Success Scaffolding: Goals & Wishes

Hello, Readers, here’s what’s been happening. I went to the hair salon. I love going there. I love my stylist, Donna, and the whole place.  It's her place, and it’s just nice. Everyone is close there. For example, I walked in and Donna was finishing with a client and she said hello to me and I saw that her eyebrows were covered in dark smudges. Then I saw that the other stylist had dark smudges on her eyebrows, too, and that she was touching up the roots of the manicure-pedicurist. Everyone was dying her hair and eyebrows. Rinsing and dousing in between clients. A perfect ballet of personal care. Now, I have not dyed my eyebrows nor my hair, but I do get highlights. As I said to my friend the other day, I’m just another Jewish woman slowly going blond. Donna takes good care of me.  

Anyway, I told Donna that I finished my manuscript and sent it to Agent. I told her that I hope Agent is still my agent, and that I’m not sanguine about that. Then I started twirling off into the wings about whether Agent is really going to pull through and be Agent for me, or if I will have to find a new agent. And Donna put her hands up. Whoa, whoa, she said. Let’s take a moment to celebrate. 

About completing my manuscript, she meant. Did you open the champagne? To which I said, Not yet, because I don’t know what Agent is going to say about or do with it. So Donna says, But celebrate. You wrote it!

This was true, and also true was that I had done nothing in particular to commemorate it. I finished my manuscript draft. I pushed send. I pushed send on an email with an attachment. The attachment was my manuscript, well, the rest of manuscript. Ninety thousand words. Sent. I texted the husband who was counseling the family of a stroke victim and texted back, Congratulations. I got a little electronic confetti. 

But, but, but…. I said, thinking of all the things left to do and all the possible ways I can be rejected, shot down, and made miserable about this sent manuscript.  And also about admitting to it in public, for example, here on my blog. 

And then Donna said that I need to stop with the negativity.  This is a nice thought, of course, stopping with the negativity. However, the debate is still open whether this is the dog of negativity, or negativity’s litter mate, pragmatic hedging. 

Now, pragmatic hedging is a term I have made up. Therefore, I am on that side of the debate. Pragmatic hedging descends from the superstition, common among the Jews I know, of mitigating all good fortune or even hopes and dreams of good fortune with a muttered, “God willing.” It’s like spitting over your shoulder or whatever. I don’t actually think it’s a Jewish thing. It’s a human thing-- for the neurotic human. It’s making sure that the God you don’t even believe in won’t smite you for daring to have a less than humble aspiration or a modicum of good fortune. It’s a kind of reflexive self-humbling so the Universe doesn’t decide to squish you.

But Donna had the scissors and I was in the chair. Her eyebrows, by the way, were by now rinsed. She said, because she is a big Deepak Chopra fan, Here’s what you’re going to do. You are going to manifest what you want to happen. 

Sounds great, I said, my pragmatic hedging ready to intrude immediately. I shushed it. 

Here’s how you do it, she said. You think about what you want. You imagine that publisher calling about the book. You picture it. Then, you imagine how you will feel when it happens, really feel it. Then you feel it. Give yourself over to it. 

Okay, I said. As I mentioned, she had the scissors. I had the pragmatic hedging in a down-stay. 

Now, I have written much about visualization in this blog, and some about abundance theory, also known as the Law of Attraction. This is the stuff of Deepak Chopra. He’s one of a long line of peddlers of this theory that if you want to achieve something, you think positively about it and attract it to you. That’s the theory. 

Also known as hooey, flim-flam, and bunk. Sorry, you Law of Attraction believers. BUT. Visualization can be an excellent tool. Visualizing a positive outcome can be helpful. It can prime you to work harder, because you’re primed to be a bit more optimistic than, uh, pragmatic. And there is a more complex form of visualization that is also helpful. It is called mental contrasting. Mental contrasting is visualizing one’s goal and also visualizing the obstacles one is likely to encounter when striving for said goal and how to overcome them. Mental contrasting helps in setting appropriate goals, because once you envision your ultimate goal, you then lay out a series of smaller goals you need to accomplish on the way there. 

This is a lot of work. Trust me, I have been doing it for a long time with this book. First a first draft, shitty a la Anne Lamott. Then another draft. And another. Then the proposal and the agent and the editor and publisher and the--- I have overcome multiple obstacles. The book, she is done. I mean, she needs polishing and revising, but her essential organs are intact. At this point, things are out of my hands. I have sent the book out. So manifesting—what harm can it do? 

Donna is not a nut. I would not let a nut take scissors to my head. What she also said was that I had to let go of how this wish manifests and just focus on the wish. I took that to mean I have to drop the reins of worry for awhile, while I wait to see what Agent says or—my big fear being that Agent doesn’t respond at all—doesn’t say. Then, I can act further. Find a different agent or whatever. Meanwhile, I can think happy thoughts about the day the publisher calls and says, I love this book! Let’s get it out on the shelves. 

Pragmatic hedging, by the way, is a relative of mental contrasting. Mental contrasting is all about being pessimistic—or realistic—in goal-setting. It’s about figuring out the contingencies that might make reaching a goal difficult and then getting around those. This is turning a goal into a series of small goals or steps. All in the head, mind you. It’s a form of proactive positive thinking. It’s positive, because you visualize your goal. And it’s negative because you visualize obstacles; that turns out to be positive, though, because you visualize obliterating those obstacles. Fortunately, Unfortunately. Anyone remember that children’s book? Fortunately, I got the last seat on the airplane. Unfortunately, the plane exploded. Fortunately, I did not die. Unfortunately, I was thrown from the plane. Fortunately, the plane had parachutes. Unfortunately, the parachute did not open. Fortunately, there was a haystack. Unfortunately, the haystack had a pitchfork in it. Fortunately, I missed the pitchfork. Unfortunately, I missed the haystack. 

And so on. Here is someone reading it aloud, in case you missed it in your elementary school education: 

Tangential to this hair styling situation, was the dharma talk I listened to while walking the dog the other day. The actual dog, on a teaching about putting the burden down. Buddha said to put down all the things we carry with us, including—according to Gil Fronsdal, the teacher—the search for Nirvana. The spiritual search can be a burden, too. Anything we struggle with represents an attachment. The idea is to somehow exist with those things WITHOUT struggle. 

Putting down the burden. That is the appeal of manifesting. That was the appeal the other day. To just let go of all the pragmatic hedging. To let go of all the caveats to the wishes and to just imagine having a simple form of wish granted, to imagine how that would feel. 

The Law of Attraction, or Abundance Mindset

Let’s talk about abundance and the Law of Attraction. But first, observe the photo. 

This was one of our finds at Le Marche aux Puces-St. Ouen in Paris. Le Marche aux Puces-St. Ouen was just below the Louvre on my list of must-sees for our trip. This is the famous Paris Flea Market. Or one of them. They’re featured in every home design magazine. Clever interior designers are always touting their finds from this warren of stalls and alleys. Antique bargains, clever repurposed chairs. Even though we live with situations like this, 

I think of myself as a decorator-manqué. So, I thought maybe, just maybe, I would find a console for our mudroom. 

Well, this was our first find. A catuck? A ducat? Who can say? I’m sure that nutty fan of stuffed and mounted wildlife The Bloggess would enjoy this. 

It wasn't a bargain-priced but indisputably elegant console for the mudroom. No, it was more a reflection of my mindset as we arrived at the eerie and half-deserted warren of alleys and stalls. This was how I'd been feeling of late. It’s chic. It’s wearing a scarf. But, really, it’s kinda poorly put together. And also discarded.

Oh, alright, I’m being melodramatic. But I was feeling a bit blah. Due to waiting - apparently endlessly - for an editor to accept my book proposal. I was in limbo, and enough time there and I start to feel blah. I’m trying to come up with a better way of using this taxidermy catuck as an analogy for my state of mind, but Readers, it’s just not flowing. Suffice it to say, this item was odd and so was my mood. 

As I mentioned, the flea market was semi-deserted when we arrived. It was midday on a Monday, and many of the stalls were shut. I wondered if we’d made a mistake in coming to this vast place. In the moment, I lacked courage to scavenge for furniture, so I trailed along after the family, past bins of this and that.

After stumbling around purposeless for a while, the 8th grader said, “Here’s what I want: I want to find an old key that I can turn into a necklace.”

Lo and behold, a few yards along, we came across a large bin full of rusty, old-timey keys. I haggled with the seller, who wanted 5 Euros for this rusty, old, worthless key. (Bargained him to 3 - still robbery). 

But despite the obvious rip-off price of that key, it was a great find. It unlocked something in me that I had forgotten. My first thought was a memory of one of the friends I made at the law firm where I had my first job out of college. She was a few years older than me, a divorced mom. One night, at her house, she told me that she was going to ask the universe for the right man. 

“You have to be really specific,” she told me. “But you have to ask the universe for what you want.” Shortly thereafter, she did meet a great guy, to whom she is still married, several (ahem) decades later. I, by the way, apparently forgot to ask until much later. 

Anyway, there by the keys, I realized that I had once again lost all sense of abundance and possibility. I was dragging around with a feeling of scarcity. A poverty mindset. This is easy to fall into when things are in limbo. This is easy to fall into when something bad happens. For example, one of my dearest friends is having a heart problem. But when the 14 year old found her key, I found that idea of abundance again. 

Finding the key turned out to be symbolic, too. 

After remembering Debra and her invocation of the universe, and remembering that I have at times felt connected to a sense of abundance, I wished (to myself, because of all people, the husband is definitely not a believer in that kind of hokum) that my book proposal would get picked up by a publisher soon. Two days later, my agent emailed that I had another new reader.  Coincidence?

Probably. Some people openly embrace this whole idea of abundance versus scarcity. Donna, my hair stylist, for example, was not at all surprised to hear about the 14 year old and the key.  “It’s the Law of Attraction,” she said, nodding and smiling. 

So is the secret to success invoking the Law of Attraction? There’s a whole major strand of success literature that says it is. The mystic success people that started back in the late 1880s, flowered in the 1920s, and keep repeating on us every decade, like a bunch of bad burps. Deepak Chopra being the one with most credibility. That lady who wrote The Secret being one of the least. I wrote about it here. 

It’s always there, this idea of asking the universe for what you want and then by your positive thoughts manifesting it. But the flip side of this is ugly. There’s a potential for self-blame that goes along with it. If what you want doesn’t manifest, did you fail to think positively enough? And if something negative happens, is that then the fault of your negativity? If you are depressed, can you never expect anything good to happen?

The grain of truth in this idea of the Law of Attraction, however, is that priming your brain really is effective in influencing your performance. Daniel Kahneman, who is not at all into hokum and who has a Nobel Prize, talks about how easily influenced the brain is. For example, in one famous study he takes two groups of college students and puts them in two rooms. To one group, he shows a bunch of slides of elderly people doing slow things. To the other, he shows slides of people enjoying vigorous activity. Then he asks everyone to move to a third room, and - this is the actual metric he’s seeking - he times them as they move from one task to the next. The ones who saw the elderly, slow people moved slower than the other group. 

Or, there’s this. When I was in high school, I had a crush on a guy who drove a lime green car. Suddenly, I saw those cars everywhere. Were there suddenly more of them? Nope. I was just primed to notice them. The 14 year old wanted an old key. She was thus primed to pick out a bucket of them from amongst all the related and unrelated bric-a-brac at the flea markets. 

So did asking the universe for a new reader bring me one? 

Isn’t it much more fun to think so? 

The result of this key find was that I reinstated my morning practise of thinking of three things for which I am grateful, and then making one wish. And just this week, after wishing that my agent would call and tell me a publisher likes my proposal - and also that the dermatologist would find no new skin cancers at my appointment - she did! And he didn’t! 

Focusing on what I’m grateful for and looking for positive outcomes hasn’t erased negatives, but it has set them into the background. 

I no longer feel like the catuck/ducat. 

I have to revise my sample chapters in my book proposal. Wish me luck! And I will keep you posted. 

Onward!

What a Tangled Webinar We Weave....*

Sir Walter Scott lived here.
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I'm still mad at myself. One of the bloggers I've been reading for a while recommended a webinar by someone he's been following for a while. Since the webinar was about increasing your blog's readership, I thought, what the hey-ho, I'll give it a try.

Now the business success gurus like Mr. Dale Carnegie came up with this idea that you've got to give something to get something. In retail, this is known as the loss-leader theory of success and it is straightforward. You offer some product free, or at a huge discount, to get people in the door of your shop--or shoppe, if you're sophisticated. Getting them in the door once, even if it means you don't earn top dollar off that customer the first time, builds loyalty, etc, etc, and makes it more likely they'll come back to your business next time they need something you sell, and they'll pay full price for it.

In other types of business this give-to-get theory works more abstractly. Maybe you offer a free class, or take up a philanthropic cause and spend time you could be raking in the dough working on that cause, with a little advertising of your business on the side. Plus you're there, a representative of your business, doing this philanthropic work, and therefore your business becomes linked with charity, honor, and integrity, which might lure more people there. Give-to-get.

The abundance success gurus like Deepak Chopra also subscribe to this give-to-get theory. Waters are murkier here, but the idea is that once you start "giving" then you start "receiving." All of which is explained in metaphysical terms both flowing and vague, so that trying to understand them is like trying to get a clear picture of yourself reflected in the water.

What I mean by that analogy is that getting a clear picture of yourself reflected in water is nearly impossible. Even this stillest ponds have their water striders creating ripples. The image is always a little distorted. Distortion is good business for the mystical-spiritual-abundance theorists (Deepak Chopra, for example), because then things are open for interpretation. Like what exactly they mean by "abundance." Or "giving," or "receiving." Most of us choose to comprehend abundance as quantities of lucre. I'm just being honest. But the abundance gurus squirm out of that definition by saying it's much more--or less--or different--than material gain. It's an internal sense of abundance.

I have no problem with either actual, material abundance, or an internal sense of it. Don't get me wrong here--which I doubt you are, if you know me, or read me regularly.

What I do have a problem with is people who try to shimmy their way around the give-to-get thing by pretending they're actually giving something, when what they're actually doing is getting, getting, getting. There are a lot of people out there trying to succeed in a material way who've absorbed this gotta give to get thing. And they're all on the internet. Many of them have blogs. Lots of these blogs are about how to write, or how to write good blogs, or how to blog, and therefore how to write good blogs. Their blogs start out seeming interesting, but turn into repacking the same old stuff, and then turn into sales pitches for their ebooks, which turn into sales pitches for their talks. Because, let's be honest here, they all want to be rich and ingenious enough to give a TED talk, but have to settle for JrTEDxx. So they decide that they can follow the give-to-get rule of success by GIVING a webinar, and hopefully starting on the road to GETTING a TED talk.

Mostly, I avoid these people. However, readers, I got sucked into one last week. It was about how to develop your blog's readership, and I read about it on a blog by someone who blogs and writes ebooks about how to write.

I'm still mad at myself, because I wasted sixty whole minutes of my afternoon on this webinar. This webinar promised to teach me 7 Foolproof ways to increase my blog's readership. Forty-five minutes into this webinar, created by someone who looks like he could be my son and talks like every salesman you've ever avoided most assiduously, I had one (1) foolproof way to increase my blog's readership. Then I learned what I'd been realizing for the last 30 minutes, that for a certain (undisclosed until the last minute of the webinar) sum, I could sign up for a series of these webinars to learn the other 6 methods.

Now, I'm not saying that one tip was stupid. It was actually kind of interesting. It was an instruction to only present one idea per blog post, along with a graphic illustration of a way to format the blog post. However, it took all of (I'm being generous here) 5 minutes to present both the idea and the format. Meanwhile, it wasn't until that 46th moment that the creator of the webinar mentioned that this webinar and all his information was directed towards businesses and bloggers who want to sell something, and not to writers.

And then--and I have only myself to blame for this--I listened to the last fourteen minutes of this webinar.  Now, I justify this additional waste of fourteen of my life's precious minutes as research. Research into the sheer audacity of this webpreneur in diapers; research into the way many of these self-help success books are applied by up-and-coming would-be successes; research into the expanded sales pitch. Mostly, however, I wanted to know how much this brazen young man planned to charge for the other 6 Foolproof methods.

Perhaps I ought to hold off on revealing his price until my next blog post. After all, I've already given you a couple of tidbits of information. However, since I've already failed to apply the 1 Foolproof method of attracting readers that I learned at this webinar, I might as well give it up right here.

Ready?

He was selling his other 6 points for $500. That's right. Another six hours of filler with a couple of pointers thrown in for $500.

Which just goes to show, there's no such thing as Foolproof. I am here to tell you that.


*"Oh, what a tangled web we weave...., etc" by Sir Walter Scott.

A Baker's Dozen Rules of Success

Otafuku, Goddess of Mirth

It's summer, or so I've heard, although the current weather in New York State suggests otherwise, and summer is a time to strip down: in clothing--to a single layer; in meals--to light fare; and in blog posts--to an easy-to-read list.

Here are 12 nuggets sifted from the many books I've read in the last few months, plus one extra, in a list.  And, readers, I dreamed it. Isn't that weird? That's only happened to me once before. I dreamed a poem, and then I sort of woke up, so I scribbled it down on a notepad. When I got up for real in the actual morning, it was just a line of gobbledygook, of course. Alas. My life might have taken a totally different course. (Possibly a terrible one--poets are usually obscure and earn very little dinero until they go out in a flame of tragedy, Billy Collins and Maya Angelou excepted. No thank you.)

1. Smile and be strategic. Think what you want to achieve from any transaction. (Dale Carnegie)
2. Build your goals around solid principles. (Stephen Covey)
3. Find people who believe in you to help you believe in yourself. (Noah St. John)
4. Shape your mind to support your goals through positive thinking, affirmations, or intentions. (Norman Vincent Peale and Everyone Else)
5. Focus on the present. (Carnegie and others)
6. Find time to meditate. (Deepak Chopra and others)
7. Make sure you rest. (Carnegie)
8. Develop a growth mindset—believe you have the capacity to change and improve. (Carol Dweck)
9. Choose goals that are difficult but achievable. (Heidi Grant Halvorsen)
10. Find work that is intrinsically rewarding: provides you with autonomy; provokes your desire for mastery; fills you with a sense of purpose because you're doing it to make a difference in the world. (Daniel Pink) 
11. Work that challenges and engages you will help you achieve Flow, which leads to   the feeling of satisfaction, happiness and success. (Czikszentmihaly)
12. Practice, practice practice, but practice wisely. Seek out coaches or mentors who can keep you working your edge. (Matthew Seyd and others)
13. Don’t worry about success, find meaningful work and do some good in the world.  (Real actual people I know who are successful)

Not bad. And the only mention of money was my own, in the second paragraph. Just saying....

Einstein Didn't Drive My Carpool

I am still contemplating those variables x, y, and z in Einstein's definition of success. Work, play, and z--keeping your mouth shut. I haven't figured out what he meant by z. Surely he didn't mean it literally. So what other possibilities are there for Z? Silence. Keeping a secret. Being discreet. Knowing when to speak and when to remain silent. Avoiding conflict. Behaving honorably. The possibilities are multiple, but I'd like to think that sometimes in the equation, z=0.

Because I want to talk about how well I've learned a few lessons of success, which I can't do, if I need to keep my mouth shut. So I'm going to speak hypothetically here.

Let's say you live in suburbia and have a child who is deeply involved in an activity--say soccer--that requires her presence several days a week. Suppose you are lucky enough to link up with the Carpool Angel, an indefatigable and always cheerful mom with organizational skills and an (unfamiliar to you) lack of aversion to using the telephone. This mom, let's call her Angie, organizes about seven children's schedules into a spread sheet and splits the driving duties among their families. And also suppose that this other mother, call her Mildred, decides, after driving your child home the first night, your first year in suburbia, that because she has to turn left and drive a little out of her way to get to your house, she can't do it. What do you do?

Well, of course you hold a grudge.

Fast forward two years. Let's say Mildred has never spoken to you since she informed you that having to drive 2/3 of a mile round trip (at 30 mph that's about 70 seconds) out of her way to drop off your child-- NOT an exaggeration--made her too late getting home. Let's say you've tried to catch her eye, or to smile. You've even said hello. But never mind. You decide she's either painfully shy, or (much preferable but more unlikely) guilty about dropping your child, or, alternatively, mentally disturbed. In any case, you give up. Two years pass in which Mildred never drives your child home, and you don't drive hers, either, by fluke of scheduling. Or maybe Angie knows something and keeps you separated. Good old Angie.

Then, let's say that a few weeks ago Mildred needs a ride home for her child. You happen to be taking Angie's turn at the carpool on that night, so Mildred calls you. Mildred assures you that to drop off her child is not out of your way at all because they live on the same block as Angie's child.

So Mildred needs your help. You're tempted to say no. You're tempted to tell her you'll bring her child home to YOUR house and Mildred can fetch her from there. You're tempted to tell her you'll drop off her child at Angie's house when you drop off Angie's daughter, but you couldn't possibly go further down the block. But you don't. Of course not. Of course you take her child home. After all, you don't want to take out any silly grudges on the children. And you have the benefit of feeling virtuous. Always a plus.

Fast forward again, to last week.  You're planning on attending your high school reunion in a few weeks, and you need help getting your child to soccer while you're away. Due to various permutations of scheduling, you need to ask Mildred for help. She is your last resort. You've already been to Angie and to Eeyore. All that's left is Mildred. You don't have Mildred's email, so you call her. Of course she does not answer her phone. (Aversion to using the telephone.) You leave a message.

The next day you get a one line email from Mildred (how did she get your email address, you wonder?) She can't take your child on Saturday because she doesn't have room in her car.

You check your spreadsheet again and see that Mildred takes her child and two others, so she ought to have room in her car. And anyway, aren't you the only person in suburbia without a minivan?

You write her back and suggest that she was confused on the date, that you don't need the ride for your daughter this Saturday, it's next Saturday, and that you're really in a bind. Can she double-check her schedule?

You go about your business, a little angry but also curious how Mildred is going to respond to this challenge. Because it is a challenge. You know it's that extra 70 seconds that Mildred doesn't want to spare. Or maybe she doesn't like you, or your child. After all, she rebuffed your early attempts at friendliness. No further word from her arrives.

In yoga class the next day, the teacher asks how everyone is doing this morning, and you mutter under your breath, "Holding a grudge," which your friend in class catches. After class, your friend at yoga asks you what's on your mind and you tell her the situation and she is righteously angry on your behalf, and she thinks you need to persist with Mildred and call her on her behavior.

When you check your messages later, you find an email from Mildred. She wants to know if your husband can drop off your daughter on the date in question, at Eeyore's house. Apparently she now has room in her car for your daughter, but she can't make that extra stop. She doesn't say either of these things, but that is the implication.

Yay. Partial victory. Nevertheless, you find yourself shaking with fury when you read her email. Her one line email.

But here's where all my research and thinking about success kicked in, my scores of readers. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Instead of following your inclination and picking up the phone and demanding of Mildred that if she can fit your child into her car, she can drive the extra 2/3 of a mile (in your fantasy you go over the math with her) round trip to pick her up from home and laying all your injured self on her-- instead of that, you go into the other room, and you meditate.

And by meditate you mean you sit cross-legged on a cushion and fume. But you do it for ten minutes or so, and finally, a feeling of mild amusement shows up in your brain, followed shortly by Dale Carnegie, he of winning friends and influencing people. You think, What am I trying to accomplish? I will never show Mildred that she's wrong. She'll never see it that way. My goal is simply to get her to pick up my daughter from home and drive her to soccer so my husband can drive our other child to the other activities she has to attend simultaneously while you're at your high school reunion.

So you call Mildred. You know she wants to communicate by email. But you want to speak to her. She doesn't answer her phone, of course. You leave a message. It's a long message. You say you gather from her email that she can drive your daughter that day after all and you're appreciative. You say you understand that minutes are precious, particularly in the morning when you're trying to get children out of the house. You say that while you wish it were possible to drop off your child at Eeyore's house at that time, it is impossible, and that if she, Mildred, can't take your daughter to soccer, she will have to miss the game. You say that you would appreciate it, as you're sure she appreciates that you are willing to take her child when the need arises, and as you're sure she appreciates how we all need to band together and help each other deal with these emergencies. Then you hang up the phone.

Let's say that a few hours later you get a one line email from Mildred. She will pick up your daughter on that Saturday at 9:45.

You have succeeded. Deepak Chopra and Dale Carnegie would be proud. You have quieted your mind and thought positively. Stephen Covey would tell you that you focused on your Circle of Influence, where you can make changes and not on your Circle of Concern, where you cannot, and were proactive. They would all tell you they're glad you spent money on their books.

However, you have not kept your mouth shut. In this equation, z=0. So have you failed? Hypothetically speaking?

What is Worse than Failure?

Emerson's Study. Photo by Benjamin F. Mills, Boston. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Someone asked me the other day how to reconcile Deepak Chopra's idea that we each have something unique to give the world and it's our job to find it with the reality that some people don't seem to find that unique something.

She was thinking of her mother, now in her 70s, who's frozen in a state of not exactly misery, but of futility. Stuck with the idea that there's nothing much left for her to do or be. Limited. Let's call it limited. And this woman, the daughter, feels there's so much possibility for her mother, only her mother doesn't see it.

I can think of people I know like that.

Success as Change

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You know, Stephen Covey has quite a program for personal growth--also known as personal change. All of these self-help people do.


I've said it before, but I'll say it again. On one level, all these self-helpers, whatever their subjects may be--happiness, contentment, success, fulfillment--are talking about how to live. They all have these programs for changing yourself.


Maybe you're an outside-in kind of person, so you like Dale Carnegie's "smile and the world smiles with you" approach. Maybe you're more of an analytic navel-gazer, so you like assignments that have you come up with your values (Covey, for example). Maybe you're more spiritual, so you like Deepak Chopra's methods. 


Whichever you prefer, I would like to point out that some changes are much easier to make than others.


Eons ago I attended a parenting talk at the younger daughter's nursery school. The school psychologist addressed the tendency people have to fall back into situations that are "comfortable" for them. Comfortable, in this sense, means "familiar," what you were accustomed to as a child. So if you came from a warm, open, loving, and supportive home, you'll tend to recreate that for yourself later in life. And if you came from a dysfunctional home where perhaps you were ignored or neglected or worse, you'll tend to feel "comfortable" re-creating these things in your adult life. Indeed, if you start feeling too happy, you might be uncomfortable, and screw things up for yourself until you feel "comfortable" again. 

Deepak Chopra Tells Us How to Succeed

Deepak Chopra's written a lot of books, given a lot of talks, and he tweets a lot, too. He's an active purveyor of the secrets of Abundance (aka, success, wealth, and happiness). Before he became this guru, however, he was a long time student of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, better known as the dude who started Transcendental Meditation. And he was once a doctor, too, although since he's  acquired so much Abundance, I doubt he practices medicine anymore. 

According to his website, Dr. Deepak Chopra has written over 60 books. I've read one,  The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success,  which turned out to be a condensed version of a different book of his, so I feel totally confident that I have a full understanding of his teachings. Which I will pass along to you, my tens of readers.

Why? Well, I actually found his book quite compelling.

I'd have to characterize it as Buddhism Lite--or Hinduism Lite, since he was born in Delhi, or was it New Delhi? Or maybe it's just New Age. Anyway, at the very least it's well-written, even if he does crib from Florence Scovel Shinn.

 In brief, the 7 Laws are:

• Underneath it all, we are pure consciousness or "pure potentiality," 
• so if we get in touch with that universal energy, we can channel it for our purposes. 
• Giving. 
• This is pretty clear. Have to give to get. Give and take keeps abundance circulating. And, the kicker--you have to give what you want to receive. So, you want money? Got to give to get, baby. 
•  Karma, or cause and effect. 
• Your choices affect you and those around you, so make them for their benefit as well as your own and you create good karma. 
• What to do if you've inherited a lot of bad luck (karma)? Well, learn from the bad stuff and try to make good choices as mentioned in previous sentence, so that you nullify the bad effects of previous bad, um, effects.
• Least Effort. 
• Meaning to stop struggling against yourself or the world. When you live "in harmony," your efforts flow and so does good old abundance. 
• Intention and Desire. 
• I've talked about this in a previous post. The idea is you plant your seed of intention in your mind (in your pure consciousness, that is), and let it sprout and bloom. 
• This is right out of Buddhist dharma talks I've read in Thich Nat Han and others: that our minds possess the seeds of all possible emotions, and that the ones we water with our attention are the ones that grow. 
• So if you're all negative and grumpy and water those seeds, you develop your negativity and grumpiness; but if you cultivate happiness and gratitude, then, well then you become an annoying Pollyanna. But I've seen that movie, and really, she was so hard to take, because life really laid the s**t on her. 

Sorry, I digressed.

•  Detachment. 
• This is actually also very fundamental to Buddhism. It means here that you plant your seed of your intent: for success at whatever your endeavor is--and then you let go of trying to control the way it comes about. 
• No micro-managing allowed. You must plant your wish, then allow it to come to fruition at the right time in the right way. Breathe. 

And finally,

• Dharma. Which here means purpose in life. 
• Which here means that once you listen to your true self (how to do that follows) and discover what your unique talent is, you pursue that.
•  And according to Deepak Chopra, we each have a special and unique something. So we find that something, and align it with our deepest wish. And all will be well and abundance will flow.

Wait, I forgot to mention one thing: this dharma has to be used in service to others in order to create real  abundance in your life.

Wow. that's a lot of info there, my tens of readers. And I didn't even get to it all. Like how to implement these laws. Phew. Tune in next time, when I add my three cents to my two cents. And get: Abundcents.

Ouch!

Scofflaws, Karma, and Success

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I've been reading about karma a lot lately. The mystical-spiritual success folks like Deepak Chopra and Florence Skovel Shinn (more on her later) are big on it.

One aspect they're particularly keen on is choosing your words carefully, so you create good karma. Right speech, in case my tens of readers aren't up on Hinduism and Buddhism, is part of the Eightfold Path to enlightenment. For Chopra this is all about creating an intention that can then grow into the perfect success you crave. He suggests writing a list of your desires, which you look at before meditating, before turning in for the night, and first thing in the morning. Stating what you want plants the seed. Time, and your rapt and focused attention on the present, takes care of the growth and blooming.

Shinn is more about getting the right prayer to Jesus Christ (oy) and having your wish granted out there in the world right now. For example, she talks about a client who was broke at Christmas time and who needed cashish. F. S. Shinn told this woman to act as if she would have the money by buying wrapping paper and ribbon, meanwhile saying a prayer. Dubious, the woman left. She did as she was told, and that very evening, upon returning home, discovered a check in the mail from a distant relative.

Deepak Chopra is a little less definitive about wish-granting. He clearly has a thorough knowledge of karma. In fact, he cautions that once you plant your intention, you have to let go of trying to control how and when your wish will be granted. This is his escape clause to his otherwise pretty astonishing assertions of our personal power to attract "abundance" to ourselves. Karma may cause this abundance to occur in a profoundly different way than we might have intended. Or at a different time.

Say, in another life?

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So how bad is it that I lost my temper on the phone when some poor telemarketing person interrupted me, deep into my list of desires, to ask for the scofflaw who used to have my home phone number? I didn't mean to. It was just that I was so deeply concentrating that the call really got to me. In fact, the number of calls I receive for this debt-ridden, possibly ill and elderly man named Joseph Addario (this is a common name, so I mention it without pointing a finger at a particular scofflaw) has dwindled from several a day, two years ago, to one or two a month, usually.

You may ask why I didn't change my number two years ago. And I considered it, but when I learned that phone numbers become available for reuse after only 30 days, I figured I'd be just as likely to end up with a different scofflaw's former number, so I stuck with the scofflaw I knew.

Yesterday I recognized the number on caller id as one that had been calling for a few days, annoying me. So this time I answered, preparing to give my long-winded explanation and ask them to remove me from their call list; but I just wasn't as nice as I could have been. I asked them to remove my number a little louder than I meant to. As I mentioned, I was deep in thought. I was considering the implication of adding "screened porch" to my list. Should I ask to be able to add it on to my house? Or would it be better to simply ask for a screened porch -- once I relinquish my attachment to the way in which my intention for a screen porch manifests (Chopra word), I will be able to see the good, perhaps, when I am forced to sell my current house and move to a small shack--with a spacious screened porch attached.

I hope Joseph Addario is having a good day.