Go with the flow...
An online digest supporting happiness and well being
July 2007
 
Gerry Fisher
Arlington, MA
(781) 929-6341
gfisher-LICSW@comcast.net
http://www.gerryfisher.com/
Using 20+ years of life-consultation experience, I teach people how to get unstuck emotionally, so they can effectively reach their goals. I keep up on research addressing this fun, life-enhancing work, and I enjoy sharing what I've learned. Please tell others about this digest, and contact me if you have any comments, questions, or good jokes!
    
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Understanding means that you can take knowledge, facts, concepts, and apply them in new situations—situations you haven't already been coached on. 

--Howard Gardner
I'm sorry, but so is Brenda Lee 
In the Spring 2007 issue of Going Bonkers?, the magazine presents a handy guide to forming an excellent apology:
  1. Admit your mistake to the person you wronged.
  2. Communicate a sincere apology.
  3. Let the person you hurt share their feelings with you.
    Ask the other person what they want you to do to fix things (the answer may be "nothing").
  4. Make a genuine effort to understand their hurt.
Although I specialize in managing emotions needed to reach goals quicker and faster, sometimes I focus on developing a strategy that my clients take from my office and test in the real world. Whether it's developing a plan to deal with a critical parent during a family visit, steps to take in delivering an apology, or some other planned activity, strategy matters. Contact me for information about how I help clients to develop, test, and use effective strategies. Follow this link for more information about Going Bonkers? magazine. 
The age of information needs a good editor 
The December 10th edition of the Boston Globe included an interesting article by Penelope Trunk, in the BostonWorks section about the need for time-management skills. This article provides very useful pointers for being productive in this age of Internet-based information.
Here are concrete suggestions for improving your time management at work, as authored by Gina Trapani:
  • Don't leave e-mail sitting in your In Box—Take action as soon as you read a message. Create files for messages and use them (including a "to do list" folder for items that require more thought).
  • Do the most important thing first—You may need to organize the night before, but starting the morning off with at least an hour of invigorating, important work can set the tone for the day.
  • Check your e-mail on a schedule—It's not effective to answer every message as it arrives.
  • Keep web-site addresses organized.
  • Know when you work best, and plan accordingly—Are you most productive in the morning, afternoon, late afternoon, early evening?
  • Give it up! Admit that multitasking is bad—No one is at their most productive when doing more than one thing at a time. Limit it!
  • Think about keystrokes—Try to use the minimum number of keystrokes necessary while working.
  • Make it easy to get started—Most people struggle with beginning, not ending. Break large tasks into smaller chunks.
  • Organize your to-do list every day—If you don't know what you should be doing, how can you manage your time?
  • Dare to be slow—Give time and effort according to an item's priority. For example, a high priority task should take more effort and time than answering e-mail.
Can we tawlk?! I think that tips lists like this can include extremely helpful suggestions, AND I hate tips lists. For example, I think that "limiting your keystrokes" is silly, I only keep a "to do" list when I start to feel overwhelmed and skip it otherwise, and it can sometimes be helpful to begin your day with the least important task on your to-do list. Sometimes, "It just depends!"
Here's why I love life consultation and do not author tips articles and books: I love to work regularly with clients to custom fit the solution to their unique needs and for their unique situations (contexts). Come see me for a free consultation about my services. Click here to visit Gina Trapani's web site.
We all can't be rock stars, super models, and movie stars 
The Spring 2007 issue of Going Bonkers? includes a very helpful article by Carol Adrienne, Ph.D., about figuring out what you want to be when you grow up (determining your life purpose). Taking time to read the entire article is best; however, I'll list her four beliefs that often block people from discovering purpose in life:
  • Waiting for 100% clarity—Get active, and do not wait for a 100% guarantee that what you want to do will work.
  • Being afraid to make mistakes—Instead of staying safe but bored in your comfort zone, allow mistakes to provide invaluable feedback on how to do something better. Mistakes are your friends! (I'm not kidding.)
  • Being afraid to look foolish—Catering to the desire to "look good" is another indirect way to stick to the status quo.
  • Thinking that only big steps change your life—Instead of jumping into an impulsive, big, and scary change, take time to pay more attention to details in your life, or try a less disruptive way to test the waters (for example, taking a night class).
Adrienne goes on to describe concrete tasks that you can perform to get in touch with your life's purpose and to stay in the flow of the work. Her suggestions can be summarized as having faith that there is a place for you in life, slow down and pay attention, and use your intuition and your sense of pleasure to guide you in taking small steps.
Working with clients regarding developing a sense of purpose is some of the most rewarding work I do as a life consultant. It can be very helpful spending time every week paying attention to clues that life gives us about who we are and what we should be doing. Contact me, if you would like to discuss developing a sense of purpose and how my work facilitates that process. Carol Adrienne also provides fun, free, weekly numerology forecasts on her web site.
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Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. 

--Leon Tec
Limitations of "following your gut" decision making 
In the April/May 2007 issue of Scientific American Mind, S. Alexander Haslam reviews research on decision making, including recent studies showing that instinctive or "gut" decisions are as effective as conscious deliberating when applied to complex decisions (see Emotional Health Digest, 9/06).
Haslam references Malcom Gladwell's 2005 book Blink and the research of Ap Dijksterhuis. In Dijksterhuis' research, simple decisions were defined as using 4 criteria to select a car for purchase and purchasing clothes, and complex decisions were defined as using 12 criteria to select a car and buying furniture. Haslam sums up the importance of defining complex decisions this way: "Variables that can be neatly circumscribed in decisions about shopping lose clarity in a world of group dynamics, social interaction, history, and politics."
Haslam argues that a better approach is found in the social psychologist Kurt Lewin or in the research of New York University psychologist Tom Tyler. Tyler's studies of the criminal justice system showed that people are not necessarily focused on a trial's outcome; instead, they want the opportunity to see justice being done. People's participation in a thoughtful, deliberative process makes it more likely they will abide by the results.
Given my experience as a life consultant, I think that there is common ground between the "go with your gut" and more deliberative approaches advocated by these two sets of professionals. Both approaches involve slowing down the process, and not pushing or forcing a decision. Whether you "sleep on it" (and make a gut decision in the morning) or whether you get group consensus over time, slowing down the process leads to better decisions for complex problems. Contact me for information about how I help my clients with decision-making skills.
You could read this next item, but I'd have to kill you 
The May/June issue of Spirituality & Health presented The CIA's 8 Steps to Busting Biases. (I never thought I'd be using the terms "CIA" and "spirituality" in the same sentence!)
According to Andrew Newberg, M.D., in his new book, Why We Believe What We Believe, our biases have emotional, perceptive (information taken in by our five senses), and cognitive (how we think) components; they are deeply imbedded in us. His book lists the approaches used by the CIA to bust biases:
  • Become proficient in developing alternative points of view.
  • Do not assume that others think and act as you do.
  • Think backward—put yourself into the future, and then think about what could have happened to have produced such an event.
  • Imagine that your belief is wrong, and create a scenario that shows how wrong it is. (Test your beliefs.)
  • Try out the other person's belief by role playing the other person.
  • Play "devil's advocate" by taking a minority opinion.
  • Brainstorm (list ideas rapidly, without criticism, and evaluate them later)—A quantity of ideas lead to quality, and new ideas help you to break free.
  • Interact with people of different backgrounds and beliefs.
In my opinion, it is vital for CIA operatives to avoid being hindered by beliefs that are too rigid and strong, because their lives depend on an accurate assessment as to the truth of a situation (as opposed to what one believes is the truth). For most of my clients, misreading the truth of their lives does not lead to instant death, as it might for a CIA agent. However, it can lead to being fired from a job, losing a friend, or becoming estranged from family members. Contact me for more information about how life consultation frees you from the shackles of your own beliefs.
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He that leaveth nothing to chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.

--George Savile