I’m always on the look-out for indirect ways to gain self-knowledge. For instance, I ask, Whom do I envy? What do I lie about? My envy and lies reveal a lot — including things I’d otherwise try to keep hidden, even from myself.

I also push myself to Imitate a spiritual master. To do so, I first had to identify my spiritual master, and recognizing that St. Therese of Lisieux is my spiritual master revealed a great deal to me about myself.

And I’ve also learned to look for my “tells.” In gambling, a tell is a change in behavior that reveals your inner state. Gamblers look for tells as clues about whether other players are holding good or bad hands.

I have a tell. It took me a long time to recognize it, but finally I did, just a few years ago. But funnily enough, even though this tell has been telling away for several days, I only noticed it this morning.

This is my tell: when I’m feeling anxious or worried, I re-read books aimed at a younger and younger audience. The more worried I am, the simpler the book. Under all circumstances, I love children’s and young-adult literature, and read it often, but when I’m reading these books as an anxiety tell, I inevitably re-read. I want the coziness, the familiarity, the high quality of a book that I know I love.

Over the few weeks, I’ve re-read Peter Cameron’s Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, Julie Andrews’s Mandy, and Jennie Lindquist’s The Golden Name Day (I re-read these books very quickly). But I didn’t pick up on this clue to self-knowledge until I saw myself, as if in a dream, reaching for J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. As I believe any lover of Tolkien would agree: that’s a long road, with no turning back. Once you begin, you’re going there and back again.

Sheesh, I have work to do! I can’t re-read the entire Lord of the Rings! And then I’ll want to watch the movies, too, like as not.

And that’s when I saw the mirror to myself: without quite perceiving it, I’ve been feeling unsettled, with a low-level of anxiety, for the last few weeks. Now that I know, I can deliberately do the things that calm me: re-read those Tolkien books; go out of my way to cultivate good smells, get enough sleep, exercise, and all the rest. It’s odd – for some of that time, I’ve been on vacation, but for me, vacation isn’t as comforting as The Lord of the Rings.

My friends have mentioned their “tells” — one watches reality TV, one eats ice cream (there’s a reason that it’s called “comfort food”), one starts sleeping much more than usual.

How about you? Do you have any tells that signal that you’re anxious, sad, happy, overworked?

1. Listen to music. It lowers your body’s level of cortisol (the stress hormone), reduces anxiety, and can even improve your memory. Whether you love Mozart, Alicia Keys, or Lady Gaga, it’s all good. Are you pregnant? One recent study found that lullabies and nature sounds were the best choices for helping moms-to-be relax.

2. Warm up. The comfort of feeling warm and cozy is a terrific stress-reducer. The doctors at the international Mandometer Clinics, which specialize in treating eating disorders, use warm rooms and blankets to help anorexic women curb their anxiety after meals. Take advantage of spring’s lingering chill by taking a hot shower and wrapping yourself in a fluffy robe afterward. Savor a cup of green tea or get a hot stone massage. If it’s a nice day, put on your sunscreen, grab a book and find a sunny spot.

3. Have a peanut butter sandwich. When you’re fixing your kids’ lunches, aren’t you tempted to make your old favorite for yourself? Go ahead. The protein in peanut butter naturally boosts your level of serotonin, the hormone that regulates moods, sleep, and behavior. Stick with an all-natural variety (you don’t need the saturated oil and preservatives in other brands), have it on whole-grain bread and skip the sugar-loaded jelly. You’re indulging your inner child, and who’s more joyful than a five-year-old?

4. Get a friend fix. A well-known study from the University of Illinois found that the happiest people are the ones with strong bonds to friends and family. (As if you need a bunch of psychologists to tell you that girlfriend-time is fun!) A lot of us don’t make it a priority to connect with our friends regularly. Get into the habit of reaching out to a friend at least once a week, or more often if you can. Send a text, call or get together for a drink after work. And you can never have too many girls’ nights out.

5. Bring nature into your life. Getting in touch with the earth is a time-honored stress reliever, and spring, when nature comes back to life, is a fabulous time to start. Have breakfast on the porch or in the backyard and watch the birds gathering material for their nests. Pick a tree in your neighborhood and look at it daily to see buds turn into leaves.

6. Write it down. For her book, Gore asked women to keep a journal of the best moments in their day. This mindfulness will get you into the habit of noticing the good times as they happen. “Focusing on the moments of flow and happiness in our daily lives instead of focusing on what went wrong just has a refreshing effect,” Gore says. “We notice the natural joy more easily, and we remind ourselves, and sometimes even begin to relearn, what we want to be spending our time doing. “ Buy a notebook and keep it on your nightstand so you can write just before bed. Your entries don’t have to be long; a few lines are plenty.

7. Get out of your rut. Many women Gore spoke to found that they were happiest doing something that took them out of their day-to-day routine: working on an art project, going on a hike, playing with the kids during a time when they didn’t have to rush off to school or sports. Shake up your schedule: Go for a walk at lunch hour instead of eating at your desk. If you spend your nights in front of the TV, turn it off and reach for your journal, a book, or a paintbrush.

In short: Don’t wait for joy to come to you—go out and grab it with both hands!

Via http://www.divinecaroline.com/22189/98056-seven-foolproof-feel-good-strategies#ixzz1PAPIe6NP

A competitor will find a way to win. Competitors take bad breaks and use them to drive themselves just that much harder. Quitters take bad breaks and use them as reasons to give up. It’s all a matter of pride.
Nancy Lopez

A discontented young fellow, filled with self pride; he certainly should have considered it an honor to be sent on so respectable an embassy as he was.
Zebulon Pike

A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Walter Bagehot

A man who is eating or lying with his wife or preparing to go to sleep in humility, thankfulness and temperance, is, by Christian standards, in an infinitely higher state than one who is listening to Bach or reading Plato in a state of pride.
C. S. Lewis

A military man can scarcely pride himself on having smitten a sleeping enemy; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten.
Isoroku Yamamoto

A portion of mankind take pride in their vices and pursue their purpose; many more waver between doing what is right and complying with what is wrong.
Horace

All anyone asks for is a chance to work with pride.
W. Edwards Deming

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words “Ich bin ein Berliner!”
John F. Kennedy

All money means to me is a pride in accomplishment.
Ray Kroc

All the world wondered as they witnessed… a people lift themselves from humiliation to the greatest pride.
Corazon Aquino

American history contains much matter for pride and congratulation, and much matter for regret and humiliation.
Herbert Croly

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.
Mohandas Gandhi

As far as I know, I have no pride of opinion.
Albert J. Nock

At some point, the pride has to be a part of the whole day-to-day oeuvre. It’s part of who you are and doesn’t need to be discussed anymore.
Sandra Bernhard

Attacks of divine transports are of pride and I accept the part assigned.
Elizabeth Barton

Besides pride, loyalty, discipline, heart, and mind, confidence is the key to all the locks.
Joe Paterno

Even if you have a bad game, you have to swallow your pride and sign. It takes a little time, but it makes the kids happy. And it makes you feel good, too.
Lorrie Fair

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.
Giorgos Seferis

Everyone I know has attention deficit, and they say it with great pride. It’s a bad time to be right.
Joni Mitchell

Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency to get the book written.
William Faulkner

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How to Have more Positive Relationships

April 9, 2010 by thegreenchildrenfoundation · View Comments 

“There are plenty of fish in the sea.”

“Time heals all wounds.”

“Get over it.”

You’ve heard ‘em all right? Russell Friedman and John W. James say jaunty phrases like these are the worst words of advice for handling a breakup. “The attempt to soothe is always well intentioned but rarely helpful,” say the authors of Moving On: Dump Your Relationship Baggage and Make Room for the Love of Your Life.

Despite its oh-god-not-another-one-of-those-books title, this is one of the best relationship books to have crossed my desk in a while (and trust me, a lot of them cross my desk).

Rather than spend a lot of time splicing, dicing and trying to spice up the failing relationships we’re currently in, Friedman and James, founders of the Grief Recovery Institute have applied techniques they’ve used to help clients deal with death to help people deal with the one thing they rarely do when they enter into a new relationship: That is, properly say good-bye to all the other crappy relationships that have gone before.

“A breakup is the death of a relationship,” says Friedman. “And just as when someone dies, you’re suddenly robbed of all the hopes, dreams and expectations you had for the future with that person.” Then we drag all that disappointment, anger and resentment (because of course, the relationship death was all the other’s person’s, right?) into our next relationship. After a few rounds of this, it’s no wonder so many of us can’t make the damn things work. In fact, says Friedman, the 50% divorce rate is nothing compared to the 70 per cent of relationships that fail outside of marriage.

Friedman and James partly blame our society’s discomfort with feelings of sadness.“By the time a child is 15 years old he or she will have received more than 23 thousand messages that sad or painful feelings should not be communicated to others,” they write.

Pet fish dies? Don’t worry honey, there are plenty more fish in the, er, pet fish store. Hurt son? Suck it up and get over it. All that stuff we learn about feeling bad or sad gets packed into the suitcase and hauled into adulthood and into our relationships.

Relationship ends? Don’t worry; you can get a new one. Heart hurtin’ like someone’s shoved it full of broken glass? Suck it up and get over it.

But the new fish/relationship isn’t a replacement for the old one, say the authors. Relationships aren’t replaceable or interchangeable. Each is unique and need to be experienced, completed and mourned differently.

And that old, “time heals all” bit? Friedman and James liken this advice to expecting time to fill a flat tire with air. To take the analogy further, imagine you continue driving on that flat tire while you’re waiting for time to fill it up again. It would make driving in a straight line really hard and eventually, you’d destroy the rim and the wheel.

So just like you need to take action to fill up your tire before you can more forward (like call a tow truck or use a jack and fix it yourself), we need to take action in order to refill our emotional flat tires and move forward into healthier, happier relationships.

The action the authors suggest is something they call the “past relationship review,” an exercise that forces you to formally review past relationships and be honest with yourself about the good, the bad and the ugly of each one. But the process isn’t just an intellectual one. “We know people who can recite a doctoral thesis on what happened and who did what to whom but still aren’t emotionally complete,” says Friedman.

Their suggested process, if done honestly and openly, allows you to “complete” past relationships by forgiving your exes for their shit and apologizing for your own so you don’t end up dragging all that “unfinished emotional business” into subsequent relationships.

But he was a bastard and I’ll never be able to forgive him, you say. Forgiving doesn’t condone the person’s behaviour, says Friedman. Not forgiving, however, makes it impossible to move on. “Not forgiving keeps you in prison and not them,” he says.

In fact, forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. “It’s only for you, to set you free,” says Friedman.

Which is why the authors are so adamant about the fact that none of this process be shared with your exes. They mean it. This is strictly a personal exercise. Suddenly calling him up to tell him you forgive him for being such a jerk isn’t going to inflate anyone’s tires.

Friedman likens the process to scraping old paint off a house to prepare it for a fresh coat.

And, once you’re ready for it, they’ve got some great advice for making that fresh coat last.

For more info or to order the book, go to relationshipbaggage.com.

Beth

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Tagged: advice, authors, book, desk, exes, friedman, grief-recovery, life, love, news, person, relationship, relationships, society, time