I’ve just been reading a wonderful little book called “Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude—How to Find, Build, and Keep a YES! Attitude for a Lifetime of Success.” (FT Press—Pearson Education) This author is a funny, funny fellow. He’s in sales and motivational speaking, so by nature he’s optimistic…thank goodness!

We need optimists, and we need people who will teach us to stand up to those Gitomer calls “pukers.” Pukers are people who vomit up their negative attitude on anything you talk about. If you’re excited about a new venture, they’ll tell you about their failures. If you tell them about a new relationship, they’ll come back with a cynical warning or story of betrayal. If you support an organization, sure enough, they’ll Google that organization’s past mistakes and tell you all about it. Basically, they are the consummate “rainers on parades.” What a drag!

So, how do you deal with these pukers, whom we inevitably come in contact with at work, in public, or even at home? First, realize that their own negativity is coming from them and them alone. Their pain is theirs, not yours. Their history of failure and defeat is theirs…NOT yours. Their fear of getting hurt or disappointed, which they try to cleverly disguise by copping a cynical attitude, is their fear…but it doesn’t have to be yours, too. Remember, negativity is truly a contagious disease that spreads like wildfire. You need a strong immune system to constantly ward it off, especially if you live, work, love and play in America!

Second, just combat their negativity with a gentle pushback. You don’t have to change their minds (you won’t, anyway), but you do need to establish yourself as someone who isn’t going to buy into their gloom and doom. A clever comeback Gitomer suggests, when faced with a puker responding to your news of your new venture, would be “You may be right. I’ll keep you posted with my progress. By the way, if it starts to pay off, when do you want me to give you a chance to get involved?” Brilliant!

Gitomer recommends several methods of dealing with pukers, but I’ll let your desire to know all of them drive you to get that great little book. (Gitomer’s website is www.gitomer.com, by the way.) But his last method I want to draw your attention to is this: “Don’t talk about what you’re going to do. Just do it.” I always say, the best revenge is a happy life. Concentrate on your own positivity, your own actions, your own development. Let the genuinely curious come ask you questions about what you’re doing, and don’t waste your breath trying to sell it to anyone else. You don’t need anyone’s approval, anyway. Or do you? If you do, you might want to look at that a bit. As I have said many times before, looking to external circumstances for happiness is the road to inner hell.

Good luck!

You’ve heard people call others “hard headed,” and you’ve also heard them call others “soft in the head.” Which is better?

Hard headedness refers to someone who has a rigid, stubborn mindset. These people are hard to teach, inflexible, and don’t wish to consider such “soft” tactics as compromise, open-mindedness, or even simple acceptance or forgiveness. If circumstances don’t fit their mental picture of how things should be, they suffer. And usually, the people around them suffer too!

“Soft in the head,” although not used too much colloquially nowadays, refers to someone who is showing signs of mental illness, dementia or even retardation. The image is a counterpoint to the idea that being mentally “sharp,” rather than “soft,” is a good thing. “His mind is like a steel trap,” is used as a compliment. Bob or Doug once said (I can’t remember which character said it, but it was a funny line from the comedy album “Bob and Doug’s Great White North”), “his head is like a bowling ball with the three holes filled with dog dung.” Now that’s an interesting juxtaposition of something hard and something soft!

Psychically speaking, it really is better to have a head like a rubber ball than an egg. Drop an egg on the floor, and it goes splat. Drop a rubber ball on the floor, and it bounces around in different directions. Life experience, which is often painful, serves as the “floor” from which we must choose whether to bounce away from, or just lie there in a broken mess.

You won’t learn anything about the art of living if you live like Humpty-Dumpty, because, like all the King’s horses and men, no one will be able to put you back together again. You have to do it yourself. So adopting an attitude of mental rigidity simply endangers you. You will be less adaptable to the inevitable changes of life, you will be less able to learn, you will be that more fragile.

Instead, cultivate a mental softness. After all, most of what our brain is (and all physical, 3-D matter as well), is just empty space…any physicist will tell you that. Let your mind be soft, your heart open, and let learning and wisdom rush in to those wonderful empty spaces you have. Cultivate the habit of thinking and saying the words “maybe,” and “perhaps,” and “what if?” in your daily language. Try “I wonder,” instead of “I know.”

In this way, you will not only have a soft mind, but a softer heart and a brighter, smiling aura.

Good luck!

I have spent the past couple of days reading voraciously, from topics ranging from the dissociative personality to how to improve your psychic abilities, with a little bit of Virginia Woolf thrown in for some good mental gymnastics. Still, what each book seems to be popping out with are stories of people making good things happen in their lives, despite very challenging circumstances.

So, what do we do when it all goes right, instead of wrong? Dramas don’t give us much information about that, other than a montage of shots showing the smiling couple, the young exec striding down the corridors of power to his hard-won corner office, or, at the end of the fairy tale, “And they lived happily ever after. The End.”

Well, gentle readers, listen up. Here’s a secret…ready? When it all goes right….Enjoy the heck out of it!

Seriously, have a blast when things are going great. Enjoy your days, months, or even years of peace and happiness. Reassure your friends and loved ones that hey, if you could manage to pull it off, so can they!

While life is almost never easy for everyone all the time, it isn’t supposed to be an unmitigated vale of tears, either. Likewise, when the stars align and you finally seem to pull it all together, enjoy it. Relish it, and be sure to pay close attention to it so you can remember, when times get tough, that if you had it once you can have it again. True, you may never have the identical circumstances of peace and pleasure, because life constantly changes. But you can feel those feelings again…feelings of peace, of victory, of contentment, of joy.

And here’s another secret…the more time you spend in positively-directed meditation, contemplation or prayer, the easier it will be for you to feel those things again…regardless of circumstances! How cool is that?

Good luck!

Now that the Labor Day holiday is over and order in my home has been restored, I am happy to be back to my computer in a quiet, clean, intact home! It’s times like these that I am reminded of how much humans share with animals in terms of our behavioral patterns and personal preferences. We like the familiar, we establish routines. While we crave stimulation and variety, we also get a little unglued when our daily rhythms and comfortable patterns get too disjointed and unpredictable.

As my disquietude was growing after what felt like a week of home chaos (banging, pounding, dust, dirt, objects and furniture out of place, tools everywhere), yesterday I felt like checking in with my Vipassana teacher, Goenka. By “checking in,” though, I really mean just listening to a set of CD recordings I have of his evening talks that he gives on 10-day meditation retreats.

I have written elsewhere about my father’s explanation of Napoleon’s four classifications of men: smart and lazy, smart and energetic, dumb and lazy, and dumb and energetic. Napoleon had good use for the men of the first three categories, but strongly advised having nothing to do whatsoever with the “dumb and energetic.” Good advice, I think!

But according to my teacher, Buddha also had four classifications for human beings. These classifications did not refer to their personalities or their usefulness in the military, however, but rather to their spiritual orientation. He classified people as people going from darkness to darkness, from darkness to light, from light to darkness, and from light to light.

We all know about the people moving from darkness to darkness. They “start out” bad, and they end up the same way! Constant negativity, suffering within themselves, and causing suffering to others is the theme of these unfortunate peoples’ lives. Crime shows enhance and sometimes glamorize these people, but their crimes are real and the effects of their crimes linger on and contaminate the generations.

People moving from darkness to light are the ones who spend time in darkness, but get a glimmer of hope, of light, of the possibility that they can live their lives differently. They somehow figure out that they can come out of their suffering and misery, and that with time and practice, and probably a lot of faith thrown in too, they can live a peaceful life. They learn that they can help others and live with joy and inner happiness. These are the people who get the treatment and “work the steps,” or find Jesus in prison not as a cynical ploy to manipulate the parole board, but because it really makes sense to them. These people can, and do, truly reform and rehabilitate. They are able to drop their anger, and gain insight, awareness and inner freedom. They do not have to be a slave to their sensations, cravings or aversions as much as they were before.

People moving from light to darkness make up scandalous stories in the newspaper. Prominent politicians, entertainers, and sports figures are common among these types, since at the apparent level they seem to “have” everything. They have money, fame, success, material wealth, power. They “have” everything, usually including a “beautiful” wife and “charming” children. However, these people make the headlines because while they seem to have so many positive things in their lives, they are hell-bent on destroying them all. They do foolish things based on their addiction to sensation: extramarital affairs, drug abuse, financial wrongdoings, even murder. The public watches in bafflement. Why would someone who has so many blessings just throw them away like that? The answer is simple: they are just humans moving from light to darkness, nothing more.

Finally, there are the people who are moving from light to light. These are the ones who, for one reason or another, have many good things in their lives. The difference is, they are aware of it, are grateful for it, and take care to preserve it. However, they also realize that nothing is permanent. As the Buddha says, “all component things decay.” As such, they use their assets wisely when they have them to do good in the world. If they are materially successful, they share their wealth by planting seeds that will bear fruit for their families, their community and the world. If they are artistically or intellectually gifted, they keep doing their work and contributing to the betterment of mankind. They realize that they must not rest on their laurels, looking down at others for their relative lack of success, but remember clearly, “there but for the grace of God go I.” They spend the good times in their lives sharing their success with others, and when bad times come, as they inevitably will, they remain peaceful, content, and hopeful. They realize that bad times are also transitory, and do not crave the past or curse the present. Rather, they maintain their equanimity and carry on, continuing to be their peaceful, positive selves. They are in the light and moving towards the light simultaneously.

Which category are you in, today? And which category would you like to be in? It is always your choice. It is your responsibility. It is your karma that you create for yourself– no one else will do it for you. As nothing is permanent, neither is your state of being. You can change it if you wish. It is your choice.

Good luck!

Some people are more naturally attuned to the Earth’s energies than others. I will say outright, I’m one of those people who are not terribly attuned to them! But many are, and when I read for a client who is, it is a very interesting energy that they carry. They feel “different,” and there is a definite presence of one or more of the elemental energies in their energetic matrices.

Astrologers can look at your birth’s date and time and tell you how much of each kind of the four basic energies is present in your chart. Each of the twelve Western astrological signs (e.g. Taurus, Leo, etc.) is associated with an element. Pisces, Cancer and Scorpio are considered “water” signs; Capricorn is an “earth” sign, and so on. These elemental energies, astrologers believe, have an influence on each soul’s development and life lessons they need to learn. Of course, astrology raises the “chicken and egg” question, which is whether a soul’s astrological makeup determines the life experiences it is to have, or whether a soul chooses the astrological makeup before birth, so it can have the necessary life experiences needed to learn the lessons it already chose to have during this lifetime! The great American psychic Edgar Cayce, in trance state, came down on the side of the latter argument.

But while astrological readings can be extremely informative and helpful, there are many other ways you can use the four elements to improve your daily life and mental well being. You can do this by simply imagining, thinking about, or drawing in the energy of any or all of the elements when you feel in need of them. For example, if you are feeling directionless and scattered, you have got too much Air. In that case, you might try to “ground” yourself by concentrating on the Earth element. Think about a solid mountain, or the deep, rich soil, or a fertile field.

When you are feeling so angry you might just explode, you are heavy with Fire, and you need some Water to cool off! In that case, think about the sea, or a calm lake, or a river, or a still pool. Drink a glass of water and imagine it cooling you down, soothing you and relieving the irritation. Search with your eyes for the colors of blues, greens, and greys.

If you seem to be picking up everyone else’s pain or emotions and can’t even figure out what you’re feeling yourself, you’re probably too much in tune with Water. You might want to try lifting your spirits by focusing on Air (think carbonated beverages, balloons, strong winds or gentle breezes). Or you might want to ground yourself with Earth, or dry things up a bit with Fire (think matches, fireplaces, candles, or even volcanoes!).

As you work with elemental energies, you will learn to recognize them and use them to your benefit. You can draw them in to shift your emotions, clear energetic blockages, and guide your thoughts, words and actions. You can draw them in when you are problem-solving, or working creatively or otherwise artistically. If you have time to experience them physically (i.e. go for a walk, light a candle, take a bath, do deep breathing), then all the better. But remember, your mind has very good memory banks, so if you’ve experienced something once, you can experience it again in your mind’s eye.

Good luck and have fun!