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2022Psychology

87 – Changes That Save Relationships

by Jill
  • People Can’t Make You Crazy If You Don’t Give Them the Keys by Dr Mike Bechtle
People Can't Drive You Crazy If You Don't Give Them the ...
  • Everyone Should Be Like Me – We think there would be less drama if everyone is like us. People are unique and have their own DNA, their own path, and therefore cannot be like us. 
  • Let People Do What They are Good At – The best way to deal with others who add arguments and drama to our lives is to find out what they are good at and encourage them to make that thing better. We might even try to find ways to make them better at that thing. 
  • How to Speak Without Reaction – We must learn to speak calmly and without the inner emotion, we are feeling. That hint in our voice could cause more drama if we play out our emotions. 
  • Temperament vs Behavior – Temperament has to do with the nature of the other person. They might behave badly or with anger without being bad people or angry people. We must realize they might act in a certain way for other reasons. 
  • Reaction vs Response – Your reaction might be hurt or anger or other emotions. It helps if you can learn to control that. But your response is how you act towards other people, and you must control this. You might act in a way that causes permanent damage to that relationship that you will regret. 
  • Control Your Emotions – In the end, you can control your emotions, so your behavior and your response are kept in check naturally. You feel more relaxed and not a victim of the relationship if you learn how to control emotions. It takes time but it is worth it. 
  • Be Committed to Others – Relations require commitment. We live in an era where we get and dump relationships all the time. A true commitment to others and the relationships will help you to keep that tie and hang in there when it is tough. It takes work but that is the heart of every commitment. 
  • Don’t Sweat the Wrong Stuff – We can’t get upset when others are wrong. We can let them be wrong. It’s ok. We can agree to disagree. They have good points too. 
  • View Through a Lens of Kindness – If we start with the idea that others have good points and good thoughts and got there with the best intentions it will allow us to be kind. When we bring kindness to our relationships, it allows us to treat others with dignity. 
  • Keep Your Integrity – In every interaction keep your integrity. It is the one thing that makes us a person of strength and decency. Never let people upset you so much that you do something that could jeopardize it. 
  • This is a Long-Term Gain – To build and keep and repair relationships is a long-term activity. It takes work and tough times, but the value is immeasurable over time. 
  • Don’t Just Avoid Conflict in the Middle of the Road – Don’t be a wimp just to get along with others. That is not what it takes. Just giving in on every point doesn’t ensure the relationship will be strong. Instead, hold your own opinions but listen and give people the benefit of the doubt. Allowing another to have their own opinion means that you too can have your own. 
  • Get Help – In the end, if the relationship cannot be worked out, get help. That investment of another professional viewpoint can make all the difference. 

Challenge

  • Which situation can you change about yourself? Is there an assumption you’re making about someone in your life that maybe isn’t correct? Or maybe you’re putting yourself in the best situation, and the other person in a worse situation? See if some thinking about that relationship, couldn’t change some of the drama involved, and take it down. Find where you can get together and find calm and peace inside your relationship

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2022Psychology

86 – Take the Key from Drama

by Jill
  • People Can’t Drive Your Crazy If You Don’t Give Them the Keys by Mike Bechtle
People Can't Drive You Crazy If You Don't Give Them the ...
  • People are Full of Drama – When we have relationships, they can be full of drama and can make us feel upset. But how do we decide if we stick to the relationship or leave it. 
  • Everything is Emotional, Shocking, Personal – When we get upset it is because something happened that is emotions involved in the situation. If something is shocking, it can upset us as well. When conversations become personal, they can make us upset or feel threatened. 
  • We Think We Can Control People – We think we can control others and fix their thoughts and decisions. But we can’t really change anything. 
  • We Can Change the Situation – If we can’t change others, we always have the option to change circumstances. If people stay too long when we invite them others to our house. We can limit the time or change locations. 
  • Are We Always Right? – We think we are always right and always think things for the right reasons, but we are blind to our own mistakes. Ensuring that we leave room in our thinking for the possibility we are wrong will help us get along with others. 
  • I am an Angel; they are the Devil – We also think we have the best of intentions and others who disagree with us have bad intentions or listen to people with bad intentions. 
  • Relationships are Important – In the end other people are important and we need connections to others. We must stick to them if we can. 
  • We Don’t Have to be a Victim – Staying with relationships that have drama must not mean we are to be victims of other people or victims of our own emotions. We need to find a place where we can be in control and not taken advantage of yet still have others in our lives. 
  • There is Hope – We have hope that with a few steps we can have both other people and control. 
  • We Can Only Change Ourselves – In the end we can only change ourselves and our own actions. 
  • We Can’t Make Others Change – Other people make their own decision. We can’t change them or their actions. 
  • Everything is Viewed Through a Lens – We can’t tell when we are looking at others or our options through the filter of our own biases and bad decisions. 
  • Be an Influencer – The best we can hope for is to be an influence to others. We can encourage people to get along or not fight with us. We can praise people when they act in a way that doesn’t. make us upset. 
  • Expectations and Expectancy – Expectations get us in trouble because we can expect others to change or decide we are right. Expectancy instead allows us to hope for a better relationship with others without expectations. 
  • Stop Acting on Autopilot with People – If we react automatically to others, we will have bad relations because we aren’t thinking about others and what they are thinking or if what they are saying has value. We just react without thinking about what our actions will do to others. 
  • Family is Important – We need other people, and we need family. They are important and protecting those relationships is worth the work. 

Challenge

  • Identify one relationship that could use a little attention and see, is it possible you can change the circumstance of how and where, and when to take the punch out of the situation? Write down that relationship and write down three things you could do that might mitigate some of the annoying drama that you have between you.

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2022Happiness

85 – Coco and Miguel Shows Us How to Forgive

by Jill
  • History Can Represent Hurts – The movie shows a family that misunderstood what someone did generations ago, leading to the banishment of music. Poor Miguel loved music but also loved his family. While he wanted to honor their wishes, he loved music so much that he found ways to sneak around and play music. 
  • We Can’t Read Minds – Because people made up a story about why Hector never came back, music was banned to prevent more hurtful feelings and more pain from music. But the story was not true. The story was not valid.  We can’t always see the real story behind why people do specific actions. So if we are going to invent an account, why not create something that uses the most positive outlook? 
  • Forgiveness and Understanding – But when we invent better stories about others or learn the hard truth, we can forgive and understand others. If we can do it early in a relationship, healing also starts early. We will prevent putting artificial emotions on others and not force them to do things they do not wish to do. 

Challenge

  • Rewrite somebody’s story. Maybe, someone you’ve been struggling to have a relationship with recently. You’re already mind reading, you’re already playing prosecutor and already judging their lives in ways you probably don’t have any right or knowledge to do a good job, or the proper knowledge to know exactly what’s going on with that person. So now, let’s rewrite and write their story differently. What kind of childhood did they have? What kind of pathway did they take to get to this place where they are the person that you’ve been struggling with recently? Is there another story you can write for them that will help you forgive, help you understand them better, and help you have a better relationship with them going forward? Find that one person and write them a new story. It’s not that this one is true, either. It’s not that this story will be valid. But the last story you told about them probably wasn’t true either. Now’s your chance to do a better job writing a story. See if that helps your relationship going forward.
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Happiness

84 – Find your Fun Magnets

by Jill

  • The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again by Catherine Price

SPARK – When We Know Something is Fun, we can get more of it through the SPARK plan. 

  • Make Space – find the right place to have fun. If it is bowling, find an alley. If it is painting, find a place to do it. 
  • Pursue Passions – Do what you love doing. Chances are your passion is related to areas you have fun. 
  • Attract Fun – Use magnets to bring more fun to your life.
  • Rebel – Do something you aren’t used to doing or outside your boundaries. Being a little edgy will help you find new fun. 
  • Keep at it – If you find it fun, keep trying it! Fun is work and will take effort on your part.

Questions of Fun Identification

  • What causes laughter?
  • What causes you to lose track of time?
  • What helps you have the sense of letting go or releasing stress?
  • Write those times in a journal. 

Find Out What Isn’t Fun

  • Actions that produce high energy and are enjoyable are true fun. 
  • The things that are high energy but not that enjoyable are sources of stress for us. 
  • Things that are low energy and not enjoyable are places where we are bored. 
  • The things that are enjoyable, but cause low energy for us, our pastimes, hobbies, pleasant things, but not that great

Create the Fun Quadrant

  • Take the time you had true fun and break them into a quadrant of high energy to low energy and enjoyable, not enjoyable. Now you can see what true fun was. 

Fun Magnets

  • Take the actual fun events and break them into smaller pieces of places, people, and actions. Try to see what is familiar with all the details you have. Do this with a friend, see their fun magnets, and figure out where you overlap. These are the areas that you will enjoy together.

Be the Architect of Your Fun

  • Once you have these fun magnets set, become the leader of your fun by creating opportunities to have more fun. Then, make sure you get to those locations. Be with the people who help you have true fun and start acting on those events that cause it. 

Challenge

  • Start thinking about the most prominent and memorable times when you had true fun. Again, who were you with? What was the environment like, and what were you doing and see if you could start seeing trends? Break them down into small fun magnets so that you can start figuring out the following steps to having more fun.

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2022Happiness

83 – Are You Having Fun?

by Jill
  • The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again by Catherine Price

  • Fun is Serious Business – We need to have fun. It is what makes life worth living and enjoyable. So, we must get fun in our lives. But we have WMDs, Weapons of Mass Distraction, keeping us from having fun and enjoying life as much as possible. You don’t need possessions or money or to be in certain places to have true fun. In the years to come, the times we had true fun are what we will remember. 
  • What is True Fun –We lose track of time in a flow state, we are no longer self-conscious, we become playful. We connected with others. With these components of true fun, we know when we have it achieved. 
  • Time is Important – We need to set aside time to make fun work for us. If we fill our time with work and distractions, we won’t have time for true fun. 
  • It’s Healthy – Having true fun reduces our stress and improves both our mental and physical health.  But instead of finding true fun and gaining health benefits, we self-medicate with distractions like tv and games and things that don’t make us happy. It is time to re-focus our efforts 
  • Become Childlike – Children have that ability to find fun in the most straightforward actions. For example, they see the joy in a new park. But as we age, we put filters and roadblocks in the way that prevent us from having fun or even understanding what brings it. 
  • What Prevents Fun – Distractions and filling our time with actions do not give us true fun. Also, thinking we can’t have true fun or that we are not fun people. Fill our lives with fake fun actions that cause us to have an ok time but not the real fun we seek. It is like having junk food. 
  • Fun is Active – Having true fun means we must be active. We must take the steps that put us in a position to have true fun. 
  • Fun Magnets – Fun Magnets are things that bring us true fun. They attract fun to us. They are people, places, activities, or anything that bring us fun. 
  • Find Real Fun – You will need to work at having fun. True fun, in the end, is meant to be fun.  You might need a specific location. Maybe it is outside your house so you will have to find the proper location. Set aside time to have fun. Set up your magnets and your location and gather your people to have true fun times in the future. Maybe it is something you often do. Maybe it is something you have never done before.  If you do new things, you will find new fun too. Put in the effort to make this happen!

Challenge

  • Start a list of times you had true fun. Start thinking about the most obvious and memorable times when you had true fun again. Who were you with? What was the environment like, and what were you doing? See if you can start seeing trends. Break them down into small fun magnets so that you can figure out the next steps to having more fun?

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2022Goals

82 – Gain Everyday Courage

by Jill
  • What is Courage? – We need the courage to act on the things we want. But we often think we do not deserve what we want or don’t have the skills to get our goals. People do not believe they should get what they want and it is all out of a lack of courage. In the end people do not act because they are brave but true courage is acting when you are not brave. Don’t be an enemy to yourself If you won’t be your own cheerleader, no one will.. 
  • Give Your Brain a New Story – Make the burden of your tasks easier by telling your brain that you aren’t afraid to do any action but instead you are excited to get your goal. It is important to get over stress and fear because it is damaging to your health more than any other reason. But it also keeps you from what you want and the relationships you wish to have in your life.  Give yourself an “anchor statement” which holds you to the goals and dreams you have but are afraid to reach out and take it. 
  • Everyday Courage – If you can learn the skill of being courageous it will follow you your whole life and help you get any goal. 
  • Courage Improves Relationships – When you are afraid in life it keeps you from other people. It can lead you to be angrier with others or even unable to get close to others. When we have confidence, we can have better relationships and let other people see the real version of us. 
  • It’s Not a Type of Person – Courage doesn’t have a type. It isn’t about a trait you are born with. You can have courage regardless of your other personality traits. 

Challenge

  • Try to find one way this week that you can be courageous about something that you have not felt courageous about. Getting on a plane is a little hard because that takes some planning some tickets. But maybe it’s about talking to someone you needed to talk to. Or maybe it’s about sending a resume to someone you wanted to send a resume to, or maybe talking to someone at work about something that’s been bothering you. Try to get that courage to do something bold and figure out what it is that was stopping you all this time and see if you can reframe it into a new story. I’m not scared to talk to my boss. I’m excited about the opportunities it will provide.

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2022Psychology

81 – Go! Go Now!

by Jill

The 5 Second Rule

The 5 Second Rule, Mel Robbins – Book Review – AE
  • What Do We Want – To get what we want; we have to know what we want. But even if we know, we still don’t get it. We plan and think and want but never act. What if we could just act and get what we want. 
  • The Real F Word – Fine – We say the F word all the time. We say we are fine. It’s a lie. We are lying to others when we say it. Worse yet, we lie to ourselves and tell ourselves we are fine. But we aren’t fine. We settle and never get what we want. 
  • We Are Born to Change the World – The odds of a person being born like us are impossibly rare. We are made to be something. To do something big! When we don’t act, or we go back to bed, we miss out on that thing we are meant to do. Instead of all the fantastic things we could be achieving or doing, we sleep and do mundane things. 
  • Being an Adult – We have people in our lives who tell us to GO or give us good advice and help make our path easier. You realize that you are the adult, and that action is now up to you. 
  • The 5 Second Rule – Don’t plan! Don’t make excuses. 5 4 3 2 1 GO! If you don’t do things in under five seconds, you will think of reasons not to do something. Get out of bed! Talk to your loved one about something hard to discuss! 
  • It Saved Her, Let It Save You – This rule she invented saved her life and marriage. A simple rule of action can make significant actions in your life. 
  • No Brainer, The Heart Rules – People say we are ruled by our brains and must convince them to get us to act. Our hearts govern us. That is what spurs us onto action. 
  •  – We believe that motivation gets us to act, but instead, we get motivated after we act. Action and the success that follows creates a snowball into more and more progress.
  • Hesitation is the Death of Achievement – We lament because we don’t feel like doing something. The truth is we never feel like doing anything. We have excuses. We always sleep in or choose to do something else. Then we pause and do nothing. The 5 Second Rule gets in first because we can hesitate and end our procrastination.
  • Small Moves – When you are doing to act at the count of five, you can still do small steps. 
  • Rosa Parks Acted – Even in history, people who acted without planning or without thinking changed the world. 
  • We Act All the Time – We act all the time without planning or procrastination. We get a drink. We turn on the tv. How can we do some things immediately and not others? By doing the 5 Second Rule, you can act on much more. 

Challenge

  • Pick one thing this week. And instead of thinking about it, sort of overthinking about it, it’s having to be something that you know you want to do that you’ve been putting off doing. So just do it 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Go! and see how that works for you.

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2022HappinessHealth

80 – Dopamine Dizziness

by Jill

Dopamine Detox : A Short Guide to Remove Distractions and Get Your Brain to Do Hard Things (Productivity Series Book 1) by [thibaut meurisse, Kerry J Donovan]

Dopamine Detox: A Short Guide to Remove Distractions and Get Your Brain to Do Hard Things by Thibaut Meurisse

  • What are you addicted to? 
  • Where are you feeling like you’re getting your primary sources of stimulation or overstimulation?
  • What is it that distracts you?
  • Do you feel like some companies and websites are trying to manipulate you into visiting it more or buying more?

Try to get rid of those distractions so that you can focus on the essential things. You only have so much time and attention. You only have so much money and resources. If dopamine leads you astray, you will use your resources in the wrong places. You won’t get your goals, and you will waste your resources on things that don’t matter. 

Get away from the dopamine drug, which is always working on the next thing. Do the next something! Instead, focus on what he calls the “here and now neurotransmitters,” which he calls endorphins, oxytocin, serotonin. Those are all things that try to bring us to our present. They are all things that try to award us for the immediate things happening, not the promises of the next great thing. He says give it 30 minutes. Give it a shot and see if it works for you. He thinks you should do a 24 or 48-hour detox. That means to give up all the things that give you that dopamine hit. Start immediately in the morning, so you don’t get on the rollercoaster. Make sure you don’t start using some other dopamine-inducing activity and replace the old behavior with just another new distraction. 

Challenge

Could do his 48-hour detox, you can do him 24-hour detox, but let’s start even smaller just to ensure we don’t fail. What is the number one thing that leads you to distraction and keeps you in that dopamine cycle? Can we just for one day get rid of it? And see, when we don’t have our doom scrolling on Facebook when we don’t have that chocolate cake we’ve been looking forward to all day. It’s going to be tough, but it will help you go towards your goals. So, can you just get rid of those things for one day? And if you find that you can’t figure out what it is that stopped you from doing it.

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2022Happiness

79 – Use Objects In all their Imperfections

by Jill

Found in Translation, A Glossary of Joy From Around the World by Tim Loomis

Happiness--Found in Translation : A Glossary of Joy from ...

Perfectly Imperfect – Steve Maraboli

We have all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake takes the perfect form for the maximum efficiency and effectiveness for its journey. And while the universal force of gravity gives them a shared destination, the expansive space in the air gives each snowflake the opportunity to take their own path. They are on the same journey, but each takes a different path.
Along this gravity-driven journey, some snowflakes collide and damage each other, some collide and join together, some are influenced by wind… there are so many transitions and changes that take place along the journey of the snowflake. But, no matter what the transition, the snowflake always finds itself perfectly shaped for its journey.


I find parallels in nature to be a beautiful reflection of grand orchestration. One of these parallels is of snowflakes and us. We, too, are all headed in the same direction. We are being driven by a universal force to the same destination. We are all individuals taking different journeys and along our journey, we sometimes bump into each other, we cross paths, we become altered… we take different physical forms. But at all times we too are 100% perfectly imperfect. At every given moment we are absolutely perfect for what is required for our journey. I’m not perfect for your journey and you’re not perfect for my journey, but I’m perfect for my journey and you’re perfect for your journey. We’re heading to the same place, we’re taking different routes, but we’re both exactly perfect the way we are.

  • Wabi Sabi is more about imperfection and beauty. It’s about how these differences these imperfections really make the world resounding, interesting, and exciting. It loosely translates into accepting that things are simple, imperfect, and temporary.
  • Kintsugi Kintsugi means that you repair broken things, in a way that is an art.  
  • Etterpåklokskap is about the wisdom you get after making a mistake. If objects can be beautiful when they are imperfect, so can you.
  • Epicureanism – The next concept of a thing has to do with Epicureanism. And that’s the philosophy, from 300 BC from the ancient Greeks. It was really a challenge to Plato because Plato really pushed to have a simple, plain life. This is the opposite of that philosophy because there is a pleasure in things like good food and prized  items. It is not meant to be hedonistic.
  • Bon Vivant is a French word about enjoying the good life, which is about a person who just loves life, loves being around people enjoying great food and drink.  
  • Joie de vivre is about the joy of life and embracing it and enjoying it for all the things it offers.

Links

https://japanobjects.com/features/wabi-sabi

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/588651/happiness–found-in-translation-by-tim-lomas-phd-illustrated-by-annika-huett/9780525538080

https://hifisamurai.github.io/lexicography/

Challenge

look around at the things that you see. Can you find beauty in their imperfection? Or can you find ways of appreciating the imperfection in yourself? Also, spend time thinking about the quality things in your life and think about how good friends, good food, and good drinks, whether wine or coffee, adds to your life.

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2022Goals

78 – Take Five and a Health Snack

by Jill

  • Have a Health Snack, which is a small action you can do to tackle your problems. For example, if you feel crunchy from sitting too long, do some stretches. If you are stressed, can you pray about it? If you are angry, can you figure out a way to forgive? The analogy is that a food snack helps you exercise when you are tired out. Is there something in an action that can be similar? The book has many suggestions.
  • We fail because we think we can fix any health situation or really any situation in a short time and in just a few steps. However, we didn’t get into trouble in a day. So we can’t fix it in a day either. So it will take small steps and tiny progress to get what we want.
  • Look at the journey. We focus on the goals. We think about what it will be like when we finish our quest. What we fail to do is consider the journey itself. We succeed by daily efforts and habits. For example, we planned a fantastic trip but never planned our stays or our activities because we were too focused on being on the trip.
  • Make It Tiny  He mentions in the book Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg how you can take any habit you wish to change and make them so small you cannot possibly fail. ‘
  • Progress Compounds by adding to our success when we make accomplishments. By gaining some ground on your goals, the rest of your goals become closer and more effortless.
  • Start Small and Easy – Smart small, and if you struggle, make it smaller and more accessible to accomplish even if it will take longer.
  • Tie new habits to something you are successfully doing out of habit now. For example, if you brush your teeth, can you do ankle lifts while you do it. Can you play your next day while cleaning off your desk at the end of the day?
  • Respect Your Natural Pattern by acting when and how you are at your best for the task. Follow that pattern if you are a morning person, night owl, or mid-afternoon bear.
  • Design Your Environment by making your surroundings as compatible with your goals as you can. Set things out or hide that’s that should be avoided.
  • Positive Self-Talk will help you continue to do your excellent work in the future. It feels silly, but it is essential to tell yourself what you did correctly and why you did it.
  • Reward and Celebrate to cheer yourself on. It can be a pat on the back or a real prize.
  • Health Snack Recipes the book has several practical activities to help you overcome everything from your mood to your physical well-being.
  • Questions To Ask Yourself
  • Write down what is bothering you or stressing you. Then, try to use paper and pen to see if it can improve it.
  • Write down steps that help this annoying thing become better.
  • Write the reason why you are stressed out about this
  • Write down a specific way you know this won’t be as bad as you think.
  • Write down what possible benefit you might gain from the situation.

Summary

  • Setitng up a few small activities that can calm your mood, make you feel physically better, and help your emotions. Then, develop a list of quick actions that will make you better or use the ones in the book.

Challenge

  • See if you can come up either through his book or on your own three small health snacks that will help you in a lot of situations. They could be a short cluster of five exercises, a way that you instantaneously de-stress from your life, or is it something that just warms your heart, looking at some photos that you really enjoy seeing that can just help your heart feel better.

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