Music as the rudder of your mood

For me, music is one of those few precious things that touches the very core of my being. So naturally when I want to feel understood, when I desperately need to know in my bones that someone truly understands me, I reach for a tune that deeply resonates with my current mood. I once tracked down a musician to let him know that he had truly reached me with a composition of his. He said he was glad and thanked me for contacting him. But here’s the lesson I’ve learned — instead of always letting my mood determine my music, I now purposely pick some music to steer my mood in a more positive direction. This works and I have found it to be a helpful insight. This is not to say that you should constantly be overriding your moods, it is just to say that you have a choice — you can take the wheel of your moods. If you are constantly having to override your mood you will of course want to get at the root of the problem. I welcome your comments and feedback.

Launch and Showing

Sound the trumpets! Announcement time! OK, I just wanted to mention that my new company Universal Laughter has been launched and the website can be found here:

Universal-Laughter.com

I also want to mention that I am bringing the film Laughology to Vancouver. Here are the details:

Title: Laughology
Date: Dec 12, 2009
Time: Doors open at 2:30 pm and the fun starts at 2:40 with laughter warmup
Venue: Pacific Cinematheque (1131 Howe St)
Tickets: This is a non-ticketed event. You decide what you want to pay after the show. Partial proceeds to the Vancouver Laughter Yoga community.

Laughology, directed by Albert Nerenberg, is a hilarious ground breaking look at why laughter is contagious and the birth of the international laughter movement.

The National Post called Laughology “screamingly funny” and the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) called the film “revolutionary, highly recommended and a completely new way of looking at laughter.”

Links:

Universal Laughter
Laughter Yoga in Vancouver
Laughology

Value Permanence

In childhood development, there is the stage of learning about Object Permanence. As humans there is another stage that we can pass though: Value Permanence. The idea here is that you are valuable, worthy, and lovable even when it might not appear to or feel so. To help us with moving this from head knowledge into body knowledge, there is a simple yet perhaps difficult exercise we can do. Please go get a piece of paper and a pen….. On the paper, write I AM _____ _____. So far so good. Now in the second blank, write WORTHY. Now comes what for me was the hard part. In the first blank, write ALWAYS. Breathe this truth in. Take your pen and underline the last two words. Repeat this as often as you need to in order to make this a part of your default world view.

Forgivness Research

Dr. Robert Enright from the University of Wisconsin–Madison founded the International Forgiveness Institute and is considered the initiator of forgiveness studies. He developed a 20-Step Process Model of Forgiveness. Recent work has focused on what kind of person is more likely to be forgiving. A longitudinal study showed that people who were generally more neurotic, angry and hostile in life were less likely to forgive another person even after a long time had passed. Specifically, these people were more likely to still avoid their transgressor and want to enact revenge upon them four and a half years after the transgression.

Studies show that people who forgive are happier and healthier than those who hold resentments. The first study to look at how forgiveness improves physical health discovered that when people think about forgiving an offender it leads to improved functioning in their cardiovascular and nervous systems. Another study at the University of Wisconsin found the more forgiving people were, the less they suffered from a wide range of illnesses. The less forgiving people reported a greater number of health problems.

The research of Dr. Fred Luskin of Stanford University shows that forgiveness can be learned. In three separate studies, including one with Catholics and Protestants from Northern Ireland whose family members were murdered in the political violence, he found that people who are taught how to forgive become less angry, feel less hurt, are more optimistic, become more forgiving in a variety of situations, and become more compassionate and self-confident. His studies show a reduction in experience of stress, physical manifestations of stress, and an increase in vitality.

One study has shown that the positive benefit of forgiveness is similar whether it was based upon religious or secular counseling as opposed to a control group that received no forgiveness counseling.

The above is from Wikipedia.

Laughter Yoga University

If the world can have a McDonald’s University (sad but true) then why not a Laughter Yoga University? Indeed, why not? That’s the dream of Dr. Kataria (the inventor of Laughter Yoga.) This dream is coming true:

What has been a dream for the last five years is very soon becoming a reality for Dr Madan and his wife, Madhuri Kataria. Before the year’s end, they will throw open the gates to India’s first Laughter Yoga University.

Located at Ramnagar, about 50 kilometers outside Bangalore, laughter enthusiasts from across the world will have access to the specially designed courses which cover everything right from the basics of laughter yoga, to teachers training courses, stress management techniques and even applied courses in Ayurveda and Naturopathy.

But that’s not even the best part. At the very end of the article an awesome vision is revealed:

Besides the Bangalore university, Madan is also planning the country’s first ‘Laughter City’ — a township that encourages people from around the world to come together and form a community based on the essence of Laughter Yoga — singing, dancing, playing and laughter.

My bags are so packed! See here for the full article.

Raising the Dead in the Corporate World

So I’m beginning to catch the vision of what my new career will be. Do these comics speak to you? In my previous job, there were the things that I got paid to do and there were the activities that I led on my own time. While I appreciate the opportunities I was given in the paid part of my job and genuinely did enjoy some aspects of them, that work did not truly fire my soul. It was the unpaid activities that gave me real joy. These things stretched people and gave them happiness. Life is too short to be the living dead at work. Now of course I realize that not everyone feels like that all the time (I know I didn’t) but I think that many in the corporate world do — and I want to help change that. I was doing that to some degree at my former work and now I have the chance to do that at many work places. What are your thoughts? What do you think I could do? If something I have done has helped you, please let me know — I’m looking for a few good quotes that I can use to help promote my services in my new role. Doing my best to make this world a better place with the gifts I have. Thanks!

Success

The other day I had two thoughts about reaching my goals:

  1. Things take work (I have to put effort into things if I ever hope to see them happen.)
  2. Not everything works (Just because I put effort into something doesn’t mean it will succeed.)

Now of course these are obvious facts but it was a bit of a revelation or epiphany to me. I am very lazy and so I tend to get stuck at number 1. I am also easily discouraged and so I get hung up at number 2 as well. I still have dreams and goals like everybody but so many of them have remained eternally frustrate because of these two facts. I figure I need to believe in myself and that will hopefully lead to others believing in me which will then propel me to sustained action. I really do believe some of my dreams are awesome. I just want more of them to see the light of day.