capable of doing as not worthwhile or meaningless.
   
   
4. Dwell
   A beautiful side-effect of low activity is that it gives you plenty of time to dwell on the past. When dwelling try to focus on those things that you regret or people who have "hurt" you or treated you unjustly. If you find yourself slipping into happy memories, pull a little unhappiness jujitsu and flip it into how sad you are that the happy memories are now just memories.
   
   
5. Kill curiosity before it kills your cat
   One of the more powerful weapons in both Mark's and Lee's arsenals of unhappiness is boredom. While sharing this with Jonathan, he wondered aloud how anyone could every be bored. (Jonathan is a man of a million ideas with the wherewithal to actually do them.) He then said, "What happens to people that they lose all curiosity?"
   
   Even if you buy into the whole genetics thing, each of us at least starts with a modicum of curiosity. A key to sustained unhappiness is killing it. Learn to find nothing interesting or inspiring.
   
   
6. Make every situation a dilemma
   The most effective way to stay stuck in a situation is to force-fit all decisions into a dichotomy (an either/or decision), in which both alternatives are wrong. Simply forget the fact that their are infinitely many solutions to any problem by insisting that there are always two, neither of which appeals to you.
   
   
7. Put obligation before desire
   A critical success factor in achieving unquenchable unhappiness is to always place your obligations before the things you want, especially when it comes to relationships.
   
   Start by recognizing that only people who are related to you genetically are your family. Remind yourself that the strangers whom you meet along the way, (the ones with whom you share dreams and passions, the ones with whom you can say anything, the ones that you love to be with) are not your family. Your family is your blood. You're genetically bound. These are the people you should be with, especially on holidays.
   
   
8. Jump to extreme examples of why something won't work
   I have two words for you, "Michael" and "Jordan". For some reason, people with a strong commitment to unhappiness frequently site Michael Jordan when attempting to prove that they're stuck with their lot in life. The statement basically takes the form of, "Thinking that you can simply decide to be something or do something is a load of crap. For example, you can't just decide to play basketball like Michael Jordon!"
   
   Alternatively, there's Tiger Woods. In the end, whenever someone proposes that you can step beyond your existing boundaries, that you can simply decide to be something you're not, remember "Michael", "Jordan".
   
   
9. Keep guilty secrets
   One of the things that I learned from my dad is that guilt and regret are powerful sources of unhappiness, perhaps the most powerful sources. You can turbo-charge guilt and regret by keeping them secret. If at all possible, never share them with anyone.
   
   
10. Answer personal questions with references to others
    Sometimes it becomes difficult to keep your sources of guilt, remorse and regret secret. Some pesky son or interested daughter-in-law may may persistently ask you questions about yourself and what's going on inside.
    
    If you find these questions impossible to avoid, the simple solution is to answer them with examples from someone else's life. By never answering personal questions with personal answers, you can guarantee that your secret guilt and regret never surface to see the light of day. You can maintain a source of perpetual unhappiness.
    

But wait, there's more...
Here are a few other tips that might come in handy.

1. Surround yourself with low energy people with a keen eye for what can go wrong
2. Know how to become obtuse and literal suggest an abstract concept that might work
   
3. In the event that someone tries to help you, insist that you do it yourself
4. Take everything personally
5. Reserve words like every, all, never and always for things you don't like
6. Dissect, pick-apart and scrutinize things you do like
   
7. Keep an account of what people have done to you
8. If someone does something nice for you, question their motives
9. Always end conversations just before reaching closure
   

What About...
It just occurred to me that you could almost reverse my list by making it an unhappiness calibration tool rather than a guide. All you'd need to do is look at each of the techniques, and then determine to what degree you (or the subject of calibration) practices them. For example, technique number one might become: On a scale of one to ten (ten being quite often), how often do you attribute things to genetics or environment?

Whether your goal is deep dark depression or unquenchable bliss, I hope that my little guide will make getting there more enjoyable.

Happy Wednesday!

Labels: adventures in happiness, all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

I had a really interesting experience Friday evening while commuting home from work. Calgary had a snow fall in the afternoon and by rush hour the snow had melted and then frozen. The main roads were slathered with ice. There were many collisions and abandoned automobiles. The Calgary area was in gridlock big time.

What is normally a twenty minute drive, took me four hours. Most of the time I was not moving and when I was moving, it was more like creeping than driving. I was going so slowly the speedometer didn't move!

Labels: choices, dangerous conditions, traffic, wake up call