“Start a journal.”

In college, I used to write down my thoughts, but I never really kept a journal until recently.

I figure that I’ll explain how it has helped me, and you can think about if it can help you in the same way.

Basically, I have all kinds of thoughts floating around my head all the time.  They are totally unorganized, and when I try to organize them in my head, typically what happens is that I get to a certain point, but then I get distracted by some other random thought, and get off track, so I never really get anywhere.

This is why talking with friends or therapists is so helpful, because it allows us to take what is inside, and forces us to structure the thoughts in such a way as to articulate what we are thinking clearly to another person, and in doing so, to ourselves.

However, often times, friends or therapists are not an option.  It is in this case, that a journal can be very helpful.  Basically, what I do, I would consider stream of conscience journaling.  Which means that I carry on a conversation with myself on paper, so it might go something like this:

“Why exactly do you like the color blue?  Is it because as a child your room was blue?  No that’s not it, your room was red.  Perhaps it’s because, you lived near the ocean, and would stare at it for hours.  Yeah, that makes sense.”

I can write 10 pages in as many minutes, just running through thoughts, and rejecting them.

Once a solid point is discovered, I’ll go back and underline the key thought that I learned, so I can remember it for later, since all thoughts come in handy later – they are all interconnected – either as a foundation thought or as a misguided thought or as some other thing you will explore again, trust me.

Basically, I have found journaling to be the best exercise so far for giving me a model that provides a building block approach to introspection and which allows me to better understand myself at a deeper level.  Try it you’ll like it.

“If you want to learn what messages you heard from your parents, listen to your kids.”

This post is a little personal.

Years ago, someone I respected told me that I didn’t trust myself, and it rang true to me.  Now, if you know me, this is probably one of the last things you would have guessed about me, and even my closest friends who know me very well would call me confident, accomplished, and a decision maker, certainly not someone who was wishy-washy or didn’t trust themself.

However, for years I have struggled with this statement, since as I mentioned, it did ring true to me, on a deeper level, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on how they were correct, even though I knew they totally were.

Until today.

This morning, I found my son upset, and when I asked him what was wrong, he said “Dad, you are just going to tell me that the anger I am feeling is silly and not logical, so don’t worry about it.  I’m okay.”

Wow, I thought.  That must be the message I have been giving him all these years, that he should ignore his feelings because they aren’t logical.

And that’s when it hit me.  He must have received that message from me before, which means that I must have received that message too some where along the way.  That I should ignore my feelings when they weren’t logical which explains why I always have felt that I wasn’t trusting myself – I wasn’t giving appropriate weight to my own inner feelings. (However, it doesn’t work that way.  Feelings and logic are both relevant in decision making and both sides need to be considered, as you know, and I told him this morning.)

So the point is, by listening to the assumptions that our kids tell us about what we are telling them, we can hear first hand what we probably were told by our parents when we were younger, and learn more about those internal messages that we are probably still telling ourselves as well.

“Learn to recognize the subtle outside influences in your life.”

As I watched tv with my kids today, and listened to the messages that they were being told about self image, success, coping, and other life lessons, I remembered how many negative influences there are that influence them in very subtle ways.  Of course, there are also positive messages that come through, but if we don’t take the time to sit down and dissect the negative ones, what a disservice we are doing them as they form their assumptions about life.

For that matter, we also need to take some time to think about those messages that we receive from the media and mass culture and analyze if they are 1) true and 2) healthy for us to live by as well!

“Smile.” :)

Smiles are contagious.  If you ever are down, try this experiment.  Go to the mall, and look at someone who is walking towards you and pretend that they are a long lost friend you haven’t seen for years, and give them a huge smile.  They’ll smile back sincerely, and you won’t be able to help changing your attitude to being a little happy.  Keep doing that and you’ll quickly find that your attitude changes.

I have also found that the happier you are when you smile, the more happiness that is returned from the other party.

When you smile at people you awaken in them the realization that life is good.  Sometimes they just weren’t thinking about it, other times they have forgotten that point, and very often until you smiled things were pretty rotten.  However, your smile has the power to bring out their happiness from wherever it was hiding and bring it to the front – and out into the universe.

So if you want to give someone a cheap gift (and get something back in return), just smile.

“If you want to always be happy, stop setting expectations.”

Someone asked me how I always seems happy about things, and I took some time to think about it.  Now, I am certainly not ALWAYS happy, but if you put me with a random group of people I would be closer to the second standard deviation of happy people (go college statistics!).  So I thought about the people that I know that are not always happy, and about myself, and I think it comes down to how we view the world, with regards to setting expectations.  Basically, I have no expectations.  I certainly have high hopes, but no real expectations.  In fact, if anything, I expect things to fail.  So when things go right, it makes me happy, and when things go wrong, I was already emotionally prepared for the event, and it doesn’t impact me too much.  On the other hand, those people who expect things to turn out right, and then things don’t, are constantly disappointed, since more than often, life doesn’t work that way.   So perhaps that explains my attitude, and helps provide a lesson that we can try to use ourselves to improve our daily life – simply don’t set expectations.