Week 19: Smile

Dr. Hanson reminds us to smile this week. Indeed, even half-a-smile is better than no smile at all. A half smile happens when you relax your face, especially the jaw and the area between the eyebrows, and let your lips turn up slightly. If you couple this with breathing or music and you have a “Serenity Now” moment that will invite others closer and help you feel better.

One day just for fun, my daughter and I compiled a list of happy songs. These songs are guaranteed to brighten your mood (and maybe get you dancing):

Dancing in the Moonlight  (King Harvest)

I Wanna Rock’n’Roll All Night (Kiss)

Don’t Worry Be Happy (Bob Marley)

Hooked on a Feeling (B.J. Thomas)

What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)

Shiny Happy People (REM)

Colour My World (Petula Clark)

Zip a Dee Doo Dah (Jiminy Cricket's song from Pinochio)

Move On Up (Curtis Mayfield)

Daydream Believer (The Monkees)

I’m into Something Good (Herman’s Hermits)

Cheek to Cheek (Fred Astaire)

Downtown (Petula Clark)

These Words (Natasha Bedingfield)

Spanish Flea (Herb Alpert)

Crocodile Rock (Elton John)

Sound of Sunshine (Michael Franti & Spearhead)

Rock Star (Pink)—especially the Chipmunk version

Perfect (Pink)

Dude Looks Like a Lady (Arrowsmith)

One Thing (One Direction)

Rhythm of Love (Plain White T’s)

Hakuna Matata (Lion King)

Do be do (Trashcan song) (Tarzan)

Hockety Pockety (Sword in the Stone)

Under the Sea (Little Mermaid)

On What a Beautiful Morning (Oklahoma)

I can go the distance (Hercules)

Fireworks (Katy Perry)

Favorite Things (Julie Andrews)

Sing a Song (Karen Carpenter)

Colors of the Wind (Pocahontas)

Help (The Beatles)

Yellow Submarine (The Beatles)

Here Comes the Sun (The Beatles)

High Hopes—The Rubber Tree Plant Song (Frank Sinatra)

Just a Spoonful of Sugar (Julie Andrews)

You Ain’t Nothing But a Hound Dog (Elvis Presley)

Obladi Oblada (The Beatles)

Dancing Queen (Abba)

Mama Mia (Abba)

Off to See the Wizard (Judy Garland)

Eye of the Tiger (Survivor)

Saturday Night (Elton John)

I’m Yours (Jason Mraz)

Forget You (Ceelo Green)

I Feel Pretty (West Side Story)

Our time now (Plain White T’s)

Begin the Beguine (Artie Shaw)

Party Rock Anthem (LMFAO)

Party in the USA (Miley Cyrus)

Scallywag (Gaelic Storm)

All You Need is Love (The Beatles)

Walking on Sunshine (Katrina and the Waves)

59^th Street Bridge Song (Simon and Garfunkel)

Pocket full of sunshine (Natasha Bedingfield)

Who says (Selena Gomez)

You’ve Got a Friend in Me (Toy Story, Randy Newman)

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas (Bing Crosby)

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (The Beatles)

All Star (Smash Mouth)

I’m a Believer (The Monkees)

Afrika (Chaka Khan)

Week 18: Be Grateful

The end of the spring semester is close at hand and stress may be accumulating as students finish projects, face final exams, make decisions that loom with every academic "edge." Some students may be in playoffs or competitions or recitals or final performances of one sort or another. They worry if they will be "good enough?" I wonder if they are "grateful enough?"

One of the ways people may cope with stress is by complaining. Do any of the following complaints sound familiar?

• Do I have to?
• Will this be on the exam?
• Its too hard.
• I don't want to and you can't make me.
• I am nervous and angry and afraid I will fail.
• I have so much to do!
• I just want to sleep in for a change.
• People expect too much.
• wah, wah, wah!

The whining is intended to solicit sympathy and caretaking. In some cases maybe it will get us off the hook for following through on what we started.

But if you are in school, playing sports, involved with music or drama, or getting ready for the next big adventure, you are very lucky! It is truly a privilege to be endowed with opportunities and making the most of those opportunities is what separates winners from losers.

Dealing with stress with an attitude of gratitude sounds something like this:

• Wow, this is going to be awesome!
• I am nervous and excited and eager to do my best.
• Its scary, but I have done my homework/practice/planning and feel ready.
• I am fortunate to have a good school and good teachers (or good workplace and good coworkers).
• When people have high expectations of me, that means they believe I can do it.
• Things could be worse.

Living a life of constant negativity and pessimism drags you down and drags down the people around you. Everyone begins to feel angry and frustrated. The bad mood is contagious. Pretty soon you are living in Eeyore's gloomy place.

The darned thing is that complaining can sometimes be the right thing to do: an injustice committed, a condition intolerable, someone's behavior being indecent or rude. However, we need to ask why we are complaining. Good reasons are feeling hurt, degraded, or humiliated. A bad reason, always, is envy.

When people see success as an either/or situation (ie., either you are successful or I am successful), competition is set up. It can be healthy or unhealthy. Healthy competition is "let's go at it and each do our best and fete the best outcome." Unhealthy competition is "I need to be the best and I will do anything to make sure that I come out on top." Unfortunately, I see all too much of that among today's high school students, with envious, driven parents asserting that their child is "the best" beyond doubt, even though their child may be struggling to live up to expectations.

So there may be some basis for the child's whining: are they are saying they do indeed doubt they are the best and have severe worries about themselves? One of my daughter's piano teachers took great alarm that I told my daughter after a difficult recital "there were a couple little problems that you can fix in the future, but overall it was just fine" rather than gushing with false praise. As it is, my daughter says she doubts our feedback is authentic because we are biased, but I remind her that my occassional criticisms should earn her trust as my praise is not unqualified.

So if complaining has become a habit, especially under stress, try the following:

• Seek support (get extra tutoring/mentoring/assistance, set limits on social demands, ask for help, prioritize, manage your time well)
• Be action oriented and solution-focused
• Cultivate an optimistic outlook
• Be grateful for all you have and all you are able to do.

Work hard, have fun!

Week 17: Find Beauty

I apologize for getting behind last week, but I will hopefully catch up with two posts this week.

Dr. Hanson asks this week "what are some things that are beautiful to you?"

This may challenge you if you are in the habit of 'not noticing.' The ability to notice and appreciate the subtleties that make something "beautiful" is something that can be learned and practiced.

As noted in previous weeks, noticing requires that you be in the moment fully with sensory apparatus turned on and dialed into maximum gain. It means not rushing in action or judgment, and taking time to be fully enriched.

There have been times and places in my life when I have had to say to myself "take a good look, you will never be here again." Those moments stand out in memory because I took time to absorb the experience and really let it sink in. Sometimes those experiences are so rich they hurt, in an exquisite, almost ecstatic sort of way.

Ecstasy is the experience of total involvement with an object in your awareness. It brings about an altered state of consciousness in which thought or action or attention is suspended and the object consumes complete awareness. Nothing else exists for a moment and you are totally consumed. The effect is total joy.

I had the pleasure last Saturday of attending an outstanding performance of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, the anthem of this very experience. The first three movements allude to the human struggles and sufferings of that time in history, while the fourth movement explodes into transcendence. My favorite part is when the orchestra bursts into auditory fireworks in the final crescendo after a slow steady upward progression. It was Beethoven's expression of his hope for mankind. This music is exquisitely beautiful and appeals across generations and nations for good reason.

In the movie Immortal Beloved, the aged Beethoven remembers his younger self escaping his abusive father and coming to float in a pond reflecting the stars in the sky. His body seems suspended in the heavens and he is transported from his life of care.

I worry about the younger generation that listens to so much truly BAD music, that seeks altered states of consciousness chemically, that may have grown up on a steady diet of little more than mainstream entertainment, that is saturated with the incessant drone of machinery.

We should each have a outlet for creating beauty in our lives: woodworking, gardening, music, painting, mosaics, drawing, dance, writing, cooking. We need arts education in our schools to cultivate the skills that will last a lifetime, some vocationally but for all of us mentally and emotionally. The value is not in the quality produced but in the effort itself.

Your homework this week is to find something of great beauty. Flowers and graduations are blooming everywhere, so it should not be difficult.

Week 16: Have Faith

Faith is a notion that has many different meaning depending on the context. In Buddhist thought, depending on the school, it means something akin to trusting confidence based on first-hand knowledge. It is the actual experience of regular practice rather than abstract knowledge that lead to true faith and conviction, and it is that conviction which propels a practitioner toward awakening. What this says to me is that commitment to practice is essential in order to have "true faith" in the teachings of Buddha.

Dr. Hanson observes that faith is akin to a feeling of optimism and that it is grounded in what we know to be reliable and nurturing. He also observes that it helps us stay on our chosen path.

Faith is also belief in the consequences of actions (law of cause and effect) and the individual ownership of actions. It means that we are personally responsible for our own enlightenment and it cannot be conferred or bestowed without committing ourselves to actual right-minded practice.

So for the developing musician or athlete, this is akin to having faith in the power of regular practice rather than blind faith that "it will be okay." For the aspiring meditator, it means you can't just talk about it, you actually have to do it. For everyone who talks about peace or ecological stewardship or social justice, you have to be doing something on a regular basis.

You have to walk the walk to get results.

So if you have been following along on this blog, ask yourself "have I been doing any of the things suggested?" If not, maybe you are not ready to take responsibility for your own well-being. If you are looking for answers (i.e., quick fixes) from outside sources, maybe you need to look inside. The person who will give you the answer is yourself. And the answer is to simply commit to regular practice of something, anything. It is all in the actual 'doing' that you will find what you are looking for.