Positive Reinforcement

Over the last two months I have found some success with practicing positive reinforcement, mainly with my beloved dog companion Sophie, but also as a life lesson more generally.

It started one day when, while I was in the bathroom, my dear Sophie–11+years young and generally excellent about utilizing piddle pads in her own rather opulent bathroom setup with tarps and liners and four pads at a time to prevent misses!–, sat right outside the bathroom door and relieved herself on the area-rug carpet!  This happened two times more in the next couple of days despite my arduous use of enzymatic cleanups and strong admonishment and reinforcement of the litter pads.

The fourth day in, I decided to get rid of the rug, rolled it up and moved it to the basement, leaving a wood floor such as she has never made mistakes on. But I wondered inwardly, what was going on? Sophie seemed pleased with herself when she had used the carpet in my view, so I knew somehow she thought I would be equally pleased and was confused when I was not!

Here’s who I’m talking about!

I realized the carpet area Sophie had used was near the water cooler (Culligan dispenser). Sometimes water might drip from the dispenser while I am filling a glass or a coffee carafe. So I figured out that Sophie might have interpreted this slight moisture on the rug as an invitation. With this awareness, I changed my approach.

After still strongly reinforcing the use of her litter pads (she is a small dog and while she loves to relieve herself out of doors, I want her to have a way to do so overnight or when I am away for several hours), I started rewarding her with diabetic-friendly Sci-Di W/D morsels, calling them “piddle treats.”  Every time she uses the pads during the day and every morning when I check her pads out, I congratulate and praise her for being such a good girl!

She has not made any mistakes since this change in approach to positive reinforcement instead of admonishment.

Good girl!

I have been reflecting on the practice of positive reinforcement more generally.  I realize it is important to use positive reinforcement with others I interact with day to day, and with myself! This has led to a more relaxed attitude altogether, and I find I am finding ways to have more fun and to celebrate happiness.

In retrospect I remember how, when I was growing up, I loved the book Irish Red.  As I recall, this story directly champions using positive reinforcement and demonstrating unconditional love in bonding with a dog, and I remember from then committing to use that approach with my own pets, always.  

images (other than of Sophie!) are from pixabay.com

My cat and dog life companions (plus a parakeet, a pigeon, and mice when I was young!) have always been among my closest friends and they are my home family as I have generally lived humanly alone or with a roommate.

My better endings suggestion here is simple: Be Kind to Others and to Yourself to Be Happy! Reward your loved ones and yourself with positive vibes and attitudes.

*****
Better Endings Story Seed

How can you practice positive reinforcement with a relationship situation you are currently facing, and with yourself? Journal also about a time when you used positive reinforcement and it led to an improvement in your life happiness.

What Is Your Happiness Quotient?

A Better Endings outlook is first and foremost a choice to maintain a positive attitude, despite or even especially in the face of life’s challenges. How can we maintain optimism, though, when beset by the heavy weight of a current problem? Recently I have stumbled upon a way out from under the otherwise debilitating burden of a pressing life situation.

I am transitioning out of my part-time job, one that I have deeply valued, because of an irresolvable environmental concern. I have been troubling over this decision, but I do know it is the right choice for me based on health considerations. So I have been mulling over this situation and yesterday arrived at a breakthrough realization that I am calling my “happiness quotient.”

I started counting my blessings compared to the negative factors I am moving through. I thought, well, most of my life remains positive, so I started adding up the percentages of positive aspects I am happy about in comparison to the elements that have been weighing me down.

For example (Readers, please make your own list), What I am Happy About:
* my pets, Sophie and Emily (healthy, loving companions)
* my family being nearer since my relocating
* good friends nearby, old and new, including my best high school buddy and her husband
* good friends I am still close with after all these years (many moons and and many moves!)
* My new book being released May 6 ! (see right panels for a Goodreads Giveaway and to pre-order)
* Continuing to teach anthropology online (my passion)
* my home environment: small hometown, river, lake, performing art center
* my spiritual practice and community activities
* my relative good health and prosperity
* my freedom

And What I am Unhappy or Challenged About (Readers again, please compose your own current list):
* leaving a job I have treasured and the people there whom I have been befriending
* the state of the world

So, when I count up my current factors for Happiness (N=10) against more negative factors (N=2), add them together (12) and calculate the percentage of happy to total factors (10/12 as x/100), I realize I have a Happiness Quotient of 84%. This awareness lifts my spirits and helps me to RELEASE what simply it is timely to Let Go!

Images are from pixabay.com

So, how about you? Try this one on for size. See if it might help you to put ‘things’ into a broader perspective. And importantly if it does not; if your Happiness Quotient turns out to be lower than you would like, then I would invite you to journal about (or contemplate or talk with your loved ones about) how you might introduce some better endings re-visioning into your current life chapter. What can you do to increase your happiness and to decrease the weight of current burdens?

Please feel free to share about your results in Comments below.

Happiness Now!

We all know Bobby McFerrin’s iconic, even haunting lyrics of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy!” McFerrin’s song is a sarcastic and somewhat of a sardonic comment on social inequalities and the burdens they impose on those who are suffering from being economically or socially underprivileged.  For those in poverty, suffering from evictions or addictions or worse, the glib remark “Don’t worry, be happy!” comes down from those higher up in the power structure as if to say, accept your lot, “be happy” with whatever you can eke out to survive even in deplorable conditions. I am not sure how many listeners realize this is the subtext message of the song lyrics, but listen again, especially to the painfully sarcastic tone:

After listening deeply to this song one day on the radio while driving about, a day or two later I started realizing a basic truth in my own life or personality. First, I realized one morning how in so many ways, I am right now, already, truly, deeply happy! I have much to be grateful for.  I do not need to wait for achieving happiness as some lifelong, distant goal; which in some ways I have been doing, ‘working toward’ a greater, elusive ultimate happiness. Many people I have interviewed for the life mapping process I present in Your Life Path (2018, see side panel) have similarly expressed achieving happiness as their “Life Dream.” So, this realization that I do not need to wait for happiness if I can recognize it underlying the present moment was eye-opening. Then, I thought, I will blog about Happiness Now as this week’s theme.

Then, however, life happened (again, who knew?!).  With some unfolding complications in my day-to-day life, over the next few days I had a second realization: I am a worrier.  I live alone, semi-retired, with my dear dog Sophie who needs special care for diabetes and with my lovely cat Emily, and I feel a great responsibility to care for all of our wellbeing. I teach online and feel responsible to deliver a quality education to students. I rent a home and feel responsible for its upkeep. I also feel seriously about my responsibilities in my spiritual community, and to my writing projects. I take everything, in sum, “so seriously.”

When worries prevail, I am absorbed in problem-solving and fulfilling my responsibilities, caring for my pets, and communicating with my dear family, friends, and colleagues.  Once I can work out a pathway through a particular cause for concern and at least begin to take actions to alleviate the weight of a particular worry, my intrinsic happiness finds its way bubbling up to the surface again.  It is always here, beneath the burdens. Then I know I am as happy now, today, as I will ever be or could ever hope to be. 

images are from pixabay.com

The worries many feel who are oppressed or beset by difficult health or social conditions are certainly real.  But maybe McFerrin’s ironic words “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” are also a wise and compassionate call to the awareness that beyond one’s worries, happiness really does exist Now and can be found beneath (or, above?) the burdens and real obstacles one encounters. 

******

Better Endings Story Seed

Happiness Now!

Here is a process you can use to excavate your present happiness:

1. List up to three (no more) current worries. Write about each of these in your Better Endings Journal (any loose-leaf notebook or journal will do).
2. For each of the worries you have identified, list 1-3 steps you can take now or that you can plan for doing in the near foreseeable future that will help you to address and alleviate key aspects of that concern. (Begin taking the first, most doable step. E.G.: Ask for help, create a budget, etc.)
3. Once you feel the burden of worrying about your most pressing responsibilities or concerns lift because you are taking actions to help address the concern, allow yourself to relax. Take a walk, get out of the home, maybe get together with a loved one.
4. Before sleep or when you rise in the morning, let yourself FEEL your deeper happiness, apart from your concerns. Contemplate what you are grateful for.
5. (Repeat)

Grist for the Mill

Because I derive a great deal of happiness through service, this month I am contemplating how best to proceed with the potential of service in my early semiretirement life. So far, about a year and a half in, I am quite active day to day. Teaching online and prepping a new course for the Spring, assuming an outreach role with my spiritual organization regionally, contributing as a member at large to my neighborhood housing association board, caring for my beautiful dog Sophie and cat Emily, writing, blogging, being active with family and friends, providing for the household and my home family; in short, I am very happy!

My brother at one time expressed the view that there are “producers” and then there are “servants” and that the former are inherently ‘better’ than the latter. I disagreed then, since teaching is my primary profession and teaching is most definitely a service role, and I love it! Now I see that service is a product in its own right. Service is a productive activity, not only supportive, and being supportive is a good thing too. It is not only about helping others, though I am happy to be of service in whatever capacity I can for another. It is about sharing from the foundation of accumulated knowledge and acquiring some measure of wisdom in the process; it is about giving, and giving back, to Life Itself, with love and gratitude.

Learning to be of greater service day by day provides grist for the mill, fuel for the dynamic expression of energetic outflow. That sounds rather lofty, yet simply expresses a dedicated sense of purpose. We breathe in and breathe out, every breath a divine energy of life. To receive and to give forth at least in equal proportion maintains balance, connection, and provides a grateful contribution to the Whole.

images are from pixabay.com

In the Balance: Building Bridges

In this eleventh month of my yearly quest to comprehend and achieve happiness, I realize how in many ways now, I am happy. Despite losses and coming to terms with leaving my friends to relocate/ semi-retire, and with two good friends having recently departed this earthly sphere, both from complications due to breast cancers, nevertheless I am happy to be where I am and to be living the “life of my dreams,” to date.

My November sub-quest is about Balance, another major necessity for achieving a lasting happiness, in my own life and I would say in the world at large too. There is so much polarization of values and beliefs today. It is easy to take a side and hold to a one-sided perspective even to the point of reviling other persons, opposite political parties or policies. Certainly we are not in a condition of societal or widely shared happiness these days, at least not in the U.S.. Avoiding communication with those with whom we expect to disagree becomes disengagement and expands the rifts between us that further divide the whole.

images are from pixabay.com

Where is the balance, how is it to be achieved? This week I am personally contemplating how to build bridges rather than perpetuating the Divide. I believe that approaching communications by looking for ways to bridge conflicting viewpoints or attitudes externally will bring healthful benefits internally as well.  Impersonal, unconditional love can be the foundation of such bridges.

Love unites, it does not seek to divide; it heals wounds and gives ground, even when it may be necessary for people or groups to separate or to agree to disagree for the sake of serving the higher interests of all concerned.

I am reminded of the well known passage from Corinthians (13:4-8), so let me start my own probe this month by putting forth this contemplation seed (from Gatescorer.com):

 

Acceptance

 

This year I am probing an annual quest. For me this is about manifesting true happiness; I encourage you to choose your own Quest. Each month we are probing a subquestion of the larger quest. This month I am contemplating “acceptance” as an aspect of achieving or manifesting happiness.

Already I am realizing that Acceptance is two-pronged:

What am I willing to accept?

What am I ready to accept?

This is a personal breakthrough to recognize this second level of acceptance. I have long held to a princiople well expressed in the statement:

“Your state of consciousness

is your level of acceptance.”

–Harold Klemp

To me I have understood this to mean to be able to accept whatever happens, to accept what IS, in order to grow through direct experience. Acceptance in this sense is not a passive state but rather it allows you to confront or accept present conditions in order to respond actively in the process of creating your own positive conditions and learning lessons along the way.

But today I am seeing how my state of consciousness also means to be open to receive and accept bounty, blessings, abundance. What am I ready to accept means what  degree of magnificence am I open to receive! How much beauty, truth, love am I ready to accept? The more I can accept, the higher my consciousness may rise from the sheer abundance of spirit.

images are from pixabay.com

So this week I will be focusing on this question of what am I ready to accept? I invite you to do similarly or to pursue your own Quest segment.

I welcome your comments and story.

How May I Serve Thee?

My July Quest theme is “How May I Serve Thee?” By Thee I address the Universal Oneness by which we are all interconnected: all beings; all states of consciousness including all humans, other animals, all of Nature and Spirit. I could say, how might I serve All that Is, but I prefer to include You, dear readers, family and friends.

Service is in so many ways what I identify with as my ‘mission’ and goal in this lifetime. As my overall Quest this year is to manifest true happiness in my new post/semi-retirement location, and since service is the means by which I might fulfill my purpose, then service is the basis of my happiness. Hence ‘How May I Serve Thee?’, day by day, moment by moment is my means as well as my measure of happiness.

images are from pixabay.com

A practice I have been using this week, based on a morning contemplation insight, is to ask myself several times every day:

What More Can I Do, Today?

This has been a fine motivator this week. It has helped me revitalize my writing goals and to refine my writing activities, for writing is one primary outlet for service to me. In addition, this prompt helps me daily to clarify and focus on priorities and opportunities, including tasks but also expanding to creative action.

What I CAN– not should or would or might — DO opens unlimited possibilities of the Moment. I CAN, for example:

walk with my dog, read, write, explore new horizons locally, meet new neighbors, exercise at the Y, write a blog post, outline chapters, edit, respond to and send emails, read poetry, contemplate, watch documentaries, like other peoples’ blogs, interact over social networks, grade papers online,  kayak with a new friend; you see? Endless vistas of possibility unfold to reveal the multidimensional potentials of Now! And all of these actions can be engaged with as modes of service to Life.

So, I give to Thee:

What More Can You Do, Today?

I welcome YOUR Story and Comments

Set Your Travel Goals (or, Happiness is a Choice)

When I prepare for a major travel excursion, I set a spiritual goal for the trip. That means I contemplate what I am ready or aiming to learn, about life or about my own potentials for self improvement. This is especially true with relocation; such an amazing opportunity to push the reset button involving any life conditions upon which you might wish to improve.

As I approach relocating Back East at the end of July, I find myself contemplating Happiness. At an Asian buffet the other night my fortune cookie stated:

“Happiness is a choice.”

That is precisely the message I needed to receive. As I contemplate the next Life Chapter of my own Dream Come True (for all of life is that, when you think about it), I realize it will be what I choose it to be with regard to the attitudes and viewpoints I exercise. Partly this means acting in ways that serve the greatest good and that may facilitate happiness and well-being for those in my immediate family and social circles. Smiling while engaging with people in public contexts can help me develop the habit of carrying happiness in my heart, coupled with acceptance and contentment.

Of course it is understood that any less than ideal conditions one experiences in one location are very likely to manifest again in a new location, so long as one carries those conditions forward within them. So contemplating current conditions is imperative for considering how to tweak the attitudes you choose to carry forward.

To me, this Travel Goal Setting for relocation goes way back in this lifetime (at least!). As my father was transferred several times to different states while I was young, I learned that in looking ahead to the next Big Move, I could use it as an opportunity to transform or tweak the life I had been living. When I was around 12, for instance, Dad told us the family would be moving around one year later from our home in Pennsylvania to New York state, near Niagara Falls.

Since at 12 I had become somewhat of an awkward, nerdy girl, I looked ahead to transforming my outer persona image in New York. I consciously changed up my wardrobe that next year, aiming to become a more “popular,” mainstream sort of teenager. When I got to my new school in New York then, I purposely sought to “get in” with what I conceived of as a more popular circle of friends. Well, it worked; however, very quickly that year I came to realize that the popular crowd I was courting really wasn’t who I am in the sense that my interests were far different from theirs. So after pretending for a short while to have a long distance boyfriend (wearing a ring from my mother’s jewelry case), pretty soon I figured out I wanted to be more authentic. I stopped sitting with this group of new friends at lunch time, even hiding in a lavatory the entire lunch period to do that. Then I joined a drama club and orchestra and started hanging out with new friends, more nerdy or artistic; people I really enjoyed being with!

The process I had undertaken to transform my life in the future from Pennsylvania to New York had succeeded, more than I could have anticipated.  I have been more mindful from that point forward of who I am (or am becoming) internally, and more appreciative of authenticity itself. I enjoyed my high school years immensely. The choices I made then were formative of the person I am today in very positive ways; no wonder then that at 64 as I have just retired, my immediate plan is to return to New York, to my family and even to be nearer to some of the deep friendships I shared there.

So, this time, I choose Happiness! 

images are from pixabay.com

I welcome YOUR Comments and Story.

Happily Ever After

Certainly one of the greatest elixirs is Happiness. After attaining our worthy goal, we achieve a degree of happiness which we can carry forward with us into the next ordeal and adventure. Probably most people would claim greater happiness—for themselves and for others—as a measure of success, whatever their endeavor.

What makes you happy in the deepest sense? I mean, not only in the moment but long-term? A child (or a pet’s) smiling face (or their playfully wagging tail or purr), a beautiful mountainscape or an Oceanside sunset: these bring a valuable though transitory happiness. They warm the heart and bring a smile. They reveal, I would say, a deeper state of intrinsic happiness. They reveal a harmony of Nature, an innocence of Spirit; breaths of fresh air, a tonic to the Soul!

Still, how can you expand your condition of happiness beyond the fleeting moment?

So I ask again, what could make you Happy in the grandest sense? Is it your job? (Stay then! Take it as far as you can!) Or your relationship(s)? Then Bravo/a to you! Or maybe it is your chosen environment, where you experience At Oneness with the All One? (More cosmic, loving power to you!!!)

For many people, enduring happiness is yet an elusive goal. Achieving their ultimate happiness shall be a result of fulfilling their most ardent endeavors (or, it may be found in the very practice of those endeavors themselves). Many will gain their enduring happiness by serving others and/or producing good works; by fulfilling, that is, their sense of Purpose and their Mission for this life.

So now, what is your Purpose; what can you claim as your Life Mission?

As a personal example, my life mission inflects on several levels. I have a spiritual Mission, which I do not feel the need to share. On a practical level, I have always sought, in one form or another, to serve the Whole…that is, to embrace and express my own inherent wholeness as well as to serve however I can the greater Whole of the community, family, fencing team (e.g.), and the world in which I live. Like many, I have always strived to make a positive contribution—whether through teaching, sharing in general, through responsible service, or through writing/publishing.

“What difference does it make?”

“It doesn’t matter!”

These were my calls in the wilderness to God, my deep laments through at least the first five decades of this life. So then, I would try harder, work more.

Until, gradually, as on cats’ feet, the Process itself—e.g. of communicating, teaching, contemplating, writing, living—has become fruitful in itself, in the moment of Doing, Being, or Knowing.  I find that I am still very goal-oriented, yet now my goal and the process I engage with to fulfill the goal have merged as one focus; see?

With this transformational shift from a ‘product/goal’ to a ‘process’-oriented mindset, now that I check in with my Self, Happiness has set in!

images are from pixabay.com

This is not to presume that I am always “happy” in the glib/ surface sense. That has never been my goal. Actually I can sometimes let things bother me now just as much if not more than ever before. This comes from my passion for advancing what is in process. Disruptions or interruptions of this forward arching flow can set me back, but only long enough overall now until I can accept and absorb the lesson (for there is always a lesson!), and move on.

What Is Your Life Mission?

My upcoming book that is announced in the right panel of this blog, Your Life Path, is my best contribution so far to serve the Whole. This book provides a complete/ original Life Path Mapping process with its chapter-ending self-discovery Tools. I have developed and practiced this approach over the last fifteen years, through interview research, analysis of results, producing a previous academic book on the subject, and—more importantly—through developing the embedded self-help Toolkit from applying the mapping and reflection process with large classes of students and with many individuals, as a “life path mapping” coaching approach.  It has been helpful for many and even deeply transformative for some.

The Your Life Path Tools can guide you gradually yet gently to review your past, to reconsider your present with regard to how you have reached where you are in life now; then to explore your values, your inner conflicts and challenges (from an archetypal psychological  perspective), and to reveal your deepest, most integrative goals. It leads you to express and embrace your Life Mission; then to claim your Life Dream and plan a fulfilling future course, beginning here and now, to live into the life of your dreams!

I do invite you to check out this book if it may serve you. You could pre-order using the url address in the right panel, either through Amazon (as a book or ebook), Barnes & Noble, or Indies. I will be offering a preview webinar series on Life Path Mapping by December (I will post about that as it becomes available).

And so, wherever your life path leads you to:

Go For It!

A Te Sante!

Be Happy!

Live Your Dream, Now!

I always welcome YOUR Comments and Stories.

Name Your Elixir!

After the initiatory achievement of Apotheosis (see September posts), the adventuresome Hero (you, for instance!) may partake of the Elixir of personal empowerment. Such Elixirs may come in many forms: Manna from Heaven— as my sister, the Rev. Lee Ireland’s guest blog discusses in last Sunday’s post; or Logos/the Word; Spirit essence; spirit waters; Ambrosia of the Gods; or more simply, an empowering sense of enlightenment or awareness that empowers personal Life Mission to serve Life!

I guess my elixir is, ideally, humility. To me, humility is the awareness that the “best that I have done” has been of divine inspiration and service. I like the phrase: “Love is all, and do as thou wilt.” (From Stranger By the River, by Paul Twitchell)  Love and humility are the best cocktail I could drink! They fuel an ardent passion to serve Life.

An elixir may be as pure and simple as an attitude, like humility, that comes with your  success in some endeavor or service that benefits the Whole. Some elixirs we might contemplate this month are:

Gratitude

Compassion

Empathy

Unconditional Love

Joy

Harmony

Balance

images are from pixabay.com

I welcome this month any suggestions of elixirs which you seek or from which you have benefitted.

So, name YOUR Elixir!

Love Overcomes Fear

I am reblogging two passages about how the Lover archetype in us all can help us attain happiness and be of service to life. These are from a daily message my sister, Rev. Lee Ireland, received and posted in Facebook last week:

There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.
– John Lennon

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
– Dalai Lama