Total Control

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Lisa Ivaldi

2 min read

CoralI am in total control.  Envious?  Don’t be, you are in total control too.

My teenage daughter gets very frustrated when things don’t go the way she planned.  Slowly, very slowly, I am trying to teach her that the only thing she has total control over is her reaction to things.  Nothing else can be controlled – the weather, the traffic, other people.  We can only control how we react to things.

Yesterday I walked past a group of about six young kids playing.  There was only one little girl with the group of boys.  Just as I passed the little girl told the others that she would “be right back guys”.  One little boy promptly responded, “I don’t care!”  A little harsh perhaps.  However, it got me thinking that there are different ways the little girl could handle the situation.  She could run away crying and have that one comment ruin the rest of her afternoon.  Or, she could choose to ignore the comment, assume that the rest of the kids do “care”, go and do whatever she has to do and then come back and continue to play.

I know it’s not easy to do the latter.  It’s very easy to get caught up in someone else’s stuff and let it affect you.  However, how much better is that little girl’s day going to be if she chooses to ignore that one small comment?  And let’s face it, we don’t know why the boy said it – maybe he really didn’t care or maybe he just wanted to sound cool because he really likes her.  You can’t know!  So why pretend that you can and let it ruin your day.

I read somewhere that the Dalai Lama says not to let anyone steal your joy.  Good advice.  You have total control of your joy, your mood, your reaction.  I hope that little girl didn’t let that one mindless comment steal her joy.

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Negativity Bias

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Lisa Ivaldi

3 min readBadlandsDo you ever wonder why we focus on the negative?  You can be having a great day, the best day ever, then one negative thing happens.  Do we think about the 497 things that went right that day, or the ONE thing that went wrong?  I know I would think about the one thing that went wrong – why did that happen, what could I have done differently, if only …

I used to think it was just me, but apparently we, as a species, are wired that way.  According to Rick Hanson in his book Just one thing: developing a Buddha brain one simple practice at a time, “Scientists believe that your brain has a built-in negativity bias … because, as our ancestors dodged sticks and chased carrots over millions of years of evolution, the sticks had the greater urgency and impact on survival.”

I love his example:  “Consider these two mistakes:

  1. You think there’s a tiger in the bushes, but actually there isn’t one.
  2. You think there’s no tiger in the bushes, but actually one is about to pounce.

Most of us make the first mistake much more often than the second one … Evolution has given us an anxious brain.  In order to survive and pass on genes, it’s better to make the first mistake a thousand times rather than make the second mistake even once; the cost of the first mistake is fear for no reason, but the cost of the second mistake could be death.”

So how do we keep our brains away from negativity when there is no actual danger?  According to Hanson:

  1. You can compensate for the brain’s negativity bias “by actively looking for good news – especially the little things you are glad about.  You will feel happier, more at peace with the world, more open to others, and more willing to stretch for your dreams.”
  2.  “Take a close look at this moment.  When we go into the future, we worry and plan.  When we go into the past, we resent and regret.  Threads of fear are woven into the mental tapestries of past and future.  Look again at the thin slice of time that is the present.  In this moment: Are you basically okay?  Is breathing okay?  Is the heart beating?  Is the mind working? … Several times a day, notice that you’re basically all right. … In this moment I am all right.”

So now we can stop beating ourselves up for focusing on the negative and know that it’s just our nature.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m pretty sure that’s just a chipmunk rustling in the bushes, but I better go check just in case …

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Wait a Moment

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Lisa Ivaldi

4 min readWild GrassPatience is not my strong suit.  When something needs doing, I like to act right away and get things moving.  Not doing makes me feel like I am not getting anywhere.  In fact, I have these words posted on my computer screen, “SLOW DOWN & PAUSE – No time to think, No energy to strategize”.

I recently participated in a group communications training exercise.  We had a team of four people and we were being timed to see which team could finish first.  One person was given a metal board and several magnetic puzzle pieces.  Another person was given a picture of the puzzle pieces assembled in a specific shape.  The person with the picture (the caller) was to give verbal instructions to the person with the puzzle pieces (the drawer) so that they could recreate the picture on their metal board without seeing what it was they were drawing.  The other two people stood so that they could see what the two people creating the picture were doing.  They could not talk to anyone while they were watching but when one of them felt they could help with the picture they could switch places with the caller.

So as a watcher you could hear the caller giving instructions and you could see what the drawer was doing with those instructions.  Sometimes they would have a piece upside down or in the wrong place.  As a watcher you could see this and you could jump in and switch with the caller and tell the drawer, “no you have that piece upside down”.  Pretty good, right!  Only problem, inevitably the drawer could not wait until the new caller was in place, it was a race and they continued to move pieces while the callers changed places.  The new caller would sit down and say “you have that piece upside down”, but the drawer had already moved it.  Another watcher would see what happened and jump in to fix the problem.

This same situation happened over and over again because it is not in most people’s nature to sit and wait without doing anything, especially if they are working under a deadline or racing to beat the clock.  We wasted quite a bit of time because the drawer did not take their hands off the board and wait for the next instruction.  By trying to speed things up they in fact slowed things down.

Sometimes we think that by moving full steam ahead we will get there faster.  But many times it may be advantageous for us to pause, to wait and see, to think things through.  Obviously this isn’t appropriate in all situations – medical emergencies call for full steam ahead.

When our team debriefed, the drawer said that they couldn’t just sit there while the callers switched, they wanted to move forward so they kept moving the pieces even though they didn’t know where they were supposed to go.

So this month’s blog is a reminder to pause.  Just because you are doing something doesn’t mean you are getting anywhere or moving forward.  Take the time to think things through and make sure you have the information you need before you start doing.  Then all your effort will indeed go toward moving forward instead of just spinning your wheels.

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Skin Deep

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Lisa Ivaldi

2 min readPeacockI remember reading once that just because you buy a product from a health food store doesn’t necessarily mean it is healthy.  I didn’t really believe it.  It goes against everything I’ve always believed to be true.  You see I tend to take things at face value.  If a jar is labelled peanut butter, I assume it is filled with peanut butter.  If a store is labelled a health food store, I assume it is filled with healthy products.  I assume I’m paying more for them because they are made with more natural and healthier ingredients than the cheaper mainstream products.

However, lately I’ve come to realize that I can’t always depend on labels.  I need to do some research to ensure I am buying the healthiest product.  Luckily I’ve found a very good online research tool for cosmetics and personal care products – Skin Deep.

Skin Deep is basically an online searchable database of personal care products and their ingredients.  The database rates products on a 0-10 scale from low to high hazard based on their ingredients.  The database also lists “how much scientists know – or don’t know – about an ingredient’s safety”.  They recommend consumers should look for “products with low hazard scores and at least “fair” data availability”.

I still haven’t perfected this system of researching and then buying.  I was recently at the grocery store and decided to buy a fairly expensive bottle of moisturizer from the health food section.  When I looked it up on the database I found it had a hazard rating of 6 – not good.  Just out of interest I looked up another mainstream brand of moisturizer – Aveeno – and found which one of their products, that can be found in the regular aisles of the grocery store, had a hazard rating of 2 – much better.

So, the moral of the story is just because it’s in a health food store doesn’t mean it’s healthy.  Lots of unhealthy chemicals get into our bodies through the products we put on them – soap, cream, shampoo, toothpaste – so you may want get some more information on the products you are using by visiting Skin Deep.

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Barriers

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Lisa Ivaldi

4 min readBarriersI’ve heard the example of the elephant and the wooden stake used several times to describe how we limit ourselves by our thoughts.  A baby elephant has his foot tied with a rope to a wooden stake.  When the elephant is small he cannot pull the stake out of the ground.  Over time he becomes accustomed to not being able to move away.  When the elephant is fully grown he could easily pull the stake out of the ground, but he is held fast by his belief that he cannot pull away from the stake.

Every time I hear it, I think what a great analogy it is and settle back in the comfort of knowing that I wouldn’t do that.  Surely I am much too self-aware to fall into that type of trap.  Apparently not so much!  Lately I’ve been realizing that if I hear or read about something and the first thought that comes to my mind is “I don’t do that”, I need to stop and really think about it because usually “I do that” and don’t realize that I am doing it.

We all have routines and they usually make the things we have to do every day that much easier.  We tend to do things in the same order so we don’t forget anything.  Recently I realized that I was tied to one of my routines just like the elephant is to the stake.  I usually floss my teeth at night before I go to bed, but last week I was too tired at bedtime so I thought I would do it in the morning.  Oh the stress!  I like to see what I’m doing when I floss my teeth, but I floss before I put cream on my face, which is before I put my glasses on.  Conclusion: I can’t floss my teeth in the morning because I don’t have my glasses on yet.

I would probably still be in the bathroom trying to figure this out if the image of the elephant and the stake didn’t pop into my mind.  The only thing that was causing me a problem was my attachment to the way I always do things.  I realized that the world wouldn’t end if I put my glasses on to floss my teeth and then took them off to put cream on my face.

I know this is a very simplistic example of how we limit ourselves, but it illustrates how when we continue to do, or think of things, a certain way we create pathways in our brains.  Once these pathways are created it is very difficult to think any other way.  It’s like trying to get your bicycle tire out of a well-worn rut in the trail.  The only thing in my way was my attachment to my routine – I can’t do this because I haven’t done that yet.  I couldn’t see the very simple solution because the barrier I had created in my mind seemed very real to me.

I tell my daughter all the time to loosen up and not be so rigid in her thinking about “the way things should be”.  Now hopefully I’ll start taking my own advice and ask myself if there is a real barrier preventing me from moving forward or if the barrier is self-created in my mind.

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Compassion

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Lisa Ivaldi

3 min readSnow Trees 2Lately I’ve been reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk.  This particular book, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames, is very simply written but offers some great insight into anger.

Hanh explains that “When someone says or does something that makes us angry, we suffer. We tend to say or do something back to make the other suffer, with the hope that we will suffer less … when I see you suffer a lot, I will feel better.”  Unfortunately, “The result is an escalation of suffering on both sides. Both of you need compassion and help. Neither of you needs punishment.”

We all get angry, whether it’s at our children, our spouse, or the person who cuts us off on the highway.  I know once my buttons are pushed it is very hard to retain perspective.  It’s hard to have compassion for the other person when you are busy flying off the handle.  But compassion is the key, “… because compassion is the real antidote for anger. Nothing can heal anger except compassion.”  If we can have compassion for the person who is doing something that would usually anger us, we are saving ourselves a lot of suffering.

I recently experienced this first hand.  I was with someone who became very angry and began to behave badly.  I could feel my anger rising up to meet the other person’s.  My perception was that they were just being a jerk for no apparent reason.  Fortunately, the other person revealed the reason they were so angry and behaving so badly.  As soon as I saw the real reason, my anger dissipated and automatically turned to compassion.  Once I saw that the other person was suffering and not just trying to make me suffer, I was no longer angry at them.

Hanh says that “Most of the time, anger is born from a wrong perception.”  Sometimes, okay maybe most of the time, we can look at a situation and get it all wrong.  How much easier is it to look at the person who just cut you off on the highway and say I feel sorry for that person?  Perhaps they are rushing to an emergency or they simply made a mistake and didn’t see me here.  Hey, I make mistakes.  I can relate.  This attitude leaves you with a whole lot less suffering than fuming about how you have been wronged.

Perhaps this holiday season we can all take a few deep breaths and give the other person, and ourselves, the benefit of the doubt.  Have compassion for yourselves and for others.  We could all use a little less suffering.

Best wishes for the holiday season and the New Year.

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Accentuate the Positive

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Lisa Ivaldi

2 min readWhite FlowersThis month’s post title may remind you of the 1944 Johnny Mercer song of the same name.  The song gives us some good advice:  You got to accentuate the positive – Eliminate the negative … You got to spread joy up to the maximum – Bring gloom down to the minimum.

As with most good advice, it’s easier said than done.  Some of us have become so used to worrying and focusing on what’s wrong that it has become our default mode.  We don’t even realize that we are focusing on the negative and that it is colouring our view of life and the world.

In her book, Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings, Lynn Grabhorn offers this two-step process to accentuating the positive.  When you find yourself feeling negative or stressing about something – the economy, a pending divorce, a lack of money, etc. – STOP – “stop thinking about it right now and flip-switch”.  Flip-switch?  That brings us to step two – “Establish a flip-switch topic for each day by finding one new item about yourself to appreciate.”

I tried this and it really does make you aware of your thoughts.  I wrote out a list of 30 things that I appreciate about myself (this was the tough part) and every morning when I got up I looked at the list for the “flip-switch” topic for the day.  When I found myself feeling down or anxious or worried I would stop that thought and replace it with my “flip-switch” topic.  For example, if I found myself thinking about something I had read or seen in the news and it was bringing me down, once I recognized that I was feeling down, I would stop that thought and replace it with something like “I’m a kind person” – something from my list.  After repeating this thought several times, the down feeling would dissipate.

Eventually you train yourself to recognize when worry or anxiety is getting the better of you and you learn how to “flip-switch” yourself into a better frame of mind.  So, write out your 30 day list and get ready to bring gloom down to the minimum.

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Why Didn’t I Think of That?

Posted on September 18, 2011 by Lisa Ivaldi

3 min readClownSometimes we don’t see things as clearly as we might.  Perhaps we are too close to the situation to see it clearly – too immersed in it to see our way out.  Often times things have a way of seeming way more complicated than they really are.  We just need some space, some distance, to see the situation clearly.  An outside, objective viewpoint can also help you to see things clearly.

Recently I was working on a case study that hit fairly close to home for me.  The situation was a parent with teenage children who had bugged her to buy them a dog and then they didn’t take care of it.  The parent was tired of nagging her children to do their homework, clean their rooms, and now, to look after their dog.  Just reading the case study, I felt the parent’s frustration of continually asking for something and not having their teenager respond.

I went into the case study thinking “I feel sorry for the person trying to solve this problem, because there is no solution”.  It’s just the nature of the beast, most teenagers don’t do what you want them to and most parents are saddled with the bulk of the work.

During the case study, I very much got into my role as the parent.  I was totally frustrated and not sure what to do.  However, one person on the other side of the case study didn’t just tell me that I should tell my children they have to look after their dog (which I had done a thousand times, and which was the cause of my frustration), he gave me a real solution.  Shift the onus to the children.  Tell them that if they don’t take care of their dog, we will have to find the dog a new home with people who love him and want to take care of him.  Now the ball is totally in their court.  Brilliant!  Why didn’t I think of that?

Lately, when faced with a dilemma or a puzzling decision, I’ve been waiting before making a decision.  Letting the situation percolate for a while before making a decision.  I’ve found that by stepping back and waiting I can see the situation more clearly.  Sometimes, after a week or so a solution comes into my mind that seems so simple that I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.

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Setting Your Intentions

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Lisa Ivaldi

3 min readPeace GardenThe word “intent” has frequently been popping up for me lately in conversations and books.  I’m currently re-reading a book that I read several years ago,  Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting: The Astonishing Power of Feelings by Lynn Grabhorn.  Ms. Grabhorn talks about thinking and feeling about what we DO want rather than focusing on what we DON’T want – substituting “inspired doing for wasted doing by stopping our constant knee-jerk responses to everything … our focus held enthusiastically on what we prefer in life”.

Ms. Grabhorn suggests that by setting our intentions we can become “deliberate creators” of our lives.  So, I flagged that page in the book but I didn’t do anything with it, until yesterday.  I had a well laid out plan – leave a half hour early for my Toastmasters meeting so that I could renew my driver’s licence at the service centre in the same building.  Well we all know what happens to the “best-laid plans” and mine was no different, it went awry.  After over 20 minutes of watching the “Now Serving” numbers crawl from 80 (where it stood when I got there) to about 86, I knew that with number 94 I was not going to be on time for my meeting in five minutes.  I started to get anxious and frustrated.  Everyone was taking so long, the employees seemed to be talking too much to each other, people seemed to be moving in slow motion.  My thoughts were totally focussed on how long it was taking and how I was going to be late for my meeting.

Suddenly Ms. Grabhorn’s message of “setting your intentions” popped into my mind.  I thought why not.  I tried to get myself into a better head space by smiling and thinking over and over, “I intend to be on time for my Toastmasters meeting”.  Even as I was doing this, somewhere in the back of my mind the thought was still there that there was no way it was going to happen.  Everytime my mind slipped back to a negative thought I would steer it back to my intention and I kept smiling and trying to feel positive.  Much to my disbelief, the numbers started to move faster and finally it was my turn.  I was out of there in 10 minutes after I set my intention.  The elevator was waiting for me as I approached at 12:05pm (five minutes late for my meeting).  When I got to the meeting, they had been delayed because the room wasn’t ready and I ended up going in to the meeting with everyone else – on time!

So how did I become the deliberate creator of my situation rather than a victim – I set my intention (be on time for my meeting) and I relaxed and smiled and stopped focusing on what I didn’t want (this is taking so long, I’m going to be late).  Was I really the deliberate creator of my situation or was it just coincidence?  I don’t know.  Will I keep trying to be the deliberate creator of my life – you bet!  It can’t hurt.

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No Thank You, I Don’t Want To

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Lisa Ivaldi

2 min readCrazy GlassesI recently agreed to do something that I really didn’t want to do.  I agreed to do it because I thought it was my duty and I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no – other than I didn’t want to do it.  Somewhere in the process of growing up many of us lose the ability to just say “No, I don’t want to do that”.  I’m not busy, I’m not out of town, I just don’t want to.  It seems like a perfectly good reason for a six year old, but not for an adult.  We don’t get the “luxury” of just not wanting to – we are grown-ups, we have responsibilities, nobody cares if we don’t want to.  It’s not usually an option.

Well, I’d like to urge you to make it an option for you.  Don Miguel Ruiz says it well in his book Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom, “If you take action because you have to, then there is no way you are going to do your best … it is better not to do it.”  By saying yes to what I really wanted to say no to, I took action because I thought I had to.  And I didn’t do my best.  It would have been better for all parties concerned if I had said no in the first place.

So don’t set yourself up for regrets.  You can’t possibly do your best if you don’t want to do something, and if you don’t do your best you will have regrets.  Practice makes perfect, so repeat after me, “No, I don’t want to, but thanks for thinking of me.”

I highly recommend Don Miguel Ruiz’s book The Four Agreements for a very short read on ways to reduce the stress that we sometimes create in our minds.  It is probably available at your local library.

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