I came across some simple but profound research thanks to Jonathan Kaplan’s Urban Mindfulness Blog about the effectiveness of Gratitude.

We’ve all known that gratitude is powerful and it works, but there’s nothing like scientific evidence to please our rational minds. Thanks to our conditioning, the lack of evidence often sets us back much more than we can imagine. =)

So here’s how just one change in your life can make huge changes – counting your blessing through a simple gratitude journal. Here is a really simple article on how to get started.

Back in 2003, Emmons and McCullough [Don't scientists ever publish their first names?] conducted research that shows the following. This is a summary and for those who’re interested, a detailed pdf document can be found here. The study findings also reference many other related studies. Google is your best friend =)

Gratitude Interventions and Psychological and Physical Well-Being

Measuring the Effects

People were asked to report being grateful on a scale of 0 to 7. And they were compared on these parameters.

Well-Being: Grateful people report higher levels of positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and lower levels of depression and stress. The disposition toward gratitude appears to enhance pleasant feeling states more than it diminishes unpleasant emotions. Grateful people do not deny or ignore the negative aspects of life.

Prosociality: People with a strong disposition toward gratitude have the capacity to be empathic and to take the perspective of others. They are rated as more generous and more helpful by people in their social networks (McCullough, Emmons, & Tsang, 2002).

Spirituality: Those who regularly attend religious services and engage in religious activities such as prayer reading religious material score are more likely to be grateful. Grateful people are more likely to acknowledge a belief in the interconnectedness of all life and a commitment to and responsibility to others (McCullough et. al., 2002). Gratitude does not require religious faith, but faith enhances the ability to be grateful.

Materialism: Grateful individuals place less importance on material goods; they are less likely to judge their own and others success in terms of possessions accumulated; they are less envious of others; and are more likely to share their possessions with others relative to less grateful persons.

All this by spending 5 minutes a day writing a gratitude journal! =O

Wishing you Lightness

“The best gifts are tied with heartstrings.” —Author Unknown

“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” –Dolly Parton

No person is your enemy, no person is your friend, every person is your teacher. – Florence Scovel Shinn

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d rather see you living in a better condition. ~Hafiz

Inner silence is where you find yourself. – Mary Margaret Moore

An email forward I received recently. Found it very inspirational!

Prayer for Freedom

Wishing You Lightness

Perfect action is one that leaves no trace of regret.

In the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, achieving perfection in action is described as a 3-step cycle that we keep repeating as long as we take action =).

1. Action
2. Introspection
3. Surrender

With each action, we are asked to reflect and learn such that our next action is more effective.
With each action, we are asked to let go of the need to control the outcome.

Step 1: Action
Action is primal. As long as we live, we act. Every action does have its consequences. The purer the seed [or intention] from which the action sprouts, the purer the consequences. Steps 2 & 3 are about continuously purifying our actions so that we live in peace with ourselves.

Step 2: Introspection
A lot of times we are told ‘think before you act’. The Yoga Sutra offers an interesting, more intuitive, paradigm. It encourages us to think after we act! The attitude of thinking is one of curious reflection. Reflect on both sides of the action – benefits and drawbacks. More importantly reflect honestly and understand your motivation for acting in this way.

Step 3: Surrender
Most times, once we act the outcome is out of our control. Yet, we spend enormous amounts of time and energy in trying to control it. The practice of surrender is to consciously let go, and trust in the process of life. This is hard to do, and yet, this practice in itself, opens up the possibilities for better results.

One way to practice surrender is to hold the attitude of a perpetual learner. “No matter what happens, I will learn and improve.”

Your belief system can help you practise surrender – “Everything is happening for me. Every adversity is an opportunity.”

Your faith in a higher power, or the a larger plan also grounds you in the practice of surrender.

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Wishing you Lightness

Aim For Balance.

A friend wrote in recently and asked how he can stay focused on positive things, when through life experience his mind has come to focus on negative stuff. And it got me thinking.

As young children we’re told that we need to look for the silver lining, the half-full glass and the opportunity in every adversity. The key to overcoming negative situations, we are told, is to shift our focus.

Firstly let me ackowledge that this is a powerful process. It helps us to see that there is a lot of good in every bad situation. But it is also incomplete. We’re never told what to shift to.

An important principle to keep in mind about how the mind works –

“In any situation, the natural tendency of the mind is to look for more of the same”

What this means is – when we’re down in the dumps, the mind focuses on even more negatives. You’ve probably experienced that when things are going bad, everything looks doomed!

And when we’re on top of the world, the mind focuses on even more positives. You’ve probably experienced this too. A striking example is the beginning of romance. You’re feeling great and your partner looks perfect!

The mistake we make in applying this principle is that we believe that the second state is better than the first. And we constantly try to shift to the overjoyed, elated, excited state and reject the miserable, down in the dumps state. In reality, neither state is better than the other because they are both lop-sided views of reality. No situation is completely bad or totally good. It’s only our state of mind that makes us believe so.

The higher state of being is Balance. Learning to shift to this state is a worthwhile pursuit. The key to being in Balance is developing the skill of seeing how every situation that appears bad also contains an equal amount of good, and every situation that appears good also contains an equal amount of bad.

There are at least 3 skills to master to achieve Balance. There may be more but I practise these three and have found them to be very effective. I hope you will participate in this article and try the exercises recommended. You will experience some powerful shifts by spending 2-3 extra minutes.

1. Emotional Awareness – Let Peace be your guide
What are you feeling right now? Be aware of your feelings in three broad categories to begin with – negative, positive and balanced.

You’re already an expert at categorising emotions. Try this and you’ll prove it to yourself right now.

Summon a negative feeling right now. Feel anger. Notice how it feels for 5 seconds.
Summon a positive feeling right now. Feel excitement. Notice how it feels for 5 seconds.
Summon a balanced feeling right now. Feel peace. Notice how it feels for 5 seconds.

The skill to practise is Awareness of these emotional states. Just tell yourself to be aware of your emotional state. Congratulate yourself whenever you remember to be aware. It’s a step by step process =)

2. Using a Multi-Dimensional Approach to Shift – the body and breath
We’re often tempted to use the mind to treat the mind. This is useful, but it can be much more effective to involve other dimensions of your being in shifting to balance.

Use your body. Right now, whatever posture you’re in – sitting, standing, lying down – can you adjust the posture to reflect a negative feeling? For eg: if you’re sitting, can you sit like a sad person? Notice your breath. Is it long or short? deep or shallow? smooth or jerky?

Can you adjust your posture to reflect an excited, overjoyed person? For eg: if you’re sitting, can you sit like you’re on top of the world? Notice your breath. Is it long or short? deep or shallow? smooth or jerky?

Can you adjust your posture to reflect balance? For eg: if you’re sitting, can you sit like a you’re at peace and ease with yourself? Notice your breath. Is it long or short? deep or shallow? smooth or jerky?

The amazing thing about this process is that by changing your body and breath, you’ll notice that you’ve immediately and effectively changed your state of mind. Learn to use your body and breath to come back to balance and peace anytime.

3. The Art of Questioning – Using the Mind to access Wisdom
Let’s compare this idea with files in a computer. You create a file and store it in a folder. At any later moment you can access the file by opening its folder or making a search with specific commands to the computer.

Our mind works like that too. With each life experience it creates learning and memories that are stored like files. These learnings can be accessed later by specifically remembering them [like opening their specific folder] or by making a search [asking a question that draws upon that particular learning]

Give a computer a bad command and you’ll get rubbish, and similarly ask your mind a dumb question and you’ll get all sorts of confusion. Know that whenever you’re feeling unbalanced negative or positive states of emotion, your mind is asking the wrong questions. Asking powerful questions leads to peace and balance.

All the answers are within you.
Minds are even more powerful than computers. They can use intelligence to make correlations and integration. They can take many seemingly unrelated life lessons [different files in different folders] and synthesize a new learning [make a whole new file].

Given a good question, our minds can synthesize come up with pretty much any kind of answer, whether or not we’ve directly experienced it =) For example, may not have served jail time. But if you ask yourself how it would be to be in jail, your mind will integrate your previous experiences of feeling shackled and restrained, and come up with a pretty accurate synthesis of being in jail.

Similarly you may not currently be experiencing peace or balance in your life right now. But asking your mind a powerful question can immediately help you to synthesize peace in the moment.

Ask yourself “How can I feel at peace with my life exactly the way it is?”
Or ask yourself “What is the balance in this situation right now?”
Or ask yourself “What is it that I’m not seeing in this situation, that can bring me to balance?”

Don’t try to force the answers. Just ask with an open mind and your mind will give you the answer. Try it! See how that works? Amazing, isn’t it? You can use these questions or come up with creative questions that work for you.

Just to summarise, don’t aim for being happy, aim for being at peace. Happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin. One always flows into the other. It’s only a matter of time =) A more powerful place to be is in balance, and feel at peace. It is a centred state of being.

To feel peace, you can learn three skills.
1. Practise how it feels like to be at peace, and summon this feeling in any moment. It is always within reach.
2. Use your body and breath to change your state of mind.
3. Ask powerful balancing questions to access your inner wisdom.

I hope you’ve participated in this article and tried some of the exercises that I’ve recommended. Did this article help in any way? I invite you to leave comments.

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Wishing you Lightness.

It does not fully acknowledge or apply all the evidence that…

Touch heals
Sound heals
Light heals
Scent heals
Foods heal
Thoughts heal

and further…

Breath heals
Words heal
Emotional release heals
Meditation heals
Prayers heal
Fasting heals
Exercise heals
Massage heals
Posture heals
Spinal alignment heals
Affirmations heal
Visualization heals
Natural environments heal
Aromas heal
Subtle energies heal
Flowers heal
Pets heal
Dolphins heal
Hypnosis heals
Placebos heal
Expectation heals
Acupressure/ puncture heals
Letting go heals
Forgiveness heals
Laughter heals
Tapping the body heals
Feeling-already-healed heals
Chanting heals
Mantras heal
Remembering good times heals
Whatever puts one in “flow” heals
Herbs heal
Minerals heal
Unshakable belief heals
Color heals
Earth energy heals
Sun energy heals
Movement heals
Dancing heals
Hugs and kisses heal
Appreciation heals
Generosity heals
Gratitude heals
Happiness heals
and
ultimately…
LOVE heals!

and compare this to…

Pills heal
Injections heal
Radiation heals
heals

Let us wake up from the dis-empowering belief that doctors are the only ones who can cure us. Let us once again take custody of the infinite natural healing abilities…each one as unique as we are…that is our Divine inheritance.

This thought provoking writing comes from dear friend and teacher, Nithyashanti

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Wishing you Lightness

“The price of anything is the amount of life you are willing to pay for it.” Thoreau

“A compromise is an agreement whereby both parties get what neither of them wanted.” via @JessicaNorthey on Twitter

“When you say ‘I love you’ you are actually saying you have awakened a place in me where I am love.” John Rogers

“Inch wide, mile deep = focus” via @Iconic88 on Twitter

“We would never get away with speaking to others the way we speak to ourselves.” via @ZenCharm on Twitter

Have a great week! Wishing you Lightness

Each of us have a pretty good idea about what we would like in a partner; a checklist of qualitites that will make the ideal relationships. I remember when I was single. I thought I would meet my ideal girl in a bookstore (wipe that smile off your face!), beautiful, intelligent, independent, a great conversationalist, graceful body language, quick to smile, passionate in defending her beliefs.

The moment I met anyone who came close to my checklist, my heart would start pumping like crazy and my head would spin, and my eyes would glaze over, impossibly lost in the possibilities of having my dream life with this girl. I say to myself, “she is perfect!”. And that was the beginning of the end.

Successful relationships are about pedestal management. Each relationship from beginning to end can be viewed with this idea.

Stage 1 – Pedestals are in the air
Most of us begin relationships with a fair amount of certainty that the person we are choosing will make us happy. After all they match most of the criteria we assume will lead to a perfect partnership. In the heady, dream-like state of first few weeks or months of a relationship, we spend most of our time building a fantasy of our partner’s qualities and behaviours. There are very few irritations, if any. And most flaws will be dismissed as ‘cute’ or ‘adorable’ =) Relationships start because we build pedestals, put our partners up high on them, and begin an affair with who we fantasize them to be.

Stage 2 – “I thought I knew you” or Pedestal breakdown
Most relationships begin to disintegrate slowly but surely from this point on. It’s only a matter of time that our partner behaves in a way that completely misfits the image that we’ve built up to that point. And the pedestal we’ve built up crumbles. More sentences like these begin to enter conversations – “I never knew you had this in you”, “How could you do this to me”, “You think you know a person”. And before we know it our world is upside down, we cannot trust our partner to be who they were at the start of the relationship. We silently question whether people can be trusted, and if we’ve made a mistake in choosing a partner.

Stage 3 – The inverted pedestal
Before relationships fail, there must be sufficient evidence that our partner is absolutely unfit for being happy with. So begins the stage of digging a hole in the ground, flinging the mud at each other, and building an inverted pedestal, putting our partner on it, and burying the relationship six feet under.

How many relationships like that have you had? I can count 3 such heartbreaking episodes as I look back. I wish I knew then what I know now. Nothing like a few years of courtship and marriage to gain some perspective =)

So why do relationship fail? Because we build pedestals with the bricks of illusion, the mortar of fantasy and the finish the marvelous structure with three coats of wishful thinking. They are destined to collapse.

And how can they be successful? By being aware of this tendency we have to build pedestals.
Here are some ideas I have about navigating our way in relationships.

Enjoy stage 1. Build your partner up to be the heroic soul that has come to bring you happiness =) It’s hard to beat the chemical thrill of infatuation! At the same time, know that stage 2 will come. There will be a point in every relationship when our partners cease to fit the pedestal that we’ve made for them. This is the make or break point.

You have two options as the painful process of pedestal breakdown begins.

Option 1: At your own risk – Approach this stage with disappointment, irritation and anger, and you’ll start building the inverted pedestal. If you’re seeing your partner as a complete villain, the total opposite of who he/she was when you started your relationship, know that you’ve successfully built the inverted pedestal. And this pedestal is also as far from the truth as the first one. The relationship is bound to break. The sad thing about this is that you’ve never truly loved or been loved in this kind of a relationship. You’ve just fallen in and out of infatuation with a fantasy.

Option 2: Recommended! – Approach this stage with curiosity and you’ll begin to see your partner in a more down-to-earth, realistic way. The real people in the relationship emerge only once the fantasy begins to dissolve. I deeply believe there can be no love without embracing reality. The reality is that you have both virtues and vices, good and bad, perfection and imperfection. And so does your partner.

Love is about accepting the person as they really are. It is about creating space for you and your partner to revel in the perfection of imperfections. This is the foundation and the journey of successful couples. On this journey know that there will be fights and disappointments and unhappiness.

Welcome each fight and they will help you break unreasonable expectations and bring you to reality.

Embrace your disappointment and it will become the doorway to receiving satisfaction.

Be friends with your unhappiness and it will be your compass to true love.

Use your relationship and the challenges you face with your partner as a pathway to higher self awareness and happiness.

You can read more related topics in the Lighter Relationships series.

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Wishing you Lightness

Change. Always happening, yet always difficult to master. We are all always changing, and yet, not always in the ways that we want. =)

Can change be mastered? Can we choose how we want to change and actually do it? Can it be achieved joyfully?These are some questions that I ask, as I scratch my head into premature baldness.

Behind the scenes of change

As a medical student and doctor, almost every person who I’ve met has needed some form of lifestyle change – healthier eating habits, more physical activity, better stress management, deaddiction – the list goes on…. my medical textbooks have told me that I must impress upon my patients about the absolute need to change such behaviours. Very clever!

Yet somehow they missed out the part about how I could actually bring about the change. Most people are already aware of the need to change. And a majority of them have tried to bring about change. Many times! Ask a smoker, or an overweight person if they have not tried to make effort to change. At your own risk =)

I began to research and study change and on the way I have come across some very powerful ideas on the subject. But very few ideas match the simplicity and the elegance of the stages of change model – the result of some very interesting work by Dr James Prochaska and his colleagues.

I will put the model In a nutshell in the next paragraph. Before that let me say why I believe this is a work of genius.

Coming to the model, Prochaska’s research led him to see that change is a process. We all know that, but he was also able to break the process into distinct stages and demonstrated relationships between the stages that can be used to predict the change process. Now, that’s something most people don’t know!

Let’s take my own example to understand these stages. I have a difficult time maintaining healthy eating habits and I tend to eat really, and I mean really, unhealthy food, and quite a lot of it, when I’m feeling upset. Don’t tell anyone. I’m a doctor.

Stage 1 – Denial. I don’t even acknowledge the need to change. Prochaska calls this stage Precontemplation.

Stage 2 - My mom has politely said that I’m looking healthy and my brother has poked me in the gut and gone off into a fit of laughter. There’s a crack in my thick skull. “Hmm..maybe I need to change something?”, I am thinking. This stage is called Contemplation.

Stage 3 - More serious thinking. I almost mean business here! I thinking of all the stuff I need to cut out of my diet and all the green and orange and yellow stuff that I’m going to add in. I’m thinking of all the restaurants that I need to keep away from. You get the picture. This stage is called Preparation.

Notice how the stages are named so appropriately? The simplicity just blows me away!

Stage 4 – Action! Now’s the time I put all my preparation into play. Walk the talk, put the sprouts where the mouth is, and all that.

Stage 5 – 6 months of continuous Action gets me to Maintainence. In my experience the first two weeks are easy. Now the red meat is beginning to look really, really good. And I’d ready to exchange a couple of organs – one liver and one pancreas for six of those hot wings anyone?

Stage 6 - Termination – that’s when I’ve completely kicked the habit. I’ve mastered change and I’m the king of the world.

Last but not the least is the Devil himself, Relapse. No matter what stage of change I’m in, relapse can spoil the party, strip me to my skin and take my efforts straight to hell.

So those are the stages. And as you’re reading them I’m sure that you were able to see how you’ve experience them in your life already for a variety of changes that you’ve tried to implement.

The stages seem easy enough to understand, but let that not fool you into underestimating the efficacy of the model. The magic is in the details, the application. How can these stages help me change? How can I use these stages to help others change? And the most important question of all if you are in the work of helping others change – how can this model be integrated to your existing methods and increase your efficiency? There’s a lot to be said and that’s what the ‘New Post’ button is for.

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Wishing you Lightness

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(1) We are all made up of energy that vibrates so fast, we appear solid.

(2) Just as water carries ripples, we are all connected by field which responds to our thoughts.

(3) Whatever we focus on, this field brings back to us as life experiences.

(4) We can change our life experience by changing the pictures we sow in this field.

courtesy Nithyashanti
www.lovingsilence.org