Freshness Does Count! - Buying Guide for Vegetables

Demand freshness! Check the characteristic signs of freshness such as bright, lively color and crispness. Vegetables are usually at their best quality and price at the peak of their season. Fresh vegetables are key ingredients in the kitchen. With the right preparation and some of your homemade creativity, they make everyday meals just as magical as special occasions. Don't buy because of low price alone. It doesn't pay to buy more vegetables than you can properly store in your refrigerator or use without waste. How do you know whether your cabbage is ready to cook or your peppers are a little too ripe? Use the following handy Buying Guide for Vegetables to find and buy the freshest vegetables around.

Artichoke Select globes that are deep green, with a tight leaf formation, and those that feel heavy for their size. A good test of freshness is to press the leaves against each other which should produce a squeaking sound. Browning of the tips can indicate age, but can also indicate frost damage. Fall and winter artichokes may be darker or bronze-tipped or have a whitish, blistered appearance due to exposure to light frost. This is called "winter-kissed." Look for tender green on the inside of petals. Many consider these frosted artichokes to be the most tender with intense flavor. Avoid artichokes which are wilting, drying or have mold. Check out my web page on Artichokes.

Asparagus Select bright green asparagus with closed, compact, firm tips. A rich green color should cover most of the spear. Stalks should be almost as far down as the green extends. Try to buy stalks that are equally thick so they cook evenly. If  the tips are slightly wilted, freshen them up by soaking them in cold water. Avoid tips that are open and spread out, moldy or decayed tips, or ribbed spears (spears with up-and-down ridges or that are not approximately round). Those are all signs of aging, and indicate tough asparagus and poor flavor. Check out my web page on Asparagus.

Beets Many beets are sold in bunches with the tops still attached, while others are sold with the tops removed. Look for beets that are firm, round, with a slender tap root (the large main root), a rich, deep red color, and smooth over most of the surface. If beets are bunched, you can judge their freshness fairly accurately by the condition of the tops. Badly wilted or decayed tops indicate a lack of freshness, but the roots may be satisfactory if they are firm. Avoid elongated beets with round, scaly areas around the top surface -- these will be tough, fibrous, and strong-flavored. Also avoid wilted, flabby beets -- they have been exposed to the air too long.

Broccoli When purchasing broccoli, select ones where the stalks are tight and firm.  Look at the stalk and make sure it's not tough. The buds should be tightly closed and the leaves are crisp and very green. The little 'trees' or florets should be dark green. Also note that if the broccoli tends to have a very strong smell or if the leaves have a slightly yellow color, it can often suggest that it is old. Try and avoid broccoli where the buds are yellow in color. Check out my web page on Broccoli.

Brussels Sprouts Brussels sprouts develop as enlarged buds on a tall stem, one sprout appearing where each main leaf is attached. The "sprouts" are cut off and, in most cases, are packed in small consumer containers, although some are packed loose, in bulk. Although they are often available about 10 months of the year, peak supplies appear from October through December. Look for a fresh, bright-green color, tight fitting outer leaves, firm body, and freedom from blemishes. Avoid elongated beets with round, scaly areas around the top surface -- these will be tough, fibrous, and strong-flavored. Also avoid wilted, flabby beets -- they have been exposed to the air too long.

Cabbage Cabbage leaves should be firm, When selecting, choose only the heads that are compact and firm. They should have fresh, crispy leaves that do not contain any markings or browning, which may be an indication of worm damage. The head should only contain a few loose outer leaves. The coloring of the leaves should reflect the variety you are purchasing. In general, the darker green the leaves the more flavor they have. The stem should be trimmed and look fresh, not dry and cracked. Avoid purchasing precut or shredded cabbage. Once the cabbage is cut it begins to lose its vitamin C content, even if it is tightly packaged or well wrapped. Check out my web page on Cabbage.

Carrots When purchasing carrots, look for firm, plump carrots without rootlets. They should be small, bright orange and smooth, without cracks. Carrots lose moisture through their leafy green tops, so if you purchase them this way, remove the tops before wrapping carrots in plastic and storing. Carrots keep will for weeks in the refrigerator.

Cauliflower When purchasing cauliflower, look for a clean, creamy white, compact curd in which the bud clusters are not separated. Spotted or dull-colored cauliflower should be avoided, as well as those in which small flowers appear. Heads that are surrounded by many thick green leaves are better protected and will be fresher. As its size is not related to its quality, choose one that best suits your needs.

Celery Select celery that is light green in color, firm, compact, and well-shaped. The stalk should have a solid, rigid feel and leaflets should be fresh or only slightly wilted. Also look for a glossy surface, stalks of light green or medium green, and mostly green leaflets. Avoid purchasing celery with bruises or discolored areas on the stalks.

Celery Root/Celeriac Celery roots can range in size from that of an apple to the size of a small cantaloupe. It is available in winter.  Select firm, hard roots that are about baseball size and feel heavy. Often the bigger ones have voids or fibrous cores. If the stems and leaves are attached, they should be fresh and green. Trim side roots and leaves and store in refrigeration at 32oF. with high humidity (well for a long time in a cool, dark place. This vegetable does not stand up to freezing. Check out my web page on Celeriac (Celery Root).

Corn Fully ripe sweet corn has bright green, moist husks. The silk should be stiff, dark and moist. You should be able to feel individual kernels by pressing gently against the husk. Fresh corn, if possible, should be cooked and served the day it is picked or purchased. As soon as corn is picked, its sugar begins is gradual conversion to starch, which reduces the corn's natural sweetness. Corn will lose 25% or more of its sugar within 25 hours afte harvesting it. If for some reason corn is not being used immediately or has been purchased from the supermarket, add sugar to replace that which has been lost. Add one teaspoon sugar for each quart of water. Check out my web page on Corn.

Daikon Radish As with any root crop, look for Chinese radishes that are free of growth cracks and bruises with firm and crisp roots. Chinese radishes keep well in refrigeration if they are placed in a sealed container or plastic bag to maintain high humidity. Check out my web page on Daikon Radish.

Eggplant Smaller, immature eggplants are best. Full-size puffy ones may have hard seeds and can be bitter. Choose a firm, smooth-skinned eggplant that is heavy for its size; avoid those with soft or brown spots. Gently push with your thumb or forefinger. If the flesh gives slightly but then bounces back, it is ripe. If the indentation remains, it is overripe and the insides will be mushy. If there is no give, the eggplant was picked too early. Also make sure an eggplant isn't dry inside, knock on it with your knuckles. If you hear a hollow sound, don't buy it. NOTE: Whether or not there is an appreciable difference, I don't know. Check out my web page on Eggplant.

Garlic When selecting garlic, it should be big, plump and firm, tight silky skins with its paper-like covering intact, not spongy, soft, or shriveled. Why buy small ones that are a pain to peel? As with all ingredients for cooking, buy the best garlic you can afford. Fresh garlic is readily available year round. Garlic is available in forms other than fresh, such as powder, flakes, oil, and puree. Also remember that a single bulb of garlic usually contains between ten and twenty individual cloves of garlic. The individual cloves are covered with a fine pinkish/purple skin, and the head of cloves is then covered with white papery outer skin. Check out my web page on Garlic.

Green or String Beans Green beans are available year round, with a peak season of May to October. Green beans are also called string beans and snap beans. Green beans were once called string beans. Today they are string less; just break off the end as you wash them. Leave whole or cut into desired lengths. Choose slender beans that are crisp, bright-colored, and free of blemishes. Check out my web page on Green Beans.

Mushrooms Fresh mushrooms have a firm texture. They are delicate, highly perishable, and must be handled with care; they are sensitive to hot temperatures and rough shipping. Many varieties of fresh mushrooms are seasonal. Watch out for mushrooms that are moldy or soft. You are looking for them to be clean and firm. Avoid overripe mushrooms (shown by wide-open caps and dark, discolored gills underneath) and those with pitted or seriously discolored caps.

Onions When buying onions, choose those that are heavy for their size with dry, papery skins, and that show no signs of spotting or moistness.  Avoid onions that are soft or sprouting. Young onions are sweeter than old ones. They should have absolutely NO SMELL whatever. If they do, they are probably bruised somewhere under the skin and are on their way out. Check out my web page on Onions.

Peas Garden peas are generally available from spring through the beginning of winter. When purchasing garden peas, look for ones whose pods are firm, velvety, and smooth. Their color should be a medium green. Those whose green color is especially light or dark, or those that are yellow, whitish or are speckled with gray, should be avoided. Additionally, do not choose pods that are puffy, water soaked or have mildew residue. The pods should contain peas of sufficient number and size that there is not much empty room in the pod. You can tell this by gently shaking the pod and noticing whether there is a slight rattling sound.

Peppers - Bell Peppers & Chile Peppers The skin should be smooth, with no bruises or marks on the surface. Sweet green bell-shaped peppers are the most popular garden variety. Left to ripen, they turn red, purple, orange or yellow and gain various levels of sweetness depending on the variety. Chili peppers range in hotness from mild to fiery hot. Check out my web page on Chile Peppers.

Potatoes Potatoes should be smooth, well shaped, and unbruised. When selecting potatoes, choose new potatoes for boiling and salads. They have thinner skins and are firmer. With new potatoes, look for firm potatoes that are free from blemishes and sunburn (a green discoloration under the skin). Some amount of skinned surface is normal, but potatoes with large skinned and discolored areas are undesirable. For general-purpose and baking potatoes, look for reasonably smooth, firm potatoes free from blemishes, sunburn, and decay. Check out my web page on Potatoes.

Spinach Choose leaves that are crisp and have dark green with a nice fresh fragrance. Avoid those that are limp, damaged, or spotted. Check out my web page on Spinach.

Squash (Summer) Summer squash includes those varieties which are harvested while still immature and when the entire squash is tender and edible. They include the yellow Crookneck, the large Straight neck, the greenish-white Patty Pan, and the slender green Zucchini. Some of these squash are available at all times of the year. Look for squash that are tender and well developed, firm, and fresh-appearing. You can identify a tender squash, because the skin is glossy instead of dull, and it is neither hard nor tough. Avoid stale or over mature squash, which will have a dull appearance and a hard, tough surface. Such squash usually have enlarged seeds and dry, stringy flesh. Also avoid squash with discolored or pitted areas.

Squash (Winter) Look for full maturity, indicated by a hard, tough rind. Also look for squash that is heavy for its size (meaning a thick wall and more edible flesh). Slight variations in skin color do not affect flavor. Avoid any squash with cuts, punctures, sunken spots, or moldy spots on the rind. These are indications of decay. A tender rind indicates immaturity, which is a sign of poor eating quality in winter squash varieties. Check out my web page on Winter Squash.

Sweet Potato Sweet potatoes should be uniformly light-tan-colored. Look for firm sweet potatoes with smooth, bright, uniformly colored skins, free from signs of decay. Because they are more perishable than white potatoes, extra care should be used in selecting sweet potatoes. Avoid sweet potatoes with worm holes, cuts, grub injury, or any other defects which penetrate the skin; this causes waste and can readily lead to decay. Even if you cut away the decayed portion, the remainder of the potato flesh may have a bad taste. Check out my web page on Sweet Potato.

Tomatoes Tomatoes don't develop adequate flavor unless allowed to ripen on the vine. Seek out locally grown tomatoes whenever possible. They may not be as "pretty" as store bought, but beauty, of course, is only skin deep. Fragrance is a better indicator of a good tomato than color. Use your nose and smell the stem end. The stem should retain the garden aroma of the plant itself - if it doesn't, your tomato will lack flavor and, as far as I'm concerned, will be good only for decoration! Since fresh tomatoes are summer fare and off-season tomatoes are rarely flavorful, substitute canned Italian plum tomatoes in cooked dishes. Cook for ten minutes to reduce the liquid and enhance the taste. Check out my web page on Tomatoes.

Tomatillos They can range in size from about an inch in diameter to the size of apricots. They are covered by a papery husk which may range from the pale green color of the fruit itself to a light grocery-bag brown. Choose small tomatillos. They are sweeter than the larger, golf-ball-size ones. The condition of the "husk" is a good indication of the freshness of the fruit. The husk should be light brown and fresh looking (not shriveled and dried). Unlike tomatoes, tomatillos should be firm and free of defects. The husks are inedible and should be removed before use. Check out my web page on Tomatillos.

Helpful Resource: How To Buy Fresh Vegetables, United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Marketing Service, Home and Garden Bulletin No 143, December 1967

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Reflective Happiness

"More than education, more than experience, more than training, resilience determines who succeeds and who fails."
---

“Positive psychology” focuses on the roles of positive emotions, positive thought patterns, and positive relationships in relation to human flourishing.

Well-being, broadly understood as frequent positive emotions, regular experiences of engagement, and a satisfying sense of meaning, matters far more than was once believed. People who experience high levels of well-being are more successful across a wide range of domains (e.g. work, love, health).

“happiness” or well- being could be decomposed into three more scientifically manageable components: positive emotion (the pleasant life), engagement (the engaged life), and meaning (the meaningful life).

gratitude and forgiveness exercises that enhance how positive memories can be

Positive emotions about the future include hope and optimism, faith, trust, and confidence, and these emotions, especially hope and optimism, are documented to buffer against depression

positive emotions can have a lasting impact on well-being
experiencing positive emotions engage in a broader array of social and personal behaviors generally identified as creative, collaborative, cooperative, and connective.

broader array of responses to situational challenges and build relationships and psychological resources within themselves that make the successful execution of one of those responses more likely

literature on depression documents a downward spiral in which depressed mood and narrowing thinking perpetuate each other.

the engaged life, a life that pursues engagement, involvement, and absorption in work, intimate relations, and leisure
highly engaging activities.

to enhance engagement
identify peoples’
talents and strengths [and nurture more talents and strengths]
and then help them to find opportunities to use these strengths more.

identifying [and creating] and employing and individual’s strengths.

use of their strengths report higher levels of engagement
and subsequently reported greater
satisfaction.

pursuit of meaning.
belong to and serve something that one believes is bigger than the self.
a sense of satisfaction and the belief that one has lived well
sense of meaning and are strongly correlated with well-being
use meaning to transform the perceptions of their circumstances
to fortunate

increasing meaning leads to greater productivity.
hear about the impact that their efforts had on that person’s life.

the Declaration of Independence made “the pursuit of happiness” a founding principle

happiness goes deeper than just witty quotes and omnipresent clichés.
positive book reviews as of higher quality and greater forcefulness.

a shared vocabulary for addressing wellbeing and resilience. Such a common language and set of experiences help re-shape culture away from the “negative is smart” and “negative is real” biases and toward a “positivity works” mindset.

"More than education, more than experience, more than training, resilience determines who succeeds and who fails."

high levels of individual well-being are beneficial
more productive, make better decisions, and recover better from adversity.

simple exercises such as “Three Blessings” or “Using Your Strengths in a New Way” can result in individuals and groups who are much better able to address both the obstacles and the opportunities they encounter.
promote well-being
more creatively and effectively both as individuals and in relationships to others.

maintain this higher state of functioning with greater conscious understanding and in the face of more severe challenges.

exercises are effective in both decreasing depressive symptoms and increasing self-reported well-being.
+++


Positive Psychology Research
http://www.reflectivehappiness.com/

Research Compendium

The Science behind Reflective Learning
http://www.reflectivehappiness.com/images/ResearchCompendiumV2_1_2.pdf
I. Executive Summary

Why Well-Being Matters
Theoretical Structure
The Pleasant Life
The Engaged Life
The Meaningful Life

Data on the Three Lives
II. Program Data- Empirical Support
III. Program Explanations

Reflective Learning is a company that uses research from the University of Pennsylvania to improve business results and individual performance. Based upon research by Penn’s Positive Psychology Center, our web-based programs are offered as independent programs, or may be used as part of a blended solution with other distance learning and face-to-face applications.

I. Executive Summary
Individuals and teams that experience frequent positive emotions, engagement, and meaning perform better in a host of ways that matter to us as individuals and organizations. Our current level of understanding allows us to deploy positive psychology applications through online delivery mechanisms in real world situations with reasonable expectations of success.

Why Well-Being Matters

“Positive psychology” focuses on the roles of positive emotions, positive thought patterns, and positive relationships in relation to human flourishing. The field was promoted by Martin E. P. Seligman, Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, while president of the American Psychology Association in 1998. Dr. Seligman emphasized the need to broaden the focus of psychology from minimizing mental illness to promoting full, rich lives. Today, the field encompasses the work of a wide array of researchers in psychology, sociology, health, medicine, organizational studies, business management, and other disciplines. These researchers have produced a significant body of knowledge that continues to expand. Hundreds of new scientific articles are published each year, and the field has been the subject of major articles in The Wall Street Journal, Time, Scientific American, Psychology Today and other major publications. Popular books make many areas of the research accessible to the general public (see the attached reading list).

Positive psychology covers subjects ranging from recently identified states such as “flow” to age-old virtues such as wisdom, courage, love, and justice. It includes hope and optimism, mindfulness, morality, and “grit.” These are neither trivial nor purely academic topics, and the work in this field has consequences significant enough to have already garnered a Nobel Prize in Economics (Daniel Kahneman, Princeton, 2002). Organizations as diverse as Best Buy and David’s Bridal (the largest bridal store chain in the country) have implemented positive psychology-based programs with favorable results (Zaslow, 2006). Positive psychology’s focus is on helping healthy individuals lead richer, fuller, more productive lives.

Positive psychology’s results are accessible, both cognitively and experientially, to individuals from all walks of life and with widely-varied educational backgrounds. Those who are interested do not have to take the findings of positive psychology on faith; they can try them out for themselves. Reflective Learning’s products facilitate learning, understanding and application of positive psychology’s findings.

Well-being, broadly understood as frequent positive emotions, regular experiences of engagement, and a satisfying sense of meaning, matters far more than was once believed. People who experience high levels of well-being are more successful across a wide range of domains (e.g. work, love, health). In a recent comprehensive review and meta-analysis by Lyubomirsky, King, and Diener (2005), compared to their less happy counterparts, people who reported high levels of well-being were: - More socially active and likable - More likely to be married, and to have successful marriages - More altruistic, exhibiting more pro-social behavior - In possession of higher self-esteem - Living longer; Having better physical health and stronger immune systems; coping better with being sick when they do get sick - In possession of better conflict resolution skills - Exhibiting more creative thinking - Earning more money and performing better at their jobs - Less susceptible to negative influences from advertising, cognitive biases such as own-race bias, etc. - More resilient and better able to find positive meaning in adversity

These are but a few of the many findings thus far discovered. Research findings have moved far beyond the level of simple correlations, with both longitudinal and experimental data pointing to the conclusion that although a bidirectional relationship exists between well-being and success wherein each builds upon the other, it is more often the case that well-being comes before success. For example, simple measures of well-being (e.g. a one-time assessment of an individual’s levels of positive affect taken during college years) can predict income and success years later controlling for factors such as socioeconomic status, gender, and GPA (see Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener for an extensive review). A similar trend seems to be the case for resilience; Tugade and Fredrickson (2004) found that people who reported frequent positive emotions and continued to experience them over the course of a month showed increased resilience at the end of that month. This effect was dependent on the continued experiencing of positive emotion (e.g. resilience only increased if people continually experienced positive emotion).

Theoretical Structure Seligman (2002) proposed that the unwieldy notion of “happiness” or well- being could be decomposed into three more scientifically manageable components: positive emotion (the pleasant life), engagement (the engaged life), and meaning (the meaningful life). Each exercise in the Employee Excellence suite is designed to further one or more of these.

The Pleasant Life
The pleasant life is what hedonic theories of well-being endorse. It consists of having a lot of positive emotion about the present, past, and future, and learning the skills to amplify the intensity and duration of these emotions. The positive emotions about the past include satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride and serenity, and we developed gratitude and forgiveness exercises that enhance how positive memories can be (e.g. Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, & Schkade, 2005; McCullough, 2000; Seligman et al., 2005). Positive emotions about the future include hope and optimism, faith, trust, and confidence, and these emotions, especially hope and optimism, are documented to buffer against depression (Seligman, 1991, 2002). Positive emotions about the present include satisfaction derived from immediate pleasures. We offer exercises for learning to savor and increase positive emotions in the past, present and future.

One way of understanding the way in which positive emotions can have a lasting impact on well-being comes from Barbara Fredrickson’s "Broaden and Build" theory of positive emotions. According to this model, negative emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness have specific behavioral consequences that are easily recognized and have been long understood. The "fight/flight" response to the perceived threat in the environment is one such response. Sadness results in withdrawal, which can be a survival response when the sadness is produced by loss occasioned by threats in the environment. The positive emotions are weaker, but more frequent. They are more interconnected and do not have the highly-patterned behavioral responses of the negative emotions. Rather, individuals experiencing positive emotions engage in a broader array of social and personal behaviors generally identified as creative, collaborative, cooperative, and connective.

Positive individuals develop a broader array of responses to situational challenges and build relationships and psychological resources within themselves that make the successful execution of one of those responses more likely (Fredrickson, 2000). Fredrickson and colleagues have provided evidence that positive emotions counteract the detrimental effects of negative emotion on physiology and attention (Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005; Fredrickson & Levenson, 1998) and promote creativity, broadened attention, and efficient decision-making in their own right (Isen, 2003). They also contribute to resilience in crises and ability to find positive meaning in adversity (Fredrickson, Tugade, Waugh, & Larkin, 2003; Tugade & Fredrickson, 2004). The cognitive literature on depression documents a downward spiral in which depressed mood and narrowing thinking perpetuate each other. In contrast, Fredrickson and Joiner (2002) reported that positive emotions and a broad thought-action repertoire amplify each other, leading to an upward spiral of well-being. Reflective Learning programs are designed to harness this theory by identifying and amplifying positive emotions.

The Engaged Life
The second route to well-being in Seligman’s theory is the engaged life, a life that pursues engagement, involvement, and absorption in work, intimate relations, and leisure (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). Flow is Csikszentmihalyi’s term for the psychological state that accompanies highly engaging activities. Time passes quickly. Attention is completely focused on the activity. The sense of self is lost. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow occurs in situations where an individual is making use of his skills in a way that is challenging, stretching his abilities to the limit, but not so difficult that it is frustrating. Seligman (2002) proposed that one way to enhance engagement and flow is to identify peoples’ highest talents and strengths and then help them to find opportunities to use these strengths more. We call the highest strengths signature strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Many of the Reflective Learning products include significant components on identifying [and creating] and employing and individual’s strengths. ReflectedBestSelf is built around this theory and, ResilienceOnline, R4Power, Penn START and the EmployeeExcellence suite include components of it in their material.

Hodges and Clifton (2004) explored the impact of “strengths-based practice,” teaching employees to use their strengths in their work. They found that employees whose work is shaped to make use of their strengths report higher levels of engagement in their work, and subsequently reported greater job satisfaction.

The Meaningful Life
The third route to well-being in Seligman’s theory involves the pursuit of meaning. This consists in using one’s signature strengths and talents to belong to and serve something that one believes is bigger than the self. There are a large number of such “positive institutions:” religion, politics, family, work, community, and nation, for example. Regardless of the particular institution one serves in order to establish a meaningful life, doing so produces a sense of satisfaction and the belief that one has lived well (Myers, 1992; Nakamura & Csikszentmihalyi, 2002). Such activities produce a subjective sense of meaning and are strongly correlated with well-being (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). A consistent theme throughout meaning-making research is that the people who achieve the greatest benefits are those who use meaning to transform the perceptions of their circumstances from unfortunate to fortunate (McAdam, Diamond, de St. Aubin, & Mansfield, 1997; Pennebaker, 1993).

In addition to resulting in greater general well-being, increasing meaning leads to greater productivity. For example, Grant et al. (2007) found that callers at a fundraising organization spent 141% more time on the phone with potential donors and ultimately raised 171% more money when they had recently been given the chance to interact with one of the beneficiaries of their organization’s fundraising, and hear about the impact that their efforts had on that person’s life.

Data on the Three Lives
Peterson, Park, and Seligman (2005) examined the role that these three lives played in life satisfaction in 845 adults who responded to a survey over the internet. They found that each way of pursuing well-being – pleasure, engagement, and meaning – independently contributed to life satisfaction. Furthermore, they found that people high on all three reported especially high life satisfaction, higher than would be predicted by looking at the contribution of the three lives separately. In other words, pleasure, engagement, and meaning appear to have a synergistic effect when an individual is high in all three, having an effect that is larger than the sum of its parts, and leading to what Peterson, Park, and Seligman (2005) call a “Full Life.” In contrast, people who were low on all three reported lower life satisfaction than would be predicted based on the effects of each life on its own; the authors called this the “Empty Life.” Seligman and colleagues then studied the pleasant, engaged, and meaningful lives of 327 young adults at the University of Pennsylvania (mean age = 32.51 years, SD= 6.63; 53% women, 69% Caucasian); the sample included clinical depressed (n=97), nondepressed psychiatric (n=46), and nondepressed nonpsychiatric (n=184) students. Clinical depressed students experienced significantly fewer positive emotions, less engagement, and less meaning in their lives than did nondepressed psychiatric (d=.37) and nondepressed nonpsychiatric samples (d=1.17). Seligman and colleagues then measured life satisfaction as a function of pursuing each of these three lives. They found that the pursuit of meaning and engagement were robustly (p  .0001) correlated with higher life satisfaction (rs = .39 and .39, respectively) and lower depression (rs = .32 and .32, respectively), whereas the pursuit of pleasure, surprisingly, was only marginally correlated with life satisfaction (r=.18) and lower depression (r=-.15) (Seligman, Rashid, & Parks, 2006).

Despite these findings, and even though the Declaration of Independence made “the pursuit of happiness” a founding principle for our country, happiness and its pursuit generally get bad press and suffer from significant negative biases even in the business world. Happy individuals are often viewed as intellectual lightweights who “just don’t get it,” or Pollyannas who shut their eyes to the negative in an effort to remain happy despite the cold, harsh reality of the world.

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” Earnest Hemingway

“One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person.” William Feather

“To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.” Gustave Flaubert

Google reveals that when the phrase “fat, dumb, and ____” is used on the web, 97% of the time it is as “fat, dumb, and happy.”

This view of happiness goes deeper than just witty quotes and omnipresent clichés. Some years ago, a Harvard Business School researcher, Teresa Amabile, found that subjects tend to rate the authors of critical book reviews as more expert and competent, even when knowledgeable, independent judges evaluated the positive book reviews as of higher quality and greater forcefulness. Reflective Learning’s products supply tools for businesses and institutions and provide users with a shared vocabulary for addressing wellbeing and resilience. Such a common language and set of experiences help re-shape culture away from the “negative is smart” and “negative is real” biases and toward a “positivity works” mindset.

Dr. Shatte- "More than education, more than experience, more than training, resilience determines who succeeds and who fails."

The body of literature has convincingly demonstrated that high levels of individual well-being are beneficial for businesses and institutions. Employees are more productive, make better decisions, and recover better from adversity. There is still significant work to be done. What is the cost of a unit of productivity improvement when realized through increased employee wellbeing versus purchasing of technology or recruiting better skilled workers through higher salaries? When a company faces difficult times, what is the return on investment in resilience training for employees versus the cost to respond to lawsuits from dissatisfied employees and the sap on productivity from depressed morale? The questions identify a glaring inefficiency in the current marketplace: online positive psychology training can be used to boost individual, corporate, and institutional performance, in a cost-effective, scalable, and rapid way. The tools offered by Reflective Learning are so new that no significant ROI data exist yet. Rather than discourage organizations from deploying the tools, this should encourage visionary leaders to seize the first-mover advantage and realize the value of these tools before others in their industry.

Considering the above-described findings of positive psychology, it becomes easier to understand how seemingly simple exercises such as “Three Blessings” or “Using Your Strengths in a New Way” can result in individuals and groups who are much better able to address both the obstacles and the opportunities they encounter. These exercises promote well-being – a state where we function far more creatively and effectively both as individuals and in relationships to others.

A more focused, deeper process such as that embodied in Resilience Online® or R4Power® increases ability to maintain this higher state of functioning with greater conscious understanding and in the face of more severe challenges. Further, the online delivery method embodied in Reflective Learning’s products has been shown to be effective in a large scale, random-assignment, placebo- controlled test of several of these products (see below).

II. Program Data- Empirical Support The exercises that appear on reflectivehappiness.com have been tested in a variety of populations – from young adults in university settings, to therapy patients, to nationally representative samples ranging from ages 18-85 – and in a variety of settings – from anecdotal case studies, to lab experiments, to web- based interfaces, to group and individual psychotherapy. Our findings consistently suggest that these exercises are effective in both decreasing depressive symptoms and increasing self-reported well-being. Furthermore, the exercises appear to be widely accepted by users; not only are compliance rates high, participants often continue to use them even when the study no longer requires them to do so.

III. Program Explanations Martin E.P. Seligman, Ph.D. first began piloting these exercises when he taught five courses at the University of Pennsylvania involving a total of more than 200 undergraduates, with weekly assignments to carry out and write up various exercises. Many of these exercises form the basis for the EmployeeExcellence suite. These seemed remarkably successful; life changing was a word not uncommonly heard when students described their experiences with these exercises. The popularity of the Positive Psychology course at Harvard (855 undergraduates enrolled in spring 2006) is likely related to the impact of this material on the lives of users.

In the next phase of piloting these interventions, Seligman taught more than 500 mental health professionals (clinical psychologists, life coaches, psychiatrists, educators); each week for 24 weeks, “trainees” heard a one hour lecture and then were assigned one exercise to carry out in their own lives and © 2007 David N. Shearon and Acacia C. Parks-Sheiner Page 10 of 16 with their patients or clients. Once again, at the anecdotal level, they were astonished by the feedback from mental health professionals about how well these interventions “took.” These pilot endeavors yielded so many powerful “case histories” and testimonials that he and his colleagues began efforts to put positive psychology interventions in more scientifically rigorous designs.

In January of 2005, www.reflectivehappiness.com was opened. This product is a consumer version of the corporate program, EmployeeExcellence. The site has a book club, a newsletter, and forum discussion of positive psychology each month, but more important, one new positive psychology exercise is posted each month. The first month’s exercise was the Three Blessings exercise. In the first month of operation, 50 subscribers had scores in the range of severe depression scoring 25 or higher on the Center for Epidemiological Studies – Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). Their mean was 33.90, close to what might be termed extremely depressed. Each of them did the three blessings exercise and returned to the web and average of 14.8 days later. At that time, 94% of them were less depressed, with a mean score of 16.90, which is down into the border of the mild-to-moderate range of depression. We replicated these findings several months later with essentially the same results. Although this was an uncontrolled study, such a dramatic decrease in depression over a short period of time compares favorably to medication and to psychotherapy.

Below are the details of three recent studies that have tested these exercises using more rigorous, controlled experimental designs:

1. Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson (2005), Individual Exercise Over the Web1 This study tested the efficacy of three exercises – Using Your Signature Strengths (N=66), Three Blessings (N=59), and Gratitude Visit (N=80) – when 1 Seligman’s research group is in the process of replicating this study and examining several other exercises included on reflectivehappiness.com: Which Door Opened, Active and Constructive Responding, Savor a Beautiful Day, Positive Service, and ABCDE Disputation. given to individuals of a wide range of ages and demographics over the web as compared to a placebo condition in which participants wrote about their early memories (N=70). Participants’ depressive symptoms and self-reported levels of well-being were assessed before and after they used the exercise for a week, then at 1-week, 1-month, 3-month, and 6-month follow-ups. They found that Using Your Signature Strengths decreased depressive symptoms and increased well-being immediately, and that this effect remained through 6-month follow-up, while Three Blessings showed a delayed effect, with increased well-being and decreased depression starting at 1-month follow-up and remaining through 6- month follow-up. The Gratitude Visit exercise had the largest immediate effect, but the effect faded by 1-month follow-up.

For the first two exercises (Signature Strengths and Three Blessings), the longevity of the effects depended on whether or not participants continued to use their exercise after the initial 1-week period during which they were required to do so; many participants opted to continue using their exercise, even though they were not explicitly asked to. The Gratitude Visit was a one-time exercise, and it was not possible for participants to continue using it, so it is not surprising that the effects faded. However, it is possible that, in larger interventions that include the Gratitude Visit among other exercises (see below), the immediate surge in happiness that results from doing the exercise might foster participants’ receptivity to other exercises.

2. Seligman, Rashid, & Parks (2006), Study 1 – Group Positive Psychotherapy This study tested the efficacy of six exercises, five of which are included, in some version, in the EmployeeExcellence suite – Three Blessings, Using Your Signature Strengths, Gratitude Visit, Active and Constructive Responding and Savor a Beautiful Day.  Participants were young adults with mild-moderate depressive symptoms (substantially above the normal range, but not suffering from clinical depression), who were randomly assigned to receive a series of six 1.5-hour workshops once a week (N=16), or to a no-intervention control condition (N=21). Each week, they practiced one of these exercises and then discussed their experience in the workshop group. Participants who received the 6-week © 2007 David N. Shearon and Acacia C. Parks-Sheiner Page 12 of 16 group intervention showed significantly fewer depressive symptoms and significantly greater satisfaction with life at the end of the intervention compared to the control condition, whose symptom levels remained constant. These effects lasted through 3-month, 6-month, and 1-year follow-up assessments.

3. Seligman, Rashid, & Parks (2006), Study 2 – Individual Positive Psychotherapy In this study, young adults with Major Depression seeking treatment at the University of Pennsylvania’s counseling center were randomly assigned to receive either 14 weeks of Individual Positive Psychotherapy (N=11), or 14 weeks of the usual psychotherapy treatment provided by the center (N=9). In addition, a group of 12 individuals receiving medication management from the counseling center were matched on demographic variables and baseline characteristics with participants in the positive psychotherapy group, and they served as a second non-randomized control condition. The positive psychotherapy condition contained a variety of exercises, many of which appear on reflectivehappiness.com, such as Using Signature Strengths, Gratitude Visit, What Door Opened, Active and Constructive Responding, Strengths Date, and Savoring a Beautiful Day. At the end of the 14 week period, participants who received positive psychotherapy reported fewer depressive symptoms and were significantly more likely to have attained remission from Major Depressive Disorder than individuals who received the center’s standard psychotherapy, or medication management. They also reported improvements in global life functioning that were larger than those observed in either comparison condition. In summary, three randomized controlled trials suggest that the positive exercises on reflectivehappiness.com are effective means of decreasing depressive symptoms (and, in one instance, treating clinical depression) as well as increasing well-being and life functioning when given in person or over the web. Although this research is still in the early stages, it shows great promise

IV. References
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Fredrickson, B.L., & Joiner, T. (2002). Positive emotions trigger upward
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Fredrickson, B.L., & Losada, M. (2005). Positive affect and the complex
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psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment. New York: Free Press.
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psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American
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psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 61, 774-788.
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influence of positive affect on social behavior and cognitive processes. In C. R.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114263698678301765-
search.html?KEYWORDS=happiness&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month on Sunday,
October 7.


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BECOME YOUR OWN SELF HEALER

BECOME YOUR OWN SELF HEALER
Instead of giving your attention to the latest gurus, become the self-empowerment expert for your own life

Exercises for self-empowerment for a better life:
  1: Value the time with your family and friends
  2: Where could I improve my personal hygiene?
  3: Examine where your behavior damages your life and health
  4: Ask yourself if you are damaging yourself to fit in.
  5: Experiment in and have fun with your life
  6: Create clear goals, and move towards them directly
  7: Find inspiring examples
  8: Ask yourself what new tools you will need for this phase of your journey
  9: Ask yourself if your life is too small
10: Accept who you are, right now
11: Stop identifying with your past, your story
12: Support a worthy cause, but support your life at the same time. Keep your emotional balance.
13: Be patient with yourself and your circumstances
14: Examine the story behind the story
15: Burst the illusions in your life


BECOME YOUR OWN SELF HEALER
http://www.garynullforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=103&highlight=&sid=18531d2a6fa0d03139bf7617ab0c9548

There have been many discussions on self-empowerment by good people who inspire and motivate us such as Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, and Tony Robbins. I suggest that in addition to the benefits derived from those sources you become your own coach. This practical self-inquiring approach works well for the people I counsel. See if it works for you.


Instead of giving your attention to the latest gurus, become the self-empowerment expert for your own life


What is normal? Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” You are the only one who can really examine your life. Part of a wholesome regimen for your soul is to take inventory of your beliefs to examine the actions and limitations that your beliefs produce. Let’s begin by asking a few questions. Go to neutral. Hold back a bit. Be candid. Are you a leader or a follower or a balance of the two? Balance is key. Most people conform throughout their lives believing they approach the mirage of perfection by blindly following the general consensus or norm. So ask yourself the question, “What is normal?”

Where I came from in West Virginia, normal was family sharing meals together every day. You had a chance to exchange ideas and argue things out, and there was the comfort of fitting in with caring, loving people.

There is a timeless wisdom in the natural protection of the family circle. Recent studies of Formosans and Okinawans show that people who live long healthy lives have enjoyed a lifelong closeness to immediate and extended family. In some cultures, it’s not just the parents who raise the children, but it’s aunts, uncles and grandparents as well, sometimes all under one roof. In many cultures, the more people who guide you through life, the longer you live and the happier you are because you realize you have support, and we thrive upon that reassurance.

Exercise one: Value the time with your family and friends

Our fellowship at table is an example of the supportive family structure we had in West Virginia, which was good, but the way we ate was bad. It was considered normal to eat until you were full because someone in China would starve if you left any food on your plate, so I would say, “Well, send them what I’m not eating.” I was thin and wiry, didn’t have a big appetite, wouldn’t eat meat, and I was fanatical about germs. If anyone sneezed at the table, I’d just refuse to eat. My brothers, sneezing intentionally in my direction, often enjoyed my portion of dinner. Everyone was expected to make fun of the whole idea of germs. Again, that was normal. Nobody really paid attention to hygiene, especially where I grew up.

When you did get sick it meant some kind of bug was in the air that we were all supposed to catch. It was a flip of the coin whether you got cancer or not or whether you got diabetes or not. We never thought that what we did, the choices we made, would contribute to how our bodies process disease.

Exercise two: Where could I improve my personal hygiene?

I also began to notice that when it came to protesting the Vietnam War, no one where I grew up protested the war. That wasn’t considered normal behavior. In fact, speaking out against authority was not normal behavior. Challenging the belief systems was not normal either. There were good things there, such as basic morality, including decency, honoring your word, being trustworthy, not stealing and loyalty. Those things were important, and they still are, but, in hindsight, there were just too many things that we did that were normal that were not right.

Ask yourself how many damaging things you do simply because you’re told it’s normal to do them. Which of these things, if examined honestly and carefully, would you find inappropriate or unnatural? For example, are you going to have your breasts removed to prevent breast cancer? Does that really make sense to you? Would you have your thumb removed to prevent hangnail?

Here’s a cautionary true story: Eve went to her doctor and he prescribed synthetic hormone replacement therapy. She quickly phoned her friend, Claire, to ask if Claire was taking synthetic hormones. When Claire said she wasn’t, Eve (a true follower of her peers) threw the prescription away. On her next visit, Eve’s doctor asked if she was taking the hormones. She said, “No.” He continued to goad her to take them for a year, but she did not. Then on a recent visit, Eve inquired, “Doctor, how come you’ve stopped trying to force me to take the hormones?” The doctor smiled and said, “Oh, they’re not in style now.” What he did not tell her is that it had been proven that synthetic HRT can kill. What if the woman’s friend had been taking HRT? Are you one of the women who still believes that synthetic hormone replacement therapy is required for your health and beauty? 1

Exercise three: Examine where your behavior damages your life and health

Conversely, consider how many life-enhancing things you do not do because you think it is abnormal to do them. For example, think of how many women in America over the age of 40 do not exercise regularly, and certainly over age 80, they often don’t exercise at all because they imagine they are too old to do so. Yet it is true that the older you are the more you need regular exercise to stay well. The disease process is going to be more systemic if you don’t exercise. We can absolutely trace the rise of diabetes, obesity, dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s Disease to people who don’t exercise and who don’t eat healthful foods.

Am I encouraging you to tear up your doctor’s prescriptions? No. Am I telling you to trust your friend’s medical advice? No. I recommend that you empower yourself by finding reliable up-to-date sources for your health information to supplement (not replace) your physician’s guidance. So you needn’t follow authority blindly, nor peers blindly, nor just guess. You can follow the facts safely with confidence.*

Is the need to fit in worth the cost of following the majority blindly? If you’re eating the normal diet, expecting the normal lifespan, and exhibiting normal behavior, you’re not going to feel very comfortable challenging what is considered to be normal, are you? Suppose everyone else says we should be at war somewhere, but you wonder, “Well, really, should we be at war?” If everyone else tells you it’s the right thing to do, do you think, “Who am I speak out against it?” Would you find the courage to protest if your child’s life were at risk?

There are times when you will know that it is appropriate to rebel, as exemplified in this compelling true story. Joe and Phil grew up together in small town America. They were best friends. When the war came, they were in the same battalion overseas. One day, they were bombed, and Joe was able to rush to safety. He realized immediately that Phil was missing and might be trapped. Joe asked Captain March for permission to return to the site under fire to rescue Phil. “Are you crazy?” Captain March replied. “You’ll be killed. I forbid you to go back there!” Joe turned on his heels and raced toward the devastation, disobeying his commanding officer. Soon Captain March saw Joe hobbling towards him carrying Phil. “I told you!” Captain March shouted, “I knew he must be dead!” Joe replied softly, “He was alive when I reached him. His last words, smiling, were ‘I knew you’d come back, Joe.’”

Remember, almost every benefit in life appears to be based on fitting in by following orders without ever questioning them and conforming to the prevailing standard, no matter how arbitrary or even deadly it might be. Hence, millions of people throughout the world devote their lives to perfecting the appearance of being just like everybody else. From the nearly universal cradle-to-grave uniform – jeans and a white T-shirt – to the popping and sharing of needless antibiotics, everyone wants what everybody else has. Do we ever really grow up or do we just continue to copy others as children do? Ask yourself if the need to fit in is worth the cost of obeying the general consensus blindly. Ask this before you go for a full-body CT scan that delivers an estimated dose of radiation to your lungs and stomach that is “equal to 100 chest x-rays or 100 mammograms,” according to Dr. David Brenner, Professor of Radiation Oncology and Public Health at Columbia University, in the September 2004 issue of Radiology.

What would happen to you if you had no safety net? Think of all the people in America who would have had to declare bankruptcy if they had not had someone who cared enough to lend them money. How many more people would be destitute? Fortunately, in most cases, people are there to aid you both financially as well as emotionally, with encouraging advice.

Unfortunately, this link to assistance, often dependent on acceptance, may make people think twice before challenging the status quo. There is risk in being dependent on anyone because you may alienate them if you express independent ideas. If, for example, you believe, based on reliable medical data, that vaccinations may harm your child, you may need courage to tell this to your family and friends. The best safety net to have is made up of people who care about you enough to respect your rights, including your right to think for yourself, and who will not abandon you for being honest with them. It is safest, of course, not to ever need to rely on family or friends as financial safety nets, but such sensible autonomy might be considered abnormal.

How in the world are we ever going to improve anything in life unless we can clearly distinguish what is normal (an arbitrary cultural construct) from what is right? Quite frankly, I don’t care about what’s normal. I care what is right, and there is often a big difference between the two. Remember, for a long time it was normal to be a racist. It was normal to have slaves. It was normal to believe that women should not have the right to vote because their brains are smaller than men’s. And long after African Americans finally got the right to vote, it was normal to continue to prevent Native Americans from voting because they were considered to be heathens. Why should we trust the Indians with anything? That was normal thinking – prejudiced, but considered normal. Were there exceptions? Yes, but the majority of people constitutes what is considered to be normal. Yet the fact that a consensus agrees upon something does not mean that it is right.

Look now at the changes that we are making. Look, for instance, at those women who are taking care of their bodies in ways that the average normal person would never do. The average normal person with menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes is going to take synthetic hormone replacement therapy. Ten million women will take it with the side effects of death from heart attacks, strokes, breast cancer, and ovarian cancer. So normal means you are willing to put yourself at risk without questioning whether there are any other options or alternatives.

Carefully consider the complete spectrum of what you live by now as normal, from your diet to what you watch on television, to how much time you spend on the telephone, to your politics, to your religious beliefs, to the kinds of friendships you have, to how you view what you should be allowed to do at different stages of your life.

Recently, there was an article in The New York Times about a man in his late 40s frequently partying with women in her 20s. He was considered particularly unusual because he was going to dance parties. Well, so what? Dancing is a part of the joy of life. When someone over the age of 40 tells you they’re going out dancing, do you ask, “Ballroom dancing? Are you going to Fred Astaire Studio? Don’t drop your dentures.” Similarly, do you believe that it is normal for people over 40 to associate only with people their own age, never with younger or older folks? Should they also go out only with people of their own economic status, at their own educational level? What if we started dealing only with people who look like us? Caucasians with Caucasians. Dark skins with each other. Rappers with rappers. Uneducated with uneducated. Glasses with glasses. Under this rubric, if Gandhi were alive today, with whom could he socialize? Do you know any skinny men with a loincloth? Start thinking about how stupid it is that we should be so limited because we want to be normal. We’re afraid not to fit in somewhere. Why are we so fearful of being unique?

The fact is that the essential need for connectedness is extraordinarily debilitating to the real self. If anything holds you back, it’s needing the comfort, support and constant validation of others. This means you don’t feel authentic on your own. It means that you may be so self-conscious that, like a teenager, you may be unable to just enjoy life without worrying what everyone else thinks of you. Do you know what happens when you allow yourself to enjoy life? You become secure. You do not feel threatened. You’re just joyful and you’re sharing your joy. Some will connect with it, some won’t, and some will be intimidated by it. And the normal people may find your vitality downright disturbing, especially if they don’t have any.

Exercise four: Ask yourself if you are damaging yourself to fit in.

You can become remarkable if you show up for your life. I want you to know that it’s important for you to focus on how you can have exceptional experiences because it’s the best meal you’ve ever had that you remember, not the Weetabix. That’s why it’s ironic that we fear our own individuality, which may make us worth remembering. It’s that wonderful crazy thing you did that was so incredible that when you entertain friends you all still laugh over it, right? You don’t get together and say, “Hey, let’s talk about our meditation marathon, or let’s relive those monotonous conversations that bored us, let’s see the television show they cancelled, and the movie we walked out on. Then we’ll celebrate by having some gruel.” You don’t remember what was most bland. You recall the high points. Now the problem is that the older we get, the fewer those become. They seem to occur when we have enough enthusiasm to fully experience life in order to create something pleasing to recall. Wake up in the morning and say, “Hey, I’m feeling good, and the rest of my day is only going to get better!”

You can create a peak moment if you know how to do it. First, learn how to recognize what is not stellar. Living every day as if it doesn’t matter is not stellar. Living every day as if it’s okay to just get through this day with your pain, suffering, depression or anxiety, most of which we could change to make way for better days, is sub-stellar. Children have exhilarating experiences all the time because they are free, honest and innocent enough to enjoy the moment they are in, until they become corrupted by following our dreary example. So let’s put high up on our to-do list, “Show up for your own life!” That means you have to appear for the opportunities so that you can engage them.

Think how often you’ve thought of going to a play or to the opera or of doing something spontaneous, but no. No, I’m too tired. What if I fall asleep? I don’t know the outcome. There’s no guarantee I’ll like it. What if a herd of goats crashes the theater? There might be a stampede during intermission. Fear turns us into robots cruising along through life on stagnant autopilot routines. Start asking what you can do to revive yourself. It’s when you make your life vital that your natural passion for life returns. You turn that flame up with that basic heat, the foundation on which almost all of our energy rests, and that flame just starts to sparkle and you begin to attract other people. When you start sending your energy out, the vibrations travel fast. The intention to do something unique in and of itself attracts other energies to you. And just the opposite is true as well. When you choose to vegetate, everyone looks right past you.

It’s not about your looks. It’s not about your weight. It’s not about your nationality or race. It’s not even about your age. That’s immaterial. It’s the energy you project that counts. Do you think Picasso was ever considered boring for all his eccentricities, from his rageful violent moments to his sublime artistic moments? No. He was never boring, and no one ever said, “Gee, I’m bored being around Picasso. He’s about as exciting as a plate of spinach.” You never knew what to expect, but then he was engaged in life. Was he out of balance? Frequently, but at least he lived a life that we can focus some attention on. Do you live a life that anyone focuses attention on? Have you developed any of your skills? There’s no excuse to take a backseat to your own life. Why retreat?

Charles Dickens’ most autobiographical novel, David Copperfield, begins, “Whether I shall turn out to the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” What do the pages of your own life show? Are you the hero of your own life, or are you phoning it in and constantly being disconnected? Regular people create exceptional lives. We’re not born great. You create your own great life, and to create yourself you have to get out of the way of all the clutter that prevents you from being you, and that clutter is all the illusion that you sell yourself, while you blame everyone else.

Exercise five: Experiment in and have fun with your life

Actualize your intentions by choosing worthy goals, and using only worthy means. Now here’s a path toward success. Achieve worthy goals by using only worthy means. If you wish to achieve something that honors who you are, you must visualize it clearly, and the intense focus on what you want, seeing the picture of it, painting it in, is like taking a canvas and showing yourself that this is your ideal house. This is your ideal relationship. This is the ideal body I would like, and then you create it. You cannot obtain what you cannot envision. You cannot hope for something to change if you don’t know what it is you want to change. What good does it do to be free from something if you don’t know what you want to be free for? You need to be as specific as possible. Otherwise, you stay in this big void, and in that void you suffer. I know I don’t want to suffer, but I’m not sure what I want instead. Now you’re in no man’s land. So always look into your future and see exactly what you do want. This is what I need. Visualize it. Master that visualization, and when you’ve mastered it enough, it is yours. Then project the energy. As that energy unfolds outward it becomes a wonderful tidal wave that sweeps up the energies of other people, and the wave returns to us enhanced. Then we have established unity, and with unity, many new opportunities arise.

It’s amazing what happens when you send your energy out, but if you are afraid or defensive, if you’re uncertain or anxious, then only fearful energy goes out. Then it’s like having guards with guns surrounding you. You may feel protected, but you will also be unapproachable. Vulnerability opens the door to the exchange of energy; fear closes that door. Love and hope open to potential.

Think of your goals and think of the many ways in which you could achieve them. Take no shortcuts. Do not use anything that is deceptive. Don’t use people in any way in which they may feel betrayed or exploited. Remember that whoever you do engage must have their needs met also in the same process as yours. That way, there is a cooperative approach. That is what I mean when I say that worthy goals require worthy means. Otherwise, you could wish for wealth and engage in unethical activities to get rich, and just be selfish with your wealth. That is an example of the use of unworthy means.

What is missing from your life? Ask yourself what is missing from your life. Don’t focus on what you already have. Focus on what you don’t have that you really need. How many times do we see only what we have like our wealth or our work or our friends? It’s fine to be thankful for those things, but that is not what is at issue. Always focus on what you lack that is essential to your well-being, and that is where you must direct your mind in order to progress.

Inspiring, motivating examples surround you. Draw power from inspiring examples. About fifteen years ago, a man named Terry Fox, who had lost one of his legs to cancer, walked clear across Canada, showing that regular people can become heroic. Terry was a humble man, but he was doing something so remarkable that it inspired us. We love it when someone who seems to be at a disadvantage comes from behind and surprises us.

Exercise six: Create clear goals, and move towards them directly

That’s why we enjoy the movie, Seabiscuit, about the little horse that was broken and damaged, and yet came back to beat War Admiral, who was considered to be the greatest racehorse of his time. Seabiscuit inspired our whole nation in the midst of the Depression to have confidence, hope and even optimism. Those Pimlico stands were packed to the rafters with waves of thunderous cheers as Seabiscuit, who was so down and out, who was thought to have no chance, came galloping into Championship history to become a beloved American hero, as he won against all odds and even set a new track record. If Seabiscuit, known as “the equine Cinderella,” could win, so can you.

People also went to the movies during the Depression to see about things that were happier than their own lives. The rise of the Marx Brothers can be traced to this need. A film may inspire you and, at least temporarily, rescue you from your troubles. A film can also motivate you. What inspires you can motivate you. Seek out what inspires you. Inspiration is everywhere. Not just at the movies. All you have to do is look around you each day.

Inspiring people who reach their goals self-actualize, and they see mistakes as opportunities for learning. Do you actualize your intentions? If you do, then you’re going to achieve even more than you ever expected. And every time you achieve something you didn’t even expect, you’re going to realize, “My goodness, I did this. How did I do this?” And then you’ll accomplish still more. When you’re free, you move freely. Your energy is free. It flows. It inspires.

Exercise seven: Find inspiring examples

What tools do I need? Do I need discipline? Do I need determination? Do I need to overcome fear? What do I need?” Then you seek out the tools that you need and you begin to implement them, and as you implement these tools, you take one step. Never look at a mistake as a setback. See a mistake as a learning opportunity because every mistake that we make is just that. Depersonalize. Disconnect from considering it to be harsh or critical or in any way disappointing. Simply say, “Okay, I’ve made a mistake. It’s completely human, and potentially helpful.” For what? For your learning process. So now you’re going to say, “All right. I didn’t do something the way I should have done it, but what is my lesson?” Remember that there is a lesson in everything we do wrong, and there is a lesson in every crisis. If you learn the lesson of your crisis, your pain, your disease process, your relationships, your friendships, and even the lessons of your own aging process, then you’re not going to make the same mistakes again. You’re past that. You’ll say that you know that. “I got that. I don’t have to do that again.” Then it’s a matter of determination, of self-actualizing. Actualize your intent. “My intent is not to make the same mistake twice.”

We don’t get into trouble in life because we make a mistake. We get into trouble because we keep making the same mistakes over and over again. How many times do you repeat the same mistakes? As many times as you’re in contact with someone who almost always repeats mistakes. And yet we expect some different outcome. How on earth can we expect a different result unless we do something differently? Change the way you do business.

Experience is not the same as growth. We all have many experiences in life. That is not the same as growth. It’s important to extract the lesson from an experience. If you know how to learn the lesson of an experience, then every experience is potentially a growth process. But how many times do we do things just because we’re up to doing them or we’re in a place to do them, but they’re just experiences that yield no lessons? You can have thousands of experiences and learn nothing from them unless you remember to ask, “What is the lesson of this experience?” Let the experience work for you.

Exercise eight: ask yourself what new tools you will need for this phase of your journey

I find that most people have outgrown their lives. They have outgrown many of their friendships, and in some cases they have outgrown other relationships as well. Many people are living too small a life, and therefore they feel as frustrated and uncomfortable as if they were wearing clothes that are far too tight so that they can’t breathe, but they don’t want to change their clothing. Don’t be afraid to expand your consciousness to the size of your life. We just accept the size of life we’ve been given, and then we adjust to it rather than transcend the expectations of others and live the life we want to live.

Everything is in motion so be okay where you are. My first apartment in Manhattan was a unique little place: one room with a kitchen with a bathtub in the kitchen. My bathtub was opposite my kitchen sink, and it wasn’t even a full bathtub. It was only a tiny bathtub so I had to scrunch way up to get into it, and I actually had to pour water out of a pot over me in order to get washed, but it was $57 a month, and that was all I could afford. “This is okay for now,” I told myself, and I remember being pleased because I knew it was just a transition.

“Everything in life is in motion,” I realized, “so this is just a moment in time. I’m in one passage that is moving, and this movement will take me to another place (preferably with a larger tub).” So why be angry about where you’re at? That’s like being impatient when you’re in the first grade because you want to be in the tenth grade. Be patient because if you keep a steady eye on what you must do and you allow your life to open up, gradually your expectations, perceptions, vision, and ideals mature until one day you’re like an eagle whose wings are spread and now you can soar.

Without patience you may settle for a very limited sense of who you are and a very narrow sense of the world you’re in. You may shut yourself down by living a constricted life with very little understanding of the higher dynamic of people. You may see only the surface of things, never looking deeply, in contrast to those who patiently transcend superficiality and selfishness, to enjoy a profound appreciation of life. You are going to do one or the other.

Exercise nine: Ask yourself if your life is too small

Be okay where you are – for now. It’s okay that I’m overweight, temporarily. It’s okay that I’m fatigued because the process that I’ve chosen for myself is going to take me from where I am to where I ideally should be. And when I get there, I’ll create a whole new ideal, and I’ll open up another door as well. And then one day, like that youthful woman in her 70s winning a National Championship, you will have fulfilled much of your potential. That woman was so fit for her age that seeing all the other 70-year-olds lined up beside her you would think she was in the wrong row. Now how about deciding that you don’t have to remain forever in the row where you are? Just choose the one where you’d like to be.

Expand your consciousness of your life, and your life expands with it. What would happen if you ask, “Why am I here?” If I am here to be an artist, then I may mistakenly think I have to become a caricature of an artist by dressing like an artist and being manically depressed. Why? Why can’t I be exuberant? You could be if you want to break out of the mold and be yourself so you open up and expand instead of impersonating your notion of what you think the world expects an artist to be. Expand your consciousness of your life and your life expands with all of its potential. You are the only one who is holding you back. Don’t blame others, and certainly don’t blame circumstances.

Exercise ten: Accept who you are, right now

Stop telling your story. Most people spend most of their time telling other people their life history. (Recently, people on buses have even begun sharing intimate details of their lives loudly over their cell phones.) How about not telling the story of your life? Just stop, and start listening to other people instead. Bear witness to them, but listen to their inner voice. Notice that if you are really comfortable with your own life, you don’t have to talk about it. All you need to do is live it. Get together with anyone and the first thing they do is to start talking about themselves. How long does it take in any conversation before people tell you their story? And how many times have you told your story? Endless times. Though you would never say to someone, “Hey, friend, in about 15 more minutes into your graphic reenactment of your root canal, we’re going to shift to the important subject, me.” Then we’ll scroll down into the “here are my problems” and “here’s why I’m angry” and “here’s what I can’t control” and “here’s who to blame” and join me in this. I want you to bear witness to my pain and my misfortunes. I know that anything you recommend I’ll reject, but I just need to talk. And do you know why I do all this? Because I’ve mastered my personality before I mastered my life. People always do master their personalities before they master their lives, and that’s why there are so many people in our society who are so apt to tell you about everything that they want to tell you, and you’re going to listen because they’re good at telling it.

Master your life, not your personality. Did you ever notice how good people are at getting your attention? They can do it in many ways, and they have wonderful personalities. And we like them because of their personalities. But they almost always use that to unload their stories. What if we reversed it? What if we mastered our lives, not our personalities? Then think of all the things we would have to say that would be more genuine, more joyful, positive, passionate and endearing to share. We would have exceptional moments to share if we mastered our lives. But when you master our personality, the only thing you have to share is your personality, and there is no depth to a person’s personality. It’s one-dimensional. It’s like watching the same actor do the same performance in every movie they’re in. Did you ever see that? There are some people who don’t care what the scene calls for. They’re always the same. That’s what happens when we just have a personality. Ask yourself if you are one of those people. If you are, it’s best to surrender your personality. Stop telling your story, and start looking at the deeper more meaningful parts of life.

Your attitude can change readily, but institutions resist change. It’s easy to change your attitude, but institutions rarely change. Why are we frustrated? We’re frustrated because we are unable to move or alter or impact so many circumstances. So what? Look, I don’t want war anywhere. I don’t want genocide. I don’t want to see anyone in pain. I don’t want any more killing. I don’t want people or animals to suffer. But I, as an individual, and you, as an individual, even together, are not going to change that today. That does not mean we shouldn’t try. In the effort to make ourselves and our inner truth known, we are honestly expressing what we feel, and therefore we as individuals are no longer contributing to the problem of the ills of the world.

Exercise 11: Stop identifying with your past, your story

It didn’t matter that everyone I grew up with ate meat. I didn’t. And when they noticed that I didn’t and they did, they may have thought I was kind of odd for not wanting to eat meat. But it wasn’t about their changing to vegetarianism. It was about my not becoming a meat eater. It’s not about changing the world to stop wars. It’s about your not respecting or honoring the arguments used for war. It’s not about your freeing all the slaves. It’s about your not accepting any arguments that legitimize slavery. So global circumstances rarely change. Throughout history, they rarely change for the better for the average person, but that doesn’t mean you should never abrogate your responsibility to continue to seek the truth irrespective of what you’re told. Circumstances almost always are far more defiant to adjustment than we as individuals are. You and I can change. Institutions rarely change.

When was the last time the American Medical Association changed or the Food and Drug Administration changed or most religions changed? They don’t. The mountain doesn’t move, but you can move around the mountain. So just remember no matter how frustrated you are by what is going on in the world, you don’t have to be fearful, despondent, and angry because of it. You can just be aware of it. When you’re aware of a problem, you can continue to have a life. If you can’t do that, then you become as toxic as the world problem you are facing. It’s like someone pushing against a steel wall that’s a thousand feet thick and saying, “I’m so angry today because I can’t move this wall.” Well, of course you can’t. What is important is to be conscious of the wall, and why you shouldn’t be underneath the wall or pinned against the wall or stuck to the wall. That means that you detach from the wall of problems, but you’re also fully aware of it, and you don’t support that wall. When enough people don’t support something, then it loses its strength, and then things can change. That frequently takes years. So don’t give up your life and the joy of your life for any cause. Always remember that life is more important than the cause. And if you forget that, look around at the countless relationships that have been destroyed by activists who are burned out, angry, depressed, and toxic. It is not what they believed in and challenged wasn’t worthy. It was.

Where in your life do you have intractable conflict? Causes are important. The anti-war movement and the human rights movement are legitimate. But you are still a person. Don’t become a casualty of your own zeal and lose your life because of it. The only reason I’ve been able to be a part of so many causes for so long and have helped so many movements along is because I don’t wake up every morning and say, “My God, my life is worthless because I’ve spent eight years on this cause and nothing has happened.” I don’t want to feel bad about myself because I can’t convince other people out there to make changes. I wake up every morning and say, “My life is great.” Yes, there are things that have got to be done in this world, but I’m still going to maintain my great life no matter what happens out there. You don’t have to make an excuse for that.

Be the supportive enthusiastic person who is an example of someone who stands for something, versus the person who is disheveled emotionally, spiritually, and psychically. They’re spent. They have nothing left. They are just going through the motions where the motions are fighting, fighting, and more fighting. As if the main thing in life were violence instead realizing that love is a greater conqueror than fear and hate. Then one day they wake up filled with as much hate as the people they’re against who are filled with hate. Well, try to distinguish hate from hate, fear from fear, anger from anger, and destructive energy from destructive energy. Where is there a difference? This is what creates what I call intractable conflict: people who become the movement by losing their sense of self in the movement. These people, who forget they are human, are caught in the machinery of despising their opponents and wishing them dead.

I remember once being in a peace march during the Vietnam War, and, as we were marching down the street, I heard people around me screaming that they wished the war supporters on the sidelines would get killed. And I said, “Then what differentiates you from him? How are you different from the war supporter if you want someone killed and he wants someone killed?”

Take a careful look at the many movements with leaders who are angry, burnt out, and bitter. They are highly reactionary having lost touch with their spiritual side. Then look at someone like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr., who never lost their joy and respect for life, including regard for the lives of those who held contrary views. Which then is the best example to follow? Watch the people who become the movement and they no longer have a life. As I said earlier, don’t master your personality before you master your life, and don’t give up your life to a cause. Keep your life and then support causes, but support the cause realizing that all causes take time, much energy, and they may not change in your lifetime. Do not give up your life and the joys of your lifetime because of the cause. I’ve seen too many people do that.

Exercise twelve: Support a worthy cause, but support your life at the same time. Keep your emotional balance.

Enjoy your relationships and each day wake up and be thankful that you have another day to live. Detach from the outcome of your efforts because if you don’t then if something fails, you’re going to go right down the hole with it. Then you’ve got a double problem. You’ve got a cause that you hate and your life that you hate too because you feel helpless and impotent to do anything about it. Then you become angry and despondent and whine and complain with other angry, despondent people. There are too many of those around. Instead of congregating with people who say, “Well, we understand what’s wrong and we’ll do the best we can to change it, but we’re not going to give up our lives in the process.” Your priorities matter.

Be patient when in doubt or your may lose your balance. One of my buddies gave up his relationship with his family because he could not control the anger that he held from the movement when he came home at night. Uncertain of the progress of his cause, he’d yell at his relatives and once, when his wife suggested that they go out to a movie, he became violent and smacked her because she wasn’t a true comrade of the cause. Look at what that does to your kids. Yet it’s easy for these people to be self-righteous to justify their inexcusable behavior. I have no sympathy for insecure people who step over the line and suddenly become as angry and hate-filled as the movement that they’re opposing. Never lose your balance. Remember that circumstances are outside of you. You can’t change them by yourself. You can only change you by yourself from within.

Exercise thirteen: Be patient with yourself and your circumstances

Illusion separates you from truth. Truth will not be found in illusion. Almost everything the media reports in America is illusion, especially politics. In the last campaign, the Democrats supported a warmonger. Is that an oxymoron? The Democrats supported a candidate who wanted to kill more people than the incumbent did, someone who also supported the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank. Is that what the Democratic movement is supposed to be about? The Democratic candidate did not support a real change in our environmental policies and he didn’t challenge NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the other trade agreements that have caused destabilization of the economies and terrible working conditions in third world countries. There were other candidates who could have made a difference, from the Constitutional Party or the Libertarian Party or the Green Party, or even Ralph Nader, who is considered unelectable. But no, it was all about the Democratic Party illusion, a web of discrepancies created by the platform Democrats claim to stand for versus the candidate they supported who reflects few of the party’s ideals.

To maintain party integrity, I would rather nominate someone who epitomizes the party’s ideas, even if it means losing the election. Because sometimes by losing with a compelling cause, you actually show more people the significance of your cause than if you lose an election where both candidates are the same. When I tried to explain that to people, it did not sink in. People become so radicalized. Why try to beat an incumbent when your candidate is almost the same? It shows you how far a field we have gone in looking for the truth. I saw no truth in the presidential debates. It was a mockery, and yet people argued over who looked the best, who answered questions the best, and who “won.” It makes no sense to fall into the trap of believing in that media illusion. Debates and press conferences are completely rehearsed. Everything is coached. In press conferences, each reporter knows which question to ask, and answers are prepared in advance. How can scripted exchanges reveal what a candidate really feels or whether or not he is knowledgeable or articulate enough to lead America? Nothing is spontaneous.

Much that we take for granted as truth, that we never question, is an illusion. Reality shows are illusion, and most of our day-to-day life is an illusion. Are you working for a standard of living or a quality of life? If you are working for a quality of life, then why are you commuting for two or three hours a day? Why are you living in overly congested urban areas that really cannot support so many people in such a confined space? Why are you living in overpopulated suburban areas that have wiped out much of the beautiful rural landscape of the United States? The forests and streams of America are deteriorating because we are paving over them.

So much of what we do is an illusion. If everyone wanted to work for a quality of life, most of you would have to change your jobs. Most of you would have to change where you live to cut the commute to make time for your family. Don’t expect to find the truth while you’re racing frantically on your treadmill of illusion, television.

So where are you going to find the truth? Did any of you hear the recent radio programs that I did on the goddesses of the Palestinians? Did you hear the shows I did on questioning inaccuracies in the Bible? I had religious scholars on who simply took all the different holy books and were soon revealing historical and archaeological inaccuracies. What if you were to demand a higher standard of truth? Almost all of your illusions would be swept away. What happens when you believe in illusion, but imagine you have the truth? You can’t question it. You’re not willing to because it’s dogma. You give a highly reactive response if anyone challenges you. Anger. And what causes that anger? You feel defensive. You feel threatened that someone may take away what you feel confident and comfortable with. So if you want to find the truth, you must first detect the illusions you support. What happens when you start to separate yourself from all illusions? You go to a point, first of all, of disappointment. You are disappointed that you trusted in things that were illusory, and then for a while you don’t believe in anything because you think everything is an illusion, but it is not.

Exercise fourteen: Examine the story behind the story

Finally, as you progress, you arrive at a place where you begin to see truths, real truths, and then you begin to respect those real truths a few at a time. The truth is easy. Illusion is difficult. Illusion means you have to keep reinforcing lies and deceptions to sustain dogmas and rituals as if they had real meaning and substance or were backed by something of substance, but they’re not. We’re afraid to pull back the curtain to see that the Wizard of Oz is our illusion.

There is a price for every engagement and for every productive change you make. There is a cost in every engagement and in every change. Sometimes it seems overwhelming. How can I go out there and protest inadequacies if I’m going to be started at, photographed or challenged? Am I going to be on anyone’s enemy list? What will my neighbors think? Think of all the times you defended something that you believed in. I think, for example, of the time I helped to stimulate change to protect children by leading the battle to remove the carcinogen MSG (monosodium glutamate) from baby foods and we succeeded. We put the truth forward to challenge the insidious illusion that if major corporations put that MSG in there, it must be good for your baby. Yes, there is a price for defending the truth, but that is a price well worth paying. Any time you sacrifice your complacency, your petty comfort, to stand up for something that is honest and will protect the helpless, you are distinguishing yourself as a person of character, integrity and spirit.

What would happen if your courage cost you your job or your friendships? We’ve made our jobs and our friendships more important than our lives. Everything depends on your character so it has to come first. From the strength of your character, you draw energy to work and to create quality relationships. When you cannot find a job out there in the marketplace that really honors who you are and what you need, create one. There are probably 20 million Americans today who have created their own workplace, and they live contentedly in that reality, which they share with others. That is really the bedrock of American society, and yet it gets no attention at all. Don’t be afraid of the cost of living an authentic life. If you support illusion, you’ll hurt far more.

What is the outcome of accepting that the end justifies the means? What happens when you accept the idea that the end justifies the means? Consider the immorality, the lack of ethics, and the indecency that can occur in how we go about achieving our goals. Always be sure that your goal and the methods you’re using to achieve it are at the highest level of integrity. Do not compromise honesty, decency, ethics, sensitivity towards other, and love to achieve your goals. You can embody these fine qualities if your goal is a legitimate one.

Look at the Wall Street mogul. Look at corporate America where every day there’s another scandal. Every day major corporations are found guilty of illegitimately gaining excessive amounts of money and then being dishonest to get more. Why do they need more? Why would a person who already makes ten or 100 million dollars a year need more money? Because no matter how much money they make they never feel authentic. They never feel real. They never feel whole. They never feel connected to what is important to them. So they keep piling in more money with the perception that more money gives more power, and with more power someone will take the time to give them attention. They still don’t get the attention because life is not about who has the most power, property, and money in the bank. Life belongs to those who are the most loving. You’re going to remember the person who gave you exceptional moments. The exceptional moments are joy, happiness, humor and love, right? That’s the person you want to be around again. You don’t want to be around people who are greedy, selfish, and conceited, no matter what they’re worth. And yet they don’t understand that. So they’ll go out tonight instead of being home with the family to continue to make deals because they don’t know when enough is enough. They don’t know when to stop. We’re talking right now probably about 60 million Americans who don’t know when they have enough but just can’t appreciate what they have.

Do you choose to limit your opportunities? How do you choose to limit yourself? Now you might assume that circumstances or others limit you, but I suggest that you tend to limit yourself, by not believing in your completeness. When you accept that you are complete and whole and that you have all that you need in order to achieve anything you choose to, then you simply have to connect with other people by sharing those waves of energy, and you’re not limited.

Does fear hold you back? Stop struggling with life. Do you assume the role of victim, as many people do, because you don’t seem to have enough? You don’t have enough money or contacts or you don’t have the right looks or something is missing; and therefore you hold yourself back with the fear that if you try to do something, you may fail. So your fear of failure, your fear of being ridiculed and humiliated, and of losing your self-esteem becomes the anchor that prevents you from moving ahead.

Stop limiting yourself. Make an honest effort, but don’t struggle. Watch how great athletes run so effortlessly, so smoothly. Live your life that way. Live smoothly: an ease of living, an ease of thinking, and an ease of being. When you’re at ease, you’re not in disease. Try too hard and you push yourself too forcibly. When we shock and overstress ourselves, we’re left with the consequences – disease. The very thing we’re after, good health through balance, is denied us. Stop struggling with everything. Life is not meant to be an obstacle course. It’s more like school. Trust in life’s generosity as your teacher.

What does multitasking do to you? We are a society that thinks the more we multitask, the more we achieve. Nothing could be farther from the truth or more misleading. Multitasking is not a synonym for accomplishment. It’s better to do a few things well in balance than to multitask and start failing. Think of all the things we juggle in a day, and with every extra task that we toss in, there’s a greater chance for things to go wrong, until one day all we’re doing is just struggling to keep our balance, nothing more. We’re no longer able to appreciate what we do because we’ve lost contact with who we are. We fall out of touch with the importance of our mission. We have no sensitivity left to be able to feel anything. We’re overwhelmed to the point of being numb. It is no coincidence that the word multitasking originally referred only to robots, computers designed to perform more than one task at a time!

Mothers and fathers are expected in today’s society to keep up with a career, as well as parental and societal responsibilities. Keep multitasking just to get more done faster, and look at the possible consequences. You may end up one day at work with a phone call from the police because your teenager stole a car. Then you wonder, “Why did he steal a car? He didn’t need to steal a car. Was it because of defiance? Was it because I was always too busy or exhausted to give him enough attention? Was it because I gave him everything except unconditional time and love?” I believe that if there is anything that we should stop doing and stop doing now it is multitasking.

Start to delegate your optional responsibilities. Make a list of the things you will no longer do, both inside and outside of your home, and then explain to others that in order to reclaim your life and protect your family, you must stop over-committing yourself. It may take three or four months before you actually feel comfortable after you stop multitasking. You’re like someone who’s given up caffeine when you’ve been drinking ten cups of it a day. You’re not just going to stop and then feel good right away. You’re going to go through multitasking withdrawal, but that’s all right because for every moment that you reclaim, you’re regaining the most precious asset you have – your time.

Do you realize how much of your time you lose to your tasks? At the end of the day are you better because of it? Is the world a better place because of it? Is your relationship better for it? No. I’ve never seen anything improve as a result of people spending so much time multitasking. I see everything deteriorate because of multitasking. So start disengaging from your excess responsibilities now. Don’t give that time away. Give it back to yourself, and then look at what you could do. Go to museums. Go the botanical gardens. Spend time with people you love. They deserve your time. That is never time wasted because it is part of reconnecting with the essential.

Exercise fifteen: Burst the illusions in your life

You already know your life’s mission. Every cell in your body has its mission, its knowledge of what to do cooperatively. To say that your body is a well-coordinated system to support life is an understatement. Trust in the unlimited wisdom of that life. The more limited world of the intellect, however, is presented to us in solitary fragments called disciplines or subjects that tend to resist full authentic coordination because they are arbitrary theories. We have, thus, become a nation of highly educated specialists, each with a piece of a puzzle, which is not put together to let you see a whole true picture. You may not find certain existential answers there. All you need to do is to get quiet, be at peace, at ease, and the distinctive picture of your life reveals itself – because you already know it.

Then one day you realize, “My goodness, you mean all this was right in front of me? Why didn’t I see it?” The camouflage of clutter, busyness, and too much responsibility breeds anxieties, fears and judgments that can blind you to reality or distort it. Stop searching for meaning and purpose through a fog of illusion. Discover what beliefs you hold that have brought you to worship your mountain of shallow tasks, surplus property, and poisons, and then disengage to freedom. Unburden yourself. Stop overdoing the inessentials. When you reconnect with what is essential and reinstate balance in your life, you will see that you have a restorative prescription for your soul because you are honoring it.

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