How to build closer relationships

via TED Ideas by Kara Cutruzzula

Advice from 7 TED speakers on creating better connections.

“Why don’t I feel closer to my parent/sibling/friend/co-worker?”

It’s a question that many of us have pondered at some point, and it usually comes out of our desire to feel more connected to the real VIPs in our life: that is, the people we care about, the people we share DNA with and/or the people we spend a lot of time with. There are a number of reasons — such as timing, competing commitments, differences of opinion, geography — why emotional distance can creep into the most important bonds. Here’s advice from seven TED speakers to help bridge some of them. Warning to the emotionally squeamish: Yes, we’re entering touchy-feely territory. But we can promise that none of these tips will hurt, and they could even make your relationships stronger.

1. Accept imperfection.

Brené Brown counseled patients for a decade before she began doing research. The area she chose to study? Connection. As she explains in one of her TED Talks, “By the time you’re a social worker for 10 years, what you realize is that connection is why we’re here.”

After conducting her interviews on connection, she divided subjects into two rough groups: those who had a strong sense of love and belonging and those who did not. What did people in the former group have in common? One of the most significant traits was “the courage to be imperfect,” says Brown, professor of social work at the University of Houston. “They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others.”

Think about it: At times when you’ve felt closely bonded to someone, how much were you worrying about coming across in a certain way? Conversely, at moments when you’ve been focused on someone else’s shortcomings — or your own — how close have you felt to that person? This insight can apply to different kinds of relationships, from your family to your professional colleagues. When you’re at work, for example, try to notice when a critical inner voice is keeping you from connecting with others, and also recognize how much you might gain by revealing your vulnerability.

Watch Brene Brown’s TEDxHouston talk here:

2. Show up.

It’s not just your laptop — you probably have too many open browser tabs in your mind, too, says life coach Charnita Arora. If you doubt that, recall your last few encounters with other people you’d like to be closer to. Then, suggests Arora, ask yourself: “Do the people I love feel loved?”

The next time you’re with someone who’s important to you, Arora says to remind yourself: “I will spend these five minutes completely offering my true presence to this person.” Listen to what they’re saying, and try to refrain from judging or rehearsing what you’ll say next. Look them directly in the eyes. How do they look compared to the last time you met? What about the first time?

This is no five-minute miracle cure for achieving intimacy. After all, you can’t control other people’s browser tabs or anything else that’s going on in their minds or their lives. But you can still bring your whole self to the moments that matter.

Watch Charnita Arora’s TEDxThaparUniversity talk here:

…keep reading the full and original article HERE

6 Summer Tips for Unwinding, Recharging and Taking Care of Yourself

“Then followed that beautiful season… Summer… Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.”
Sydney J. Harris

The summer is here.

And for many of us it’s a time of vacations, a time of being free from school or a slow time at work or in your business.

So it’s a good time to focus on taking extra good care of yourself to unwind, decompress and to recharge.

And that’s exactly what this week’s article is all about. Let me share 6 of my favorite tips that I’ll be using this summer.

1. Just watch the clouds go by.

During the months of continuous intense work it’s easy to get trapped in the mindset that you have to do something pretty much all the time. This can add a lot of tensions and stress.

So try doing nothing at all from time to time this summer. Just go for a walk in the woods. Sit by the lake and take in the wonderful landscape. Or lie down in the grass and just watch the clouds go by.

Do only that, savor the moments of summer and feel how the inner tensions flow out of your body and mind.

2. Disconnect for a time.

I’ll be disconnected for much of this summer. I won’t go online unless it’s necessary. I’ll only check my emails once a day. And I’ll leave my smartphone at home while I’m out in the sun enjoying a book.

I recommend trying this one out, especially if you tend to spend a lot of time at work or in school with being online or talking on the phone.

Start by just staying away from your email and phone for maybe 6 or 12 hours. Then check them.

You may see that you haven’t missed much by not being available all the time. And discover that your stress levels have dropped quite a bit and it feels easier to fully focus on your family, friends or your hobby.

3. Appreciate what you did between New Year’s Eve and the start of this summer.

Half of 2018 has now gone by.

And there might have been some worries. Perhaps you were angry with yourself more than a few times during these 6 months. Or disappointed in what you did, didn’t do or what happened in your life.

When the stress and inner tensions are plentiful then it’s easy to get stuck in focusing on what went wrong or on your own setbacks or mistakes.

So take a break from that.

Ask yourself: What can I appreciate about what I did and I accomplished during these 6 months?

It doesn’t always have to be big things. And be sure to appreciate what you did, the effort you put in even if things didn’t go exactly as planned.

4. Go slow.

This will also dial your stress down.

And, perhaps even more importantly, help you to be in the moment and to fully enjoy all the sights, sounds, smells and people of your summer.

Instead of being half-lost in the future or in a memory while life and perhaps something really wonderful is happening right in front of you.

5. Say no to the shoulds of summer.

There are sneaky shoulds in life. They can make a vacation filled with things you “just have to do before the summer is over” seem like draining work. And they’ll leave you more tired than you were before your time off even started.

Avoid them by asking yourself: Will this matter in 5 years? Or even 5 weeks?

Zooming out like this makes it easier to find a healthier perspective on things and to see the real value of doing something.

It makes it easier to simply relax and to say no to doing something because you realize that it frankly isn’t that important anyway.

6. Spend more time doing what you love.

Maybe it’s fishing. Or going out into the woods and picking berries and mushrooms. Or painting. Or reading books. Or playing with your kids or hanging out with an old friend.

No matter what it might be, think about how you can fit more what you love doing into not only your summer but the rest of your 2018.

Take a couple of minutes and sit down with a pen and a piece of paper. Think about what you spend your time on during a normal week.

Then find 1-2 things during your regular weeks that you can spend less time on. Or things you can simply say no to so that you have a bit more time and energy over each week during the summer, fall and winter for what you love doing.

Passive vs active optimism

by Dr Tim Sharp (aka Dr Happy)

I’m pretty sure you’re all familiar with the idea of “optimism”; and more so, that it brings with it many health and wellbeing benefits…

…but do you know that optimism is often misunderstood? And are you really aware that there are helpful AND unhelpful definitions of optimism?

Real optimism is invaluable. People who get it right enjoy numerous benefits including:

• more happiness
• better health
• greater resilience
• more positive relationships
• and even longer lives!

But “real optimism” requires action. To a point it’s true to say “it’s the thought that counts”; but thoughts count for little without accompanying actions. That is, I can sit and think about all the things I want to enjoy and to achieve in life, but if I don’t get up and DO SOMETHING they’re unlikely to come to me!

And this is the mistake many make; they engage in “passive optimism”. Sitting and hoping and wishing, WITHOUT DOING. Few things in life are more likely to bring disappointment.

Action won’t always bring happiness and success; but there never be any happiness and success without action!

So think positive thoughts; dream and wish as much as you like. But make sure you follow this up with real and meaningful action; with focused deeds designed to bring about desirable outcomes.

…So that’s today’s mailing. Take some time to reflect upon the message and how it might apply to you. Check out, also, the links below for some additional readings and resources.

I hope it helps you enjoy some more happiness. Until next time…

Keep well & keep smiling
Tim Sharp (aka Dr Happy)

Worry too much? Check out these 7 mindfulness secrets…

It’s hard to be happy if you’re always worrying.

Happiness tends not to come to those who’re anxious and stressed.

But anxiety and worry can be controlled; and happiness, therefore, can be yours…

via Eric Barker

We all worry. At one point or another, almost one-third of people have dealt with a level of anxiety that would qualify as a disorder.

From The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety:

…a survey of almost ten thousand people across the United States found that with the exception of substance-use disorders, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health diagnosis. In fact, almost one-third of people surveyed had experienced at least one anxiety disorder at some point in their lives (Kessler et al. 2005).

Now anxiety and fear are different. Fear is what you feel, in the moment, when someone comes at you with a knife. Fear makes a lot of sense.

But anxiety is about the anticipation of an event. Your brain starts asking “what if” too many times, and comes up with a lot of answers it doesn’t like. But you don’t know the future. That “what if” may not even happen. And even if you have a solution, you can’t be sure it will work because your crystal ball is on the fritz. So anxiety is often problem solving — but without the solving part.

And in the meantime, you’re lost in thoughts — negative ones — and missing out on the world around you. Chronic worrying is like being on your phone all the time but the screen is showing you a horror movie where you’re the main character. And even if your worries aren’t that bad, if you’re focused on them, you’re not focused on your life. You’re missing out on a lot of potentially fun moments and giving the people you care about only a fraction of your attention. Real life becomes background noise because you’re focused on the endless horror film.

So, inevitably, you try and push the worries out of you head, which is inherently problematic because to be vigilant about not thinking about something, your brain needs to keep it in mind. So the pushing away game is like weightlifting for worries; they come back at you with bulging biceps and striated delts. The thoughts just get stickier. So what can you do?

From The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety:

Rather than passing through our minds, coming in and then slipping back out, worry thoughts are “sticky.” In fact, that’s why we attach to them. It’s kind of like we get stuck to them as they enter our minds and then have difficulty separating ourselves from them. Therefore, one of the most useful skills for dealing with worrisome thoughts is the DBT mindfulness skill of noticing thoughts without attaching to, reacting to, or acting on them (Linehan 1993b).

If you wanted little stop-worrying tips like, “Oh, think happy thoughts and have some soothing chamomile tea” you have come to the wrong place. If you’re a chronic worrier, that’s like taking aspirin to treat cancer. Instead, we’re gonna nuke this thing from orbit and watch the ashes dance.

Our weapon of choice? A few concepts from Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Originally created by Dr. Marsha Linehan at the University of Washington, it has shown fantastic results in treating everything from anxiety to depression and is the first line treatment for problems as serious as Borderline Personality Disorder — which had previously been regarded as untreatable.

It hits your worries with the one-two punch of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and mindfulness. If the ancient Stoics and Buddhists had gang signs, I’d be throwing them up right now — once again, those guys were ahead of their time.

This is not an overnight solution but it’s one that actually works. Those troubling thoughts may be sticky — but with a little work we can give you a teflon mind.

Roll up your sleeves. We have work to do…

Build Your Mindfulness Muscles

If you want to be more mindful, you need to remember three words: acceptance, attention, and labeling.

Push back against your worries and they get stronger. So accept their presence. You don’t need to accept their speculative doom-and-gloom scenarios as inevitable; you just need to accept that the worries are here and stop trying to serve them mental-eviction-notices that they’ll ignore.

From The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety:

By “accept,” we don’t mean surrender, give up, or even like or enjoy your experiences; we simply mean stopping the constant struggle to run away or escape from your experiences and allowing them to be what they are. You can accept something and still work to change it. In fact, to successfully change something in your life, you may need to accept it first…

Next is attention. Where is yours? Laser focused inward on those awful future possibilities that may not even occur. Where is your attention not? Here. “Here” being the world around you. You’re ignoring life and lost in thought. (You might think you have a terrible attention span but you’re wrong. You have a near-infinite attention span… when it comes considering horrible things that probably won’t even happen.)

So get out of your thoughts and focus on the world around you. Those “what-ifs” aren’t real. The people around you are. Granted, when you’ve had little practice at it, consistently shifting your attention like this is really hard to do. And that’s where labeling comes in.

Always remember: you are not your thoughts. You think all kinds of crazy stuff and dismiss most of it. But with emotional stuff we tend to undergo “cognitive fusion” — we think that we are the thoughts and feelings. If you broke your arm, you’d say “my arm is broken” not “I am broken.” And so the correct response to worrying thoughts is “there are worries” not “I am worried.”

When a worry pops up, label it as “a worrying thought.” It’s not you. Do not identify with it and let it overtake you.

From The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anxiety:

One of the reasons human beings tend to get so attached to and caught up in worrisome thoughts is that we “buy into” these thoughts as literally true. Rather than recognizing that these worries are simply thoughts our minds generated that may or may not be true or accurate, we believe our thoughts and take them to be the truth. Therefore, labeling a thought as just a thought is one way to keep yourself from buying into your thoughts or responding as if they were true.

So every day, spend a few minutes being mindful. Your worries are like a passenger next to you on the bus. You can’t shove them out of the vehicle. You accept that they are there. But you don’t have to give them your attention either. Redirect your focus from your internal thoughts to the world around you. Notice the seat beneath you. Notice the sounds you hear. Pretend you’re experiencing everything for the first time. Give the world your full attention.

And when those worried thoughts rear their ugly heads again, label them as thoughts. They’re not you, they’re just thoughts. Then, once again, redirect your attention to the world. With practice, your mindfulness powers will grow.

(To learn more about the science of a successful life, check out my bestselling book here.)

Okay, building mindfulness muscles allows you to keep worries at bay and prevent them from emotionally hijacking your mind. But what if the worries sneak past your defenses?

Well, you need to know what the enemy looks like if you’re going to see’em coming…

Find The Canaries In Your Coal Mine

Recognizing that thoughts are just thoughts takes practice but you can develop the skill relatively quickly. Dealing with emotions is trickier. And the two tend to gang up on you; negative thoughts producing negative emotions and vice versa — creating a self-reinforcing loop of awfulness.

When we get lost in thought we tend to forget our bodies. You need to start noticing the physical sensations that accompany your emotions. Muscle tightening. Shallow breaths. Sweating. Whatever you do when the worrying heats up. These are the canaries in the coal mine.

So make yourself a list. Write down the common thoughts you have when getting worried, the physical sensations that accompany the emotions, and also note what actions you feel driven to take (procrastination, playing video games, record-breaking bourbon consumption, etc.)

Get familiar with the list. This is like the supercool planning montage in the heist film, setting up all the protagonist’s tricks before they pay off in the third act.

(To learn the two-word morning ritual that will make you happy all day, click here.)

This might sound like a lot of planning and preparing. It would be better if your brain had an “off” switch but sadly that’s not available in Sapien OS7. Sorry. So it might seem much easier and more effective to simply avoid things that make you worried.

But that’s actually the worst thing you can do…

…keep reading the full & original article HERE

How to Overcome Perfectionism: 6 Powerful Habits

“Certain flaws are necessary for the whole. It would seem strange if old friends lacked certain quirks.”
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“People throw away what they could have by insisting on perfection, which they cannot have, and looking for it where they will never find it.”
Edith Schaeffer

One of the most common challenges that people email me about – and I myself have had quite a bit of trouble with – is perfectionism.

It’s an issue that can hold you back in life. Not only from achieving and finishing what you want.

But sometimes from even getting started. While at the same time draining your self-esteem and getting you stuck in a negative spiral where it can become harder and harder to start moving forward.

So today I’d like to share 6 things that have helped me – and still helps me to this day – with this destructive and distracting thought habit.

1. Go for good enough.

Aiming for perfection usually winds up in a project or something else never being finished. So go for good enough instead.

Don’t use it as an excuse to slack off. But simply realize that there is something called good enough and when you are there then you are finished with whatever you are doing.

So find a balance for yourself where you do good work and don’t slack off but at the same time don’t get lost in trying to improve and polish something too much.

How to find that balance? I have found my own balance through trial and error and experience.

2. Realize that you hurt yourself and the people around you by buying into myths of perfection.

By watching too many movies, listening to too many songs and just taking in what the world is telling you it is very easy to be lulled into dreams of perfection. It sounds so good and wonderful and you want it.

But in real life it clashes with reality and tends to:

• Cause much suffering and stress within you and in the people around you.
• Harm or possibly lead you to end relationships, jobs, projects etc. just because your expectations are out of this world.

I find it very helpful to remind myself of these simple facts.

Whenever I get lost in a perfectionist headspace I remind myself that it will cause me and my world harm. And so it become easier to switch my focus and thoughts because I want to avoid making destructive choices and avoid causing myself and the people closest to me unnecessary pain.

3. Accept that you are human and so are everyone else.

Set human standards for everyone and accept that life is like that.

Everything and everyone has flaws and things don’t always go as planned. You can still improve things but they will never be perfect.

And realize that you won’t be rejected if things or you aren’t perfect. At least not by reasonably well-balanced human beings, like most people actually are in reality.

4. Compare yourself to yourself.

Comparing yourself to other people on a regular basis can easily lead to feeling inferior. There will always be a lot of people ahead of you in any area of life.

So compare yourself to yourself…

• See your improvement, see how far you have come.
• Look back at what you have overcome.
• Appreciate yourself and focus what you have done and are doing rather than what everyone else is doing.

5. Do what you think is the right thing.

So you realize that perfectionism will harm you and you try to avoid it. But people and media and the society around you have an influence over how you think and feel.

One of the best ways I have found to practically lessen that influence is by doing the right thing as much as possible. When you do that other people’s expectations have less and less power over you and you take more charge of your life.

Because by doing the right thing your self-esteem goes up and other people’s opinions about you and life will matter less to you. You have become stronger, more certain in who you are and you are not so easily swayed by external forces.

6. Shape an environment of human standards around you.

Emotions are contagious. So is perfectionism.

And even though you can lessen the impact that your environment has you can also work at the other end of things.

You can reshape your environment by for example:

• Reducing or cutting out the sources that try to reinforce perfectionism in you. Take a little time to review what websites, magazines, podcasts, TV-shows and books you spend a lot of time with. Take a look at if they have realistic and positive expectations or views on you and on life. And if not, choose to spend more of your time with the sources that lift you up and support you.
• Spending less time with nervously perfectionistic people. And more of your time each week with people who are trying to improve themselves and/or are living a good life in a positive, healthy and relaxed way.

How to live positively with negative people

via Dr Tim Sharp (aka Dr Happy) – from my free, weekly eNewsletter

In an ideal world, everyone with whom we interacted would be positive, uplifting, kind and caring and supportive…

…but the reality is, we don’t live in an ideal world!

The sad reality is that some people, for a variety of reasons, are negative and difficult, pessimistic and even disruptive.

So if we acknowledge this a reality, how can we deal with these people? How can we live positively, despite some negativity? How can we not allow them to drag us down?

Well, as with many things in life, there are no simple answers. But there are some practical strategies, tried and tested over many years by many people, that you’ll almost certainly find useful:

• to begin with, remember you can’t control or change everything or everyone. Accordingly, it’s important to accept that some people will just be…who and what they are
• when and where possible, just let them do their thing and listen or observe, without judgement
  again, as much as possible, do all you can to stay calm (as noted, we can’t control other people but we can try to control ourselves)
• where necessary, let the person know as clearly as you can if/when they’re doing something that’s distressing or disruptive. When doing so, focus on the issue NOT the person
• If possible, find ways to turn their difficulty into a positive. Can, for example, that pessimist be used as a form of risk management!
• If necessary, limit your time with this person
• Avoid, where ever possible, becoming defensive; and remember, where ever possible and appropriate, that humour can be very useful
• and finally, do all you an to take care of your health and wellbeing

…So that’s today’s mailing. Take some time to reflect upon the message and how it might apply to you. Check out, also, the links below for some additional readings and resources.

I hope it helps you enjoy some more happiness. Until next time…

Keep well & keep smiling
Tim Sharp (aka Dr Happy)

9 Powerful Tips to Help You Turn a Bad Day Around

“To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.”
Henry David Thoreau

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”
Robert Louis Stevenson

Some days are great, better than you would have expected when you rolled out of the bed in the morning.

Quite a few days are just good and OK days.

And then we have the other ones. The days that just wind up being bad.

What do you do then? I used to let them drag me down and I often wound up having not just one but a couple of bad days because of whatever happened.

Nowadays I do things a bit differently. And this week I’d like to share how I do that.

This is 9 tips and habits that help me to turn a bad day around. Most of the time I use more than one of these habits to do that.

1. Breathe.

I usually start turning my day around with shaking things up by using my body in some way.

The first thing I almost always do is to just breathe. I breathe deeply through my nose by using my belly. I focus only on the air going in and out for 1-2 minutes.

This calms my body and mind.

2. Do a power pose.

Then I sometimes follow that up by striking what Amy Cuddy calls a power pose for about 2 minutes (check out her TED talk, it’s really good).

The simplest way to strike a power pose is to stand up confidently like Wonder Woman or Superman with your legs apart, head up and your hands on your hips.

It might sound odd but it can really change how you feel in a quick and positive way.

3. Work out.

Another habit I use several times a week to shake things up by using my body is to lift free weights in my home. I do this for about 30-40 minutes and it helps me to release tensions and worry.

And after I am done I feel more powerful, focused and energetic.

4. Hug.

Just by hugging someone quickly you can feel safer and more optimistic again. And an embrace that lasts 30 seconds or a minute or more can recharge your your batteries and release an unexpectedly large amount of stress and tensions.

5. Pet an animal.

If you don’t have anyone close by to hug during a bad day then pet your cat, dog, bird etc. It has a very similar calming and stress reliving effect.

And it makes your animal companion happy and that in turn will boost your mood too.

6. Find a new viewpoint.

The body tips above often work well to change my perspective by altering my emotional state and energy level.

Sometimes something more is needed though.

So I start looking more actively for a better and more helpful viewpoint by asking myself a couple of questions.

Three of my most commonly used questions that help me with that are:

• Will this matter 5 years from now?
• Who cares?
• What is one small action, one small and practical step I can take to start turning this day or situation around?

7. Go out into nature and enjoy the summer.

Leave your couch or workspace for a little while. Talk a walk and just soak in the summer sun and warmth. Enjoy the birds singing and the nature blossoming.

Just being out there in nature tends to make it easier to think optimistically again and to start looking for practical solutions or upsides. Or you can simply be there in the moment fully and let your thoughts about for example work rest for a while (and then later on you can return to that with fresh eyes and a calmer mind).

Another upside is that the sunshine and exercise during this 20-30 minute pause in my day also recharges my energy.

8. Accept what is.

One thing that sometimes work better than just about anything is simply to accept what is at this moment.

To not deny or try to push away negative feelings or thoughts that show up. Even though you may feel an impulse to do so.

Instead, just accept what is right now. The thoughts and feelings within you. And just be with them fully and observe them flowing through you.

By doing so you are not giving up.

No, because when you accept what is then you stop feeding the negative thoughts in your mind with more energy. And so they become weaker.

They start to lose their grip on you after a while and then they float away. And so you feel more open and are able to think more clearly again.

9. Remember: sometimes a bad day will just be a bad day.

Now, from time to time, even if you use several of the techniques above – one after the other – you won’t be able to turn a bad day around. That has been my experience at least.

Because no matter what habits you adopt, life will never be perfect, positive or awesome all the time.

And this website was never about living some kind of life that only exists in a perfect dream anyway.

This website is about replacing unhelpful habits with better ones. It is about raising the percentages of times where you can handle things in a better way. In your regular, everyday life. And when bigger things happen.

Because that will make a huge difference.

But still, life will have natural valleys.

And a bad day will sometimes just be a bad day. And that’s OK. That’s life.

But the interesting thing is this: if you accept that life is like this sometimes – and let go of the dream of perfection – then you’ll create less suffering for yourself and life will become lighter, simpler and happier.

So in the long run there is an upside even to a bad day that you may not be able to turn around.

Just 24 Hours to Go Until The Unstress Course Closes

Just a quick heads up today.

There’s only 24 hours left until registration for The Unstress Course closes.

Until 1.00 p.m EST (that’s 17.00 GMT) on Monday the 4th of June you can still join it.

So if you are interested in that – and in getting the free bonus program The Art of Relaxed Productivity worth $27 if you join the Standard Edition of the course and my Simplicity Course (value $47) if you enroll in the Advanced Edition – then now is the time to take action.

Click here to learn more about The Unstress Course and to enroll before the doors close