HOW to Relax and Be Yourself

IN LEWIS ANDREWS' excellent book, To Thine Own Self Be True, he says, "To the extent we compromise our integrity to make an attractive image of ourselves, we lose contact with our natural enthusiasm. We become contrived, artificial… bored."

I thought that was rather interesting and then I went on about my business.

But one day I realized how it works. Trying to make an attractive image is not as unusual or rare as I thought. We do it a lot. People expect you to be something in particular, and you expect yourself to act a certain way also — often. The trouble with that is: It leaves you with no flexibility, no freedom, and thus no enthusiasm for living.

People used to comment on my attitude — I was so cheerful and full of life so often. After my first book was published, people began to expect me to be in a great mood all the time. After all, I wrote a book on how to improve your attitude.

I didn't want to disappoint them. I wanted them to think well of me and my book. I wanted to prove the stuff was good. But every moment I spent trying to live up to an image ruined my attitude. It sapped my enthusiasm. It was stressful and it made me resentful of those people for their unrealistic expectations of me. That's when Andrew's meaning hit home. When you try to live up to an image, he said, it kills your natural enthusiasm for living.

After I realized that, I deliberately started doing what I wanted, and had the determination to make sure I didn't do anything to live up to someone else's expectations. And you know what? I was in a great mood. That very day, for the first time in a long time, someone commented on my great attitude.

Opera singer Rise Stevens had a lot of poise and confidence on stage, but she wasn't comfortable hanging around with others. "My discomfort came from trying to be something I was not," she said, "a star in the drawing room as well as on stage. If a clever person made a joke, I tried to top it — and failed. I pretended to be familiar with subjects I knew nothing of…"

But then she had a personal revelation. She says, "I realized that I simply wasn't a wit or an intellectual and that I could succeed only as myself. I began listening and asking questions at parties instead of trying to impress the guests. When I spoke, I tried to contribute, not to shine. Almost at once I started feeling new warmth in my social contacts. They liked the real me better."

Whenever you feel yourself harden into a fixed persona, break out! Whenever you lack natural enthusiasm for living, find out where you're trying to live up to someone's expectation (including your own) and break out of it. Start creating your life again right from that point, as an artist would take down a painted canvas and put up a new blank one.

The price you'll pay is that you will, in fact, disappoint people more often. And you aways have the choice: Live up to someone's expectations or have a natural enthusiasm for living. Choose one and then the other for awhile, just to get a feel for the difference in results. Eventually you'll settle on freeing yourself from trying to live up to an image and you'll relax and be yourself.

Don't try to live up to an image.

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Calm Relationships Are Good For Your Mood

EMPATHY FOR OTHERS requires a minimum level of calm in yourself. To take an extreme example, if you are hanging off the top ledge of a fifty-story building and someone starts telling you their problems, you don't have much empathy, do you? And in a more mundane situations, when you're scared or upset or simply stressed out, your empathy for others isn't as high as it would be if you were relaxed.

And it is true in the other direction too: When you are calmer than you usually are, your empathy for others is higher than normal.

And empathy is a fundamental element in creating and maintaining great relationships. Empathy is what allows you to really connect with people. Empathy is being able to feel how another person feels, to share the experience with them, to see the world through their eyes. It is the most important state of mind you can cultivate in yourself for the pursuit of closeness.

And having a calm body and mind really helps. Experiments have shown this to be the case, and your everyday experience confirms it.

The surest way to calm your body is with what Herbert Benson called the relaxation response, a physical response you can create in yourself very easily. When you hold one word or phrase in your mind for a period of time, you become calmer — and that greater calm lasts for several hours afterward. Here how to produce the relaxation response:

1. Choose one word or phrase to hold in mind.

2. Decide ahead of time how long you will go. Ten minutes is a good length of time. Twenty minutes is best.

3. Get in a quiet place and sit down. Don't lie down. Close your eyes and think the word or phrase. Just hold it gently in your mind. It doesn't matter if you have other thoughts.

4. Your mind will wander away. After awhile, you'll realize you aren't holding your word or phrase in your mind at all any more. When you notice this, simply return to thinking your word or phrase.

5. When your time is up, open your eyes.

Don't do this with a forcing effort. For a few minutes, let go of your planning, your worries, your ideas, or the conversations you might have had or will be having. The relaxation response is a refuge — an island of peace in an ocean of stressful thoughts.

Your increased calm gives you more empathy for people, which changes the way you interact, which improves your connections with people, which improves your health.

All you need to do is sit quietly and hold a simple word or phrase in your mind with your eyes closed for twenty minutes.

Something really surprising happens when you do this simple exercise. The simplicity of your thoughts somehow calms your mind and body. The physical changes are dramatic. Blood pressure drops. Stress hormone levels drop. Your heart slows down. Muscle tension fades away. And some of these effects last for many hours.

Try it. It is incredibly boring sometimes, but ironically, that might be what is so wonderful about it. Just like excitement and fear are almost the same thing, depending on your acceptance or rejection of what's happening, boredom and peace are almost the same thing, depending on your acceptance or rejection of what's happening.

Think of a feeling of calmness as one end of a sliding scale. Calm is on one end; agitation is on the other. Or to put it more extremely: We're talking about a sliding scale with deep serenity on one end and hysterical freakout at the other.

The main thing to remember is that agitation is the malady. Calm is the remedy.

The more agitated you are, the more difficult it is for other people to have a good relationship with you. When we say someone has a "bad attitude," we are just referring to some form of agitation. Stress is agitation. Upset is agitation. Irritable is agitation. Worry is agitation. Anger is agitation. Impatience and intolerance are agitation. When you see it this way, you can easily see why calmness is so vitally important.

When you want to create better relationships, calmness is the most important attribute you can cultivate in yourself. Calmness is the gateway to love, kindness, and affection. Calmness enhances relationships.

You're a better listener when you're calm. When you can listen calmly, thoughtfully, intently, the person really gets heard.

And you're a better speaker when you're calm. When you feel relaxed and secure, it's easier to let your guard down. It's easier to know what you're feeling and easier to say what you're feeling.

Calmness supports sanity (good listening, thoughtful responses to events, sound decisions, etc.).

Agitation does not support sanity.

One thing is sure: The calmness you can cultivate will enhance your relationships.

So think about this next time you want to feel better or be in a better mood. One of the most important influencing factors on your mood is how good your relationships are. In other words, how close you feel with the important people in your life.

If you want to be in a better mood, get closer to people. And the first place to start is to feel calmer and more relaxed. The relaxation response can get you there quickly and reliably.

Herbert Benson wrote an excellent book about how to become more relaxed: The Relaxation Response. I recommend it.

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