“There is no use to worry,” Great Grandma Fehriens always said. And she was right. Ninety percent of what we worry about never happens.
If you are in the habit of seeing the worst in a situation you are exercising that pathway of perception in your mind. The neurons that fire together wire together. Anger, fear and anxiety produce the flight or fight chemicals of adrenaline, cortisol, and cyclophosomide while focusing on positives in a situation can generate endorphins, interleukins, and interferons which result in the feelings of relaxation and joy. Candace Pert at Georgetown University is just one of many researchers showing the ways in which our habits of mind can influence our mood.
At the turn of the 20th century, Williams James found this to be true in his psychological observations. One of his five characteristics of thought is that “…whilst we think, our brain changes, and that, like the aurora borealis, its whole internal equilibrium shifts with every impulse of change. The precise nature of the shifting at a given moment is a product of many factors. The accidental state of local nutrition or blood-supply may be among them” (234).
Observing the intransitive quality of thought, James speaks of the human mind seeing its thought object relationally. “When everything is dark a somewhat less dark sensation makes us see an object white.” Imagine then if we saw all around us as white how much brighter our darkest spot would be.
How do we learn to reframe situations? Making the effort to share positive experiences rather than negatives one is one important way and works to reverse the 20:1 ratio of negative experiences being repeated twenty more times than positive ones.
How do we habituate to state our experience in the positive? For example, if we are driving down the road with some friends how do we not say, “We almost hit that squirrel” but instead reframe our thought into the positive to say, “We missed the squirrel. The squirrel is safe!”?
How do you reframe life into the positive?
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Just because I’m losing doesn’t mean I’m lost
“Healing Begins with You.”
"Every relationship in your life can be healed, every relationship can be wonderful, but it’s always going to begin with you. Heal your half, and you are going to be happy. If you can heal that part of you, then you are going to be ready for a relationship without fear, without need. But remember, you can only heal your half. If you are in a relationship and you work with your half, and your partner works with the other half, you will see how quickly progress is made.
Perhaps you cannot control what is going to happen around you, but you can control your own reactions. Those reactions are going to guide the dream of your life, your personal dream. Your reactions are the key to having a wonderful life.
Your reactions come from a belief that is deep inside you. The way you react has been repeated thousands of times, and it becomes routine for you. You are conditioned to be a certain way. And that is the challenge: to change your normal reactions, to change your routine, to take a risk and make different choices. If the consequence is not what you want, change it again and again until you finally get the result you want.
You can have a relationship that fulfills your dream of Heaven; you can create a Paradise, but you have to begin with you."
-excerpt from Don Miquel Ruiz's Wisdom from The Mastery of Love.
"Every relationship in your life can be healed, every relationship can be wonderful, but it’s always going to begin with you. Heal your half, and you are going to be happy. If you can heal that part of you, then you are going to be ready for a relationship without fear, without need. But remember, you can only heal your half. If you are in a relationship and you work with your half, and your partner works with the other half, you will see how quickly progress is made.
Perhaps you cannot control what is going to happen around you, but you can control your own reactions. Those reactions are going to guide the dream of your life, your personal dream. Your reactions are the key to having a wonderful life.
Your reactions come from a belief that is deep inside you. The way you react has been repeated thousands of times, and it becomes routine for you. You are conditioned to be a certain way. And that is the challenge: to change your normal reactions, to change your routine, to take a risk and make different choices. If the consequence is not what you want, change it again and again until you finally get the result you want.
You can have a relationship that fulfills your dream of Heaven; you can create a Paradise, but you have to begin with you."
-excerpt from Don Miquel Ruiz's Wisdom from The Mastery of Love.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Bar Bathroom Review: The Penthouse at The Huntley
For the best place to appreciate a view of the Pacific, Malibu and Santa Monica, relieve yourself in the bathroom of the The Penthouse at The Huntley Hotel. Wait for the last stall to see what I mean. Also, the sink runs at a 90 degree angle down to the corner drain just like an ocean wave or the vision of someone who has drunk more than a few Thyme and Cucumber cocktails.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
How will Twitter influence the evolution of the English language?
Gerund usage is most popular on twitter than elsewhere. The average sentence length afforded a twitterer tweeting in 140 characters is 1.40. And the second most popular word invited to the party is the almighty "I." I'm glad to see we are over our junior high gym class angst and choosing ourselves first for kickball. But I ask you,
my English language users, my post-post-modern language theorists, and my social theory fortune tellers what is your prediction on the influence of Twitter on the English language?
**
Facts Referenced were found by OED editors and reported at:
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2009/06/twittercomoxfor.html
my English language users, my post-post-modern language theorists, and my social theory fortune tellers what is your prediction on the influence of Twitter on the English language?
**
Facts Referenced were found by OED editors and reported at:
http://www.publicradio.org/columns/futuretense/2009/06/twittercomoxfor.html
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Baudrillard and Michael Jackson's Memorial Service
In Baudrillard’s assessment of the realized Utopia, America, he critiques the lack of history, inability to uphold tradition and failure to maintain the integrity of personal privacy.
Driving toward the heartland of wealth, toward the Neverland Ranch, “you always hear the same question: ‘What are you doing after the orgy?’ What do you do when everything is available—sex, flowers, the stereotypes of life and death?” On Tuesday, July 7, 2009, during the Michael Jackson Memorial Service at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles and projected on plasma screens across “Astral America,” what is done is to take the stereotypical flowers of death and ignore the problems of probable pedophilia during a celebrity life. What is done after the orgy in a state of abundance, as can be guessed, is to pick and choose and do whatever fits the stage. In this case, I must concede to Baudrillard. There is no privacy. Nor are there commonly agreed upon traditions to guide actions and words. What is reverent is that which generates the most buzz for the Jackson estate's archives. After the orgy, you recreate the orgy only wearing the diamonds against the color of mourning.
A collage of images feature Michael Jackson from five-years-old to a few days prior to his death. His physicality, perhaps above anyone else's, evidences the “morbid preoccupation” of the body. The evolution of his appearance marks the hedonism of being ‘into’ the body. “This omnipresent cult of the body is extraordinary” when comparing his childhood smile in a soft, beautiful, full face to a washed-out, pointy, synthetic face, a death mask, long before being placed in golden casket.
But all benevolent action eclipses any harm done to others by a man on the day of his funeral and memorial. Therefore, in this realized Utopia, the toothpaste effect conceals the impurities of the orgy and all that is pure is thrust over accusations to create the hyperreal image. Performances masqueraded as a human. Behind the stage makeup and lights was a man mutilated by upbringing, childhood stardom, celebrity status and the man in the mirror. Understanding the demolotion of the spirit of being a child thrust into the artifical stage lighting, he kept his own children so far from the public eye that many of us forgot that he had children. Yet, the King of Pop, from the crescent moon upon which Brooke Shields imagines him, surely is crying to see his family clutch his children and thrust them onto the stage. On a day the children should be most protected in loving arms, Michael Jackson’s children are watched by camera crews in a day long funeral. As a nation we sit back and watch the potential for the same harmful cycle that led to this man’s death regenerate before our very eyes as eleven-year-old Paris Michael Katherine Jackson is thrust into the spotlight to close her father's memorial service.
Driving toward the heartland of wealth, toward the Neverland Ranch, “you always hear the same question: ‘What are you doing after the orgy?’ What do you do when everything is available—sex, flowers, the stereotypes of life and death?” On Tuesday, July 7, 2009, during the Michael Jackson Memorial Service at the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles and projected on plasma screens across “Astral America,” what is done is to take the stereotypical flowers of death and ignore the problems of probable pedophilia during a celebrity life. What is done after the orgy in a state of abundance, as can be guessed, is to pick and choose and do whatever fits the stage. In this case, I must concede to Baudrillard. There is no privacy. Nor are there commonly agreed upon traditions to guide actions and words. What is reverent is that which generates the most buzz for the Jackson estate's archives. After the orgy, you recreate the orgy only wearing the diamonds against the color of mourning.
A collage of images feature Michael Jackson from five-years-old to a few days prior to his death. His physicality, perhaps above anyone else's, evidences the “morbid preoccupation” of the body. The evolution of his appearance marks the hedonism of being ‘into’ the body. “This omnipresent cult of the body is extraordinary” when comparing his childhood smile in a soft, beautiful, full face to a washed-out, pointy, synthetic face, a death mask, long before being placed in golden casket.
But all benevolent action eclipses any harm done to others by a man on the day of his funeral and memorial. Therefore, in this realized Utopia, the toothpaste effect conceals the impurities of the orgy and all that is pure is thrust over accusations to create the hyperreal image. Performances masqueraded as a human. Behind the stage makeup and lights was a man mutilated by upbringing, childhood stardom, celebrity status and the man in the mirror. Understanding the demolotion of the spirit of being a child thrust into the artifical stage lighting, he kept his own children so far from the public eye that many of us forgot that he had children. Yet, the King of Pop, from the crescent moon upon which Brooke Shields imagines him, surely is crying to see his family clutch his children and thrust them onto the stage. On a day the children should be most protected in loving arms, Michael Jackson’s children are watched by camera crews in a day long funeral. As a nation we sit back and watch the potential for the same harmful cycle that led to this man’s death regenerate before our very eyes as eleven-year-old Paris Michael Katherine Jackson is thrust into the spotlight to close her father's memorial service.
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