Category Archives: Life

Articles and thoughts about LIFE and living it to its fullest.

What Were You Thinking?

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What Were You Thinking?

Click here to buy

Whew! 15 years of work! Although this is book #5 for me, it was the most difficult to write – because it’s about ME and MY thinking errors (don’t you just love self-disclosure?!). The publisher says that if you use the code MVY7M9SU they will knock off $3. That’s about 20%. Nice!

What Were You Thinking?

Some Common Thinking Errors and What to Do About Them

Authored by Joseph Bennette

A critical look into how our magnificent brains can help us make the most of our lives – and get us into deep trouble. Fortunately, thanks to our big brains we have the capability to solve our own thinking errors – once we know what those errors are. Explore some common thinking errors and what you can do to prevent or correct them. From the introduction: Continue reading →

Advantages of Having a Grandparent

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Spending time with a grandparent was found to equip adolescents with better social skills and fewer behavior problems.

Spending time with a grandparent was found to equip adolescents with better social skills and fewer behavior problems.

“Grandparents are a positive force for all families but play a significant role in families undergoing difficulties,” said Shalhevet Attar-Schwartz, PhD, of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “They can reduce the negative influence of parents separating and be a resource for children who are going through these family changes.”

The study appears in the February Journal of Family Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The researchers found that children and adolescents whose parents have separated or divorced see their grandparents as confidants and sources of comfort. Spending time with a grandparent was found to equip adolescents with better social skills and fewer behavior problems, especially among those children living in single-parent or stepfamily households.

As in previous studies, this research found that grandchildren are closer to their maternal grandparents and closest to their maternal grandmothers.

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Clench for Willpower Boost

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Tempted? Clench your lip muscles shut!

Tempted? Clench your lip muscles shut!

A study reported in the Journal of Consumer Research says firming muscles can shore up self-control. Of course, it only works if the choice you are faced with is in alignment with your goals and the muscle clenching is done at the moment of highest self-control dilemma. For example, when faced with the choice to snag a high fat snack when your goal is to lose weight is the perfect time to clench your muscles – adding will-power to your self-control dilemma.

Apparently it doesn’t matter which muscles you clench – what matters is the timing. You must clench DURING a crisis of will-power – like when you’re staring that cigarette in the face! It doesn’t help – in fact it works to your detriment – to clench muscles before the temptation.

So, next time you feel the urge to break your diet, clench your lip muscles shut instead!

Study source: Iris W. Hung and Aparna A. Labroo. “From Firm Muscles to Firm Willpower: Understanding the Role of Embodied Cognition in Self-Regulation.” Journal of Consumer Research.

Adversity’s Silver Lining

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A little trauma actually strengthens your resilience.

A little trauma actually strengthens your resilience.

Mark D. Seery of the University at Buffalo published a paper on the psychological effects of adversity vs resilience. He concludes that a little adversity is actually good for you. But, how much is “too much” adversity depends on each person’s resilience. Many studies have shown that traumatic events can cause long-lasting psychological damage.

The common wisdom is “That which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – which is not supported by scientific evidence. Quite the contrary, most evidence points to the opposite – that which doesn’t kill you makes you weaker, at least psychologically.

However, Seery contends that a little trauma actually strengthens your resilience – a bit like exercise traumatizes yet strengthens muscles. Just like in the case of strengthening muscles by traumatizing them (to build muscle, one must damage muscle cells a little), a few traumatizing events in one’s lifetime can strengthen their resilience after future traumas.

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Don’t Stop?

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It takes more energy to stop a thought than to change it.

It takes more energy to stop a thought than to change it.

Thinking, that is! A study out of Case Western Reserve University shows that it takes more energy to stop a thought than to change it. No wonder it’s so hard to stop smoking or stop berating yourself or stop that tune that got stuck in your head. It just takes too much energy!

Some years ago, I underwent a year of intensive thought transformation in which a group of us focused attention on catching each other or sometimes even catch ourselves saying the “wrong” things – things that detracted us from our goals. “Try” was on the taboo list of words for obvious reasons – it holds a built-in failure. So, each time we’d hear one of us say the word, “try”, we’d say, “Cancel that!” The process seemed horribly difficult as we were catching each other often over that year. In the end, however, the goal was attained and my speech cleared up so much.

I wonder if we were unintentionally making it harder on ourselves by canceling (stopping) our thoughts instead of reframing them – sort of like nudging an asteroid instead of hitting it head-on.

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Focus on Happiness

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Happy thoughts helped Peter Pan to fly.

Happy thoughts helped Peter Pan to fly.

Two researchers, Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert, used an iPhone Web app to collect data on people’s feelings, thoughts and activities. They wanted to know how people felt doing various activities including doing nothing at all. What they discovered was that during times when people were not actively engaged in a specific activity, their minds tended to wander. During times of mind wandering, respondents reported lower feelings of happiness than when they were engaged in an activity, especially sex. Says Killingsworth:

“A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost. Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities. This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the nonpresent. Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people’s happiness. In fact, how often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged.”

Mind wandering is natural for humans, apparently the only animal with the brain capacity. It occurs to me that if our minds must wander, why not give them something useful to wander about? Instead of ruminating on past failures, why not focus that rumination on past successes – or daydream on future successes? We’re practicing mind wandering all the time (okay, the study authors say only 46.9% of the time), so focusing on happy thoughts, which helped Peter Pan to fly, might make the difference between serious depression and living a happy life.

Think about it.

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What Will You Give Your Children?

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The top level [of risk], he said, was parents smoking in cars, where children were

The top level [of risk], he said, was parents smoking in cars, where children were “trapped” and exposed to a “high intensity” of fumes.

A leading hospital says up to a third of the children it treats for certain conditions are ill because their parents smoke around them.

Dr Steve Ryan, Medical Director of Liverpool’s Alder Hey Hospital, says bronchitis, asthma and ear infections could be cut if parents quit smoking.

He said parents often lied about whether they smoke near their children. The British Lung Foundation says 17,000 under-fives are treated every year for exposure to second-hand smoke.

Speaking to BBC Radio Five Live, he said out of the 35,000 children the hospital treats every year, 2,000 are there because they have been exposed to their parents’ smoke.

He said between a quarter and a third of those suffering from certain conditions such as chest infections and asthma were the victims of passive smoking. Continue reading →

The Power of Your Affirmations

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"I am NOT angry!!!"

Rigidity of thought – “I’m right!” thinking – tends to embitter one’s life and sour relationships.

A member of the United States Senate, known for his hot temper and acid tongue, exploded one day in mid-session and began to shout, “Half of this Senate is made up of cowards and corrupt politicians!”

All the other Senators demanded that the angry member withdraw his statement, or be removed from the remainder of the session.

After a long pause, the angry member acquiesced. “OK,” he said, “I withdraw what I said. Half of this Senate is NOT made up of cowards and corrupt politicians!”

Did you notice how both of the Senator’s iterations meant the same thing? How many times have you confused yourself with negative affirmations? For example, how many times have you told yourself that you could not do something. Most of the time, such self-defeating affirmations are absolutely false. You aren’t telling yourself the truth.

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Peace as an Action

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By doing you manifest what is in your heart. Many stop at the BEing and don't get around to the DOing part.

By doing you manifest what is in your heart. Many stop at the BEing and don’t get around to the DOing part.

If there is to be Peace in the world, there must be Peace in the nations.
If there is to be Peace in the nations, there must be Peace in the cities.
If there is to be Peace in the cities, there must be Peace between neighbors.
If there is to be Peace between neighbors, there must be Peace in the home.
If there is to be Peace in the home, there must be Peace in the Heart.
—Lao Tzu

Perhaps the great Zen master was on to something there…

I see the Peace referred to above as an action. That is, as something we DO from an inner point of BEING tranquil and peaceful (full of peace). Peace, in my way of thinking, feeling, and believing, is only in its manifestation – what we DO about it. Peace as a concept is just a thoughtform – basically fluff – (“the absence of war or hostilities” – what is that?) – of virtually no significance until acted upon. Only ACTIVE peace matters. Some will manifest peace as did Master Tzu or Gandhi. Others like Jesus or the Buddha. Still others like the Prophet Muhammad. It doesn’t really matter, I suppose – so long as the peace in the heart makes itself known in action - in DOing. Continue reading →

Proxy Addiction?

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Although questioning is important, asking the right question is much more important - and difficult to do.

Although questioning is important, asking the right question is much more important – and difficult to do.

Proxy or surrogate healing is the act of standing in for another during some kind of therapeutic process.

I consider myself a pretty pragmatic guy. I appreciate how important it is for us to have an answer or some kind of reason for why things happen as they do. We invent religions and gods to help us cope with what we don’t understand or fear. Even science has its own religion of sorts – always seeking to find that illusive reason why.

I, too, would love to know why. It’s in my nature to want to know. Although questioning is important, asking the right question is much more important – and difficult to do. In lieu of proper questions, I’ve often settled with poorly formed questions along with answers I’ve settled upon and defended – answers to the wrong questions or a question asked wrongly. Further, I have tended to put “reasons” behind my settled upon answers – a means by which I can protect my “truths” and make them seem right no matter their veracity. We call this process justification or rationalization.

For a moment, let’s dispense with all reasoning/justification/rationalization and simply look at cause and effect. Something happens and that causes something else to happen. Some cause and effect relationships we have experienced often enough that we feel that we can predict effect from cause.

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