Weeds or Wildflowers: Where Does Your Attention Land?

Experiences matter. 
Experiences of worry and anxiety or happiness and love can make real changes in your neural networks. Your attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner: It highlights what it lands on and then sucks it into your brain—for better or worse.

There’s a traditional saying that the mind takes its shape from what it rests upon. Based on what we’ve learned about experience-dependent neuroplasticity, a modern version would be that the brain takes its shape from what the mind rests upon. 

Consider two mind-focused options & outcomes:

1. Self-criticism, worries, grumbling about others, hurts, and stress = a brain shaped into greater reactivity, vulnerability to anxiety and depressed mood, a narrow focus on threats and losses, and inclinations toward anger, sadness, and guilt.

OR,
2. Resting your mind on good events and conditions (someone was nice to you, there’s a roof over your head), pleasant feelings, the things you do get done, physical pleasures, and your good intentions and qualities = over time, a brain with a different shape, one with strength and resilience hard-wired into it, as well as a realistically optimistic outlook, positive mood, and a sense of worth.

Reflect back over the past hour, day, week. Where has your mind been resting? 
Are you creating, thus experiencing a life of weeds or wildflowers?

Living mindfully,

Dana

(excerpted -with my amendments- from Dr. Rick Hanson's, Hardwiring Happiness.) 

What's Worth Doing in Your Life? Is It Worth Dying For?

Sushmita Banerjee was committed to helping poor Afghani women receive medicine they would otherwise not have access to. She also wrote about and had a movie made about escaping the Taliban. Until they caught up with her. "They had heard of the dispensary I was running from my house. I am not a qualified doctor. But I knew a little about common ailments, and since there was no medical help in the vicinity, I thought I could support myself and keep myself busy by dispensing medicines. The members of the Taliban who called on us were aghast that I, a woman, could be running a business establishment. They ordered me to close down the dispensary and branded me a woman of poor morals.

"They also listed out do's and don'ts. The burkha was a necessity. Listening to the radio or playing a tape recorder was banned. Women were not allowed to go to shops. They were even prohibited from stepping out from their houses unless accompanied by their husbands. All women had to have the names of their husbands tattooed on their left hand. Virtually all interaction between men and women outside the confines of their own homes was banned."

She was gunned down this week. 

What's worth doing in your life, despite the odds? Are you doing it? 

Passion and purpose,

Dana

Too Much or Too Little - It's Up to You

What is meaningful living if you don't take risks, 

embracing all that comes with venturing into unchartered waters? 

What life-enhancing risk is waiting to be unleashed by you?

What is holding you back? 

Ask yourself, "What will my life be if I choose not to take the plunge?" 
If your answer is, "Not well-lived," then get yourself to the cliff's edge.

Conviction trumps fear when the risk is right. 

Personally, I covet the epitaph: "This Woman Died From Living Too Much."

Supporting you to dive in...rather, to take flight,

Dana

How to Take a Hit and Rise Up Soaring

    You've been positive, you've been focused, you've garnered support from mentors and confidants, but alas, you've not attained your desired outcome. Maybe it's 'the' perfect new job, a career-boosting client or Ms. or Mr. Right who makes your heart sing. Not receiving the offer, landing the contract, or being rebuffed is a major hit. A panoply of responses overwhelms your mind, heart and body. "It isn't fair!" "Now what?" "What's the matter with me?" you hear yourself repeating. All you see is a blurry gray void. Frustration, anger, sadness, embarrassment and physical exhaustion seep from every pore.

     How do you move from devastation to righting to walking to soaring? 

• It starts with wallowing! Wallow? Yes! (Of course, wallowing does not include hurting yourself, others or a wall!) A first step of recovery is recognizing your authentic reactions. The key here is: wallowing is only the first step. Staying in that place, however, is not self-honoring. One powerful practice from a Native American tribe is repeating a sorrow or negative circumstance three times only and then letting it go.
• It's remembering and reclaiming who you are, job, client or partner aside. 
• It's making new choices about:
• what you say -  "I'm valuable." "I wonder what's next?" "I've got potential."
• what you see - a vast horizon of possibilities (with 8 billion people on the planet, it is quite likely that other career options, clients and partners exist)
• what you feel - open, curious, proud, energized, or at least looking forward to being so
• Activate and boost these choices by engaging in activities that make you say, see and feel these ways: exercise, hobbies, meditation, being outdoors,...
•  It's about connecting with supporters, asking for help in refocusing and restarting your efforts
• It's having gratitude for yourself, your supporters, your learning (from this hit and otherwise), your presence in the present and a future that you are going to create

What do you do to survive and thrive from a hit? Please share your tactics!

Supporting you,

Dana

Nay, It May Not Mean What You Think It Does

    Whether you're aware of it or not, up to 92% of your communication is exhibited through your body language. While you can try very hard to control it, involuntary shifts in your body language during an interaction reveal that you're having a reaction to what's being said. Being authentically curious during a conversation, facilitated by a smile -- because your physical body affects your language and your emotions and vice versa -- opens up possibilities that a ridged forehead and rigid mindset prohibit.

     Since communication is a two-way street, it's just as important to pay attention to another's body shifts, eye and other facial movements and changes in skin coloration as clues to a match, or not, between what you're trying to convey and what they're hearing.
     Here are two essentials to keep in mind as you interact:
        1) Communication (words) involve three components: Your words, the words themselves, and another's words. Given that we each have our unique understanding about what words mean, we cannot assume that the words we use carry THE universal definition and will therefore be clearly understood by everyone else. Everyone's unique experiences drive their unique definitions of words that may or not fit your or the dictionary's definitions. Shifts in another's body language as you're speaking may be a clue that there is a disconnect. Checking for understanding is essential. Just ask!
        2) Look for patterns versus isolated instances of body shifts as clues about what's really going on for the other person. As with words, we each have our unique understanding about what body language means, so we cannot assume that movements are universally made and understood. Someone placing their hands tightly over opposite elbows while you're speaking may signal a retreat because that's what you do when you don't like what's being offered or requested. But they're not you (neither the person nor their body language). Their gripping action may just as well mean that they overdid it on the golf course over the weekend, so they're trying to ease the ache in their elbows! Don't assume. Ask if you see/sense that there might be a disconnect. 

The goal in communication is to authentically connect so that 

you can each get what you want from the interaction.
That requires speaking, listening and observing.

Do you know what I mean?

Nay, What Do You Mean?!

Dana