The Push You Need

Behavioral experts teach that we are motivated both by pain and by pleasure. We can change behaviors and attitudes as we utilize the Principle of Pain and Pleasure.

Here is how it works: One of the most successful American football coaches was Vince Lombardi. But he was not an easy coach to play for. One player, Henry Jordan, chuckled about Lombardi, “He treats us all the same – like dogs.” He went on to say, “I play for the love of the game, the love of the money and the fear of Lombardi.”

When he plays for the love of the game and the love of the money, he is motivated by pleasure. He thinks of the enjoyment he will get when he is on the field and his financial success as a professional player. He may even think of the personal recognition he receives as a professional player and the feelings of self-respect he experiences as he continues to succeed. The pleasure of these thoughts motivates him to play well.

When he thinks of Lombardi’s ire if he does less than his best, he is motivated by pain. Fear is emotional pain – as real as any physical pain. He may think also of the pain of losing his position to another player or even of the embarrassment of a fumbled ball. People will go to great lengths to avoid pain, in whatever form they find it.

All of these “pain thoughts,” as well as his “pleasure thoughts,” help him to rise to his best level of performance. This is the Principle of Pain and Pleasure.

What do you need motivation to do? Is it something related to your job or school? A project? A time-consuming task you’ve been putting off?  Do you need motivation to do something personal, such as quitting a crippling habit? Or do you need more encouragement to work on a huge lifestyle change?

Utilize the Principle of Pain and Pleasure. Think of the pain you will eventually feel (or even feel now) as you fail to follow your heart’s lead. Be creative. Close your eyes and visualize how that pain is oppressing you. Try to see in gory detail how the pain of failing at what you want to accomplish is going to hurt. Spend a little time just feeling that pain.

Then think of the pleasure you will experience as you do or become whatever it is you want for yourself. Visualize yourself as free and happy as you can imagine being. Try to see in your mind’s eye how your eventual success will elevate your life to whole new levels. Spend time feeling that pleasure.

This simple technique will help  you will find the push you need to give birth to your beautiful new life.

-- Steve Goodier 

Image: FreeImages.com/Fernando AUDIBERT

'Fessing Up

Image by Aarthi Ramamurthy

A hot, new business capitalizes on people's need to 'fess up, as well as their interest in eavesdropping on the confessions of others.

Fee-based phone services and Web sites allow customers to confess anonymously - anything from admissions of petty theft to adultery and even murder. Or, those who are inclined can listen to or read the sordid tales of others. (This is where most of the traffic is headed, by the way.) After the first year of business, one such telephone service, The Confession Line, reportedly made 17 million dollars. Plans were implemented to expand from 25 telephone lines to 100.

I question how beneficial the online confessions sites are for those who actually need to get something off their chests. There is a noticeable lack of contrition and a great deal of self justification. One gets the sense that these so-called true confessions are little more than verbal exhibitionism for contributors and voyeurism for readers. Yet the need to confess, or more importantly, to own up to past mistakes and misdeeds, is vital if one is to be truly free.

Confession is, as they say, good for the soul. And it is also good for the body. Researcher James Pennebaker, author of Opening Up: The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions, studied health benefits of confession. Some people's secrets literally make them sick. He discovered that criminals who confessed to lie detector technicians were often so grateful for the physical relief they felt after "getting it all out," that they actually sent birthday, holiday and thank you cards to the polygraph personnel who heard their stories.

It seems that what we bury deep does not quietly go away. Like a nasty parasite, it eats us up from the inside. Our secrets become our sickness and we won't recover until what we concealed is finally revealed.

So how do we ultimately find freedom from haunting memories and harmful guilt? The best advice goes like this:

1. Bring it up and bring it out into to light. Talk to someone safe. And if it makes sense, talk to the person you wronged. Remember, an apology must never include the the word “but.” No excuses. No rationalization. Just lay it out there and take responsibility. You may be surprised that others are quicker to understand your misdeed than you are even to admit it. But if not, you still did the right thing.
2. Make amends if possible. This is the step most often omitted, but may be the most therapeutic for you and essential for anyone you may have wronged.
3. Forgive yourself. Regardless of whether or not the other forgives you, forgive yourself. Once you’ve done everything else you can, self flagellation will get you nowhere.

Bring it up, make amends, forgive yourself. It sounds simple, but don’t think for a second that it is easy. Getting free from the tyranny of past mistakes can be hard work, but definitely worth the effort.

And  the payoff is health, wholeness and inner peace. In other words, you get your life back.

-- Steve Goodier

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Choosing to End Anger

Angry Bale

Imagine a fine, spring day. A man is driving cheerfully along a picturesque road, which winds through the lazy countryside. Suddenly, from around the next curve, a car barrels toward him in his lane. He brakes hard, and as it swerves past, the woman driver screams at him, “Pig! Pig!”

Furious, he shouts back at her, “Sow! Sow!” Pleased with himself, he drives around the curve and runs smack into a pig.

Anyone can get angry. But like Aristotle pointed out, “To be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way is not so easy.” Which is to say, much of the time we get angry either with the wrong person, or to the wrong degree, or at the wrong time, or for the wrong purpose, or in the wrong way.

Few of us are experts here. And there is no shortage of tried and true anger management techniques. Skilled practitioners tell us to slow down and think before we speak, to take a timeout, to find an emotional “happy place,” to use humor, to learn how to relax or meditate...you may use some of these methods yourself. And these practices certainly have a place in keeping ire in check.

But a piece of advice from ancient wisdom may be the most useful of all. It gets at what is probably the most important thing we can do when we become upset and angry. The advice is this: decide to end it. That’s right; anger should be ended. Get it out, then put it down. Biblical wisdom teaches, “Don’t let the sun set on your anger.”

Anger without end is the worst. As Frederick Buechner (Wishful Thinking) observes: “To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past ... to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back – in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

Anyone can get angry and all of us will. But lingering acrimony hurts everyone, especially those who pick away at it. And no anger management technique will work if we don’t finally make the decision to push away from the table and leave it all behind.

Healthy people know not to gorge on anger. At the end of the day, they walk away. They choose to end it. And it’s an easier choice the next time.

-- Steve Goodier

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Three Important Things to Know

Do you know what they are?

Can you be too nice? I heard of a woman who is a hard core believer in the adage “it's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice.”  She likes to tell about when she first started to referee children's basketball games. Her grown son stopped by to watch her officiate one of her first practice games. Afterward he suggested that she be more forceful. “You know, Mom,” he said, “you don't have to say 'I'm sorry, dear, but you stepped out of bounds.'”

I think that U.S. industrialist Charles M. Schwab may have gotten it right. At age 72, Schwab was sued for a large sum of money. Many high-profile personalities would have settled out of court, but Schwab went through with it and eventually won the suit.

Before he left the witness stand, he asked permission of the court to make a statement of a personal nature. This is what he said:

“I am an old man, and I want to say that ninety percent of my troubles have been due to my being good to other people. If you younger folk want to avoid trouble, be hard-boiled and say no to everybody. You will then walk through life unmolested, but…” and here a broad smile lit up his face, “you will have to do without friends, and you won’t have much fun.”

Maybe that’s why author Henry James said, “Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”

What if today you gave yourself permission to be outrageously kind? What if you extended as much goodwill and kindness as you can possibly muster to every person you meet? And what if you did it with no thought of reward? I'm sure of one thing: it will be a day you will never regret.

-- Steve Goodier


Image: freeimages.com/Crystal Church

Finding the Way Out of Bagamoyo

You've heard the stories. Cruel slavers in bygone years trek into the African interior and capture men, women and children to sell on the slave market. Then, for weeks upon end, they march their captives to the African coast and force them to board ships bound for the New World.

During those long marches from remote villages, newly acquired slaves were made to carry their captor's heavy loads. Historians report that, at the end of an excruciating day, as evening approached, slavers sometimes shouted to their captives in Swahili, "Bwaga mizigo," which means, "Put down your burdens." Only then could they rest.

When the slaves finally reached the coast, they laid down those burdens for the last time. There they boarded ships that took them away from their loved ones and their homeland forever. Some called that place "Bagamoyo," from the words "bwaga" (put down) and "moyo" (heart). Bagamoyo translates to "Put down your heart." In hopelessness and despair, they put down their hearts and left them on the African continent.

Bagamoyo. I've been there. Haven't you? We've been to our own personal places of despair. Imprisoned by fear and worry and doubts. Trapped by grief. Or betrayed by our own bodies – left to languish in illness and pain. We know how it feels to give up. We know how it feels to desperately wonder if we can go on, or even should go on.

And more than once I've been tempted to lay down my heart and leave it behind. Haven't you? I think we've all been to our own Bagamoyos, those places of deep despair.

But here is the hope. If life teaches me anything, it teaches me that my personal Bagamoyo may be a way-point, but I shouldn't make it a destination. We will each find ourselves there from time to time, but it is not a place to remain permanently. Life cautions that I should never lay my heart down in despair never to pick it up again. There is usually a way through our personal Bagamoyo.

Author and playwright Jean Kerr put it like this. She said, "Hope is the feeling you have, that the feeling you have, isn't permanent." Hope does not deny the terrible place in which I may find myself. Oh, that's real enough. But it reminds me that Bagamoyo is only a temporary place. It may seem like a place I'll never leave, but I will. And sometimes it's just enough to know that.

So I've learned to believe in tomorrow. When I believe in tomorrow I can pick up my heart today. When I believe in tomorrow, I can find my way out of Bagamoyo.

And when I do, I'll find my way to life.

-- Steve Goodier

Image: http://www.scottliddell.com/

An Incredible Feeling

Photo by Gary Scott

Newscaster Paul Harvey once told about a woman who called the Butterball Turkey Company and said that she had a turkey that had been in her freezer for 23 years. She asked if it was still any good. She was told that if her freezer was at least zero degrees Fahrenheit, then the turkey was probably safe enough to eat. But they wouldn’t recommend that she eat it. The flavor would have deteriorated considerably. She said, “That’s what we thought. I guess we’ll just give it to the church.”
   
I suppose there are many reasons we choose to give. But people who enjoy sharing with others the most do not share simply because they have a need to get rid of something. Those who find the greatest joy from giving have learned to give from a deeper place; they give from their hearts.
   
Santa Claus is becoming a universal symbol of giving. Millions of children write letters to Santa each year in hopes that they won’t be forgotten during his annual giving spree. Did you know that the US Post Office actually found ways to answer those letters to Santa Claus? They used to just stick them in the so-called dead letter box. But now some cities have programs that allow people to sort through these hand-written pleas, hopes and wishes and become “Santas” to others in need. They choose a letter and respond however they can. Most anyone can play Santa.
   
One letter that might have been discarded a few years ago, but was picked up by a volunteer Santa Claus, came from a boy named Donny. He wrote that he wanted a bike for Christmas and “some food and what I really need is love.”
   
Another volunteer Santa latched onto a letter from a young mother who wrote, “I lost my job...and I cannot afford to give my two children the things they need for the winter months.” That generous spirit helped with some necessities for the children.
   
“I like to go to their home on Christmas Eve,” one joyful Santa said. One year he bought presents for four children and a ham for their mother. Then he added this poignant observation: “The feeling you get is just incredible.”
   
I admit it – I don't always get that feeling when I give. But then I don't always give out of untainted motivations. Sometimes I give from other places. Sometimes I give out of social obligation or out of guilt. Or I give with an expectation for receiving back. But I give best when I give from that deeper place; when I give simply, freely and generously, and sometimes for no particular reason. I give best when I give from my heart.

And isn't it true? Opportunities to give from the heart are not limited to a particular holiday season or cultural tradition. Whether we give food, money, an hour of time or a hug, we can give it sincerely and joyously.

But let me offer a word of caution. If you choose to give from your heart, be careful. The most incredible feeling might just overwhelm you. And if you continue in this behavior, that feeling may become permanent.

-- Steve Goodier

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People Matter

Image courtesy of Spekulator

In their book The Big Book of Jewish Humor (HarperCollins, 1981), authors Novak and Waldoks tell of a woman from New York who, on her 80th birthday, decided to prepare her last will and testament. She went to her rabbi to make two final requests. First, she insisted on cremation.

“What is your second request?” the rabbi asked.

“I want my ashes scattered over the Bloomingdale’s store.”

“Why Bloomingdale’s?”

“Then I’ll be sure that my daughters visit me twice a week.”

I know we can't ensure others will show they care in the way we expect, though we all want to know that people do care. Maybe it's about being assured that we are not alone in this world. For that reason, we are drawn to those who make us feel as if we matter.

My grandmother was such a person. She was someone who made me feel important to her. She lived far away, so visits were special. When we got together she acted as if she truly missed me. Some days she would slip me little gifts – like chewing gum, a homemade cookie or money “so you can buy yourself a treat.” She once whispered that I was her favorite. (I now have evidence that she said the same thing to each of her grandchildren, which still causes me to chuckle.) She made the effort to be present at the important times in my life.

I felt valued by her. She took me seriously. At age eight or nine I complained one day that I had trouble breathing and I said that I thought my nasal passage was somehow blocked. She actually put her finger up my nose to feel for an obstruction. (Did I mention she was blind?) There was a blockage and because of her intervention with my family I eventually saw a doctor and had corrective surgery.

I don't remember her ever telling me how much she cared about me. It just wasn't her way. She wasn't gushy and she didn't often say those things to people. But she told me how she felt in a different way – she noticed me. She paid attention to me. I felt as if I were a piece in her life puzzle and she would notice if I were missing or didn't fit in just right. And my awareness of this made a huge difference.

Poet Maya Angelou writes:

“People will forget what you said
People will forget what you did
But people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I wonder what would happen if I set out to make everyone in my presence feel as I felt around my grandmother – like they matter. How would that change the way I treat others and what difference might it make to them?

Who doesn't want to know that we notice them and value them? And who might respond to us better when they feel that they matter?

It probably cannot be overstated – it matters...that people matter.

-- Steve Goodier

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