Читать книгу The Charisma Code - Robin Sol Lieberman - Страница 14
ОглавлениеCHARISMA RULE
Know you are made of great stuff.
We cannot fight war with war, but we can entice war to lay down its guns. Charisma disarms with charm.
As a little girl, I remember disarming my grouchy, old, sick grandpa, my Popo, with hula dances and surprise hugs. I put gel in his bangs till they stood tall like 1980s Cosmopolitan models. Then we’d go to the mirror and laugh together. He barked this or that and I just giggled. I knew he loved me.
Because I was one of the few who didn’t get offended by the armed grouch in him, he enjoyed being with me. He gave me stuffed animals and “ahhrng juice” (what any genuine East Coaster calls their breakfast beverage).
Before my Popo died, he took me to the collection of medals he’d earned in World War II as a bombardier. He opened their glass case and told me to take good care of them after he passed. Oh, my Popo knew how to fight all right. As a New York orphan, he also knew how to survive.
I loved making my Popo happy. And I think he loved me most because he loved who he was when he was with me. Not the fighter. Not the survivor. Just the grandpa whose granddaughter giggled when he got grouchy. That is how charisma disarms. Its grace forgives curmudgeons their lack of grace, and suddenly, they find it.
I was twelve years old when my Popo died. When I got the call, I ran outside to the top of the big, wild hill behind my house, threw off my clothes, and played my blue ocarina clay flute. I knew only one song, and I played it over and over again. In my own rain, sun rays through cloud, wind on my skin, I played this song to him:
“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now I see.”
JOHN NEWTON
[S]uddenly, a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ . . . Saul arose from the ground; and when his eyes were opened, he could see nothing. And for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank. (Acts 9: 3-9)
After this experience, Saul became known as Paul. His three days of blindness and fasting were extremely somatic and must have been physically trying, yet he recounts them as a mystical experience with God. So much so that Paul went on to write about this event in the epistles, describing it as “a gift of God’s grace.”1
How could such a clearly traumatic event have been experienced as a gift of grace? That’s where it gets interesting, because while describing this gift from on high, Paul coined a word: “charisma.” The word itself is a combination of charis, which historians believe was the Greek colloquial for the word “grace-gift,” and -ma, the Greek suffix for “act of.”
The concept was twofold: when one received an act of grace (charis-ma) from God, one would keep one’s gift alive by giving it! For example, let’s say someone is endowed with the gift of inspiring others with their words. Whenever they open their mouth, they are spreading their divine gift of gab. Charisma is a gift that keeps on giving, like a snowball or an economic stimulus package. It was never meant to be an attribute, as much as a force, a currency. Like any currency, charisma moves through the community. And, like currency, charisma has to come from somewhere before it can circulate. Money originates at the governmental Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Charisma comes from a divine source to a grounded recipient. From that recipient, it can radiate to the community. You too can be an unending well of value for your global community, but, like Paul, in order to give your gift, you must first receive it.
In this chapter, we will discover how to receive your grace-gift directly, by becoming still and allowing the “lightning from on high” to strike. As success coach and empowerment giant Tony Robbins says, “Passion wakes you up to something in life that you desire so strongly that you no longer have to push yourself to do anything. You now have a different kind of drive; a force that pulls you forward.”2 Once that fire is lit within you, you glow with the passion of knowing you have something to give. That knowing will give you confidence, and confidence, young Grasshopper, is the first step in your charisma training.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
There is no clear consensus on the nature of God.
WIKIPEDIA “GOD” PAGE
Can I talk about “God” for a sec? A three-letter word that has brought undeniable peace, joy, and sanity for many, while on the flip-side it has been a vehicle for our collective insanity through holy wars, child molestation cover-ups, and outright scams.
Why do I need to talk about God at all? I mean, I’m here to teach you how to unlock your charisma code, right? The thing is, the more I delve into decoding charisma, the more I encounter countless surprises, all of them pointing towards the mysterious, the ineffable, language beyond words. There has to be something responsible for all of this, right? I love science, but people, I need to know one thing: What banged the big bang?
When I began research for this book, the fact that the word “charisma” had its coming-out party in the Bible was news to me. Raised a Jewish Pagan who celebrated Christmas, I was initially exposed to the Bible in hotel rooms. Because of my previously limited exposure, I feel I’ve had the opportunity to explore Christianity from a perspective of innocence and discovery. I hope you will join me in that innocence as we visit charisma’s roots.
THE IMMEDIATE CONTEXT
First off, we should talk about why you’re not crazy confident in the first place. This is a serious question. It’s safe to assume that, soon after conception, we are all confident, because we . . . are. We exist. Against all odds, we’ve got a heartbeat and trillions of cells just for us. We land in the womb with no reason to believe we are anything less than life’s favorite bambino. That being the case, it should be easy to sit still, look inside, and immediately get high on the glory of existing, but, for most of us, it’s not that easy. Somewhere along the way, we lost our sense of worth. Why? you may ask. Well, there are a couple of reasons. Let’s take a look at them. And then we’ll smash on through to confident badassery.
Let’s start by examining your immediate circumstances. If you reside in the West, you’re in a hypercommercialized society, bombarded with constant advertising. Traditional advertising works by making you dissatisfied with what you have and who you are. It’s pretty simple: in order to get you to buy something, the seller must convince you that you’d be happier if you did so. But what if you are already happy? Bad news for the seller, that’s what.
This is why, when you watch a commercial for a product, often the first thing they want you to know is that you’re lacking, and you should be dissatisfied about it. In the next moment, they offer a solution: here’s our product to save the day! Next time you see a commercial, pay attention. You’ll see it everywhere. It’s the same reason that impossible standards of wealth and beauty are modeled on, oh, you know, billboards and pamphlets and bus benches and TV screens and the side of your Facebook page. We are constantly shown a mirage of social perfection beyond the horizon, forever out of reach. A carrot dangling before the bridle. Thought you had the best phone? Nope, there’s a new one. Can’t keep up? Don’t worry. We can help with that.
Truth is, these advertisements are speaking to our actual pain, our fear of becoming an irrelevant, insignificant, lackluster, disposable commodity. These advertisements work only when we believe we are incomplete. These advertisements work only when we flaccidly allow ourselves to ask, “What if I am incomplete?” The question becomes, “Who made up this fear, them or us?”
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Ever since Adam took the bait and bit right into that scrumptious Red Delicious, Western humans have lived with two powerful but dangerous ideas:
1. We know right from wrong; and
2. We are not only capable of sin, but bound to commit it. It’s in our very nature. You could even say it’s part of our job description.
Organized religion has used these concepts to manipulate millions ever since, offering direction on how to stay on the “right side” of God’s good grace. While there is nothing inherently “wrong” with religious guidance, in the tenth and eleventh centuries CE, we took the external-judgment train a bit too far and ended up at the end of the line: the Dark Ages, a time of extreme control and punishment.
Then, 700 years ago, Western people enjoyed a fun explosion of art and culture. During the Renaissance, a time of spiritual refreshment, joy and new ideas blossomed like lilies in the field. But this too has passed, and all that merrymaking transitioned into the “Age of Disenchantment,” when the lilies were machine-mowed down and replaced by an Astroturf of rational, visible, fact-based reality. A new and powerful addiction to the quantifiable wrapped its know-it-all tongue into the gaping holes of our holiness. It declared ownership of the unknown. It called the enchanted gardens and beliefs of animist villagers “primitive” and “ignorant,” and it has been raising its scrupulous head ever since.
The result? We now live in a culture that values the rational over the romantic. But even our best scientists, while excellent at measuring the very small and the very big, still cannot measure the Infinite. We can measure the big bang, but who banged it?
There is a big, embarrassing hole in our cultural logic, which states that all things can be explained, and if they cannot, they are silly (as if there’s something wrong with silly). Rational is more adult, and so, more credible. Intuition, wonder, and awe are fairytales, things we grow out of when we are mature. Right? Nay, nay, my friend. Listen up to Albert Einstein: “And certainly we should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve; and it is not fastidious in its choices of a leader.”3
Despite our factual society, not one of us Homo sapiens was born this way. We arrived innately enchanted with the untamable wonders of life! Swayed by its wet, diamond-tipped leaves and sometimes-warm, sometimes-cold winds, we loved being surprise-kissed by the waves meeting the seashore. We laughed and squealed. Nature programmed us that way. We are born scientists, designed to explore, to play, to wonder, What if . . .? Remember?
PLAY?
The field of play science is expanding. Scientists like Stuart L. Brown from the National Institute for Play in Carmel Valley, California, suggest that play is not just fun, it is tied to our survival as a species. Dr. Brown tells us that, just as asking “what if?” is an integral part of our human survival strategy as a superorganism, so too is play a part of what keeps our species highly adaptive. But here’s the rub: in one generation alone, childhood playtime outside has decreased by 71 percent in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Seventy-one percent! Ouch. Dr. Brown writes, “At the far end of serious major play deprivation, a review of the mass murderers who have either been grievance killers, or potentially those with a psychotic core, has, in the majority, demonstrated that healthy play was seriously missing in their lives.”4 Okay. This is a warning to modern-day Westerners to bring back the wildness of childhood in which open lots breed rough and tumble play and other children-organized explorations of their world. But now I need to talk to you about your life.
Although Western culture shames citizens who aren’t busily working away the tick-tock of their day, the resulting symptoms of adult play-deprivation are anything but charismatic. Here’s what Dr. Brown found as the byproducts of adults withholding play from their daily lives: lack of vital life engagement; diminished optimism; stuck-in-a-rut feeling about life, with little curiosity or exploratory imagination to alter their situation; predilection to escapist temporary fixes such as alcohol (or other compulsions); a personal sense of being life’s victim rather than life’s conqueror. In sum: withholding play from your life is NOT what you should do if you’re looking to increase your charisma quotient.
THE ANSWER
Back to the question at hand: Why aren’t we confident? We are born full of wonder and reverence for Reality, in all its splendor and mystery, but culture condemns us for being “childish,” “naive,” and “uneducated.” A gaping hole exists in our souls, a hunger to be exploited by advertisers offering comfort-stuffed Band-Aids: food, fashion, cigarettes, cinema, boobs, botox, and booze. The only reason this works is because a poisonous seed was planted long, long ago. This one old, stupid idea that keeps people scared, makes us behave, and threatens us with hellfire. You ready? I hinted at it before. Here it is:
GREAT STUFF VERSUS BAD STUFF
That’s it. It came with our apple-eating, Garden of Eden, cultural mythology. While you may have placed your attention on the main point (God’s wrath at the biblical couple’s newfound ability to tell right from wrong), you may have missed the underlying message: that “good” and “bad” exist at all. See, when we feel bad about ourselves, there’s something really subtle going on, but it only seems subtle because it’s been hammered into us, over hundreds of years, to the point that we barely think to question it.
The ideas of good and evil are deeply ingrained in our cultural mythology, but when we use these dichotomies for any reason whatsoever, we apply a dangerous logic: If some characters are worthy of love and others are not, if some cleaning supplies are evil and others are our friends, if some clothes are so last season and others are fabulous, if some countries are terrorist nations and others are our buddies—do you see the pattern? Whether we’re talking about people, products, pants, or politics—we’ve been told that matter can be made of bad stuff.
We’ve lost touch with the greatness in all things. We think that maybe only some of the matter on earth is good and we should be frantically collecting that stuff and discarding the bad. Since we’re taught that we can’t trust ourselves to know which is which, we learn to fear what we have and reach for the next thing. If you aren’t carrying the latest touchpad device, advancing your career, or fixing your body flaws, then maybe you are not good enough. Maybe you are the bad stuff. Somebody is. It could be you!
This fear of inadequacy paralyzes us. When you feel the guilt that comes with thinking you are bad stuff, your body releases inflammatory substances. Inflammation is what we find when there is trauma to or infection in the body’s tissues. Here’s the kicker: You make it yourself. Your guilt and shame send a signal to your body, telling you that you’re being attacked. In response, your body sends floods of fluids and fighter cells to protect itself. In other words, the state of guilt and shame is a physical attack. You’re fighting yourself. Your body cannot tell the difference between your thoughts and a virus. The resulting inflammation is systemic and leads to all kinds of nastiness.
Tragically, in this lush first world of ours, many people spend their whole lives fighting the bad feelings the only way they know how: by earning small change to purchase short-term self-medication in the aforementioned forms of food, fashion, cigarettes, cinema, booze, boobs, and erectile-tissue enhancers. The result? In the United States, the richest nation on earth, depression is epidemic.
Here’s the good news: None of that logic works on you if you stop believing in bad stuff. When you choose to believe you’re made of great stuff, you have no need to waste your time being afraid and insecure, so your body has no need to send unnecessary inflammatory fighter responses, and you can get back to the good sh——t: exploring yourself, exploring your environment, and getting in touch with this f——ing moment! Are you ready to stop asking what if I’m not enough and start asking what if I am? If you’re okay with being a cultural rebel, sincerely ask yourself the following question right now: What if I am enough?
You are. The rest is makeup. Grace is the state we are in when we are doing nothing but just being who we are.
Next question is: Are you ready to stop running and start experiencing? I warn you: The charge of the here and now is electrifying! Rasping and riveting, laughing and belly hurting, tingling and cringing, smashing and contracting, expanding and orgasming. It’s messy and it’s wet and it bubbles over sometimes. There is phlegm. Oh, yeah. Living in the present demands every fiber of your being, and it will force you to grow and blossom and vomit out magic in ways you never thought possible; and you’ve been trained to run away from it your whole life. But baby, I’m here to tell you, it’s what you were born for. Are you ready to choose it? It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be great!
“In the beginning was the Word. (John 1:1) Before the Word was . . . THE.”
THE-: [COMBINING FORM. FROM GREEK THEOS: GOD]
THE CHOICE
I believe that God is our highest instinct to know ourselves.
DEEPAK CHOPRA
One night, I was unable to sleep. Anxious thoughts riddled my mind, and I struggled to calm myself. Eventually I got up to stand by the window, and by chance, I found myself admiring the curve of my shoulder under my nightgown. Then I looked up to the perfectly green ivy growing on the Los Angeles stucco, and I felt the caress of the cool air between us. That’s when it dawned on me, as it sometimes does, that I have absolutely no idea where this life came from.
I imagined the magnificent pictures taken by NASA showing spirals upon spirals of galaxies above me and felt the impending squish from this uncontrollably large universe, like an ant under a human foot en route to Starbucks, and you know what? I liked it. It made me more present, like a hot needle pressing skin. Here I Am! In the midst of eternity, I exist! Next time you think you or your circumstances suck, go outside and look up. In the presence of the vast, wordless sky, you’ll see those negative thoughts are really all just little stuff. But we often forget. And when we do, confidence gets lost.
The key to feeling confident in the middle of a wildly distracting world is perspective, and the only way to gain any real perspective is by anchoring yourself firmly in the present. How can you know how to relate to what is around you unless you know who, what, and where you are? There are simple tools to get you there . . . or here, as the case may be. Let’s start at the beginning.
Have you ever noticed that when you pause to take a deep breath or become attentive to your lover’s breath, a sense of peace washes over you? Maybe you’ve felt peaceful when you are deeply engaged in making music or writing a poem? How about when you look at the colors in a sea-blown sunset or smell the clarity in mountain air? Maybe you experience peace most when you’re racing cars or rock climbing? When do you recall a time when you felt truly at peace?
Peace comes when we are fully engaged with whatever we are doing. Another name for this is presence. The more you spend time engaged with the present, the more people will experience you as “larger than life,” “a charismatic personality,” someone they themselves want to engage with. Being engaged with the present means you have chosen to be curious with where you are, what’s around you, and how you’re feeling. When you’re present, you’re open and porous to experience and ready to let it have its way with you. It’s really rather sexy. Plus you’ll no longer have a need to be exploited by advertisers when gallivanting in a field of crickets or when quietly knitting a quilt becomes exhilarating for you. All the present asks for before it will fill you with its vitality-enhancing sanity is that you put down your defenses, abstractions, and even your what ifs so it can . . . um . . . enter you.
Note: In many parts of the world, people, often called monks, dedicate their entire lives to figuring out how to spend as many moments as possible becoming one with the present. Do you know what these monks are really doing, though? In charisma code speak, they are learning how to master their whatiferousness. They are learning how to leave their questioning minds so that an even higher intelligence, believed to exist in every now, can impregnate them with a wholeness and an insight so great, they remember who they are. This is what I call “THE.” In the beginning was the Word, but before the Word itself, is “THE.” “THE” is a prefix to all things. The Word doesn’t exist until you have THE. Nothing exists until you have THE.
How does THE relate to charisma? It has to do with the confidence that comes from knowing who you are. Whatever you think you are, you’re not. You’re more. THE is a way of remembering that there is a mysteriously massive and impeccably clean slate available to you in every moment. You’re not stuck in what you think you are. You’re not stuck in the words other people use to describe you either. You are vast like space itself. You are made of a language beyond words. Baby, you were born with charisma!
Just as words are symbols, so are your thoughts. They are mere clouds floating through your mental sky. You make them up. Sometimes you think thoughts that empower you, while other times you think thoughts that usurp your power. We all do it, right? The question remains, to which thoughts do you give attention?
One common energy drain is to leave the present moment and go gallivanting about in the future. Perhaps you can relate. Has your mind ever strayed from your work, thinking about what to eat for lunch? Then, when you’re eating lunch, do you find yourself thinking about what’s next at work? Get back in your body! The difference between thinking about eating your sandwich and actually eating it is the difference between reading a menu and crunching that hot aioli toast between your teeth.
Likewise, the past clamors for your attention. Have you ever been hung up on a conversation you wish had gone differently, a mistake you think you made, or a lost relationship you now imagine was perfect? The past is so much less energized than the present. When you live in the past, you become a shadow of yourself. In order to cultivate charismatic currency, you have to stay current. Exchange all of those little-stuff thoughts swimming around in your cranium, the ones based in the past or the future, and embrace the big stuff. Love, joy, and passion live in the present, so let’s get your mind back to this succulent moment. This will require focus.
You can’t make fire with a magnifying glass if your hand is wiggling around. You need a steady, still hand to gather the sun and start the fire. Using this analogy, I like to think of the sun as a life force available to us in any given moment, if we stop and sip the stillness. Out of this stillness comes novel ideas. Out of this stillness comes life, and out of this stillness comes fiery passion. Any moment our minds stop playing ping pong, a huge rush of energy floods into our bodies. Still thoughts are like the steady magnifying glass, focusing life force into fire, into creation. Creativity, inspiration, and innovation are born here. In this creative crucible, it is obvious we are made of great stuff, and when you realize you are made of great stuff, you rip off the mask that occludes your confidence.
As mentioned, we Western folk are trained to be on the run from immediate circumstance. When you first attempt to stay present, you may encounter resistance personalities like these:
THE WORRY WART: With the slightest tinge of fear, our instinctual brain looks for a handhold of safety. l might forget to pick my daughter up from school . . . . I better keep thinking about it, so I don’t “lose myself in the moment” and forget.
THE SHRINKING COCK: If there is a strong sensation or emotion we don’t know how to deal with, we find a way to bypass the uncomfortable, unknown, and overwhelmingly powerful sensations by retreating to our dismal, calculating, video-game mind, trying to predict every possible outcome and plan every inch beforehand. Bo . . . ring.
THE BELIEVER: The same way an apple falling from a tree picks up speed as it falls, so your thoughts gain momentum the longer you believe them. The believer is compelled to trust the mind’s fantastical imaginings as gospel. Usually, the believer is one who feels one’s thoughts strongly. Your body responds to worry, doubt, and desire so intensely that it is challenging to just stop spinning that mental hamster wheel. I must find a solution! This is real! There is a problem! The problem is, the more you look at the problem, the more of a problem it becomes. The believer has a way out, though; it is the same savior we all have, the ever-present, neutral, soft and expansive, deeply intelligent, and trustworthy present. All the believer needs to do is deem these thoughts unworthy of their time. One more time: All the believer needs to do is deem these thoughts unworthy of their time. This sets the believers free to believe a new story; the one happening right now. (Note: If you try to stop your mental hamster wheel via command but continue to spin back onto the wheel, best you go do something physical.)
These knee-jerk reactions to being present may be discouraging, but like any habit, we can make it stick with repetition and conviction. Make a valiant choice to bring yourself back to the vibrant aliveness in each sensory moment. Remember: Only you can turn the knob on how much life you let inhabit every second. The present, by its very nature, can never leave you. It does not matter how frightened, confused, or angst-ridden you feel, the present is “the gift of grace” that every charismatic learns to stretch out in.
Want to turn your faucet knob full throttle with the pomegranate juice of now? Take a hint from the ancient Masters and do the simplest thing in the world: Sit still, watch your breath, and don’t be afraid of what you feel.
Ask yourself: Is my behavior getting me the results I want?
I asked a cognitive neuroscientist friend of mine, Dr. Andrew Hill, what the function of our brain is. He told me the brain is “a pattern-matching machine. Its job is to maximize benefit and reduce risk, by identifying patterns from previous experience in incoming information.” That great wiry, curlicued electric miracle of your brain serves one function: it makes patterns!
Think about it: Patterns are necessary for survival. Recognizing bright orange spherical things on the edges of tree branches can keep you alive. The more we think or do something, the more our brains assign relevance to it. “Oh,” says the brain, “she’s done that a lot; it must be important. I will keep my eye out for it and be ready to respond the way she’s practiced (fight it, love it, or ignore it).”
Bless our brain’s pattern-making ability. It is greatly responsible for why we are the most adaptable species on earth, but we can also create some pretty nasty unintentional patterns. Patterns are like ruts, wagon-wheel pathways our brain runs over and over because we keep practicing them. Sometimes we practice the wrong thing, and then it’s hard to get out of those well-worn, mud-hardened grooves. Our biology is efficient; it won’t go out of its way to change a patterned route. Nope. If left to its own devices, the brain will keep on running the pattern that you (and your parents and your culture) have had you practicing since birth. Same old self-deprecating thoughts. Same old late-night cake and cookie dough, same old running away before “maybe . . .”; same old little tiny, insignificant, grey-walled thought loops—on and on and on and on and on and on and on—and they suck. They suck the life out of your would-be larger-than-life charisma. Misidentifying these rut-thoughts as a dictation of who we are tethers us, like a warm tongue on the frigid metal of a frozen winter flagpole. Helpless, hurting, humiliated, we have only courage enough to howl in silence.
But all is not lost. You have the power to completely repattern your brain routes. You’re the driver. You can take the wheel of your brain and drive it on a new pathway. A route nobody has seen before.
What is this power? Why, it’s you! Neuroscientists say it takes between three to five weeks of repeating a pattern to form a new habit. The more you practice, the more that pattern becomes your new go-to, knee-jerk response. Not only do your existing cells (with millions of interconnections) remap when you learn new things, but you also add new cells. In just three to five short weeks, those little synapse coyote trails become the new wagon trail to glory.
Three to five weeks. That means be patient with yourself. Don’t give up. It won’t be easy; you’re fighting to get out of ruts built over a lifetime. Like toboggan tracks in snow, the longer you’ve careened down that path, the deeper the grooves. Without active perseverance and determination, the old behaviors your parents, teachers, culture, and everything you ever thought about yourself—positive or negative, true or false—will do their damnedest to keep you rolling in those ruts. Is that what you want? Of course not! Remember to ask yourself, “Is my behavior getting me the results I want?” If not, you can change it, a little at a time, but consistently over time. Nothing succeeds like success, and overcoming challenges is what makes success so rich. When we do, we believe in our power again.
Start with something small. For example, maybe you say, “I’m sorry” a lot, when you’ve done nothing wrong. Or maybe you compulsively check your phone while driving. Or maybe you beat yourself up over small mistakes. Practice stopping, breathing, and returning to the moment. Let the energy of the present flood you with a regenerative force. Warning: we live in a culture that celebrates laziness. You are not your culture. Use the power of your conviction to repeatedly push against your patterned norm until you break through to a new norm. Train your mind to see what’s going right and track your wins. This will help you win more. Be patient. Once you start seeing results, you can start making bigger changes. Soon, you’ll be redesigning your whole brain.
I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.
WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
GRATITUDE
One more time: your brain is programmed to help you survive; it is not programmed so you’ll be happy. Nor is your brain against you being happy. It’s just more compelled to keep you alive, regardless of how happy you are while you’re alive. Since people traditionally find happy individuals more enjoyable to be around, more magnetic, and more charismatic, I am interested in giving you as many happiness tools as possible. Your brain keeps you alive, your soul steers that life. For those souls interested in reaching destination: happiness, I suggest a gratitude practice.
Do you like the word “gratitude,” or is it soft cotton, void of any real meaning for you? How about the words “God” and “love”? We know “gratitude,” “God,” and “love” are fine words. They stand for phenomenal concepts, but I’m afraid they’ve been overused and misused to the point of meaninglessness for many of us. These words are like the perfect skin caress that was once sublime but with repetitive, unconscious stimulation now feels numb at best, irritating at worst.
With that said, you know what I mean when I say gratitude. To make sure my words are not lost on you, do me a favor and feel what gratitude feels like. Take the time to do it until you are really feeling grateful. Maybe you feel the heart-pleasure-body-warm-tingle-fullness thing when you think of your pet or your dreamy, yellow curtains. Maybe you feel it when you think about some unexpectedly nice something someone did. Or maybe you get the gratitude rush when you recognize that you. are. existing. Whatever it is that makes you feel grateful, once you’re there, ask yourself how you got there. What did you do to feel this warm, regenerative, contentment-inducing feeling?
If you read the “Brain” section above and thought, “Hmmm . . . I’m not sure which patterned rut to reroute,” then start a gratitude journal. Crafting your brain to feel gratitude instead of lack is one of the best things you can do for your happiness quotient. The reason the word “gratitude” (and probably “love” and “God”) has been so overused is that it is so powerful. Everyone’s doing it these days. Sometimes what everyone’s doing is not sane, but in this instance I agree with Nike: “Just do it!”
THE WAY OF THE SEVEN-STEP GRATITUDE JOURNAL
1. Buy journal.
2. Keep journal by bed.
3. Begin journal with brief documentation about what’s going on in your life and how you currently feel.
4. Every night before sleeping and every morning upon waking write ten things you are grateful for.
5. Repeat this practice religiously for three to five weeks.
6. Complete journal by documenting how you feel now and in what ways your life has changed.
7. Continue your gratitude journaling process until you reach your grave (even if the only “journal” you continue to “write” in is your heart)!
Grateful people are offered opportunities and are people magnets.
DANI JOHNSON
Don’t want to make a journal or do a seven-step anything? No problem. Just bless. Bless. Bless. Bless. Bless your water bottle. Bless your cat. Bless your hard drive. Bless your toenails. Bless your friend. Bless your salmon. Bless what she said. Bless what he said. Bless where you’ve been. Bless where you are. Bless your doubt. Bless your sadness. Bless your growth. Bless your stagnancy. Bless the wind. Bless your joy. Bless your toilet seat. Bless your backyard (bless its dirt). Bless your veins. Bless your books. Bless your reading glasses. Bless this moment. Whatever it is, bless it.
The hot sun and the total absence of water made the mouth feel as though it were stuffed with cotton. Endurance was part of the sacrificial side of the dance. I did make it through three hot, exhausting days and nights. Thirty pounds of mostly water melted off my lanky twenty-three-year-old frame. I now had a much better sense of who I was, of courage, of the importance of my life, of what I might be able to teach others.
TOM JOHNSON, WRITING ABOUT THE SHOSHONE SUN DANCE, 1967
I can relate to Johnson’s experience. At twenty-one years of age, I too chose to go through my own sacred ordeal.aa Staying up into the sunrise, night after night after night. To the left and right of me, chiffon-clad women taken by dance, offering joy in hand gestures and song. The sweat, dirt, fire and countless hours, footprint after footprint, etched into sand. Know me, I spoke silently with each footprint. Remember my signature, the curve of toe, my commitment to meet you each time I pound my body into you. That ordeal and the ones I have chosen since take all I have to make it through the dark nights. Much like Johnson, I must become Great if I want to survive.
I am forever grateful to my Fire family. You know who you are.
You can find an “ordeal ritual” in almost every indigenous culture around the world, and for good reason. If we persevere beyond the pain at the edge of our limits, we discover we are more powerful than we thought. Once a boy; after an Ordeal, a man. Our industrialized culture is founded on the premise that an easy, comfortable life is a good life, but this has a cost: Our fear of discomfort limits what we attempt to do, so we never find out what we are capable of. We never know how great we really are. How can you be confident in your amazing human abilities if you have never risen to the demands of an ordeal outside the status quo?
A friend of mine made the empowered choice to birth at home. At 5′3″ and with hips like a skinny adolescent, she knew this could be the most painful experience of her life, but instead of opting for a hospital setting, with painkilling epidurals and the option of a Cesarean, she trusted herself and her midwife. “Once you do this, you’ll know you can do anything. You’ll be able to take on wildcats!” Her prelabor pains rendered her unable to sleep for a full week before the birth. She wanted to give up, but when her baby finally emerged, she was fully awake, drug-free, and aware of her greatness. The pain did not kill her. She became great to rise to her ordeal.
Most enlightenment practices focus on transforming suffering. In order to do so, you have to face it head on. How do we face the suffering? With allowance. Another dear friend, Amber Hartnell, “allowed” her birthing contractions so fully that she began to orgasm. She then shared the experience of her orgasmic birth on numerous news and talk shows, beginning a birthing revolution around the world. Allowance brings grace in the midst of extraordinary pain. What Amber discovered went way beyond childbirth. She later had two root canals without anesthesia.
Peacocks purposely eat poison, but the poison doesn’t kill them. Instead, it makes their feathers more colorful. Pain is an integral part of being alive. When you know that a certain pain will not destroy you, why not sit back and enjoy it? Surround yourself with the safety you need, then relax into the pain.
One of my strongest pain teachers are clusters of migraine headaches that mysteriously come on daily for three weeks, almost every fall. My body rejects pain medication with a physical allergy, so during those three weeks, I learn from pain. Sometimes I experience five migraines in a single night. If you’ve ever had a migraine, you know it is not an exalted headache or a stomachache. Each one is a beast of flashing, piercing, screaming sensations.
I’ve developed a pain-management system to tame this beast or at least stay in the ring with it. At the barest hint of blood-vessel spasming I stop what I’m doing and focus my attention on it. I watch for edges and peaks. I accompany the pain through the corridors and hallways of my skull. I mingle with it like a vampire and princess might mingle with each other: not exactly easy escorts, but vital with alert thrill. I ride the sharp bites, stick through the high-pitch point, wait for the submission, and then, I give thanks. The tight corridors of pain lift, and I’m free to wander again. By cultivating stillness while mingling with the magnitude of sensation, I can cut the duration and strength of the headaches in half.
When we resist pain, whether emotional or physical, it is highly unpleasant. We don’t want it. We want pleasure, crave it, beg for it. Our bodies feel pleasure as safety. So how can we stay with our pain and allow it instead of repelling its overwhelming sensation? Would you believe me if I said pain is not possible unless you resist it? What if I told you that pain and pleasure are the same thing? Could it be possible that each is only an extreme sensation, and the way we choose to feel it marks our experience as painful or pleasurable?
A person with charisma is often described as someone who glows. So I thought, “What in nature glows naturally, and how does it do it?” Naturally, I thought of the sun. What I discovered about the sun’s light-making process floored me. Here’s the simple of it: Through heat, gravity, and grace, atoms within the sun connect so completely that they unify. In their unification, it takes less energy to hold them together than when they were separate particles. The excess energy is released into space in the form of sunlight. All the light you have ever experienced is literally the result of connection! Likewise, your pain dissolves when you fuse it with acceptance, releasing that special glow. Through deep allowance and surrender, your pain will transform from a prison into a radiant surge of charisma.
Next time pain comes knocking on your front door, choose from the following menu options:
