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June 2009 |
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New World Library Facebook contest! |
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A talk with Alison Bonds Shapiro, author of Healing into Possibility |
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"Appreciating Yourself," by Robert Mack, author of Happiness from the Inside Out |
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Hot New World Library titles — save 40%! |
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New World Library recently created a fan page on Facebook, and we'd love to have you be a part of it — so much so that we will be giving away a free copy of a New World Library book to two members of our Facebook community on Monday, July 6th! |
Here's how it works. Simply join our fan page and post a comment in response to the wall post that asks, "What is your favorite New World Library book, and why?"
Your comment must be posted before 9 a.m. PDT on Monday, July 6th. That is when we'll draw two lucky winners from all those who post comments. The winners will receive one free copy of the New World Library book of their choice.
We will announce the winners on our Facebook fan page and will contact the winners via Facebook for their mailing address and book selection.
If you are already a member of our Facebook fan page, you are more than welcome to enter — just add a comment in response to the wall post. Only one comment per person, please.
See you on Facebook!
— Your friends at New World Library
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Meet Alison Bonds Shapiro |
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| How do you apply the lessons you learned through healing from a stroke to other areas of your life? |
| Fundamentally, I learned that how we approach a problem is far more important than the problem itself. Whatever problem we face is something that has already happened. Now that it has happened, the useful approach is to find out what we can do with the situation. I ask myself, "What is the opportunity embedded in this problem?" I pay close attention to fully understanding what the situation is, just as it is, then I look for creative responses that I can make — I seek the possibilities I can discover. It takes practice, and once we know how to do it, we can help other people do the same thing. The eight principles I teach are simple steps that allow us to move quickly through problems. When we practice them, we begin to discover possibilities beyond anything we could have imagined. |
| What does it mean to "live around your limitations"? |
| We each have the capacity either to be stopped by what we perceive to be something that limits us — our age, our education, our physical ability — or to find ways to make a satisfying life with what we have. A tree root grows around a rock and finds nourishment. It doesn't stop growing when it encounters something that blocks its path. This is a fundamentally creative approach to life. If I cannot accomplish what I want to do one way, I find another way. If we spend our time crying over what we do not have, we never discover what we do have and what we can do with it. |
| What part does humor play? |
| When something difficult happens in our lives, we often think that it would be wrong to laugh — that somehow we have to insist that nothing can be funny in the face of a serious problem. If we focus on only the hardship, we lose something essentially life giving. Laughter lowers blood pressure, calms the mind, and invites others into our lives. All those things have a powerful effect on recovery. Life seems more livable and problems seem more solvable when we remember to laugh. That doesn't mean we are laughing at somebody else or are trying to be cruel. We are remembering that it is possible to find joy even in hardship. |
| What do you mean when you say "the disability habituates"? |
| Our bodies form habits as a way to make actions efficient. When a part of the body has been injured or disabled, the brain will concentrate on the parts that work well and will create something called "learned non-use." In other words, our brains will ignore the part of the body that is not working and make a habit of the disability. Habits become hardwired in the brain and, as you may have experienced, become increasingly harder to change — not impossible, but increasingly harder. If we actively challenge the habituation of the disability from the beginning of and throughout the recovery, we improve our chances of gaining more function. |
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Appreciating Yourself
by Robert Mack, author of Happiness from the Inside Out
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The root of much unhappiness is comparison. Comparison gets in the way of healthy self-appreciation — and thus happiness — more than anything else. Because of comparison, hardly anybody is ever happy with what they get and nothing's ever good enough for practically everybody. That's because we measure our success in anything by comparing it to what others have or to what we have had before. In other words, whether you are happy with what you get depends on how it measures up to some norm. That norm depends on two things: what other people get (social comparison), and what you yourself are used to getting (habituation). It is hard for success in any form (money, status, prestige, and so on) to improve your happiness because as actual success rises, the norm by which success is judged rises in step.
A study, for instance, found Olympic bronze medalists to be happier than silver medalists. The bronze medalists, it turns out, tended to compare themselves with all the people who competed but won no medal at all, while the silver medalists compared themselves with the gold medal winners and tortured themselves with the belief that they could have — should have — won the gold. Similarly, in families, it has been found that the more your spouse earns, the less satisfied you are with your own job.
Because we constantly compare ourselves to others, we don't feel good about what we have and who we are. The grass seems perennially greener in your neighbor's lawn. Continuing with this metaphor, it might be said that the grass always seems to be greener in your neighbor's yard because (1) you're urinating on your own lawn and (2) you're looking at your neighbor's lawn from your lawn, and everything looks better from a distance. There is only one solution to this "grass is greener" problem: practicing self-appreciation. Self-appreciation involves both staying off of other people's lawns and taking care of your own.
A key ingredient in happiness is appreciating your life as it is. You can do this by keeping an appreciation log. Just list the positive aspects of things in your life. List the positive aspects of what you have and what you appreciate about your life and the people in it. And be sure to make a list of what you appreciate about yourself. Do this at least once a week — every day is even better. Science has found that the benefits of being grateful are optimized when you focus on appreciation at least once a week. This exercise isn't about wearing rose-colored glasses as much as it is about appreciating what's worthy of appreciation. Some things are just bad. If you can't change them, learn to accept them.
When you're feeling particularly frustrated, jealous, or hopeless, see if you can't sit down and write out a list of things you appreciate about your current situation. By doing so, you'll come to the realization that you have enough and do enough already. And when you do decide to get or do more, it will come from a positive, healthy, loving, inspired place instead of a dark, negative, and unhealthy bottomless pit.
To fully appreciate yourself and your life, you have to ignore what others think of you, what others have, and what others do. Only your thoughts influence your happiness. Others' thoughts of you do not affect your happiness. Only your thoughts about their thoughts affect how you feel. Only your thoughts about what they have and what they do influence your feelings of well-being. You can change your thoughts and you can't change theirs. What others think, say, do, or have has nothing to do with you.
The only opinion in the entire universe that is of importance to you is your own. And your opinion affects your entire life. Nobody else needs to get what you're doing or agree with it. So replace your shopping sprees, working sprees, pleasure sprees, complaining sprees, and unhappiness sprees with an appreciation spree. Shop for things to appreciate about your life and yourself, not for things to purchase or improve. Never admire somebody else's fortune so much that you become dissatisfied with your own.
From the book Happiness from the Inside Out. Copyright © 2009 by Robert Mack. Reprinted with permission.
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Hot New World Library titles —
save 40%!
(Please order by July 6, 2009.) |
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