Project Creative Vision

Biochemistry of Happiness

"Happiness is what we feel when our biochemicals of emotion, the neuropeptides and their receptors, are open and flowing freely throughout the psychosomatic network, integrating and coordinating our systems, organs, and cells in a smooth and rhythmic movement. Physiology and emotions are inseparable." - Candace Pert, Ph.D., "Molecules of Emotion."

(Can you tell I'm rereading "Molecules of Emotions"?  One of the most brilliant books on the biochemistry of emotions by the brilliant Candace Pert.)

Restoring Sanity Amidst Fear-Mongering

In the midst of this whole financial crisis, I've found myself longing for a leader with an inspirational message. A leader who would come out and, in FDR's manner, tell us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. A leader who'll remind us all that, rather than falling prey to panic, we should be focusing on the great things awaiting us. A leader who, rather than scaring us, will urge us to rise above the pettiness of it all and restore our faith in our great destiny.

Who will tell me, in the manner of Eleanor Roosevelt: "I gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which I must stop and look fear in the face...I say to myself, I’ve lived through this and can take the next thing that comes along"? 

But since there's no such leader in sight, it looks like I'll have to come up with an inspirational message all by myself... So here are some words of wisdom of my own for these trying times:

1. Refuse to panic. Fear-mongering may be the daily fare of the talking heads, but you – you can choose against joining in the doom and gloom. Turn off the TV and choose to be in the company of people with a more positive view of life. If there are no such people in your life, keep your own counsel. It's better to be alone than surround yourself with those who infect you with panic and fear.

2. Take a big-picture perspective. Sure, the world as you know it as changing. Who would have thought, even a couple of months ago, that Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan would disappear from our financial landscape? For that matter, though, who ever thought that Enron would? And how about that old monster, the Soviet Union?

The Buddha, as always, was right: life is about change, and if you think otherwise, you're clinging to an illusion. Institutions come and go, and so do economic, financial, and political crises. Life, on the other hand, goes on.

Here's my bold, big-picture prediction: No matter the outcome of the Senate vote tonight, the Fall will still be ravishingly beautiful in the Shenandoah valley, winter will be cold in Siberia, and the birds will continue chirping outside my window.  N no matter who becomes president on November 4, the sun will rise every day and the rivers will continue to flow.

Life went on after other crises, and it will again. Are you living it in such a way as to say, at the end of it, that you lived a life of few or no regrets?  That's the real question we all need to answer.

3. Nurture your mind with great thoughts. In the words of Benjamin Disraeli, "to believe in the heroic makes heroes." So rather than filling your mind with fear-mongering, fill it with something that inspires you. Who are your heroes? Who are the people you want to emulate? There is nothing like a time of transition, in which we find ourselves now, to reconsider what's important for you and readjust your life's course to make sure that you are moving exactly in the direction you want to be.

4. Security comes from within. If you were working for Lehman Brothers, you, too, probably thought that you had a secure job. You learned first-hand that no external source can provide you with that security. Now may be as good a time as any to ask yourself what security really means to you. If the company you work for now disappeared from under you, where would you draw your sense of security from? Hint:  look on the inside, where it's always been and where it always will be.  No external source – job, marriage, relationship, bank account – can give it to you. Reconnect with your inner sense of security, and you will never again depend on external circumstances to live an abundant and prosperous life.

5. Get grateful for what you have. "Complaints erase good fortune. Appreciation builds joy for all eternity." How about that one from Taro Gold? No comment necessary.

6. Tighten your circle. We are constantly urged to broaden our network, but here's a bit of a contrary advice. Rather going out in search of new contacts, how about consolidating the friendships and family relationships you already have? These are the people who love you and to whom you mean a lot. Now may be as good a time as any to begin overlooking the little irritations they've caused you and forgiving the small mistakes they've made. Strengthen the relationships you have. Create the sense of stability from within. You really do already have everything you need to feel happy and secure.

Laid Off from Lehman? Now Is Your Chance

"Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."- Alan Keightley

With Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch and AIG barely squeaking by, I thought I'd drop a line to the employees of those companies who are now on the outs or are awaiting their fate. 

Believe me, I know what it's like to be part of a collapsing organization.  When you lose your job because the company you've worked for so hard collapses, it may seem as if your world is crashing all around you.  It's worse when it happens because of the dishonesty, greed, and incompetence of the management, whose sole preoccupation in these last moments is saving their own hide.

But here's a small bit of a silver lining:  Even though your job is over, your life isn't.

And here's an even bigger truth:  You are now completely free to do whatever you want with your life.

Natalie Coughlin: "Define Success for You"

Olympians have a lot to teach us in helping us reach for and achieve our dreams.  Their stories are a source not just of inspiration but also of invaluable strategies that are applicable to both our personal and professional lives, no matter what we do in life and what we are trying to achieve.

These strategies are as much about the mind as they are about the body.  The things you say to yourself, your mindset, your ability to focus on that which will give you energy and strength are all key components of your personal success - whatever "success" means to you.   

JoAnn Dahlkoetter, a sports psychologist, has a great book on the subject called "Your Performing Edge," which I expect to be reviewing in the coming weeks.  Meanwhile, as an introduction to the topic, I wanted to pass along a few inspirational quotes from women athletes that landed in my mailbox this morning courtesy Oprah's Spirit Newsletter.

Read them and be inspired - but don't stop there.  Set the intention to read the advice of these athletes and actually take it to heart.  In other words, don't just be inspired.  Be transformed.  This week, choose to pick one thing you could do to bring you closer to your dream.  Do the same next week and the week after, and let momentum develop.

And here's a tip for making this a success.  Imagine that you are on an Olympian's schedule.  Imagine that you only have four years to achieve your goal and that in your entire life, you'll only have 2-3 opportunities (your personal equivalents of the Olympic games) to make your dream come true.  Let that fill you with the sense of urgency needed to finally give your dream a priority. 

With that, here's your Monday morning dose of inspiration.

The Noble Art of Leaving Things Undone

For the overwhelmed and compulsive among us, here's a quote to ponder:

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” - Lin Yutang

What a radical concept.  Imagine that:  leaving things undone and actually embracing it.  No guilt, no shame - just a feeling of peace and equanimity.  Embracing the undoingness of things and feeling free and liberated. 

Hard to imagine?  How about an experiment:

1. Take a look at your to-do list and slash it by half.  Randomly cross things off it or deliberately put them off till Monday or, better yet, till the week after.

2. Very important: forget all about those things until the day you've agreed with yourself as the day you'll return to them.  Just wipe them out of your mind.  Poof - gone!

3. Very, very important: don't add any more things to your to-do list.  Instead, set the list aside and, well, just be. Glory in the experience of having nothing to do and nowhere to go. 

4. When you're done, see whether the sky has fallen. See whether you've terminally fallen behind competition or lost ground in your career progression.  Check out if your worst fears have come to pass.   

5. If none of the horrible things you imagined would happen if you didn't complete your to-do list actually happen, ask yourself: did you really need to do those things?  Chances are, you'll find out that the answer was no.  Aren't you glad you didn't bother doing them in the first place?

Final step: Next time, add an item to your to-do list reminding you to make sure you keep those non-essential to-dos off the list.  Stick to the program. You'll be a much happier person, I guarantee it. 

Friday Inspiration

A couple of quotes have appeared and reappeared in my life enough times lately for me to want to share them.  Here are the two as our Friday's inspiration/food for thought, plus a link to an excellent blog entry I came across today. 

"As the flower blooms, the bees come uninvited."
- Sri Ramakrishna

This one was a gift from the Richard Leider/Dick Bolles's life purpose/career workshop in Chicago, and it came as we delved into the exploration of our core gifts.  Dick Bolles has always said that the road to your dream job passes through you.  His idea is that, rather than trying to desperately adjust ourselves to every job that's out there, we should explore who we really are and what we really want and then go after those opportunities that match that. The success rates of such job searches is dramatically higher, as is the ultimate level of satisfaction experienced by the job seeker once hired.

It's a philosophy that I subscribe to with all my heart and soul.  When we know exactly what it is that we have to offer the world and what it is that we really, really want in our lives, we begin to attract the right people and opportunities. It's like that feeling of flow that each of us has experienced (all too fleetingly, most of the time) and that all of us cherish - the sense of getting things accomplished effortlessly and easily, as if on a wave of inspiration. 

You blossom in your work when you feel that your work is in line with your deepest desires, when you have a sense of purpose, when you know how you want to use your unique gifts to make this world a better place in a way that's meaningful for you.  As we blossom in that way, opportunities begin to show up, almost without our having to do anything more to attract them.

"The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet."
- James Oppenheim.

I first heard this quote during the Pangea Day broadcast and made a note of it for myself.  Then yesterday it landed in my mailbox curtesy of my coach Hillary.  It struck me because I've been learning in my own life that happiness really does lie within us.  For years I was always the one jetting off to some far-off land, planning to move to London or Sicily or Beijing, figuring out what new activity I could engage in or what new interesting people I could  meet.  It was fun for a while, but after some time, I realized that the only thing this created was an insatiable hunger, as one thing after another proved to have been an illusory goal.  It took settling down and deepening connections where I already was, making a difference where I'd been placed, for me to realize a better recipe toward that greater sense of happiness that I was always seeking.

And, as a final point of inspiration, check out this post, Your Brain on Jazz, from Robyn McMaster, brain scientist and blogger extraordinaire.  Her "riff" on improvisation and its importance in our lives is rich and thought-provoking, as is her question: "Is your work richly rewarding because you create new melodies on the fly?" 

Happy Friday everyone!

Life and Career Advice for a Teenager in My Life

I have a teenager in my life who is in the midst of making decisions about college, career, and the future direction of her life.  As I watch her go through her struggles, I find myself wishing that I could just take all the wisdom I’ve accumulated in my 38 years and transfer it to her.  It’s probably lucky that I can’t - she deserves her own chance at learning her own lessons, and, anyway, who am I to say that my wisdom applies to her life.  But I still couldn't help myself, and, I figured, blogging is less intrusive than a brain download... So my dear teenager, here is my unsolicited advice on your dilemmas.  Take whatever you find useful and ignore the rest. May you be happy!

And for the rest of my readers:  What other advice would you give a 16 or 17 year old who is just embarking on her or his adult life? Please chime in.

1. Decisions are revisable and, a lot of the times, reversible. Although you may feel as though the decisions you're facing right now are final and irreversible, you are actually not determining the direction of your life for the rest of your life.  Nobody goes through life executing on a plan hatched when they are sixteen.  People change directions all the time, and that’s the beauty of life. Nothing is ever final, and there are always options.  Right now, you are just making your first steps. The plan will change many times.  You will review your decisions and change your direction, and you’ll find yourself in wonderful places you never planned to go. 

So remove that pressure from your life.  Make the best possible decisions you can in each moment, follow your intuition to reach out for things, people, subjects, opportunities that seem fun, exciting, and interesting, and always keep your eyes open for new gifts from life.  And if you make a decision that doesn’t feel right, know that you can always change it.

2. Grow into your true self.  Follow examples of people you admire, but don’t forget that you need to grow into your own true self.  Your path is your own.  You have unique gifts to offer the world that nobody else has.  These gifts may not be apparent to you, and that’s normal:  we all tend to take our greatest gifts for granted.  But they are apparent to me and to anybody else who truly loves you.  And the world can't wait to receive those gifts.  Don’t withdraw them from the world by choosing a path that doesn’t feel like your own.

Feeling Our Life, Finding Our Life's Work

My amazing coach Hillary Harris forwarded me this short article from DailyOM the other day, and I'm reprinting it here with DailyOM's expressed permission.

Rather than highlighting what I found important in it, just read on - every sentence is a pearl of wisdom.

Feeling Our Life, Finding Our Life’s Work
(© 2004-08 DailyOM - All Rights Reserved
Sometimes it takes us the better part of a lifetime to discover our life’s work, even though we may have been doing it our whole lives without necessarily realizing it. Our life’s work is not always what we do to make money, although we often think it should be, and sometimes this way of thinking prevents us from seeing clearly what it is. It may be the work of having children, caring for them, and running a household. The way we know our life’s work is by how we feel when we are doing it.

When we are doing our life’s work, we feel an uncanny sense of ease and alignment. This doesn’t mean that the work is always easy, and it doesn’t mean that it’s the only work we have to do; it just means that there is a conviction deep inside us that tells us we are in tune with our innermost self. When we are engaged in our life’s work, our bodies feel more alive, because our energy is devoted to a cause that, in turn, feeds us. We may be tired after engaging in our life’s work, but we are almost never depleted. We feel grounded in the world, knowing that we belong here and have something important to offer.

When we are deeply unhappy, depressed, or subject to one illness after another, this may be due to a sense of disconnection from our life’s work. At times like these, finding the work we are meant to do is an essential act of healing. Most of us remember a time when we felt fully engaged in some act of work, service or creativity, and it is here that we may rediscover the work we are meant to do now. On the other hand, it may be time to explore what inspires us through volunteering, taking a class, going back to school, or just doing whatever it is we long to try. We all have callings, and when we find them, we owe it to ourselves to nurture and protect them, because while they may or may not be our livelihood, they are the keys to our well-being.

(Reprinted from DailyOM - Inspirational thoughts for a happy, healthy and fulfilling day. Register for free at www.dailyom.com.)

Feed the Positive Dog

Since this week has been about how our state of mind affects our lives, here's a little fable to round out the previous post:

A man goes to the village to visit the wise man, and he says to the wise man, "I feel like there are two dogs inside me.  One dog is this positive, loving, kind, and gentle dog, and then I have this angry, mean-spirited, and negative dog, and they fight all the time.  I don't know which is going to win."  The wise man thinks for a moment and he says, "I know which is going to win.  The one you feed the most, so feed the positive dog. (From The Energy Bus, by Jon Gordon)

The truth is, that to which we give most of our attention will grow.  We are so conditioned to focus on our mistakes and on those areas where we are lacking, it's no wonder so many of us are feeling angry, inadequate, and dissatisfied.  Focusing on what went right during the day seems counterintuitive, and when it comes to internal work, it's among the hardest switches to make.  But it's one that produces some of the most amazing results in terms of well-being and, yes, happiness. 

So what if for the next few days you focused on your strengths and forgot all about your so-called weaknesses?  What if you chose to talk - and, most important, think - only about those things that are going well?  Doesn't it make sense that those areas of your life are going to expand?  Give it a shot, and let me know what happens.

Listening to Your Heart and Soul in Choosing Your Career

I am a big fan of Paulo Coelho, who's always wise, poetic, and inspiring.  I'm also a fan of Ode magazine, which is always forward-looking, eclectic, and provocative.  This made the May issue of Ode, with its contribution by Coelho titled "Life: A Walker's Guide. How to honour and care for the path you're on," close to perfect.

Coelho's piece also seemed like a perfect reflection of something I've been thinking about a lot lately - how our search for the right career is really a spiritual search.  Underlying our quest for satisfying and authentically fulfilling work are the eternal questions of spiritual seekers of all times - Who am I? and Why am I here?

Our paths toward finding answers to these questions - and to finding ways to express these answers through our work in this world - can be long and twisting, sometimes exasperatingly so. So often we feel like we're walking in the dark, wondering why we are doing what we are doing, how long we're going to be doing it, and where all of it is leading. 

Coelho reminds us, in that spiritual-guide kind of way of his, that no matter where we are in our lives, we are exactly where we need to be at this time, and that our real job - possibly our only true job in life - is to be present to this path and to trust that it will lead us to the right place. 

Unfortunately, the article is not available on Ode's website as yet.  You can either pick up a paper copy of Ode at your nearest newsstand or check back with Ode's website in a week or so. Meanwhile, I hope the editors won't hold it against me if I quote a couple of Coelho's gems here - ones that are particularly relevant for those on the quest to find their true path:

The path begins at a crossroads.  There you can stop and think what direction to take.  But don't spend too much time thinking or you'll never leave the spot.  Ask yourself the classic Carlos Castaneda question:  Which of these paths has a heart?  Reflect a lot on the choices that lie ahead, but once you've taken the first step, forget the crossroads forever or you'll always torture yourself with the useless question, "Did I take the right path?"  If you listened to your heart before making the first movement, you chose the right path...

Make your path a mirror of yourself.  By no means let yourself be influenced by the way others care for their paths.  You have your own soul to listen to, and the birds to whisper translations of what your soul is saying...

Love your path.  Without this, nothing makes any sense.