“If you want something you have never had,
you have to do something you have never done.” ~ Mike Murdock
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"I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become."
~ Carl Jung "Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out." ~ Art Linkletter At first read, I thought these two quotes were dialectics, that is opposing sides of the same idea. But reading them over and over, I think they are saying the same thing. That while we often don't control what life puts in front of us, we do control what we do with it, how we approach what life puts in front of us. Making the choice to focus on what we can control, even if it's only our response or reaction. Effective. Social psychologist Arthur Aron wondered if having long time married couples act more like newly dating couples would result in an increase in marital satisfaction. He had couples generate a list of exciting activities and a list of pleasant activities that they might do together. Then he assigned some couples to do something from the list of exciting activities and other couples to do something from the list of pleasant activities.
I’ll bet you can guess what he found. :-) The couples who added some new and exciting activities into their life, acting more like newly dating than like long time married couples, had significantly more happiness than the couples that engaged in more pleasant activities or the couples that served as baseline and did nothing different at all. Acting excited and trying new things results in feeling excited and more energized about your relationship. Keeping things fresh leads to more relationship satisfaction. Several studies looked at whether the words you say and the way you say them have any effect on your mood. One study by psychologist Emmett Velten asked some people to read cards with increasingly positive statements on them (“I do feel pretty good today”). Another group read cards with neutral statements unrelated to mood on them (“The Orient Express travels between Paris and Istanbul”). Using pre- and post-tests of mood, the group that read the increasingly positive statements had a happier mood afterwards while the neutral statement group showed no change in mood. Other researchers have expanded this format to include telling jokes, laughing, reading stories about happy events, all with the same result. Acting as if you are happy results in people reporting being happier. What’s the takeaway here? If you want to feel a certain way, act the way you want to feel. Don’t wait for the feelings. Change your behavior and the feelings will follow. So, how do you want to feel today? :-) I love this quote from a truly inspiring person!
"Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it." ~Michael J. Fox “You can’t fix what you don’t acknowledge.”
~Dr. Phil I was talking in an earlier post about radical acceptance, about how it’s not about liking or not liking what’s in front of you, it’s about seeing the reality of what’s in front of you so you can make the most effective plan for how to deal with it. Starting with what is, not what we wish it to be, sets us on a path to a better outcome. Let’s consider an example here. Your doctor tells you that your test results show an unusual pattern that needs further investigation. Of course, you do not want this to be true, you want to have normal test results. You don’t want it to be true that something could be really wrong. Now I’m giving my opinion here, but I think even though you (and I) do not want these fears to be true, getting the facts about what is true needs to be the next step here. Maybe something isn’t wrong. Or maybe something is wrong. If that’s true, you need to know so you can plan your most effective next steps, e.g., finding out about treatment options, or getting treatment or changing your habits. How about a more everyday example? How about getting caught in an unexpected traffic jam on I-40 when you’re on your way to an important meeting with your boss? You haven’t allowed for the extra time it is going to take to get moving again. There’s no exit nearby and you are boxed in by all the other cars. Your only choice is to wait it out. But you’re late! But this meeting is really important! “I can’t be late!” What are your choices? Getting angry? Getting nervous about being late? Getting angry with yourself for not leaving sooner or taking a different route? Yes, all options :-) But effective? Make any difference to getting the traffic moving again? Not so much. So, how about just observing your reaction (“wow, I can really get myself worked up here, can’t I?”) and try to just be in the experience (“well, I’m stuck here for I don’t know how long. Is there anything I can do? Maybe call my boss and let her know I’m going to be late.”). The truth is that the traffic will start flowing again when it does, and your reaction to it will have no influence whatsoever on getting those cars moving again. I think about the Serenity Prayer here, wisdom is about knowing the difference between what we can control (leaving early for an important meeting) and what we can’t (getting stuck in traffic). Acceptance is being in the flow of life as it reveals itself, as it unfolds, not putting undue energy into opposing or resisting the flow of life. I know, I know, easier to say than to live. But aspire to it, set your intention to accept. Notice when you resist, invite yourself to pause and let life be what it is. ♥ “A greater intelligence is available to you when you no longer reject, deny, or “don’t want” what is.” ~Eckhart Tolle Accepting what is. I think this is such a powerful and life changing idea that sounds deceptively simple. What is acceptance? One generally understood definition of acceptance is through the lens of a judgment, that accepting something is the opposite of rejecting something. So with this definition, acceptance is like approval “I accept this because I approve of it, or I’m OK with it.” “She was accepted into her first choice of school”, which would obviously mean the school approved of her. With this definition of accepting as akin to approving, accepting means welcoming something, bringing it closer to you, while rejecting would mean pushing away, denying, not wanting something, in this example being rejected from her first choice of school would not be the outcome she would want. This other (and I believe ultimately more powerful) way to think about acceptance is without the lens of judgement/approval/evaluating. True acceptance means stepping away from the liking/disliking paradigm altogether. Another term for this form of acceptance is radical acceptance, a description used in DBT, radical acceptance means allowing your experience to be just what it is, flowing with the rhythm of life, not trying to control what is beyond your control, just observing what is. Now, this does not mean you don’t have feelings or an opinion about what’s in front of you. What it does mean is that you don’t conflate the two, that seeing what’s in front of you and what you believe about what’s in front of you are distinct. Being able to hold the facts and the feelings about the facts as separate gives you so many advantages. The one most obvious benefit is that you can plan your action based on what is, not on what you wish to be true. Your actions are more likely to be effective the closer they take reality into account. I’ll talk more about radical acceptance in my next post. Stay tuned :-) What a treasure we have in Durham! So much in bloom at Duke Gardens yesterday. And the parking lot and overflow parking lots were full! If you’re anywhere close by, do make a trip there this spring. Even though it was crowded, it was easy to be in the nature and not feel like I was bumping up against people the whole time. A few pictures. Enjoy. :-) My parents grew roses when I was growing up.
I remember a few things about this. One, they would throw used coffee grounds and egg shells onto the rose beds. I thought that was weird, to put food that would otherwise go in the trash around the plants. They explained that there were certain nutrients in those foods that made the roses even more beautiful. The other thing I remember was that the roses, the flowers, were stunningly beautiful. When they bloomed, it seemed that it was a thrill and delight for the entire family. I also remember how these amazing blooms were surrounded by straggly, not very pretty bushes. Oh one last thing, it seemed like it was an awful lot of work for a few flowers that lasted for such a short time. You’re probably wondering by now, why is she telling me this sweet memory about rosebushes? As I was writing about before, I’ve been reading Henry Cloud’s book called “Necessary Endings”. He uses the metaphor of a rosebush to show how important it is to decide what your vision is for what you want, in this case, the perfectly groomed rosebush, and to engage in an active process to let go of what is not best to get you to your vision. For a rosebush to be at its’ dazzling best, you have to prune. You have to prune weak branches, you have to prune dead branches, and you have to prune perfectly good branches that are outside the shape of your ideal. You have to let go in order to get closer to what it is that you really want, your ideal rosebush. Can you see the metaphor here? To get to your best self, your vision of the life that you most want, you have to learn to let go. People are like rosebushes. We have limited resources–of time, energy, money and attention. In order to be at our best, we have to make decisions about what we really want. Contrary to the saying “you can have it all”, no, the truth is we can’t. And we have to learn to say no to what isn’t best for us, to what is no longer working for us, to what used to be fine but no longer is, and even to let go of some perfectly good enough things that are no longer necessary as we are moving towards our best life in this moment. Isn’t that a great title?
I’m reading a book by Dr. Henry Cloud about how failing to end something blocks businesses from creating something new and better, whether that ending is a way of doing business, or discontinuing a product line that is no longer selling, or letting an employee go when they are not receptive to going in a new direction. Applying this idea to a more personal and global context about living a life, I think about how our fears of letting something or someone go, often without a clear sense of what’s next, can keep us from trying something new and better for us. The idea of needing to let go of the brass ring for the chance to catch the gold one comes to mind here. But there’s risk you say. Of course there is! But there is risk, while not as obvious, to holding on to what is not working too. Not ending something that deep down you know is no longer working for you, leaving a job or a relationship or a way of doing something, is scary. And, often it is the only way to clear the space for something new and better to come forward. ♥♥♥ “In real life, love is much more than a feeling. It is a long series of decisions to be together and to give to one another, a commitment to work together to build a shared life, a day to day involvement that changes who we are as people. Love involves your entire being: your love for someone is a part of you because it involves your feelings, your thoughts, and your actions.” ♥♥♥♥ –Blaine J. Fowler ♥♥♥ I’ve been thinking about love lately, about what it really means to love someone. Not just romantic love, but love in a more general way. I think our culture overemphasizes the feeling part of love and underemphasizes the thinking and doing parts of love. Dr. Fowler’s quote above is talking about love in marriage but I think it also applies to love in other relationships, in our friendships, in our family relationships.
Especially the “long series of decisions” part. ACT refers to this as “values in action”, living your life, behaving in your life, in ways that are congruent with what you value, what you want your life to stand for. Loving someone means feeling the feeling of love (that seems to me the easy part:-) but it also means choosing to think loving thoughts and act in loving ways. Thinking loving thoughts and acting in loving ways when you are not feeling loving feelings is where the rubber meets the road, in my opinion. This deliberate and intentional “values in action” is the part that isn’t taught or emphasized enough in our culture, that loving someone is wonderful and feels good a lot of the time but it is also hard work and deliberate effort. Worth it, as the saying goes, love is what makes the journey worth it. But also good to be prepared to live love, to think love and do love, not just feel it. |
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