Belief Makers

The western part of Europe has recently been influenced by the plume from a volcano in Iceland. The volcano is called Eyjafjallajökull, which seems to me more difficult to pronounce than Tuomenoksa! The power of this volcano is even more difficult to comprehend than its pronunciation. At this moment there is still more plume coming and we do not have the knowledge to stop it or to calculate the duration.

The last two days the sky has been blue, and every time I looked up in the sky, I could not detect the plume. It is hard to imagine that it is up there while I cannot see it, but I surely felt it because the temperature has dropped significantly.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull has given us, the western Europeans who are not used to tornados or earthquakes, a great opportunity to observe our reactions.

My first reaction:
My first reaction was fascination. I found this whole situation mind blowing (I mean this in a positive sense). I saw the pictures of the volcano and pictures of the plume and I was completely fascinated.

At the same time I felt at deep respect for these enormous powers. Mother Earth calling us.

My second reaction:
My second reaction was to be grateful for the opportunity for us to learn from this.

In the Danish news I watched a scientist explain how fabulous an opportunity this was: this plume is acting in similar ways to the reaction after an atomic bomb. It went higher and moved slower, but the patterns in which the particles moved were similar. This meant that the scientist, who is responsible for calculating the effects of an atomic bomb, had the possibility to test his models on questions like: What is the possibility that the plume reaches our country? If the plume reaches our country, when will this happen? How long will it take to pass the country? He creates projections for all the information you need in order to make and maintain evacuation plans.

How often do we judge events as bad when they can be seen as great learning opportunities? How can I ever judge an event as good or bad when I do not know the specifics of whom or what may benefit from this event?

My third reaction.
This reaction was the one, which surprised me the most. I realized that I have no idea of the greater impact my wishes have.

Today some people asked me to meditate on keeping the plume less than three kilometers high so that we could soon fly from Europe again. Earlier this weekend I heard that if it would start to rain then the plume would not raise as high and this would give us better chances of flying.

But what happens if the plume is low? What happens if it starts raining?

During the first days the volcano directly impacted only the people close to the volcano in Iceland. They have been keeping the animals indoor because there is too much powder on the ground and this can be harmful for the animals. When it has been raining people and animals stay inside since it could be harmful for the lungs. Now, if it starts raining here in Denmark, while the plume is above my country, we are also advised to stay indoors.

They say that Eyjafjallajökull is not very harmful, but it is close to the biggest volcano on Iceland and it seems possible that it can "wake up" this neighbor called Katla.

I don't know if the rain will have any influence on the possibility of waking up Katla, but I when I got the request of wishing for the plume to get lower my reaction was: how can I know if this will be more harmful, if it might influence the awakening of Katla?

My fourth reaction
My fourth reaction was how surprisingly calm I felt not knowing what would happen in the future.

Historically this volcano becomes active every 200 yrs. The last time it was active it lasted one and a half years (on and of). How long time will it last now?

Last time it was active no one bothered about airplanes! But if it stays active for that long this time, how would it influence our lives? No flights to the USA? Would we sail to Iceland to take a flight from there (in Iceland only eastbound flights are influenced)?

Will we start living with a different attitude? Like: if I can't fly today, then maybe tomorrow or next week? Will we invent aircrafts who are less sensitive to the plume or who can fly under it?

A short term effect has been friendly people offering people they don't know a long distance ride in their car, since trains and busses didn't have capacity to take all the people who missed their flights.

And there have been some beautiful sunsets...

I would love to hear your reaction to Eyjafjallajökull's activities or to experiences with earthquakes, tornados or....

Love Joy

Labels: all blogs, beliefs, joy vigh strand, mother nature, reactions

"The future is brightly illuminated by the burning bridges of the past."

Teflon

This is a quote that I have come to love more and more deeply. As I said goodbye to my old colleagues to begin getting ready for my new job, I was enjoying myself. I reflected on the year that had past, the challenges, how I'd handled them, the colleagues who supported me and those who didn't.

It felt good to say goodbye. I didn't feel like running away or being pushed away.

Don't Slam the Door
Next day, as I was walking the dog, I remembered the quote from Teflon and smiled as I thought "YES, this is it!" I was raised with the expression 'Don't slam the door', meaning that you should never leave a place in an angry manner. So far I would agree, but the way the phrase was interpreted by most people meant, "be sure they'll take you back if you ask."

I did not slam the door, but I did close it! I told them how the new company has made the effort to create a position that will fit me. How I am looking forward to it.

When I leave through my front door I do not slam it, but I also don't leave it wide open. I close it. I lock it. (I never used to lock my door, but this one will swing open if I don't so I lock it.)

But you know what? I've always been able to unlock it when I returned. What I am trying to say is that burning the bridges doesn't mean that I cannot build them again if I want to. It might not be exactly the same bridge; it might be stronger and more beautiful; the new bridge could be unstable and break.

Yes or No
Burning bridges also means that, when I get a question, I give a yes or a no answer; I don't live in the maybe's. When I decide to leave a job, I leave it. When people say that they would like to see me back, I'll smile and say 'thanks'. It doesn't mean that I'll never be back. But for now I'm gone.

If an ex-employer offered me an old job back the answer would be 'no' -- that bridge no longer exists. However, if they offered me the opportunity to join a new venture with them, I would definitely consider the possibility.

Doubting
Burning bridges is new to me. It feels good, but there are times when I ask myself whether or not this is a bridge that I now want to rebuild, or, what would happen if others still believe that there is a bridge?

Last year I said goodbye to some old friends. Now they just sent me an invitation. This time the invitation included a girl who is now living in Australia and hasn't been back in Denmark in a while. My inclination was maybe, to keep the door open, to not decide, yet.

However, as I reflect on this, my answer has changed. I burned those bridges for a reason. Spending time with those people is like eating an ice cream: the taste is sweet but it isn't really nourishing.

They tell me how much they want to get together, and yet they often hesitate when I ask to set a time. Their way of keeping friendship with me is to meet once a year and have absolutely no contact in between.

I am actually really clear that this is not how I want to do friendship. I like to spend time with people who I find interesting and inspiring, and who want to spend time with me. To accept an invitation from this group of people I would need a bigger reason than a person returning from far away, a person who I stopped writing to because she didn't return my letters.

I guess that the kind of friendship they are offering is just not for me.

Now it's clear: if I had the choice between a day with this group or to spend an hour in the playroom, I would chose the playroom without hesitation. If I had the choice between a day with this group or a cup of coffee and a deep discussion with my girlfriend and her husband, I know what I would choose.

Are you clinging to old bridges? Living in maybes? Often? Sometimes? Never?

Big Love

Joy

Labels: all blogs, burning bridges, change, choices, joy vigh strand, solar system, wants

Some months ago my good friend Mark K was very engaged in his reading of (i.e., listening to) Martin Seligman who has a long background in positive psychology.

I finally got the CD, Learned Optimism, that included an evaluation of your optimism profile.

The test is very simple and can be found on the Internet at Optimism Test.

The survey basically asks you about how you respond to good and bad events (or stimuli), and then measures the degree of pervasiveness, permanence and personalization of your beliefs. The pervasiveness, permanence and personal nature of beliefs correlates directly to your level of optimism.

Permanence
The permanence of a belief has to do with how long you believe something will last. When you get sick, do you feel as though you'll never get well (permanent) or do you feel as though it will be over quickly (not permanent)? If you get fired, do you believe that you'll never find a job or that you'll get a job quickly? If someone says they love you, do you see that as a forever statement or as something that needs to be reinforced frequently? These are examples used to measure permanence.

Optimistic people tend to ascribe little permanence to negative (unhappiness-fueling) beliefs and situations, and significant permanence to positive (happiness-fueling) situations of beliefs. I tend to see bad events as something that will pass (which gives me a high score on the bad-permanence factor). However, I also see many good events as something that will end some time (which gives me a low score on the good-permanence factor).

So I started to question myself: do I believe that I can change so I keep seeing bad events as temporary, whereas I prolong the expected duration of good events?

Labels: acceptance, all blogs, control, joy vigh strand, optimism

If you wonder if you have read Optimism Test: Part One, then the answer is NO! Or at least you have not yet read a blog written by me called Optimism Test: Part One. If you wonder why this blog is called Optimism Test: Part Two, then you might have the same feeling as I had last Sunday when I was discussing optimism... we never came to the starting point, or rather we never came to what I had expected to be the starting point.

The Starting Point
Every three months I meet with a group of Danish people who have two things in common:

Labels: all blogs, choices, joy vigh strand, optimism

Recently we had some discussions about ADHD and medication, and now I want to suggest another consequence of ADHD: being great at coming up with new ideas.

Creating New Ideas
Today I received an email from a friend in my Danish Option network. We regularly meet to discuss 'Option-related' topics. In the email he asked me for a topic idea for our next meeting. I hadn't thought about it, but I easily came up with five topics without missing a beat. This was what he expected because he also wrote, "or do you have a whole list of topics?"

Whenever I talk with the mom running the Son-Rise program that I volunteer in, I am often in awe of all she has been doing in the playroom since the week before. And yet, as we talk after my session, she always has three new ideas of things to try in the next week. She's never at a loss for ideas.

This skill is very useful when I am teaching meditation. During the classes, many people have challenges when they are asked to meditate at home, but when they tell me about their experiences I can usually help them with ideas of how it might work for them: ideas ranging from listening to music, to meditating two minutes before driving, to doing active meditation while swimming, to meditating while peeling potatoes. I always have enough new ideas to help people.

From time to time, one of my friends will call me with a problem saying, "I have no idea of what to do!"

In this case, she means that she can't think of anything to do.

I'm never at a loss for ideas of what to do. If I do say, "I don't know what to do", it's because I don't know which idea to pursue, or I want some help implementing my ideas, or I'm just becoming impatient.

I've never thought about how I create new ideas. I've never experienced an issue where I have had absolutely no ideas. I do have times where I judge my ideas as "too difficult" or "not likely to work." But, I always have ideas.

Input Delivery Machine
When people ask me for input, I am often surprised by how much knowledge I have on what seemed to be an unknown topic to me.

I was invited to attend a meeting at work tomorrow, because even though it is not directly related to my daily job, it seems that no one else poses as many helpful questions in meetings as I do. I get invited to all kinds of planning meetings to help with creative ideas, everything from workshops to children’s birthday parties.

How do I do this? First I just start talking, mentioning everything that comes to my mind. Then I ask what ideas resonate with others and what ideas don't. We continue from there.

When people ask for input it is often as if the thoughts in my mind fight to see who gets to come out first. I really don't understand how people can sit in a meeting being asked for input and have nothing to say.

Responding to Ideas
Some people are great idea supporters; if you bring up an idea, they'll jump in with a thousand reasons why it is a great idea. I could do that, but I would struggle with all the reasons why it would not be a good idea or why other ideas should also be considered. I have lots of ideas about ideas.

When people present an idea to me, I actually don't always know what to do. I'll usually ask them.

Sometimes people will present an idea to get my input on whether or not it will work. Other times they present an idea they've already decided to go through with.

It's much easier for me when people want me to help them to create ideas than if they want my input on ideas (especially ones they've already decided to pursue.)

What About You?
I believe I may be I handling ideas differently than most people. So now I want to ask you:
Do ideas come easily for you or do you struggle with ideas?
What are times when ideas come easily and what are times when ideas come with difficulty?

Labels: all blogs, ideas, joy vigh strand

Over the last year, many people have suggested that I see a psychiatrist and to check out if I have Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

My first reaction was, "WHY?"

I didn't question whether or not I had ADHD; my knowledge was limited, but the few things they told me about ADHD sounded like me. No, the WHY was more of, "How could it possibly help me to get diagnosed?"

My guess was that even with a diagnosis, I would still have a problem with clutter, disorganization and mess; I would still feel an urge to interrupt people and to finish their sentences; I would still...

So, why would it be in my interest to get diagnosed rather than simply addressing what seemed to be obvious challenges?

A Little Research
Just before Christmas, I decided to look more into ADHD. My first reaction to the information I found was a sense of confirmation; my second was grief.

I realized how much I have identified with being a messy person and how many self-judgments I've held. (Yes, Benevolent Warrior, even a Mentor certified at the Option Institute^TM can still hold self-judgments; just not while facilitating a dialogue.)

I realized how good it would feel to tell my friends and family that my habitual messiness came from not knowing how to be neat and from becoming extremely tired every time I looked at the clutter.

Imagine if, in preparing for her marathon, Iris' legs got extremely heavy every time she looked at her running shoes. It would be a loooooong way from where she is to finishing that marathon.

Well, that's how I feel about organizing stuff. Every time I look at the clutter, I get tired. Then I get confused as I try to stop myself from being tired, but can't figure out how to do that either. My confusion makes me even more tired and voila, it's a loooooooong way to a neat apartment.

Diagnosis for Whom?
I quickly realized that it was not my family I needed to tell this to; I needed to tell it to myself. As soon as I gave myself the diagnosis of ADHD, I started to let go of my self-judgments. For years I've tried an endless variety of approaches to cleaning based on my judgments that I should be able to clean my apartment. Now, having ADHD, I decided to just make it really easy: do 5-10 minutes and then take a break.

After taking some tests on the Internet, my next step was to get an appointment with a psychologist specialized in ADHD. She confirmed the diagnoses (it's still not official since only a psychiatrist can diagnose you with ADHD) and she gave me the name of a psychiatrist so I could try some medications.

So Now What?
What I did since the meeting with the psychologist (other than looking forward to trying some meds that might show me what peace of mind can be like), was to determine:

1. which of my symptoms pose the biggest problems for me,
2. what characterizes times in my life when I seem to have more problems,
3. what characterizes times in my life when I seem to have fewer problems.
4. what research is available on ADHD that could be useful to me.

What I have come up with so far is:

1. I don't work well in noise such as sitting next to someone who is always on the phone
2. I can do anything for five minutes
3. I thrive in workshops and brainstorming sessions where multiple ideas are on the table at the same time
4. Having my skin touched calms me down
5. There doesn't seem to be connection with food and ADHD other than what is good for everyone
6. Vitamin D might have a positive influence on ADHD symptoms (I want to learn more about this)
7. Low estrogen increases ADHD symptoms
8. Strenuous workouts can be effective in helping with ADHD; however, I'm not sure if this is only true for men, since I believe that it might also lower your estrogen level

It's Nice to have a Diagnosis

Labels: ADHD, all blogs, awareness, diagnosis, joy vigh strand

Recently I have thought about what loyalty means to me and I want to share with you some thoughts based on the definitions from Wikipedia:

Loyalty and Marketing
The practice of providing discounts, prizes, or other incentives to encourage continued patronage of a business. Generally, loyalty programs are considered less expensive to maintain than allowing customer defection or 'churn'.

In most of my work life I have been working in what we call "Customer Relationship Management" (CRM), or Customer Relationship Management Analysis.

To manage your customer relationship means among other things that you want to decide which customers you want to keep and which you do not want to keep, and how much you are willing to pay to keep your customers.

You might think that it is a simple calculation: money in - money out, by watching the balance. It's not that simple. I used to work for a phone company, and I can tell you: there isn't a simple relation between what the company earns per customer and size of their bills! It's a calculation of the amount of in going and out going calls and where there are directed to and from. What time were the calls, did we get the information on the call or were there delays? How much time did we spend on the customer, what price the phones were that we gave them. And last but not least: who is his network? If we loose one will we then loose others, because they are used to call each other at a cheap rates?

We did not want to keep all our customers, or we did not want to keep them all on similar terms. We wanted to keep the customers who paid well for the services we provided. Among those customers we looked for the loyal customers and we looked on how we could increase their loyalty.

• Step one is purchasing and re-purchasing (what we call having a long lifetime)
• Step two is having them not use our competitors’ products
• Step three is advocating for us

On the other hand: having a large number of customers was important at the stock exchange, regardless of the value of each customer. So we also wanted the not-loyal customers, but at what prize?

Loyalty and ethics
The concept of loyalty is an important part of ethics. Plato originally said that "only a man who is just could be loyal", and that loyalty "is a condition of genuine philosophy". The philosopher Josiah Royce said it was "the supreme moral good", and that one's devotion to an object mattered more than the merits of the object itself. Loyalty is a quality you look for in a friend.

I agree: Loyalty is definitely what I look for in a friend. I see loyalty in a friend as someone who is true to their word, who'll do what they said they would do. Who will say the same things to my face as they would say behind my back.

I find it interesting that Plato relates justice and loyalty. To be just means to have the "right" morals, but according to whom or what? Does it mean that I can only be loyal to someone or something who is sharing my perception of what the right morals are?

I guess: Yes!

Let me give you an conversation I had with an ex: If I believed that one should never lie and you believed that it was ok to lie but that one should never say something bad about another person. And then you would ask me about your haircut and I didn't like it. Saying that I didn't like it would then be disloyal to you, saying I liked it would be disloyal to me.

What I take from Plato is that loyalty is subjective and that we will always see loyalty according to our own ethics. Even if we see ourselves as loyal, people with different ethics might see us as disloyal.

Loyalty is an illusion
If I get Josiah Royce right then being a loyal friend means that the value of being a friend means more than the value the person you befriend has (according to whatever standards).

So maybe loyalty is an illusion, or loyalty is based on an illusion. It is not based on values or facts but just a decision: this is what I make up that loyalty is and these are the people or causes I want to be loyal to. And no one can prove that I am loyal.

Loyalty within Hierarchy
Within hierarchies loyalty usually has to be given to authority.

This is one of my favorites, because I know that when it comes to authorities I have a different way of showing loyalty than most others: I am authentic! I believe that being honest is one of the biggest signs of authenticity and loyalty I can give. Some people believe that obeying or pretending to agree is the biggest signs of loyalty.

Loyalty in the Bible
Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other." (Matthew 6:24 NIV)
Attempting to serve two masters leads to "double-mindedness" (James 4:8), undermining loyalty to a cause.

James 5:2. The Bible also speaks of loyal ones, which would be those who follow the Bible with absolute loyalty, as in "Precious in the eyes of Jehovah, is the death of his loyal ones", (Psalms 116:15)

I used to believe that I had made up my own religion. I wasn't brought up in a religious home but as a kid I learned a lot about the bible. And what I understood was that "God will always forgive you", "There are no sins" and "Thou shall love thou brother". What I got was: we are all doing our best and God loves all of us. I really meant ALL OF US. So you can imagine I got confused when I heard people condemn gays or people of other religions. First I thought that they just hadn't read the bible yet. Later I thought that I had just made up my own religion since I seemed to get something different from the same book.

I believe in Jesus saying that you cannot have two masters. You have one or none. But this also means to me that if God exists, them I am one with God. Because if I am loyal to God I cannot be loyal to anyone else unless they have the exact same morals as I have. I can only be loyal to God if we share the same morals. If not there will be times where I will be disloyal to him or to myself. I believe that I am always doing exactly what I want to be doing so I cannot really break my own moral standards, I can only change them. So if I am loyal to God then my moral and my ethics are the same as God's morals.

If I am God I guess that everyone who believes in God is God. But in my thought process this leads to God is everyone, and this means we are all the same, which really confuses me because I experience that we are not always loyal to each other. I have had friends who would one day say that they would help me, and the next day they would say that helping me would mean being disloyal to someone else.

I just want to be loyal in my own way, to my own standards, and I am blessed with the knowing that my loyalty is the same as being God.

So maybe loyalty is one big illusion based on an illusion. Maybe that's why Wikipedia writes that:

Loyalty plays an important rule in Literature.

Labels: all blogs, beliefs, choices, empowerment, joy vigh strand, Loyalty

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

"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

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

A question that has been on my mind lately is, "How can I become more effective at getting answers to my questions and providing relevant answers to other people's questions?"

Statements or Questions?
We are often met by questions that I would call pseudo questions. A pseudo question sounds like a question, but in reality is a statement. We often voice statements as questions, when we think that there might be a disagreement and we want to avoid conflict.

An example of this might be a mother asking her teenage son, "Don't you really think that you need a haircut?"

It sounds like a question, but it's not! The parent believes that her son needs a haircut, but the son likely doesn't believe the same thing.

Pseudo questions are also asked when people want to illustrate a point. When Teflon asked Paul "How many people do you know who mostly play low notes?" (see Generally Speaking ), it's my guess that Teflon was attempting to show Paul that he'd been speaking using generalizations and had no specifics. He wasn't actually interested in hearing Paul's detailed response. He probably didn't even anticipate a response.

Of course, I cannot know what Telfon’s intentions were, but that's my guess.

Non-answers
Yesterday, I asked the twelve-year-old Antonia, "When will you be done with the computer?"

Her answer was (referring to her brother), "He was at the computer for an hour!"

In this case, I finally got an answer to my original question by clarifying that it was OK for her to also be on the computer for an hour and then finding out how long she had been on the computer thus far. I have the feeling that Teflon would call her original answer a not-even-wrong answer.

Now, I didn't know the house rules specifying that each child was allowed thirty minutes on their preferred computer, but Antonia did. When she heard my question, she replied from within her context of knowing the thirty-minute limit. Knowing that her brother had violated the limit, she immediately launched a "not-fair" defense, rather than simply saying, "I'll be done in forty minutes."

In an Option Dialogue we say, "You are never more than two questions away from an "on" question: that is, a non-directive, non-judgmental and helpful question."

So we can usually get back on the road quickly, when we pose a question that doesn't turn out to be particularly useful.

Answering Pseudo Questions
How many times have you heard questions such as:
I don't think it's fair to call these questions! Think of the potential answers:

When we were trained with these kind of questions, we were also trained to look for hidden reasons behind them. Antonia suspected that my hidden agenda was to stop her from playing in ten minutes, so she provided an answer to address my supposed agenda, creating a non-answer to the question that I had posed.

Creating Context
In Winnie the Pooh, each chapter has a title that tells what is going to happen, such as, In Which Piglet Meets a Heffalump. This way we know beforehand where the focus is going to be.

The same can be done with questions!

One way to ask a question that will be answered in a useful way is by stating our wants or intentions clearly before asking the actual question. For example, I might have said to Antonia, "I want to know which game I can play with your brother before he goes on the computer, so when can I expect you to be done?"

Creating a context for my question might have saved a lot of time with Antonia and would have given me a more relevant response.

Trusting Answers
Once we've established a context for our questions, we also need to establish a context for the answer. We want to understand where the other person is coming from and we must plan to trust the answer we get.

With my ex-husband, I gradually learned to clarify my questions and become clearer on what I wanted to know, but he would still respond with "not-even-wrong" answers!

My ex-husband was raised in a family where it was important to tell the women what they wanted to hear! So, when I would ask, "when will you be home tonight", he would assume I that didn't want him working overtime and he would tell me that he'd be home early.

I soon learned that the answer to my question bore no resemblance to the actual time he would show up. So I would start asking questions like, "I would like to plan what to do after work. My preference is to have an early dinner, but it all depends on when you'll be home. I can start cooking as soon as I come home or I might first go for a run. What time do you expect to come home?"

It worked, sometimes!

Sometimes I would call him after my run and he would say, "I'll be home in twenty minutes".

My experience was that this could mean a lot of things. His drive from work took around twenty minutes. So, I would ask, "Where are you?"

When the answer was "in the office", I would know he likely would be answering a few more emails, and making a few phone calls before heading home. I would only trust the twenty minutes when he was actually walking to the car when I called. If he were already on the road, I would clarify where he was and make my own time estimation.

Long term, this was not the way to go; I gradually trained him that I did not trust him.

So, in some cases, creating context can be useful, but not if you plan on not trusting the answer before you pose the question.

Clarify
Marshall Rosenberg suggests in his book on non-violent communication that it is very useful to rephrase a statement in your own words, e.g., "What I hear you saying is... Is that what you are saying?"

We could do the same with questions, "What I hear you asking me is... Is that correct?"

Rule of thumb: Make sure that you understand the question before answering!

My sister, usually very clear in her communication, posed me some questions today.

Question 1: "Joy, will you help me?"

I am usually pretty helpful, but I do like to know what I am getting myself into. So my answer was a clarifying question, "What do you want me to help you with?"

Question 2: "Could you check if the link works?"

This required a few questions and qualifiers of my own to answer her meaningfully. I responded, "Do you mean the link that you posted on Facebook? It takes me to a site with a list of candidates. It takes me to the top of the site, but not to the specific candidate you want me to vote for. If this is the link you are referring to and that is the place you want to link to, then yes, it does work. If not..."

With all this clarification, I see myself as helpful when I answer a question, but I know that some people see me as someone who likes to make things complicated!

So What?
In the end, I think we can all become better askers and better answerers by following a few rules of thumb.

1. If you want an actual answer, don't mask statements as questions
2. If someone asks you a pseudo question, say, "Hey, that sounds more like a statement than a question. Is there something you'd like to say?"
3. Before asking a question, make sure that you've established a context for it
4. If you're not going to trust the answer anyway, then don't ask the question
5. Before answering, make sure you actually understand the question
   

What do you do to get good answers to your questions? How do you make sure that you yourself are providing good answers?

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

One of my favorite movies is Forest Gump. I think it has a lot of good quotes and it shows that you do not need to be smart to accomplice big things - and a boy who can hardly walk can actually learn to run.

When I was a teenager I thought I could never run. I have a funny knee which kept getting inflamations whenever I tried to run. So I started to row and do weigths - and it turned out that this practice actually strengthend my knee so I could run.

But rowing was my first priority, and I kept rowing - I won the national championships in my country and got to the finals in the world championships - I kept rowing until I hurt my achilles.

For years I was struggling with my achilles - and this kept me from rowing AND from running, until one day more than 10 years later when I got this idea which could seem crazy to some people: I decided that I wanted to run a marathon.

Just think about it: at the time I had not been running for years. My longest run ever at the time was 13 km - or a quarter of a marathon - and the longest run I had done with the previous 5 years was 5 km.

So I startede out with 2 x 2 minutes running and increased from there. Within 6 months I did my first half marathon - the following year I did Copenhagen and Berlin Marathon.

Why do I mention this?
To me this is an example of how I operate: if I wants something in my life I'll make a plan, I'll move step by step towards my goal. - if I can do a marathon I can do anything!

The only problem with this this approach is that I tend to often move with small steps rather than quantum leaps - but the advantages is: I keep moving and I usually reaches my goal - eventally.

This year I did my third marathon. But my reasons and my approach was different from the previous onces. First I decided to do it to draw a line between my past and my future. I wanted the past to be about the past and that the furture would be based on the now and not on the past. I wanted to motivate myself to be more healthy and I wanted to be happy.
Different things came up so I decided that doing marathon might not be a good idea from a health perspective - but I ended up wanting to finish so I kept running - and after that I kept walking, and then I kept running again - and I made it. And I was happy on my way.

I learned something very important that day. 1) I felt so happy and blessed to have friends and strangers cheering for me. It was a bigger inspiration than I had realised. 2) once I had decided to finish the run the best I could do was to focus on the present moment. A few times on my way down 5th av. I thought about the finishing ling. At this poing the finishing line is getting closer and the signals from the body asking you to stop is getting louder, and what happend was that I felt sick and tired and I could hardly move my body. But when I looked up, watched the beutiful sky and the sun going down behind central park, then I started to trust the voices which kept shouting: You can do it! I remembered that I did move in the direction I wanted to go. And I felt happy and blessed and I knew that I was at the right place.

I think that it is so important in life to trust your decisions and keep moving in the direction you want to go. -it doesn't mean that you can never stop reflect or change directions. But when you have decided what direction you want to go, when you are doing something that feels right - then stop the questioning, enjoy the process and keep doing what works for you.

- I'll keep running.

Joy

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

I was looking through some of the articles on this blog and I got inspired by Teflon's blog posted on September 30, called "The Path to the Future". The quote posted in his article says:

"The path to the future is brightly illuminated by the bridges burning behind us".

I love this motto.  Think about it: traveling through life is so much easier when you truly decide to let go of the past and focus on the future. You don't have to carry the weight of a tough childhood, an abusive ex-partner, etc. All you have to do is focus on what you want in the future and how to act in the present in order to bring your desired future into being.  Doing this lets you enjoy the present moment.

After reading the Teflon's motto, I spent some time thinking about all the things that I have let go of, things that I didn't want in my life  and are no longer in my life.  It felt so good to recognize the choices I've made and it felt great to silently celebrate them.

The same evening I was talking to my friend Mark K. I mentioned that I had withdrawn my application from a position at work because I didn't trust the manager. Mark asked me why my reaction was to withdraw my application. He suggested that I could have changed my relationship with the manager or I could have asked to work in that position under another manager. He wanted to know why my action was to simply redraw.

I explained my reasons. Although I had made attempts to change our relationship, I had decided that I didn't want to trust him. I had also made attempts to switch organizations (which might have actually happened in the end), but hadn't happened yet.

As I talked with Mark K., I got tired. I felt exhausted!

Mark also got tired of listening to me!

Wearing Myself Out
Initially, I thought I got tired because I felt that I hadn't "succeeded". I wasn't "good enough" and I could have "done more".

And this might have been true, but...  Today, I realized that my problem was the following: I had made the decision that "the man was not trustworthy by my standards, and that I did not want to work closely with a man of his standards".  This would have been fine had I only  BURNED MY BRIDGES. 

I hadn't!

Instead, I had held on to the belief that everything would have been better if I simply could have inspired the manager to change or if I could have inspired the organization to remove him from the department where I wanted to work.

Simultaneously, I held on to the belief that I could not have changed the situation in any way!

On the Horns of a Trilemma
I've been taught that I should split the situations I face into one of three categories:

1. things over which I have full control
2. things I can influence or over which I have some control 
3. things where I have absolutely no control

In this case, I decided that this situation fit into the second category; I decided that I would be able to influence or have some control over either the manager or the organization.

Why did I decide this?

Well, Samahria believes she can control the weather. So, why would I not believe that I could change my department or my manager? Maybe I already have influenced my department!

Understanding that this was my decision, I have now made peace with my decision, burning my bridges and looking forward.

I can always look at my dis-empowering beliefs about which parts of the world I can influence and which parts I cannot influence.

Looking Forward
For now, I can take credit for the changes I have started in the organization by pointing out that low standards are not acceptable to me. Maybe highlighting one person's low standards is what it takes for ten other people to raise their own standards.

Next, I am going to make a list of all the parts of my life where I have low energy and see for each of them if there are bridges I need to burn. I already feel my energy level getting higher!

Thank you Mark .K for being such an honest friend. Thank you Mark T. for introducing this great motto which I'll repeat:

"The path to the future is brightly illuminated by the bridges burning behind us."

Labels: acceptance, empowerment, joy vigh strand

Joining a Son-Rise Program® has been a great inspiration for me. Not only is it fun to be in the playroom. I also get inspired to do more fun stuff outside the playroom. I get inspired to find ways to inspire Christo's mom. And I get inspired to change my life.

Inspiration in the playroom
When I am in the playroom we mostly play games inspired by Disney. We started with Tigger, which happens to be Christo's and my favorite Pooh character. We will bounce around and quote Tigger. Just try to perfect your "youuuhuuuhuuuhuuuhu". Can you do that without smiling? Do you recognize the amazing feeling when you get Tigger under your skin? You can feel the energy and happiness bounching around while being Tigger. It is so different from playing Eeyore (which is fun too, just different).

Sometimes we pick characters from "Jungle Book". I love Balou. Being Balou gives me a chance to move my but! I would like to be a monkey, but I still can't sing all the words from "I wanna be a Mankind" (I haven't made it my highest priority yet!). Than there are the dogs. They are everywhere: it can be 101 Dalmantines, Blutz, you name it. There are so many great Disney dogs, and I'm a dog person..

I would recommend to anyone to personify a disney character. It's fun and you can make it a good workout too. Pick one of your favorite disney characters and start playing! And by the way: when was the last time you were standing close to someone making funny faces? or scary faces?

Preparing for the playroom
We've been playing monsters, dogs and George of the jungle. I didn't even know George of the jungle. So recently I 've spent time on youtube. Laughing a lot watching clips from this crazy movie.

I've bought some new dvd's and borrowed some from friends with kids. Because how could I know that "Get out of here" was just a quote from Beauty and the Beast"? And I for sure didn't know that there were lines from StarWars in KungFu Panda!

Lately I have been smiling, singing new songs and making more jokes and people around me have been laughing with me!

Inspiring someone else
When I did Group Facilitator training I found it challenging to find the energy and enthusiasm within me. But when I am sitting at the kitchen table exchanging ideas for the playroom with the mom, I am excited. I love telling her how good she is, how fantastic it is that she can see what to do next and that she keeps moving.

I want her to get more help and training, so I keep feeding her with suggestions, and step by step is she moving on it. It's fantastic. I see that I can inspire, and can be patient, all at the same time. It feels so good.

I used this inspiration to challenge people at my work, people who seemed to be waiting for inspiration. When they resisted taking responsibility for their lack of inspiration, I would ask them: how is it working for you to wait for a small ant to bite you, to get under their skin and fill you up with inspiration. As we laughed I knew that they knew that inspiration was there for them to choose.

Let the world be my playroom
I want to take as much as I can from the playroom and build my world from this.

I know that Brian and Mary have a webpage on how to create relationships. My suggestion will be: build a playroom for you and your partner. Build this place with love and acceptance, and a lot of space for exploration.

If anyone want to join my playroom, let me know. It might include pillow fighting and greek dancing, but it will be fun.

My playroom, my rules.

Joy

Labels: inspiration, intention, joy vigh strand, love, relationships, son-rise

Someone asked me of examples of my positive self-dialoguing. This is an interesting question since I haven't done self-dialogues in a long time. I do pose myself dialogue questions but for the last two years I have had dialogue exchanges every week or every second week, and these are the times I have been exploring (with a few exceptions).

About Self Dialoguing
I see a difference between "posing dialogue questions to myself" and "doing a self-dialogue".

For me doing a self-dialogue is setting aside time to pose questions, in a similar way as if I was getting a dialogue with a certified mentor. I might sit at my computer and write down my own questions and answers or I will talk out loud as I pose the questions and give the answers. When I write the answer and read it, the following question will come easily; following the process. If I do not write down the answers I can easily buy into my own beliefs or I can stay in general rather than specific. All things which would lead me to pose non-dialogue questions. In an ideal world I would speak out loud. When I speak out loud I activate different centers in the brain and this process will increase the efficiency of the questions. When I speak out loud I also let myself stay with one thread rather than jumping between different threads.

If I stay silent without writing, I will often pose non-dialogue questions. I see the same when I mentor a person who doesn't leave room for questions, but poses the questions him/ herself. In that situation I hear the person buy into beliefs, which then will not be questioned. I hear them jump from one example to the next, as if they were deciding that their beliefs were the same in these different situations. Often their feelings are the same OR there are similarities between the stimuli, but it is far from obvious that it is the same belief which is invoked in all the examples (this is more significant when the explorer is not a mentor him/ herself). Another situation that can happen is that the explorer doesn't stay with the example but goes to general with "this happens all the time".

Posing dialogue questions to myself
I see the dialogue process as a slow logic process, which helps me understand how I'm thinking and how I'm reasoning. I can then decide whether to change or not.

In many day-to-day situations I'm using a faster logic. I might pose one or more questions, and then decide to change without having done the whole part of uncovering my belief.

For example:

1. In a meeting I get angry or annoyed with a person. I could do a dialogue about it, but since I know that I usually get annoyed when I am judgmental (I believe that the other person should be thinking differently) and I also know that I am not being present when I am annoyed, and so I am not listening properly. My fast logic will tell me: I am annoyed - get back to being present. (I can look at the reasons for annoyance later if I want to).
2. In the playroom I'm often asked to repeat a sequence of movements and quotes until I can repeat it correctly. At times I catch myself in thinking "Could we please change this activity". I instantly change the thought to: I want to be useful, and being present is a premise for being useful, so I change it to "I want to be useful". (I can always do a dialogue about what happened after my playroom session).
3. Crying: I have done so many dialogues about crying and they have always seem to end in: "I cry because I have a problem and I want someone else to fix it". So when I catch myself crying I start smiling asking myself: what do I want fixed, why, how...

Biggest change from exploring
My biggest change since I learned the dialogue process is that I stopped being suicidal, and I stopped "doing" depression. This was not done by one single dialogue. It was several dialogues. It was a combination of dialogues and life experiences. But I remember two dialogues that were part of the final "quitting depression".

The first one was a eight minute dialogue with Jon as a mentor. A dialogue where I explored what it meant to me to be always living with the notion: "I can always kill myself in 3 months". So it was this idea of always having a back door. If choosing happiness doesn't give me what I want in life such as job, partner, family, health etc.; if choosing happiness doesn't give me all these things I "need" to have in order to stay happy - THEN I could just kill myself. (Prior to the option process I believed that some of my wants - symbols of success - were things I would "need" to be happy)

A person who has never been depressed, might not understand the magnitude of this. Part of being depressed was for me having my brain full of memories of things which didn't work out the way I wanted it. These thoughts were ranking from abuse and violence to minor things as feeling fat or getting the second best grade (instead of the best).

When I was depressed I was judging myself for not being good enough. And because there were people who were not treating me as I would have wanted, I was constantly judging myself for being judgmental towards them.

Over several dialogues I had given up this way of thinking, but I still had the "I can always kill myself in 3 months" back-door mentality. So in this particular dialogue (during a class break at a wide-awake course at The Option Institute) I decided to give up this mentality. What I realised was: considering suicide sometime in the future is really not relevant: my life is now. Do I or don't I want to live now? And I decided to live!

A week later I did my "last depression dialogue". This was during an evening - a late evening! I was walking the dog in the rain. I was sad and on top of my sadness judging myself for not being good enough to imply the option process. As I started to pose questions to myself I realized that my sadness was my way of asking for help. Even if no one was there to see my sadness. For about 30 years I helped my mom when she was depressed, and I had learned to use depression when I had a problem and no answers. But since my mom didn't want to see me sad, I had learned to do sadness when no one was around.

Suddenly I started laughing: here I was, on my own (except for the dog), how would sadness help me do anything if it wasn't just helping me NOT solving my problems. Since this day, I have never been depressed. I have been sad at times. I have wanted my life to be different. But I know forever that crying is for me "a cry for help". So anytime I realize that I'm sad, I just ask myself: what is my problem, who do I want to help me? And why do I not solve it myself?

Another issue I solved on the same walk in the rain, was choosing happiness. I went through all my fears of death and loneliness and realized that anything which could ever happen to me in life, being happy would make it ok.

Do what works
So happiness is now my first priority. At times I forget it and find myself focusing on future wants and at times this brings unhappiness into my life. Until I give up my want to have it right now and I choose happiness again. I still practice to make the priority of happiness stronger.

For me it works to blow up the issues I have, because I find it the best way to see how I can start changing it. An example was when I got feedback on my recertification tapes. My average on the tapes was very good, so we were in fact talking about details. I'm sure that anyone listening to the conversation would have thought I was not certifiable.

How do you use the Option Process? The questions? The attitude? How does it work for you?

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