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).