Why there is still a “Bright Side” to being Positive (more so than Barbara wants you to think there is)

I was watching a DVRed episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from earlier this week and the guest was Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of “Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”. Jon greeted her with “Hi grumpy” and the interview went from there.

Now, I cannot say I have read this book, but what I gleaned from the author was that the book had stemmed from her own experiences with illness and with people telling her she had to “think positive” in order to heal. This lead her into writing a book that I believe she hopes will debunk the idea that positive thinking does any lot of good. She then went on to sniff at quantum physics as a means to explaining the law of attraction and made fun of feeling “the vibes” of a situation. She also said that while people told her she was going to have a spiritual journey and come out the other side learning more about herself and life, she – quite amusingly – said that wasn’t what happened with her at all.

Here’s what I’ll agree to in what Ehrenreich talks about:

First, that this culture of “positive thinking” around illness inhibits people from expressing what they need to express during an illness – which is a whole range of thoughts and feelings ranging from fear and anger all the way through to blessed and grateful. Without acknowledgement and then acceptance of the “what’s so” (and name me one person who doesn’t get scared in life period, much less when a cancer diagnosis is added to the mix) then positive thinking is basically layering itself on top of deeper, unexpressed emotions. It’s the pretending or even believing “everything is okay” without addressing the underlying fears, which do the damage. The “positive thinker” is trying to change with thinking alone and I believe emotions have to be a part of the picture for true change to take place.

Which, two, leads to the other thing I agree with Ehrenreich about:

Positive thinking, all by its lonesome, doesn’t work.

Changing one’s thinking is important, no question. Learning to be present and accountable for the thoughts in your head and learning to transform those from taking you down a negative path to a more reasonable outcome is a big, important step in self-development. It’s also one of the first major steps, because until you can really hear and be present to what you tell yourself all day long, it’s hard to hear the more subtle messages from your body, emotional and spiritual self. Our heads tend to drown those other suckers out if we don’t manage them better.

Still, there were a lot of things I didn’t agree with Ehrenreich.

What we’re learning, what I’m learning from other great Masters of Emotion, is that it’s not about (just) thinking positive, but about feeling positive.

Feeling positive, really and truly from a grounded state of being fully ensconced in the reality of a situation, no matter the outcome – that is a vibrational shift that can transform. I’m not saying it’s always going to heal cancer or make you a millionaire. But it will transform your experience of life, and often when that happens, when you are really grounded, calm, centred, okay with whatever the outcome…funny enough you tend to make different choices, be more aware of opportunities and are easier to interact with than when you are at the height of neediness, fear and anger.

Let me be clear: all of these emotions are VERY normal reactions to both illness and job search fear. I’m not saying you shouldn’t have these feelings, I’m saying that you want to accept these feelings as part of the process and then shift to another energy level. Most people have trouble with how to feel when that “shift” happens (versus pushing past the uncomfortable feelings and trying to reach the missing land of bliss) and it takes lots of practice. I’m not surprised the author felt constantly like she was being pushed past feelings that were true for her. Yuck.

We can get easily confused by the simplified message of “Think Positive”. It suggests its our fault we got sick or that we’re unemployed or we can’t figure out our dream job. The concept of vibrational shift doesn’t mean that people who can’t seem to change their lives are broken, or less deserving of healing. I think the reasons people get sick or stuck are often quite complex, not easily fixed by any one methodology or process. I have observed within myself and others that sometimes the learning we need the most is unconscious to us – it’s so deep that we are literally blind to its existence. I believe that it takes incredible courage to live on this planet given the challenges we face by simply existing. It’s no wonder we can grow weary of self-development, change, hope and all that is expected of us that comes with those qualities and intentions. So I think it takes a lot more work than just changing one part of the puzzle, which is thinking, particularly if that comes at the expense of getting in touch with reality and truth of what you’re actually thinking and feeling.

I’m not really upset with Ehrenreich’s upset.

What I am is a little sad that she wrote a book that might lead other people to stop their personal explorations into what might change and transform their experience of life. I’m sad she’s out there in the media with a “kind of okay” message (i.e. let’s talk about this interpretation of proper “positive thinking”, especially in communities supporting people with illness, that shuts people down from all their feelings) and yet she didn’t go further in finding something that worked in lieu of that path (this is what I gather from her presentation – she certainly didn’t give the Daily Show audience much hope).

I’m also pretty sure she’s got issues with “The Secret” and that whole kettle of be-a-millionaire fish (something I would agree with as well…and even written about in an earlier blog). I guess it’s not her first reaction that there’s something off that saddens me, it’s her conclusion to tar anything in that “category” of law of attraction or intention healing with the same negative brush. It’s too bad she couldn’t have opened up the conversation from having learned something positive, rather than shutting it all down with negativity (and she says as much on Stewart’s show – funny, I’ll grant you, but pretty much determined to have learned nothing powerful or spiritual from her experience with illness).

Don’t get caught up in Ehrenreich’s experience.

Barbara’s truth is her truth and it doesn’t have to be yours. Rather than focusing on those outside, acknowledge the truth of what is so in your situation. Acknowledge and accept all the feelings that come with that truth (easier said than done…and a lot of where the work usually is). Be present. Be loving. Move your energy towards an achievable state. (i.e. right now I feel frustrated in my job search – perhaps I could shift that to “open to possiblity”…rather than getting right to “passionate and happy”). Find tools and ideas that work for you…and dig deeper on them. Anything worth learning cannot be learned at one sitting or from one source. Keep your focus moving towards ideas and resources that bring you energy, possibility, opportunity. Steer away from the ones that sink your energy and make you feel like it’s not worth getting up in the morning.

Because it’s the energy you present in the world that others respond to, and if your energy is high (not your thinking; your energy) you will attract what you need next and transformations – inside and out – will come.

Nice Long Juicy Thoughts from Deepak Chopra

I think this is a brilliant quote…there’s so much richness in these ideas. Learning how to “be” with your hurt is the only way through to something different – the way to happiness through freedom of emotion. The more you accept what is, the more spacious and wonderful life is. Enjoy.

“Unhappy people are always confused when they are told to try and be happy.

Their minds are occupied by grievances; there seems to be no room for new experiences that might be uplifting, and even if they came along, they would be seen through the gray haze of one’s misery.

So the search cannot be for happy experiences. Those are already available in abundance. The search is for an opening that allows happiness to become your experience. This opening comes about very differently from the way most people suppose. Most people try to make themselves happy by forcing their unhappy feelings underground, or by turning their backs on them or pretending that they don’t exist.

If you have a closet stuffed with junk, the best way to find room for new stuff is to clean the closet. In this case the closet is the nervous system, and one cleans it out at the level of awareness.

Communicate your desire to be free of this hurt. Ask for inner guidance to The healing process isn’t mystical; it involves well-known practical steps.

Look directly at what hurts you and let it show you what to do. Listen to what you feel, but don’t give in to it. Know for certain that you can remove old hurts. Be patient, since you will have to return to your old hurt many times.

Most people feel trapped by their resentments because their behavior runs counter to these steps. They don’t look honestly at their hurt but focus instead on blaming someone outside themselves. They don’t communicate a desire to let go of their anger but keep nursing it. Instead of listening to what they feel in the moment, they replay the same tired reactions from the past. Instead of being patient, they take a few stabs at healing only to conclude that there’s nothing to be done.”

Adapted from: Peace Is the Way, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2005).

Me on Video!

I recently did a short video with Bill Vick who has a number of sites incliding www.employmentdigest.net to helping people with their careers. He approached me via Twitter (thanks Bill!) and we met on Skype and recorded this short take on authentic job searching. The internet just blows me away sometimes, especially when I think about how little I used it a mere 11 years ago.

Anyway, it was a good experiment in online video creation for me. Perhaps I’ll finally get myself on YouTube one of these days.

So this is your chance…if you’re curious about what I look like or finding out how much I throw my hands around when I talk (quarter Italian…it’s hard for me to keep still), check out this link and scroll down for me. I’ve cut off all my hair since I did this (well, not ALL my hair but a good portion of it) so you’ll have to imagine that part of it. Let me know what you think!

Moment of Gratitude for #BeOriginal

Learning all about Twitter these days…which is a little distracting from this dear blog, but a good way to touch base daily with online creativity. 

One of the cool things you can do on Twitter is add a hashtag (#) in front of a topic that allows users to find comments and tweets on that subject. One of my favourites is #beoriginal that allows people to generate their own quotes and tweet them to others.

It’s quite a challenge to share thoughts from The Job of Your Life (I’ve discovered I write LONG sentences…under 140 characters is rare) and yet quite fun. Takes me back to my Grade 12 English class when I learned about “precis” – the art of writing short.

Anyway…here’s a link to a bunch of #beoriginal quotations – lots of great advice and insight…including some from JOYL.

http://koerberwalker.wordpress.com/highlights-from-beoriginal-2/

Thanks to Joan Koerber Walker for creating the original #beoriginal hashtag and then capturing  the results on a dedicated web page!

p.s. And follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jobofyourlife  – My tweets show up below left on this blog but not as neatly as in the Twitter-verse, and only five at a time. You don’t need your own account to follow someone. That’s one of the rad things about Twitter…lurking is totally cool.

Spaciousness or Just Drifting?

(Shout out Renata and thanks for waiting for this one!)

So I’ve spent my summer (supposedly) working on this wonderful question from a “Job of Your Life” reader, who, in engaging with the new step of Spaciousness asked “How do I know if I’m being spacious or if I’m just drifting?”

Because that’s the concern, isn’t it?

In The Job of Your Life I’ve outlined the idea of Spaciousness – of allowing things to occur inside of a structured inquiry – which sounds really meaningful and important. But then you could just as easily be calling it “Spaciousness” when what you’re really doing is avoiding the decision or maintaining the status quo with a great excuse or drifting along thinking you’re getting somewhere but really just fooling yourself.

And really, in our chaotic world of “go, go, GO!” it does seem self-indulgent and new-agey to “just go with the flow” or that’s how it feels maybe when we’re trying to explain to people about our lack of perceivable action. And if it’s hard for other people to tell if we’re being “spacious” or just being “drifters”, it can be even harder to tell ourselves, since in this area of career exploration I find that people often feel like they’ve lost their proverbial mojo anyway – that inner sense of knowing that you’re going in the right direction.

Ironically the very reason WHY you’re career exploring is exactly why you feel so confused; you’re looking for a new direction you’ve never considered before.

That’s also why you can feel pretty vulnerable to the vagueness of the process, the wondering “Am I getting it right?” and the sense that other people would be doing a lot more fancy action steps. Plus we really don’t value spaciousness, ever. Our world has become so instantaneous and responsive, we have problems understanding why someone can’t “just get it together already” and make a choice. So measured by that standard, we get very unforgiving of ourselves if there’s any sense that we’re not in constant motion.

So here’s a way of evaluating whether it’s drifting or spaciousness:

1. A Created and Stated Intention: When you move into spaciousness, do so with intention. That mean, be clear on your outcome (not rigidly but with some specificity) such as “I allow new ideas and opportunities into my working life. I stay open to when these new ideas and opportunities arise”. Intentions are the structure, the silent backbone - it allows you to become spacious and allowing “with purpose”. If you want to know more about the power of intention, check out/read The Intention Experiment. It will scientifically both prove my point and blow your mind.

2. Follows an Intense Period of Breakthroughs: Spaciousness is often required if you’ve been doing some deep inner work. That takes time for your system to process. It may be that other, unexpected things came up, things you didn’t expect to be related to career. It may be you saw new things about how you relate to work, or your self-identity, or made progress in your personal self-development. Following the natural ebb and flow, this means letting things settle before leaping into the next stage.

3. Continued Personal Work: Spaciousness can still mean that you’re working with a coach or doing other kinds of personal work. I do notice that there are times that clients step away from regular meetings with me and need a few weeks or months to process what we’ve worked on. Or they may find an alternative form of therapy or personal work that they resonate with and want to do work with that for a while – this might require some spaciousness.

4. Keeping in Touch with Your Needs: Learning how to listen to yourself is one of the first hurdles of an inner exploration. If you know how to tune into yourself and when you tune in you are clear that you still need space – take it. Your mind might get impatient (mine always does) but I soothe it by showing it the undeniable truth – I’m not ready and I won’t be ready until I’m ready. And there’s no sense trying to hurry it.

5. Other Things Are Happening: Often we get impatient with ourselves at the weirdest times – like when you’ve had a big breakup or you’ve moved or you just had a kid (that goes for Dads too) or lost someone close to you. Everyone else is like “slow down, take it easy” but we try and crack our inner whip on the career thing, like that’s going to make a difference. I think we just have a deep human desire for emotional events not to touch or change us and so we reach out to things that we feel like we can control, like career decisions, even if it’s more appropriate that we spend time processing or getting through what we need to get through in the moment. If your moment is demanding your attention elsewhere, give it in trust. You can always check in with yourself if the demands continue to keep you away from your career exploration.

6. You Feel Engaged Even If You’re Not in Action: I always associate this one with writing. I have books in me that I don’t yet have time to write, but when I check in, they are there, waiting for me to be ready. I don’t feel like I avoid them; I feel like they are a delicious thing in my future that will flower at the right time (pardon the mixing of metaphors – I suppose you can eat a flower but maybe it won’t be delicious). If you check in on your feelings about the career exploration, and you feel positive about it – that some part of you is engaged, feeling like this change will be good and it’s coming – you’re likely in spaciousness.

7. You Get Unexpected Breakthroughs or Synchronistic Events: Spaciousness is the opportunity for your subconscious to process all the learning you’re doing about yourself and the possibilities and opportunities that might fit you. So you can be in a period of spaciousness and suddenly get a new insight, apparently out of nowhere, or get into a great conversation with a woman at the dentist’s office, or hear a program on the radio that seems like it’s speaking to you, even if nothing else seems to be happening. These are signs, also called termed God Winks and other various names, that let you know you’re still on the playing field even if you don’t feel geared up and carrying the ball (see…there go those metaphors again).

8. Ask Yourself – You Know the Truth Without This List Anyway: We have a deep knowing as human beings if we are doing something for the “right” or the “wrong” reasons – we just keep ourselves from knowing that truth by keeping ourselves busy and on the surface of our minds. If you have the courage to look inside deeply, you’ll know if you’re creating spaciousness or if you’re merely using the idea to keep you stuck.

It’s totally natural to doubt yourself, particularly when nothing seems to be happening on the surface. Spaciousness is the ultimate practice in trusting yourself – and trusting the Universe – that all will happen in right timing. Your insights are happening deep below the surface. Your job is coming. Stay peaceful. Stay connected.

All is right with the world.

Life Can Change In A Moment

If you’ve been following the Bryant case in Toronto, Judith Timson of the Globe and Mail wrote an excellent article analysing how perceptions keep changing as we learn more about each man on that tragic night. She concludes with a great point:

“How frustrating that we will have to wait at least until mid-October to know the end of this sad tale, that in the meantime we will have to deal with more ambiguity and nuance, with not knowing which details matter and which are just the easy ways we have come to typecast our heroes and villains – not to mention voice our own frustrations. We may finally have to acknowledge that notwithstanding a Harvard degree or an alcohol problem, both of these human beings gave in to the wrong emotion at the wrong time. Yet of course only one lost his life.

Told that way, we are left with no clear villain – only colossal misjudgment in a human tragedy that reminds us what we don’t want to think too closely about, lest it happen to us: Our lives are completely hostage to human frailty. That isn’t the satisfying moral conclusion we want to draw from this story. But it’s the one we’ve got“.

I have also been fascinated by this case and for the reason Timson identifies, which is that in a flash of anger or fear or upset we can make terrible decisions that can impact us for the rest of our lives – or cause our deaths. I think what makes the story a “hard-to-look-away” story is that by the grace of god goes all of us – one bad decision, one temperamental moment and it’s over. And in this case, that goes for both men. No matter what the end result, each of them made bad decisions that compounded into tragedy.

How do we stay grounded when our tempers are flaring? How do we walk away from an ego moment? How do we know when it’s best to let go, even if it means the other guy might get the upper hand?

A Life Changing Moment

The practice of what Landmark Education calls “getting unhooked” and all spiritual practices talk about in some form or other is the practice of being able to “let go” right when Ego has us in its grip. The practice of ego detachment has to start long before the penultimate confrontation. It’s a daily practice of letting go in the moment…letting go of being right, letting go of being understood, letting go of the outer world asserting that we’re okay.

I have a really extraordinarily calm relationship with my husband, which I credit to our mutual practice of being able to let go of anger and upset within moments and quickly moving to communication and resolution. . And it helps that we both do it…over time we have come to trust that letting go on one side will lead to the other person letting go as well.

The ability to let go in the moment after an upset didn’t come for me all at once though. I was practicing that skill long before I met him in ways big and small – with everyone from family members to the person who cut in front of me in line. It’s a commitment to peace. Inner peace. It  didn’t come easily and I failed often. But little by little I got stronger in it, where an upset didn’t have to last days or even hours, but I could work through in the moment what had triggered me, why I wanted to react and get to a place of being able to share that without making the other person the enemy.

I haven’t always been successful. Who is? It’s hard to do when you’re tired or vulnerable or full up from other emotional situations. It’s hard to do if you have an unsafe history with the other person. It’s hard to do when a stranger is screaming in your face, because you’ve never built up trust with that person and have to trust in yourself to create it in that moment. But the way is always there and it’s practice that gets us there faster.

It’s not about giving up your ground.

On the contrary it’s about honouring the other person’s ground and then sharing your perspective. If you’re yelling your “perspective” at someone or you’re trying to getting across to them while you’ve got them in a headlock, it’s probably not going to get through. It would take the Dalai Lama to peer out from under your arm and say “You must be really upset I took your special cupcake from the fridge. I apologize for depriving you and I want you to know I did it out of extreme hunger”.

But if you practice letting go, of calming down, of not allowing that flash of anger and hurt to create your reality but to acknowledge and then step away from the feeling and look for another path that would honour you both, that is where inner strength and inner peace is created.

And it’s that very inner certainty that will hold you stable in a chaotic world, and keep the people around you – the ones you know and the ones you don’t – safe from harm, no matter how they behave.

It’s been a long wait…

Thanks for your patience as I juggle a busy summer of moving, minor surgery and work. I’m sure there’s many a post I could share on the old “work/life” balance conundrum. Overall, the blog may be a little barren in recent posts but life is full, rich and wonderful…thanks for asking!

I’ll be back soon…working on a post on spaciousness versus drifting…

A Thought from Po Bronson

“I’ve been all over the country,” I said. “And what I’ve found is that…if you succeed at something in which you’re honest to yourself and in line with your values and not wearing a mask to the world, then that does seem to make people happy. It’s not a mirage. When you succeed and you’re still unhappy, it’s usually because in your heart you’re conflicted about how you accomplished it or whether you really deserved or, most likely, that you’re conflicted about what you’ve presented about yourself to the world.”

 Po Bronson, What Should I Do With My Life?

We Aren’t Taught About The Value of Space

Just as a follow up to the previous post, I just had to share something I saw in the free Metro paper handout yesterday.

So in the paper they have this Canada-wide “Word on the Street” poll, with a little on-the-street photo of about six people, their ages, their city and their on-the-spot quote (we assume) when asked a question. Yesterday’s question was “Should Canada have more legislated vacation days?”.

I’m going to pick on Richard Kevis here, age 19 from Calgary. Richard, caught on camera with slightly untidy long hair and a rocking sunglasses/black blazer/no tie with his collared shirt look, served up this gem of an answer:

“Probably not. Days off aren’t really practical. They’re not really used for anything. They’re not really necessary to the system”.

We can speculate as to whether Richard Kevis, age 19, Calgary was having us on, or if he truly believes that no one “uses” days off productively and therefore aren’t necessary to the Kafkaesque machine we like to call “work” but it’s interesting to hear what bubbles under most people’s thinking about time off so blatantly. We have not been taught that it is wise – nay essential – to have space from our work. We don’t get great or easily accessible models for spaciousness and how that might link to productivity, creativity or even the ability to rest and re-charge.

We had a model once, long ago, in the Christian world, that went something like “And on the seventh day God rested” but lately we have all started to act like God was a bit of a wuss, and that spaciousness is a sign that we’re getting soft or lazy. I meet so many people (myself included) who have a secret suspicion they’re lazy.

We’re not. We’re exhausted.

Some of the things I love to say when I teach yoga is “Enjoy the spaces between the postures” and “Enjoy the resting posture, the counter-posture to the active movements. Observe how this rest allows you to feel the energy you’ve created”. Often students come up to me after to tell me how much they liked that direction, in part because we tend to devalue the parts of the yoga class where it seems like we’re not “doing” anything. But we are. We are observing our energy releasing. We are enjoying the active part of our practice from the restful state. We are allowing the active postures into our being.

Holidays serve as that same spaciousness to our life. They allow us to sit back, appreciate who we are, where we’ve come from, what we’ve achieved and what we’d like to be doing. Often, it’s not that conscious a process. We don’t think at all (and perhaps this is Richard’s real protest). We happily “don’t think” about anything but jumping into the cottage lake, or enjoying our families, or visiting a new place, or sitting in the back yard reading the paper cover to cover and weeding the petunias. Little do we know it, but our “don’t think” period refreshes us at the deepest levels, allowing (wait for it) SPACE for new ideas to emerge. I bet you all have had the experience of moving away from something you’re working on, and coming back to it fresh with new ideas after a bit of a mental ‘holiday’.

So…thank you Richard for your opinion. You made me laugh and you also made me think about how to start better speaking the value of space.

Enjoy your summer vacations!

Reflecting on Contemplative Learning

What’s the difference between contemplation and reflection?

I had an interesting insight from someone who is doing work in diversity and religious studies who uses a “contemplative” model. She discussed how this was different from (though complimentary to) the reflective model. I was curious so I asked the difference.

The Reflective learning model – is all about observation, the ability to conciously analyze what we feel, see, observe.

The Contemplative learning model – is about more than analysis; it is about creating space around the questions so that something new and fresh can emerge. It’s not from an intellectual place, but from somewhere else inside ourselves.

I love that other disciplines are trying to define the same essence I’ve been trying to understand for the last few years of my career. We must be headed for a global breakthrough in the subject. It’s no accident that the “new” step I added to the updated version “The Job of Your Life” is Spaciousness.

Without space, the analysis can paralyze the observer. Without space, we are locked up in thought. Without space, there is no actual “newness”.