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.