Focus on What You Have

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Lisa Ivaldi

2 min read

Focus on What You Have

Last month I wrote about my experience creating a gratitude vision board. I mentioned that at one point during the workshop I decided that the board just wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t have the right resources – the magazines were not good enough and there weren’t enough of them. Other people had taken all the good pictures and the few I did find weren’t perfect.

The theme of the workshop was being grateful for what you already have in your life instead of thinking about what you don’t have or what you would like more of. The irony of my situation was not entirely lost on me!

It struck me that sometimes I look at the pieces of my life the same way I was looking at the pictures for my board – that I don’t have enough to make it really good. Sure, my life is pretty good, but surely if it were bigger it would be better!

I was recently listening to a talk by Deepak Chopra who said that people very often buy into ideas about what will make them happy that are not necessarily true. We think we must be hugely successful and rich.  Even millionaires think they won’t be happy until they are billionaires. Basically, bigger is better.

The vision board exercise really illustrated this for me. I wasn’t happy with what I had because I thought I needed more to make something good. I couldn’t see that I actually had enough of the resources I needed to make something beautiful. All I could see was what I didn’t have.

There will always be others who have more. But happiness really comes down to your perspective. You can choose to look at the pieces of your life and say “it’s not enough, I won’t be happy until I have more” or you can choose to be pleased with, and really enjoy, what you do have.

It’s not about settling or fooling yourself. It’s about seeing what is really there and accepting it. Once I stopped focusing on what I didn’t have and started seeing what I did have, it was possible to make a really good vision board. Actually, not even just a really good board, but one that I loved. One that made me smile and feel good.

It may not be a small adjustment for all of us, but a change in focus from what you don’t have to what you do have can make a huge difference in your happiness level.

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You Can’t Know!

Posted on July 27, 2014 by Lisa Ivaldi

4 min read

Lisa's Gratitude Vision Board 2014

When my daughter was little she used to say “I can’t know” instead of “I don’t know”. It was very cute – “Where’s your teddy bear?” – “I can’t know!” However, over the years I have come to realize that in many instances she was absolutely right, it’s not just that I don’t know, I really can’t know.

Last spring, my now 16 year old daughter and I went to a one day retreat. The exercise in the afternoon was to create a vision board.  I usually enjoy making a vision board – flipping through magazines, cutting out pictures that appeal to me and then gluing them onto a board to make a visual reminder of what I want more of in my life or what I am grateful for in my life. There were lots of magazines and we had quite a bit of time to put our boards together – all good.

However, I started to get concerned when I had gone through about a dozen magazines and found no pictures I liked. I looked around the room to see everyone else happily cutting and gluing the mounds of pictures they had found. I was looking at my blank board and starting to think that there was no way I was going to create a vision board that day.

I finally found about six pictures that I liked the look of and a few pictures of words that were pretty cool. However, when I tried to arrange them on the board they just didn’t look good – a few random pictures with lots of black space around them. I was thinking that I didn’t have enough pictures to make a good board. There just wasn’t enough to fill up my board.

Near the end of the exercise, the facilitator mentioned that we could include anything that appealed to us including colours. I started looking at some of the waste paper lying around from cutting out the pictures. There were some background pinks and blues that I really liked. I started cutting up the pinks and blues and putting them on the black board. Those pieces of coloured paper along with the few pictures and words were enough to fill up the board in a way that was really pleasing to me. I ended up finishing with everyone else and with a board that I really liked (see picture above).

In the space of just over an hour I went from “this is hopeless” to “this is great”. I sat there at the end of the exercise looking at my board in wonder. Where did this come from? I easily could have given up after the first dozen magazines when I had no pictures and couldn’t see any possibility that I would ever create a vision board. I could have given up after I did manage to find a few pictures but still couldn’t see how they would ever come together to make a good board.

Life can be the same. At some points in our lives we look at what we currently have or where we currently and we can’t see how we can get to where we want to go. The lesson the vision board exercise taught me is that you can’t always know how things are going to turn out or how to get where you want. You can guess, you can predict, you can hypothesize, but you can’t know.  There are just so many variables that we can’t even imagine.  It reminded me to let go of trying to figure everything out beforehand. How limiting to assume that if I can’t imagine it, it’s not possible!

Hopefully I will remember this lesson in the future and know that if I just keep going in the direction I want to go, even if success seems very unlikely, I never know where I will end up. I really “can’t know” – and maybe that’s a good thing.

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What have you stopped seeing that it may be in your best interest to change?

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Lisa Ivaldi

4 min read

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Over the last couple of months I’ve been sharing what I learned from Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.

Many of us have habits that we know are bad for us and that we want to change, such as nail biting or smoking. However, over the years we may also have developed habits, or coping mechanisms, that we don’t even realize exist and that it may be in our best interest to change.

Over the last year or so my husband has pointed out to me that almost every weekend I don’t feel well. I couldn’t see it at first. It didn’t help that he pointed it out when I was not feeling well. It felt more like I was being kicked when I was down than someone trying to help me. However, one day my husband and I were out for a walk and I was telling him about something I had read in Duhigg’s book. It was a nice day and we were enjoying our walk through a local forest. Being the brave man that he is, he tried one more time to broach the weekend illness topic with me. He prefaced it with, “I know you don’t like to hear this, but you do always get sick on the weekends”. Because I was feeling well and therefore more receptive, I was able to delve into the issue with him.

After much discussion and a pretty big revelation, I realized that I was unconsciously following a habit loop – Cue, Routine, Reward – that I wasn’t even remotely aware of. The short(er) version of the story is that basically I am a pleaser. I like to make sure that other people are happy. Sounds good, but actually in order to make sure that other people are happy many times I sacrifice my own happiness out of an exaggerated sense of duty.

So, Monday to Friday my friends and family know to mostly leave me alone as I am working.   I also know what I am doing Monday to Friday so there is no internal sense of pressure to be doing anything other than working – “I can’t worry about pleasing you now, I’m working!” A little weird but it was my “free pass” to not having to worry about other people’s happiness.

Weekends of course were another matter entirely. No free pass. All of a sudden all my time was open to make sure others were happy. Now before you label my friends and family as horrible monsters, you have to remember that I was doing this to myself. No one else was putting pressure on me; I was putting it on myself. Just the fact that we were home together and I didn’t have a free pass made me feel obligated to make sure everyone else was happy.

Unfortunately, my brain created its own free pass – not feeling well. I was not faking feeling unwell and then going and doing whatever I wanted. I actually didn’t feel well and would spend time sleeping and generally feeling crappy. Cue (weekend) – Routine (feel crappy) – Reward (everyone leaves me alone and I don’t feel a duty to please anyone) – “I can’t worry about pleasing you now, I’m not well!”

Once I recognized the habit loop, I was able to stop it. The next weekend I kept reminding myself that everyone is responsible for their own happiness. I started to feel unwell and reminded myself that I am only responsible for my own happiness and that I don’t have to please anyone. I reminded myself that I felt fine and I could choose to do whatever I wanted in that moment.

I’m happy to report that although I am still working on the pleasing thing, I no longer feel ill on weekends. I was able to break that particular habit loop. Actually, breaking the loop was the easy part, recognizing that there was a loop at all was the real work.

So again, what have you stopped seeing that it may be in your best interest to change?

Lisa Ivaldi is a Writer and Virtual Assistant in Guelph, ON. Click here to download a free copy of her Wake Up to What You Love workbook.

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Changing Habits

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Lisa Ivaldi

4 min read

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In The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg describes a habit as “a formula our brain automatically follows: When I see CUE, I will do ROUTINE in order to get a REWARD.” He calls this the habit loop – CUE, ROUTINE, REWARD.  (See last month’s post “How’s the Water?” for more background information on the topic of habits.)

Duhigg’s nail biting example matched one of my bad habits exactly. I stopped biting my nails in high school but somehow the habit snuck back into my life in the last few years. By recognizing that nail biting is a “craving for stimulation” (REWARD) which I usually do when bored (CUE), I was able to replace the ROUTINE of nail biting with something that will “provide a quick physical stimulation” – such as rubbing my arm or rapping my knuckles on a table – anything that would produce a physical response (REWARD).

Once you know what habit you want to change, you need to find your CUE so that you can change the habit loop because “Over time, this loop – cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward – becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become intertwined until a powerful sense of anticipation and craving emerges. Eventually … a habit is born.” When I felt bored I automatically bit my nails – the two became connected in my brain.

So to change a habit, “you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine.” Duhigg uses the example of eating a cookie at work every afternoon. In this example, you need to determine if you crave the cookie itself, a break from work, a burst of energy, or an excuse to socialize in the cafeteria. He suggests testing to see which craving is driving your routine. Try replacing the cookie with an apple, a cup of coffee, a walk outside, or a visit with a colleague. After each test, set an alarm for fifteen minutes and then ask yourself if you still feel the urge for that cookie. If fifteen minutes after chatting with a friend you find it easy to get back to work, then you’ve identified the REWARD that your habit sought to satisfy – temporary distraction and socialization. “By experimenting with different rewards, you can isolate what you are actually craving, which is essential in redesigning the habit.”

You also need to figure out the CUE. In order to do that, Duhigg suggests you write down the following five things that are happening when the urge or craving hits:

  1. Where are you?
  2. What time is it?
  3. What is your emotional state i.e. bored, happy, tired, excited, etc.?
  4. Who else is around?
  5. What action immediately preceded the urge?

In the cookie example, if you realize that the urge for the cookie hits at approximately the same time every day, you know that time of day is your CUE i.e. every day at approximately 3pm you get the urge for a cookie. “Once you’ve figured out your habit loop – you’ve identified the reward driving your behavior, the cue triggering it, and the routine itself – you can begin to shift the behavior. You can change to a better routine by planning for the cue and choosing a behavior that delivers the reward you are craving. What you need is a plan.”

With the cookie example, you know that you crave a cookie at approximately 3pm every day and through testing you have realized that your reward is temporary distraction and socialization. So every day at approximately 3pm (your CUE) you can go for a walk and chat with a colleague or go to the cafeteria and have a tea with colleagues (new ROUTINE) to satisfy your REWARD of temporary distraction and socialization.

I didn’t have to test for my cue or my reward. The nail biting example in the book was a perfect match for me. I directly followed the example in the book and so far it has worked. When I feel the urge to bite my nails I replace the action with some other type of physical response until the urge goes away. Eventually I hope my new routine becomes a healthier habit.

Lisa Ivaldi is a Writer and Virtual Assistant in Guelph, ON. Click here to download a free copy of her Wake Up to What You Love workbook.

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How’s the Water?

Posted on April 30, 2014 by Lisa Ivaldi

3 min read

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I recently read Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business because I wanted to find out why I sometimes do what I do. I’m a fairly smart person and yet I still make unwise choices way more often than I would like to admit.

The book explains that “Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they’re not. They’re habits. … One paper published by a Duke University researcher in 2006 found that more than 40 percent of the actions people performed each day weren’t actual decisions, but habits.”

In Duhigg’s book, habits are technically defined as “the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day.” Our brains convert a sequence of actions that we do regularly into an automatic routine and a habit is eventually formed. Our brains form these habits to be more efficient by not wasting energy on “thinking constantly about basic behaviors” of everyday life.

This is pretty cool for the most part. It’s why we can breathe and drive and watch out for dangers all at the same time without all our focus having to go into only one of these activities at a time. The downside is that sometimes we get into habits that are not so good for us and we don’t even realize it.

With nearly half of what we do every day based on habits and not on conscious decisions of what is the best choice at that moment, we are pretty much operating on automatic pilot nearly half of the time. We could be functioning on habits that were formed years ago and may no longer be in our best interest. No wonder we sometimes look back at our behaviour and question why we did that, said that, ate or drank or smoked that.

Fortunately, habits can be changed. The first step is to recognize what our habits are and which ones we would like to change. But sometimes it is not easy to see our habits, especially our emotional habits.

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?'” the writer David Foster Wallace told a class of graduating college students in 2005. “And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?'”

According to Duhigg, “The water is habits, the unthinking choices and invisible decisions that surround us every day – and which, just by looking at them, become visible again.”

Next month’s post will be about how to change our habits. However, in the meantime let’s look at the “water” that surrounds each of us. What have you stopped seeing that it may be in your best interest to change?

Lisa Ivaldi is a Writer and Virtual Assistant in Guelph, ON. Click here to download a free copy of her Wake Up to What You Love workbook.

Posted in Behaviour | 3 Comments

Thinking bigger than right or wrong

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Lisa Ivaldi

2 min read

TeddyBears

Lately I’ve been wondering how I could possibly have made it to the ripe old age of 52 without, apparently, the slightest idea of how to communicate with others.  Several incidents have arisen recently that have left me wondering how the communication could have broken down so completely.  Nothing big or life shattering, just small incidents where I’m left shaking my head and thinking, “Really, that’s what you got out of that interaction!” and wondering how two reasonably intelligent people could end up at two completely different places based on the same information.

According to Words Can Change Your Brain: 12 Conversation Strategies to Build Trust, Resolve Conflict, and Increase Intimacy by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Mark Robert Waldman, “Every brain processes language in a different way, and this results in a communication style that is unique to each individual.  Thus every conversation has the potential to unfold in a creative and original way … Different people continue to apply different meanings to the same words…”

This was a huge revelation to me, “Every brain processes language in a different way”.  I always assumed that some things were a given to every brain – like one plus one for example.  However, Dr. Ellen Langer (www.ellenlanger.com), a social psychologist, tells of a student who adds one and one and gets one.  This is a perfect example of where the teacher could shake their head and think, “Really, that’s what you got out of that question!” and do their best to show the student that if you have one apple in a basket and you add one more apple, you now have two apples in the basket.  Pretty basic stuff – could even be labeled a universal truth.

Dr. Langer points out that the teacher could “just say “Wrong,” or he can try to figure out how the person got to one.”  When asked how they got to one, the student responds, “If you add one wad of chewing gum to another wad, one plus one equals one.” True!  My brain hadn’t thought of it that way.  My brain thought that one plus one always equals two.

Sometimes the things we take for granted as universal truths are not necessarily so – like one plus one always equals two.  This revelation is helping me move from “Really, that’s what you got out of that interaction!” to “Wow, that’s interesting; I wonder what I am missing here?” and opening up the dialogue rather than shutting it down by getting caught in right and wrong.

Lisa Ivaldi is a Writer and Virtual Assistant in Guelph, ON. Click here to download a free copy of her Wake Up to What You Love workbook.

Posted in Communication | 3 Comments

Lighten Up

Posted on February 28, 2014 by Lisa Ivaldi

3 min read

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This year I have been reading Pema Chödrön’s Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion.  I try and read one of the teachings each morning before I get up.

Number 29 struck home so deeply that I realized I had to keep reading it every day until I “get it” to the point that I am living it.  Number 29 is about lightening up, in part it says:

“This earnestness, this seriousness about everything in our lives … this goal-oriented, we’re-going-to-do-it-or-else attitude, is the world’s greatest killjoy.  There’s no sense of appreciation because we’re so solemn about everything.  In contrast, a joyful mind is very ordinary and relaxed.  So lighten up.  Don’t make such a big deal.”

In general I am very goal oriented, but the area of my life that Pema’s words most resonated in was parenting.  Like most parents, I love my daughter and want the best for her (Goal).  So lately, in all my goal-oriented “earnestness” and “seriousness” I was always thinking about what she “needed” to do in order to reach my goal of attaining what’s best for her (things like homework, summer job applications, eating better, exercising, getting more fresh air, getting more sleep – you get the picture – pretty much every aspect of her teenage life).  Oh, the intention was good, but you know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions.

I realized that I have been completely sucking the joy out of our relationship.  It seemed that every time I interacted with her it was just to recite a list of things that she still needed to do.  She had become a living, breathing “to do list” for me. I had totally lost my appreciation for what a good kid she is and for all that she does accomplish.  No wonder she was rebelling and constantly telling me to stop trying to control her.

Of course, I kept thinking that I wouldn’t have to nag if she would just do what she needed to.  I was nagging in her best interest.  Then Pema’s words hit me like a freight train.  I was becoming a killjoy!

Reality check – she’s not three years old anymore.  She will be learning to drive in three months.  She knows what she needs to do and she knows the consequences of not doing it.  My nagging was only ruining our relationship; it wasn’t getting anything done any faster or any better.

I’m still reading #29 most mornings and reminding myself that life is a journey and not a “goal-oriented, we’re-going-to-do-it-or-else” destination.   The journey is a lot more pleasant for both my daughter and me when I lighten up.  Homework is still getting done, as are all the other important things on my list, they are just getting done on her schedule, not mine – as they should be.

Lisa Ivaldi is a Writer and Virtual Assistant in Guelph, ON.  Click here to download a free copy of her Wake Up to What You Love workbook.

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Focus on What You Want

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Lisa Ivaldi

3 min read

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Back in July 2011 I wrote a blog post about Setting Your Intentions.  The general idea was to focus on what you do want and not on what you don’t want.  Sounds simple enough, but it is very easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and only focus on the impending doom and gloom that seems inevitable.

Last month I was reminded of the power of setting your intentions.  We were driving my father and daughter to a theatre in Toronto to see Les Miserables (it was our Christmas present to the two of them).  We were making good time until we got caught up in some really nasty traffic.  It was getting really close to the start of the show (less than 15 minutes) and we weren’t getting anywhere fast.  Tension in the car was heating up.  My mind started racing with thoughts of how we were going to be late and they were going to miss the beginning of the show.  I was going into panic mode when I remembered the Setting Your Intentions lesson.  Although it seemed highly unlikely, I started saying to myself “Kathryn and my dad will be comfortable and relaxed in their seats when the show starts”.

There was a really big part of my brain that did not believe this to be true but it did feel better to have something to do with my brain other than panic and freak out.  It helped me calm down.  Somehow the traffic eased up and we made it on time.  Kathryn and my dad were comfortable and relaxed in their seats when the show began.

It takes practise to recognize when we are heading down a negative thought path because it is so natural for many of us.  I really like Brene Brown’s idea of saying out loud “I am feeling vulnerable” when you recognize that you are starting to panic about something that hasn’t actually happened.  Saying it out loud makes a huge difference.  It slows the panic down enough that you can redirect your thoughts – because that is all they are, crazy thoughts about everything that could go wrong – nothing has actually happened yet (we were not yet late for the show, it was just a possibility).   Or as Brene Brown describes it, “It takes me out of my fear brain—i.e., off the crazy train—and puts me back on the platform, where I can make a conscious choice not to reboard.”

Now I’m not saying that I created the outcome in our situation.  Maybe we would have had the same outcome even if I had continued to panic and freak out.  But I can tell you that stopping the panicking and the freaking out, and giving my brain something more positive to do, was a much more pleasant way to spend those last 15 minutes in the car.  So even if I didn’t create the outcome, I did create my own experience of the situation.

Lisa Ivaldi is a Virtual Assistant and the owner of Forestview Business Services in Guelph, ON.

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Illusion

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Lisa Ivaldi

3 min read

Sunset CroppedI recently read an email from my sister-in-law where she mentioned her “baby food processor”.  When I jokingly wrote back that I wasn’t even going to ask why my babyless sister-in-law had a baby food processor, I found out that she has a “baby” food processor – a tiny sized food processor.

This reminded me of the Buddhist belief that everything is an illusion.  Some things may seem very real but that doesn’t mean that they are in fact real.  Our individual minds put our own unique and different spin on what we see and hear, so each of us may have a different reality when looking at the same data or situation.  In my sister-in-law’s mind she was writing about her mini food processor but my mind read the words she wrote and pictured a “baby food” maker.

As we know, many conflicts are created by miscommunication and lately I’ve been thinking about the way our minds interpret information leading to miscommunication.  Somebody makes a simple comment and our minds do all kinds of interesting things with it.

For example, just before Christmas my husband asked if we had kept any of the plastic containers that we get when we occasionally order Chinese food.  I replied that we did have a few. To which he responded, too bad we didn’t keep more to send Christmas dinner leftovers home with people, after all we could have kept hundreds of them.  My mind took “hundreds of them” and quickly processed it to mean that he thinks we order Chinese food way too often because I am an inadequate wife who doesn’t make good home cooked meals nearly often enough.

When I mentioned this to him, he gave me that “you’ve lost your mind” look (I know the look quite well) and clarified that he simply meant it was too bad we didn’t keep more because we have had more (maybe not hundreds, but more). That comment could have led to a more heated disagreement or just left me feeling slighted and him totally unaware of why if I hadn’t mentioned how I interpreted his comment and him clarifying his intention.

This little miscommunication reminded me of one of Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements: “Don’t Make Assumptions – Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.”

For the New Year I hope we all find “the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want” and the insight to realize that what we perceive may be an illusion and not what was intended.  If you are unsure or even offended or hurt, clarify.  Better to know that your husband wishes we had saved more plastic food containers than to assume he wishes his wife was a better cook or that your sister-in-law has a mini food processor and is not pregnant!

Best wishes for peace and happiness in the New Year.

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Are you excited?

Posted on November 30, 2013 by Lisa Ivaldi

2 min read

Happiness Wordle

My 15 year old daughter is always asking me if I am excited about things that are coming up. Even though I am usually looking forward to whatever it is that she is asking about, I can never quite bring myself to say that I am excited about it.

Excited is a strong word and I find it hard to muster enough energy for that kind of strong emotion when thinking about going to the movies, or out for dinner, or going on a trip.
My daughter seems to have no trouble with it. She is always excited about something. I was attributing this to her youth until I participated in a communications workshop where they gave us a list of commonly used “affect” words to describe feeling.

The words were separated into categories of Emotion (i.e. Happiness, Fear, Anger) and Intensity (Strong, Moderate, Weak). As I was reading the different words I realized that I very rarely, if ever, use the strong words for happiness – excited, thrilled, delighted, overjoyed, ecstatic, elated, jubilated. I do use the moderate words for happiness – good and happy, but I more often use the weak words – pleased, glad, satisfied.

Okay, so again this could be an age thing – too much energy needed to get worked up about things. However, when I looked at the words for anger I realized that I have no problem using the strong words like furious and angry to describe my emotions at times. In fact I am more likely to use strong words to describe all the more negative emotions – sadness (depressed, miserable), fear (afraid, frightened, scared, overwhelmed), and uncertainty (bewildered, confused).

It’s interesting that I can muster the energy to be angry but not to be excited. Perhaps it is not an energy thing after all. Perhaps it is an age thing – or my perception of what it means to be an adult. Children get excited and delighted, mature adults get pleased and glad. However, it is quite acceptable for a mature adult to get angry and overwhelmed.

Now I’m thinking it’s time to stop being quite so mature and adult and turning the volume down on happiness.  Sure, it’s okay to be pleased, glad, and satisfied sometimes, but it’s also okay to be excited, thrilled, ecstatic, elated, jubilated, overjoyed, and delighted as often as possible.

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