Mind - Crying as Catharsis Isn’t Always the Case - NYTimes.com

Mind - Crying as Catharsis Isn’t Always the Case - NYTimes.com

How to Have More Love in Your Life

People celebrate the upcoming Valentine's day in all sorts of ways -- flowers, chocolate, champagne, and more. But the romantic love that we celebrate at Valentine's Day -- while wonderful -- is only one kind of love. Or maybe it's the poster child for all kinds of love.

So how do you create more love in your life? First, realize that "I love" is a complete statement. It has a subject and a predicate and does not actually need an object. Say it to yourself right now -- "I love". Simple. Complete. "I love."

How do you know when you love? Think about this for a moment. Often people will confuse the actions that express love, like a hug, or a kiss, or a gift, with the love itself.

Second, be clear that love is a feeling, so you need to be able to recognize it in yourself. Here's a simple exercise which will, with practice, enable you to recognize the feeling of your own love, as well as the feeling of others' love coming back to you:

• Find someone or something to love - I highly recommend pets or small sleeping children, as we tend to have more complicated relationships with older humans (as in, "I love my husband, but he leaves the toilet seat up" or "I love my girlfriend but [fill in the blank with whatever makes her imperfect]"). If you don't have handy, regular access to either a pet or a child, you can try an adult, or a plant, or a place. In a pinch, you can even use a memory of someone or something you love, or have loved. I will refer to this as your 'creature', partly for convenience, and partly in honor of my black and white cat, Creature, who sleeps beside me as I write this, and with whom I do this often.
  
• Actively love this creature - Sit or stand near it, contemplating all the wonderful qualities (s)he possesses, until you notice a response in your body and/or a more subtle one in your energy field.
• Pay attention to the feeling - Notice exactly where the feeling is. Is it in your chest? stomach? around your head? somewhere else? Roughly what shape is it? How large an area contains the feeling? If it's spherical, is it the size of a golf ball, or a baseball, or a softball, or a basketball? Now describe it to yourself, using only kinesthetic words, such as warm, cold, tense, relaxed, expanding, contracting, or tingly. For example, I feel love as an expansive warmth in my chest (around my heart chakra!), somewhat smaller than a basketball, thought the size does change.
  
• This feeling is how you feel love - Notice that you generated it yourself, using only your thoughts. If you did it just now, what's stopping you from doing it any time? What's stopping you from having more love in your life?
  

This is an exercise worth practicing, though I hesitate to use the word 'practice', because that makes it sound like work, when it's so much fun!

Eventually, you'll probably find the feeling of love actually expands to include the creature you love. You may feel this in any number of ways. The feeling of love may become a sort of energetic cloud that envelops both of you, or you may feel it as a sort of elastic band between you and your creature, or you may feel your creature radiating love back to you in another way. (This is why I earlier suggested a physical creature, rather than a memory -- it's hard to feel love radiating off a memory.)

So, how do you have more love in your life? You create it yourself, with your intention.

Should those Word screens be blue?

And maybe the Excel screens should be red. Looks like people are more creative on a blue background and more accurate on a red one, though this may be an oversimplification:

Color Study Looks at Effects of Red and Blue - NYTimes.com

My Word screen was already blue. I did it because it's easier on my eyes. I'm going to try the red for Excel, too -- typing accuracy is not my strong suit.

Is there anything positve about the economic situation?

A friend wrote this. There may, in fact, be a silver lining to the economic black cloud. It's generally best to look on the bright side, while acknowledging reality, so I thought I'd post the link.

On Psychic Etiquette

The human senses register millions of pieces of information every second, so many that we can't possibly process them all consciously -- and many of then we can't even process at an unconscious level. These bits of information, processed beneath the level of conscious awareness, constitute intuition or the psychic senses. (See Malcom Gladwell's "Blink" for a great discussion of this.)

You can choose where to focus your attention, however. And as you begin to open up psychically, you have to have guidelines for the responsible use of your abilities. Here are my rules for what is fair game (you can choose your own):

1. Things that concern me.
2. Things that other people ask me to look at that concern them.
   

For me, all else is off limits -- it is not clairvoyance, but clairvoyeurism, rather like being a psychic peeping Tom. If no one asks me to look, I don't look.

I do know some people have a lot of natural psychic or intuitive ability, and don't know how to manage it, and 'see' or feel stuff for other people all the time. These people (usually women) are so overwhelmed by the information that they get, that they either can't function, or shut the abilities down entirely. And often, before they shut down the abilities, they have the experience of telling someone something they saw, and being made wrong for having seen it.

Shutting down seems a shame to me, because we are given these gifts as a natural part of our existence, and not using what you have is like tying your dominant arm behind your back. Then you don't have your arm available for your own betterment or protection, and you don't have it available to help others who want to be helped. (If you are one of these people, I can help. Call me at 888-4-hollis.)

Grandma was right!

My grandmother (and her daughter, my mother) used a lot of common sayings. Here are 3 of her favorites:

1. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
2. You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.
3. Don't dignify that with an answer. (For someone saying something mean.)

If everyone lived by #1, the world would be a much nicer place. TV might be a bit more boring, though.

Most of us over the age of 21 (the age of 10? 8?) have learned this, to at least some degree. We have learned not to say to someone, "You have a big butt", but rather "That isn't the most flattering outfit." I'm told by friends who grew up in the South, that when women there want to be catty (or perhaps along with the cattiness), they say, "Bless her heart". I do think that's much more positive, asking for a blessing for the person whom you dislike, to help him/her see the light, change his/her ways, etc.

#2 really hit home this week, as I began to delete blog post comments that showed up in my email box without reading them. Why read something I knew was going to be vile, just from the subject? And you can't influence someone without reaching him or her.

#3 is about not giving energy to the negative. What you focus on, expands. I choose to focus on the positive. This is also why I've chosen to hide the comments. Why leave the vile stuff out in the open? (And it doesn't seem possible to publish some comments and not others, and even if it were possible, that would be way too much work, and focusing on the negative.)

To Natalie

Thank you very much for your clear explanation and civil tone. May your open heart help heal many others!

I did do as you asked.

Thank you again!

More Lessons from Wife Swap (& its aftermath)

So I posted the item below on Saturday afternoon, and began to get hate mail. Most of it was gratuitously vile, while a few people struck a reasonable tone and made good points. To the reasonable among you, thank you. To those who just used the comments to vent their anger, has it occurred to you that perhaps praying for open hearts (Stephen's, yours, mine, heck, the entire world's) might be a more productive use of your time and energy?

Here's what I've learned from this:

• The power of prime time television - I wasn't on the show; all I did was write a blog post about it. And yet my blog has gotten more hits in the last 2 days than in the last 6 months combined.
  
• The power of controversy - A radio talent manager told me years ago that you get better ratings by stirring up controversy than by being nice. (He's the person who convinced Dr. Laura to air her real comments rather than what he called, "happy talk" -- and the rating soared.) Wow, was he right.
  
• What you put out comes back to you, amplified - While I didn't say anything mean, I am apparently guilty by association. Stephen said mean things on screen, and so that energy comes back at him, his family and me, just for writing about it.
• People are willing to judge someone based on very little evidence - Obviously, they are willing to condemn a man's entire life and being based on part of 42 minutes of (edited) television. And of course, they know him better than people who have met him. Does anyone remember "judge not, lest ye be judged"?
  
• Once people have made up their minds, they don't want to hear anything that contradicts their judgment - Heaven forbid you should bring up a different side of the issue.
• A 'public' figure is not viewed as human - People apparently feel it is fine to say horrible things to people they have never met. They say things I'm sure they would never say to a friend or family member -- or even a stranger -- to his or her face. I'm an adult, and I can take it, but I'm beginning to feel sorry for the teenagers on American Idol, who must get all sorts of crap, at a time in their lives when they're very vulnerable. Therefore...
• If you are going to be 'public', you'd better have pretty thick skin. - The problem with this is that people who develop such thick skin then begin to ignore the negative comments and surround themselves with people they feel they can trust. If those people are sycophants, that 'public' figure begins to live in an isolated, unrealistic bubble.
  
• Loyalty is not valued - To say something positive about someone who is out of favor is not viewed as loyalty, but as being vile, or stupid.
  
• Listener, viewer, reader beware: freedom of speech does not mean you have to tell the truth, let alone be civil - I've read that it's illegal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, unless there is, in fact, a fire. But is is fine to threaten publicly, and to lie about the facts on the air. Of course, I should have learned this from the media darlings who make their living by spreading lies that feed hatred, but I get it at a deeper level now.
  

(And as for those of you who said, 'if you were psychic, you would have warned them' -- hey, no one asked me!)

3 Tips for Getting Organized on Outlook/Entourage

This economic climate is all about doing more with less. Being organized is about the best way I know to do that. Saving time on clerical tasks means more time with clients, or more time marketing to get new clients. So who wouldn't want to be better organized? And it's easy.

I've given tips on getting organized to a number of my small business clients over the last few weeks, so I now realize that the software you already have can be used to save time and effort. [I'll be using Entourage for my examples, but I'm sure Outlook is very similar. And even if you have different calendar/email/database software, these tips will still apply.] Here are my favorite tips:

1) Put in "To Do" items for the future. You want to create a "Task". Click "NEW", then "Task" in the drop down menu. You can schedule a reminder for any date, and it will pop up to remind you just when you need it most! For example, I use it to remind me to call the contractors if I haven't heard from them by 'x' date. You can also set up recurring reminders. Mine include changing the kitty litter weekly, all the exercise classes I like & my monthly bill-paying session.

2) Put today's "To Do's" on an ever-evolving list. This is a "Note". I used to keep my "To Do" list on a scrap of paper, to which I'd add new things to do, phone numbers, emails, urls, etc. as time went on, as well as crossing off things. It got to be a mess, plus I'd have to copy the updated version onto a new piece of paper every few days. Yes, I got to throw out the old one with all the crossed-off stuff, but then I'd have to keep some of them because of all the phone numbers. Not satisfying -- and a mess. What do you do with all those odd-sized pieces of paper? Where do you keep all the odd notes for the long erm?

Now I keep mine in a Note, entitled "To Do List", which I update and print daily. I 3-hole punch them at the end of the day, and keep them in a notebook, so I can easily find notes later if I need to. Plus they'll make a great record of the year, along with my gratitude and success journals. Click "NEW", then "Note" in the drop down window.

3) Keep a folder for form emails. Remember form lettters? They're great for things you have to say to a zillion people, one at a time, aren't they? In the past, you photocopied a form and just hand wrote names in. Later, they were Word documents, into which you'd insert names and other appropriate info. Well, you can do it with emails, too! I do it for receipts, and welcomes, etc. Here's how:

• Highlight the "Drafts" Folder by putting your cursor on it.
  
• At the top, click "New", then "Sub-folder" in the drop down menu. Then go to the new folder and title it "ReUse Drafts". This is the folder you'll keep all those form emails in.
  
• When you get the text of an email you send a lot exactly the way you want it, put it into the body of an email.
• Title the email "Draft of -----".
• Save it -- it will automatically go into a 'Draft' Folder.
• Click on the 'Draft' Folder, so you see the contents.
• Highlight the "Draft of ----" and drag it into the "ReUse Drafts" Folder.
• Then, when you need to thanks someone for their inquiry, click on the ReUse Drafts Folder, highlight the draft you want, and copy the text into a new email, inserting the appropriate info into the new email.
  

Yes, consciousness affects water

Entangled Minds: Water crystal replication study

Entangled Minds: Collective consciousness and the inauguration

Entangled Minds: Collective consciousness and the inauguration

Develop Your Intuition -- it's fun AND convenient!

Everyone has intuitive abilities. No matter what level you’re starting from, you can develop your innate abilities and learn new skills. You'll learn easy-to-use techniques to access deeper level information and you'll get answers for yourself and others. You'll

* practice getting answers to everyday issues in your life and others' lives,
* learn to read people quickly and easily, and
* understand the deeper dynamics of interpersonal and business situations. .

This is a safe environment to explore your issues. You'll even make new friends, as you'll be trading readings.

This method is completely different from any other way of teaching the development of intuition; all other training teaches standard techniques, which may or may not work for you. Here, you'll identify your natural talents; then turn these talents into skills, using my unique method. This intuitive method does not use any sorts of external divination tools, like tarot or runes. This has several advantages:

· Your tools are always available, since there are none outside yourself.
· Your skill is subtle and can be used in any setting, with anyone, skeptic or not.
· Your skill enhances the use of any divination tools.

Here's what you can expect:

- A clear understanding of what psychic ability is
- Useful beliefs to enhance your intuition/psychic ability/clairvoyance
- An understanding of your own psychic/intuitive skills
- Practice with others in a safe space to get feedback about what works for you
- Knowledge of how to practice using your skills on your own

Who should attend:

Everyone!

It's for you if you're ready to see yourself, others and the world more clearly.

It’s for you if you have ever said something like, “I know there’s a message here, but I’m not quite getting it” or “I know I’m intuitive, but I can’t rely on it, because it isn’t always on.”

When:

* 1st & 3rd Mondays of the month, for 5 months (10 classes), beginning February 16
* 5:30PM - 6:30 PM
* All calls will be recorded, so you can listen in if you miss a class, or replay a class you feel you can get more out of by listening again (each class will have a meditation, so this is highly recommended!)

For fees and other info, please click here.

It really IS a new day!

I left yesterday morning's schedule empty so I could watch the Inauguration -- and like most people, stayed until I watched W's helicopter disappear. I guess I wanted to be sure he was really gone...

Then I went for one of my usual walks, to the library, though much later than usual. What surprised me was how many strangers and bare acquaintances all said the same thing -- "I'm proud to be an American again." I don't know that I've ever been actively proud of my country (I was a little kid during the Viet Nam conflict, another time where pride was dubious), but I sure have been ashamed for the last 8 years, and feel I can hold my head up again.

I did have clients scheduled in the afternoon. The first time I got into the appropriate state to do a reading, I had an amazing experience. Normally, when I ask my guides to be with me, to help me help my client, humanity and the earth, my palm chakras open up for 2 of the guides and I see beams of light in different places for the others.

Not yesterday. Yesterday, each of them showed up in a sort of light body, all standing in a ring with me. When I asked why, I 'heard' that Obama's inauguration was a big step in humanity's ascension, big shift in our collective consciousness.

In case you missed it: Obama’s Inaugural Address

In case you missed it -- or even if you didn't, because it's even better reading it the next day:

Transcript - Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address - Text - NYTimes.com

He manages to put everyone on notice that things are going to be different, from the Republicans to other nations to Wall Street to you and me. He invokes our ancestors as well as future generations -- with hope, and a call to hard work.

I put it here so I can always find it, because I think I'll want to refer to it often over the next few years.

Persuasion is...

...the art of showing someone exactly how it is in their best interest to do what you want them to do.

The way I got the owner of the property with the neighbor from hell (NFH) to give me power of attorney to get rid of her, was that I showed him his liability for keeping her there, and then made him an offer he couldn't refuse to let me do it for him.

The way I got rid of the NFH was to have the attorney tell her that if I even filed a suit for unlawful detainer (the technical term for eviction lawsuit), it would be follow her around for the rest of her life, regardless of the disposition of the suit. It's amazing how fast people can move when they're motivated!

The way I'm hoping to convice the lender to sell to me cheaply is to point out that if they don't, they become liable for the myriad problems on the property, and that the Homeowners' Association can foreclose judicially at any time, which would wipe out their interest entirely. Wish me luck!

What is the difference between a vow & an affirmation?

A friend of mine, who definitely enjoys her wine, was talking about a vow she'd made recently -- "No more hangovers!" And a funny thing happened: she was at a business/social event, drinking moderately, when she felt nauseous. She left the party, went back to her hotel room, had a glass of water and fell asleep, only to dream that she was milking a rattlesnake, symbolically pulling the poison from her system. And she hasn't had a hangover in the months since making the vow.

So obviously, vows can be powerful. They tend to be simple. declarative statements, structured in absolutes. Sometimes, they're stated in the positive, though they're usually stated in the negative, such as "No more..." They're often stated in the future tense, such as "I'll never... again." They are often stated in the third person, such as "This ____ stops now!" And they're generally made just once.

Affirmations, on the other hand, are positive, present tense, first person statements, which are repeated over and over till they become true. They're powerful, too.

So how can these two opposite ways of expressing a clear intention both be so effective?

My guess -- and it is just a guess -- is that an affirmation comes from a superficial part of the self, which desires change, while a vow comes from a deeper part of the self, which recognizes an internal change has already happened, and just needs to manifest in the exterior world. An affirmation is a declaration of what you choose, as if it already exists. A vow is a statement of what already exists on the inner planes, declaring itself to the outside world.

Oh, Happy Day!

The neighbor from hell is GONE!

Hormones' complex role in human sexuality

Hormones' complex role in human sexuality

8 Business Lessons from the "Neighbor from Hell'

I worked really hard to get rid of the 'neighbor from hell' at a condo I own. (More about that here.) She left, finally, all because I got the owner to give me power of attorney to do it. As I look back on it, though, doing this has taught me a number of lessons which are much more widely applicable:

1) Have a clear intention (don't take no for an answer) -- The neighbor from hell (NFH) had been negatively affecting my life for years now. Because of her, I had a much harder time finding an acceptable tenant for that unit than for any other unit I own (and a few are in the neighborhood, so it really is comparing apples to apples). Further, the tenant in that unit turns over immediately at the end of each lease (if they even paid the rent on time, so that I didn't have to get rid of them earlier -- and this is the only unit where I've ever had to evict anyone).

When my wonderful current tenant gave me 60 days notice, despite acknowledging the fact that she has a lease which at that point lasted another 6 months, I got desperate. And desperation turned into determination that this ends now. And somehow, when I get determined, the universe lines up behind me. (This is most defiitely a vow, which seems to be a variant on the Law of Attraction.)

2) Be nice -- My first step was to contact the owner. Of course, I'd been trying that without success for over a year. She wouldn't answer my phone calls or emails. So what I did was pay her a visit. How did I have her address? When she bought the property, back in 2006, I was nice. I called her up (got that number because the former owner was a friend -- see, I'm nice), and said, "If I can help you in any way, please let me know. And oh, by the way, please give me your contact info", which she did.

3) Be organized -- I'm fanatic about keeping people's contact information. If you give me a card, all that goes into my database, even if I don't put you on my mailing list. My database is over 3000 records, everyone from the plumber to the dentist to the health insurance company to my extended family to my clients and on and on. So when I needed this woman's address, there it was, easy to find.

4) Know the rules of the game -- It's important to know what you can do, and what you can't. Without the owner authorizing me to do it, neither I nor my tenants could evict the NFH, who was essentially a squatter, paying no rent, no water or sewer bill, no gas bill, putting slugs in the communal washing machine. My tenant couldn't put the stuff the NFH had wrongly stored in my tenant's half of the shared garage out on the driveway, or in the dumpster -- that would have been illegal. We could, however, call the police to keep an eye on the place, and file lots of complaints about the bad behavior of the NFH. We could call Child Protective Services to have the mother investigated for leaving her minor child unsupervised for a week at a time. And with the power of attorney from the owner, I can file an unlawful detainer suit, which will eventually get her out for sure.

5) You can't always be nice -- Some people, like like the Neighbor from Hell, don't respond to nice. You can ask a Neighbor from Hell something nicely, and she'll either ignore you, or smile, say yes, and then ignore you. With these people, you have to be tough. That means using all the resources available to you -- veiled threats, contracts, police, Child Protective Services, the courts, whatever. (NLP would say, "the most flexible system always wins". And by trying everything, I am being flexible as hell.)

6) Talk to people in terms they'll understand -- This is actually a basic principle of NLP, phrased as "The meaning of communication is the response you get." I always took this to mean that if you didn't get the response you wanted from the words you chose, you should try different words.

That's part of it. Another part of communication is not your words, it's your actions. The NFH basically lives by working the system (Section 8 & disability payments for 5 years that I know of, even though she's capable of painting apartments for extra income). So I made sure that the information came from an authority figure (attorney), who said that if I even filed an unlawful detainer (i.e. eviction) lawsuit, it would follow her around forever. (Translation: you'll have a really hard time finding another apartment for the rest of your life.) Funny thing, the U-Haul truck made regular appearances right after that.

7) Be transparent -- that is, tell the truth, and tell it to everyone who needs hear it. This is one of the wonders of email. You can easily have a one to many conversation. You don't have to say the same thing over and over to keep everyone up to date, and you don't have to wonder who said what to whom, or when. When I email my tenant about what's going on, I often cc the property owner, the attorney and the police. Same thing when they email me. That way, everyone is on the same page, and we can all go forward together. In fact, we all begin to trust each other more, too.

8) Reach out to the community -- When I told a friend my saga of the NFH, she said, it sounds like bad custody battle. And she has a point. The custody problem is directly between the parents, but it affects the children, and anyone to whom those kids act out. A people problem is therefore a problem for the community. This is why Child Protective Services exist. It's why police, aka peace officers, exist. It's why the courts exist. They are all her to provide formal community solutions to community problems. Use them.

Yet another reason to clean up your thoughts...

You think your thoughts are private, don't you? Most everyone does, and that's why people tend to freak out when I mention telepathy -- I think it's the last taboo.

I have some bad news for you -- neuroscientists are beginning to be able to read your mind using computers and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging). It's surprisingly accurate, too.

Lest you think that this is only something that can be done using fMRI at great inconvenience and expense, there's more -- they expect to be able to do this using lasers in a few years, so that you won't even know it's being done to you.

I'm not eing alarmist, either. Check this out:

Reading Your Mind Video - CBSNews.com

So now, while your thoughts are still private, is a really good time to clean them up. Many of our unbidden thoughts come as a result of unconscious processing, which you can shift. If you'd like some help with thoughts that seem to intrude, that you'd prefer to eliminate, call me at 888-4-hollis (888-446-5547).