Are You Getting Enough Vitamin P?

Even small doses of pleasure can raise our levels of immune-boosting chemicals.

Recently, at a healthy-living conference, I had one of those quickie checkups. In five minutes, you get a blood-pressure reading; a finger-stick blood draw; a computerized printout of your triglyceride, cholesterol and blood sugar levels; and a mini-analysis of your results from the attending health pro. Amazing!

If you can access these kinds of tests at your fitness club or a local health fair, do–it’s a great snapshot of your overall health, and a solid motivator to make positive lifestyle adjustments if you don’t like what you see.

In my case, the numbers were all good. So I’m going to keep on doing what seems to be working for me–namely, eating mostly whole foods, exercising regularly, getting enough sleep and managing my stress. And, being an inveterate self-improver, I’m going to continue experimenting and fine-tuning my approach.

One adjustment I’ve been working on over the past few years involves upping my daily intake of what nutritional psychologist Marc David, MA, has dubbed “vitamin P,” which stands for Pleasure.

To date, there’s no blood test that can directly assess your baseline level of this nutrient, and no official recommended daily intake. But as a key factor in both our physical and mental vitality, pleasure counts for far more than most of us realize.

That’s why, ever since we did a feature on the relationship between pleasure, satisfaction and optimal health (“A Real Pleasure,”), I’ve had a clipped-out pull quote from the story posted on my kitchen bulletin board. It reads:

“What’s clear is that our levels of pleasure and satisfaction are directly related to our biochemical balance.”

Seeing this little clipping reminds me that, just like our nutrition and fitness regimens, a steady supply of feel-good satisfaction is important to our physiological well-being.

Posted right next to our household calendar, the snippet nudges me to look ahead at my upcoming schedule with a view to what’s fun, exciting, novel or relaxing. If drab deadlines are ruling my weeks, I know it’s time to get something a little less obligatory (and a little more joyful) on the books.

On many days, the clipping also entices me to stop and appreciate what’s going on right in the moment: Look, there’s our dog curled up on the dining room rug, snoring in that grunty little way that makes my heart melt. Oh, there’s a vine in bloom just outside the window, with a big ol’ bee buzzing around it. And my, what a delightful caramelizing-cauliflower aroma that is, coming from the oven. Simple stuff like that.

Science suggests that training ourselves to be aware of such blips of pleasure, happiness and appreciation is the best way to begin experiencing more of them. And such small “noticings” of what’s right and good can have a surprisingly large effect on our overall mindset–and, by extension, on our biochemistry.

Even small doses of pleasure can raise immune-boosting chemicals like proenkephalin, for example, as well as feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. Pleasure- and satisfaction-triggering experiences also help reduce and offset the pro-inflammatory effects of stress hormones like cortisol, which plays a significant role in many chronic health conditions like heart disease, obesity and diabetes.

Of course, unchecked hedonism can also have its downsides. Overindulging in any pleasure–or becoming dependent on certain “fixes” as a way of coping with an otherwise joy-deficient existence–is a sure recipe for eventual misery.

The key, I think, is expanding our sense of what brings us pleasure, and taking stock of the full range of healthy satisfactions that are available to us.

For me, there is always pleasure available in slowing down, for example. I also love getting regular bodywork (for fascinating specifics on the healing power of massage, see “Mmm… Massage“). And I have learned to appreciate the visceral satisfactions that come from simply treating my body with care and sensory respect.

Many of my daily practices–stepping outside every morning, doing a little yoga, drinking really great herbal tea, using plant-based stuff on my skin–these are healthy little individual choices that, taken together, vastly amplify my pleasure in living. But that’s just me. What nourishes you may be entirely different.

What’s true of most of us, I suspect, is that regardless of what our lab results say, we could all use a daily infusion of vitamin P.

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds

What To Do When You Doubt Everything and Want To Stay In Bed

Do you ever start questioning everything you’re creating, everything you’re working on and everything you’re working toward?

Do you sometimes wish you could just pull the covers over your head and stay in bed all day long?

Gurrrl, I feel you. Now before we go any further, I want you to know that you’re not alone.

Millions of highly successful people go through periods of questioning what the heck they’re doing and crave a few days off the grid and under the sheets. I know I do!

I’ve talked about it before — knowing your “why” is key to both success and longevity in any endeavor.

But once you’ve got that handled, you also need to proactively build in “NNT” time if you want to stay consistently engaged and on track. “What’s that crazy acronym?” you say.

Press play and I’ll explain how this simple concept will give you massive results, fast.

Warning: you’re about to hear me rap, so crank up your volume and get ready for some high-quality entertainment.

Since I shared my core daily NNT activities above, I also want to share my weekly NNT activities with you, too. It’s made a huge difference in my productivity and happiness.

I take at least one full day each week to completely disconnect from email, cell phone and the computer. No business advice or self-help books allowed; just pure non-work-related activities.

I can’t even begin to describe the massive impact this small change has made in my creativity, well-being, and most importantly, in my relationship. I strongly recommend you give this a try, too.

Take Action Now

Take five minutes right now and create your own list of NNT daily activities. Ready to go buck wild? Then outline your weekly, monthly and yearly NNT activities, too.

As you know, insight without action is a waste! So turn your insight into action right now.

In the comments below, share your exact list of daily NNT activities, and what type of impact gettin’ down with NNT will have your health, happiness and productivity.

And if you found this post useful, go ahead and share it with your friends. They’ll thank you for it!

For more information on how to optimize your life, visit marieforleo.com.

Photo credit: Luc de Leeuw

Other People’s Lives Aren’t What You Think

“Sometimes, late at night, I’m visited by dread and shame. I lie in bed and think of somebody else’s life. I imagine the love that they’re getting and the relief that comes from being really known. The private pleasures they share. The friends they have and the pressures they don’t. Their sense of importance. The satisfactions of their work. I imagine how fulfilled they are, and how rich their life is. In these moments, I feel empty and wanting.”

– The character Amy, in HBO’s “Enlightened”

Recently it’s come to my attention, with various people and in totally coincidental ways, that a lot of people are really struggling right now with the belief that Other People’s Lives are somehow better or more gratifying than their own. Both in my personal as well as my professional life, I’m getting the consistent feedback that some people are seeing the lives of others from a distance – whether on Facebook, Twitter or in the real world – and then filling in the blanks in such a way that they assume that those lives are glamorous, satisfying and problem-free.

The tendency to think this way is far from new, but in the age of social networking, it seems to have really amped itself up. I have friends, for example – wonderful friends with good lives – who are veering away from Facebook more and more because other people’s status updates are filling them with jealousy, as well as with the belief that their own lives are boring by comparison. As a therapist, it seems to me that this kind of thinking is not only mistaken, but that it has the potential to be psychologically damaging.

At the risk of sounding like I’m stating the obvious here: People do not, generally speaking, post pictures of themselves online when they’re crying or in an argument. They don’t post status updates about their grief, their humiliations or their low self-esteem. No, people (especially on Facebook) show us want they want us to see. Sometimes that’s intentional and deliberately crafted, but it also sometimes happens simply because people aren’t naturally inclined to post about the hard parts of their lives. That doesn’t mean that the hard parts don’t exist though! Moreover, while it may be hard to imagine, what we often underestimate when we think this way is that other people sometimes make these assumptions about us.

A couple of months ago, a client of mine came into session wanting to talk about an internal reaction that she had to a woman she’d seen walking up the street near my office. Evidently this woman was beautiful and well-dressed, and this prompted my very lovely client to make all sorts of assumptions about her. This woman had money; she was happy; she “had it all together” and “didn’t have any problems.” The funny thing about this, for me, is that this client is a very attractive and talented young woman, and she possesses many enviable attributes. I also happen to know that while there are things that have happened and are happening in her life that bring her pain, she talks about them with almost no one other than me, so I can all but guarantee that other people sometimes have the same reaction to her that she had to this woman. What’s perhaps even wilder is that this isn’t the only example of this kind of exchange that I’ve had in my clinical work recently. I’ve had several patients over the course of the past couple of months who have expressed this sentiment – that they have problems, but that other people don’t – when I have felt very sure that other people perceive them similarly.

Perhaps it’s the benefit of being a therapist, or the fact that I’ve had the privilege of knowing a number of people with seemingly charmed lives who have trusted me enough to show me the mold in their mental basements, but I just don’t buy into this notion that anybody’s life is perfect. We all have our baggage. We all suffer. Sadly, it’s the very nature of life. We only serve to make ourselves feel bad if we go around thinking that we have problems and that other people don’t.

If you ever find yourself thinking this way in the future, try to keep this one thought in mind: You never know what you don’t know about somebody else’s life. If it helps, think about some of the secrets that you keep closest to the vest (the things you’ve probably assumed that most other people don’t experience), and think about how many people you’ve told those secrets to. How many people DON’T know about some of the hardest aspects of your life? When you feel really down, do you Facebook about it? I’m guessing you don’t. So please, for Pete’s sake, don’t ever assume that other people don’t have problems.

For more information about this author, please visit, visit www.lesliecarr.com.

Photo credit: Carmela Alvarado

Deepen Your Awareness; Become Luminous

In Pali, the language of the original Buddhist texts, the term for the potent and alive energy of awareness is “tejos.” The word has several meanings. It can mean heat, flame, fire, or light, and it conveys a sense of splendor and radiance and glory. Tejos refers to a very bright energy, a strength, and a power that is luminous.

By practicing meditation, we bring forth some of this splendor, this luminosity, and this power into the activities of an ordinary day. We practice meditation to be aware in whatever we are doing. And the deeper our awareness, the greater the luminosity.

Our perceptual world is transformed when we relate fully. It is as though we are experiencing each object – each sound, each sensation, each breath — for the very first time. Even painful or unpleasant feelings become included in our sense of the fullness of life, rather than being fearfully held at bay in a futile effort to keep them away from us.

Living without immediacy in our awareness, we seek fulfillment outside of ourselves, grasping at passing experiences. It becomes easy to fall into addiction to increasing levels of stimulating sensations. These supply us with our sense of wholeness, but it is a wholeness held together with only passing phenomena. Imagine doing something very simple, perhaps something you’ve done many times before, so it doesn’t bring up a great intensity. Something like eating an apple.

If you eat the apple while paying very little attention to the sight of it, the feel of it, the smells and tastes of it, then eating the apple is not likely to be a very fulfilling experience. Feeling a mild discontent with the experience, you may be likely to blame the apple. But is it the apple’s fault? It is rare for any of us to recognize that the quality of our attention might have played a role in our feeling of dissatisfaction.

You may begin to think, “If only I could have a banana, then I would be happy. But if you find a banana and then eat it, again in a distracted or inattentive way, you will again end up feeling unsatisfied. But instead of realizing that you simply were not paying attention to the experience of eating the banana, you start to think, “My life is just too prosaic; it is so ordinary. How could anybody be happy with just apples and bananas? What I need is something exotic. I need to go out and get something unusual like a mango. Then I will be happy.”

Perhaps with some trial and tribulation, you actually do get a mango. The first few bites may be wonderful. You have not had a mango for a long time, and this is a new sensation. Soon, however, you are finishing off the exotic mango in just the same way you ate the prosaic apple and the banana, and once again you are left with a feeling of dissatisfaction. In this way we can see that mindfulness is the key to fulfillment, and in fact to life itself.

We practice meditation to make skills like mindfulness real, to take them from an abstract appreciation to a positive part of every day, to generate the force of tejos. Actually doing a meditation practice, rather than just thinking about it, is of course the hard part.

During the month of February, Sharon Salzberg is hosting a mediation program based on her latest book, “Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation: A 28-Day Program.” Participants are invited to reflect on their experiences—pleasant, difficult, and in between—on Sharon’s website and on their own blogs or websites. Comments are welcome from anyone and everyone is invited to make a commitment to 28 days of meditation practice.

For more information on how to optimize your life, visit sharonsalzberg.com.

Photo credit: Taaj Digital Studio

Happiness is a Skill Worth Developing

Over the last 17 years, I’ve seen dramatic business turnarounds in as little as a week — the only change being an increase in a person’s happiness. The results I’ve witnessed have been dramatic. My clients on Wall Street made better trades, CEOs made more profitable decisions, and sales people made more sales, all with a shift in their mindset, which led to greater well-being.

As a result, in the late 90s I decided to focus my career on the pursuit of happiness and fully investigate its effects on the success process. Over a 10-year period, I found that happiness was a skill that anyone could learn and that happiness was a hidden determinant in success. Bottom line: When entrepreneurs learn the skills to be happy, they have unexplainable increases in their results.

Four happiness skills anyone can learn

1. Give up being right.
Most people are addicted to being right, and they don’t even know it. This leads to endless argument and strife. To be happy, you must let go of this ineffective habit of thought.

Try this: Notice that “the drunk monkey” (my nickname for the chatter in your mind) has an opinion on everything, including things it knows nothing about. Opinions are vanities and are always from your perspective. Your perspective may be right for you but certainly not for everyone and everything. And yet, when you pay attention to the drunk monkey, you see that it actually believes it is right about almost everything.

The desire to be right often puts you into a resistant state, which does not lead to happiness.

To give up being right, put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Look at the world from their perspective, and acknowledge that there are multiple ways to view the situation. In short, have compassion for others.

2. Accept the situation as it is, and then take action.
A client of mine found himself in an unpleasant situation. His company was merging with another company, and he was informed that he would be losing his coveted office with the sun shining into the windows that he was accustomed to. This may sound trivial. For him, this was the end of a 10-year era, and he was very attached to what the office represented in his life. He had been angry for a week when we finally spoke. The merger had not yet happened. Yet his anger was creating dysfunction in his ability to produce sales results today.

I helped him realize that he was moving no matter how angry he got. Ultimately, he accepted this and promised to stop complaining because it was not making him feel good. We shifted his focus to defining what he wanted to create out of the merger. He described his best-case scenario. As he did, new options were illuminated, his mood changed, and his energy went up. Getting happy allowed him to get out of his resentment, see new possibilities and get creative.

In the following weeks, his sales results returned, and he discovered a compromise that would work for his new working environment

3. Quit pretending you are a psychic who can tell the future.
Just the idea of a change to his office environment caused him to hallucinate about a future he didn’t like. The problem is, he’s not psychic, so he doesn’t know what the future will hold. Yet he was suffering, right now, as if the negative future had already occurred. This is a trick the drunk monkey plays on people to strip them of their happiness.

The drunk monkey in your head is not your friend. As a biological survival mechanism, one of its functions is to predict potentially negative situations and then mobilize the body to avoid them. But most of your life is not dangerous.

Today, just remind yourself that you are not psychic and that you cannot predict the future. Work to see the situation with clarity by removing your fear and your opinions. Next, identify what you want to have happen.

4. Stop protecting yourself from people who aren’t attacking you.
A Wall Street executive was managing billions of dollars in assets, and yet he felt like nobody listened to him and that he wasn’t important. This perspective had him feeling repressed and defeated. His positive results didn’t seem to match his unhappy mindset. He felt like other people in the firm didn’t think what he had to say was important, and therefore he was an outsider and not involved in making critical decisions. He realized that taking on more responsibility was important, but he felt powerless to do so.

I asked him how he knew this was true. He told me about incidents that had occurred the year before. I asked him to consider that he had changed, they had changed, times had changed, and the world had changed since the incidents from last year. I asked him if he would be willing to run an experiment to put the drunk monkey into place so he could return to happy, fulfilled and satisfied with work. Here’s what I told him to do.

Instead of trying to keep his ideas safe, instead of wondering how he could move his objectives forward, for the next week, he should find out what other people were committed to. See what the other people in the company were working on, and discover ways to contribute to each of the people in the company. Make it a game. See if you can contribute something to someone every day for the next seven days — an idea, a contact, a resource or even just an encouraging word.

Through this process, he shifted from protecting himself from all the people who weren’t attacking him to being supportive and giving. Within the year, he became one of the most celebrated people in his company. The next year, he was recruited away by a superstar in his industry and made a partner in the firm. The trick was simple: He needed to be the change he wanted to see in the world, just like Gandhi said.

When you are happy, you are creative, approachable, flexible and easy to be with. Add those characteristics to your skill set, and you will see an immediate positive benefit.

Most people believe that happiness is something that occurs when the conditions of life are favorable. But the truth is, happiness is the skill navigating challenging situations without getting reactive. If you wait for happiness to find you, you’ll be waiting a long time. Happiness is an inside job.

Matthew Ferry is a revealer, illuminator and awakener whose point of view creates instant transformation in people’s lives. Since 1993 he has personally coached more then 8,000 people to breakthrough performance barriers and achieve unparalleled happiness and success.

Photo credit: Camdiluv