Feeling powerless? Here's what you can do!

Issues tend to show up in my clients in clusters -- all of a sudden, a few will be in grief, or contemplating a major life change, or wanting to get over a heartbreak, for example. (I don't know why this is. Maybe it's just an astrological thing? One of my teachers said that when her clients all turned up with the same issue, it was always something she was going through, or had just gone through, but that doesn't seem to be the case for me.)

Lately, I've been having a run of people feeling powerless (names have been changed, as have the situations, though slightly, so as to protect the innocent):

• Joe's wife was raped. He knows he can't really help her, except to be there for her, and so he feels angry, out of control, and powerless.
• Jack, a supervisor, is about to have all his reports, who are contractors, changed out from under him, because his employer is changing temp agencies. While he's not happy with most of the current bunch, the thought of having to train all new employees is daunting. No one asked him if this is a good idea, so he feels powerless and unheard. 
• Jane worked towards a hellish deadline for a month, and then got sick with a flu which became pneumonia. She feels like her body has betrayed her, and feels powerless against larger forces.
• The company that employs Jenny is about to be sold. She wonders if she'll have a job in another few months, through no fault of her own. This has happened to her before, so she feels powerless against the larger economic forces.

What can you do if you feel powerless? 

• Recognize this as a reality check. Reality can sometimes be unpleasant, even downright ugly. That doesn't make it your fault, so don't beat yourself up about it. A rapist needs a victim, who knows why it was Joe's wife? Companies change their vendors -- and now Jack knows how important he isn't. Jane had an opportunity to learn the limits of her body. Companies get sold -- and unless you are the 1% (or probably the .1%), you are, in fact, powerless. 
• Recognize the power you DO have. Joe can comfort his wife in the aftermath of her trauma. Jack can teach his new workers, perhaps even to do a better job than the old ones. Jane can listen to her body and perhaps take better care of it. Jenny can polish up her resume, start networking, and in the longer term, work towards a specialty that is unique and will give her staying power.
• Look for resonance to earlier events in your life, and resolve them, so that you're only reacting to what's going on now, and not also to the earlier ones. Joe was bullied when he was in junior high, and his wife's ordeal brought that up for him. By resolving the remaining feelings about being bullied, he could be there more effectively for his wife, without letting his anger at the rapist be amplified by his anger at the bully. 
• Look for your lesson in this. There is a school of thought that says that your soul/ higher self  agreed to be in your situation for your own spiritual growth. If you learn your lesson, then the event creates meaning in your life. I think this is often, but not always, true. Accidents do happen. 
• Look for the deeper structure that makes you feel powerless. What is it in society that creates rapists, or allows them out on the street?What laws allow companies to act as they do, whether it's changing vendors with no notice, or assigning impossible deadlines, or slashing jobs? 
• Band together to create change. Remember the old line, "You can't fight City Hall"? You can -- just not all by yourself. This is why unions were created. It's originally why democracy was created. It's why people raise money to research cures for diseases. It's why the Occupy movement exists. With whom can you ally yourself to create the change you envision? And yes, be that change, wherever and whenever you can.

Sen. Paul Wellstone's Death, or, Know What You Know

Did you ever have that niggling feeling that you knew something, but you couldn't quite put your finger on it? Or maybe you had the feeling that you weren't being told the whole story, or worse, an outright lie, but when you brought up your doubts, everyone told you you were nuts?

Those things happen to me, with fair regularity, but it can take quite a while -- years, decades, sometimes -- to find out I was right. Here's one of those stories, but it's going to take a little while to get there.

I grew up in NJ, at the Jersey shore (yes, there is a group of people who are really like that; I avoided them like the plague). In fact, I grew up at northernmost end of the Jersey Shore, quite close to NYC, where rum running was invented. (During Prohibition, booze was smuggled in by ship to the north Jersey shore, which was one of the ways the Mafia made money, and grew powerful.)

This really was Mafia country. So when I was a kid, and someone had a light plane accident, or a boating accident, we knew it wasn't really an accident. I mean, even 10-year-olds knew that.

Which brings me to Paul Wellstone.

When he died in a 'light plane accident', I strongly suspected it wasn't an accident. And there were some plausible theories about the balance of power in the Senate a a motive for murder, yadda yadda yadda. But those didn't really explain it.

Last night, I was reading my most recent Harvard Magazine, and I came across this, in an article about Sen. Al Franken.

"Paul Wellstone didn’t mind taking unpopular positions. In 1990, his first year as junior U.S. senator from Minnesota, he voted against the Gulf War. President George H.W. Bush’s reaction: “Who is that chickenshit?” An equal-opportunity offender, Wellstone was the only Democrat to vote against President Bill Clinton’s welfare-reform bill. And when the second Bush administration was rounding up votes for an invasion of Iraq, Wellstone said he heard from Vice President Dick Cheney: “If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you. There will be severe ramifications for you and the state of Minnesota.”

Wellstone voted against the war, but Cheney never had to retaliate. On October 25, 2002—just two weeks after the Senate vote—a plane carrying Wellstone, his wife, his daughter, two aides, and two pilots crashed in northern Minnesota."

Umm, Cheney never had to retaliate??? Huh? If a guy is willing to shoot his hunting partner in the face, what do you suppose he'd do to a guy he didn't like?

So there it is, right there in black and white for everyone to see. All you have to read is the first 2 paragraphs, though the rest of the story is wonderful. (The author, Jesse Kornbluth, is no slouch, having written for New York Times, New York, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest and more.  So I assume journalistic competence here, that he isn't making this up.)

Here's what gets me: At least one person, who knew about the threat and was willing to talk about, lived to talk about it. That means this mass murder was meant as a message to someone else. Ever wonder why the Republicans walk in lockstep?


My larger point is this: while you do have to listen to what is out there, what other people think, hang on to that niggling sense that all those people may be wrong, and you might just be right.

Science overturns view of humans as naturally 'nasty' - The Times of India

My personal opinion is that we picked a relatively nasty race of apes to ensoul (e.g. chimpanzees v. bonobos), and there's still a lot of hope:

Science overturns view of humans as naturally 'nasty' - The Times of India

Feeling unmotivated lately? You're not alone...

A number of my friends and clients have turned up sick and/or unmotivated lately. These are not slackers, but successful women (and the occasional man) who are suddenly, though temporarily incapacitated (the flu, a broken leg), or uncharacteristically lazy all of a sudden. A few are on overwhelm after months or years of doing too much, and just can't seem to get going right now. Most of them are energetically sensitive, as well.

They all seem to feel guilty about their lack of 'get up and go', too. This makes it worse, of course, because the guilt ties them up in knots of self-doubt, and sucks their energy so it can't go into healing.  Even worse, they don't want to admit it to anyone, so each of them thinks she's alone in feeling this way.

When one person says something to me, it's about that person. When 2 people say it, well, maybe it's a coincidence. When 3 or 4 or 10 say it, it's a pattern. Well, folks, this is a pattern. It's not just me noticing the pattern, either - 2 of my healer friends have noticed the same pattern in their friends and clients, as well.

What's going on?

I don't know for sure, but I'd like to offer 2 hypotheses:

1. Part of your energy is going towards changing society on the inner planes. Remember, we are all one, along with the planet, and so when things change, we all have to change as a system. Think of a mobile here -- if you tap one piece, all the others rearrange in space. (For more on this, listen to my interview of Roger Nelson about the Gaia Project, here or here in iTunes.) Sometimes, mild illnesses serve a larger purpose, whether it's personal, like giving you time to re-evaluate, or global, like helping the earth evolve.
2. You are acting out of learned helplessness. If you try and try and try, and nothing comes of your efforts, you give up. This has been demonstrated even in rats. Given the stacked nature of the deck in today's economy, I suspect many people are here.  (See this "60 Minutes" story for examples. )

I actually think most of the ones I'm seeing are the first kind, and I have to acknowledge that the second kind are probably legion as well. 

Here's the point: if you are feeling unmotivated lately, please know it is not completely you -- and at least stop beating yourself up about it. This will free up some energy for you to heal, and ultimately to get your motivation back.

If you are type 1 for lack of motivation, please know, this will pass, and your motivation will return at the appropriate time. If you are type 2, then it's time to remember this NLP precept: If what you are doing isn't working, do anything different.

(Call me at 888-4-HOLLIS, which is 888-446-5547, if you want help looking at your motivation issues.

What's your Losada ratio?

What's the best way to improve any relationship? 

This is so simple, it's almost mind-blowing. You ready? Here it is:

Say more positive things to the other person.

That's it! Simple, huh?

I'm reading "Flourish" by Martin Seligman. In it, he quotes a colleague, who says:

"We go into companies and transcribe every word that is said in their business meetings. We have done this in sixty companies. One-third of the companies are flourishing, one-third are doing okay, and one-third are failing. We code each sentence for positive or negative words, and then we take a simple ratio of positive to negative statements.

"There is a sharp dividing line... Companies with better than a 2.9:1 ratio for positive to negative statements are flourishing. Below that ratio, companies are not doing well economically."

They call this the Losada ratio.

But you can't be Polyanna about it, either --- a ratio above 13:1 diminishes your credibility.

Think about this. Although they were talking about work groups, why wouldn't this work for personal relationships, too? In fact, there is evidence that marriages break up if that ratio is less than 5:1.

So how do you improve your Losada ratio? Here are a few ideas:

• Catch people doing things right -- and then tell them about it, preferably in front of others. 
• Appreciate them at random just for being who they are. (Intermittent feedback has been shown to be more effective than consistent feedback.)
• Talk about things that are going right for you, instead of whining about what's going wrong.
• Actively look for the silver lining in the dark cloud, and talk about that. See the opportunities offered by the problems.
• Express your appreciation for your surroundings.
• If you're looking forward to something, talk about that. 

You can only change your own communication -- but since we all affect others, you are a role model.  The more positive you are, the more positive others in your sphere will be. And that makes for a much more pleasant world.

What do you know? And how do you know it?

Many years ago, I was a part owner of a business that sold equipment to fire departments, so I got to know lots of firefighters, mostly fire captains and fire chiefs. One of those chiefs, who'd been a volunteer for over 20 years in a fire department that protected part of Hwy. 80, told me he'd never seen a fatal car wreck where the driver was wearing a seat belt. He didn't know why, but suspected it was because it kept the driver better oriented to what was happening.

Times are about to get very weird. (See this and listen to this and this to learn about what I mean. They are long, and well worth the time and effort. The written one is well-researched, and the audio is convincing.) Imagine that you're alone, flying down the highway at top speed, when the road suddenly disappears. Maybe you're just on grass, or worse, mud. Or you're suddenly in a forest, having to drive around trees that you never noticed before. And all kinds of people are suddenly clamoring for your attention, some from the back seat and some from the forest.

It's definitely time to fasten your metaphorical seat belt. How do you do that?

Ask yourself how you know what is true. The natural world is a great place to start. Plants can't really lie, and animals find that pretty hard, too (the Oscar-worthy performances of our cat to scam us out of more food notwithstanding). What do you feel in your physical body (or your electromagnetic body) when you're in nature? Maybe you'd describe it as peaceful, or grounded, or one of a thousand other words, but go deeper. Use kinesthetic words to describe the feeling -- are you feeling light or heavy? warm or cool? tense or relaxed? tingly? These are just suggestions -- it doesn't matter how you feel, but rather that you identify it.

Once you have that down, how do you know when someone is telling the truth? Again, use what you feel.

Or here, maybe you have an inner voice, the still small voice within, that says, "nope", or some variant of that. It's important to pay attention to the quality of that voice. Is it male? female? neither? How fast does it speak? Does it's inflection go up and down, or stay fairly flat? Where does the voice seem to come from? Is it inside your head, or somewhere outside that you can point to?

Or maybe it's not a voice, exactly. Maybe it's a sound. Maybe it beeps when you're getting a lie, or the truth for that matter. Again, it doesn't matter how you know the truth, but that you identify how you know it. 

It's important to keep that truth meter on all the time. The best lies include some elements of truth, and you have to be discerning to tell which is which.

Remember, as things get strange, you can't drive looking in the rear view mirror. If things change significantly, then habitual ways of acting must shift. You wouldn't drive the same way in snow as you would on a sunny warm day, would you? Look at the conditions ahead.

As you watch significant changes happening all around you, it might be easy to be seduced by the spectacle into just watching. This is equivalent to trying to drive while watching out your side window. You're likely to crash, because you're not watching where you're going.

Similarly, it will be important to stay focused on your responsibilities as things change. This will be different for each person, and only you will know your particular path through the new landscape. How will you know? By knowing your own truth.

Here Are All My Webpages

Problems I can help you with:

How to find Mr. Right
Is he The One for me?
How to know when a relationship is over
Getting through a divorce
Passing the Bar Exam -- or any other exam
 
     Have you failed the bar? More than once? Are you beginning to wonder if you’ll fail the bar again, despite all that studying?

    Perhaps if you failed the bar it has far less to do with studying than from suffering from a common problem: test anxiety.

    I can help you get over your test anxiety, and start feeling more positive and hopeful about passing the bar the next time.

Put Off Procrastinating!

Last week, I filed for a copyright on a training course I finished a while back. (It's called Coaching Your Client to a Successful Close, and it teaches basic coaching techniques to real estate brokers and agents. as part of the required 45 hours you need to renew your CA agent or broker license every 4 years). I procrastinated filing for the copyright for a couple of months, which is not really like me, only to discover that it took under an hour, and only $35.  What a waste of all the emotional energy involved in procrastination -- the weight, the dread, the self-judgment!

And some problems have a way of getting bigger if you procrastinate them. A small plumbing leak, dealt with immediately, is no big deal. But if you don't deal with it immediately, it can cause a mold infestation, or the warping of your floor, or worse.

This got me to thinking about procrastination -- why we do it, and when. There seem to be 4 reasons to put something off:

1. Not knowing how to do it
2. Being overwhelmed
3. Expecting a bad outcome
4. Having higher priorities on other things

Let's take these in turn.

Not knowing how to do something - Yes, it's scary all right. You have no idea how to begin.You don't even know what you don't know. This thing looks HUGE.

There really is no cure for this one, except to start. Start by asking questions, or googling anything you can think of that might be related. Then follow wherever the trail leads you. I had no idea how to do a copyright. Was I going to need an attorney? How expensive was this going to be? Terrifying.

Information has a way of showing up when you need it, though. I got an email list notice for a free telesiminar with a copyright attorney. The attorney said you could do it yourself (sigh of relief) and recommended her own book, of course. So I bought the book, which said you should go to www.copyright.gov.

On copyright.gov, there was an ebook explaining the procedure (not all that helpful) -- and instructions on the website as to how to do it. Basically, answer a few questions, pay your $35, and then upload your file. That's it!

Being overwhelmed - There are a few cures for this one:

• Chunk it down - There's an old saying, "The journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step." And so it is with projects -- they can all be broken down into a number of steps. Any one step should not overwhelm you. If it does, it's not really one step! Break it down into even smaller parts, till each one feels manageable.
• Get help - No, you can't do everything yourself. Lately, I've been having huge technical problems because various versions of the software programs I use don't play well together. I can't figure this out myself -- so yesterday alone, I spent 6 1/2 hours on the phone with tech support from Microsoft and Apple. As this seems excessive, I'm considering finding someone who can do it with a little less involvement on my part.
• Pace yourself - You can't do it all at once, either. Choose one step, preferably what seems like it should be first, and do that. Don't expect yourself to do all the steps in a particular time frame. You may not be in control of all the timing -- things take as long as they take, not your idea of how long they should take.

Expecting a bad outcome - Maybe you dread doing something, so you put it off. That dread is a part of you expecting something bad to happen when you take action. What is it that this part of you is expecting? When you've identified the expected problem, you can then identify what you can do to ensure that what you expect doesn't happen.

Let's say you need to change an appointment with someone, but you dread doing it. Here's where it's important to check inside. Why do you dread it? When you check inside yourself, you may discover that part of you is afraid of offending the other person, or afraid that if you ask for the change, you'll never get an appointment at all. When you realize this, perhaps you'll think of things you can do to short circuit the problem, like asking on the phone, instead of by email. And you'll remember that sooner is a much better time to solve this particular problem than later.

Having higher priorities on other things - This is not really procrastination, but rather the realization that you can't actually do everything at once, and some things are more important than others. If you've relegated a particular job to a lower priority, then stop calling it procrastination, and stop beating yourself up for ignoring the task!

Concidence, Synchronicity -- or Telepathy?

On Saturday morning, I went to the Farmers' Market, as usual. I got hungry while I was there, so I stopped at a pupusa stand which makes an amazing meal of a bean, cheese and pork pupusa (a kind of stuffed tortilla) with spicy, vinegary coleslaw and hot tomato sauce. Yum! The only drawback is that this is definitely not fast food -- there's about a 20 minute wait from when you place your order till you receive it.

While I waited, I perused Facebook on my iPhone. One of my friends had posted a link to a new blog post I'd been awaiting for a couple of weeks. I knew my husband had been awaiting it as well, so I called him right away. I don't normally use my phone when I'm out and about unless I absolutely have to, so this was somewhat out of character. He knows I don't like to be texted, so this is a bit out of character for him, too. (He knew I'd never answer the phone if I were driving, which explains the text.)

When he answered, the first thing he said was, "Did you get my text?" I hadn't gotten a text message from him -- but within 30 seconds before my call, he'd texted me to say that this particular blog post was up!

Is this merely a coincidence? According to Webster's dictionary, a coincidence is "an accidental and remarkable occurrence of events, ideas, etc. at the same time...".

Well, okay, it's definitely remarkable, but is it accidental?

Is it more? Is it a synchronicity?

According to Wikipedia, "The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurrences that are meaningfully related."

Maybe, maybe not.

Is it telepathy?

My definition of telepathy is mind to mind communication, unmediated by physical world communication. That is, if we had already spoken and planned to contact each other when the blog post came out, it wouldn't be telepathy. If we looked at each other, shared a meaningful glance, and said, "I just saw this post", it wouldn't be telepathy. But since we were miles apart, and had no communication before the almost simultaneous communication, it could be.

So which is it? My vote is for telepathy. Maybe telepathy explains this particular synchronicity and what others might call a coincidence.

How Do You Know Whom to Trust?

This is not knews to anyone, but our institutions have broken down, and you can't trust them any more:

• Government: The entire Iraq war was based on lies. 
  
• Elections: The Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case allows private groups, funded by corporations, or even foreign governments, to say whatever they want to influence an election, unhampered by any accountability -- nor are the candidates they support accountable for what these groups say. Thus our government is more accountable to these groups than to We the People.
• Corporations: Novartis does a 'voluntary' drug recall of major over the counter drugs, because prescription drugs may have gotten mixed in with them. Note that it is voluntary, not mandatory. (Not to mention the abuses of the financial system.)
• Commerce: The internet is the Wild West of commercial endeavor - anyone can claim anything, with basicailly no repercussions.
• Religious institutions: The Catholic Church effectively condones the sexual abuse of children by hiding it and not disciplining the perpetrators. 
• Journalism: Fox News spews propaganda 24 hours a day in the US -- but isn't allowed on television in Canada because it is illegal there to lie on TV.

I know I'm not the only one with this issue, because when I posted the following on FB, I got 16 likes and 20 comments, one of my most commented on posts ever: 

"I'm always looking for radio guests. Recently I was referred to someone who sent me an email which included this: " I have become one of the World’s Leading Authorities on “How Life Works”. " Am I the only one who is getting really tired of people saying they know EVERYTHING and/or promising the world?"

How do you know whom to trust? This post offers the best ways I know. Sometimes oldies are goodies -- the only thing I thought to add to that post was crowdsourcing, so I added it in the other post instead of here.

Dealing with Uncertainty

Are you feeling stressed out by the amount of uncertainty in your world?  Me, too.

When I was getting my MBA, I took a course, called "Self-Assessment and Career Development". In the course, we did a number of standard tests to learn more about ourselves, so that we could plan our careers better. One of these explored how comfortable we were with ambiguity/uncertainty. I was extremely high in this regard -- out there on one tail of the bell curve with the research scientists. 

On top of that, I have clairvoyant abilities, so I can see out into the future for planning purposes. I also have a strong belief in inertia, which is the tendency of something to remain going (or not going) along the path on which it is already going. This helps for planning, as well, and for being comfortable with uncertainty.

But I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable with the amount of uncertainty in the world right now. And if I'm feeling it, I'll bet you are, too.

I have a strong sense right now that my belief in inertia is about to be challenged. In fact, I 'see' an image of a point on a graph where the direction changes abruptly, a place where all change is possible, coming quite soon. (See bad drawing on left. Point A is the point to which I refer.) I can see that on the other side of it, things are going to look much the same as today, but much better somehow.

So how do we handle this place where anything is possible? Here is what my guides want us all to remember:

• We are all in this together. Since we are co-creating this reality, each of us must do his or her part to create the future we choose. What do you choose? Do you choose the golden rule, or do you choose a situation where he who has the gold, rules? Do you choose freedom and justice for all, or do you choose a government sold to the highest bidder? Do you choose the comfort of the dysfunctional system we have, because at least it is something you know, or do you choose to envision something healthier, even though it's scary because it is unknown?
• Vision matters. What is your vision of the future? What is yor vision for yourself? your family? your community? your country? the Earth as a whole? Since we create our realities from our (often unconscious) beliefs, it is important to notice where those beliefs lead us into fear and to shift them to more empowering beliefs. (If you want help with this, call me at 888-4-HOLLIS.)
• Collective vision matters.  If enough of us have a vision of a better world, say one of ecological health, then this is the way it will go. None of us has to know how to get there, or even exactly where "there" is, we just all have to have a positive vision. This means, of course, that we can't give in to the dystopian visions that fear creates, and that are fed to us by the media.
• Action matters. There is an old saying that 'nothing changes until something moves'.
• You only have to do your part. Feeling responsible for the future of the world be quite overwhelming. You are not responsible for the entire world; you are only responsible for your part of it and in it. Your part can be meditating and holding the positive vision and/or protesting and/or helping to develop an energy-saving device and/or planting a garden and/or recycling and/or well, you name it. Just do your part, whatever that is.

I really believe that if each of us holds a positive vision for ourselves, our families, our communities, our countries, and the planet, then it will help put us on a good track as we travel through this uncertain time.

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Trees really DO go dormant in winter!

I make a habit of saying hello to the trees as I walk by them on my daily morning walk. Not every tree, and not the entire walk, but most of the trees on part of the walk.

Because of this, I notice that trees do, in a sense, say hello back. What happens is actually that I send an energetic wave of greeting and appreciation to each tree as I walk -- and the tree sends a return wave of energy, which I can feel in my aura. Different trees are different; some sort of sparkle or shimmer as they do it, with some I can hear a sort of laugh of delight with my clairaudience. Could I be making this up? Absolutely, especially the laughter!

But here's the interesting thing. I'm up in Sacramento, and it's winter here. Though the days will generally reach the high 50s, at night, it is often below freezing, which means that the many deciduous trees are going dormant. Those which have lost all their leaves don't return my hello! The trees that have many orange or yellow or red leaves still seem to return my greeting, but it's very weak, a fraction of what I'm used to. The conifers still return my greeting at full strength. The fact that I can still feel the conifers' greeting in the normal way let's me know that I haven't changed, rather it's the trees which have.

One way we're all one - through water!

This article doesn't even mention the work of Prof. Masaru Emoto!

Scientists investigate water memory | OdeWire

Scientists Prove DNA Can Be Reprogrammed by Words and Frequencies | Wake Up World

There is some really intriguing info in here --

- DNA can be reprogrammed by voice
- Our DNA can be used for hypercommunication (telepathy, etc.)
- At least some of what we think of as starcraft are created by our own consciousness

Unfortunately, the research was all written/published in Russian. My Russian is not good enough to know how accurate this interpretation is.

Scientists Prove DNA Can Be Reprogrammed by Words and Frequencies | Wake Up World

Another Reason NOT to Get into the Wrong Relationship

Here's another lesson courtesy of my friend, Gina (see this post for the background info):

If you're enmeshed with the wrong relationship, you won't be available for the right one.

Imagine that you have a glass -- and it's full of water. How are you going to put in more water? If your heart is full of someone, and that person is not available to you, or treating you badly, how are you going to make space for someone else?

This is what happened with Gina. She remained so attached to Guy #3 that when she met someone else (I'll call him Guy #4),  she couldn't connect with him. They found each other on match.com, and quickly decided to meet for coffee. Coffee turned into 3 hours, and then turned into dinner. They clicked on many levels, and had a lot in common. Both were in the medical field. Both liked to hike. Both were spiritually aware. And it went on from there.

Guy #4 recognized that this could be very special, and Gina liked #4 a lot. But as things began to progress, Gina had to admit to herself, and to #4, that she was still hung up on #3, and couldn't really connect to #4 in the way that he deserved. She knows it's hopeless with #3, but is still having trouble letting go of him, for what looks like a much more promising relationship.

So the wrong relationship is preventing her from getting into what might be the right one. Another reason not to get to quickly involved with what might be the wrong relationship.

Book from 11/30 'Your Life, Your Relationships'

This is one of my new favorite books. I knew the information in a few of the chapters, and Wilcock is spot on. So I trust his information for the parts I don't know.

Unconscious mind knows 'what's wrong with this picture'...

New research distinguishes roles of conscious and subconscious awareness

Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees - NYTimes.com

This is interesting, because earlier research showed that, on average, there are 4 degrees of separation between 99% of all people -- and that the best ways to find people are by location and profession.

Separating You and Me? 4.74 Degrees - NYTimes.com

Ways to Handle the Holidays without Shopping

"Peace on Earth

Good Will to Men"

I don't know about you, but I don't see anything about shopping in that statement. I'm also opposed to buying things for people just because we're conditioned to do so. I mean, I love to give people presents -- what they need, when they need it, or something they'd love, when I see it -- but just because the calendar says so? I think not. (I make an exception here for kids, especially at this season, for a few reasons. First, seeing their faces light up. Second, Santa Klaus/Kris Kringle/Saint Nicolas did traditionally give kids small gifts, as well as stories of the three wise men bringing gifts to baby Jesus, so there is long tradition here.)

That said, I have to say that I'm lucky, in that my extended family either feels the same way, or at least understands that I do, and doesn't insist on a huge gift exchange. I don't remember when that shift happened, as I think the gift giving just sort of faded away.

What do you do if your family does insist? Here are a few ideas:

• Talk to other family members about your preferences
• Suggest that each family member draw the name of one other family member out of a hat, and then only get a gift for that one person.
• Suggest a 'white elephant' gift exchange, where each person brings something they have but don't want or need to give to a name drawn out of a hat at a gathering. People can trade gifts after the official exchange.
• Agree upon a dollar limit to each gift.
• Instead of gifts, make coupons for your services:
• Are you a great cook? Offer to make a meal for the recipient. 
• Are you handy? Offer a few hours of 'fix-it' services. 
• Does someone have small kids? Offer a few hours of babysitting. 

• Make a gift of food. 
• If you have a baking specialty, make that (my sister-in-law makes the world's best baklava, and there are small plates of it, cut into small squares and wrapped in paper frills, all over her kitchen, destined for many, many people -- apparently one pan feeds a crowd). 
• There are a bunch of simple recipes here. 
• Even if you can't bake, you can mix up a batch of soup mix (here's the recipe) and package it, along with the other things needed to make soup. When your recipient makes the soup, she/he will think of you fondly. Who doesn't like soup?

• Give your own art and/or crafts.
• Use your photos to make calendars -- there are lots of online services that will do this. Everyone needs a calendar -- and what's better than photos that are meaningful to the recipient? You could recent family photos, vacation photos, and old family photos scanned into digital form. You can also personalize the calendars to include family birth dates or other significant events. 

• If you aren't creative at all, and you still must give presents, here are a couple of ideas:
• Give a service (massage, psychic reading, etc. -- yes, call me at 888-446-5547 to set that up)
• Give something made in America --www.etsy.com has lots of things made by crafters right here in the US (but you do have to look, not everything is made here)

Thanksgiving Memories

"Over the river and through the woods

  to Grandmother's house we go.

  The horse knows the way

  to carry the sleigh

  through the white and drifted snow... oh!"

My dad actually sang that song as we rode -- in a car -- over a couple of rivers, and through some woods -- and by a bunch of manufacturing plants -- to my grandmother's house for Thanksgiving when I was a little kid.

And that created the first of many fond memories of Thanksgiving. For us, Thanksgiving was the one day of the year when my entire extended family (all 13 of us) were together -- my parents, my sister and me, my aunt and uncle and 4 cousins, both grandmothers and our one remaining grandfather. We kids were all pretty close in age, so we had a lot of fun, playing games, putting on skits and 'haunted houses' for the adults. And of course, eating!

Like all families who can remember an ethnic heritage other than American/English, we had not only the turkey and trimmings, but also ethnic foods. Today, I'd kill for my grandmother's noodle kugel and potato kugel (she took those recipes to her grave, and no one else's comes close). My aunt, born in Sweden, didn't make cranberry sauce, she made lingonberry sauce instead. (Tasted the same to me -- great!). When we got older, there was champagne. One year, there was even a jeroboam of champagne.

So Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I mean, really, what's not to like? You get to appreciate everything, to share that with people you care about -- and then there's all that food! For my family, turkey, stuffing, gravy and lingonberry sauce only appeared once a year.

With every bit of turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce today, I am linked to those happy memories.  Even when I cook, I think of my mother and aunt and grandmothers cooking for us all those years ago, and so even the cooking is a kind of ritual. It's a ritual that takes a few days -- and is well worth the time.

I'll be cooking next Wednesday, not writing or doing my radio show. Have a great Thanksgiving, everyone!

Are You Making These Relationship Mistakes?

Gina, a former student of mine, now friend, is newly single after a 25 year marriage. She is capable, energetic, intelligent, caring, and very sensitive energetically.

Gina married her high school sweetheart at 19, got her nursing degree, began working as a nurse and eventually had a daughter. Somewhere along the way, the bloom fell off the rose of her marriage. It was nothing horrible, she wasn't abused or anything, but after her daughter left for college, she decided it was time to move on.

She really had no experience in the dating world, and signed up for match.com with high hopes. And it worked! The first guy she met was an  engineer, both smart, funny, and what's more, she was really attracted to him. She slept with him very quickly, and enjoyed that a lot, too. Unfortunately, she discovered that he was an emotional mess, and she needed to take care of him emotionally. She wasn't sure if it was worth it, and backed off. Then she began to feel these odd pains in her lower back.

Enter guy #2 (not the second one she met, but the second with whom she got involved).  Also smart, funny, with a great job as an attorney, he was an outdoorsman, and took her on many adventures. Again, she slept with him early on, felt quite close to him and was providing emotional support. But he eventually got so depressed, so enmeshed in his divorce settlement and custody battle that he needed too much from her, out of all proportion to what he was giving, and she moved on. However, he would visit her in her dreams, and occasionally, lying in bed late at night, she'd have the sense that he was lying there beside her. Further, she began having these odd pains in her lower abdomen.

Several months later, she met guy #3. She said he wasn't really her type (but still smart, funny, and with a job he loved as a manufacturing supervisor). She slept with him, too, even though he was still seeing his ex-wife off and on. She began to get attached to him, finding more things right with him -- if only he'd stop playing pushme-pullyou games. He'd somehow become her type, and as she felt that, she began to have this odd ache in her heart, along with a vague fatigue.

What was going on?

Gina had slept with each of these men. Good sex (and she reported that  it was!) releases oxytocin, the hormone of connection. So she felt connected to each of them.

She's a nurse, so it is her job to take care of people. She'd carried this over into her personal life. Ever the helper, she had unconsciously offered her help to each of these somewhat needy guys. And they were taking advantage of it!

When we connect with people (actually with animals and even plants, too), we form energetic cords between us. Healthy cords run from an energy center in one person to the same center in someone else. The cord most easily felt and recognized runs from your heart center to someone else's. Healthy cords can also run from, your sexual center to another's sexual center, or from your third eye to theirs, for example.

Gina had formed these energetic connections. When she backed off a relationship, though, she forgot to cut the cords between her and the guy, which meant that he could still connect to her energetically and suck her energy.

I taught her to cut these cords, which she did. She'd feel relief for a little while, and then the pains would begin again. Why?

Each man, cut off from a source of energy/healing which he'd come to expect, would unconsciously feel the cutting of the cord -- and set it up all over again!

Gina had not only to cut the cords, but also needed to protect herself energetically so that the cords wouldn't reappear. When she set energetic boundaries, that is, protected herself energetically, as she cut the cords, they didn't reappear -- and she felt much better.

In sum, then, the relationship mistakes are:

1. Sleeping with someone before you really know what you're getting into
2. Forgetting to cut the energetic cords between you and another when a relationship ends
3. Neglecting to set energetic boundaries between you and another so that they can suck your energy even after the relationship is over

If you want help learning how to cut cords or set energetic boundaries, call me at 888-4-HOLLIS (888-446-5547) or send me an email at hollis@888-4-hollis.com.

Introducing Aardvark!

On Busyness

It seems an article of faith in our more, better, faster culture that being busy is good (busyness is next to godliness?). People practically brag about being overbooked, and how much they have to accomplish, as if this somehow makes them more valuable as people. I don't think it makes them more valuable, and I'm really not so sure busyness is good.

This comes from my personal experience. I have been really busy lately, not just with clients and writing this blog, sending out my newsletter and doing my radio show, which you all see, but also starting a new online business with a partner, and managing another small business I own. I feel kind of guilty all the time, because I'm not 100% on top of everything, and I can't deliver everything to everyone simultaneously. And then there are all the things I want to do, but don't have to do -- enjoy the earth, hang out with friends, help some people I believe in with their projects. A fair percentage of my available attention units are simply taken up with constantly re-evaluating and shifting priorities.

Using those attention units to figure out what to do next precludes using them to reflect, to learn from what just happened. How do you tease out all the lessons from a situation if you don't have time to think about it? If you're making a stew, and it tastes flat, and you gulp it down, all you notice is that it's not too good. It takes time and attention to actually notice what you're eating, to figure out that it needs more salt, and more of some herb, and less fat, perhaps. Or maybe you should have added the herbs as you sauteed the meat, rather than just during the simmering. But if you're so busy that you have to chomp on it while you're driving to your next appointment, you'll never notice. You won't improve your cooking, and you'll continue to make the same mistakes.

How do you get unbusy? Obviously, I'm no expert, since I'm having this predicament at the moment myself. Instead, here is Brig. General Rhonda Cornum, as quoted in Flourish, by Martin Seligman:

"Prioritize.
"A.
"B.
"C.
"Discard C."

How do you know what is an A, a B or a C?

Think of it this way -- there are two dimensions: importance and urgency.

                        Important    Not Important
                        ----------------------------------
Urgent             |       A        |            B?        |
                         |------------|------------------|
Not Urgent      |        B       |           C           |
                        ----------------------------------

A - Urgent and Important - There's a humongous fire in the neighborhood. Drop everything, pack up and get ready to evacuate NOW. (This one actually happened.)

B - Important but not Urgent - It's May in CA, where it won't rain till next October or November, and the house needs a new roof. Finding contractors, getting bids, calling all the references. selecting the roofer and scheduling the work all need to happen. They can be put on my to do list, and/or my calendar, and worked in with other things.

B - Urgent but Not Important - For me, this is the hard one. The cat is whining to be fed again. (I just fed him 3 hours ago.) He thinks it's urgent. I know he's not starving. But if I put it off too long, he may express his displeasure in ways I find atrocious -- and which are both urgent an important to clean up (not to mention occasionally expensive.)

C- Not Urgent and Not Important - The back of the refrigerator needs cleaning. Not gonna happen -- at least not until there's pretty much nothing going on in my life. Do I get up from my work, or not?

Evidence for the Existence of a Hypnotic State

Researchers have found evidence for the existence of a hypnotic state

The key was in the glazed staring eyes

Researchers have found evidence for the existence of a hypnotic state -- the key was in the glazed staring eyes
A multidisciplinary group of researchers from Finland (University of Turku and Aalto University) and Sweden (University of Skövde) has found that strange stare may be a key that can eventually lead to a solution to this long debate about the existence of a hypnotic state.
One of the most widely known features of a hypnotized person in the popular culture is a glazed, wide-open look in the eyes. Paradoxically, this sign has not been considered to have any major importance among researchers and has never been studied in any detail, probably due to the fact that it can be seen in only some hypnotized people.
This study was done with a very highly hypnotizable participant who can be hypnotized and dehypnotized by just using a one-word cue. The change between hypnotic state and normal state can thus be varied in seconds.
The researchers used high-resolution eye-tracking methodology and presented a set of well-established oculomotor tasks that trigger automatic eye behavior. They found the glazed stare was accompanied by objectively measurable changes in automatic, reflexive eye behavior that could not be imitated by non-hypnotized participants.
In the field of hypnosis research this result means that hypnosis can no longer be regarded as mental imagery that takes place during a totally normal waking state of consciousness. On the other hand, the result may have wider consequences for psychology and cognitive neuroscience, since it provides the first evidence of the existence of a conscious state in humans that has previously not been scientifically confirmed.
Hypnosis has had a long and controversial history in psychology, psychiatry and neurology. For over 100 years researchers have debated if a special hypnotic state exists or whether it is just about using cognitive strategies and mental imagery in a normal waking state. So far, a hypnotic state has never been convincingly demonstrated, and therefore, many researchers regard the hypnotic state to be just a popular myth in psychology.

3 Ways to Deal with Tough Times

Times are tough. If you've been paying attention, you know that all of the economic gains of the last decade have gone to the top 1% of the population, leaving 99% of us no better off -- or worse off. You know that half of all workers earn less than about $23,600/year. Small business owners have been hurt more than other workers -- with an average decrease in income in the last few years of about 17%.

This has been hitting home in a number of ways.  Here's one:

Last week, a friend called me, saying she was at the end of her rope and didn't know what to do. Jenny is a talented psychologist in private practice, generally very positive, very together, very upbeat. Her clients think the world of her -- and say so publicly. But her business is down -- her sales are now less than her rent. Jenny, divorced many years ago, is going through her savings, and although she is in no danger of being homeless any time soon, she's terrified.

When I tried to commiserate with her, saying my business was way off, too, she sobbed, "But you have a husband, you own a home -- you have something!"

I had to acknowledge that that was true, and pointed out her close family and many good friends. Jenny has been a good friend to many people, and so many people would be there if she asked. But she won't ask.

"Why not?", I wanted to know.

Well, because many years ago, her mother, a stiff upper lip Brit, told her that, "People don't want to hear your troubles. If you tell them you have problems, they'll abandon you."

As my Dad (an educated man) used to say, "Them as don't ask, don't get." You have to ask for what you need! How else are people supposed to know you need something?

So for Jenny, step one is acknowledging to her friends that she needs help, and asking for what she needs.

99% of us are all in this together. So the next question, whether or not you're in need right now, is: what do you have to share? If you need a place to stay, can you offer services in exchange? Can you cook? clean? garden? If you have an extra room, are you willing to share that? What would you like in exchange?

 We're all in this together -- and the more we can share, the more outside shocks we can all withstand. United we stand...

There's more to it than just sharing, though. Gratitude is hugely important, too, and there are two reasons for this. First, if you are appreciating what is good in your life, you'll have a more positive frame of mind to deal with what is less positive. Second, what you focus on, expands. This is the famed Law of Attraction.

Here's a very partial list of things to be grateful for:

• food to eat
• clothes to wear
• a roof over your head, and the utilities to run the household
• any and all good relationships
• good health
• the ability to get from one place to another
• having a body, so you can experience the world at this most interesting time
• the beauty of the earth
• being connected to the world on the internet 

For a really easy and effective way to be grateful -- and totally not what you'd expect -- click here. 

To summarize, here are the three ways to deal with tough times:

1. Ask for what you need
2. Share what you can
3. Be grateful for you have

Noise & music are more distracting to introverts at work

And it's even worse if your main perceptual system is auditory! (No research on that, though.)

BPS Occupational Digest: Noise and music are more distracting to introverts at work

A realy simple way to eat less!

Eat with your non-dominant hand! Research here:

BPS Research Digest

Half-Generation Friends

A couple of weeks ago, I had my first real conversation with Perry Garfinkel on my radio show, "Your Life, Your Relationships". [You can hear the conversation online here, or here in iTunes.] It was delightful! I felt like I'd made a new friend, or maybe found an older brother I hadn't yet met. Names of several well-known people, whom I'd heard lecture, or whose works I'd read, fell off his tongue -- they were his teacher, his friends, his personal acquaintances. Wow!

It turned out that he's 11 years older than I am. While he was in India, I was in high school (and if I hadn't been intellectually precocious, I'd still have been in grade school)! That meant he was enough older than me to have been in the vanguard of the American consciousness revolution, while I was following distantly in their footsteps.

And that got me to thinking about friends who are a half-generation ahead of or behind me. [A generation is variously described as 20 - 30 years, so a half-generation would be 10 - 15 years.] These are very important friendships!

When I was a kid, my Dad had 2 good friends, men he'd play tennis with each week. One had his own family, with kids around the ages of my sister and me; our two families became friendly. The other, though only a couple of years younger than my Dad, was still single, and actively dating. The women he dated all seemed to be about the same age, 23 - 26, even as he got older. As I entered my teen years, my (temporary) friendships with these young women became very important to me. Why? Well, they were enough older than me to have 'been there, done that', and thereby give good advice (and I had no older sisters or cousins). They were also young enough to understand my world, and therefore not to judge me in the way someone of my parents' age would have.

Today, as an adult, I still have half-generation friends. The older ones point the way into the second half of life. The younger ones change my perspective on the world, because it looks a bit different to them than it does to me.

Who are the half-generation friends in your life? What do they bring to your life?

The Secrets No One Bothers to Tell You…

Is your midlife body getting in your way every day?

Are you missing out on the life you really want because you feel less than wonderful?

Are you…

• Exhausted even after a full night of sleep
• Sick of hot flashes, dryness, brain fog and other menopause symptoms
• Carrying extra weight that’s impossible to get off
• Starting to look “your age”
• Embarrassed because you’re losing your sex drive
• Wishing for companionship, but not so sure about dating after 40
• Wondering whether you’ll ever get to retire and what retirement will be like
•  

If you want to look and feel your best for the rest of your life, please join me for an exciting series coming up in October called Cracking the Midlife Code II, hosted by my friend, Nina Price.

It features interviews with more than a dozen top midlife experts (including me!) about the frustrating things we’re dealing with at this time of life: hormones, sleep, sex, weight loss, fitness, how we look and how we feel.

The experts will be teaching you what you can do to take incredibly good care of yourself during midlife so you can enjoy the rest of your life.

In a hurry to save your spot? It’s FREE -- just sign up here!

Here’s what you’re going to learn from the amazing speakers in this free event:

Drop the extra weight once and for all
Learn the best natural health secrets to cope with the changes in your midlife body
How you can help your body, mind and spirit to heal
How to reduce your stress and have more energy
How to deal with age bias
What retirement can look like for us
How to get back in the dating game
How to get better quality sleep so you can wake up feeling refreshed and ready for your day
How to have the best sex of your life

p.s. Do you know the #1 secret about midlife that no one bothers to prepare you for?

Check out Cracking the Midlife Code
http://www.mcssl.com/app/?af=1383669

Coincidence or Synchronicity?

Last weekend, I was chatting with a young woman, who is just beginning to open up psychically. She said, "I'm starting to have all these weird coincidences. Does that happen to you?"

I answered that I preferred to think of them as synchronicities, and that yes, they happen to me all the time. To me, a coincidence is accidental, and a synchronicity is a manifestation of some deeper level of structure, perhaps related to intention. This is borne out by dictionary definitions (shown at the bottom of this article).

And wouldn't you know that a synchronicity happened almost immediately? My husband and I were in LA for a benefit concert for a friend's charitable project, for which my husband had done some publicity. Through a series of misunderstandings, we weren't left the "all access" passes we'd been promised.

At dinner, we discussed this predicament. We were both prepared to pay for general admission tickets -- after all, we'd come all this way. My clear intention, though, was to hang out back stage, or maybe in the VIP area. Here's what happened:

After dinner, we walked back to our motel, which was 6 long blocks from the theater, in a borderline scary neighborhood, to change our clothes. On our walk, I said that after the concert, I'd like to take a taxi back to the motel, as I didn't want to walk there in the wee hours of the morning. My husband said he'd rather get a ride from one of the locals we knew who'd be at the concert. That sounded good to me.

We left the motel, intending to walk up to the theater. As we left, we stepped into the street to avoid some 'action' on the sidewalk. As we did, an empty taxi pulled up to us. We hadn't signaled for it at all. We got in, and the driver asked us if we'd called for a cab! When we said no, he said that someone at the motel had called, but had not given a name or room number! I guess it was our cab -- we just hadn't called for it with a telephone.

The taxi whisked us to the theater -- remember, it's only 6 blocks. As we alighted, our friend, the one whose project the concert was supporting, happened to be behind the cordon, talking to those who'd be checking credentials. He said, gesturing at us, "These people are my set up crew." (He doesn't really have a set up crew.) And we got our all access passes! No fuss, no hassle.

Had we not taken that cab, we would have arrived 10 minutes later. Our friend would already have been inside, directing the concert's video people on how to set up his video. And we would have been stuck with the General Admission tickets -- more money, a crummier experience. Is this a synchronicity? Or a coincidence?

And before the end of the concert, when we left, the young woman who wondered about coincidences, was leaving, too. She gave us a ride back to our motel. Synchronicity? Or coincidence?

Definitions:

According to Webster's dictionary, a coincidence is "an accidental and remarkable occurrence of events, ideas, etc. at the same time...".

According to Wikipedia, "The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurrences that are meaningfully related."

NLPers: Research verifying the Value of Rapport

There is a lot in here about what influences us beneath the level of our conscious mind. And no surprise, rapport (which they call 'mimicry') is important. Worth downloading the .pdf.

Mind wide open - Vol. 21, Part 4 ( April 2008)

High medical costs decrease 28% after 5 yrs of TM (meditation) practice

According to a study published this week in the September/October 2011 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion (Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 56-60), people with consistently high health care costs experienced a 28 percent cumulative decrease in physician fees after an average of five years practicing the stress-reducing Transcendental Meditation technique compared with their baseline. Both between and within group comparisons were statistically significant. This study has major policy implications.

In most populations, a small fraction of people account for the majority of health care costs. In the U.S., the highest spending 10% in the general population incurred 60% to 70% of total medical expenditures annually. In the Medicare population, the highest spending 5% incurred 43% of total Medicare costs, and the highest spending 25% of seniors accounted for 85% of total expenses. A large number of these people have consistently high medical bills over many years. (References in article, available upon request.)

Chronic stress is the number one factor contributing to high medical expenses. Stress reduction may help reduce these costs.

This new study compared the changes in physician costs for 284 consistent high-cost participants—142 Transcendental Meditation practitioners with 142 non-practitioners, over five years in Quebec, Canada. The non-TM subjects were randomly selected from Quebec health insurance enrollees with the same age, sex, and region to match the TM participant profiles. The TM participants decided to begin the technique prior to choosing to enter the study. In the year before the intervention began, there were no significant differences between the groups in payments to physicians.

During the five-year assessment period, the TM group's annual rate of change in payments declined significantly (p = 0.004), while the comparison group's payments showed no significant changes. After the first year, the TM group decreased 11%, and after 5 years, their cumulative reduction was 28% (p = 0.001).

The primary measure for assessing the effectiveness of TM practice in decreasing medical costs was the fees paid by the Quebec health insurance agency to private physicians in all settings for treating study participants. In Canada and U.S., physician payments have been 20% of national health expenditures. This study's results are important because doctors' decisions determine most medical expenses: tests, prescription drugs, hospitalization, surgery, and other treatments.

The paper's sole author, Robert E. Herron, Ph.D., is an independent researcher, and director of the Center for Health Systems Analysis. Dr. Herron was the first to describe the impact of the Transcendental Meditation technique on health care costs.

This study's findings were similar to earlier ones. In a previous Canadian study, the TM group exhibited reduced medical expenses between 5% and 13% relative to comparison subjects each year for 6 consecutive years.

In a subsequent Canadian study of senior citizens, the TM group's five-year cumulative reduction for people aged 65 years and older relative to comparison subjects was 70%.

In a sample of American health insurance enrollees, the TM participants had reduced rates of illness in all disease categories. An eleven-year, cross-sectional study in Iowa found that subjects age 45 and over who practiced the TM technique had 88% fewer hospital days compared with controls. Their medical expenditures were 60% below the norm.

Other studies, including randomized clinical trials, indicate the TM technique can improve physical and mental health, decrease tobacco use, reduce substance abuse, and decrease other unhealthy habits and risk factors that lead to chronic disease and costly treatments.

"This article has major policy significance for saving Medicare and Medicaid without cutting benefits or raising taxes," said Herron. "Almost no intervention for cost containment has decreased medical expenditures by 28% over 5 years from a baseline. Now, it may be possible to rescue Medicare and Medicaid by adding coverage for learning the Transcendental Meditation technique."

[I got this from Bayho, which sells supplements.]

Downside of the 'Law of Attraction'?

BPS Occupational Digest: Positive pollyannas more frustrated by unmet expectations

Mass Hypnosis in Every Day Life

Watch out when you go shopping! One more reason to shop at a real farmers' market:

How Whole Foods "Primes" You To Shop | Fast Company

How to Develop Confidence

"I'm confident" is rarely a complete sentence. Usually, it's followed by something specific. You say, "I'm confident that...", as in

• I'm confident that the sun will rise in the morning, or
• I'm confident that my mother will make a nasty crack about someone at tonight's dinner party, or 
• I'm confident that I can pass this exam, or
• I'm confident that I can win over this audience.

Where does confidence come from? Usually it comes from experience, from which you've deduced a pattern, and/or  some kind of external learning.

You're confident that the sun will rise in the morning because it has for every single day of your life, as it has for every single day of the lives of everyone you know, and because astronomers have explained the earth's rotation, relative to the sun. That is experience plus learning.

You're  confident your mother will make that nasty crack because she's done it at every other dinner party you've been at with her. That's experience.

You're confident that you can pass the exam because you've passed all the exams before and because you've done all the homework. That is experience plus learning.

You're confident you can win over an audience because you've done it so many times before. This is the untold secret behind so may young stars. Crystal Bowersox, who came in second at American Idol in 2010 at the age of 24, was amazingly poised. Why? Because she began performing professionally at the age of 10. That is, she'd been a pro for 14 years by the time she got to American Idol. 14 years is a lot of experience -- it's a long time to both perfect your craft and to learn the patterns that it takes to win over an audience. That's how you develop confidence at both the craft and the performing edge.

What do you do if you aren't confident?

If you aren't confident about something, it means you don't have enough experience and/or knowledge. Which means that your task is to get that experience and/or knowledge.

If the subject about which you lack confidence is not within your control, like the sun rising or someone else's behavior, then you must do whatever research you can. Something else you can do is to plan for different possibilites. Flexibility can make up for a lack of a sure pattern.

If you need confidence about something within your control, then your only answer is practice. When I was an engineering undergrad, and terrified about my grades in technical courses, which consisted only of exam scores, my father said, "The answer is simple: do every problem in every textbook you have." Dad was right! I did all those problems and immediately began to ace all my exams. Then I became confident that as long as I did this admittedly prodigious amount of work, I'd succeed.

So developing confidence is simply a matter of increasing your knowledge and gaining experience. Ask yourself:

• How can I learn about this subject?
• How can I practice the skills I need?

When you have the answers to these questions, do the work suggested by those answers.

How to Get a FREE Change Work Session

Is there some pattern that seems to repeat for you time after time? Maybe you're always attracted to the wrong partner, or you regularly get into a job with a great boss, only to find that the boss leaves and is replaced by an ogre. Or may be there's some attitude, some belief, that you know you need to change, but you don't know how, and so you stay miserable.


Often patterns or beliefs can be shifted in one session!

I am offering ONE free session to someone who really needs a change. In order to qualify, you must:

• be willing to do the session on my online radio show
• be available from 3 - 4 PM PST (6 - 7 PM EST) on the Wednesday of the session, which will be scheduled in advance
• call in from a land line for the session
• write to me at hollis@888-4-hollis.com with a 1 - 2 sentence description of your issue

I will only pick ONE person to do this. If it goes well, I may do it again at a later date. 

For all you Firesign Theater fans...

One of the backstage duties at the Sausalito Art Festival is to guard the various entrances to the dressing rooms and backstage area, which are, oddly, not contiguous. (The dressing rooms back to the garbage. No kidding.) Other jobs include moving equipment and getting provisions for the artists, so people don't really hang around the dressing rooms all that much.

At one point, when I was guarding one of the dressing room gates, some came up and asked to see a volunteer, named Dave. I went back to the 'office', which is part of the same tent as the dressing rooms, and  -- no Dave. So I went out to see the requester, and I got to say, very legitimately,

"Dave's not here!"

Banding Together -- Literally!

Last Sunday, I did my annual day of being a 'roadie' (well, okay, working backstage) at the Sausalito Art Festival. I learn something every time, and this year was no exception.

What I learned was this: banding together really does work to make a living -- especially in this economy. Here's what I mean:

I was told privately that the attendance for the Festival was down 24%, at least for the first day. This is in one of the 20 richest counties in the entire US. (The bar receipts at the side of the stage were up 7 or 8%, though. Not sure what that means -- people who can afford $25 to get in, down from $27 two years ago, can afford to buy drinks? People need drinks more?)

The big draw for Sunday was the World Class Rockers. Who? Who are they? Never heard of them. And I'll bet you never have, either.

They are all guys who were part of big name bands -- Steppenwolf,  Santana, Journey, Toto, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Boston -- but never got personally famous. Some, like the drummer, Aynsley Dunbar, are rock royalty, while others, like Randall Hall, were replacements for original band members. They're all wonderful musicians -- and their love of the music, and in some cases, love of the crowd, are infectious. They also clearly like working together (the party was definitely around their dressing room -- so big it spilled out into the open-air corridor).

Individually, not one of them would have been a big draw. But together -- a big crowd! And I do have to say, they rocked the house!

So banding together works. If it works for the rockers, it might work for you -- and a few of your friends. With whom can you band together to provide a good or service that people might want?

Book mentioned on 8/17/11 'Your Life, Your Relationships"

This is the book to buy so you can make sense of how other people function (or don't) in relationships.

The Secret Language Code | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS

Yes, how you speak, speaks louder than what you say, about gender, status, and success in college, among other things:

The Secret Language Code | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS

Lessons from a Murder-Suicide

On Friday afternoon, I was doing some paperwork, which I really don't like to do, so I turned on the TV as a way to distract myself while I did it. As I did, there was breaking news, an Amber Alert (aka child abduction). Usually, those just kind of blow by me, but this time -- I actually knew the guy! 

I knew him because a friend of mine had been dating him for several months. Ella told me about Mourad -- he was an engineer, who'd been working for a long time at Hewlett Packard, a single dad of a 2 year old daughter, whom he adored. He liked to windsurf and kayak. He was divorced from an attorney who was constantly trying to get more from him. At this point, she was trying to get more than the 80% custody she already had of their daughter. 

In California, custody decisions are usually made in the best interest of the child. The presumption is that it is good for the child to have both parents in her life, unless one of them is an addict, a criminal or an abuser. Mourad didn't appear to be any of those. In fact, Ella said, he was a kind, loving, patient father. And Ella would know -- she was not only a mother herself, but also a teacher, so she'd seen lots of parents interacting with their kids. 

Anyway, Ella wanted me to meet Mourad, and so in May, my husband and I had a long, leisurely dinner with him and Ella at an Indian restaurant.  Apparently the restaurant's management knew and liked him -- they brought us some of his favorite dish on the house. 

He was good company, engaging without dominating the conversation. Although he'd been born in Egypt, his parents, both psychologists, moved here when he was 2 to escape religious persecution, as they were Copts,  i.e. Christians, in an Arabic country. He grew up speaking only English, and decided as an adult to learn Arabic, out of curiosity. He'd been to Egypt in his 30's to visit family, and while there, tried to get Egyptian citizenship. He was refused, and was pretty sure it was because he was Christian. 

His eyes absolutely lit up when he spoke of his daughter, whom he called 'the light of my life'. 

As time went on, I heard a bit more. His custody battle got worse. He'd spent a LOT of money on an attorney who he felt had done very little for him, so his brother, also an attorney, advised him to represent himself, which he was doing. 

About a month ago, Ella backed off from dating him, saying that he'd become obsessed with the custody battle, which he felt was rigged against him. They remained friends, though, and were still in touch with each other. 

All day Saturday, as my husband and I were helping his daughter move to new digs for her senior year in college, we saw the Amber Alert signs on the freeway. On Sunday morning, as we drove up to Sacramento to take care of some business, we noticed that the signs were down. And then we heard the news: the bodies of Mourad and his daughter had been found. 

Ella was devastated, and oddly, so was I. Ella wondered, would it have changed anything had she stayed in a closer relationship to him? Could she have changed it? I did my best to comfort her -- but murders and suicides don't feel like deaths from disease or even accident. And even I was wondering, how did I miss this?

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and here's what I've learned:

• Desperate people do desperate things - Cornered animals will attack; a trapped one will chew off its own leg to get free (one man sawed off his own arm). 
• You never know whom you are going to effect - I barely knew Mourad, and yet I am deeply affected by his apparent choice (police have not yet given a cause of death). There are probably many more like me. Further, I'm writing about it, so it affects you. And that's true of all of us all the time. You don't know how your actions will affect others, or even who those others are. (For the story through Mourad's father's eyes, and how it may affect even more people, click here.)
• You can't change someone else's agreements - When Ella asked me to look at the deaths psychically, I saw that 
• the father and daughter were fine on the 'other side',
• it really wasn't hard on the girl, who hadn't been here very long, anyway,
• they had an agreement to teach a lesson to the mother, who was manipulative and a bully. The lesson: you can't have everything your way,
• When all three eventually reunite on the other side, they'll shake hands, and the mother will be grateful for the sacrifice they made to teach her that lesson. 
• You never know what tomorrow will hold - People can leave the earth plane very suddenly and unexpectedly, so clear up all misunderstandings and disagreements as quickly as you can. Tell people you love them as often as you think of it.
• You can't 'see' what you're not asked to 'see'- When I met Mourad, I met him as a human being. I listened to my friend talk about him, as friends do. I was never asked to look at anything psychically for him or about him, and so I didn't. To do so without being asked, and without it affecting my life, would not have been clairvoyance, it would have been clairvoyeurism. Now I understand all the neighbors who say, after a tragedy, "He was such a nice guy -- how could this have happened?"

A Lesson from Giants' Pitcher, Brian Wilson

A friend (thanks, Dennis!) took me to a SF Giants' game on Friday night, where I had the wonderful opportunity, not only to see the game with someone who could explain the nuances to me, but also to see the power of focus in the relief pitcher, aka the 'closer', Brian Wilson.

For most of the game, I watched other pitchers work. From this, I learned that the pitcher is the one person in baseball who really is in charge. Nothing happens till the pitcher lets go of that ball. Everyone else -- on both teams -- is reacting. The batter is reacting to the pitcher's pitch. The catcher, the infield and the outfield are all reacting to the batter's actions.

Yes, the pitcher must take into account the handedness of the batter, along with all sorts of other peculiarities, as well as the wind, and maybe even whether it's day or night. But he can practice in all sorts of conditions and with all sorts of goals -- putting different spins on the ball, hitting different areas of the strike zone, pitching at different speeds. So to some degree, the best pitcher is the one who practices the most.

And what does that take? Focus. 

In his day, the basketball player, Larry Bird, was renowned for his amazing free throw percentage -- .886, which was significantly higher than anyone else's. Why? Practice, practice, practice. He was renowned also for the interminable hours he spent shooting those free throws.

The special talent of the 'closer', that is, the relief pitcher who specializes in ending games in which his team is ahead by 1 - 3 runs, is the ability to perform under pressure. What is that? Focus, again.

You can see it in Brian Wilson. When he's on the mound, it's clear that for him, there is no one else around, except the batter. His focus is on his internal process. He's more into his own core than any of the other pitchers I watched (and there were 3 others, because pitchers get tired after about 100 pitches and so can't pitch an entire normal game).

The evidence is in the statistics:

1. Saves - When a relief pitcher enters a game in which his team has a 1, 2, or 3 run lead and this pitcher finishes the game without letting the other team tie or win the game, then he gets a Save. There have been 1095 save opportunities in the National League this year resulting in 819 saves (75%). WIlson has had 35 save opportunities and achieved 31 saves (89%). 
2. Earned Run Average (ERA). This is how many runs a pitcher gives up, on average, in 9 innings of pitching, so the lower it is, the better the pitcher. League average is 3.90, while Wilson's is 2.77. 

So what is the lesson from Brian Wilson? The power of focus. 


Of what is that focus comprised?

• Shutting out all distractions
• Being in your core, very alert to what's going on inside you
• Practice, practice, practice

Hypnosis helps healing | Harvard Gazette

Hypnosis helps healing | Harvard Gazette

Is the relationship over?

Finding Mr. Right

How do you find the right guy for you? Or the right woman for that matter? It's easier than you think! And I can teach you how to do it, as well as remove internal blocks to finding Mr. Right. 

Dealing with Bad Behavior, Part 2

I was right, Jim never called me back. He did, however, send an email apologizing for taking over the group, saying it was 'not like me at all'. (My phone message was very light, very pleasant, asking him to call me. That's all.)

So I was forced to send a return email, enumerating his bad behavior, so that he'd be clear about exactly what he did wrong -- and not do it again.

Dealing with Bad Behavior

Many years ago, when I was beginning to co-lead an Integral Transformative Practice (ITP) group, George Leonard told me that volunteer groups were horrible to manage, because 'the only currency is power' and that there is 'always someone' who is real jerk and difficult to get rid of. George knew, because he was one of the founders of ITP, and a long time board member of Esalen Institute. I know George was right, because one of those people actually drove me from the group about 5 years later.

My husband now organizes a small, informal monthly group of folks who go out stargazing. We've been doing this for a little over a year now. The cast of characters varies from month to month, though some folks are regular, or semi-regular.

We had one of our sessions last week. Jim, who volunteers for the larger, more organized group of which we are a part, decided to come. Jim is not one of my favorite people. A year after he broke the agreement my husband and I had with him (the incident is described in this post), he is still unemployed, still sponging off the person with whom he moved in after he left our home.

Our group hiked out to our stargazing spot, hauling chairs and equipment about 3/4 of a mile, mostly up hill, in the dark. We set up, and Jim sort  of took over, standing in the middle of our circle, expounding and lecturing, though not the most knowledgeable or experienced member of the group. A few people asked quietly for him to sit down so we could meditate. He did not. Then he began to play with his 250 milliwatt laser pointer (the kind you can buy at the office supply store are usually 10 milliwatt), holding it steady as he pointed into the air (you're supposed to move it constantly so as not to blind a pilot), and shining it in the direction of the airport, both of which we told him not to do. Finally, he crossed one of the group members' eyes with it, temporarily blinding her. 


No one forcefully put a stop to this, including me. I take partial responsibility for letting this happen, but I had driven for 5 hours that day, in terrible traffic, and was not even able to keep my eyes open. I know I can't allow it to happen again. How do I prevent it, short of telling Jim he's not welcome in the group?

I know I have to talk to him. In person would be best, but he doesn't live near me, and I'm not willing to drive to him. I doubt he'd be willing to drive to see me, as I'm not one of his favorite people, either. That leaves the phone. (Email is out for two reasons. First, it is so easy for things to be taken wrong, Second, I don't want to leave a 'paper' trail -- who knows how that might be used?)

I have to be specific about what he did wrong, and tell him that this is not only my reaction, but that of others in the group, as well (which is true, btw). Ideally, he'll understand what he did wrong, and agree not to do these things again. If not, I will have to tell him he is not welcome in the group.

I did call him last night, and left a message. I'm quite sure he won't call me back. As I said, I'm not one of his favorite people. So today, I'll call him using my husband's phone -- we'll see how far that gets me.

If he does not talk to me, the fallback position is that he is not welcome in our home or in the group.

The lesson for me? Leopards don't change their spots -- nor do jerks change their ways without good reason. 

Failed the bar exam? Or have other test anxiety problems?

 I can help you pass your bar exam, nursing license exam, chiropractic license exam, acupuncture license exam -- or any other exam.

Usually, when someone does badly on an exam, or a series or exams (maybe even in childhood), he/she develops internal issues that make taking exams, or sometimes, even studying for exams, extremely difficult -- with awful results. I can help with these issues, so that you prepare calmly and walk in to the exam calmly and confidently.

If you'd like to talk with me about this, call me at 888-4-hollis (888-446-5547).