:: The Center of Happiness ::

Rhonda’s reflections:

Okay, okay. I know I’m supposed to promote myself on my blog about ons, filters and habits and how each of those aspects of the coaching process impact the results they are ngs and cars but no people.

T: Had it been raining?

P: Not sure - I guess it might have been.

T: So there were puddles?

P: I guess there could have been puddles.

T: And, I’m just guessing here, might there have been fish in
those puddles?

P: Wow - I suppose there might have been…

T: (triumphant) Ah ha! Just as I suspected - fish in the
dreams!

While most of our own biases are not so obvious and don’t seem so silly (at least to us), the point is that if you’re listening for something specific, you’ll tend to find it. Listen for
hesitation in the voice of your partner and boom, you’ve “caught” him lying to you. Listen for warning signs of trouble in your relationship and before you know it, they’ll be
everywhere.

The problem isn’t so much to do with what you’re listening for, but what you’ll miss by listening for it. Whether it’s the affection in your partner’s voice, the look of love in her eyes or the sadness in your child’s heart when they’re telling you about their day, if you’re looking too hard for something else, you’re liable to miss what’s actually there.

As Abraham Maslow once said, “To the man who only has a hammer in the toolkit, every problem looks like a nail.” But when you expand your listening pallet, you will be able to hear more and more.

2. Listening to the voice inside your head vs. Listening to the other person

Have you ever had your best “go ahead - I’m listening” face on while inside your head you’re saying to yourself something like “oh my god I can’t believe they’re telling me this for the nine millionth time will they ever learn what day is it today is it Tuesday I wonder if there’ll be something good on television
tonight…”?

As you may have noticed, when we get caught up in our internal dialogue, we not only lose track of what the other person is saying to us, we often lose the plot altogether. Yet most of us habitually go inside our heads while “listening” in order to formulate our response to what is being said. This is roughly akin to looking for your keys inside the house instead of out in the street because the lighting’s better in your house. If the
keys are outside, you won’t find them on the inside no matter how well illuminated things may seem.

3. Listening hard vs. Listening easy

“Purpose tremor” is a phrase which describes the slight shake most people notice in their hands when they first try to thread a needle or remove the shin bone in a game of “Operation”. Simply put, our muscles work better when we’re not trying so hard to make them work better.

What’s sometimes less obvious is that the same thing is true with our listening:

*It’s easier to hear what’s really going on with other people when we’re not trying so hard to listen to them.

When you listen to another person speaking the way you might listen to pleasant background music (the kind they play on “easy listening” stations), things will often jump out at you which turn out to be the keys to unlocking whatever is going on for that person.

And when you learn to listen to yourself in the same way, it becomes easier and easier to separate out your own mental chatter from the still small voice of wisdom within.

——————–
Today’s Experiment:
——————–

1. Choose a few non-crucial conversations to experiment with this week and notice what you can notice about your own habitual listening filters. Are you listening for problems or opportunities? Holes in their argument or openings for resolution? What they’re saying with their words or what they’re communicating with their feelings?

2. Just for this week, play with turning down the volume on the voice inside your head when you’re listening to someone else speak. Notice how much more you hear, and whether or not this actually does make the other person feel “heard”.

3. Practice “easy listening” this week - listening the way a tape recorder or film camera might do it. No effort involved - just allow the words to come in pass right through with nothing on your mind and no agenda for what you do or don’t want to hear.

Bonus Experiment:
Practice “easy listening” to your own internal dialogue this
week and discover what you can discover.

(c) 2007 Michael Neill/All Rights Reserved

Dear Treasured Traveling Companions,

I am writing this from Southern California
with ash still raining from the sky as a result
of the devastating fires that surround me in
Long Beach as I visit my three grandsons. To
the north is Malibu, to the south is Orange
County and San Diego, and to the east are the
fires in Lake Arrowhead and the forests of San
Bernardino County. The creepy orange glow
of the sun struggles to be seen through the
already too smoggy LA basin. How can there be
happiness knowing tragedy haunts so many.
And yet, if we are willing to see, positive things
can emerge even amidst such heartache and
challenge. From the ashes rises the Phoenix.

Just a couple of days ago before the fires had
made any progress toward containment I had
the opportunity to attend the afternoon session
of the Women’s Conference 2007, a day devoted
to honoring women hosted by Maria Shriver.
Here women gathered for a day of empowerment,
inspiration, acknowledgment. The meaning of the
day expanded as together we imagined ways to
provide relief for affected families. Together we
reflected on them, loosing their homes, jobs, and
life as they had known it, and attempted to vision
resilience for new beginnings. What we focus on
expands, and so we visioned peace and courage
for these families, and the safety of those risking
their lives to fight the fires.

It was amazing to hear the powerful presentations
of women such as Maria Shriver, Jamie Lee Curtis,
Linda Ellerbee, Nora Effron, and Nobel Peace Prize
recipient and activist Jody Williams. Distributed
were the Minerva Awards. The Maria Shriver Minerva
Award features Minerva, the Roman Goddess of
war and wisdom.

According to mythology, with her helmet on,
Minerva is a tireless warrior; without it she is the
goddess of peace. Today, women are warriors in
their everyday lives who nurture, protect and
fight for the people and causes they hold dear.
In her endeavors, Minerva embodies the qualities
of courage, wisdom and strength.

It was equally as powerful learn more about the
recipients of this award as it was to overhear the
conversations of ordinary women while standing in
line awaiting to be inspired. In a way, it was as touching
to hear these informal circles of women sharing from
their heart and imagining outside the box the ways
that they might be of service to those who were
experiencing loss in the surrounding communities.
Through contributions of time, energy, and money
and informal commitments made, a day devoted to
honoring women altered it’s focus to include offering
relief to the fire victims. Happiness honed by heartache
teaches us that we are all one and connected in some
way.

This conference is an event I will now plan to attend
each year, and many women there had already made it
an annual ritual pilgrimage. To hear/see clips of this
year’s conference, and years past, visit:
http://www.californiagovernorsconference.org/.

There’s too much emotion, too much negative emotion: frustration, hatred, anger. I think that’s the greatest obstacle. So I think as a first step this should be cooled down. Reduced. Forget these things. And I think for the time being, we need more festivals, more picinics. Let us forget these difficult things, these emotions, and make personal friends. Then we can start to talk about these serious matters.”

~~ Dalai Lama

We are living in a golden age of self-expression. There is an expanding explosion of user-created content on blogs and social networking sites, but while we may be spending a lot more time in virtual worlds, it is important we not loose the urge to connect and make our physical world more meaningful.

A wonderful concept is to leave art and ideas in public places as a way of affecting someone’s day—change their mood or their mind in a positive and creative way—and maybe even change the world in the process! What a great possibility to visualize! This also seems it could be a valuable resource for ways to apply the use of art in Circle.

I have not held this book in my hot little hands yet, but still feel compelled to bring it to your attention. The Guerilla Art Kit promises to shows how small artistic acts can start a revolution. After all, lovevolves. Essential to the healing of our planet is to think not only outside the box, but to dance creatively in circles! This provides a fun way to do it!

Keri Smith, noted author of Living Out Loud and the blog Wish Jar Journal, uses her unique drawing and handwriting style to help anyone find and release their inner artist or activist. This visually exciting activity book is said to be full of step-by-step exercises, cutout projects, sticker ideas, and more.

I just like the idea of it, and hope the book lives up to the thought of making a meaningful impact. From the quick exercises—leaving books for strangers to find, chalking quotes on the sidewalk—to the more involved—making a “wish tree,” guerilla gardening, or making your own stencils—The Guerilla Art Kit promises everything you need to put your message out into the world. Keri Smith is the author/illustrator turned guerilla artist.

Join me as a new fan of hers, following her adventures at kerismith.com.

This is a book you will return to often. It’s a great gift for someone who needs a nudge out of being a victim, especially if that someone is you!

This story and its message is simple, clear, and memorable. If you are ready to break free of the ‘drama triangle’ and hang up co-dependency once and for all, give The Power of T. E. D. a read. It will definitely put you on a smoother road to happiness.

With co-creative freinds and founders, Ann Smith and Carol Hansen Grey at Circle Connections (http:www.circleconnections.com), we are formulating a Circle Connections Leadership Certification program especially for those hungry for peace and aware of the importance of a feminine model of empowerment (Yin-Powerment). We plan to include this easy to understand concept for breaking free of the ‘Drama Triangle’ as an essential basic ingredient of our leadership curriculum.

For sure, I give this book an enchanting ‘thumbs-up’.

There are a growing number out there getting ‘hip’ to the importance of redefining happiness. We have always seen it as important. Matter-of-fact, just about every decision we make is prompted by and based upon our longing for happiness. Still, cling to our assumptions.

Although simple, sustaining happiness is often not always as easy as we think it should be when measured by our faulty definition. Because our attempts for happiness do not meet our misconception, we doubt sustainable happiness is possible and our ‘pursuit of happiness’ often leads to frustration rather than joy.

A growing number of ‘happiness experts’, including myself, now make every effort to shed new light on the true meaning of happiness. Today I want to highlight a colleague in the field of happiness who mixes psychobabble with meaning and humor.

If you are someone who most easily changes your mind by knowing the facts behind a concept, you need to know about Dan Gilbert. Dan Gilbert believes that, in our ardent, lifelong pursuit of happiness, most of us have the wrong map. In the same way that optical illusions fool our eyes — and fool everyone’s eyes in the same way — Gilbert argues that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy. And these quirks in our cognition make humans very poor predictors of our own bliss.

The premise of his current research — that our assumptions about what will make us happy are often wrong — is supported with clinical research drawn from psychology and neuroscience. But his delivery is what sets him apart. His engaging — and often hilarious — style pokes fun at typical human behavior and invokes pop-culture references everyone can relate to. This winning style translates also to Gilbert’s writing, which is lucid, approachable and laugh-out-loud funny. The immensely readable Stumbling on Happiness, published in 2006, became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages.

In fact, the title of his book, Stumbling on Happiness, could be drawn from his own life. At 19, he was a high school dropout with dreams of writing science fiction. When a creative writing class at his community college was full, he enrolled in the only available course: psychology. He found his passion there, earned a doctorate in social psychology in 1985 at Princeton, and has since won a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Phi Beta Kappa teaching prize for his work at Harvard. He has written essays and articles for The New York Times, Time and even Starbucks, while continuing his research into happiness at his Hedonic Psychology Laboratory.

In the following video-clip, Psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel real, enduring happiness, he says, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness “synthetic happiness,” and he says it’s “every bit as real and enduring as the kind of happiness you stumble upon when you get exactly what you were aiming for.”

Take a look…

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/97