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One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began. – Mary Oliver

 

Live your life on purpose.

Why?

I’ll give you two reasons:

1. Life is too short not to live it on purpose.

2. Living with purpose and meaning anchors you and gives you something to hold on to when the storms of life blow your way.

Because we all know the first reason well (although it is quite easy to forget), I want to focus on the second one.

 

How to live life on purpose

Although the idea of living life on purpose makes sense, the question is: How do you do it?

One of the reasons I like the quote above by Mary Oliver is that she shows us action and intention are involved. You knew what you had to do, and began. It’s not about knowing your life purpose and sitting back to admire it. You take action.

So now the question is: How do I begin – what do I do?

And the answer is: You practice your Core Gift.

 

Your life purpose in action

I like to call your Core Gift your life purpose in action. It is the thing that you do that is so easy for you and so energizing that it’s often called being in the “flow.”  It’s the action that helps you fulfill your life purpose.

Your Core Gift is something you are born with and it is different than your talents and skills. While a skill is something you learn, and a talent is an innate ability that you are good at, your Core Gift is the one über-talent that has been with you your whole life and directs you toward your purpose.

Although personality tests can be helpful, they tend to lump you in with others in a category with one-word descriptors or sets of letters. Your Core Gift is unique to only you and is described by a statement. Here are a few examples:

My Core Gift is helping mutual understanding to take place. I do this by teaching, leading, and sharing myself.

My Core Gift is providing balance. I do this by being in situations where I can be honest, peaceful, and a focused, competent problem solver.

My Core Gift is “composting.” I do this by demonstrating that there is nothing that cannot be transferred to riches by allowing the heat and energy of disintegration to take place.

 

Being who you are

So, how does knowing your Core Gift help you become more resilient? Your Core Gift is who you are and what you do. You bounce back into your “core shape” when difficulties arise because it is who you are. As Oscar Hammerstein once wrote, “Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly . . .”

When the squalls in life blow your way, your anchor that holds you steady is your knowledge of who you are as a Gifted person. You know you can be no other so you are more easily able to bounce back.

 

Discovering your Core Gift

How do you name your Core Gift? I’m doing a workshop in a few weeks here in the Bay Area that helps you do just that and I’ll describe it below.

But, if you’re not in the area or can’t make the workshop, a couple of good resources are a blog post I wrote awhile back about finding your Gift and a wonderfully detailed post  written by Tina Suh of ThinkSimpleNow.com.

 

Your Core Gift is living life on purpose, with purpose. It is about doing. You have much to bring to this world.

 

Takeaway points: Living life on purpose is what fuels your resiliency. The way to be most purposeful is to know and use your own unique Core Gift.

 

What’s your Core Gift and how do you put it into action?

 

Who Are You, Really? Discover Your Core Gift

Workshop to be held Friday, February 24th, 9 am to 4 pm, Palo Alto, Ca.

Want to discover your Gift with a group of other like-minded people? More information can be found here.

 

This is a guest post by Ernest Schmidt, psychotherapist and author of Tackling Anxiety: How to Regain Your Peace of Mind. I asked Ernie to share some ideas on how to bounce back from one of the most difficult emotions: anxiety.

Anxiety is a very common mental health concern. In fact, just about everyone can identify a time in their lives when they have been bothered by anxiety, whether it be public speaking anxiety, panic attacks, social nervousness, or just plain old worry.

Some people experience anxiety as only a small annoyance, but many others have anxious feelings that are extremely uncomfortable, or even life altering. You can learn to successfully manage anxiety by learning about and understanding this emotion and following a few guidelines.

What to look for

Common ways you may experience anxiety are: rapid heartbeat, muscle tension, fear of losing control, the feeling of butterflies in your stomach, obsessive thoughts or worries, restlessness, irritability, and avoidance of things, people, or places that are connected with the anxiety.

This last symptom, avoidance or the act of running from your anxiety, is often the most destructive of all but is generally the least recognized when you are struggling with anxiety. You may practice avoidance by turning down quality job offers that include an element of public speaking, whereas others consistently pass up social engagements.

There are several ways to overcome anxiety, but unless you stop running and your avoidance is addressed, it is difficult to make significant and long-lasting progress.

1. Become aware

It is difficult to change something that is not fully acknowledged. To begin to acknowledge and understand your anxiety, it is helpful to create a list of all the things you have avoided due to worry or anxious feelings. Although this can be somewhat painful and challenging, it is also extremely motivating.

You might realize you have not signed up for particular college courses that involve giving presentations, or perhaps you avoid having lunch out with friends because you fear you will look strange while you’re eating, or that you can’t keep up the conversation. This tangible list allows you to focus on specific areas for improvement.

Without this understanding and awareness, the process of trying to manage anxiety is often aimless and uninspired.

2. Change the way you think

Although changing your thoughts may sound daunting, it can be relatively easy with the right guidance. A great technique is to mentally observe your thoughts when you are feeling anxious and then record them on paper.

For example, someone who is overwhelmed with change in his or her life may have the thought “I can’t handle this” or “I am going to have a nervous breakdown.” Rather than getting caught up in the worry itself, you can use your rational mind to respond to your faulty thoughts.

For instance, if you really try to define “nervous breakdown,” you will realize it’s a false term. You may be experiencing intense anxiety, but neither your nervous system nor your brain actually “breaks.” Although these mental misstatements may seem harmless, they profoundly affect your level of anxiety.

When you acknowledge and challenge these exaggerations, anxiety lessens. As with learning any new skill, changing the way you think takes time and practice, but in the end it is well worth it.

3. Face anxiety

Although it may sound counterintuitive, turning and facing anxiety is the final step in ultimately managing this emotion. By shifting your relationship with anxiety and actually seeking it out, you can forever change how it affects you.

Due to the very nature of anxiety, it causes you to exaggerate what it is you are trying to avoid, and/or it makes you feel you are unable to cope with the feared situation. I often compare anxiety to the “monster in the closet” or to the harmless “man behind the curtain” in the movie The Wizard of Oz.

Certainly, facing anxiety is much easier said than done, but when the first two steps are followed, this final step can be accomplished with less difficulty.

Managing anxiety is no easy task, but choosing to live with the damage and emotional pain it causes is a poor alternative. By following the three steps above, you can make significant progress in the battle with anxiety.

Those who become skilled at understanding their anxiety, changing the way they think about it, and managing their avoidance are ultimately rewarded with lasting freedom from this difficult emotion.

Ernest Schmidt, LCSW, is a therapist and the founder of Palo Alto Therapy. As a results-oriented practice, Palo Alto Therapy stands apart by specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for anxiety including panic, obsessive compulsive disorder, and social anxiety disorder.

Takeaway points: Running away from anxiety is only going to exacerbate the problem. Taking a breath and facing it will allow you to change your thoughts so you can change your life.

How do you manage anxiety in your life?

This month’s edition of Bounce Boosters is about being in the moment, a key component of the resiliency skill perspective.

1. Ram Dass

The next message you need is always right where you are.

2. Fr. Albert D’Souza

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.

3. Guillaume Apollinaire

Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

4. Gilda Radner

Some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

5. Caleb Baylor Hive

Let the credit card companies market as they will, the only thing that’s priceless is Now.

What’s your favorite quote?

“It’s the same old thing,” Kathy said as she settled herself in her chair across from me. “I’m not really that happy being with Mike.

“You know . . . it’s the same stuff I talk about every week: We don’t have common interests, he’s financially irresponsible, he doesn’t work full-time like I do but I still end up doing all the work around the house, and sometimes I catch him in lies.”

She paused for a moment and then sighed.

“I just wonder why I stay with him when I’m unhappy.”

I leaned back a bit in my chair and propped my chin on my hand, considering this. “Perhaps you’re comfortably uncomfortable.”

Kathy gave me a puzzled look. “What?”

“You’re comfortably uncomfortable. You’ve been doing the same thing for so long that, even though you don’t like it, you know it well and therefore you are comfortable . . . but uncomfortable at the same time.

“Change is really hard when you’re comfortable. It’s that old adage, ‘The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.’”

Kathy looked at me and cocked her head slightly to the side. I could see her trying to wrap her mind around this new idea. “You know,” she said slowly, “I think there might be some truth to that. I am comfortably uncomfortable.”

What about you?

Do you find yourself vaguely or even actively unhappy, but unsure as to why you’re not doing anything to change it?

You might be comfortably uncomfortable right where you are. Even though you don’t like what is happening in your life, you’re in your comfort zone where it is safe and you know the terrain.

What happens if you step outside of your comfortably uncomfortable spot?

The downside is that it might be scary and will certainly be foreign territory for you.

The upside is that you open yourself up to new opportunities, new ways of being and relating, and the possibility of long-term contentment and well-being. And we know that a sense of well-being is vital to our ability to bounce back from life’s hard knocks.

4 steps toward change

Now, how do you get out of that comfortably uncomfortable place that is lulling you into ongoing dissatisfaction? Try these steps:

1. Acknowledge that you’re stuck.

It’s hard to notice that you’re comfortably uncomfortable. Why? You’re used to it. You’re . . . well, comfortable. In an uncomfortable sort of way. So the trick is to become very honest with yourself and acknowledge the reality of your stuckness. And that’s it. No need for judgment about it.

2. Notice your emotions.

Change is rarely easy so check out how you’re feeling about leaving your comfort zone. You may be feeling some or all of these: fear, trepidation, hope, anxiety, anger, excitement. Welcome whatever your emotions you are experiencing and remember that emotions just are and they tend to be transitory. If you are feeling scared now, it doesn’t mean that you will always feel scared.

Just notice your feelings and try not to have judgment about them.

3. Remember that you have made it through tough times in the past.

Now that you’ve identified your emotions about the change, recall a time in the past when you felt the same way. You must have made it through that time because you’re here reading this now, right? Maybe it was hard, but you did it.

4. Call for reinforcements.

One of the best ways to make a change is to bring trusted friends in on your plan. Kathy eventually decided to end her relationship with Mike, but she needed the emotional support of her sister and best friend before she could actually feel safe enough to do it. Remember that having supportive people around you is a vital resiliency tool and also a great way to provide yourself with an emotional cushion as you step into the unknown territory of change.

Tired of being uncomfortable? It’s time for a change.

You can do it.

Takeaway points: It’s very easy to slide into a place of being unhappy but you are so used to it that you are comfortable. You don’t have to stay there. You can increase your well-being by acknowledging the reality of your situation and gathering up the courage to change. With a little help from your friends!

Have you ever been comfortably uncomfortable?

Yes, you read the title right. Happiness irritates me.

The other day I was in a large bookstore in the Self-Improvement section. I was doing some research for a book I’m writing about resiliency and my task was to scan all of the books in this particular section.

I could feel my happiness-irritation button being pushed as I walked along the shelves with my head tilted sideways to read the titles. It seemed that every other book was related to happiness.

How to be happier, how to be spontaneously happy, the secrets to happiness, why you aren’t happy, why you should be happy, how to make others happy . . .

Happy, happy, happy.

I enter “happiness” into the book search function on Amazon and it spits out 22,524 books that talk about being happy.

Happiness vs. Well-being

Now, I know that a recent post of mine had to do with happiness and included research about the happiness set-point. However, the difference is that Sonija Lyubomirsky set her definition of happiness as equivalent to that of well-being.

And this difference between happiness and well-being is huge and important.

My beef with happiness and the self-help books that promote it is that the marketing slant leads us to believe that we must experience the emotion of happiness at all times. Otherwise, there’s something wrong with us.

Luckily, there are researchers out there who are correcting this misperception. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, says that happiness isn’t about just feeling positive emotions constantly. Instead, it involves what he terms PERMA: Positive emotions, Engagement (the feeling of being lost in a task, aka “flow”), Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment.

Seligman also talks about this concept as well-being, or the ability to flourish, rather than happiness.

The downside to short-term happiness

A Wall Street Journal article interviewed researchers who refined the term well-being even further. Hedonic well-being is the short-term good feelings we get when we have a good meal or watch a good movie. These emotions are what we usually think of as happiness.

Eudaimonic (from the Greek ‘eudaimonia’) well-being results from engaging in meaningful activity and having a purpose in life.

A San Diego State University study noted that symptoms of depression, paranoia, and psychopathology have steadily increased among students in an analysis of the student population from 1938-2007.

A possible culprit?

Researchers at San Diego State University who conducted the analysis pointed to increasing cultural emphasis in the U.S. on materialism and status, which emphasize hedonic happiness, and decreasing attention to community and meaning in life [eudaimonic well-being], as possible explanations.

Happiness and resiliency

From a resilience perspective, we know that it is important to feel confident in yourself as well as capable and effective in life. The market-brand definition of happiness provides the opposite, leaving you feeling as though there is something wrong with you because you can’t get a firm grasp on this slippery fish called “being happy.”

Resilience is much more about eudaimonic well-being, the idea that we need to plug away at the things that are meaningful and purposeful in life, even if we don’t get that immediate hit of happiness we’re “supposed to” experience.

It’s about taking the long-term approach and actively practicing the components of Seligman’s PERMA idea. This kind of well-being roots us and provides a strong anchor for when the storms of life surge into our personal horizons.

Happiness irritates me.

But I wish well-being for all of us.

Takeaway points: There’s nothing wrong with being happy. But it’s important to realize the we don’t have to feel happy constantly. And that pursuing meaning and purpose in our lives is what gives us the strong anchor of well-being and resiliency.

Am I the only one irritated by happiness?

Model your life on the spiral, not the stick. – Carol Orsborn

I love this little instruction. Orsborn says that in our society, we are encouraged – pressured, perhaps – to achieve success and to achieve it in a straight line of ascent – a stick. We’re not supposed to let anything get in our way; we just need to keep after it, keep moving, keep fighting . . .

The problem with this kind of approach is that we then have no flexibility and our vision becomes too narrowly focused. When the strong winds of life come along, then, we have no ability to bend with them and, because our sight is so limited, we can’t see our way to shelter.

Orsborn suggests that, instead of striving to be a stick, perhaps we should aspire to the spiral. Life is constant change and the spiral teaches us that, even as things change, they come back around again. Not in an endless circle, but in a gentle upward growth.

Being fully alive

In nature, destruction often is the requisite state that precedes new growth, like the bursting open of a pinecone in the heat of a forest fire, releasing its seeds to the soil. When you are fully alive, you are continually asked to let go of what you have in order to make space for new possibilities to come to you.

And sometimes that letting go can feel like you are moving down the spiral for awhile. This is often the time when you are cocooning and allowing the old you to slough away while the new you is growing, soon to spread your wings. Being open to new growth will soon have you moving upward on the spiral again.

Mastering the art of resilience

So, the trick is to allow for the difficult times and to realize that they are as much a welcome part of our lives as the good times, for it is in the hard times that the sapling that can bend in the fierce winds grows strong.

Rather than saying that you will succeed, allowing nothing to get in your way, mastering the art of resilience requires you to do whatever it takes, understanding that many things are going to get in your way.

Takeaway points: The spiral shows us that, although life is ever-changing, it has a steady pattern that helps us to continue upward, even as troubles visit us. Resilience is honoring the destruction with the construction and realizing that both make us strong.

Is your life modeled after a stick or a spiral?

Orsborn, C. (1997). the Art of resilience: 100 paths to wisdom and strength in an uncertain world. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Photo credit: NicoCanali

What makes you happy?

Money? The newest iPhone? The good health of your family? A promotion at work?

Some interesting work by University of California researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky not only suggests where our happiness comes from, but shows how to get more of it.

Pieces of the happiness pie

Dr. Lyubomirsky proposes that there are three components to the happiness pie: a genetically-based “happiness set point,*” life circumstances, and intentional activities and practices. She has broken these three areas into percentages regarding how much they are responsible for your happiness.

You might want to be sitting down for this first one. Ready? A genetically-based happiness set point – something you inherited – is responsible for a whopping 50% of your overall happiness.

Life circumstances – things like the aforementioned iPhone, family health, and work promotion – account for only 10% of your happiness. You thought it would be more, didn’t you?

That leaves intentional activities aimed toward positive emotion providing you with 40% of your happiness quotient.

Now, here are a couple of important things to know:

• Your happiness set point is genetic and therefore impervious to change. You’re stuck with it. The idea is that no matter what happens – good or bad – you tend to eventually settle back into your inherited level of happiness. So, there’s no use trying to make an impact on your happiness set point.
• You could try to improve your life circumstances by getting more stuff, striving for career goals, and finding the perfect partner. But not only do life circumstances only account for a small percentage of your happiness, they are subject to a very human process: hedonic adaptation. In a nutshell, this means that we very quickly adapt to new things in our lives, so our happiness about it is short-lived.

Taking action toward happiness

So that leaves us with intentional activities as the remaining piece of the happiness pie, a piece that creates 40% of our well-being.** Lyubomirsky believes it is this component that we have the most control over and that allows us to take action rather than merely react when it comes to creating happiness.

So what are these activities that promote positive emotions and well-being? Lyubomirsky suggests three well-researched practices:

1. Committing acts of kindness. Doing nice things for others tends to up your happiness quotient. Curiously, Lyubomirsky found that doing several acts of kindness on the same day – rather than spreading them out through the week – generated the greatest jump in well-being.

2. Expressing gratitude and optimism. Keeping a list of things you are grateful for really does help make you happier. An intriguing note on this component is the discovery that making a list one time per week created a greater boost in happiness than making lists three or more times per week.

3. Processing happy and unhappy life experiences. This is where it really gets interesting. It turns out that talking or writing about your life experiences is helpful in only one of these conditions: the negative experiences.

Why? Apparently, talking to a friend or writing about difficult times in your life helps you to create a story and structure around the event, an act which helps you make sense of it and adjust to the experience more easily.

Positive experiences, however, generate more happiness if they are thought about privately. This allows you to savor and re-experience them without having to analyze them. It’s perfectly fine to talk with others about great things that happen to you; this will brighten your friend’s day, too! But be sure to remember and relish those good events in your life in your private time, too.

I asked at the beginning of this post, What makes you happy? I hope that these three strategies will help you arrange the pieces of your happiness pie so they bring you tasty, sweet joy!

Takeaway points: Life circumstances only make up a small portion of our happiness and our genetically-based “happiness set point” can’t be changed, so what can we do? The practices of acts of kindness, gratitude, and processing life experiences can boost our happiness through intentional action.

This post is based on the following paper by Sonja Lyubomirsky:

Lyubomirsky, S. & Della Porta, M.D. (2010). Boosting Happiness, Buttressing Resilience: Results from Cognitive and Behavioral Interventions. In J.W. Reich, A.J. Zautra, & J.S. Hall (Eds.) Handbook of of Adult Resilience (450-464.) New York: The Guilford Press.

*Of course, more research is being conducted about this moderately controversial topic. However, you can see these papers for the basics of the happiness set point:

Lykken, D. (1999). Happiness: What studies on twins show us about nature, nurture, and the happiness set-point. New York: Golden Books.

Lykken, D., & Tellegen, A. (1996). Happiness is a stochastic phenomenon. Psychological Science, 7, 186-189.

**The terms “happiness” and “well-being” are interchangeable in Lyubomirsky’s research.

Depression is insidious. You feel sad, you lose your concentration, nothing is interesting to you anymore, and – to top it all off – your thoughts become stuck in an endless loop of self-criticism.

There are many ways to address depression. Researchers interested in decreasing depression and increasing resilience have found that using a number of intentional activities* creates positive emotions and helps reduce feelings of depression. These activities will be discussed in a forthcoming post.

The first step, though, is to work toward letting go of the critical rumination going on in your head. Why? Because it is very difficult to even consider pursuing intentional activities with thoughts such as:

“It won’t help.”

“Why even bother?”

“I’ll just screw it up.”

These thoughts make your mood bleaker and keep you on the sofa rather than feeling up for trying a new activity or intervention.

So, what to do? Use mindfulness.

Now, to a depressed person, even the encouragement to be mindful can sound like a daunting challenge. “Oh, great. Something else to learn and mess up.”

But wait. Here’s all you have to do: Just notice something and have no judgment about it. So, when you hear yourself think something like, “Why even bother?” you just notice the thought. You don’t decide it’s good or bad, you just take note and then let it go.

Life coach Rick Carson calls these negative thoughts “gremlins.” In his book, Taming Your Gremlin, Carson refers to the wise words of the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu:

Simply notice the natural order of things.

Work with it rather than against it.

For to try to change what is only sets up resistance.

Carson bases much of his work on this idea: Simply notice.

Don’t judge. Don’t place meaning. Just notice your thoughts and let them go. Same with your moods. Simply notice that you’re depressed. No need to place any particular import or opinion on it. Just notice it.

This practice of simply noticing is very freeing. One of the key ideas in Carson’s book is don’t grapple with your gremlins. As soon as you start wrestling with the critical thought in your head – your gremlin – it wins. The gremlin gets bigger and more powerful the longer you grapple with it.

Just noticing your thought or mood and having no judgment about it takes all the power away from it.

The authors of The Mindful Way Through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness, encourage us to view thoughts as “passing mental events” that come and go and that don’t necessarily equate to true reality. They write:

Thoughts involve interpretations and judgments, which are not in themselves facts; they are merely more thoughts . . . This ever-so-simple, yet challenging, shift in the way we relate to thoughts releases us from their control. For when we have thoughts such as ‘This unhappiness will always be with me’ or ‘I am an unlovable person,’ we don’t have to take them as realities. When we do, we succumb to endlessly struggling with them. (pp. 59-60)

Want to take the important first step in bouncing back from depression? Simply notice your thoughts and moods without judgment. The sense of freedom will be worth it.

Takeaway points: When depressed, our thoughts can easily become self-critical and circular. Simply noticing them rather than attaching a judgment can free us from the prison of rumination that accompanies depression. If you think of your critical thought as a gremlin, remember that it only has power when you pay attention to it, so try not to grapple with your gremlin!

Is it hard for you to simply notice?

*Lyubomirsky, S. & Della Porta, M.D. (2010) Boosting Happiness, Buttressing Resilience. In J.W. Reich, A.J. Zautra, & J.S. Hall (Eds.) Handbook of Adult Resilience (450-464). New York: The Guilford Press.

Need help with depression? I’m available for therapy in Los Altos, Ca. Call me at 650-529-9059 or email me for an appointment or free 30-minute consultation.