Solution to a Crazy World

THERAPISTS WHO try to help depressives have a problem. Depression is characterized by a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. In other words, a depressive doesn't think his actions will make any difference. She or he is quite sure of this. She feels her situation is hopeless. She believes she can't do anything about either her situation or her depression. She feels helpless about it.

A good therapist knows better. If the depressive would change the way she thinks, she could reduce or even eliminate her feelings of depression. But here's the catch: Changing the way she thinks takes effort. And effort requires motivation. And motivation requires the assumption that her actions will make a difference.

In other words, before the depressive can get over her feelings of helplessness, she must first get over her feelings of helplessness.

Cognitive-behavioral therapists have actually found a way to do this. They give the depressive an antidepressant drug and then while she's feeling more hopeful and less helpless, they help her change the way she thinks.

Then they take away the drug and she doesn't (usually) lapse back into depression because she no longer thinks depressingly about her circumstances. Research has shown that the combination of antidepressants and cognitive therapy works better than either alone.

Now here's my point: Meditation does the same thing for the "normal" mental illness we all have.

Abraham Maslow came to the conclusion that many of the most cherished "laws of psychology" often turned out to be "no laws at all but only rules for living in a state of mild and chronic psychopathology and fearfulness, of stunting and crippling and immaturity which we don't notice because most others have this same disease that we have."

Maslow also wrote, "What we call 'normal' in psychology is really a psychopathology of the average, so undramatic and so widely spread that we don't even notice it ordinarily."

He wasn't the first to have noticed this. Freud wrote of the "universal neurosis in man." Buddha said that "all worldlings are deranged."

There is a kind of craziness we all share and it's hard to get out of it. The craziness is a self-perpetuating trap similar to the depressive's dilemma.

Most of us wish we could be more peaceful, feel more contentment, be better listeners, feel more forgiving and patient and so on, but our own physiology defeats us. It's frustrating because we know we could be that way, but somehow, no matter how great our insights are on a relaxing vacation, when we get back into our daily lives, we are unable to be the people we want to be.

The problem is, you constantly release stress hormones into your body in response to the crazy world (and your ingrained mental responses to that crazy world). It is almost impossible to ingrain any new mental patterns because the anxious, agitated, frustrated, discontented state of your bodymind will continually thwart you. You're saturated with stress hormones and it causes the "psychopathology of the average" you can't seem to escape.

However, there is a way out. Meditation lowers stress hormones. Specifically, it reduces cortisol and lactate drastically. Read more about that here. So when you meditate a couple of times a day, twenty minutes a pop — enough to keep your stress hormone level low — you become calm. And in your new, calmer frame of mind and body, new habits of mind can form.

In this calmer state, you naturally and inevitably develop more serene, loving, and peaceful points of view and habits of action. These new ways of thinking and looking at the world and behavior can become natural and ingrained when you keep up your meditation practice, so even if you were to skip a day of meditation, your new habits would sustain your serenity and sanity.

It is worth taking the time to filter out your cortisol by meditating. It is the fastest, most efficient way to reduce your stress hormones.

If you did nothing, the cortisol in your bloodstream would eventually get used up or filtered out. The problem with just waiting is that while they are in your system, the stress hormones have an influence on your behavior. And the stress hormones influence your ways of thinking. They influence how you interpret the events of your life. And those actions and thoughts and interpretations can make your body produce more cortisol.

Because your stress hormones have not yet been filtered out, you might snap at your spouse, for example, and that makes you a little more upset, especially when your spouse snaps back. It puts more cortisol in your system. It makes your life a little more upsetting, a little crazier. In this way, the craziness tends to perpetuate the craziness.

That new jolt of cortisol also stimulates more anxious thoughts or frustrating reactions, which come right around and boost your cortisol level some more. It is a cycle of insanity that is hard to get out of.

But meditation is a reliable way out of the madness. Read the literature to convince yourself. Or simply try it.

A tremendous amount of research has been done on the physical effects of meditation. This is not guesswork or based on mere anecdotal evidence. The research is solid and there is a lot of it. And the results all point in the same direction.

Meditation can make you an oasis of sanity in a crazy world. Learn how to meditate here.

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Improve Your Mood Around People

UNTIL I GOT to high school, I was "shy." My mom still thinks I am. It was so much a part of my personality, she just can't seem to get over it. But anyone who knows me now would have a hard time believing I was ever shy.

If you think other people aren't going to like you, then when you're around other people, you tend to be somewhat withdrawn. You don't talk very much. You don't open up. The person you're talking to feels, of course, that you don't like him, so he withdraws. His withdrawal is evidence that other people don't like you. See how that works? It's a negative self-feeding loop.

It was easy to fix. I got the idea from Maxwell Maltz's book, Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life. When I talked to people, I started thinking to myself, "They like me." I became more comfortable and talked a little easier, and people responded. I started seeing evidence that people liked me, and the self-feeding loop was going. Now I feel comfortable around just about everyone and they feel comfortable around me.

I saw an ingenious experiment on this recently: Students were paired up and allowed to talk with each other for five minutes. Then one person from each pair was called aside and spoken with privately. Half of them were told his partner liked him. The other half was told his partner didn't like him.

Then all the pairs were put back together to talk some more, and the researchers watched and took notes. Here's what they found: When a person thought the other person liked him, he talked more personally about himself, leaned in toward the other person more, and used more eye contact. And how did his partner respond to this? By doing the same thing. His partner leaned forward more, talked more personally, and looked him in the eye more.

When a person thought his partner didn't like him, he tended to lean back, talk less personally about himself, and use less eye contact. And again, his partner did the same.

Whether you assume other people will like you or not, you're probably going to be right! It will tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy either way. So one simple way to improve your mood on a daily basis is to assume the person you are about to talk to likes you. Try it today.

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Make Your Goal Into a Self-Fulfilling Prophesy

YOU CAN HELP yourself achieve your goals by creating positive self-feeding loops. You can lift yourself up by your bootstraps. In the success literature like Think and Grow Rich, there is an important principle called Faith. It is the willful assumption that you can and will persist with your goal until you succeed. Once you have that, you've literally got it made. It makes your goal a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In those books, there are stories galore of people doing it. Many people have read these stories and become convinced they can accomplish the impossible, and then actually accomplished it!

The problem, of course, is doubt, worry, and discouragement. Those also become self-fulfilling prophecies also, and are easier to think (because of the mind's natural negative bias). If you get discouraged, you lose your drive and don't take the steps that would lead to success. And who is going to loan money to someone for a business venture when the person doubts it will work!

Faith is electrifying! It moves people. Napoleon Hill says the starting point of all achievement is Desire. And he exhorts the reader to work herself into a state of white hot desire. And you can easily see that if you were in a state of white hot desire, you could achieve things that would be impossible normally.

But how does Napoleon Hill suggest you get to that state? There are some old-fashioned things about this book. After all, it was written during the Great Depression. But there are some things about it which are startlingly modern. The method he suggests is what he calls auto-suggestion, which means "talking to yourself."

What do you think would happen if you constantly pictured your goal in your mind and saw yourself accomplishing it, and winning, succeeding, and you were at the same time saying to yourself, "I will achieve this goal; I will never stop until it is mine; I have the ability; I will follow my plan and if it doesn't work, I will make a new one and follow that; and if that one doesn't work, I will keep trying, I will keep aiming for it, and I will get it!"

If your mind was filled with that kind of stuff, do you see you would have a drive — a level of energy — that was far above average? Can you see how it would make you more powerful? More likely to achieve your goals?

This is how you can make your goal into a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is how you can lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.

I know that sounds like drummed-up phoniness. And it is, in a sense. You really can't accomplish something that is truly impossible. But many of the things that we think are impossible are only impossible because we think they are.

So in a sense, you may be able to accomplish what you now think is impossible. And you can do it by assuming it can be done and committing yourself to doing it.

Now of course, there are not many people with the ambition to accomplish the impossible. Most of us would be content with a new house, or something like that. What is your goal? I know you have lots of little goals like a new TV or getting in better shape or making more money. But is there something that really stirs you? Something that makes your eyes water a little when you think of it? That's the goal I'm talking about. It might be something you've written off because it was impossible or impractical. But let me tell you something: You're going to die. Even if you live to be a hundred and twenty, you're going to die. And the goal that stirs you should be accomplished before you die. You can start small, but it should be done, if only because it will give a meaning to your life and make this experience extraordinary.

Determine you will do it, and then get started. Make that dream into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Here's how to make your goal a self-fulfilling prophecy: Keep your thoughts on what you want, and keep your thoughts confident. When you notice you feel doubtful, attack the thoughts. Question them on the basis of their validity. (Read more about that here.) And then consciously, deliberately imagine your goal and say things to yourself that motivate you and give you courage and confidence. All you have to do is control your mind, which is the subject of this article.

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Improving Someone Else's Mood

HAVE YOU EVER wondered why more people aren't making an effort to improve their moods and attitudes? Has it ever bothered you? Maybe even frustrated you? There are four common reasons why more people don't try to feel better:

1. They don't realize how foolish it is to stay in a bad mood. They don't understand the far-reaching consequences.

2. They don't know good methods exist and really work.

3. They think positive attitudes are phony, and they don't want to be phony.

4. Even if none of the first three apply, most people know very few good methods for raising their moods, so they feel it's not worth the effort.

So instead of being irritated at the negative attitudes of those around you — and before you go trying to improve their moods — first become a master of your own great attitude.

Let's say another person has a bad attitude, and that makes you irritated. If you asked him why he's in a bad mood, he can tell you. It has something to do with something outside him. Almost never do people think they're in a bad mood because of something he himself is doing.

Step back and see this situation from a distance. You are irritated at him for having such a lousy attitude. In other words, you are in a bad mood because of something outside you — the guy with the bad attitude. If you can't manage to get into a good mood despite his attitude, then you have no right to expect him to overcome his bad mood, which was caused by something outside him.

When you are able to stay in a great mood regardless of anyone else's attitude, then you will have the right and will be in a position to help them improve their own attitude. But you will have no need to do so. You won't need anyone to feel good so you can feel good. But you'll help them feel good anyway, out of pure kindness. And that will really help.

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