Surviving Thanksgiving - with joy and genuine gratitude!

Families, these days as I suspect, always, don't always have a lot in common..... so conversation can be commonplace or contentious [the ever inappropriate "When are you going to get married/get the career that *I* want you to pursue, etc.?"] but it is only very rarely charming, witty, engaging and fun.

Hence we need something to do with the beloved family that we nagged to come visit us. What the heck do you do after all the rushing around for the meal, and the after-meal ball game, are over?

Movies are popular - people can enjoy AND SHUT UP for two hours, hallelujah. Going out somewhere - zoo, museum, etc. works if it isn't Puget Sound (always raining) or Snow Zone (unless you can get them skiing, making snow people and castles, etc.).

Another idea is to set up creativity projects. Get the contentious people out of the house by any means (an attraction, get them arrested, don't invite them in the first place, whatever works), then settle in with:

** Coloring station. I LOVE this and so do more and more people. Get some nature oriented natural scenes from Dover Publications. Heaven.

** Go to Joanne's or Michael's and buy holiday ornament kits and chivvy, nag, encourage everyone to grab one and start painting.

There are also decorations to be painted. Get the kids involved if it's not suitable for outdoor running around.

Creating things generates biochemical changes in the body that leads to happy feelings! Consider paper-based mosaics and other fun outlined in my book 101 Stress Busters.

https://www.amazon.com/Busters-Healthy-Longevity-Through-Barriers-ebook/dp/B01MZ4HNRZ (ebook or print)

While you are creating, get the older folks reminiscing about their childhoods. What did they do to create? Did they sew their clothes? Could they teach you how? Did they ever take art classes? Did they have unmarried siblings or cousins? Were any of them creative?

You get the picture. Steer the conversation AWAY from the traditional things they did at Thanksgiving, with large families and people who only lived 5 miles away from each other. They nag and complain about you, because they want to keep things static, but the arrow of time moves, and what used to be happy and healthy no longer is, for many of us.

If you can get it going, ** having everyone right a letter to their future self, ten years in the future, making predictions, expressing hopes and dreams - and DON'T SHARE THEM or they won't be honest and real.

How about, while you're coloring, ** have people dream-vacation. Sure, there will be the usual tropical island, because Americans don't get enough rest and holiday time, and we have more reasons for anxiety, with no health care, fewer good jobs and an uncertain economic future BUT keep the conversation going, dig down deep, ask for details. They can dream of more than sunscreen and lying in the sun, doing nothing, if they are forced to. No one is really that dull-witted. Suggest excursions. Would they reef-snorkle? Take a boat to a nearby island and picnic?

And maybe, if you're lucky, have people write down a gratitude list, and put the lists in a bowl and pick a list and read it, with respect, without trying to figure out who dunnit, and without shaming or criticizing the writer. True gratitude, beyond the platitudes, is what this holiday is all about.

The original thanksgiving day was in Virginia. The folks prayed, ate some seafood and went to bed. That might not be practical unless you live alone or with someone equally spiritual, but the closer you can get to the true spirit of humility and gratitude, the happier you will be when you wake up on National Leftovers Day (aka Black Friday).

Bless us all, every one.

It's a good year. No, it's a bad year. No, it's.....

We so blithely talk about having a “good” or “bad” year.  What we mean is a time in which we got what we wanted out of life - we had health, a good marriage, a nice income, low stress – or we had a time that presented many challenges, sometimes intense challenge on one front – exceptional health challenges or frustrating unemployment .  My “bad” years frequently feature being nibbled to death by ducks – dozens of mild to moderate problems, but constant and relentless  - that lead your psyche to believe that the Lords of Creation have it in for you (as a Christian client referred to it) or that life is just a constant struggle with one stumbling block after another.

2015 was a difficult year for me.  2016 is shaping up to have lots of challenges as well.  I lost 5 weeks of my life to a serious bronchitis attack and now my beloved sister is riddled with cancer and breathing through her last weeks, the latter hitting with almost no warning.   Why did my goddess, angel and animal spirit cards, not to mention my Akashic consults, all tell me that this was going to be a “good” year?  Are they wrong – or nuts?

Maybe the latter is closest to the truth.

I think the disconnect can be explained by a story from one of the Buddhist scriptures, which I will paraphrase and shorten.  A farmer had a young son who was an excellent helper.  That’s good, his neighbors told him.  Then the boy broke his leg and it set poorly; he would always have a limp.  That’s bad, his neighbors said.  Years pass and the nation is at war.  All the young men are conscripted for military service.  All the fathers lose their young male labor and have to work hard in the fields.  Except our farmer.  Because the boy limps, he is excused from military service.  That’s good, the neighbors say. The young man does not die in the war and remains to help work on the farm, albeit at a reduced capacity.

This constant mental categorizing event outcome as “good” or “bad” is the major cause of our life’s dissatisfaction.  If things aren’t good or bad, but just are, we can move on to maximizing the value of what we have, like the farmer.  His emotions weren’t up and down, fluctuating with the “story” that his mind created about reality, like his neighbors were doing.  Some people read the story and think that the moral is that you have to wait to decide if something is good or bad, because of course the story ends up “good” – the young man does not die.  But the real meaning is much more profound.

So what about me?  Maybe I can be very sad, weep and journal and be hugged, but my sister’s untimely death isn’t “bad,” per se, just very, very sad.  Maybe it just is.  Maybe the bronchitis just is.  [Compare this with “the bronchitis is actually good because it got me to cut back on the number of overseas trips I was planning for 2016, which were exhausting to think about, much less do” which is the psych cognitive-behavioral approach, and a very good one it is, too, in getting us to see another possibe interpretation of the available facts.  But with all its virtues, it is only turning bad into good, not walking away from bad and good as categories, period.]

So I don’t think all those cards and Akashic messages were wrong.  It was my interpretation of them that was off-base.  They didn’t say I would have a “good” year.  They said that many blessings were coming to me.  It was I who mistranslated that into “nothing sad is going to happen.”   When I take a more balanced look at the year, the blessings – so many more than in 2015 – stand out in stark relief.   My gosh, what a shower of blessings, in business, in health and in new friendships and spiritual relationships.   Not nothing but blessings of course.  But blessings there are.  And all of it – without being labeled good, bad or both/neither – just is.

If you ask me how the year is going, I may make you comfortable by saying, “Many blessings,” because small-talk doesn’t require philosophy or truth.  But know that I know what kind of year I’m having.  I’m having a year in which I am alive, and all of it just is.

Have Courage and Be Kind: What do you do if you didn't have a Golden Childhood?

 Have you seen the 2015 version of Cinderella?  Wonderful movie isn’t it?  The theme – Have courage and be kind, and all will be well – stunned me when I saw the movie in the theatre, because it is exactly what my mother taught me.

Think about it.  So much of what “happens” to us is really the result of a lack of courage on our part.  We stay in harmful situations way too long, allowing ourselves to be more deeply hurt, because we are afraid of the unknown that lies outside of the Known But Awful.  We stay in jobs.  We stay in relationships.  We let ourselves stay connected to toxic people of all types.  We stay in toxic places, that suck our souls dry.  Why?  Lack of courage.

We fall into mistakes because we lack the courage to thoroughly examine a proposition before we commit to it.  We tell ourselves that we are following our heart or our intuition, but what we’re really doing is telling the universe that we don’t matter, that looking out for ourselves with a minimal Due Diligence is wrong, because we don’t have the right to stop a slick sales pitch in its tracks and examine it very, very closely.  If we really mattered to ourselves, we wouldn’t care who got pissed off.  We would move toward what is good for us, move away from what isn’t healthy, and smile kindly while we say “No, thank you,” which is a complete sentence. 

Ella exhibited both kinds of courage.  And many kinds of kindness.

And most lovely of all, the movie reminds people like me, who work every day to uncover, clean out and repair the effects of childhood damage in beautiful adult souls, of the importance of what parents and teachers do.  If you are a parent or teacher, don’t ever believe that the hard work you do every day is thankless.  It isn’t.  Adult Ella was able to endure her harsh young adulthood of emotional abuse and neglect because her core belief in her own value and goodness was never breached.  That “golden childhood” of parental love, appreciation and delight inoculated her, for a long time, against the slings and arrows of an outrageous fortune.  The wickedest adults could not make her bitter, angry and resentful, her soul shone in the darkest times, because she had a bone-deep belief in and memory of love.  Her youngest years protected her soul from shriveling under the heaviest hammer blows of adversity.  THAT soul is what the prince/king could not live without, and which gave him the courage to “become his own man.” 

That shining soul is the gift that those of us who’ve had a golden childhood carry with them, the armor that keeps them safe forever after.  The rest of us have to work harder – for years or decades, depending on the damage – to build that same deep, shining soul, that has courage and kindness as its north star.  When we do, we don’t have to battle against resentment, envy and uncertainty any more.  When we know, at the deepest level of our hearts, that we are lovable, then whether others do or don’t doesn’t determine our own behavior.  And then we become the hero/ine of our own glorious story, inspiring everyone around us.  We become the candle that lights up all the dark, scared candles around us. 

If you wonder if you’ll ever have Ella’s kindness and courage, know that there are healers like me in the world, who have the skills and the determination to help you become a person who can light candles all around you, a person with a genuine, rock-solid certainty of their own value, and the deepest humility about themselves.  You can do it.  We all can.  For those of us without a golden childhood, it can be a long, hard trek, but the mountaintop is reachable.  We really can all be Ella.  Blessed be. 

6 Tools and Techniques to Make Healthy Self-Love a Reality

For some people, brought up by caring parents who wanted us to be generous and humble adults, the difference between healthy self-love and unhealthy selfishness, arrogance and narcissism, was not made clear to us.

In consequence, we grew to adulthood happily prepared to take care of everyone around us, be a rock of care and concern for all our loved ones, while relying on the attention of others to see to it that our own nurturing - emotional feeding - gets done.

That's not the way things are supposed to roll.  With due respect to our well-intentioned parents, hoping to steer us away from self-absorption, they missed the healthy balance point.

Self-love, so far from being a character flaw, is the foundation upon which every other healthy ediface of adult love and character is built.

Let me explain what healthy self-love is, and give you some specific techniques and tools that you can use to build this capacity within yourself.  It's never too late!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKQe5VFm0gc

1 Simple Step to Improve Your Home Life in 2016

Even the most career-obsessed person knows that an unhappy home life sucks the energy and joy from your life.  And most of us are more balanced than that. So here is one simple step to make a big difference in your personal happiness for 2016 – and you’ll make your spouse or partner much happier as well.

Here’s the scenario that most of us live with:

Ø  There is no demarcation in communication between the tactical (kids’ dental appointments, other calendaring, the bill that needs paying) and the strategic (where are we going on vacation next year, what % of our time are we spending on kids, parents, hobbies, our spiritual growth, an irritation I have with you, an important way in which you are disrespecting me, my time or my importance in your life).  The tactical gets sandwiched into whatever snippets of time are available.  The most important strategic questions – the primary relationship and its emotions, meaning the meaning that the relationship has in our lives, how valued we are, how trusted you are – require undivided attention and a calm interior, so they never get aired until the bucket overflows on a particularly stressful day.

Ø  Important conversations (both tactical and strategic) about finances, vacations, problems or opportunities with the kids, problems and opportunities with in-laws, ourselves, our careers, our <fill in the blanks> gets sandwiched in to a brain that is tunneled on the stress of the moment.  A tunneled brain cannot even absorb all the details and nuances of the issue, much less process it with both analytic and intuitive wisdom. 

Ø  Because we cannot absorb the full reality that is being presented to our tunneled brain, we lose most of the context and half the content.  Our spouse correctly concludes that we aren’t listening and (possibly incorrectly) that we really don’t value them. 

Ø  Whoever is paying the bills, dealing with the teacher or the nasty neighbor, or mediating the in-laws knows what’s going on, but the other partner really doesn’t, so that miscommunications with the external world occur, wasting everyone’s already scanty free time. [The time you should be spending at the gym, right?]

Some people have a weekly What’s Going On? Meeting in which they coordinate the tactical.  It’s a step toward wisdom, certainly.  It’s a rare family that sets aside well-rested, unpressured time to tackle the strategic.  You need to.

To the rescue – the mandatory weekly Family Meeting!  Have a scribe, either the person with the best handwriting, or the person who really loves to take notes or who is the most comprehensive note-taker [that would be my partner], or both/all parties on a rotating basis.  Start with the tactical stuff.  Write everything down!  This ensures that whoever dealt with the problem, challenge or opportunity isn’t the only adult who knows who said what and what was done.  

So far, so tactical.

Then start on the strategic, specifically the non-relationship-oriented events, plans, goals.  Brainstorm.  Talk about retirement, or your career plans, or the possibility of relocation, or what kinds of investments you both really care about.  Focus on listening twice as much as you talk.  Take three long, deep breaths and don’t respond to any idea that upsets, scares or enrages you until you are calm again.  Have a Time Out process.  Stand up and stretch.  Talk about reducing expenses on things you want but don’t need, so that the longer-term strategic needs can be met – or even the strategic wants, like a life-altering trip to India or above the Arctic Circle, can come true without incurring debt.  You can forego the $5 cup of coffee if you know what you are getting instead.  Keep your eyes on the prize!

The last element of the Family Meeting is the relationship.  Keep reminding yourself that no human being is going to support you in your life goals, including your business and career goals, if they are disrespected themselves.  Cheer when your spouse trusts you enough to bring up something that s/he wishes you’d do or not do, or do differently.  You are finding out about it while s/he still loves and trusts you.  If I had a dollar for every male friend, colleague, relative or client who has told me in bewilderment that he has no idea why his wife is divorcing him, I would have a fully-paid condo in Lahaina.  With the exception of the 3% of humanity who are sociopaths, people are only mysterious when we aren’t listening.  Coaxing problems out of hiding when they are still small and fixable keep the garden of love well-weeded.

And that is the most effective, most powerful boost you can give your career and your life for 2016.

Fun Food!

A new recipe!

I decided to try some new things for my new cookbook (following up 101 Healthy Meals in 5 Minutes or Less!) and this one is going to a potluck tomorrow.

I start with a reasonably healthy commercial cornbread mix, add 2 eggs or egg white, some applesauce, lots of cinnamon.

The applesauce adds nice natural sugar and enough water that I can skip the usual milk. It's great, low cal too, well as a dessert, LOL.

What are you thankful for?

If you are like most Americans, you will gather around an over-loaded table of food tomorrow, for the Thanksgiving Day obligatory eat-fest.  If you are fortunate, someone will suggest that you all give short speeches about What You Are Thankful For, before you dig in.

It’s better than just digging in, of course.  But let’s be honest – most of these ThankFests are very superficial.  I’m thankful for my family.  Or my friends.  Whoever is in the room with me and will remember if I DON’T go down that timeworn road.  I’m thankful for my health.  Or my obliviousness, when spoken by people who don’t get tests and checkups from a reputable doctor regularly.  My mother-in-law thanked god for her good health every year, including the Thanksgiving just before she was diagnosed with the colon cancer that she could have completely averted if she hadn’t insisted that having an easy, simple colonoscopy was “claiming” cancer.  So let’s say that you either have or imagine that you have some level of good health.  Most of us grab that old chestnut and quit.  End of introspection until next year.

What most of us really are thankful for is our income, and our place and prestige in the world.  Who has the courage to say that they aren’t really thankful for their economic good fortune, both because it is usually considered unseemly bragging to admit you are doing quite a bit better than just Middle Middle Class, and because we really do believe that our success is 100% attributable to our own cleverness, thank you very much?  We focus so much of our precious life energy in jockeying for position, either in an organization or directly in the marketplace.  If we had what we define as a Good Year, because we got money, power and prestige enough to please us, we aren’t going to be honest and say so.  And if we fell short by society’s estimation, which becomes our estimation at a deep level, then we have yet another reason to put on a fake Happy Face and utter the usual platitude or make a joke of the whole Thankfulness thing.

So, go ahead and get through the social amenities as best you can.  Just don’t forget that gratitude – real gratitude – has been clinically shown to move mountains.  It shields you from flu bugs, cleans out your arteries, lowers your blood sugar and gives you more years of genuine good health, if you practice it regularly.  The only Gotcha is that it has to be real gratitude.  Genuine gratitude differs from the posturing and positioning around the groaning table in that it’s foundation is surrender to the reality that whatever sadness comes to you isn’t 100% caused by your DNA and blatant stupidity.  Some of your sadness is better explained as bad luck, a spiritual process like karma involving thousands of generations, or other processes that you can’t control and don’t need to waste your time trying to be angry about.  Real gratitude also comes from a place where you know that your Good Times are never 100% about you.  They are a gift from the universe, from the luck of the cosmic bouncing dice or from processes that you can’t game and can’t predict.  A stranger or a new acquaintance gives you exactly what you need, a gift that fills you with awe, pleasant shock and, if you’re prepared, with genuine gratitude.  For that moment, you are standing in a spotlight of love, joy and ease, that you didn’t create and can’t control.

When I’m not feeling it, it’s because I am tunnel-visioned on what’s wrong with my world.  Which, at various times in my life, has encompassed every single realm of generally-accepted Life.  Visualize me at a total loss, finally coming up with “I am grateful that I don’t have cancer… that I don’t have diabetes….. that I don’t have a broken leg; I can walk… that I don’t have….”  Imagine me finally realize that I was working as a college prof of human anatomy and had a mental list of about 5,000 health problems I didn’t have (making the few I DID have seem pretty paltry), and laughing at myself.  At which point, real gratitude had a chance.  

If you are stuck with unaware family or friends on The Day, find a way to sneak off with your journal, meditate and let something real happen for you.  [Writing gets you out of your head; it’s magical.]  Perhaps you can Skype or email someone who will understand.  If not, you will have created pockets of time and space in which you can feel and express that which you can’t express publicly.

What a wondrous thing is gratitude.  May it move mountains for you this Thanksgiving weekend, and the rest of the holiday month of December.  

Having Fun with 23andme - the joys and broader vision

Genetic identity products like the 23andme product I purchased recently have been wildly popular.  The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took the medical portion of the product off the market until concerns about how the info would be used could be addressed.  It’s so easy for someone who doesn’t have a deep background in genetics to misunderstand what a predisposition could refer to. 

As a larger issue, there is a real danger of employers in the US getting access to genetic information, because they WILL refuse to hire, and WILL find excuses to get rid of any person who might (big word there!) have a medical problem in the future – that their health insurance company would have to pay for.  The real villain in that scenario is insurance that is tied to an employer, not a basic right of citizenship, because it gives your employer a powerful motivation to get rid of you based on your potential for expensive health problems.  If your health is an issue for you and the community that pays for all its citizens, your employer is out of the loop.

But back to products that promise to give you insights into your genetic identity.  The 23andme product that I bought for myself and my husband included some basics from the nuclear DNA and from mitchondrial DNA with (for men only) some info from the Y chromosome.  To recap:  Your nuclear DNA comes from your mother and your father, and gets shuffled around in each generation.  Your mitochondrial DNA comes from the egg that started your journey to life, so it is entirely from your mother.  [Your dad’s sperm has nothing but nuclear DNA to make it as light and fast as possible.]  It doesn’t mix and match with every generation, but provides an unbroken, except by mutations, lineage from some very ancient woman.  Men’s Y-chromosomes also provide an unbroken lineage, except for mutations, from a very ancient man. 

Another aside: a group of Jewish South Africans who claimed biological descent as Cohens (a priestly family in ancient Palestine) were never believed because to all outward appearances they were just black South Africans.  But a Y-chromosome study proved them right; that DNA came from ancient Palestine and was similar to other Jewish Cohens who were still living in their ancestral home. 

I will admit that I paid the money ($180 for the two of us) for entertainment purposes, and that’s a good way to approach any consumer product.  We both could see the known outlines of our ancestry popping up in the numbers. 

What everyone except me misinterpreted and what I want to talk about is the small amounts of DNA in which I resemble folks in east and west Africa, Oceania and East Asia.  The immediate assumption is that I have a distant ancestor from those places.  I wouldn’t mind if I did, and it could be.  A more likely explanation is the mundane genetic fact that similarity doesn’t necessarily mean direct ancestry.  It most likely means that I have some very old DNA that hasn’t changed since all of us were encapsulated in 2000 individuals living in East Africa, 60,000 years ago.  A bit of it went west to west Africa, a bit of it took off into the Middle East and from there travelled to East Asia and then to Oceania, and the rest became the Neolithic farmers who moved into Europe, killed off the hunter/gatherers and took their land.  Horticulture and agriculture allowed my ancestors to feed more kids and breed more fighters, it was that simple.   My mitochondrial DNA supports that narrative.  There are a lot of fascinating details, that I am keeping appropriately private.  I’m less Neandertal than the average European. 

And I am re-assessing the “purely entertainment” motive.  Right after I received my genetic info, I researched more about the various identified groups and genes and found myself profoundly moved.  One of my course offerings is a fascinating journey to consult with one’s biological forebears.  It has been inspiring and profoundly healing for many people.  Looking at the geographical distribution of those maternal haplogroups led me to take the journey myself, psychically touching those women who lived so long ago.  [Email me for more information on the course.]

We can get so wound up in our daily to-do lists that we forget to, as my course encourages, visit with our very distant ancestors, to put a larger perspective on our lives.  All 10,000 generations of them changed their culture and their world in all the small ways that a person’s life does.  

We have the opportunity and the privilege to be beacons of love, comfort and inspiration in our own time.  This little glimpse into the past reminded me of my duty to do my very best with the life that all these fascinating ancestors have given me.

3 Reasons Why You DO Want to Create a Yearly Newsletter (aka Christmas Letter)

 I admit it.  I love to write yearly newsletters.  I even enjoy – for a totally different reason – receiving them.

Yet so many of you don’t – and I completely understand.  I agree that many of them are non-stop brag-fests that can leave you feeling less-than.  If you believe them.  And that’s the key to enjoying them!

If you choose to read newsletters with the expectation of being amused at people’s attempts to convince you (and themselves) that their life is so totally, mermerizingly perfect, they will succeed in entertaining you, minus the comparison-induced depression.

Think about it: you know the reality of your own life and it’s never perfect.  If you compare that reality with the glorious, victorious image projected by others, of COURSE you will think that they are doing so much better in life than you are.

Take a deep breath.  Take another.  Take a third, nice and slow and deep.  Ready for a revelation?  Here it is:  you can read, laugh and throw it in the dustbin.  Laughing is good for your cardiovascular system.

You can also, if you are patient, help guide these misguided souls into more authentic communication with you.  You start by getting off the From Success to Glorious Success treadmill yourself.  

When my husband was facing a devastating layoff, I was matter-of-fact about our worries for the future, and a request for prayers.  I share all the things I’m trying in my business, not just the stuff that worked. 

The big key to why good people (not the jerks of the family) really enjoy our yearly newsletter is that I make it funny.  Sometimes I poke fun at us, like the year I was so frustrated with my boss at the university where I was teaching that I took out my frustrations on the back hedge.  You can understand the depths of my anger when I tell you that I saved us $1000 in hedge trimming services.  You can laugh when I asked for power tools for my birthday and hubby said absolutely not, that he likes having a hedge not a low shrub! Or The Astronomy Widow tells a funny story about hubby’s obsession.  The crazy antics that pet parents get into when one of the darlings is sick and needs a pill.  The Abbott and Costello-esque Victoria-does-home-repair. 

Every issue has a deep point or two. One of us details a profoundly moving experience at a funeral.  We share how we honored the 10^th anniversary of earning a new graduate degree, that put no money in our pocket but enriches our life every day.  A brave mama deer is killed by the local cougar, and her two orphaned fawns are adopted by another mama deer, who successfully raises all four to adulthood. 

If you create a document that shares from the heart, instead of showing off, you might encourage a wiser approach to life among others.  The Grand Canyon grew over millions of year through the constant action of insubstantial water on seemingly solid rock.  You never know what influence you might be having, and you are 100 times more likely to be influential if you stop trying to be! 

As Shakespeare has Hotspur tell Glendower, “Tell the truth and shame the devil!”  If you start creating yearly newsletters that are fun, that are real – though edited for privacy and need-to-know – and that are from the heart, you next task is to not give a damn what any recipient thinks of you, your life and your newsletter.  When you are in that blessed place, you can mail your yearly snippet-of-life out with a joyous heart.  A gift that is given with absolutely no strings attached leaves you joyous and free.  A creation that does not rely on being praised floats high in the sky, free of anyone’s ability to trample it in the dust.

Don’t give up yearly newsletters, grasshopper.  Enjoy the creation.  Set them free to float on the breeze, to whatever new world they may land in.