Living a satisfying life means being in touch with our senses.
- Seeing a beautiful sunset
- Enjoying the aroma of a fresh cup of coffee
- The pleasure of moving easily
- The delight of touch with my lover . . .
Being in touch with our senses is not all there is to life. It is one delightful aspect of life.
Our culture is well and truly split in our attitude to our body and sensual life.
- We want leisure, and work hard for it
- We want ease in our bodies, and take on one scheme after another to discipline ourselves (I.e. punish ourselves).
- We want indulgence and are ever vigilant against it.
This situation is lunacy. And I believe it is our own creation.
How do we create it? By treating ourselves as if we are just a means to an end. We treat our bodies as objects to be shaped as mere energy to be directed to a particular end.
- Imagine if someone gave you a diet that you had to stick to, but that had nothing to do with what you needed.
But we do this to ourselves.
- Imagine if someone paid no attention to the physical needs of their child.
But we do this to the child inside us.
- Imagine if we told someone that their body was no good and had to look another way.
There are whole industries that are profitable because we do this to ourselves.
- Imagine telling someone that what mattered was not their physical health but the amount of money they make, or how successful they are or that they should hurt themselves to achieve enlightenment.
I suspect we tell ourselves this quite often. I suspect there are many institutions in our culture giving us exactly these messages.
A satisfying life means being authentically in touch with our physical senses. Authenticity can mean radical acceptance. Our bodies are us – not all of us, but an essential and potentially delightful part of us.
A Reality Not An Ideal
Which can sound like just another ideal to punish ourselves with. “You should be in touch with your senses, perfectly, all the time!”
I have no desire to impose another should on you. There are more than enough of these already.
Instead I want to do three things.
- Help you feel sympathy for the person you give a hard time to (yourself, especially your physical self in this post).
- Issue an invitation to a more satisfying life.
- Say that it is not hard to be in touch with our senses. That it is easy to live more enjoyably.
The Tough Stuff
So why wouldn’t we want to be in touch with the world of delight that our senses are in touch with? Because it hurts.
When we start to get in touch with our senses the first thing we often feel is pain. Sometimes it is pain that is the wake up call to how unkind we have been to ourselves.
To say that being in touch with what we feel is wonderful sounds very doubtful when the first thing I feel is pain.
Our environments are not always pleasing, they do sometimes cause us pain.
- buildings out of human scale
- furniture and fashion that doesn’t seem designed to suit anyone’s body
- Some smells are awfully unpleasant (some are plain disgusting)
To which I want to say three things
1. Some way of ignoring the unpleasant stuff may be essential.
- We hold our breath while we walk past the source of the noxious smell.
- We learn to ignore the ugliness of our cities and suburbs.
- We search out clothes that work well enough for us.
- We need to cope with the noise when we are in a city.
2. Ignoring the unpleasant stuff can be a problem.
If we deaden ourselves to pain we can end up hurting ourselves without realising it. (Doing this in an emergency may be essential but it is a rotten lifestyle).
- We can develop bad posture as we adapt to bad furniture
- We can end up not tasting the flavour or enjoying the texture of our food
- We can end up with poorer eyesight because we don’t look away from our computer screen every few minutes.
3. If we start paying attention we can find delights that we didn’t expect.
- We can become more alive to that particular piece of clothing and how if fits beautifully
- That facade on an old building
- The pleasure of just walking easily
- The warmth of the sun on our face
- How bracing a cold wind can be
What to do?
If you have chronic pain get it checked out. There may be a simple solution, or it may indicate some kind of problem. Either one is worth knowing.
[In my view drugs are god's good gift to increase the amount of pleasure in our lives. This includes herbs. Having them properly prescribed is important. We should not turn our backs on the gift of drugs in my opinion.]
Set aside time for pleasure. It can be just a few seconds.
- Take the time to taste a sip of coffee
- Take a few seconds just to enjoy three easy breaths
- You may be able to find the time for a monthly dance class or hike
Notice something new
- When I was walking home from the bus stop each day I made it a game to notice something new every time
- Try setting up a signal of some kind – every time I walk past that tree, or hear that sound – pause and notice what is happening
Education
There are classes in just about everything
- music appreciation
- cooking
- dance
- sphere abuse (sport)
- drawing
the list is almost endless
I think there are many simple ways that we can get in touch with our physical senses and so live a more satisfying and rich life.
I am my body. You are your body. It is not all of us, it is a good part of us. To be in touch with my senses is one part of authenticity – without it we will not find satisfaction (or not nearly as much as we could).
Which of your senses gives you the greatest pleasure? Which of your senses are you most in touch with? (They may not be the same.) Let me know in the comments.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: physical body, physical senses
Nacie
This is Nacie Carson. Today’s post is an interview with Nacie about her new book, The Finch Effect. Nacie and I found each other through our blogs several years ago now (which must be equivalent to at least one off line life time). We are quite different people, with very different backgrounds – Nacie more corporate and me more marginal. Our blogs overlap because we both care about self development. Her blog is The Life Uncommon. We have stayed in touch as we have pursued our different paths. I won’t say much more because I started by asking Nacie to tell us a bit about herself and her journey.
Evan: Your book is about the opportunities that the difficult employment situation in the US offers to professionals. Could you tell us a bit about your story and how it lead to you writing this book?
Nacie: I was inspired to write the book after I saw how my friends and family were powerfully affected by the recession here in the United States. I was freelance writing full time when the recession started, and in spite of being in a position that might intuitively seem like it had more risk I found myself more buoyant than those around me – but it occurred to me that this buoyancy might not last. So many people, who were (and still are) capable, intelligent, and successful were thrown for a loop by the rapid disintegration of the job market here, it would only be a matter of time before it affected me as well.
But the world was still turning, the sun was still rising every day, so I realized that there must be some people out there who were finding a way to thrive in spite of things, and I felt called to figure out who they were, what they were doing, and how they were doing it. Thus my journey in writing this book started.
The Finch Effect by Nacie Carson
Evan: Your book is about professionals taking charge of their employment – whether they work for themselves or others. What does this have to do with finches?
Nacie: Everything! I was really inspired by the image of Darwin’s finches…these little birds live on the Galapagos Islands, and they were first “discovered” by Charles Darwin in the 1830s when he was sailing around the world on a science expedition. What Darwin observed is that these little birds rapidly adapt to changes in their environment, thus allowing them to not only survive but thrive – the Galapagos Island chain has 13 distinct species of these birds, in all sizes and shapes, because of their ability to adapt. (Interesting side note, the finches ability to adapt was a major influence for his world-changing book “On the Origin of Species.”)
The finches, with their ability to change quickly to shifts in their environment, are such a beautiful metaphor for us modern professionals who are trying to find success in a professional world where it feels like the rules keep changing.
Evan: You have identified five strategies for professionals to survive and thrive in their working life. What are they?
Nacie: These strategies were extrapolated from the interviews I’ve done with professionals finding success in our economy – I call them “the Fittest.” Those strategies are:
- adopt a gig mindset,
- identify your professional value,
- cultivate your skill set,
- nurture your social network, and,
- harness your entrepreneurial energy.
Evan: Let’s take these in order. First: What is the gig economy? How is it different to the “normal” economy?
Nacie: The gig economy is an approach to work where a professional pieces together multiple and unrelated projects, known as “gigs,” rather than working in a full-time position for just one employer. As opposed to the traditional, 9-5 full time work model, the gig economy provides professionals with a way they can expand their resume faster, earn more, and diversify their work base simultaneously. It is a core tenet of The Finch Effect – or, at least the ability to see yourself as someone who can flourish in this kind of work arrangement.
Evan: Next: What is an easy way for someone to identify their professional value (or at least begin to)?
Nacie: A great question you can (and should) ask yourself is “Why you?” Why are you the best person for the job? Why should someone give you a raise or promotion over someone else? As professionals, we need to make sure we can confidently answer when someone asks us (implicitly or literally) why us – why are we special, worthy, or qualified for what they have to offer us.
Evan: Why is cultivating skills important and what is one easy way that people can begin to do this?
Nacie: Cultivating skills is very important because it can help us prove our value as well as help us adapt to changes in technology and how business is done. Taking an active interest in your own skill development is imperative, because a company may not do that for you (at least not at the level it needs to be done).
An easy way you can do that is to pick something small to adjust – maybe it’s your emailing skills, maybe it’s your time management – and set small goals to be accomplished over a short time frame. For example, you might choose to run shorter, more effective meetings and have a goal to do so over the next 30 days, instead of improving your time management at large. Shorter, more targeted bursts are always more productive than larger, generalized goals.
Evan: Why is it important to nurture our social network and how do you keep this from taking all your time?
Nacie: Our social networks are some of the most powerful resources we have available to us as professionals in the global economy. Not only can they provide a location for us to share our professional brands, but they also allow us to cultivate relationships with clients, peers, or recruiters right from our own living rooms or smartphones.
The number one way to keep it from taking your time is to schedule it into your day like you would any other activity – and then honor that schedule. Budget a hour, a half hour, whatever feels right for you to be completely present on social networks and then let it go until the next day.
Evan: How do you suggest people tap into their entrepreneurial energy and find the best way to direct it?
Nacie: The best thing people can do is to remove limiting beliefs around what they think of in relationship to entrepreneurship. People tend to think about entrepreneurship like they do about creativity – they see themselves as creative, or not creative, inherently. Similarly, people see themselves as entrepreneurial or not inherently. This isn’t true – just like creativity, we all have the potential to be entrepreneurial and apply that energy in a way that suits our needs, whether we are in a traditional job or running our own business.
You can direct your Entrepreneurial Energy in several ways: you can approach your work as employee with a strategic outlook; you can use that energy to build some gigs in addition to your full time role; or you can use that energy to start your own business as full-fledged entrepreneur.
Evan: Any final thoughts or things you want to say?
Nacie: This book was written with the US job market in mind, but the concept of being adaptable in your career is applicable to professionals around the world – changes will happen in our economies and job markets, now and in the future, and all of us need to be agile enough to adapt.
Evan: And, most importantly: Where can people find out more about you and your book?
Nacie: They can find out more about my book at my website, TheLifeUncommon.net or get their copy at Amazon here: http://ow.ly/aAxg5
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: career development, employment, Nacie Carson, professional development, The Finch Effect, work life
A Natural Rhythm
Our lives naturally go through the rhythm from rest to engagement to disengagement and back to rest.
- We all do have our own version of this rhythm to some extent.
- I tend to get very focused at the engagement stage and tend to be vague before this.
- Some people go through one cycle of the rhythm quickly, others are more leisurely.
Social Pressures
Our Western culture seems quite averse to rest. Though it does promote leisure – even then it tells us to ‘play hard’. School children aren’t allowed to stop working in accord with their rhythm – they need to keep working because the schedule and/or the teacher says so. And they have to stop even if they aren’t ready to because the schedule and/or the teacher says so.
I’m not really sure what lies at the base of this obsession with keeping busy. My best guess is that it is some kind of anxiety. (If you have ideas please let me know in the comments to this post.)
Counter-Cultural
I’m suggesting that finding a way to live more in tune with your natural rhythm of rest to activity to rest, will be to some extent counter-cultural. So it may help to get encouragement from friends. And it may help to know how much better you feel as a result of doing it (because we quickly get used to feeling better we can forget how much we have changed; so find a way to keep track – something simple like keeping a notebook from the time you start changing to the time when a new way of living is established; it could be anything from a few days to a few months. It doesn’t need to be elaborate, it needs to be enough so you can recall how you felt so you can know how you feel differently as a result of making the change.).
The Next Thing Emerges
While we are resting from the last thing we are in a bit of a state of suspension. How long this is will depend on how was asked of us by the activity we were doing. When we have rested enough then the next thing will emerge.
I have just finished a series of posts on authenticity as ‘the killer app’ for a satisfying life. So I am resting and waiting for the next thing to emerge. It may be on what gets in the way of authenticity and so means we don’t find satisfaction, it is still becoming clear for me. It would effectively be trouble-shooting the app.
A Question About Linking to Blogs
I want to draw your attention to a post about psychopaths and having empathy for them by Joe Burgo. It is a very considered and important post I think. And the comments are excellent too – some well worth reading just on their own.
And I didn’t know whether to do this on the blog. I highlight the posts I like through twitter these days (if you want to follow me on twitter I’m @evanhadkins). This means that if you just read the blog you don’t get to hear about other posts that I like.
I used to do posts that linked to other posts but have pretty much stopped doing this since I have been using twitter. Let me know what you think. Would you like me to point to posts that I think are especially good by doing posts on this blog about them?
Hoping you can have some restful times and looking forward to hearing from you in the comments, Evan.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: link posts, natural cycles, rest
You and Your Situation
Authenticity isn’t only about ourselves. It is also about the situation that we are in. Knowing our needs is one thing; knowing our situation and acting effectively in it so that our needs is met is quite another. The learning, exhilaration, and frustration of dealing with our context is all part of the authentic life.
We Are Social Beings
Human newborns are able to do little for themselves. Almost everything we do we have learned. Which means that we are very dependent on others – how they care for us, what we learn from them, what they teach us by example and instruction.
Your Relationships Matter
If you are like most people then how good you feel and how satisfying you find your life, is effected in a major way by your relationships. Our relationships with family members, friends, colleagues and collaborators all have a major impact on how we experience our lives.
Fake Isn’t Satisfying
False politeness and phoney closeness don’t make for long-lasting relationships. Or at least not long-lasting relationships that we want to spend much time in.
Authenticity
It is only a relationship where who is we are welcomed that can be satisfying in the long term.
How to Do Authenticity for a Satisfying Relationship
Here are the stages for the killer app for a satisfying life – authenticity.
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
- Do it.
- Ask yourself:Am I satisfied?
- Rest
A note about our biggest need. Before I talk about how the app applies to our relationships I want to say a word about our biggest need: attachment. If we do not have a secure attachment to a parent early in our lives this has big consequences. If we do not have closeness with others our lives are much diminished.
Authenticity in relationships is not simply about ‘getting my needs met’. It is about the quality of the relationship. If we set out to use others to meet our needs we won’t end up with closeness, our biggest need won’t be met, we won’t have satisfying relationships. Our human relationships make it clear that authenticity isn’t just about ourself – it is about how we relate to our situation and those around us.
The Killer App Applied to Relationships
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
This can be large or small. It can involve big changes or smaller ones. It may be very specific (one word or action by one friend) or quite general (e.g. I can’t express myself clearly in conversation).
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
Because the way our society is organised is pretty hostile to relationships (too quick, too cerebral, little education about our emotions and how they work) there is lots of information around on how to deal with this. There are shelves full of books and many courses. There are people to help you deal with varying levels of problems for varying levels of fees whether offering secular counselling or religious guidance. There may be friends you can talk to.
- Do it
If the problem is general then general advice can be very helpful. Books or courses may be the way to go. If you find this doesn’t quite do it (even though you feel it should) you may need something more individually tailored by a person. The more specific it is to a particular person or situation the more you will need to talk it over with a person (whether a friend or a “professional”).
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
We can get very confused by and entangled in our relationships. Checking how satisfied we are can help us cut through the clutter and confusion. It will also prevent us pursuing what isn’t working.
- Rest
Those of us into self development, like me and perhaps you if you are reading this blog, can work relentlessly. Especially on our relationships. There is usually more we can do. But if we don’t rest we usually won’t have the energy to work well, we’ll get compulsive and trapped by unproductive habits and routines. Resting – whether this means just hanging out with a friend, or withdrawing for solitude – is hugely important.
Here are a couple of examples of how the process can work.
1. Something very specific
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
It is one little thing – the way a friend speaks about a particular topic.
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
It is so particular there won’t be courses or books about it. I could talk to a counsellor or a friend or my friend directly. My friend can be touchy about this topic, maybe I’ll talk to a mutual friend.
- Do it.
I talk to the mutual friend and they tell me something about my friends background that helps me understand my friends approach to this topic.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
Yes, now I understand more of where my friend is coming from it doesn’t bother me much.
- Rest
I can relax around my friend and not be bothered by the way they speak about this particular topic.
2. A general frustration.
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
How come I can always figure out what to say later? During the conversation I’m not sure what I think or want to say.
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
There are various books and courses. It isn’t about assertiveness – I’m quite happy to say what I think and ask for what I want once I know what it is. It is something about thinking clearly and feeling that I have to hurry up and get it right. I decide to do a course that explains how my feelings work and how they can sometimes get in the way of thinking clearly.
- Do it.
The course is pretty good. The presenter explains things well and some of the exercises apply pretty well to my problem.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
With a little practise I learn to take time to think even in the middle of conversations. I realise I can use ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ to give myself time to think, or I can say I need a moment to think. After doing this a few times I can do it pretty easily. I’m satisfied with what I’ve learnt and how I can now say what I think in conversation.
- Rest
I can rely on my new ability and relax while having conversations.
Conclusion
It is hard for a relationship to be satisfying for both people when one person isn’t happy in it. Even with quite large groups, one person being unhappy can affect the whole group. If we can address our dissatisfaction with a relationship usually the other person(s) involved will benefit too.
What has helped you most have satisfying relationships? Let me know in the comments.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: authenticity, Relationships, satisfaction
In our Western culture at the moment we are in an interesting place about spirituality. (For those interested in lots of detail about how we got here Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age is great – it is quite long and a bit repetitious in places but it is really good.)
On the one hand our public culture is dominated by the crass materialism of (neo-liberal) economics and a particular kind of science (at the moment associate with Richard Dawkins). (I don’t know if this is so true outside the English-speaking West, which is my culture.) On the other hand there is an explosion of private spirituality. Adherence to the ‘spirituality clubs’ (churches, temples, synagogues) are in decline but people still want the personal satisfaction that a spirituality brings.
This split of public and private is not new. It has been around at least since industrialisation – and I suspect probably since large cities (but that is just a wild guess on my part). The harsh world of real politik and the private world where softness and emotion are valued.
Previously it was the ‘spirituality clubs’ that bridged this split. These are declining and so individuals are now put in the situation of developing their own spirituality in quite an acute way. (They also tended to be the institutions that injected ethics into public debates. However much we disagreed with their ethics. Which would lead us to a different topic.)
This post will leave aside these bigger issues and focus on how to develop a personally satisfying spirituality.
What do I mean by spirituality?
I mean our sense of purpose and values.
For me our sense of values and purpose is a separate dimension to our lives to our thoughts or feelings. We can rationally implement procedures to achieve purposes we disagree with. We can be attracted to what conflicts with our values. This means that our values are not the same as our thoughts and feelings.
Our spirituality needs to be authentic. The decline in the ‘spirituality clubs’ I think is because they are not dealing with major parts of our experience. Thus new age and other newer spiritualities tend to include a focus on ecology, and the non-rational aspects of ourselves (both of which had disappeared from Western Christianity that had been the dominant ‘spirituality club’ in our culture).
The killer app for spiritual satisfaction
Authenticity is the killer app for a satisfying life. In brief the app is as follows:
Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
Look for options of what you can do about it.
Do it.
Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
Rest
Applied to our values and purposes this would mean something like the following.
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
I’m achieving my goals. My intimate relationships are good. My lifestyle would be the envy of most people on the planet. So what’s wrong? Maybe I have no right to feel dissatisfied – but I do! It is something about the why of my life. Somehow I need to find a why that has to do with me personally. A why that shapes what I do, how I live, the choices I make.
There are many possibilities for this dissatisfaction. It may have always been there. Or you may have moved on to a new area of your life that existing ways of doing things don’t deal with. (The evangelical christianity I grew up with didn’t have much to say about being an entrepreneur for instance.) Or a spiritual practise that has been working for you no longer does.
If you have a definite sense of what is wrong then it can be easier to know where to look for alternatives.
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
There is no shortage of options. All the religions and some philosophies have guidance on what is correct behaviour and usually have spiritual practises they have devised over time.
The question becomes how to filter all these options. My advice is by a ruthless focus on what’s bugging you. If it is about your values and purpose you can find ways to respond to this. If it is dissatisfaction with a current practise where you look may be different.
- Do it
A couple of cautions.
1. It can be important to know what it is that the spirituality is asking of you. Within christianity a monastic spirituality is quite different to social justice oriented one. Some yogas emphasise breathing and posture, others emphasise sitting and watching the breath. Do the best you can to find out what the spirituality you want to do actually involves.
2. Checking out a new spiritual practise or tradition can take a long time. It may be a good idea to decide in advance how long you want to devote to doing the new thing. You can always decide to keep going at the end of the time period.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
This can be tricky with spirituality. What you do may open up new perspectives and experiences that you couldn’t have anticipated. So your perception about your original discontent may change. I think all you can do is acknowledge this. Then move on to an assessment of your current level of satisfaction. There may be parts of what was originally bugging you that still need to be addressed or the new experiences may bring their new satisfactions and discontents.
- Rest
Beware, being spiritually concerned can lead to workaholism and perfectionism. If a spirituality is authentic to you then you will be experience satisfaction and rest.
Here are a couple of examples about applying authenticity to spirituality. They are just to give you an idea of what it looks like. They are both to do with my personal spirituality. I didn’t think I could really presume to talk about anybody else’s.
1. Evangelical Christianity and Our Bodies
This process took me several years to work through. This example is just a fragment of the whole experience.
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
I was working in an office and feeling antsy. I was finding that I was attracted to doco’s on TV about craftspeople. I realised I wanted to explore my physical experience more.
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
I don’t know of many christian traditions that deal with this. I see an ad for a massage class that is local.
- Do it.
I do the massage class.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
I find that the massage does give a centred attention. It surprises me that it is a form of communication with the other person. I am not contented with my understanding of this process and how it would fit with evangelical christianity. (Back to what is bugging me.)
- Rest
I am glad for what I have experienced in the massage class. I have a sense of where to look next.
I went through this process several more times before I had processed this. I found Shintaido (a form of self development that evolved from Okinawan karate), zen shiatsu, Israel It’s Life and Culture by J Pedersen (vol.1 The Soul and It’s Powers), developed a workshop for a christian group called Options in Spirituality and formulated a set of processes suitable for evangelical christians.
2. How I Found Journalling
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
The standard christian disciplines don’t seem to work for me. Somehow they just don’t fit. They seem to work well enough for others, but they are not me!
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
I’ll read a Bible passage and write my response to it.
- Do it.
It goes far better than I expected. The writing flows easily. I find that if I pursue what comes up – however ‘unspiritual’ I judge it to be – I end up with a sense of spirit being present with me. (And if I don’t it doesn’t!)
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
Yes. Over time I have tried other things. Some of which have been great. I now use journalling in slightly different ways to assist my thinking and work through my feelings as well.
- Rest
I have found a way that works for me and which I keep practising for years to come.
Conclusion
I think spirituality is one dimension of our lives. If it was better looked after I think may people would live much richer and satisfying lives.
I think spirituality is one dimension of our lives. If you have a sense of purpose and your values you can still have problems if you eat crap and don’t look after your body. People with a real sense of connection to spirit can be shoddy in their thinking and poor at relating to others. (Reading biographies of those with a strong sense of spirituality can be very instructive).
In my experience an authentic spirituality brings a satisfaction that nothing else does.
I would like to hear about your sense of purpose and values. And if you have ways of connecting with this and maintaining it. I realise this is an area where there is much disagreement, all comments are most welcome – hostile critique is welcome too. Looking forward to hearing your experience.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: authenticity, purpose, satisfaction, self development, Spirituality, values
Rebecca Brown from Cadence Marketing Group (specialising in books) was kind enough to send me a copy of Change Your Life Not Your Wife marriage saving advice for success driven people by Tony Ferretti and Peter Weiss. It is available on Amazon in hardcopy and kindle editions
Anything sent to me for review is on the understanding that I write whatever I like about it. Rebecca had no problems with this condition.
Introduction
In this review I will first give my overall assessment, then some quibbles which you can skip, and finally a more detailed review.
Overall Assessment
This is a really good book. Not just for those who are success driven or whose marriage is having difficulties but for anyone who wants to enjoy their marriage more.
It is easy to read, uses the story of a typical couple (John and Mary) to ground the ideas in real life, has summaries at the end of the chapters for easy reference and exercises so you can use the ideas in your marriage.
I recommend it highly and without significant reservations.
Quibbles
- Success. By success these writers mean high paying prestige jobs such as the professions. The kind of jobs that demand long hours and co-operative spouses (usually a wife). I don’t really buy into these kinds of ideas.
- Its Social Limitations. The people this is written for are well off and secure. The book inhabits this world. It is a different universe to Occupy Wall Street, environmental activism or polyamory. You don’t go to books to improve your marriage for these kinds of things, and certainly not ones aimed at the success driven, but if you aren’t part of the class this book is aimed at you will probably have a few moments of dislike. This shouldn’t get in the way of you benefitting from the book. This is a quibble not a major problem.
- Lack of social critique. This book is about your marriage requiring work and being prioritised above work and acquiring prestige. They do describe the pressures that modern marriages are put under. However, there is no questioning of the existing forms of professionalism or work practises that create these pressures to put work and prestige before marriage or people in general. The responses asked for are individual. However, this kind of critique probably isn’t what people are looking for in books about improving their marriage.
- Cliches. The book is structured partly around the story of a couple who go to marriage counselling – there are two endings, one where they stay together and one where they separate. Occasionally the couple seems to be too cliched to be real.
- The view of counselling. The writers seem to have a view of counselling that is quite directive and professionalised. This is never questioned. The therapist dealing with the couple tells them what to do to save their marriage and expects them to comply. I don’t disagree with the advice given but aren’t entirely comfortable with this view of therapy. Most people are comfortable with this way of doing therapy and this is the way that most therapists work, my view is a minority one (which I think is correct).
Detailed Review
This book is aimed at those who have achieved conventional success in their careers. And who have done it in the conventional way – which means by maintaining and exerting control. Which has lead to failure in their marriage – spouses don’t like being managed and controlled.
So what does make for a good marriage? They list five essentials:
- equality between the partners
- making the marriage a priority
- effective communication and conflict resolution
- forgiveness
- intimacy
They also list the six main relationship killers:
- emotional unawareness
- overly strong achievement drive
- perfectionism
- criticising
- attempting to control your partner
- allowing your partner to control you
Each of the essentials for a good marriage and the six killers are grounded with examples of what it means for couples and self assessment exercises. This material is never left abstract, the authors are good at explaining the material and giving assessments to see how it applies to your relationship.
There also have a good chapter (ch.6) on How You Got Your Personality Issues. Which fills in the background on why people want to achieve success – and why people fall in love with those who want to achieve success. This adds depth to the analysis.
The guts of the book – the part about rebuilding your marriage – are chapters 8 and 9. Chapter Eight explains what marriage therapy is like and chapter nine tells the story of the typical couple (John and Mary) going to marriage counselling.
In brief the process to rescue a marriage is to resolve conflict, forgiveness, build trust and rebuild intimacy. They give a seven stage process for conflict resolution (p.116) that is simple and straightforward and offers good guidance on how to do it. The authors also give lists of behaviours on how to do each of the essentials for a good marriage (pp.125-7). There is lots of good practical advice on what to do and how to do it.
In Conclusion
If your marriage is in strife because one of you is driven to achieve success this is probably the book for you. If you are having a few problems in your marriage there is much here that could be very helpful.
If you are pretty happy with your marriage and want some ways to strengthen it, then you will probably want to skip lots, but there is still stuff to benefit from on conflict resolution and the checklist of behaviours for the essentials of a good marriage.
If you have found other books that have benefitted your marriage please let me know in the comments to this post. I’d like to know and others will benefit too, thanks, Evan.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: career, conflict resolution, control, forgiveness, intimacy, marriage, success, trust
Our culture especially our schooling is obsessed with our intellect. This has lead to a strong couter-reaction by some people where our feeling and/or intuition or sensory life is more highly valued than our intellect. I think this is unfortunate.
Our curiosity and intellect and ability to understand is wonderful and extraordinary.
This has been beautifully put by a physicist, Richard Feynman – when discussing the value of getting a Nobel Prize he said:
The prize is the pleasure of finding a thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it – those are the real things.
[http://home.primus.ca/~remedy3/THE%20PERENNIAL%20QUEST.htm]
Unfortunately for all our obsession with intellect we are rarely taught how to think. If we are it is usually a course in logic and won’t involve creativity or how to design a solution. I have written about this (especially creativity) many times on this blog. A good course in thinking that embraces all these is Edward de Bono’s CoRT Thinking Program. (http://www.cortthinking.com/) There are no doubt many others. [Please let me know of any you know of in the comments to this post.]
Authenticity may not feel relevant to our intellectual life, but I think it is vital. We need to think about our own problems, devise our own solutions, formulate our own ideas – all this is part of a satisfying life. This doesn’t preclude learning from others, it means that we genuinely learn and make what we learn our own.
Put as briefly as I can here is the killer app – authenticity leading to satisfaction.
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
- Do it.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
- Rest
Applied to our intellectual experience this goes something like:
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
Something isn’t going right. I keep doing the same thing and it doesn’t work out. I don’t know what I am doing (or what I think I’m doing doesn’t lead to the result I expect).
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
I can look for holes in my knowledge and ways to learn more about the field where things aren’t working for me. I can ask friends with experiences similar to mine. I can perhaps hire a personal coach or teacher. I can check that I am implementing what I already understand. I can try and get more specific about where the problems arise more precisely.
- Do it.
I choose one of these options to address what is going wrong and pursue. If it is a major project this could take years. If it is a minor technical detail it may take a few minutes.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
Information can be fascinating, knowledge can be seductive. We need to check that what we have learned deals with what was bugging us. (This can involve us seeing our initial problem in a new way – or even finding out that the problem wasn’t what we thought it was.)
- Rest
Rushing and trying to understand everything will lead to exhaustion. Take time to rest.
Here is a small example.
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
A venue for a group I belong too (sports club, church or whatever) is getting a bit untidy and dirty.
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
If the group has the money we can employ cleaners. We can organise a working bee. I can ask others how come the place gets untidy and dirty. This time I decide to pay some people to do the cleaning.
- Do it.
I organise the cleaners and check the job they did.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
They did well, good job. However, we can’t afford to employ cleaners regularly.
- Rest
There is some time before we need to figure out what we are going to do to keep the place clean and tidy.
A Personal Example
When I was doing a youth work course we did a little on management. One exercise was to plan the moving of the furniture from the room we were in to the one next door: establishing what things would be done and in which order. If you need to be convinced of the need to use our intellect to think things through, do this exercise. You will be surprised at how useful it is to show the usefulness of our ability to plan and organise. Even if you don’t think you need convincing it is probably worth spending 15 minutes doing it.
The beauty and power of our intellect can be extraordinary. It is one essential part of living a satisfying life.
Do you take pleasure in finding things out? Do you think you tend to overestimate or underestimate the importance of your intellect? If so, what kind of consequences does this have for you? Let me know in the comments.
Coming Soon: The steps to a satisfying life. An online course that takes you from where you are and shows you a path to lasting satisfaction.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: authenticity, intellect, satisfaction
Blogging Has Two Audiences – this post is for only one of them
My kind of blogging, one person writing on one topic – rather than a multi-author topic blog or a blog that is just about me and my random thoughts or doings – is a bit strange. People come for the topic but also want to have a personal connection with the blogger. Especially, those of you who have been reading for a while.
My kind of blog tends to have two audiences. Those who follow me (that is get each new post sent to them in a reader or by email – there are buttons for this in the sidebar – or bookmark my site and look at it regularly) and those who find a particlar post through the search engines.
This post is about me and my recent thinkings and doings and the blog in general; it is mostly for my regular readers (‘followers’). So if you got here from a search on ‘update from evan’ and this isn’t what you expected, my apologies; the next post will be back to my normal topical posts on self development – satisfaction from authenticity.
How Things Are With Me
The first group of people are just about to finish the 40 Reminders course. This is a brief email each day for forty days reminding you to check in with your experience. It is my way of giving the easiest possible first step to living authentically and so experiencing more satisfaction. I am waiting a little nervously to see what feedback people have. The worst possible is no feedback at all but I hope it is mostly positive (although negative at least lets me know what to improve and how much improvement is needed).
I am starting to write my ‘signature program’ (this is a piece of jargon that means roughly, the program that sets out the core of what you are about). It will be [So Many] Steps to Authenticity. How many I’m not sure yet. Should starting at rest be a step of it’s own or is the first step our awareness of some disturbance? And then there is whether a general survery should be a separate step from the more narrow focus that follows it. My approach to these things is to keep writing and the right decision tends to become obvious.
Personally there are some renovations going on where I live and I’m feeling a bit in suspended animation. I’m waiting to see what happens with some stuff that friends are going through too. So I’m feeling a bit detached, not unpleasantly; the feeling is quite mellow. Perhaps in response to this I’m feeling that I want to go deeper into stillness (this sounds pretentious to me). When I’m more centred I’m also more in touch and responsive, which sounds contradictory I guess. It is a quite dynamic kind of stillness.
So that’s how things are going for me? How’s life with you? Looking forward to hearing from you in the comments.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: personal update
Our Culture Doesn’t Welcome Our Feelings
I think our society lives to fast for us to know how we feel. I think this leads to physical distress and poor relationships.
I don’t mean that our lives are too fast for our feelings – these can be very quick, almost immediate. It takes little time to be overwhelmed by the beauty of a sunset, flower, or member of our preferred gender.
I mean that we live to fast to know our feelings. For us to realise what we are feeling and to let us influence our thinking and doing.
Our Emotions Provide Important Information
I think it is important to pay attention to our feelings because they are information. (Not absolutely reliable 100% right all the time kind of information – but information that is worth paying attention to. I don’t know of any way to get information that is always accurate.)
- If we are afraid we may be in danger
- If we are angry something we value may have been insulted or threatened.
- If we are happy something good for us may be occurring
- If we are sad we may be loosing something valuable.
Or not.
Instead of our emotional response being to what is going on it may be to something that happened long ago.
- Do I need to be scared of most big dogs? Probably not. I am wary of them because I was scared by one walking home from infants school (grades 1 and 2) one afternoon.
- I may feel angry because of the way I was treated in the past.
- I may be happy because something reminds of a happy time I once had.
- I may be sad because I’m reminded of a past loss.
And we can be mistaken.
- That animal I thought I swerved to avoid while driving turned out to be a piece of paper.
- I misheard what someone said and so didn’t need to feel angry
- I may not pay close enough attention and so be happy for no reason
- It may be that I am not actually losing something, I just thought I was.
Our emotions are not infallible, they are valuable and provide us with information. To live a satisfying life we need to be open to the information that they give us.
- Our fear alerts us to possible danger.
- Our anger alerts us to what is valuable to us.
- Our sadness alerts us to what is being lost that we value.
- Our happiness lets us know what suits us.
If we listen to our emotions we can become clearer on our needs and values. And these can become more deeply a part of our life. Which is essential for satisfaction.
Being Moved by Our Emotions
Knowing what we are feeling is not enough for a satisfying life. We also need to put our emotions into motion. More precisely we need to not stop ourselves putting our emotions into motion.
Because our emotions are partly muscular.
- Fear affects our breathing and stomach.
- Anger is a contraction of particular muscles, readying them for action.
- Sadness usually involves softening around our eyes.
- Happiness involves a kind of relaxation.
Sometimes we stop these muscular actions. Sometimes we get so good and quick at this that we really aren’t aware of feeling fearful or angry, happy or sad. We will say in all honesty that, “I don’t feel [whatever the emotion is]”. Usually this stopping of the feeling will mean holding our breath and tightening other muscles as well (perhaps anal sphincter or throat or jaw or back).
To live an emotionally satisfying life our emotions need to flow. Which brings us to authenticity.
We need to not only know our feeling, our feeling needs to relate to the world around us – and in two ways.
- Our feeling needs to be a response to what is genuinely going on (not being mistaken or triggering something in the past), and,
- Our feeling needs to be expressed in a way that relates to where we are and what is going on.
I talked about mistakes and responses to past events above. Expression is the other side of the story. Which brings us to authenticity – knowing what is going on in ourselves and in our environment, and having these two fitting well.
Authenticity is The Killer App for Emotional Satisfaction
Here is the app in brief:
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
- Do it.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
- Rest
I’ll apply this to a couple of small emotional moments. I hope that this will convey to you; that it is easy to have a slightly more satisfying emotional life, and, that it will give you an easy place to start if you want to begin to make bigger changes to the amount of satisfaction you feel in your emotional life.
Anger
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
I’ve stopped and clenched my jaw. Or I am feeling stunned. It happened when a remark was made. I feel like lashing out or making a cutting remark. I’m angry.
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
I can keep my thoughts to myself. I can allow my jaw to loosen without hitting or demeaning anybody. I can tell this person I want to speak to them later. I can say what I think loudly and in no uncertain terms. I decide now is not the time but I tell them I want to speak to them later.
- Do it.
Later I tell the person what I got upset about. They apologise.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
That went well. Breathe out, feel the relief, and the pleasure of being clear and having a good relationship with the other person.
- Rest
Feel the relaxation, how easy it is to breathe and the muscular relaxation.
Happiness
Happiness is a state of ease and relaxation, so we tend not to look at it closely when we are experiencing it. Which is understandable, but knowing what makes us happy is valuable to live a more satisfying life.
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
[I suppose that isn't the best way of putting things for happiness. Maybe it would be better put as: What's going on?]
I’m feeling light and relaxed. My breathing is easy and my shoulders aren’t raised.
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
I could go for a walk, ring a friend, lie down for a few minutes.
- Do it.
I ring my friend and we talk for a while about how we are feeling at the moment.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
Yes, that was a nice call. My friend was happy, there was no misunderstandings, neither of us are dealing with major dramas in our lives.
- Rest
I take a moment to enjoy the good feeling before moving on to the next thing.
Conclusion
Our culture really doesn’t encourage us to be in touch with our feelings. It doesn’t educate us to know what we are feeling and it doesn’t educate to know how to express our feelings well. I think a lot of the drugs (legal and illegal, substances and experiences) we use are due to this hostility to our emotions.
Do you find that you have trouble knowing that you are feeling some feelings? Have you found ways to express particular feelings that you had trouble with? I would love to hear your experience in the comments.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: authenticity, awareness of feelings, blocking our feelings, emotions, expressing our feelings., feelings, feelings are information, satisfactions
We live in a crassly materialistic and pleasure seeking culture (I am speaking of what is roughly my culture – the english-speaking “West”).
- Politics is dominated by economics. As is the ‘political’ commentary in the mainstream media. There are entire industries devoted to how we look – whole shops devoted to our nails!
- Diets are promoted not for health so much as losing weight to look better (thinner. Perhaps the obsession with thinness is because screens make us look larger, and we spend an awful lot of time looking at screens; but that is just a wild speculation of mine.)
- The cults of youth and fitness are usually put in decidedly physical terms. When was the last time you read of the latest compassion or equality fad?
Which you would think would lead to;
- Buildings of great beauty,
- Suburbs that were a delight to live in,
- Furniture that felt exactly right and that was designed to accommodate us physically, and,
- Workplaces that we left feeling better than when we arrived.
And yet . . .
Our physical lives are full of stress and misery.
Perhaps it is not so quiet now but many still live lives of desperation. Instead of being able to slow down so we aren’t stressed we are encouraged to tranquillise ourselves – with pills or cultural activities or sport or meditation or whatever (all of which can be very good things I think).
So I want to suggest that not only is our culture obsessed with pleasure it is also obsessed with punishing ourselves, especially our physical selves.
Those who push themselves to endure pain are admired, not regarded as foolish or in need of psychotherapy. An Australian Olympic Swimmer, Ian Thorpe, has described pushing himself in training to the point of needing to get out of the pool to vomit. (And yes, self development of which I am a part, is also guilty of this.)
Perhaps the worst normal example of this is the moralising and vicious judgements directed to those who are ‘overweight’ (on a scale devised from averages).
So I want to say something that may seem contradictory – I want people to be less concerned with the physical and to experience greater physical ease and pleasure.
My own view is that the obsession with the physical is to cover a lack. Perhaps most often a lack of nurturing and nourishing relationships; and perhaps also lack of a sense of meaning or spirituality. You can’t get enough of what doesn’t satisfy your need. Doing a PB (personal best) won’t help your relationship with your beloved or child. That taste sensation of a meal won’t help you relate any better to your colleague. I like good food and there is nothing wrong with achieving a PB, but when we use those to meet needs that we can’t meet then we get obsession.
In the last post I suggested that authenticity was the killer app for a satisfying life. In this post I want to apply the app to our physical lives.
In brief the app goes like this:
1. Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
2. Look for options of what you can do about it.
3. Do it.
4. Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
5. Rest
We have various physical needs to meet if we are to thrive. These are healthy air, food, drink, movement, rest and touch.
These needs vary slightly from person to person; which brings us to authenticity. We need to know our own needs to thrive physically, and we need to be able to understand and relate to our environment effectively in order to meet them.
I will give a couple of simple examples of how to use this app – not because it doesn’t apply to big things but because it is easiest to start with small and easy things. I’ll do food first and then movement.
[Philosophical Disclaimer: focusing on the physical doesn't mean that our physical life isn't affected by our thoughts, feelings, relationships or spirituality. It just means that for this post I am focusing on one aspect of who we are.]
Food
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
An empty feeling in my stomach that I recognise as hunger.
- Look for options of what you can do about it.
Looking in the cupboards and fridge, perhaps considering going out to get something. Decide to heat leftovers.
- Do it.
Heat and eat the leftovers.
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied?
Check in with your stomach. You may feel like something else, perhaps a hot drink or something else to eat. Or you may feel satisfied.
- Rest
Take a moment or a few minutes to allow digestion.
Movement
- Ask yourself: What’s bugging me?
Feeling a bit antsy and stiff sitting in this chair in front of the computer.
- Look for options of what you can do about it
Shoulder rolls; stretch; get up and walk around the room; go for a quick, brisk walk. Decide I don’t have time for a walk so I will get up and take a few steps in the room.
- Do it.
I get up and walk around the room
- Ask yourself: Am I satisfied
Check whether you are feeling lighter and more relaxed or still a bit antsy and stiff.
- Rest
Take a few seconds to rest before getting back to work on the computer.
Conclusion
For most of us reading this (relatively wealthy – in world terms – people) there are things we can do to look after ourselves better physically. There are things we can do to increase the amount of physical ease and pleasure that we experience.
I would like to hear any experiences you have of when you have found what suited you physically. Let me know in the comments.
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To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.
It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.
If you would like me to write about some aspect of living an authentic life please don’t hesitate to get in touch. There is a box in the sidebar where you can leave this anonymously if you wish.
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Tags: authenticity, ease, physical life, satisfaction
