Straying isn't what it used to be, Silvio” Pamela Drukerman notes in her article written about the same time I also commented on Veronica Lario’s front-page letter of rebuke to her ever flirting, flamboyant, billionaire husband Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy.
Writes the former Wall Street Journal correspondent, Druckerman, “The authors of ‘Sexus Politicus’ recently concluded that Charles de Gaulle was the only French president in modern memory who didn't enjoy a few petites amies. European statesmen may not be able to enjoy this private club for much longer, however. Wives are rebelling.”
But European marital sparring somehow manages to sound more passionate and even elevated compared to the rehab, romance (and rabidly worse) stories about, say, Britney and Anna Nicole.
Extramarital affairs and how they differ around the world have been on Druckerman’s mind for some while. In April, you’ll learn what she’s discovered when her book comes out, Lust in Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee. Here's the rest of the story.... for now.
What woman can resist getting something for free?
Especially if it is something she might really like?
And don’t most of us like to tip off our friends about products we love…. or do not?
Imagine that, for the rest of your life, you can get a stream of products for free in exchange for your candid feedback?
Aliza Freud has devised a clever way to capture this opportunity for everyone. Read the rest of the story.
In an over-advertised world, some savvy business owners are turning from paid promotion to providing the information that most matters to their kind of customers.... Read the rest of the story.
the hotels, restaurants, hospitals, stores and other places we enter are immediately and constantly telling us how we should feel about the place. And each place has a distinct personality, often inadvertent, that shapes how we act and feel about it. From Montessori to flight schools, the power of the senses to accelerate learning and enjoyment (or not!) is dimly understood.
Just as directors “storyboard” a movie, TV show, advertisement or photo op for their candidate, leverage your opportunity to optimize an experience by making every moment count. And, again like creating a memorable movie, manage the sequence of moments your guests or customers will experience, from the climactic opening scene, through the end. Read more here.
Like many photographers before him, Richard Zaltman was visiting
remote areas of the world to capture images of people living
lives far removed from those in the United States.
Here’s what made his experience different.
One morning, while walking through an isolated village in Bhutan, he suddenly got the idea of turning his camera over to the locals to see what they would consider significant enough to show others about themselves.
Later, when he looked at all their pictures, he noticed that most of the photos cut off people’s feet. “At first, I thought the villagers had just aimed wrong,” Zaltman says. “But it turns out that being barefoot is a sign of poverty. Even though everyone was barefoot, people wanted to hide that - -which is an important message to see.”
You never really know someone until you see the choices she makes.
We instinctively put people into categories to make the world more understandable and then get surprised by a co-worker’s sudden vehemence about a new subject. That’s the mystery of life. You can have fewer surprises, however, when you seek to understand others’ less visible, underlying motives.
What others don’t reveal is often most revealing.
What one doesn’t say often says it all.
As surrealist painter, Rene Magrite wrote, “Everything we see hides something else we want to see.” Surrealists in art and literature in the 1920s and 1930s sought to understand and portray others’ subconscious perceptions of the physical world.
Remember that movie, many years ago, in which Mary Tyler Moore plays the grieving mother of her favorite son who died, choosing to avoid her surviving son? In fact leaning away from the son and her husband (played bo Donald Sutherland) in the family photo? Ah senior moment, I can’t recall the name of this engrossing movie – can you?
That’s why it may be interesting to look back through family and friends’ photo albums – and your photo albums. See how people positioned themselves in group photos – and how they positioned photos in their photo album.
You may be more aware of your choices as you ask your family or circle of friends to join you in creating a celebratory group photo album online (wherever you are in the world), as you now can through SnapJot.
Now, if you’d like to glean some insights into why people do what they do -- so you can find the common ground upon which to work or play together - discover their unstated or even unconscious motivations for protection or pleasure
Uncover what they feel but are not saying. Here are four ways to learn more about underlying feelings -- yours and others -- so you can be more thoughtful, clear and genuine in your choices and your communication.
1. Look for the “Bare Feet” That Aren’t in the Picture
To better understand someone and how to inspire that person to take positive action, learn to recognize his unstated “hot buttons of high emotion”, positive or negative. These are the major rules to his “operating manual” -- what makes him run smoothly, bump into obstacles or simply get stuck.
People act most quickly and intensely to avoid what they fear, even if their worst fear has a much lower probability of occurring than the possibility of their dream scenario. That’s because our deepest, most innate and primeval gut instinct is to survive. We reflexively react to any appearance of danger from the most primitive, triune part of the brain, which was developed way back when “fight or flight” seemed the only options for any situation.
2. See Them in Motion to See Their Emotions
Seek to understand what the other person most wants to avoid; what most annoys them or makes them angry or anxious.
To recognize their hot buttons, look for changes in their behavior as signals that you are on a hot topic of concern. Facial expression tells others how we feel, while our bodies suggest the intensity of our feelings.
Look for the “vital signs” of increased excitement such as dilated pupils, constricted throat that produces a higher and /or thinner voice, rapid blinking, flushed face, more rapid and shallow breathing or much less breathing and avoidance of direct eye contact when he had looked you in the eye earlier
in the conversation.
If the person usually moves and gestures little, look for the times when he has more and more rapid body movements and hand or foot changes. If he tends to be more animated, look for the times when he becomes more still.
Women, in time of increased concern, are more likely to “hand dance”, that is move the hands and forearms more.
When seated, men tend to “leak” their feelings through twitching one foot when their legs are crossed. In general, in times of conflict or other kinds of tension, women tend to move and talk more and more; men tend to move and talk less and less. Psychiatrist, Pierre Mornell wrote a book about this effect, called “Passive Men and Wild, Wild Women.”
Once you recognize when someone gets upset, you can consider what gets them upset and come closer to understand their operating manual. Now you can present your ideas in ways that address their concern, either directly or indirectly. Thus you can get someone to either take action to avoid their perceived danger or recognize how the perceived danger can be overcome or avoided to they can contemplate an “upside” opportunity.
3. People Often Don’t Understand Their Own Strong Reactions
Many times we are not aware of our underlying fears or concerns. We often go through life in a trance, reacting to earlier patterns, especially vividly negative experiences, and not knowing that we are not acting in our current best interests.
A client of mine only realized at age 42 that because she had a stocky brother who physically and verbally bullied her, she’d developed a pattern the rest of her life of what she now calls “preemptive defensiveness” around any man she met with a similarly chunky body type.
Only by understanding her previously unconscious “imprinting” from childhood could she begin to change her behavior towards new people she met.
Another colleague grew up in a household where tidiness and timeliness were paramount. He was the “black sheep” in the family who resisted. Even into adulthood, he kept a messy home and office, and was often late, especially for people he felt were trying to control him. However, until he recognized the pattern -- and his core unconscious motivation for free could he choose how he really wanted to act.
Few people are aware of how dramatically bodies shut down in times of perceived crisis or even unfamiliar situations, yet the phenomena has wide implications. In times of fear or even mild discomfort, people have diminished hearing.
They start listening to you later in the conversation and hear and remember less.
Their peripheral vision narrows in times of mild or extreme upset. Even the ability to taste goes down. Imagine a police officer who’s afraid in a dark alley, a surgeon who becomes angry during an operation or a child facing a teacher on the first day of school.
In each “shut down” situation, they are hampering their ability to perform and others may misinterpret their slowed down reactions, with possible negative consequences for several people in the situation. You may see the pattern in someone else’s hot buttons when they do not, especially if you are around that person frequently.
If this person is close to you at home or work, it pays to recognize their unstated warning signs so you appear as safe and familiar as possible to that person, so they can be open to hearing you.
Don’t assume the other person fully realizes why she is saying or acting the way she is. Her words or deeds may have very different meaning for him than for you. For example, many Americans are disturbed when another person does not look them directly in the eye while talking. Yet for some cultures, such as Spanish, direct eye contact demonstrates a lack of respect. Many shy people or those deep in thought prefer to look away.
When someone else does not act right, like you, your strongest instinct will be to make them act right by acting out a more extreme variation of your “right” behavior. For example, you may become exaggerated in your attempt to look closely at the other person so they will look at you. Instead, look to your “bottom line”, the main goal in the situation -- which may be to get a task done or to simply play.
4. We Are Far More Revealing by the Questions We Ask
Than the Answers We Give
To increase the chances of learning what is really on someone’s mind -- and thus what will motivate them to act -- know that people are far more revealing when they are the questioners.
When they are question you, rather than when you are questioning them. While we are taught to ask questions to show interest and learn more about another person, we will learn more, more deeply and quickly when we get that person to ask us questions.
How?
Explain something that engages their interest, touching on the highlights so they want to ask questions to learn more.
Respond directly but briefly to their questions so they are “in charge” and asking follow-up questions to learn still more. Note the direction that the other person’s questions take. On average, by the third question, you will know more about the nature of their deeper concern or interest than if you had “taken charge”, even with good intent to ask your own sequence of questions.
Why?
Because you don’t know what you don’t know. Your line of questions will be based on your worldview and operating manual. Their line of questions will reveal theirs. Their questions bring you closer to what’s most on their mind, especially if they could ask them in close sequence to get at what they msot wanted to know.
5. What Do You Not See in Yourself?
Want to learn more about your own blind spots and hot buttons? Or solve a nagging, recurring problem? Or have a novel approach to an opportunity pop into your mind?
Take time to do some of the apparently time-consuming daily tasks you often do too fast or hire someone else to do: garden, wash your car, walk rather than drive to an errand, build or repair it yourself.
You need these times to “sidelong” glance at the periphery of your thoughts to gain insights into your own “operating manual.”
Savor the time to stay aware in real time.
When you do a physical task, especially one that involves motion, sunshine and fresh air, your mind can move in different directions. Consider these task your “mental cross-training” to get deeper into your own psyche and imagination.
Who’s Living Your Life?
You’ll gain a second benefit from your labors.
To “anchor” that thought, here’s a story. Beth Berg created a job out of designing and maintaining rich person’s gardens in Southern California. We went sailing near Santa Catalina Island in a boat lent to her by Richard, a client who was detained in New York and could not use it. I asked her if she would ever hire someone like herself to do some of her maintenance tasks.
“I don’t think so,” she replied. “I think I would always want to take care of those basic things in my life. Because if you don’t put the work into something, you don't know the worth of it either.”
Beth said that she told Richard, her client, “We plant these flowers in your garden and most of the time you just walk by them. It’s sad, really. You don’t get the good feelings from your life that I get from your life.”
Ways to Sidelong Glance Back at Your Own Way of Deciding
• Do the mundane to experience the profound.
• Go slow to go fast.
• Step back from your hot subject to walk close to it.
• Do something real to see something intangible.
• Move your hands and body to move your mind and imagination.
• Look sideways to see directly.
• Look wide to see narrowly.
• Look at what you hate to recognize what you fear and don’t like in yourself. • Hear your criticisms to discover your sense of your own inadequacies.
• Notice what you avoid to recognize what you most need to learn next.
• Notice when and where you dabble, doodle and dawdle to see your dreams for living the kind of adventure life story you really want.
In a civilization when love is
gone we turn to justice and when
justice is gone we turn to power
and when power is gone we
turn to violence.
Failure is no more fatal
than success is permanent.
Opportunity is often inconvenient.
The fun is in discovering how the sum of us can be greater than apart.
Coercive power saps energy
from everyone. Shared power
showers energy on everyone.
Some people control by defining
the rules of the relationship.
You can choose to define the rules
of how you will relate.
Being defined by others
gives them control.
Defining yourself
gives you choices.
Power resides not in
aggressiveness but
in conscious choice.
You can't empower or
disempower someone else.
As you fix the problem,
you won't have to
fix the blame.
Holding onto your anger is like
clutching a vibrating pole.
The harder you hold, the more
every part of your being
vibrates in reaction.
Strengths spread
just as fears do.
The stronger the signal
you send yourself of your
highest purpose, the higher
the priority you assign to that area.
Think well of yourself.
The subconscious
can't take a joke.
We do not see things as they are.
We see them as we are.
Beliefs shape your experience,
not the other way around.
Your eyes see what
they are trained to see.
Your body speaks to you constantly,
telling you what your own needs are.
Problems seldom exist
on the level at which
they are expressed.
It is easier to act your way
into a more positive feeling
than to feel your way into
a positive way of acting.
You can't develop
positive people with
negative feedback.
What you praise in others,
you'll encourage to flourish.
Praise others when they are
around people who most
matter to them.
Unflinching kindness in
the face of cruelty is
your strongest protection.
Quiet the chattering mind
promotes directed action.
Point out to someone that
they are acting like a jerk
they will go out of their way
to prove it to you some more.
People like people who like them.
All that we are is the result
of what we think. All that we will
be is based on our ability to
feel and to think with warmth.
Our emotions fuel our energy.
You are the medium
for your message.
Resenting someone is
a way of never leaving them.
Look to their positive intent,
especially when they
appear to have none.
Act as if the world is
going to treat you well.
What you do not say
often says it all.
If I say you are a bad person
I can almost see you worsen.
Funny how my words for you
have a way of becoming
true in my mind.
Our emotions fuel
our energy. Strengths
spread just as fears do.
The person who chooses
from the broadest range of
possible actions usually
becomes the peacemaker.
You can disagree with an argument,
but not with a personal experience.
You cannot defect from an insight.
You cannot unsee what you have seen.
Better to see something once than
to hear it a hundred times.
That's why actions are often
more powerful than words.
A personal experience shapes
your opinions without
your conscious willing.
Whoever most vividly
characterizes what a situation
is about usually determines how
others see it, talk about it, and
make decisions about it.
Speak like it tastes good.
Offer verbal snapshots that
penetrate the mind and the gut
in an instant then linger, leaving
a bright after image.
If you are arguing for more
than ten minutes, consider that
you may not be arguing about
your true conflict.
How we do our tasks
may have more impact
than the tasks themselves.
Whatever you press against
will press back. However hard you
press against it, it will press back
at least equally hard.
Shut people out
and they shut up.
Bring people in
and they open up.
In most cases stress
is caused not by the event itself
but rather by our response
to the event.
Forgive all who have
offended you, not for them,
but for yourself.
Act genially in the
face of rancor.
You may be the only
angel in that person’s life.
Happiness is a state
of minimum regret.
You only and always
have three choices
in any situation:
change, accept or leave.
Take each step with reverence
as if it is the axis on which
the whole earth revolves,
slowly, evenly, without rushing
toward the future. Only this
actual moment is life.
The sweetest revenge
is a well - lived life.
Love is not always power; that may be as
good a description of the human predicament
as we are likely to get.
Remember the many
compartments of the heart,
the seed of what is
possible. So much of who
we are is defined by
the places we hold for each
other. For it is not our ingenuity
that sets us apart, but our
capacity for love, the
possibility our way will
be lit by grace. Our hearts
prisms, chiseling out the
colors of pure light.
... to Move Past Procrastination to Savor Your Just Rewards
Remember the agitated, bleary late-night looks on your friends' faces in college as they attempted to cram a semester of learning into the night before a final? Perhaps you were one of those crammers.
Then you probably resented righteous-looking people like me who appeared to spend a pleasant bit of time each day on reading and class note taking before sailing through tests.
You'll be happy to know that people like me all get our comeuppance in other situations. How? Because everybody gets mind blocks to doing some kinds of tasks.
Mind blocks have nothing to do with mental acuity. They're very much a part of the human experience, albeit an irritating part for which most of us emotionally flagellate ourselves about, as we continue to avoid the task, thus incurring double damage. We all have them.
We just have different kinds of places we get stuck on different kinds of tasks. My blocks, for example, are with big or boring talks. I can easily slide into writing a brief article or going on a half hour morning run along the hills above my seaside village of Sausalito.
Give me a larger task, however, such as writing a book or going into the gym for an hour (minimum needed) work-out or a boring "time-waste" task like getting to the dry cleaners or gas station and I can become diabolically clever at deceiving myself into all the reasons why I can't start, right now anyway, but will sometime soon. Sound familiar?
Here's some tricks to getting yourself into a kind of task you often find yourself avoiding and even finding ways to feel righteous as you savor completion.
Vividly Specific Contrasting Scenarios
Picture the worst and best case situations -- in all their emotional details -- for not starting an important task now.
How bad could the consequences be if you don't get it done or done right?
How exciting could it be if you did it on time and superbly?
What if you intend to start it later today?
How many things "beyond your control" can prevent you from getting started? If you did, in fact, start it right now, when is the soonest you might be done if you get clear and focused, and allow no other interruptions until you get to a crucial state of completion or actually finish it?
What small indulgence could you give yourself when you're done? Take a break to savor time with a colleague who makes you laugh? Get a surprise gift for a friend who's been especially thoughtful recently? Dive into another, slightly less pressing task and actually get ahead of the curve for once?
See Your Success Again and Again
Since most nurses have time-pressed lives, allowing yourself to savor each success is akin to imprinting on your psyche the experience of satisfaction with a task completed.
Just as athletes learn new habits to improve performance by watching videos of master athletes, then store up memories of those images of successful work-outs for their constant internal play-back, your stored-up memories of ease in task completion can motivate you to have those satisfying experiences more often.
You are literally seeing yourself repeat your performance. That's new habit-forming. You will become more naturally inclined to dive in early and get more tasks completed in a state of inward and outward grace.
Take on a Big Task, a Bite at a Time
Large or unfamiliar tasks where you don't feel especially confident about your future performance are the ones you're most likely to avoid. Write down the steps to completion.
Call this approach "going slow to go faster later."
Writing will make the steps more real and doable to you and your commitment to the timetables you attach to each task become more vital. They are right in front of you. Post your " tasks and timetable" where you can't avoid seeing it. Tell others of your commitment to that sheet. These actions will place the task higher in your consciousness.
Reward Yourself and Savor Your Rewards
Plan your rewards ahead of time. Diligent nurse that you are, don't deny yourself the reward when you are done by rushing onto the next task. Life goes by too fast anyway. For example, when I complete boring tasks -- and not before -- I allow myself time to do something that gives me pleasure, such as a stop at a bookstore or time with a friend. When I finish a big important task I give myself a bigger reward such as a trip or new outfit.
Sidelong Glancing at It
Sometimes facing a task straight on just makes you freeze. Try to picture how to do it by "sidelong glancing", that is getting small glimpses out of the corner of your mental eye about how you can most easily do the task.
One of the best ways is to literally get moving and looking around. In times of mind-blocks, anger or tension, men tend to act out more while women tend to shut down, moving less. You will be more aware of your emotions and motivations when you get into motion. Consider walking, showering, eating or otherwise being "on your way" to doing the task. You will let your mind go naturally free.
When you are in motion and not focusing directly on what you have to do, especially if you can get outside into the fresh air and sunlight, you can literally see farther, gain a larger perspective and see how the parts of the task can fit together.
You will pull up ideas from lower in your consciousness, think of apparently unrelated ideas that do, in fact, have a bearing on ways to get the task done. Your unconscious mind becomes your friend in helping you recognize your best path to accomplishing the task. And the task will seem less onerous because you lift your mood when you put yourself in motion.
You can make some simple changes in how you dress, move or speak and discover that you have fewer conflicts and greater opportunity to build enduring relationships from smoother daily interactions. From the research on our gut instinctual reactions, here's some easy-to-adopt suggestions.
1. Sidle. People are more likely to like each other, remember more of what they discuss, and agree when they "sidle," standing or sitting side by side, rather than facing each other.
Two women or a man and a woman are more likely to face each other. They literally "face off". Two men instinctively sidle. Siddling brings people "in sync." Walking and talking gets you further connected. The best time to resolve issues is while walking together to the meeting, not when you are in the meeting, sitting across from each other.
2. Look for the underlying issue. When you are arguing for more than ten minutes, you are probably not discussing the real conflict and are thus unlikely to get it resolved in the discussion. Look for the underlying issue. Read Robert Bromson's Dealing With Difficult People for ideas about how to recognize difficult behaviors and ways to respond to them.
3. Detect lying earlier. When lying, most people can put an innocent expression on their face when you ask them a question about the topic, yet few (except pathological liars) get the right timing or duration of that expression.
Ignore the expression itself when they respond but note whether they appear to put it on too soon or too late and if the duration of the expression seems off. Here your instincts will often guide you to knowing their truthfulness. To learn more about how to detect lying, read Paul Ekman's book, Telling Lies.
4. Come back to your scents. Since smell is the most directly emotional sense, bypassing much of the brain's thinking process, consider how to introduce positively natural and uplifting scents into your environment as your own "sane self-indulgence."
A naturally scented environment refreshs people, so they feel uplifted. That's why outlets as diverse as the Rainforest Cafe, Sahara Vegas Casino, Disney/Epcot Home of the Future and San Francisco Aquarium have created natural "signature scents" to avoid allergic reactions while refreshing those they serve.
People who are responsible for your work setting may consider environmental scenting someday. Consider lightly scenting your uniform with the smells that are most comfortingly familiar to you. Two hospitals in Tokyo scent bed sheets with vanilla. Since a Paris hotel began scenting their twoels with rose and citrus, guests have been giving more positive reports on the hotel staff's thoughtfulness and appearance. Vanilla, apple, and chocolate are Americans' most -liked scents.
5. Be vividly specific. A specific detail or example proves a general conclusion, not the reverse. A vivid, specific detail is memorable, while a general statement is less credible and easily forgotten. Ironically, most adult conversation and advertising is general. Children are more likely to be vividly specific and thus more memorable.
When you want to be heard and remembered, characterize your information or request with a vivid, specific detail, example, story or contrasting options. Involve words that relate to the senses. For example "beautiful color" is not as vivid as "blue" which is not as vivid as "cobalt blue."
6. Be "plainly clear." Avoid wearing patterned clothing or other detail on your clothing, especially on the upper half of the body, because it will shorten the attention span of the person with whom you are speaking.
We women generally worry more than men, yes? How can we know when a fear for personal safety is justified and when a worry is sapping our spirit and making us see the world simply as a dangerous place?
“Our fears are fashioned out of the ways in which we perceive the world,” wrote Gavin Becker, author of The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence.
Better to learn how to recognize when someone’s hostile or other less apparently dangerous actions are, in fact, a danger to you, so you can act to protect yourself, and not let unfounded fears and worry contaminate your life.
What can we do? Revise FDR’s advice, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” by using our gut instincts well, with this variation: “There is nothing to fear unless and until you feel fear.”
Whenever you’ve felt profound fear, it was linked to the presence of danger, imminent pain or death. Said DeBecker in a National Public Radio interview, “When we get a fear signal, our intuition has already made many connections. When you feel fear, try to ‘link’ it back to a past situation where the feeling that was similar to see if your fear is, in fact, justified.”
When you feel it, take notice to find the link back to see if you need to take action. How rational are our fears? In the 1960s a study was done on what single word evoked the greatest psychologically strong reactions of fear. The study included words like spider, snake death, rape, murder and incest. Shark evoked the strongest reaction.
But why? Sharks rarely come in contact with us. Three reasons: the seeming randomness of their strike, the lack of warning for it and the apparent lack of remorse.
Yet man is a potential predator with far more abilities to approach, disguise and deceive. While the media often portray human violence as random, de Becker points out how it seldom is, and how you can anticipate the patterns in most cases, if you listen to your instinct of genuine fear and take action.
DeBecker’s book offers specific criteria for how you can better protect yourself by learning to recognize and act on the intuitive signals you pick up but reject as unfounded.
Worry, on the other hand, is the fear we manufacture.
Worry, anxiety, concern and wariness all have a purpose, but they are not fear. Any time your dreaded outcome cannot be reasonably linked to pain or death and it isn’t a signal in the presence of danger, then it really should not be confused with fear.
Worry will not bring solutions. Worry distracts from finding solutions.
It is a form of self-harassment.
To free yourself from worry sooner, understand what it really is. Most people worry because it provides some secondary reward such as:
• Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don’t do anything about the matter.
• Worry allows us to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we’re doing something. Prayer also makes us feel like we’re doing something, and even the most committed agnostic will admit that prayer is more productive than worry.
• Worry is a cloying way to have a connection with others. Worry somehow shows love. The other side of this is the beleif that not worrying about someone means you don’t care about that person. As many people who’ve been worried about know well, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action.
• Worry is a protection against future disappointment. After you complete an important project where the success of your approach won’t be known for some while, for example, you can worry about it. Ostensibly, if you can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it, so to speak, by worrying about it, then failing won’t feel as bad when it happens.
But how would you want to spend the time while you find out: worrying, playing or iniating another action on another endeavor?
For some people, worrying is a “magical amulet”, according to Emotional Intelligence author, Daniel Goleman. Some people feel it wards off danger. They truly believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening.
Most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur. This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predictor that it isn’t likely to happen.
The connection between real fear and worry is similar to the relationship between pain and suffering. Pain and fear are necessary and valuable components of life. Suffering and worry are destructive and unnecessary parts of life. Worry interrupts clear thinking, wastes time, and shortens your life.
When worrying, ask yourself, “How does this serve me?”
To be free of fear and yet still get its gift, consider these techniques:
1. When you feel fear, listen.
2. When you don’t feel fear, don’t manufacture it.
3. If you find yourself creating worry, explore and discover why.
We Choke on Anxiety
Anxiety, unlike real fear and like worry, is always caused by uncertainty. it is caused, ultimately, by predictions in which you have little confidence. If you predict you will be fired and you are certain that your prediction is correct, you don’t have anxiety about being fired, but about the ramifications of losing a job.
Predictions in which you have a high confidence free you to respond, adjust, feel sadness, accept, prepare, or to do whatever you need to do. You can reduce your anxiety by improving your predictions, thus increasing your certainty. It is worth doing, because the word anxiety, like worry, stems from a root that means “to choke,” and that is just what it does to us.
Our imaginations can be fertile soil in which worry and anxiety grow from seeds to weeds, but when we assume the imagined outcome is a sure thing, we are in conflict with what Proust called an inexorable law: “Only that which is absent can be imagined.” In other words, what you imagine -- just like what you fear -- is not happening.
Joseph Heller wrote a vivid passage about what this feels like for a man in his novel, “Something Happened”: “I try my best to remember on what terms (my wife) and I parted this morning, or went to sleep last night, in order to know if she is still angry with me for something I did or did not say or do that I a no longer aware of. Is she mad or is she glad? I can’t remember. And I am unable to tell. So I remain on guard … “
Consequently his routine around her begins by being on guard, walking on eggshells, and hers is to speak out more, sooner, longer and wait for him to “get it”, to respond.
When he doesn’t, she escalates her attack, gets more specific and detailed, motivated to get him to finally respond. He gets overwhelmed and tunes out sooner, longer and more frequently.
You see something gradually changed. The tenderness left. And tenderness is the lubricant in male/female love relationships. Early in a relationship men and women are innocent until proven guilty. We literally don’t see what we do not want to see and focus on what we adore.
Later, after repetitive “passive men and wild, wild women” episodes of friction, each person is guilty until proven innocent, from the beginning. Because that is what we grow to expect of each other and act out to prove each other right.
The rules now? Whatever he does is now never enough. Right or wrong, he is always wrong. And so is she.
