About half way through my walk, when I was already going at a good pace and feeling pretty pumped, I saw a young Chinese woman leaving one of the houses and saying goodbye to a young man standing on the doorstep.

Suddenly, the young woman noticed a bus at a stop about 200 meters away. She became visibly uptight, her pitch rose and she looked like she was asking the young man what to do (as I do not speak Chinese, this is all my interpretation).

The man gestured towards the bus and looked like he was urging the woman to run for it and try to catch it. She kept pleading with him until he joined her and they started running toward the bus stop.

By the time they decided to run and crossed the street, I had been half way to the bus and it was still there. There were no passengers in sight, its doors were closed and it kept waiting.

I looked over at the young couple running on the other side of the street. She was running half-heartedly, as if she thought the bus would surely drive away before she caught it. He was just running alongside her, slowing himself down to her pace to support her all the way.

About 30 meters before they reached the bus stop, the bus pulled out onto the road and drove away. By then, nearly 2 minutes had passed and would have caught the bus easily.

This was someone else’s business until Eden came home from the university in the evening and told me another bus story (Coincidence? Serendipity? Quantum attraction?).

Eden’s Philosophy class typically ends at 8:50pm, after which she walks to the bus station and catches the bus home. That evening, the class ran a bit longer and only finished around 9:10pm.

As she was walking towards the bus station, Eden saw her bus already standing there. She said to her friend, “Hey, that’s my bus”.

Her friend said to her, “Go ahead and catch it”.

“Will you be OK?” asked Eden, because it was that time of night.

“Sure”, said her friend, “Go for it”.

Eden sprinted towards the bus and reached it panting heavily. As she got on, the driver smiled at her and said, “You’re lucky you caught me. This is the last bus for today”.

Eden had not known it, but the buses are scheduled according to the normal end time of class, 8:50pm, which leaves plenty of time for the students to make it to the station and board their bus home. Still, when she saw the bus, she ran for it with everything she had.

The way I see it, this sums up very nicely the difference between winners and losers and presents a lesson every parent should be teaching every child repeatedly:

Nobody knows for sure what will happen in the future.

Losers live their life as if they have already lost and give up.

Winners live as if they are certain to win and give life all they’ve got

On a personal note, I was happy my own daughter was showing winning attitude. I would like to believe she got it from Ronit and me, but what I told her was, “Eden, it’s funny you’ve told me this story. Do you know what happened this morning?” And I told her about the other young woman.

If there had been even the slightest doubt in her mind that evening when she had decided to run for the bus, I hope my story helped her choose to give life all she has got every time.

Have a winning day,
Gal

Reality is a bit different, unfortunately. Most of our information feeds are controlled by a fairly small group of huge profit-driven conglomerates, which make their money by selling. To sell well, they need people to “see red”, so they inspire fear via TV news broadcasts, bold newspaper headlines and various other methods.

The result of this is the general view that violent crime is everywhere, that different people cannot live together in harmony and that all too often, the only way to sort things out is to wage war on another ethnic group or country, even at the cost of “friendly” life.

Ronit and I have lived with our kids in a number of places around the world, where there were different cultures, different languages, different food and different climates. We have lived in Arlington Texas and Sunnyvale California in the USA. We have lived in Thailand and in Singapore. We have lived in Israel and in 2 big cities in Australia. We also traveled to many places, including Mexico, France, Philippines, Korea and China.

When we arrived in each one of these places, we naturally focused on the things that were unfamiliar and strange to us, because we needed to get used to them in order to be able to live comfortably. We noticed the local clothing, the local rules of driving, the style of the local buildings, the local manners and the local money.

But after a while, once we have settled in, all we could see was people – human beings, just like us, who get up in the morning, work for a living, have a family, care for their elders and sometimes struggle with life’s mysterious ways. We noticed couples holding hands and smiling at each other, kids running around screaming with excitement and parents looking worried when their child climbed too high or went too far away. We heard complaints about parking being hard to find, the ever rising price of fuel, the unpredictable economy and the distrust of politics. We saw women searching frantically for something in their purse and men panicking as they notice the time. We joined families as they watched big shows and played in the playground.

Everywhere we went, we saw good people.

Now, some people find it hard to spot the good people and I think I know why. You see, by design, our brains interprets anything that looks, sounds or feels like us as trustworthy and good, because it affirms us. By the same design, we become suspicious of things that look, sound or feel different to us.

The problem is there are sometimes obvious things that look different, while the similarities are harder to find and require effort.

One of the things I have said to many people many times is this:

The more you know about another person, the harder it is to judge them. If you knew everything about them, everything they did would seem like the best thing to do and the obvious choice. Being them, you would do exactly what they do

Ronit and I have immersed ourselves and our kids in other cultures and gradually understood more and more of their customs. People who live in the same culture all their life (especially in the same place) and receive filtered information about other groups and other places are not likely to find that understanding. When they bump into people who do things differently to their local custom, they suspect them and protect themselves against their influence.

In many places in Europe, the population is rapidly becoming heterogeneous, especially since the Soviet Union was dissolved and the European Union was established. In the USA, over 1.1 million people became permanent residents in 2008 alone and over 4.4 million from 2005 to 2008.

Australia is a country of immigrants. Of nearly 24 million residents, over 4.4 million (18.3% of the population) were born outside of Australia, mostly from non-English speaking countries. In 2008, 1½ times more people were added to the population of Australia through immigration than through birth. Looking back 3 generations, most of the Australian population came from somewhere else and many still retain their original culture to some extent.

Lots of people now work with colleagues in other countries. Many serve clients in other countries or purchase from suppliers in other countries. Unfortunately, not a small number of people have lost their jobs to people in other countries.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to “stick to your own”, isn’t it? If you think about it, it is going to be far more difficult for your kids!

So what can you do?

Whenever we go out to events with a large crowd, I like to play a little game with myself (if you are smiling to yourself now, please stop it and stay focused). I choose a person, a couple or a family and make up a story about them. I watch them for a while as they move around, touch things, speak, gesture and interact with other people. Then, I imagine what it might be like to be them.

When I see a couple with stern faces who hardly talk to each other, I imagine how they got up in the morning and had a fight. When I see a little girl crying and her father comforting her, I imagine she fell and got hurt or wanted to buy something and was disappointed.

I ask myself, “What may have happened for this person to behave like this?” I try to put myself in their shoes, or rather their emotional state, sometimes by matching their body language or facial expression. I try to BE them for a second.

Some of these people are black, some are Muslim, some are Asian, some are big, some are thin, some are short, some are sunburned, some wear sandals, some wear fancy hats, some are old and some are bound to a wheelchair. I really don’t care.

To me, they are all people. Good people.

In my imagination, they feel scared, they feel happy, they worry about their relationship with their spouse or their all-of-a-sudden opinionated teenager walking around looking too inviting, they give up chatting with a friend to push their toddler on the swing, they wonder what others might be thinking about them and are surprised when a stranger (guess who) smiles at them a big smile of understanding and identification.

Often, I share my stories with Ronit and the kids. I think it is important for my kids to see good people, because they are everywhere, but they are so easy to miss. I believe that for our world to be a good place for my kids to live, they have to see the good people in it and in doing so, they will become good people too.

What about you?

Gal

But this post is not about parties or being the life and soul of them. It is about managing emotions. Specifically, it is about getting rid of negative feelings that seem to haunt us and get us into trouble often.

As a partner, a parent and a person, it is likely you find yourself in familiar situations, feeling the same familiar feeling and wondering how you got there. It may be as you walk in the door after a long day at work. It may be when some misunderstanding with your partner or your (teenage) child quickly escalates to an unpleasant exchange of verbal blows. It may just be when you look in the mirror.

The book explains that all negative feelings are some form of fear and that fear is a defensive feeling aimed at protecting our self from being hurt. Some part of us recognizes certain words or behaviors as a form of attack raises the alert by creating this protective feeling.

The thing is, the “attack” pattern may have been saved in our mind when we were little and certainly in a particular context, both of which are longer in effect. However, our reaction is a subconscious one, which means there is no time for logic, but also that to get rid of this type of reaction we must “talk” directly with our subconscious (this is called Neurolinguistic Programming or NLP).

How to let go of a common negative emotion

1. Recall a common unpleasant feeling you would like to stop having
2. Think of a “thing”, an object, an animal or even a natural phenomenon that this feeling would be if it had physical form. Imagine it right in front of you. What would this “thing” look like, sound like, taste like, smell like and feel like? Is it heavy? Is it light? Would you touch it?
3. Ask the “thing” what it is trying to protect you from and what its positive reason is for being with you so intensely for so long.
4. Let the “thing” reply. You may see, hear, taste, smell and/or feel the answer, so be patient and attentive to the answer.
5. Thank it. Give appreciation to the “thing” for being there with a positive intention.
6. Find some aspects of the “thing” that are appealing to you – its color, its voice, smell, taste, texture or movement.
7. Your “thing” may now change its shape and other attributes. If not, keep talking to the “thing”. You can use any tools or imaginary aids you like to get closer to your “thing” and develop your mutual understanding. Continue in a playful way until your “thing” has changed its form into something pleasant or completely disappeared.
8. As this is in YOUR mind, any outcome that appeals to you is good. This process is complete when you feel comfortable returning to your daily life with the confidence that your original emotion has either gone away for good or become something you would like to keep.

I was so excited about this, I nearly exploded. Right away, I decided to work on the feeling most common for digital people – overwhelm.

First, I imagined my feeling of overwhelm as a very large octopus. I did not count the arms, but there were probably more than 8 there. It was big, it was dark, it had huge bulging eyes, it was frowning, it had a shoe box in each tentacle (which I knew was something I had to do) and it kept moving all the time. I felt very overwhelmed.

When I asked the big octopus for the good reason it was there, it became quite a bit shorter and its expression changed from menacing to compassionate. It said to me in a soft voice, “I’m desperately trying to keep track of all these things for you, so you can focus on doing one task at a time and doing it well. Have I not been doing a good job?”

Then it sort of deflated a bit, shrank to my own height and move closer to me, looking self conscious. “Would you like me to leave?” it asked timidly.

“No, it’s OK”, I said, “Why don’t you just keep all this stuff somewhere else?”

“Sure”, the octopus said happily and then turned around, grew roller skates on 2 tentacles and skated away into the darkness.

I felt great, knowing I was being watched over by my friend the octopus, who was keeping my to-do list tucked away for me. My body relaxed and I smiled to myself and ran to tell Ronit and Eden.

Being you, your “thing” may be completely different. Being you, your imaginary negotiation with the “thing” may be completely different. Either way, give it a try. You will feel great afterwards and your life will change forever.

Of course, once you get the hang of it, it will be nice of you to share it with your partner and with your kids (friends and family may come a bit later).

Kids have few inhibitions imagining things, but they already have things that bother them repeatedly. Unlike many areas, imagining can be easily done without words, so kids are even better at it than adults. However, kids may not be able to “spot the troublemaker” yet, which is where you can help them greatly.

Say one of your kids displays miserable behavior often or throws temper tantrums. You can suggest to them to play an imagination game with you, in which you guide them through the steps above. They do not have to tell you what they are experiencing, but if they do, would you please come back here and tell us about it?

Happy life,
Gal

A strong light travels through the film towards the screen. You can see the beam of light getting wider as it travels through the air, showing flickers of colors and movement inside it. Follow the beam of light with your eyes as it keeps on going and getting wider, until you are facing forward and looking at a huge screen, which practically fills your entire fields of vision.

As you look, you become absorbed in the movie, finding yourself emotionally attached to some of the characters, fearing some of the others, hating a few and getting carried away with the story.

Real life is very much the same. We become absorbed in our own story, which we project onto the world. When we interact with other people, we each look at our own “film” and can get into all kinds of trouble.

What?!

Well, our beliefs are like film. Once we have them, they tend to just stick with us and shed different kinds of light on different parts of our life.

For example, if we have a belief we are not good enough, this will cast a dark shadow on all of our successes. Realistically, we can always find something to improve. Even if we got an A+ on an exam, we can tell ourselves we are not done with school yet. Even if we have great primary-school-aged kids, we can tell ourselves we might have problems when they become teens. This way, we remain not good enough.

On the other hand, if we have a belief we are friendly and social, this will brighten up every human encounter for us. No matter what someone says, we will quickly find something good about it or use the opportunity to be nice to that person and make the interaction more positive. Either way, we remain friendly and social.

Here is a story to illustrate how this works.

In my circle of family and friends, I am famous for troubleshooting computer problems. I know a fair bit, I like the detective work involved, I have the determination and I like to help and make people happy. So from time to time, I get calls for help with someone’s computer.

Unfortunately, many of them are too far away, which means I cannot see what they are doing and I must rely on them to do as I say and be accurate in their description of what happens at their end.

One day, Ronit’s sister Ora called with a problem. Full of enthusiasm, I started asking her to check different things, until she gave me an answer that did not make any sense to me. I asked her again to do the same thing, but she could not find the buttons and details I was talking about.

After a while, I asked her what she was looking at and realized she had not done exactly as I had said and was looking at a different window than the one in my mind. I backtracked and we kept going from where she was, but inside, I felt she did not trust me enough and was trying her own troubleshooting instead of doing exactly as I said.

At some point, she again told me things that made no sense. I am not very proud of the next bit, but I poured my frustration on her. In the end, we worked out the problem, but both of us were left feeling badly, although I had helped her and her problem had been solved.

To let off my steam, I asked Ronit to walk with me around the block and told her I felt her sister had not trusted me. Ronit, who had witnessed the whole conversation, surprised me by saying, “If you go over what happened again, you’ll see it was you who didn’t trust Ora”.

I nearly blew up at that, but being the open-minded person that I am (what a great belief to have), we retraced the interaction and I realized I had indeed assumed Ora had misinformed me of things or done the wrong thing, but I had also made mistakes and could have interpreted her actions in other ways, which Ronit was able to do.

Ronit then summarized it for me by saying, “You see yourself in the world around you. You could not trust another person, so all you could see is another person not trusting you and another person who could not be trusted. Had you looked at the same situation without the suspicion, things would have turned out differently”.

This is how projection works. There is a proverb that describes it very nicely, saying, “A camel can only see the other camels’ humps”.

There are many things involved in projecting – communication styles, love languages, beliefs, values and needs – but a critical one (and a hard one to overcome, unfortunately) is interpreting everything from our own point of view at the center of the universe. When we do this, people do things to us, for us and against us, when in fact, they do everything to benefit themselves.

Here is a quick exercise you can do to notice your projection and possibly overcome some challenges by changing it. I would suggest doing this privately and with your eyes closed in a quiet spot first, when you are nice and relaxed, and trying to do it as things happen later on, after you have had some practice.

Think back to a heated conversation you have had lately, which has left you confused and irritated. Go over it step by step (to the best of your ability) and do the following:

1. Start with a frozen picture of yourself and the other person at the beginning of your argument
2. Leave your body and stand outside the discussion space
3. “Play” you or the other person saying a sentence or expressing an idea
4. Freeze the picture
5. Examine the your body language and facial expression
6. Examine the other person’s body language and facial expression
7. You may already have a glimpse of the difference in each person’s feeling and point of view, but if you do not, float into that person’s body, associate with them fully and see the world through their eyes for a bit until you feel the understanding sinking in
8. “Play” the next step
9. When you are certain you have gained enough understanding to do things differently next time, float back into yourself, return to here and now, take a deep breath, smile and slowly open your eyes

As a parent, of course, the other person is likely to be your partner, but may very well be one of your kids. When you try to associate with your kids‘ feelings, remember that young kids generally feel small and helpless and teenagers generally feel confused, overwhelmed and inadequate. Also, kids do not fully comprehend everything you say.

Another good projection exercise is to ask yourself, “Where have I felt like this before? Do I feel like this often?” If the answer is “Yes”, ask yourself, “When was the very first time I felt like this?”

Our past experiences, most often from our childhood, play in our minds repeatedly like well-rehearsed stories. They are so familiar to us, they seem to be the only way to behave, but they are not. Obviously, when you feel good with something, the more you do it, the better, but when a familiar scene makes you feel bad, just noticing it may already break its automatic nature and make you aware.

Again, find a quiet spot and some quiet time, close your eyes and revisit the very first time you experienced the unpleasant chain of events. Analyze it by looking at it from the outside and from each participant’s point of view, noting how different things were from here and now. When you are certain you have learned enough to break the repetitive story, come back to the room, breathe deeply, smile and slowly open your eyes.

I would love to read your experiences with these little imaginary adventures. Please come back and share when you have done one or two.

Live in a loving world,
Gal

This video blew my mind when I saw it. It demonstrates in a symbolic way what each and every one of us should be doing in order to reverse some of the bad trends in our society and create a better environment for everybody.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Which way do you read the script of your life?

Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us
- Jane Austen

Two weeks ago, I ran a leadership camp for 26 kids from five different schools. For two days, I asked them many times what made them proud. Believe it or not, it was not easy for everyone to reply. From as early as 12 years old, though the definition of “proud” is “Feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality or relationship by which one measures one’s stature or self-worth”, many kids thought that being proud meant boasting or being arrogant.

In the morning, I told them about a game Gal had made up, which is written on our white board at home, “I’m proud of me!”

As kids, we learned that pride is the territory of adults who show off with their “possessions”. Parents were proud of their kids for doing what was expected and when the kids’ behavior improved, the parents’ status improved as well. Teachers did exactly the same. The older generation used statements of pride to build a sense of belonging and set standards.

In the “olden days”, being proud of yourself involved the risk of being considered arrogant and only people in superior social standing could afford to take that risk. I thought the definition of pride has long changed from external approval to recognizing self worth. So I was very surprised to hear the adults in the camp, who are leaders and educators, sharing stories of hiding their own success to avoid being seen as bragging by others.

Despite many social changes and a personal development trend, kids are still dependent on external pride, grow up to be adults starving for external pride and raise kids dependent on external pride…

Time to change

As a life coach, I find that most of the personal development process is refining the definition of life experiences and finding healthy, empowering definitions that will help us move forward to a happy, healthy and fulfilling life. In other words, if you are not happy, it means your definitions of happiness, fear, anxiety, wealth, relationships and so on are making you unhappy and need to change.

One of my clients once said to me, “Ronit, but this is just a change in my mind, not in real life”, so I said, “It’s a change in your mind and therefore, it is a change in your real life, because your mind is real life”.

It is as simple as that – you change your definitions, then your thoughts, ideas and actions change and there you have it, a changed reality, only this time it is the change you have been looking for.

I would like to use this opportunity to spread the word about the importance of refining the definition of being proud in yourself as fuel for the engine of your personal development.

I will be proud of myself if by the end of this article, I can convince you that there is a big difference between arrogance and pride in yourself and that you should be proud of yourself, because it will make you happy.

Ronit’s new rules

Growing up in a house that confused pride with arrogance and never hearing the word “I am proud of you” was not very helpful in making me proud of myself (being a sick girl and a bad student with a bad behavior did not help either). I remember glimpses of pride when I hit a ball in a street game and being good at sports, but generally, pride was not part of my emotional vocabulary.

I was 16 when things changed for me, after being kicked out of high school at the end of Grade 10. I realized that my definition of life was leading me to a very sad place. I cried for days and agonized over this for hours, until I discovered that my self esteem was extremely dependent on what my parents and teachers thought or said about me and that I could not encourage myself at all.

You see, until that moment, I did not think I had any control over my life, because I had been giving that control to others whose job, I thought, was to provide for me. They were busy “feeding me fish”, but never taught me how to “fish” for myself. My emotional food was their approval and external rewards and I was doomed to starve, because I did not know how to fulfill my own needs. The people around me helped me get up in the morning and go to school using punishments and school grades, but I never learned what I needed to tell myself in order to motivate myself to get up in the morning. Realizing that my definition of what needs to drive me forward is pathetic was painful and from this pain, I was driven to change the definition.

So I said to myself

Whatever other people think about motivation, success, health and good relationships is only theirs, not mine. Their thoughts and ideas may lead them to motivation, success, health and good relationships, but not me. How they navigate their life may be good for them, but not me. If I want to control my own life, I need to find my own definitions and my own ways!

And I started my personal development journey right then and there.

Many years have passed since this first awareness. The good thing about personal development is that it never ends and even when you think you have reached a desired state or understanding, there are higher states and understandings waiting for you to reveal them. The most important things I refined when I was 16 were my basic rules of living. When life was tough and no one could save me from myself, all I had to focus on was following them and so I did. Religiously, slowly, one action after the other, I used my new rules to guide me. Here are the rules I followed:

1. Life is a personal journey. No one can make you feel anything, either good or bad. Stop blaming others and expecting others to motivate you. You are the captain or your own ship, so take charge!
2. Everything that happens in life must move you forward. Although this may seem strange, pain can also help you move forward. If you are stuck, feel overwhelmed or hurt too much to recognize a step forward, ask yourself, “What good can come out of this?” Ask and you will find the answer. I have gone through some tough things, yet a lot came out of them when I asked the right questions. And if you saying to yourself, “Ronit, but it was all in your mind”, you are right – it was and it still is.
3. Life is a choice! Regardless of how horrible the situation is, you have a choice. Practice choosing. I could choose to be a good student, I could choose to behave, I could choose to be healthy and you know what, when I realized it, I chose all these things!
4. Do not mix choosing and being a fortune teller. Every day is the first day of your new life. You can plot a new course and sail to a new destination, but you cannot predict the weather, who you will meet on your journey or how those will affect your trip. Do not waste time and energy trying to predict the future. Some choices will work and others will not – choose anyway! If you want to hit a target, you have to practice shooting.
5. Happy moments and success experiences are the fuel of every progress on your personal development journey and it is your responsibility to refill your own motivation tank. What I appreciate about myself and my life, what I have achieved, what I can now do better, what I have learned (especially from failures) and what I am proud of provide the energy for a happy life. It was easy – I made a list of happy moments and achievements, skills and things I was grateful for and looked at them whenever I felt down. I still do this! Over 25 years later, I am teaching others to use this technique and it works for them too.
6. Do not confuse being proud with being arrogant and putting others down. Being proud of yourself is “feeling happy and satisfied about an action, decision, quality, possession or association that positively reflects on my confidence and self worth and I do not need anyone to feel bad for me to be happy and satisfied with myself”. Suddenly, after defining this, others around me could be wonderful and great and I swapped envy with inspiration.

Refining my basic rules of life has helped me move from darkness to light, where social life was wonderful (I started going out with Gal), academic success was easy (6 months after being accepted on probation to Grade 11, I received an excellence award for academic achievement), my relationship skills improved (a month into Grade 11, I started editing the school newsletter and joined the school council) and the ride since has been much smoother.

The pride game

The last 6 months have been a long and wonderful “Pride Therapy” for us (highly recommended!). We were proud of overcoming Gal’s health challenges and the stress and anxiety concerning my sisters and my new nephews. We were proud of our successes at work, new projects and the wonderful successes of our kids (which positively reflect on our confidence and self worth as parents). All these motivated us to move forward.

But our proud moments were occasional and mostly related to external events. We needed some ongoing way to feel we are on the right track. We needed something daily.

One day, Gal returned from his morning walk and wrote on our white board “I’m proud of myself”. When we sat down for dinner, he said, “Today, we will start a new game, called ‘I’m proud of myself’. When we describe our day, each of us will tell the rest about things he or she is proud of” and I thought, “Yes, this is brilliant. What a great way to ‘learn to fish’”. It took only 2-3 days for the kids to get the hang of it and we got a chance to declare our pride in our achievements and efforts out loud and hear ourselves saying them. It felt great.

On camp, at night, when the kids went to bed, I entered their rooms and told them that at night, before they go to bed, it is a good time to fuel their ships with motivation by going over the day and taking happy moments and successes that positively reflect on the way they see themselves. We then had one round of “I’m proud of myself” in each room.

Just before kids went home from camp, I asked them to tell me about the most meaningful things they got from our time together. To me, if they took nothing but ways to fuel themselves and reduce the dependency, I had done great. Kathleen, my wonderful and inspiring Together for Humanity partner, wrote what they said on a piece of paper.

Every other word was “proud”.

I left home that afternoon tired and happy, knowing this could fuel me for a long time. I was very proud of myself!

Wishing you a proud life,
Ronit

God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference

- Reinhold Niebuhr

This week, I was asked by one of my clients about the formula for a successful, healthy and happy life, but as much as I wanted to give him the formula, I could not.

“But Ronit, you are a life coach. Why not?” he asked.

“Because my formula is mine”, I said.

“What do you mean yours? Are you saying you don’t want to share it with me?” he asked.

“Of course I want to share it with you, but I don’t believe it’s transferable”, I replied.

“Why not?” he kept asking.

“Because every person has his or her own formula with a unique signature that cannot be duplicated. Because no two people experience the same things, not even in the same situation”, I explained.

“So what is life coaching for?” he asked.

“It is a way of helping you on your personal journey to find your own formula”, I said.

Everyone wants to be successful, healthy and happy. If you examine every desire in life, it falls under one of the categories above. When we get up in the morning, the drive to get to somewhere, whether it is an achievement, a feeling or a state, is the essence of life. We want to get to our destination quickly and easily and formulas can help greatly. When we want success, we want to get it fast, without much effort and with as low a price as possible, so if someone could show us the way there, life would be much easier. When we want a feeling, we want to feel it now and without any heartache or doubt. If we only knew how to trigger the feelings we want and turn off the one we do not, life would be an awesome adventure. When we want to be healthy, we want to take a pill and make all the pain and sickness disappear. The harder life is, the more we wish for the easy life formula.

The quest for a successful, healthy and happy life starts very early, although our definition of that life changes with every new experience and change of circumstances. Unfortunately, so does the formula.

I would say that if you examined your desires every three month, you would find new spins on every definition every time. To illustrate this point, think of what you thought success was in primary school or in high school and how different it is from the way you define success today. I always say that the birth of my first daughter changed many definitions for me regarding success, happiness and even health.

Living on the two sides of the fence called life

People are divided into two groups – the ones that live life aimlessly, surviving from one day to the next, and those who look for the formula and wish to direct their efforts towards a chosen destination, rather than get up in the morning and find themselves in a place they do not like.

The first group adopts an “aimless (go with the flow) life style” and the second group a “planned (or purposeful) life style”. Many people think that going with the flow and taking things as they come is everyone lives, until they suffer pain that is too hard to bear. Others think that everybody plans their life, until they must acknowledge things beyond their control and with their wisdom comes calmness and acceptance.

I can relate to both. I remember myself treating my health aimlessly until my daughter got very sick and I changed. I also remember during my own coaching giving up control over areas that concern other people. I used a different formula for each of these experiences.

There is a lot of freedom and joy in aimless living. It involves fewer worries and more acceptance. You get your paycheck, spend it as you like and who cares about tomorrow. After all, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift, that’s why we call it the present”.

Those who prefer to plan might look over the fence and frown, but is there really one side that is better than the other? I think not.

For the people who flow, planned living is too rigid and too frustrating, full of people who try to predict the future and live an illusion of a connection between what they do today and what will happen tomorrow. But for planners, certainty is the currency of life and they believe they can avoid pain most of the time and that is better than flowing and getting hit hard.

Everywhere, we head personal development gurus telling us to set goals and focus on desires. They say that desires are the engine of moving forward. They tell us, “Always plan ahead. It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark”, but is there really one side that is better than the other? I think not.

People on both sides of the fence live life and do the only things they think they know how to do – justify their choices! They say, “My side is the right side and the best side”. I believe a lot of heartache, wars, conflicts, relationship breakdowns and pain exist in the world because people are too focused on justifying their own lifestyle and pushing away other choices. We spend lots of energy shouting to the other side, “My choices are better than yours”. Even religious wars are based on “God loves me more. My beliefs are better than yours”. Are they really?!

I believe that living on either side of the fence is not a problem until you try to convince those on the other side that your side is better. Aimless living is cool, as long as you consider it best for YOU! Planned living is great, as long as you consider it best for YOU!

Because formulas for living well are not transferable. They are personal. You do not need statistics to feel better with your aimless or planned choice and it does not matter if there are more people on your side of the fence or on the other side. The only thing that matters is that wherever you are, you can be successful, healthy and happy by your own definition. If you spend most of your energy on convincing others you are “right”, it defeats the purpose of getting to your destination quickly and easily.

In different areas of life, we probably sit on different sides of different fences and, whether we are on one side or the other, we choose the side we think will give us what we are looking for.

My client asked me about my formula. Now, I share my life philosophy freely with anyone who would like to hear. I even share it with people I have never met, through the many posts I have published, but I have to make it clear – it is mine and mine alone and it is not meant to be copied, because it just will not work for you as it does for me. My experience is meant to be used as a tool to help you find your own life formula, which will be the best for you, regardless of the side of the fence you choose.

Until next time, good luck on your quest for the formula,
Ronit

Yes, it happens to everyone, but stop for a minute and relive your emotions while you were having the last such conversation. Maybe you were trying to convince your kids it was really time for bed and sleep was good for them, while thinking, “I could use some peace and quiet after a long day”. Maybe you were saying to your boss, “Sure I can do this, no problem”, while thinking, “And I really hope you’ll remember this when the next layoffs come around and keep me employed”. Maybe you were saying to your partner, “Honey, you look great”, knowing full well what would happen if you said something else.

Whatever it was, see if you can detect a bit of pressure in yourself.

This pressure comes from what professionals call “incongruence”, which is when your behavior disagrees with your beliefs. It is the opposite of feeling whole and complete and of being at peace inside.

Not that movies are anything like real life, but I found myself thinking about this issue while I was watching the movie “State of Play“. Cal McAffrey, played by Russell Crow, has his share of problems, but throughout most of the film, he says simple, honest things to the people around him. Being a reporter, he needs to hide what he knows and what he wants to do from people, but instead of beating around the bush, he says, “I can’t tell you about it now, but I have to go” or “It’s going to be tough, but do you really want to get the story?”

There is one particular scene, in which his ex-lover, played by Robin Wright-Penn, tries to seduce him and he softly says to her, “I’m really sorry, but this isn’t going to work”. He is so sincere about being sorry, while at the same time being very clear he is not going to go along.

Most people, especially Hollywood film characters, would try to manipulated the situation to avoid being uncomfortable, so I was expecting either to see him move in on her or start pretending and making excuses. When he just told it like it was, I was actually surprised.

Being a pesky life coach, I immediately began some intensive soul searching and self reflection and realized I could probably do better at getting rid of my own hidden agendas and saying what I think more often. OK, so I grew up surrounded by people who cared a lot about what others might think (not “would”, “might”, as in “there could be a one in a million chance”). That does not mean I have to live like this all my life.

So I started to experiment with saying things like, “Kids, my back really hurts. Can you please do the dishes?”, “It’s really hard for me to concentrate in this noise. Please stop” and even “It’s not exactly my taste, but I’m glad you like it” (sorry, no boss example, because I do not have one). It felt good not hiding my own feelings behind accusations or verbal maneuvers. The pressure was gone. It was nice and quiet in my head and relaxed in my chest.

In fact, I have gone further than this and said things I had meant to say many many times and things I had kept for quite some time (I am not going to quote those here). Regardless of the outcome, I felt whole and at peace with myself. I was also proud of myself for growing as a person and becoming an honest communicator.

Oddly enough, this opened the door for others to do the same, and whether they had said those things or not, I began to hear them and accept them, which made things even better.

So no more hidden agendas for me (not at home, anyway). No more being afraid of showing how I really feel. Another step towards personal freedom.

What about you?

A few weeks back, Tsoof had to choose a song from a movie to perform in class. He chose “Say” by John Mayer from the movie “The Bucket List“. He practiced at home so much we all joined in and eventually even performed this song as a family on an amateur stage. Here are the video clip and the lyrics for your enjoyment and pondering.

Happy communication,
Gal

Also, every two people are different in some way and so, when person A’s actions affect person B’s life, invariably there is some form of feedback from person B to let person A know. In the purest sense of the word, this is criticism.

A quick look at Internet-based dictionaries reveals the following definitions:

• Feedback is “The return of information about the result of a process or activity; an evaluative response”
• Criticism is “A comment expressing fault, interpretation, analysis, verbal disapproval”

Say your partner likes vanilla ice cream and you like chocolate. Your partner goes shopping and comes back with vanilla. No chocolate. Bummer!

Obvious criticism that will get you shaking your head and saying, “This is not the way to behave” is when you frown and say angrily, “You’re so selfish, you know? You only got the kind of ice cream you like, but what about me?”

Name-calling is just bad form, and so is the assumption of selfish intent, so we will just label this example as a clear-cut no-no and move on.

Here is another approach. You help your partner unpack and put away and casually say, “Honey, could you get some chocolate ice cream next time?”

If you are in a good mood as you read this, or if you take criticism easily, it may seem to you that this is a very nice way to deal with the situation – it is future-focused, presented as a request and contains nothing obviously negative. But there are people and there are times and moods when this request can be taken just as badly as if you were being horrible about not getting your kind of ice cream.

The way I see it, even the most well intended, forward-thinking, let’s-work-together comment will be taken as (severe) criticism if one or more of the following is true:

1. The recipient is past-focused and interprets the comment as “You didn’t get me the ice cream I like this time”, instead of “please do it next time”
2. The recipient over generalizes and interprets the comment as “You never get me the ice cream I like”, as opposed to “this time”
3. The recipient personalizes and interprets the comment as “You are a selfish person” (identity-level), instead of “You didn’t buy my ice cream” (action-level)
4. The recipient presumes to tell the future and interprets the comment as “Now he/she’s going to be mad at me”
5. The recipient catastrophizes and thinks “This is horrible and I can’t live with it”, instead of “It’s only ice cream”

Put together, a seemingly innocent request for ice cream is received as “You never get me my ice cream, you are selfish and I’m going to be mad at you forever!”

The magic cure for criticism

You will be happy to know there is a very good cure for criticism. It is so good it applies equally to both people in any relationship and can boost their respective self-esteems. It involves the following belief:

I always do the best I can

Important notes:

• You are doing the best you can subconsciously. You may be aiming for things you are not aware of, like satisfying your need for significance or variety or protecting your sense of identity.
• You always do the best you can for you. Whenever others are hurt by your actions or words, this is not what you mean. Even when you deliberately and knowingly say or do something nasty to someone else, your true goal is to improve your own feeling and the other person is an unfortunate casualty.

Essentially, believing that people always do the best they can will stop you from blaming them for not doing what you want just because you want it. Any feedback you give them will then be positive, future-focused and presented as a request. If they think your request is good for them and is within their power, they will do it.

Believing that you always do the best you can will stop you from being defensive when others present their view of things and their desires. Maybe you did not know something, maybe you were tired, maybe you were angry, it does not matter. You always do the best you can.

Unfortunately, most people do not have this belief. This is not surprising, because we are surrounded by self-centered people who put demands on our time and attention and do their best to link our self-esteem to how happy we make them. Most notable is parents’ (and teachers’) habit of saying to kids “Good boy/girl” (identity-level statement) when they do what they are expected to do and “Bad boy/girl” when they do not.

How to believe the best about yourself

Find a quiet, private place for this exercise, where you can spend a few minutes undisturbed. After you read the rest of the instructions, sit comfortably, take a few deep breaths and close your eyes.

Think of something in your life you deeply regret. It may be something you have done or something you have said and even something you “could have done/said” but did not. With the memory, you may feel a variety of negative emotions, such as guilt, shame, inadequacy and sadness.

Now answer this question: If you rolled back time and went back to being that same person at that time and place, could you do anything differently?

Many people say, “Of course. With what I know now…” But you are going back to being the same person. No new knowledge, no new abilities, not even from 1 second later. The exact same person, in the same mood and with the same mindset.

As long as you think the answer is “Yes”, keep asking yourself, “So why didn’t you?”

If you get tempted to think, “But I should have”, keep asking yourself, “But could I?”

Eventually, you are bound to realize the person you were at that time and place, following the events that came just before, having your unique background, beliefs and needs could only do the very thing you did. It was your only option.

The only conclusion possible from this exercise is that you always do the best you can. If it was in your power or within your (emotional) abilities to do anything better, you would have done it for sure.

And the same is true for everybody else!

Have an empowering life,
Gal

Why is this? Better yet, once we know why this is, how can we benefit from this knowledge to become happier?

I am so glad you asked…

First, an introduction to human sensory perception (relax, this is the end of big words, except one). Think about a time when you stepped out of your warm home and into a cold street. At first, the feeling is sharp – your face, your ears and your nose seem to drain heat out of your body and pour it out. Then, you start feeling the cold in your fingers and feet. You shiver. Your muscles tighten.

But then, the strangest thing happens. As time goes by, you feel the cold less and less, until you can stay outside as long as you like. Although the temperature does not change anymore, it seems to be going UP for you, because you feel more and more comfortable.

Turns out the human nervous system mostly notices changes – a drop or a rise in temperature, more or less pressure on the skin or joints, the presence of a chemical in the nose or on the tongue, the presence or absence of a particular sound and the presence or absence of light in a particular color. Scientists call this “excitation”. When the temperature, pressure, chemical concentration, sound or light stays the same, our system gets used to it. Scientists call this “habituation”, from the word “habit”.

To test this yourself right now, fix your eyes on something that is bright white, like one of the lights on the ceiling. Count to 10 and then come back here.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

What you probably see now is a dark spot in the shape and size of the light but in “negative”. If you blink, you will see the light again when your eyes are closed and the “negative” when they are open.

This happens because as you stare at the light, the cells in your eyes “get used” to the light and become less sensitive to it. When you look somewhere else, it notices all the other colors, but not the color of the light until some time has passed.

The same happens with our emotions and especially with happiness. When something really great happens to us – we bump into someone we like, somebody buys us flowers or our kids give us a hug – there is a difference between our degree of happiness before and after, so we feel very happy very quickly. We get excited.

However, as times goes by, the effect of that encounter, those flowers and that hug fade, our emotional system gets used to them and we blend them into the background until we are back. We become habituated.

It actually gets worse, oddly enough.

Research on porters at a loading dock measured their physical response to going in and out of cold storage. The difference in temperature was 40 degrees Celsius (72 Fahrenheit). Experienced porters adapted so quickly to the temperature changes, they hardly noticed them anymore.

So what happens when you work around people you like every day? What happens when you get flowers every week? What happens when your kids hug you a lot? We get used to it. It becomes a habit and no longer excites us.

This can become a challenge in very common situations, like marriage, parenting and work. The hunt is over, we got the girl/boy, we even have kids together, no more romantic excitement, now what? Kids do well in Math, keep bringing home those good results, nobody gets excited anymore, now what? Work is great and fulfilling, then stops being new, we already know what happens next, now what?

The solution is a combination of variety, gratitude and updating our emotional position in life (our “normal” state).

More variety for more happiness

It is easy to see that a boring life leads to unhappiness. Therefore, it is also easy to see that making changes spices life up and leads to happiness.

Changes can be very small, like rearranging the position of the furniture in the living room, putting flowers on the dining table, switching from plain white napkins to colorful ones, drinking in special glasses for a week and so on.

Changes can be bigger, like painting a room, clearing the garage, doing up the garden or dining at a restaurant. Really big changes might be getting a new car, moving house and changing jobs.

Whatever you change, as long as it is OK with everyone, the level of happiness around the house will increase for a while. If you keep changing things from time to time, you will generate more happiness.

When you plan your changes, watch out for negative reactions, like worrying about the effects on your finances of buying a new car. Start with smaller changes, get everybody on board and gradually notice together how your happiness increases until you like making changes and can make bigger ones.

More gratitude for more happiness

There is a limit to the things you want to change. A few obvious ones are your family members and most of your physical features.

What you can do is feel grateful for the good things in your life. Make a list of them, read your list every day, express your gratitude to the people around you who make you happy and watch your happiness grow.

Here is a list of things many people take for granted, at least after a while. See if it makes you any happier to notice that you have them:

• Having a home
• Being healthy (even mostly healthy)
• Having access to the Internet
• Living in a free country where you are not afraid of the government
• Being able to send the kids to school for 12 years
• Living in peace
• Being able to buy food in abundance at the supermarket, rather than hunting, gathering or growing all of it

Feeling any better?

How to raise your emotional position

There is a girl we know, who was a school captain, who is a truly fine performing artist, playing violin and percussions, singing and dancing, and who always, always smiles.

We have seen her in stressful situations, being in the middle of a mess and organizing her friends with a big smile on her face. We have seen her playing music, singing and dancing many times with a big smile on her face. She comes from an large family and we know she did not always have all the equipment she needed. To our family, this girl is the ultimate role model.

Smiling takes you to a happier place. As simple as it may seem, smiling works miracles. It is a chemical thing.

Try it.

Yes, now. Come on. Smile.

Feeling any better?

Keep smiling, then.

When you smile, you do things better, quicker and you think they are easier. Then, you get better results and this makes you happier.

When you smile, people tend to smile back at you, making your world a happier place, full of smiling people. Then, it is easier to smile more and you become happier.

When you smile at people, they are far more willing to help you, so you have less friction and more cooperation. Being “on the same wavelength” with others will make it even easier to smile and keep you happier longer.

Not a smiling person? Remember the movie Hook? Grown up Peter Pan needed a happy thought to lift his spirits so he could fly. Think of your kids. If they are no longer cute and cuddly, think of them when they were cute and cuddly and SMILE. Feel the tingle in your ears and neck, show your teeth, raise your cheeks, imagine yourself holding your kids for the first time, throwing them up in the air with excitement, bouncing with them on a trampoline or swinging with them at the playground.

Does this feel good or what?!

Now, do this first thing every morning and your whole day will start on a positive note. Things will go your way, you will be pleasantly surprised and your happiness will keep growing as you smile your way through the day.

Have a happy day,
Gal