Author & Book Views On a Healthy Life!

Tuesday

30Jun

Who Are the Guilt Bashers?

Jun 30, 2009

Claire Shipman and Katty Kay: Authors of Womenomics

Claire Shipman and Katty Kay--

Guilt is a sneaky emotion. Unlike anger, love, or sorrow, it has an ability to work behind the scenes without your really noticing. This means that you first need to identify that it's actually there -- that the undercurrent of emotion behind this flurry of negative, self-blaming thought is guilt. From there, the steps toward getting guilt out of your thought process and daily life are relatively simple.

Step 1. Ask the Right Questions
You first need to identify what's going on. You're feeling as if you did something wrong. But did you? Ask yourself:

1. Did I actually lie, deceive, or really let someone down?
Maybe you're having some healthy guilt -- which is really more like remorse. If so, and the situation is already in the past, do something about it, and then please, MOVE ON. Send a card, write an e-mail, make a call. Apologize, explain, whatever. Get it out of your mind and put it someplace else. Dwelling on it doesn't help anyone, and most importantly, it takes up your precious time.

2. Am I guilty of guilt exaggeration?
Often a feeling of guilt is justified, but its response is blown out of proportion. Imagine someone doing to you what you're feeling guilty about. Nine times out of ten, you'd probably say to yourself, "Yeah, that wasn't the best thing they could have done, but it definitely wasn't the worst either. I'll get over it, so should they."

3. Am I suffering from inappropriate guilt?
Most of the time, we reckon you are. Perhaps your boss is suggesting, even though you are supposed to be off on Friday, or at a lunch, or coming in late, that it would be helpful for you to cancel your plans and pitch in with someone else's project. You're feeling queasy and guilty. You start down that familiar path, hearing that well-worn internal dialogue with yourself that can spiral into nuttiness. "Oh, I should probably give up my day off or my lunch hour or my trip this weekend." "I was wrong to ask for that day off, time at my son's school, a late morning." 'My boss clearly believes I'm a slacker, lazy, or lack ambition." "I'm letting down my boss, the team, my gender." "Maybe I'll lose my job, my respect, my identity."

When you are starting to spin this way, learn to recognize it before you get dizzy with guilt. If you can identify the onslaught, you are already on your way to having a healthier emotional life. You can see what is inappropriate. The day, lunch hour, weekend off was yours. You will lose time if you give it up.
"I'm getting so much better at recognizing that part of this is my own thing," says Linda Brooks, the New York lawyer. 'The paranoia and self-talk that says 'I shouldn't be doing this. I should be available 24/7.'"
If you are having trouble sorting out whether the guilt is justified, then getting to the source of the "should" can help.

Remember this: guilt is one of the basic human emotions that people in public or professional life will use to get you to do what they want. It's a very sharp, very sophisticated emotional tool -- one that bosses love to wield. The explanation is simple: in situations where you're entitled to your break, to your vacation, to asking someone else to do a project, your boss knows that it's unreasonable to take away that right. So that's where he uses guilt to get what he needs.

Avoiding this kind of tactical guilt -- which you might otherwise call "bosses' guilt" -- is a matter of breaking down any feeling of "should" into legitimate shoulds, where you actually failed to fulfill your obligations, and illegitimate shoulds, where you had no business fulfilling a request in the first place.

Lauren Tyler, a private equity banker at a top New York firm, who some days seems to be managing a small circus as she handles her high-level job, three children, and two stepchildren, says her industry thrives on an all-or-nothing competitive spirit. "You have to develop a thick skin. I know I'm doing my job well and I don't have time to angst," she says. "It's not always easy, but I've learned to get things done in my business life and my personal life, without a lot of hand-wringing."

So ask yourself: is the guilt you are feeling at a particular moment serving you and your own moral framework, or is it serving someone else and their wants and needs? If you come to the conclusion that you're being guilted so someone else can gain, throw the guilt away.

Step 2. Write it all Down
Early in the guilt-bashing, time-winning process, you will find that thinking is not enough. It will be hard to hear all of those familiar guilt thoughts and unfamiliar guilt-conquering thoughts and make sense of them. So get out that pen again.

1. List exactly what you believe you should feel badly about. Your personal classic guilt trips. All of them.

2. Stare at the list. Now, on another sheet of paper, make another list. A list of guilt busters. All the things you should feel good about. (That rarely occurs to any of us, of course.) Examples: "I asked for the day off." "People are allowed to have days off in the company." "I am only going to lunch, not to China." "I've been doing a great job lately on the Brenner report." "My boss is not going to dwell on this -- he's got a lot more to think about." "Managers usually try to get all they can from people, and when they fail, they move on." "It's his job -- it's not personal. " "He does not think I'm a bad person" "I'm going to seem more powerful for sticking to my plan." You see where we are going here. We're reminding you how to keep things in perspective. Eventually we should be able to do it without the help of exercises. But sometimes we need to stop our minds from spinning, put it all on paper, and have a look. It really does help.

Step 3. Picture Your Boss in Diapers
Think of bosses as crying, whining children who need a bit of discipline. Forgive the analogy, but it is really quite similar to training little ones. The first time a tantrum or refusal to go to bed crops up, or, let's say, an unreasonable work request is made, you will feel horrible and guilt-ridden at "letting down" your child/boss. But once you power through the tears/pressure, which lasts much less time than you imagine, you'll soon realize you've gained power.

You've set not only boundaries but also a precedent for the future. Further, you'll wonder why you didn't try it a long time ago. The next time, your child/boss will cry/demand less. The time after that, they might not whine/make an unreasonable demand at all. And you've got power -- not to mention a tension-relieving inside giggle at your supervisor.

Step 4. Change the Soundtrack
Pretty soon, you can drop all of the paper and lists and funny mental images and do it all reflexively. You'll easily understand where your mind is going BEFORE you start to spiral. Then you're really saving time. You can cut off the whole long-winded, emotionally draining process at the start, and move on.
Another way to think about it when these negative thoughts crop up: you need to literally change the "thought-track" in your head.

Change your internal message. Instead of running a negative track about all of the things you haven't done and the reasons why you have to meet unreasonable requests or you might be forever doomed, you turn on the positive track, which reminds you of all of your accomplishments and power. If you keep that on a continuous loop, then your angst will float away.

Christy Runningen of Best Buy says the only way she stops it is by literally forcing her mind onto better terrain. "It's so easy to get overwhelmed and think, 'oh I should be doing this, or I should be doing that,' or 'I feel guilty, it's ten o'clock on a weekday morning and I'm not working at this very moment,'" Christy says. "Well for me the key is backing up and taking a look at what I am responsible for. It doesn't matter if I'm not doing it at this very second. I'm meeting every work goal, and that's what matters."

Step 5. Compromise Counts
There are times when you will feel unreasonable guilt, and you should not have to "give in," but the reality is that you won't always get to do things your way. Don't always focus on an all-or-nothing outcome. That in itself can create lots of tension. At these moments, instead of letting your guilt force a dejected "cave-in," look for a split.

You may be able to get part of what you want. "I can't come in Friday because I've already made plans, since I asked for the day off last month, but I can work through my lunch today. I hope that helps!" This sort of olive branch seems powerful, can leave you feeling good, and still preserves the basics of what you need. And when you do have to compromise -- for goodness' sake don't feel guilty about doing so. You haven't sold yourself short or failed, you've just compromised! You've lost some time during your lunch break but at least you've won your Friday.

Step 6. Pull out the Rhetorical Guilt Shields
We tend to think silence and a smile are the best guilt-deflectors, but if you just can't help yourself, here are some ready-made scripts you can use to avert an assault from coworkers and bosses.
"Out the door so early," your annoying coworker sneers. "It's awesome how quickly I nailed that Brenner report," you reply with a smile.

"I was at the office until midnight last night," grumbles your office mate, pointedly. "Brutal" you sympathetically reply. "When I logged on at 6 A.M.this morning, I thought I'd die."
"This project could really use your input over the weekend -- oh -- did you say you were away?" your boss asks, clearly testing the waters.

About The Authors

Claire Shipman, co-author of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success (Harper Collins/ Jun 2009), is the senior national correspondent for ABC News' Good Morning America and a regular on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Previously, Shipman was the White House correspondent for NBC news and a reporter for CNN in Moscow, where she earned multiple awards for her coverage of the demise of the Soviet Union. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.

Katty Kay is the Washington correspondent and anchor for BBC World News America. She is also a contributor on Meet the Press, The Charlie Rose Show,and The Chris Matthews Show,as well as a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on NPR. Kay grew up in the Middle East and now lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and four children.

Oprah, Newsweek and Claire Shipman's View

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Wednesday

24Jun

The Yin And Yang of The Slow Life

Jun 24, 2009

Arthur Rosenfeld--

Imagine your last few moments on this mortal coil. Say, for the sake of discussion, that you step off the curb and are hit by a bus. As you lie on the street with your life seeping out, you hear people screaming and you see them pointing and you watch someone dial 911. A few moments later you hear the wail of an approaching ambulance, but you realize in a place beyond pain and beyond terror that it will arrive too late. Even though I don’t know you, I can pretty much guarantee that you don’t want your last thought to be “That was fast, but at least I got a lot done.”

Instead, of course, you hope that when your time comes you have a feeling of satisfaction, a sense that you fully engaged the people in your life, that you tried the things you wanted to try, that you felt the things you wanted to feel, that you pursued your dreams in an open, relaxed way, that you lived each and every moment fully and with presence. It’s true that life can end any moment—a meteor can land on your house, a fire can take you while you sleep, a heart attack can get you, or a stroke or that pesky bus—and so it’s important to live fully without wasting time or effort. Living fully, however, is not the same as living quickly. In fact, I would like to argue that the best way to both live longer and get more out of life is to live at a reduced pace. It’s official. My motto has become “anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.”

Apparently, I’m not the only one taken with this idea. There is a veritable explosion in mind/body activities that serve to slow down that mad rush to the end. Tai chi classes are popping up all over the country, yoga studies are doing a strong business despite a shriveling economy, and everywhere you turn you hear someone talking about the benefits of meditation—all arts that teach us to slow down and savor the unique, spectacular experience of being alive.

The moment you make that effort to gear down you become aware of just how addicted you are to the pace of the speed-and-greed culture. You experience your own little internal yin/yang, a war that goes on inside your head between those neurons that want the constant stimulation our technology and overcrowding bring and those that crave tranquility and peace. At any given moment on any given day, one or the other side of you will win. The more often the quiet side is the victor, the more likely you are to achieve what the sages of the East call “mindfulness.”

Living mindfully, the quality of life increases. Mindful, you can begin to sort through whatever health issues you have. Slow and mindful, you are more likely to discover that your hypertension, your irritable bowel, your painful joints, your migraines, your stiff back, your inability to focus, your shortness of temper, your impatience, frustration, even your road rage, are all the consequences of your body screaming at you to slow down. Pushed and pulled along too quickly and in too many directions, you feel stressed and respond with illness; slow and mindful you are able to prioritize what needs to be done, discard what doesn’t, and even enjoy the doing.

A slow, considered, mindful life does not mean one devoid of contribution or accomplishment; rather the opposite. It is said that if you want something done you give it to a busy person. That truism applies to stapling some papers, to mopping the floor, to expediting the shipping of a package, to fixing a broken fence. On the other hand, people who accomplish truly meaningful things are not often rushed. Deliberate, slow, mindful and focused, they are free of frivolous demands, compulsions and projects. Not addicted to a pace of life set by outside forces whose motivations are almost always their own profit or interests, this kind of person, the sage we all can be if we choose, concentrates his or her energy effectively on those things that really matter.

Imagine if we all lived this way. Imagine if we were willing to stop grasping at things we don’t need, spending money we don’t have, rushing around chasing things that don’t matter, obeying impatient masters who manipulate us to their own advantage by keeping the pace so frenetic we never figure things out. Taking time to notice the marvels of everyday life sounds so simple, so utopian, so hopelessly out of touch with “real” life….and yet, what is real? The world is as we make it, and we can make it different. Imagine the global shift we would see if everyone slowed down enough to notice what’s really going on.

Mind/body practices are, at their core, all about balance. That fast “yang” urge and that slow, “yin” yearning need to be balanced. Sometimes, after all, we need to move quickly, as in evading the front bumper of that awful bus. What has happened to us, however, is that technology and overcrowding have put us way out of balance and much to far in the fast direction. We don’t take naps, we don’t contemplate the clouds, we don’t eat our food without talking or watching TV, we don’t even drive our car without using our cell phones or, worse, checking our e-mail on PDAs.

The most obvious solution is to take up a mind/body practice, but that isn’t the only answer. Just making the decision to slow down and be mindful can work wonders. Try it today. Just take a deep breath, stop what you’re doing, look around, think about those people and things that really matter, and let go of those that don’t. Then go to your next experience slowly, whether it is writing an expense report or making love. Remember, anything worth doing is worth doing slowly!

Arthur Rosenfeld is an authority on the spiritual dimensions of Eastern thinking for a Western world. A novelist, martial arts master and philosopher, Rosenfeld is a contributor to national magazines, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Parade, has been seen on national tv and radio networks. The author of eleven acclaimed books and the creator of the fiction genre "Kung Fu Noir," he combines stories with Eastern wisdom drawn from nearly 30 years of martial arts study. His forthcoming title is Quiet Teacher.

A Yale graduate, Rosenfeld combines scientific background and communication skills gained through post-graduate studies at the University of California with real-world savvy gleaned from high-level corporate positions. Drawing on his background in medicine and science he has been cited in national media, including Newsweek, Ebony, and Parade. He has also written The Truth About Chronic Pain.

The Biology of Belief

The Conflict of Pain, Illegal Drugs, The Law, and Compassion

A Random Act of Consciousness

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Tuesday

23Jun

Renewal Of Your Life Begins In Your Mind

Jun 23, 2009

After studying art in college, which earned him a career as a janitor, Allan J. Hamilton, MD, FACS, went on to attend Harvard Medical School, and to become the chief of neurosurgery and chairman of the Department of Surgery at the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center. He currently holds a main appointment as a Professor in Neurosurgery as well as professorships in Radiation Oncology, Psychology, and Electrical and Computer Engineering Dr. Hamilton also is the Executive Director of The Arizona Simulation Technology and Education Center (ASTEC) at The University of Arizona College of Medicine. Dr. Hamilton is also a script consultant in neurosurgery for Grey’s Anatomy. Dr. Hamilton is the author of The Scalpel and the Soul (Tarcher/Penguin, 2008).

Allan Hamilton--

Every morning, we wake up to a choice: status quo or something better? We must decide if we are content to live as we have been doing or do we, can we, change? Wayne Dyer has summed the challenge like this: “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” But we’re also hopelessly caught in a kind of Catch-22: How can we change the way we see life if it is largely determined by our genetic and experiential history–something we have no control over? The answer lies in our ability to transform our personal story.

Let’s start off by confessing that each of us is just the main character in his or her own story. And that story—like all good ones—is made up. It bears no resemblance to any truth because it is simply our version of the truth. So it is fantasy, mostly lies. Not that we’re liars (we are that too, but that’s a different story). Some of us see ourselves as victims - or patients - or martyrs. Some have chosen to cast ourselves as heroes - or providers - or saviors. And, we could just claim that all of these scripts are the result of mere chance; or we can take ownership of them by admitting that our personal vision of the truth is nothing more than story we choose to believe in with the most energy.

But that admission also opens a vital option for us too. We can exercise the author’s ultimate prerogative - a rewrite. We can turn the page and start a beautiful new chapter about the story of how we began to transform ourselves to become well, to be healthy, and to be at peace. We can grant ourselves the power to declare this day - this moment - different from all the others we have experienced so far. Wellness is a script where renewal is central to the plot. It’s sets up the development of sustained inspiration, fueled by faith that every moment lying ahead can hold as much joy and beauty as we choose to put into our story.

The truth is that we just need to throw the switch in our heads. Turn disbelief into wonder. Maybe it’s nothing more than walking the dog two extra blocks (for the dog’s sake) - or heading to the gym for the first ten minutes of your life - or maybe, it’s canceling fast food tonight and deciding to cook a fresh, wholesome meal - or maybe, it’s listening. Maybe it’s asking a question, instead of giving an answer, so there’s a space created for another person’s voice to fill - or maybe it is just watching stuff instead of doing stuff.

The changes may be small changes but they are the bricks with which we build the path of rejuvenation. Two blocks becomes four. Ten minutes in the gym leads to fifteen. One good meal takes you to the organic produce aisle. And one conversation of active listening leads to a deeper friendship. That’s how renewal begins.

The best part of renewal is creating a context for dreams. My daughter taught me the power of context. One day, when she was about ten, she went through a stage where she had a fantasy that she would go diving for buried treasure off the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. Don’t ask me where or how this notion came. Let’s just assume she wrote it that way. But, as part of her chapter, she decided one afternoon she should lead me by the hand to the swimming pool in our backyard.

Here, she took a step down into the water and then settled her diving mask on her face. Then she looked up at me expectantly as if to say: “Well, we’re not going to find any gold standing here on the edge—out of the water.” So I put on my mask, flippers, and snorkel to play along and off we glided into the deep—the deep end, at least. The next evening the ritual repeated itself only we swam about longer. Somehow the game got more elaborate with each dive. Soon, on my way home, I would stop off at the pet store and purchase a handful of small plastic sharks and rubber whales, designed for decoration in aquariums, and bring them to populate the imaginary reef in our pool. We would swim after them and race to see who could get them first. We would hold our breath and dive to the bottom to retrieve them. Our play sessions in the pool stretched into hours.

I also began to mysteriously develop a terrible French accent - a bad imitation of Jacques Cousteau - with which I would narrate each of our dives. “As we pree-pair to leeva da safetee of da Calypso, my diving part-nair and I sink een-too dee deep when we suddenly see dee vague but ohm-meenous sha-dough of what could only be aah great white shark.” Then I’d start shaking a handful of my sharks back and forth, wrestling with them in a miniaturized feeding frenzy, and left me sinking helplessly to the bottom. Only my daughter could save me. And for that, well, she had to decide to change the story. Forsake her quest for the gold or save me instead? The great whites would then slowly sink into the depths. As she swam to rescue me, I could see my daughter smile so widely that tiny little bubbles would escape from the corners of her mouth. I am sure Monsieur Cousteau could not have written it better.

Renewal means today will be different because we are willing to entertain new, different stories which all begin by allowing ourselves the freedom to play the characters we want to be.

Book Review: The Scalpel And The Soul by Allan J. Hamilton, M.D., FACS

Pull A Tom Cruise

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Monday

15Jun

It's Natural to be Skeptical of the Supernatural

Jun 15, 2009

By Lynette Fleming

Coauthor of Lunch Buddies: Buddy Up for a Better Diet

For some it is natural to be skeptical of the supernatural. Unless you have experienced a phenomenon such as a ghostly encounter or an unexplainable premonition which unfolds before your eyes, like those described in The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives, it will be difficult for you to believe these types of stories. It is easy to say people are just writing about it for the money or the fame. But for others, like me, who have experienced the unexplainable this story is totally believable.

Long ago, in the early 1950's, My grandfather built a small cottage on Gull Lake, a beautiful spring-fed lake between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, Michigan. My siblings and I were lucky enough to be able to go there for a week every summer with grandma and grandpa. One warm summer night, after attending a worship service at the Bible Conference, my 16-year old cousin and I climbed the steps to the attic, which had been converted into a bedroom. The steps were the kind you pull down from the ceiling, very creaky and difficult to climb. Grandpa had put two beds up there for the grandkids.

I was 11 at the time. In the middle of the night, I awoke to see a dark haired man standing beside my bed, staring down at me. My green eyes and his blue eyes were interlocked for what seemed like an eternity. I thought he was a burglar, although his eyes did not reflect any anger, fear or hatred. He did not say anything to me. I decided not to scream because I thought he would kill me if I did, and closed my eyes tight, forcing myself to count to 50 before I opened them again. I heard no sounds, not a one. When I opened my eyes he was gone.

Then I screamed . . . so loud I woke up everyone in our cottage. My grandfather checked all the doors and windows to make sure they were locked (they were), and told me (like every good parent or grandparent would) to go back to sleep . . . that it must have been just a bad dream. To this day I know it was not a dream, and that my nocturnal visitor could not have been a real person (due to the fact that the stair steps did not emit a single creaking noise while I held my eyes closed). Ten years later, after grandpa had died, my mom and grandma went to the cottage for a summer vacation. One morning grandma told my mom . . . "Last night I saw a dark-haired man standing by the refrigerator. He looked so real I thought I was awake, but it must have been a dream." She did not remember the night I saw him.

Some who read this will say I'm a nut . . . just as some do not believe the story of these parents and their remarkable son. No one can prove they are telling the truth, and yes it is possible they made up the whole story for money or fame. However, as someone who has experienced the unbelievable, I believe it is possible this is a "true story." The story is a great read. Open your mind, believe that anything is possible, and read this intriguing story . . . a story which brought closure to the family of a World War II pilot who, prior to the birth of James Leininger, knew nothing about how their James had died.

Soul Survivor (Grand Central Publishing/ Jun 2009) by Bruce and Andrea Leininger with Ken Gross

The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing The Future Can Shape Our Lives (Dutton/ Apr 2009) by Larry Dossey, M.D.

Book Review:The Power of Premonitions by Larry Dossey

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Monday

15Jun

Book Review: We Plan, God Laughs by Rabbi Sherre Hirsch

Jun 15, 2009

Reviewed By David M. Kinchen of The Huntington News Network

'We Plan, God Laughs' Offers 10-Step Spiritual Improvement Plan Grounded on Jewish Theology But Applicable to Those of All Faiths

If Sherre Hirsch's We Plan, God Laughs: What to Do When Life Hits You Over the Head (Doubleday, $12.99, 208 pages) sounds as if it was written by a cheerleader, it makes sense: Rabbi Hirsch was a cheerleader in high school. Who knew? A cheerleader who became a rabbi: only in America!

The title comes from an old Yiddish proverb, but Hirsch turns it on its head: In her view God is not laughing at you, he's laughing with you. Hirsch was a rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles from 1998-2006, where she built the membership to a record level. She received her Rabbinic ordination and master's degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. She has a master's in Hebrew Letters from the University of Judaism in L.A., as well as a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University.

She's academically qualified and from my reading of her spritely, easy-to-digest book, she's adept in practical counseling, too.

The 10 steps are:

1) What Happened? Assessing yourself honestly

2) Ending the Excuses.

3) Getting Present.

4) Celebrating the Divine You.

5) Partnering with God.

6) Re-Creating Your Creator.

7) Finding Your Divine Spark.

8) Engaging Up.

9) Finding New Meaning.

10) Questioning -- an essential element in Jewish theology. (As is answering a question with another question!)

Sounds new-agey, doesn't it? Yes, Hirsch is a modern woman, but she draws on Jewish thought, which, as the oldest of the three Abrahamic faiths, has a 5,000-year history of recognizing that things have a way of turning out not as we planned or hoped. She argues that our plans are limited to ones we think up at bedtime, those devised by our parents, or those that will look good on our resumes.

Hirsch suggests that instead of listening to others to shape our paths, career choices, career changes, etc. that our paths must be more authentic, more vibrant and divinely inspired. The 10 steps are designed to do just that, starting with an honest assessment.

For example, she says "expectations are like vintage clothes. We keep our old clothes in a closet thinking someday we will fit into them again or someday they will be back in style. We do the same with our expectations. We hold on to them for far too long. And the longer we keep them, the less room there is for new possibilities."

Hirsch says celebrating the divine you is essential to see ourselves as God sees us. "The Bible tells us God described himself with thirteen positive attributes: Put thirteen candles on the cake, and celebrate the divine you."

This quality paperback bears an endorsement from Rabbi Harold Kushner, author of the best-selling When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I've read Rabbi Kushner's book and I found it eye-opening, with sensible, grounded advice that should work for people of any faith -- or even those who are not sure they have a faith. We Plan, God Laughs is written in the same vein, with examples drawing from Hirsch's counseling experience. I recommend it without reservation as a book to keep on your bedside table and take along on trips or while you're waiting for appointments.