Happiness Talk Blog

Happiness

Monday, March 01, 2010

Sometimes I Have to Jump Start Myself

How Stuck are You?
So often, we have low periods, ebbs within the flow of life. If you find yourself stuck, you might want to look at what has you there. You could be sabotaging yourself. On the other hand, maybe you are just temporarily stuck and need to work though the next step.

Check Your Values
Sometimes our ebbs are indicative of a value to which we are not paying attention. What do you value that you are neglecting?

Evaluate Your Survival Needs
You might do an intensive search inside of you to see what needs you are not fulfilling. There are so many needs for you to look at. Are you meeting your physical needs? Do you have all your survival needs in place? Especially in these times of economic recession, you may have to evaluate and assess your financial position. With homeowners being upside down in their mortgages, do you need to do something in this area? Do you have six months cash set aside? You cannot address your higher-level needs well if you have something in this survival area to fulfill. Start taking action if you have any financial circumstances in bad shape. Be sure to look outside the box for different solutions. Brainstorm.

Pleasure Needs
Then move yourself into an investigation of some higher-level needs. Do you have lots of pleasure and fun you are participating in and creating? Do you have some form of recreation you love to do? Are you eating well, exercising, and playing? What do you do for fun? What makes you laugh? Do you have enough of this? If not, put some fun into your schedule each week or day. You cannot wait to laugh on Saturday. If you are having financial difficulties, it is especially important to add pleasurable activities to your life.

Need for Engagement with Life
Let’s take a look at what activities you do weekly that are really engaging for you. If you have a hobby or interest like quilting, needle pointing, playing bridge, baking pies, golfing, tennis, travel, antiquing, or sailing, you have many opportunities to feel some passion, contentment and fulfillment in doing something you love. Finding an activity in which you lose yourself brings a lot of happiness. If you find this in your work, you will be among a third of people and one of the wealthiest people alive. This is the concept of Zen and the art of “X”.  Find something you enjoy doing in which you become one with the activity – where you lose yourself in space and time. This optimal experience or “flow” as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has termed it is one of the key elements of happiness.

Be of Service
One of the most important things to do to get yourself fully “living” your life is to get beyond yourself. Think about someone else. Help someone. Help many others. Find a way to be of service to others. Donate your time and talent to improve the lives of others. Sometimes you keep your world so small you drown yourself in your own self-pity. Get beyond the walls of your house and your heart, to pay attention to others.

Make Your Relationships Magnificent
If you are still stuck, directionless, empty or bored, get involved with people. Call friends and suggest getting together. Join activities where you might meet people who share your interests and values. Reach out in friendship. Continue developing meaningful relationships and do things regularly together. You will be happier and live longer if you have friends to see and places to go every week.

Get out of your own little world and connect with others. There is a lot of love and happiness waiting for you to create.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 03/01 at 01:27 PM
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

A New Start, Goals, Life-Planning, and Success

This is the beginning of a new decade, a natural “marker” to reflect and gauge our journey. This provides us with an opportunity to look at the highs and lows, the success and weaknesses of our last decade. January becomes an imaginary “new start” when we can compost the past and with a beautiful new pen set priorities and create a magnificent decade ahead. Many of us may have made New Year’s resolutions that already have slipped and here at the end of January, we aren’t any more successful than we were in December. So what can we do about that disappointment?

Getting Started – Reflect and Daydream About All Areas of Life
Take the majority of a day or two to establish a plan for this decade. What are the most important things you would like to do? Spend a little time daydreaming and visualizing how you would like your life to be. Look into the specific areas of importance: health, love relationship, family, career, spirituality, interests and hobbies, finances, personal growth, service, etc.

Write Outcome Goals
Make a decision about what you would like each area of life to look like ten years from now.  Write what that looks and feels like. Express the specialness of that vision or goal in the present tense, as if it is NOW true: I am enjoying the excellence of my health; the fulfillment of eating organic and “clean” foods; the ease of movement I experience as I walk, dance, and do everything with my 130 pound feminine, fit and sensual body.

Benchmark
Now go backwards and benchmark the goals or milestones from that outcome goal to where you are now. That outlines the steps you take to get from where you are to where you want to be. It fills in the gap or the part to which we usually do not pay enough attention.

Small Steps
Next pay attention to all the small steps you will start with to attain the next goal. These are the attitudes, plan of action and support you need to accomplish the beginning of your journey. Write each step in detail.

What It Looks Like
You will have a paper, a wall, a notebook, something that shows your movement from left to right, present time to ten years in the future for your first goal. You’ll have lots of detail in present time and just sketchy milestones as you move through the ten years. As you get to the next milestone, or perhaps the next month or quarter, you’ll fill in the details of your steps.

Do the same thing with each area of your life: write the outcome goal, fill in the milestones, and complete the details of your next steps. You will have the next decade completed of your life plan. If the decade seems too long, try 5 years or a marker that makes sense for your life.

Keys For Success
It is up to you to work on these goals daily and weekly so you establish new behaviors and habits. Savor your successes. Celebrate the accomplishments of milestones. Get someone to be your accountability partner or a group of people who are doing the same thing so you can support each other. I have a group of friends who have been doing this together for eight years. We meet on the phone at least once a quarter to review our progress and get help with anything we need. We add additional meetings to learn or address specific items, such as organizational systems, educational/business systems, etc. We also set up special calls with each other for coaching when we need the on-going support of a coach. (We are all coaches by profession…) We have written books, started new businesses, expanded businesses, been hired as consultants, secured corporate contracts and speaking engagements, supported each other through deaths, births, marriages, divorces, relocations, second homes, awards, and many other highs and lows of life. The support and accountability make this life-planning enjoyable and worthwhile.

Take Action
You have one week left in January. Do you want to get started on your life-planning journey? If you read this during another month, well, you can still get started!

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 01/26 at 10:17 AM
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Monday, August 24, 2009

How to Stop the Negativity in Your Life

Don’t interact with your negative thoughts

First, there are our own thoughts. These are negative thoughts that just seem to come up in our minds like pop-ups. These can be self critical or they can be about other people or situations. It is our job to refrain from interacting with these thoughts. In other words, don’t follow a negative thought with another thought as if in conversation with the first. Do everything to not enlarge or enhance the negative thought. That way you will avoid rumination and reinforcing your own negative beliefs.

Ask others the end their verbal negativity

There are negative comments we hear from others in the form of gossip and sarcasm. Right along with these is the continuous flow of negative comments that others make. They might be about other people, maybe their own victim type stories, or about situations that evoke their criticism. We can choose to not listen to these. We can attempt to have the other person change by encouraging him to speak more positively or to not share gossip with us.

Deal with others’ negativity by changing something in oneself

More importantly we can change the situation by changing something in ourselves.
         

• We can inject more understanding, acceptance and compassion into our attitude.

• We might also rid ourselves of judgment and strive to be more open.

• We can take action that involves doing something different so we create a different result.

• We might also try focusing our attention on something more positive. We might think about the people or situations differently or find appreciation in them. What we attune to is what we see and experience. We have a choice of where we place our focus.

• In addition we can put another meaning on the situation or interpret it differently.

Distance oneself or end relationships with negative people

Our last resort might be to choose to end the relationship with negative people or to reduce our involvement. It is very important to rid ourselves of negative influences if we cannot deal with negative people and situations.

Reduce or end other negative influences

It is easier to be positive if we reduce or eliminate as much negativity as possible from our lives. We could stop much of the violent television we watch. Turn off the negative news. Stop the newspaper. End the negative music, movies and video games. What might life be like if we didn’t feed our minds and souls with such negativity? There would be so much room for positivity. I suspect it would be a mental muscle we’d all have to get used to exercising!

Dispute negative thoughts

When you experience your own or others’ negative thoughts, you will want to work hard at disputing them. Examine the facts and prove the positive is true. Argue with yourself as if you are the best attorney. Prove the thoughts to be incorrect.

Be mindful

One of the most important skills to control your negativity is mindfulness. Mindfulness means to pay attention to your thoughts and responses in an aware, objective and detached manner. You eventually learn to detach or create distance in watching your reactions and responses to things that happen. You are trying to not have an emotional action or reaction. This allows you to create neutrality or more positive emotions while you simply allow the negative thoughts and emotions to pass through you. It’s like watching them but not building on them. You want to build on the positive but not the negative. Mindfulness reduces stress, pain, anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive experiences, and self-injury, improves immune functioning, and changes metabolism in brain circuits known to underlie emotional responding. It even increases a certain part of the brain. You can learn to meditate by taking a workshop, reading a book, or just sitting and relaxing

Exercise

Take a look at your negativity this week to see how you can refrain from interacting with your own negative thoughts, change your behaviors or thinking in relation to others, don’t participate in or listen to gossip and sarcasm, turn down the amount of negative media in your home, dispute your negative thoughts, and begin to meditate, even if you are only quiet and slow down your breathing for 5 minutes a day. You might want to make a chart to help you keep track daily of reducing your negativity.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 08/24 at 10:24 AM
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Sunday, August 16, 2009

Four Roads to Happiness

There are four major roads to happiness: pleasure, engagement, meaningfulness, and relationships.

What have you done this summer to add experiences in all of these areas of your life? Consider writing things down in all 4 categories and see which ones you may have scored an A+ and which areas you could pay more attention to.

PLEASURE
In terms of pleasure, I have attended and watched many movies this summer. Julie/Julia hit the top of my list. I’ve had lots of laughs thanks to the movies. And I finally started Netflix so I can see many of the independent films I’ve missed or that didn’t make it to Las Vegas. Jersey Boys was filled with great music from the past, as was Love, and the other Vegas shows provided me with plenty of summer pleasure! Water for Elephants, Best Friends Forever, and The Reader have been great pleasurable summer reads.

I’ve eaten at several new restaurants, had great Thai and Italian dishes. I have made several great salads and many seafood dishes. I actually had a Whoopee Pie on vacation. I thank my friend Kathryn for telling me about them – wow! I’ve even allowed myself to have chocolate and vanilla shakes whenever I wanted them this summer.

ENGAGEMENT
I ate eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, and lots of herbs from my garden. I spend a number of hours finding all the 5-leaved rose markers for clipping. And when I want to space out a bit or be totally engaged, I water my struggling, new lawn. It is easy to spend 30 minutes getting every little space filled with water so it grows in thick. It is also fun chasing the pigeons away with the jet spray from the hose.

Books such as Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Love as the Way to Live, Creating Your Best Life, The How of Happiness, and Positivity have provided me with my reading for engagement. I have had many days of being in flow writing for my blog, Happiness Talk. I also felt quite engaged when I read the chapter I wrote which will be published this fall.

Much of my flow or engagement comes from cooking. I’ve tried several recipes from the new chefs which allowed me to spend weekends in flow while also having good food for entertaining friends. The conversations with friends always provide me with great engagement. Meeting and getting to know a few new friends this summer was most engaging and pleasurable.

MEANING
I think a lot of my work with clients is pure engagement. Separating it from meaningfulness is sometimes difficult. Helping others is always meaningful. But helping while engaged can be a purely spiritual experience. I have both couples I see for relationship coaching and individuals I talk with virtually and in person for life and business coaching. At times we are running through the daffodils or smelling the roses, riding the waves, going down the tongue of the river or floating in the clouds on our way towards their dreams. It is the most blessed experience to be asked into the journey of someone else’s life and have the pleasure and reward to traveling to new and adventuresome places. I’m honored to help access and provide meaning for them as it is reflected right back to me. Every day I receive magnificent gifts of this nature.

Another most meaningful part of my week is when I call my beloved 83 year old friend. She has hospice care but is otherwise alone and lonely. She was meant to be with people but at this age and with her condition, she spends her time, as so many older people do, isolated. She has an active mind which is always thinking and processing the political scene, DNA and now the meaning of life. It is special to listen to her and resonate with her, bringing joy to both of us. To spend an hour on the phone laughing with Bev is the food of angels. Seeing her this summer was also meaningful in the discussing of her death and the joy of her life.

RELATIONSHIPS
Going to the beach with a friend who has had several heart attacks this year was also quite a special time of engagement and meaning. The connection we felt as he went into the Pacific for possibly his last time was like waltzing the tango. Time was suspended as we talked and soaked up the vitamin D. Watching him swim was such a joy, the smile on his face too precious for words. I have to admit it felt like we were about 20.

Being at Priest Lake on the boat with Stephen, Barrister and Jewell was pleasurable and engaging because of the beauty of nature. Watching Jewell fly at the picnic site was a pleasurable experience without bounds. A week of personal connection with the bonds of friendship with Stephen and his family added deep meaning to my life.

I redid my trust and will – writing some of it was engaging, but it has much meaning when I think of how right it feels. Cleaning out my closet and giving things to Sis was engaging and meaningful. Spending time on the lake with her and Cy was too. Enjoying a family breakfast with a sorority sister I have not seen for 43 years was a beautiful connective experience. Beyond words. Spending time with my great granddaughter was filled with the laughter and love of the generations. Being with my kids and best friends and feeling the loving safety of those relationships topped off my summer. The joy of a phone call from Paul my step son, a beautiful note from him, the “I love you” at the end of calls with him, Sis and friends, are such indescribably delicious relationship moments. Hanging out with girlfriends, old and new always goes through all four of these categories. Enjoyable conversations with my ex, the same. Being at the hospital with my dearest friend and having him be alive, was again a loving connective experience. It feels like something without time that endures for eternity.

The relationships in our lives are precious. I hope you are having pleasure, engagement and meaning in the most important ones in your life! I hope your summer was filled with as many moments creating happiness as mine!

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 08/16 at 07:54 PM
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Monday, June 15, 2009

When You Want to Improve Your Life, Where do You Start?

When you want to improve your life, where do you start? How do you go about it? Many clients have come to my office wanting to be out of the pain they are in and desiring to experience more happiness. They arrive with many different presenting problems and we always look at the superficial solutions to those symptoms. But there is always something underneath that we can discover which dictates their sabotage or repeated failures in life. It’s usually about their excuses. So, whether they come in for help with depression, anxiety, trauma or a relationship, we look at the underlying causes, the excuses, and the patterns that began in childhood which do not work so well in adulthood. So often we learn beliefs and behaviors when we are two, three, four or five years old that do not work quite the same when we are 30 or 40. This is the stuff of therapy.

For those of you who are reading this who are not in therapy and who do not wish at this time to begin such an adventure, I’d like to offer you some things which you can do on your own which will give you insight into your core beliefs and help you clear unfinished business of childhood and early adulthood. I also want to help you stop your excuses and start being successful in the areas you have avoided. I also want to help you forgive yourself and others and get onto the business of loving – loving yourself and loving others.

If you are in therapy, this will help you in working with your therapist. It may give you an outline for self-help work or you may pick and choose what you and your therapist think will help you with your particular issues and patterns. If you are in coaching, it will also help you to work with your coach on what you do to excuse and sabotage your success.

Where to start?

What makes you mad? What can’t you stand? What drains you or zaps your energy? What causes you pain? What are your guilty about? What would you like to change in your life? These questions about negative influences in your life or negative reactions should shed some light on where you can begin. Start journaling about these questions. You might separate them into items or issues or people or situations. When you are writing about them, just let your thoughts flow and your feelings get expressed. Be sure to indicate what happened, who did what (including yourself), who had less than respectable behavior? What did you do that was a mistake or wrong in some way? What did others do that was a mistake or wrong in your opinion? How did you feel or how were you affected by what happened? How do you think the other people involved may have felt? What good came from this? What good could come from this if you determined that it would? What action do you have to take to compost this experience and make it a learning experience in your life rather than a drain because of negative emotions? How will you take this action? When will you do it? Who will know about it? Who can give you recognition or praise about correcting this lesson in life?

Whenever you have a negative experience or something that has affected you in a negative way, try to identify your errors, the others’ errors and what you can do to correct it. Also identify the lesson in it for you. Find a way to become grateful for the experience and feel and express your gratitude. It might take you a couple months to get over the anger or hurt. It is important to get over it. It’s important for you to move past this place to a place of acceptance, understanding and even gratitude for having an opportunity to learn and grow.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/15 at 12:58 PM
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Friday, June 12, 2009

Gratitude Is The Easy Answer to Happiness and Well Being

Expressing our gratitude is an activity that increases our happiness levels by over 25%; gives us higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress; gives us better sleep quality and more energy; and it is one of the more effective ways of coping with disease, disability and even death. People who keep gratitude lists make progress toward completing important individual goals such as academic, interpersonal and health-based, according to research by Robert Emmons.

Keep a Gratitude Journal

Establish a daily habit of recalling and writing ordinary events that happened to you today, the valuable people in your life and what they contribute to you. Spend the day looking for people, incidents, events, and qualities that you enjoy and that support your life. Look for the gifts, grace, benefits and good things in your life.     

    1. Think and recall throughout the day the good things happening…
    2. Write at least three things of gratitude toward the end of the day.

Share Gratitude with your Family

    1. Have your family share at dinner three things that happened to each of you that were good or things for which you are grateful
    2. Have our children recall and speak gratitude when going to bed
    3. Share gratitude blessings with your spouse at the end of the day
    4. Make Thanksgiving a holiday of super big thanks all around the table

Write letters of gratitude

    1. Write thank you notes for gifts, events and special thoughtful acts
    2. Write letters of gratitude to people who have improved or touched your life – teachers, friends, family members, old friends, former spouses, etc.
    3. Write birthday letters sharing about the person’s qualities and good acts

Think of ways you can see the challenges of life as a gift and then how you can express your gratitude.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/12 at 07:57 AM
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Thursday, June 11, 2009

Forgiveness Is Urgent

It is important to forgive yourself the mistakes you have made and the things you have done that have been most hurtful to others. By writing them you give yourself the gift of making your load lighter as you attempt to experience more happiness.

It is a good thing to forgive people who have done things that have been hurtful to you. It allows you to move on past that incident or wrong and be in present time without bitterness or anger in your heart. Forgiveness is for you, not the other person.

This is a simple exercise. Either take out your journal or sit at your computer and start writing:
1. These are things I have thought, said or done for which I want forgiveness or for which I want to forgive myself.
2. These are things others have said or done that I want to forgive, clearing me of all negative feelings.

After writing the items, say aloud you forgive yourself and you forgive others. Ask for forgiveness and imagine being your perfect spiritual or higher self, understanding, accepting and loving yourself. Imagine your parents doing the same. And sense the forgiveness of God or the creative force of the universe. Then again say aloud your forgive yourself and you forgive others who harmed you.

Sometimes it is important to share these things with your clergy, a therapist or a trusted friend. Receiving acceptance and feeling the caring or love of another makes it easier to move into forgiveness and let go of the negative feelings.

Life gets better and well being is strengthened when you regularly clear and forgive these actions of yours and others. Feeling gratitude after forgiveness helps solidify the release of negative emotions.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/11 at 06:15 AM
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Do You Get Stuck and Sabotage Yourself?

Getting yourself unstuck requires motivation, a certain awareness, and discipline.

I have a dear friend who has wanted to write a story about his aunt for a couple of decades or so. After enough avoidance and busyness, focusing on other business ideas and even start-ups, he decided he had enough failure and wanted to see some success. He had to dig down to find his motivation - the joy of having his children and best friends think highly of him. Then he had to get his awareness up to his mind in 2009. He had failed at enough great ideas - just thinking and talking about them. Now he wanted to put a great idea into action. Finally finding enough self esteem and confidence, he started to write. And what a beautiful writer he is! Now it’s time for the discipline. Every weekend he is creating the time to write.

He finally got down to his negative core beliefs and worked trough the stages of change to take action. You’ll hear about the book when it is finished! Check back in about a year.

Look at some of the negative beliefs you have that are self-limiting or that sabotage your ability to be your very best. Sometimes we refer to these beliefs as negative self-talk or negative tapes in our heads. They are “gremlins”. These are the things we believe that hold us back or prevent us from being authentic and healthy. Some examples might be: I have to be perfect; I can’t make a mistake; I am not smart enough; I can’t do it; If I am successful I will have to be accountable; Money is the root of all evil; etc.

Find some of your self-defeating beliefs and write them. Using all the enthusiasm you have, write the opposite, motivating, positive belief about yourself. Spend the day thinking about and repeating inside your head these lovely affirmations of your authentic self. If you find the negative beliefs winning, keep working to prove the positive is true. Find the evidence and convince yourself of your greatness!

If you still have difficulties succeeding at your goals, do they line up with your values? If they do, read James Prochaska’s book, “Changing for Good” and get into the action stage to make your dreams come true.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/10 at 05:48 AM
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Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Compliments

Expressing positive things about another person is like giving them a gift. It says you recognize something special, unique or even just ordinary about them. By bringing it to their attention you are encouraging them to continue doing or being that positive way.

It is also important to tell them how it affects you. An example could go like this: “You called to tell me what you would like to do this evening. You are sensitive to my need to plan a little in advance and I appreciate that you are considering my preferences.”

Please give 3 compliments a day to anyone with whom you are living or spending a lot of time (spouse, children, co-workers, or friends).

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/09 at 10:05 AM
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Saturday, June 06, 2009

Acts of kindness

Doing an act of kindness is one of the best things you can do for yourself and others. When you do something thoughtful or nice for another, the regard comes back to you in multiples. You help make a better world when you pick up trash that blows around your neighborhood. Your vacationing neighbor appreciates putting the newspapers and trash can out of site. The elderly woman at the doctor’s office is thankful for your holding the door and the elevator.

Your magnitude of loving and sense of happiness can grow exponentially if you do some acts of kindness as secrets. The secret act of giving can be enormously fun and fulfilling. 

During the holidays we sometimes play “Secret Santa” to someone in the office and leave them small gifts like a special coffee from Starbucks or perform a small task without them knowing who is doing it. Why not be a Secret Pal all year long? I know a creative and big-hearted woman who secretly goes to a friend’s home and decorates the outside of it for every major holiday. She does it in the middle of the night so her friend never knows who the Secret Decorator is.

Take this challenge: do one act of kindness each work day this week, Monday through Friday.

If you are wanting to try another challenge, here it is: Select three things to do in the next month that are secrets from the receiver. Be a “Secret Pal” and do something for three different people where they cannot discover who you are. Good luck! Please share your stories with us if you’d like. We’d love to hear from you!

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 06/06 at 04:42 PM
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Laugh Away Your Stress

Stress is a normal part of life but sometimes we have too much, requiring us to call on our resilience to deal with it. Our response to stress is a complex series of hormones surging through our bodies, our sympathetic nervous system amps up, and the limbic brain goes into overdrive.

Stress causes heart attacks in men and reproductive problems in women. We narrow our focus and respond less to new ideas. We sleep less and argue more. Irritation and frustration are heightened while romance and sexual interest are lessened. So what are we to do?

Our resources and resilience are called out to the forefront. This is the time to use your resources to create positive emotions. We know from Barbara Fredrickson’s theory of “broaden and build” that positive emotions like joy, delight, lightness and amusement allow us to expand our thinking.
We know from many researchers in medicine and positive psychology that humor is a strength that diffuses the stress and allows us to manage it with easy success, returning us to a healthier state physically and psychologically.

The things you might do to reduce your stress include reading the comics, look up some of those silly emails we all receive, call a friend and ask them to help you laugh, watch a funny movie or listen to a comedy show. One of the easiest and most rewarding things to do is watch a baby and enjoy their amusement with life. Go to “You Tube” and watch funny videos to change your outlook and your chemistry in just a few minutes.
One of the main things to do to reduce your stress is to start laughing. Join a laughing yoga group or a laughing club. Without anyone else to depend on, just start laughing. Fake it until you make it and you will reduce your stress. Try it in the morning – just laugh, even if you don’t feel it. Keep laughing; try it for 5 minutes or 20. Even 1 minute is a stretch!  If you have to prime your pump, think about Lucille Ball, a master of creating laughter. Try it now. 

Laugh away your stress.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 05/26 at 06:39 PM
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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Take Vacation Time

I’m being very nice to myself and going on vacation. If you need help doing this for yourself, call me at 702-242-4222 and leave a message. Please note I will not return the call until I am back. Enjoy life!

Love,
D’Arcy

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 05/12 at 10:35 AM
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Monday, May 11, 2009

Be Loving to Make your Life Happier and More Satisfying

Today I have been reading and reflecting on love. In thinking about love, I looked at our purpose in life, how to fulfill it, and how to be happy. That led me to this:  Love is the answer to life. It is the only way to live. And its the only thing we have to do…

When I was ordained as a minister my spiritual teacher gave me a blessing that said to teach love. I have been wondering about the focus of my dissertation and the book I have been told and prompted to write for quite some time. I feel about ready to do so. It seems I should have put it all together, but, you know how sometimes it is difficult to see the forest for the trees? Well, I got lost in all the positive psychology research – necessary for a dissertation. I was advised by several advisers to write my own stuff. My way of doing things had to be in there. So, today it is coming together better than ever.

Learning and studying The Need for Positive Regard: A Contribution to Client - Centered Theory and understanding Unconditional Positive Regard from the man who coined the term was what my Masters studies were all about. And my life at that time was in large part learning about how to love, individuating, maturing, being in emotional control, understanding my core beliefs, being autonomous, and becoming a better person. I was mentored by a master who gave me the opportunities to develop my talent in helping others heal their conditional love and learn to love unconditionally in their personal and business lives.

The answers about how to have a better life and how to feel happier all comes from the life and teachings of Christ. I doubt that if the University of Chicago would have known, they probably would not have granted the first theoretical dissertation, in psychology and under Carl Rogers, for a theory that explained Christ’s life and ministry in theoretical constructs as the way to understanding how a human develops psychologically. But they did. Christ is the example: love unconditionally and you are the Christ consciousness we all have within us. We can do as many miracles and more. We simply have to put into practice loving attitudes and actions.

I studied Christ in Sunday school, in MYF, in college. My mother took me to attend all types of religious services as we learned about them together. Later my work took me to the depths of schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, alcohol and substance abuse, teen delinquency, psychopathology and sexual perpretration. I continued my quest. I studied Buddhism and A Course in Miracles, meditated, prayed, and read. Then I studied the ways of the saints and from all faiths, their religious experiences. I went on to study possession and exorcism. These were followed by spiritual practices and I became an ordained minister. With my father’s joy and my teacher’s ministerial blessing I began to “officially” teach love.

I added to my mission working with thousands of couples who were trying to love and struggling. I helped parents learning to deal with power while loving their teens. And I have worked with the worried wealthy and executives from around the world trying to create heart-oriented organizations and communities.  We’ve been adding to their lessons on how to love in all relationships, partnerships and marriages, families, their work, their businesses, their communities. From governors, statesmen and CEOs to the homeless, I have been learning about love as I have helped myself and so many others. We have all improved our lives, careers, organizations, families, primary relationships, and all our loves.

We all live in our relationships. And it is in these relationships that we all grow and become the best people we can. This is our purpose and our job! When we send our children off to school, we tell them their job is to learn: to go to school and listen, do their homework, study, and get the best grades they are capable of getting. As time goes on we add to their curriculum to become involved with activities of their choice and we advise them on sports, music, service, clubs and talents. We tell them to become good friends and we help them learn about friendships as they socialize through all of their schooling. In our places of worship we teach our children about various moral values. We teach them by our own modeling throughout our lives and in vivo about it until we stop teaching them.

How much of all this teaching is about love? A lot of it is, although we may not label the class as Love 101. None of us attends a class called Love.

I’d like to pull together what I have figured out how to love and use love to create your happiness and well being. Once we have taken care of our basic needs of shelter, food, water and sex, we set about to fulfill our higher level needs. We pursue relationships and nurture those we like and love, we establish ourselves in engaging work, we master some interests, and bring meaning into our lives by the service we provide to others. The essence of our pursuits is to create more happiness and well being through pleasure, engagement, meaning, and relationships. So it is that we spend our lifetime in the pursuit of happiness. If we love all the people and esoteric things with which we have relationships, we increase our happiness and improve our well being. You can make yourself happier and the world better. It is our journey and our destiny.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 05/11 at 02:16 PM
Happiness • Relationships • Spirituality • (0) Comments • Permalink

Friday, May 08, 2009

Women Drive Their Beloved Men Away

I have been listening to women’s complaints about men for 35 years, not counting the 30 years before I did it as a career.  What have I learned from it? Oh, my, so very much! Let’s start with what men need. Let’s add a little about what leads to an affair. Then we’ll top it off with how to get what you want from your man. This is for the women in my office this week with their many complaints.  It’s also for the women with the same or similar complaints last month, last year, the last decade, the last century.

92% of men who cheat on their wives do so because they feel disconnected. Listen ladies. We tend to think of them as not knowing much about connection and that we are the experts. However, men feel undervalued and underappreciated. If you want his attention, his love, his fidelity, try acknowledging and praising what he does and who he is.

Remember in the beginning of your relationship how you saw all his wonderful qualities? And how simple it was to tell him about the good things you saw in him? Remember all the great praises about him you told your girlfriends? And your mother? You couldn’t see the red flags or anything wrong with him if you had your rose colored glasses off. But now, after several years of kids and chores, and busy lives, and forgotten events, and little help at home, and hurtful words, and yelling, and continuously escalating fights, and nights of headaches and exhaustion, ad nauseam, you can hardly think of the good things about him. You see and stay focused on his errors, mistakes, unkindness, bad habits, childhood issues not resolved, character flaws, the countless things only a wife knows. You are an expert at everything wrong with him.

Your man needs to win! You are making him feel like he’s losing in everything, no matter what he does. You know he has to win at work, at golf, at tennis, betting on his football teams, watching his teams on TV, whooping it up for his daughter’s soccer team and his son’s basketball team, his bridge game, being better than his partner, knowing more about movie stars than anyone at the party, making the world’s best martini, beating you home when you travel in two cars down different streets (sometimes they let us win), having his yard better than the neighbor’s, and on and on. He wants to win at everything. 

What are you doing to help him feel he is winning at relationship? Or marriage? Or love? Or intimacy? Or sex? Or your happiness? Or as your hero? Your lover? Fatherhood? Are you helping him feel a winner with his aging parents? Or his warring sibling? Are you appreciating that he does, indeed, make the world’s best martini? And that he makes it for you when he knows you have had a very difficult day at work? Do you notice that he stops to pick up dinner when he knows you have been driving taxi for 4 hours? Or that he always makes the coffee before he goes to bed so it is there in the morning? How about the days he has your coffee (white chocolate mocha, nonfat, no whipped) sitting on the counter when you get up? Better yet, the times he delivers it to you in bed? Do you remember how he woke you up that first New Year’s morning? Are you remembering the little things he does that add love, laughter and meaning to your life?

It is extremely important to appreciate your man about the little and the humongous things he is doing. Notice them, praise him, and thank him, And do it all the time. After centuries, our guys still go out and slay the modern day dragons. They drive long hours on the freeway. They get up early. They stay late. They work on weekends. They do side jobs. They do whatever it takes to support us and our families. (We might do the same thing, but this is what is wired in for them.) They carry the responsibility for financial support from the time they say, “I do” until their last breath. And even then, they see to it that we are all taken care of in the best way they can do it when they are gone. There are many details that go into their fulfilling this responsibility. We’ll look another time at some of those. Remember they are doing it for us. They might enjoy their work and love their career, but they are also doing it for us. When he brings home the toughest dragon, the largest buffalo, the biggest fish, and the best bonus, we need to declare him a winner and our very own personal hero. He’s the best! And we appreciate him! Celebrate his win!

Not only does your man carry the financial support banner, he also is trying to figure out how to support you emotionally. Now he’s into gathering berries and he doesn’t have much of a clue. We have to teach him the expertise that is wired into us. He’s not in first grade and he doesn’t have his doctoral. He walks on eggshells when he knows you are touchy, sensitive, out of sorts. He’s trying to figure out what will please you. He tries everything and you are still angry. You make a curt comment, roll your eyes, and breathe with disgust. Sometimes you blast him from out of nowhere. You are declaring him the loser, loser, loser. Loser at his own marriage. I’m not saying he doesn’t have some things to learn. But you aren’t going to get him to learn through your negativity, irritation, and declarations of his stupidity and failure.

Praise, praise, praise your man. You can’t give him too much, as long as it is genuine. You need to become an expert at saying and showing your appreciation. Do all that you can to keep him connected to you. Don’t push him away with the negatives. Pull him toward you with the positives. If you want him to be loving and kind, to stop a lot of his bad habits, to stop his anger, to pay attention to you, to not wander off with someone else who pays attention to him, to rekindle the old feelings you had before marriage, be kind to him and make him feel appreciated and valued – as a man and as your beloved.

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 05/08 at 12:56 PM
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Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Relationship Tip # 3 - Be Complimentary

When couples start in coaching or therapy with me I always give them the same assignments: be kind, put your stories in the closet and think/act positive, and be complimentary. We have you thinking positively now. So your next step is to say these things aloud. I want you to think about the good things about your partner. Their good qualities. Their kind and loving behaviors, the cute and charming things about their personality. Then, tell them how wonderful they are!

Give your partner 3 compliments a day.  Some couples can only start with one. But push yourself to do 3. This is what you want to put your energy into so that this becomes a normal and easy part of your day. You should be able to do 10 without thinking! When you do that, you are probably safe from divorce court.

You might need to look at the days’ activities as a way to notice your partner’s behaviors worth complimenting. Normal things like, “Thank you for making coffee for me this morning.” Or perhaps, “It was very nice of you to volunteer to pick up the kids today.” Or, “The way you handled the situation with the phone company was terrific. I appreciated that I didn’t have to do it and you did it with so much assertiveness. You straightened out the situation quickly and I felt a lot of respect for how you did it.”

In addition to the daily activity, look at the character traits, personality, interests, and actions that demonstrate values, social awareness, intelligence, talents, gifts, and unique qualities that make the person who they genuinely are. There is no limit to the positives you can see about this person if you open your mind and focus on the positives. You will feel more loving and more loved.

All you have to do is be complimentary. Think and say these beautiful things to your partner. You’ll be surprised how the love will flow between you if you make this a lifelong process…

Posted by D'Arcy Vanderpool on 04/22 at 09:08 AM
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