Increase Your Ability to Connect with People

Increase Your Ability to Connect with People

by | Nov 7, 2016 | Musings | 0 comments

Do you want to increase your ability to connect with people? Do you want to be able to experience true intimacy with others? Julie de Azevedo Hanks, PhD www.drjuliehanks.com has written a book to help you to do just that.

In her book, “The Assertiveness Guide for Women: How to Communicate Your Needs, Set Healthy Boundaries & Transform Your Relationships” Dr. Hanks gives us information and tools to know ourselves better and be more available to know others. I’ve already started recommending it to my clients.

Dr. Hanks, in a straight-forward, engaging way, demonstrates how saying “no” keeps us from being overwhelmed and overcommitted. She even gives a list of helpful examples of how to say no. Who couldn’t benefit from that? As important, she shows us that saying no actually makes us more available to ourselves and others.

The one con is this—Dr. Hanks’ examples and writing are so accessible, readers might not realize how much helpful information is packed in this 200 page book. I recommend reading “The Assertiveness Guide” a couple of times so you get all you can out of it.

10% Happier: How Meditation Turned a Skeptic to an Evangelist

10% Happier: How Meditation Turned a Skeptic to an Evangelist

by | Sep 21, 2016 | Musings | 0 comments

10% Happier: How Meditation Turned a Skeptic to an Evangelist

In all fairness, I doubt that Dan Harris, a news anchor and correspondent for ABC would call himself an evangelist. However, since he has written a wonderful book extolling the benefits of meditation (and I like to overstate things for effect) I am sticking with the word.

If you have an interest in meditation, calming your mind, not letting your ego run the show all the time, and/or genuinely being a kinder person—read this book.

Even if you have no interest in mediation and just like reading an stimulating, well-written book, read 10% Happier: How I Tamed The Voice In My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, And Found Self-Help That Actually Works—A True Story.

I have been meditating for over 20 years, so I admit a bias. I have seen the benefits in my own life from early on. In the first year or so, I was lurching my way toward a daily practice (read meditating for a week, then stopping for a week or month or two.) One day, as I was sniping about something minor, my boyfriend said “You haven’t been meditating lately have you?” I won’t bother you with my response.

His comment surprised me. I knew I felt better even if I sat for 10 minutes. I had no clue others could see the difference. My life was no less stressful. I just didn’t react as much.

That is the brilliance of meditation.

In many ways, we can’t control what is going on in or world. (The stock market comes to mind.) We can control how we respond.

This is where our power is.

We have a habit of looking outside ourselves for happiness and struggling with all the things wrong in the world—all the things that get in our way of happiness. It is a paradox that by creating greater calm inside, we actually find we have greater influence outside ourselves, with less struggle and stress.

As Dan writes in his book’s epilogue “Paradoxically, looking inward has made me a much more outward facing and much nicer colleague, friend and husband.”

Who doesn’t want that?

If you are interested in the meditation that Dan does, you can go to his website for a free 7 day introduction to meditation.

The World is Perfect (I sometimes forget)

The World is Perfect (I sometimes forget)

by | Aug 21, 2016 | Musings | 0 comments

The World is Perfect (I sometimes forget)

I’m a recovering perfectionist, you see. So sometimes I forget the world is perfect.

Yesterday was one of those days. It was a day off and I bumbled about the city, struck by how many times people “made mistakes”: not noticing others, forgetting, feeling slighted (and that was just me.)

For some reason, the imperfection got into my skin—I pondered it all day, including into when I wanted to be sleeping. (You can bet your boots I thought about the imperfection of the unanswered need for sleep.)

This morning I read a poem from “Why I Wake Early.”

“I would like to wrote a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open
and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is the dark
pinprick will of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.”                      ~Mary Oliver

And I cried.

I cried at the beauty of the world and the beings in it. I cried because I sometimes forget I am one of those perfect beings.

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