5 Minutes to Better Sleep, Better Income, Clever Problem-Solving - and it's great fun, too!

The launch party for Red State, Blue Heart was a great success - lots of new and returned faces, big discounts and prizes. The book is still on sale at Bloomsbury Books, and of course Amazon and all the usual places.

Early reviewers were in stitches over the humor and the travelog aspects - 5 stars from everyone on that!

The calls to action are calls to think over the ideas. You don't have to agree with everything. All I ask - and with all the life in my soul - is that you really, really be open to hearing what is being said, and not shut down into ideology immediately.

I encourage everyone to write about their lives, and to do it constantly. Write out the funny things your dog or kid did, the goofy thing your husband said that made you laugh. When you re-read it 6 months or 6 years from now, you'll laugh again.

My newest book Red State, Blue Heart grew out of the stories i wrote down when I was living in the South - not intending or expecting to "make" anything of it.

In the same way, you need to create every day, not because it's part of a grand plan, but because it ISN'T part of a grand plan, other than the plan to have a graceful and powerful life. Reading the funny times allows you to see a life of joy. Seeing the anger, sadness, grief on pages allows you to be proud of all that you have accomplished. Yes, it was hard but you got through it, day by day, tear by tear.

You can be as Real as real gets in the privacy of a journal. There's no fool to call you weak because you cry or call you any other insult because you're angry. No one to mock you because you admit to some other "unacceptable" emotion, like the desire for revenge.

Your life matters. Your life deserves remembrance. And your mind and soul deserve to have the emotions of the day dumped. [This tool is Dump the Garbage, part of the 5 Tools in 5 Minutes/Day class and also explained in 101 Stress Busters for Energy, Joy & Healthy Longevity.]

When you write every day, pouring out the pratfalls and delights to be remembered, and the hurt and sadness to be purged from your body, mind and soul...... then you can start soaring with dragons!

Yours FREE:

https://blastthruthosebarriers.thinkific.com/courses/106742

Are you laughing yet? No? It's OK, I'll come back in 5 minutes......

Online personal ads consistently say “Sense of humor,” and some studies of who gets called and responded to suggest that we do, indeed, care about this characteristic in our potential mates. 

Makes sense, too.  Try this logic chain:

·         Someone with a sense of humor is likely to take the small things lightly.  A genuine sense of humor is inconsistent with dramatics, and

·         Laughing is good for your health and

·         Laughing makes you attractive.

 We are biologically programmed, from earliest neonate to elder, to respond to a smiling face with an answering smile.  If I can get myself honestly laughing on the date, it not only means that I am having a good time, it also means that I will appear more attractive to you.   [Chimpanzees and gorillas know that a human smile means positive intentions, so it must go back at least 15 million years.]

Humor is a real asset in life as well as dating, for all three reasons.  Call up funny videos on You Tube or Facebook.  Flush the cortisol out of your body with short breaks to laugh.  Allow those tense muscles to naturally relax.  Your brain will clear, solutions will pop into consciousness and you’ll actually notice that the sun is shining, or you’ve got some blessed rain, and you’re alive.   You’ll take a deep breath and remember that it is very, very good to be alive, and loved by the universe and probably quite a few people and other animals.  You’ll take another breath and the whole day has shifted on its axis.

Pretty good ROI on 2 minutes of laughing, wouldn’t you say?

Laugh for the Day.....

A client who loves cats and who knows that I love all three species of critters who live at my house, wondered why I have a lovely, spacious room in the house devoted to the critters, who are never allowed into the business part of the office/home. Well, two reasons:

1) I want to be able to work with clients who are allergic to cat dander, rabbit dander and/or are frightened of furry mammals.

2) there was this time.....

There was this time, many decades ago, when I was doing a consulting business in my home, and I would clear out the living room to a preternatural level of Clean before every client visit. Then one day, a particularly potentially-lucrative client came. I was in my best suit, my presentation was going very professionally, and my cat, who clearly was offended at being ignored, came trotting out of the bedroom with a pair of undies in her mouth. From the stinky To Be Laundered pile, natch. Which she dropped on my potential client's FOOT, double natch.

So, class, what do you think? Did that client sign a lucrative professional consulting deal with our heroine?

The furry mammals have their very own lovely, spacious room in the house, and never, ever are allowed anywhere NEAR a business visitor.

Now you know, grasshopper.....

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.  

The Surest Road to Peace of Mind

I know, it's pretty funny.  But if you really meditate on this simple "joke," how profound it really is.  

How often do we get caught up in someone's else's drama, someone else's emotional snares, because we get "hooked" by one of the Three Horsemen of Disaster:

>  We are trying to change someone.  You know you can't do that, right?  Really know it?  Take a long, slow deep breath.  It isn't even your business.  You weren't put on this earth to tell other adults - regardless of how much you love them or how much DNA you share with them - how to behave or what choices to make in their lives.  If they are harming you, get away from them.  Otherwise, not your circus.

> We are trying to force an outcome.  This doesn't mean the same as changing someone's nature or their take on things.  It usually means a circus involving more than one person, which is more insane than a circus with just one flying monkey.  You can't make things come out the way you want them, no matter how many vision boards you create.  God may or may not exist.  What's for sure, is that it ain't you.  Let go.

> We are trying to defend ourselves. The worst of the three! In addition to not being able to control other people's behavior, you also can't change how other people think, including how they think about you.  Even if you are being judged based on something other than facts (or the facts that you know).  Even if it's terribly, horribly unfair.  Even if no one asked you what "really happened."  Even so.  You 100% cannot, and will not, ever, ever, ever have the power to control your image with others.  They are going to think what they think.  They are going to talk about you.  They are going to spread false rumors and tear down your reputation.  Your integrity is what you know about yourself.  Your reputation is what others know about you.  Guard the one; ignore the other.  What others think about you is not your circus.

Keeping other people's circus from poisoning YOUR peace of mind is probably the #1 challenge of this time of year, the season of family togetherness and - love?  

Martha Beck had a suggestion years ago about how to survive family holidays with less-than-optimal families: she suggested that you and your sane friends each create a Bingo card in which each segment represents a Circus event (Uncle Harry gets drunk; Dad starts a rant about race; Mom asks me when I am going to get married - or divorced).  Keep track as the holidays pass.  The first person to get a winning Bingo row calls the others and we celebrate.  By taking the focus off the Circus and onto the game, it helps the players to avoid being hooked by the obnoxious comments that tempt you to "defend" what never needs defending - your life choices.  [If you break a law, you might need to defend your choices to a jury or risk prison, but otherwise - no.]

If you can chuck all those monkeys, peace of mind is a cinch.  Call me for a training session on who owns the Circus.  www.soaringdragon.biz

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.