The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

A Dad’s DAD

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Dick Hoyt died on March 17 and yet he’s never been more alive. . .
WHO???
Who exactly. . .
I never met Mr Hoyt
but I read/heard about him years ago
when I was still running marathons
at a pretty good clip
and an even better speed
but nothing like
Dick Hoyt
did. . .

STRONGEST DAD IN THE WORLD

RICK REILLY is a great writer and a very frequent contributor to SPORTS ILLUSTRATED and I not only bow to his craft but instead of even trying to rephrase or even poorly plagiarize him, I thought I’d share what he had to say but I deeply felt:

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.

Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life,” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”

But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.“

“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”

And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”

How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.”

To see a photo gallery of Dick and Rick Hoyt, go to SI.com/teamhoyt. If you have a comment for Rick Reilly, send it to reilly@siletters.com.

“Dad, when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”

Dick Hoyt gives his son that feeling as often as he can.

Kind of gives
FATHER’S DAY
a whole new meaning, huh. . .
M A Y B E
m a y b e
all those years
all those races
all those marathons
all those Ironmen Triathlons
he wasn’t pushing his son, Rick so much
as he was pushing me
and anyone else who took notice
TO BE A NO LIMIT
d a d
TO BE A NO LIMIT
p e r s o n
TO BE
what it took
when it took
how it took
TO BE
what was truly needed
instead of merely
wanted. . .

KAZE NO DENWA (Phone of the Wind)

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“Hello. If you’re out there, please listen to me.” On a hill overlooking the ocean in Otsuchi Town in northeastern Japan is a phone booth known as the “Telephone of the Wind.” It is connected to nowhere, but people come to “call” family members lost during the tsunami of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Many visit the phone booth including a mother and 3 children who have lost their father. This documentary looks at the unique role that this phone is playing in helping the grieving process of many.

KIND OF CHILLING, huh. . . ?
QUESTION:
WHO WOULD YOU CALL
on the Wind Phone

Kaze no denwa (phone of the wind)

curling whispers from the depths of the earth
carried by the wind
through every crack and crevice
finally reaching my ear

i’ve missed your smile
your warm glow
gentle touches
please come back to me

i want to hear your voice again.

in a little town
on the coastline of Japan
stands a white phone booth 
in a small backyard

in the booth is a telephone
rotary, the clicking numbers
line going nowhere 

but the wind carries words
of the lost loved to us
so we can speak to them again

“grandpa, are you well?”
“i won a prize in school today!”
“is it cold over there?”

maybe i can’t hear your voice
for real again
but
if for one instant
i could say “i love you”
i’d be happy.

In Otsuchi, Japan, there is a telephone booth with a rotary phone with an unconnected phone line. It was built by Itaru Sasaki after his cousin died in 2010 as a way to talk to him and have closure. Many from Otsuchi use the phone to talk to loved ones lost in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Some come for one long talk to say things they could not, and some regularly visit to talk to the deceased about everyday things. It’s become a way to connect to the past and the one’s they’ve lost, since many Japanese do not usually tell people that they love them often to their face. It’s a way to lay regrets to rest. Sasaki said that he wanted the line to not connect to anything, so that his words would be carried on the wind to his cousin. And so, the wind phone remains. 

. . .R E M A I N S
to let us know that
L O V E
is the one thing
IN AND OUT OF THIS WORLD
that CONNECTS US
and with or without a phone
it’s the clearest connection
you’ll ever experience. . .
Now,
about THAT Call. . .
get to dialing

A (SELF) CARING CATALYST

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FAMILIAR. . . ?
Sometimes some of the worst care
is the lack we give
O U R S E L V E S. . .
Being A Caring Catalyst to Others
begins with being
A Caring Catalyst
to Ourselves
IT IS THIS SIMPLE:
We do the best we can with what we know at the time. . .
It is VERY unloving to expect more;
We often were not given the knowledge
or the tools while we were young. . .
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Life is about learning.
Sometimes that learning can be painful.
Our challenge is that once we have learned the lesson
that we do not continue to repeat it. . .
For many of us, however,
we may have to go around the track a few times
before we are able to count it as a
m i l e. . .
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
There is no finish line
(PERIOD)
There is no competition
(PERIOD)
Self forgiveness is necessary on a daily basis
and SELF-LOVE even more needed
(MORE OFTEN)
in order to bring Compassion Care. . .
BEING A CARING CATALYST
means acknowledging
YOU DID THE BEST YOU COULD
. . .Now let it go

YOUR MIDNIGHT LIBRARY

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The Pandemic hasn’t been all BAD. . .
BECAUSE IT HAS GIVEN ME MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO
R E A D
A voracious reader
from the even before I could read
I have loved books
and have loved passing on my
LOVE OF BOOKS
from the very first one
I can ever remember
having

To the one
I just started last night

And the
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
so many in between. . .
which brings me to the opening pages of:

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:
One of the reasons I’ve always loved reading
is because it
has inspired
WRITING
SPEAKING
FREE-THINKING
that I have no
ON/OFF
Switch
(and one I’m not seeking or ever hoping to find). . .
It’s made my
EYES, HEAR
NOSE, TASTE
EARS, SEE
IMAGINATION, FANTASIZE
IT HAS MADE ME
M E
and my idea of a perfect death
is having
FAMILY
FRIENDS
BOOKS
surrounding me. . .
It allows me
WONDER
as I
WANDER
and to
P O N D E R
even now
AM I MORE
IF/BUT
or
CAN/WILL
KIND OF A PERSON. . .
Y O U ?

So here’s the
D E A L
We have a Pen in our hands
with Blank pages before us
waiting not just for a written word
or a secret message
but that one single sentence
that can only come from
Y O U
THE WORLD
desperately needs to not have written
but
specifically
intentionally
purposely
intimately
R E A D
(NO PANDEMIC NECESSARY)

IS HAPPINESS A PLACE?

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Wouldn’t we all do it. . .
Book a Trip
Go to a Destination
Make a Pilgrimage
Escape on a Excursion
if we knew that the final landing spot was the
U N I V E R S E
of
HAPPINESS

W E L L . . . Which Values Make You Happy? It Might Depend on Where You Live

Different cultures value different things—and that matters for happiness. . .

 KIRA M. NEWMAN a journalist with The Greater Good Magazine did a little exploring on this HAPPINESS PLACE issue with some interesting findings. . .

When a new psychology study comes out, its findings—gratitude makes people happy! meditating can boost your mood!—are often taken as truth about humanity as a whole. But in recent years, researchers have pointed out that much of psychology research involves participants who are WEIRD: Western, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries. 

Why is that a problem? Because it could be the case that the insights we’re learning about how to live happy, meaningful lives privilege one group’s experiences—and they may not be as useful to people from other cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds.

A new study surveyed people in five regions around the world to see if the factors that influenced their happiness might be different. The discrepancies that the researchers found lend support to concerns that our current knowledge about well-being isn’t as universal as we might think. 

“The implicit claim in previous research that ‘one size fits all’ is probably incorrect,” write Bruce Headey and his colleagues at the DIW Berlin research institute. 

Values and Happiness

The study was based on the World Values Survey, which surveyed hundreds of thousands of people around the world from 1999 to 2014. The researchers decided to focus on five regions: 

  • Western countries, including the United States, Britain, Australia, Spain, and others;
  • Latin America;
  • Asian-Confucian countries: Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan;
  • Ex-communist countries: Russia and Eastern Europe; and
  • Communist countries: China and Vietnam.

People in each region reported on their values and priorities in life—the things that matter most to them. These included:

  • Traditional family values: The importance of family, as well as helping people who live nearby and caring for their needs.
  • Friendship and leisure values: The importance of friendship and leisure.
  • Materialistic values: Believing it’s important to be rich, successful, and recognized for your achievements. 
  • Political values: The importance of politics. 
  • Prosocial values: Believing it’s important to do something for the good of society and look after the environment. 
  • Religious values: The importance of religion and God. 

The researchers then compared how people rated the importance of these values to how satisfied they felt about their lives. 

The results suggest that some values may be more universally important to well-being than others. In all five regions, people who highly valued family, friendship/leisure, and prosociality tended to be more satisfied with life. But the results for materialism, politics, and religion were more complicated. 

People with stronger political values were more satisfied with life in communist countries, where “good citizens are supposed to be politically active” within the limits laid out by the state, explains Headey. This was also true to a lesser extent in the West. Meanwhile, in ex-communist Russia and Eastern Europe, people who cared more deeply about politics were less happy. This may be due to the “disillusionment with politics” in those countries, after the fall of communism.

People who placed more importance on religion tended to be happier in the West, Latin America, and the Asian-Confucian countries. But they were less satisfied with life if they were living in the communist and ex-communist regions. As the researchers speculate, this may be because communist governments tend to be hostile to religion, and people in ex-communist countries may still be suffering the long-term effects of that. 

Materialism, a value that’s long been assumed to make us unhappy, actually went hand in hand with life satisfaction in Eastern Europe. It was only in the wealthier Western and Asian-Confucian countries where materialists tended to be less satisfied. In Latin America and the Communist countries, being materialistic didn’t seem to matter to life satisfaction. 

Happiness and Conformity

Why might some values be beneficial everywhere, whereas others only seem helpful in certain cultures? 

The researchers suggest that people may be happier when their personal values align with the societal and governmental norms in their country. In other words, some values may benefit us not in and of themselves, but because they give us a sense of belonging and make it easier for us to navigate the world. 

These findings also help make sense of a paradox in happiness research—the fact that some regions (like Latin America) are much happier than their gross domestic product (GDP) would predict, while others (like Eastern Europe) are much less happy. 

Examining the values people hold could help explain these discrepancies. In Eastern Europe, for example, the researchers found that many people rated all the different values as relatively unimportant, a recipe for unhappiness. In Latin America, people’s strong family and religious ties seemed to bring them a great deal of satisfaction. 

Though they aimed to be more inclusive, the researchers didn’t have access to surveys from sub-Saharan Africa or Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia—which means this picture of well-being is still incomplete. But it does point to a provocative idea: that the path to happiness isn’t the same everywhere, and what works for you may depend on the society and culture in which you live.

Amazing, stuff, huh. . .
To think that HAPPINESS IN A PLACE
instead of a PERSON
but then again, maybe that’s when it get’s really
W E I R D
(Western, Educated, and from Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic countries)
and it gets WEIRDER still
when Your WEIRD
gets my WEIRD
. . .now that’s some kind of
P L A C E
(to be)

The Seeds We DON’T SOW

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Sometimes the most important
S E E D S
there are
ARE THE ONES WE DON’T SOW. . .
It’s one of my favorite parables by
Megan McKenna
and by
SOWING
ITS
SEED
hopefully it’ll take root in you, too. . .

“There was a woman who wanted peace in the world and peace in her heart and all sorts of good things, but she was very frustrated. The world seemed to be falling apart. She would read the newspapers and get depressed. One day she decided to go shopping, and she went into a mall and picked a store at random. She walked in and was surprised to see Jesus behind the counter. She knew it was Jesus because he looked just like the pictures she’d seen on holy cards and devotional pictures. She looked again and again at him, and finally she got up enough nerve and asked, ‘Excuse me, are you Jesus?’ ‘I am.’ ‘Do you work here?’ ‘No,’ Jesus said, ‘I own the store.’ ‘Oh, what do you sell in here?’ ‘Oh, just about anything!’ ‘Anything?’ ‘Yeah, anything you want. What do you want?’ She said, ‘I don’t know.’ Well,’ Jesus said, ‘feel free, walk up and down the aisles, make a list, see what it is that you want, and then come back and we’ll see what we can do for you.’

“She did just that, walked up and down the aisles. There was peace on earth, no more war, no hunger or poverty, peace in families, no more drugs, harmony, clean air, careful use of resources. She wrote furiously. By the time she got back to the counter, she had a long list. Jesus took the list, skimmed through it, looked up and smiled, ‘No problem.’ And then he bent down behind the counter and picked out all sorts of things, stood up, and laid out the packets. She asked, ‘What are these?’ Jesus replied, ‘Seed packets. This is a catalog store.’ She said, ‘You mean I don’t get the finished product?’ ‘No, this is a place of dreams. You come and see what it looks like, and I give you the seeds. You plant the seeds. You go home and nurture them and help them to grow and someone else reaps the benefits.’ ‘Oh,’ she said. And she left the store without buying anything.”

Maybe we all need a trip to the
SEED STORE
where DREAMS COME TRUE
with the biggest question not being
WHAT SEEDS ARE YOU SOWING
or
WHERE ARE YOU SOWING YOUR SEEDS
so much as
WHICH SEEDS ARE YOU REFUSING TO
SOW
WATER
FERTILIZE
NOURISH
but expect just the same to
R E A P
It’s kind of like
making applesauce
with bananas
or a pineapple
and expecting it to taste like
Brownies. . .

A Dirty Hand
is no proof of a
SEED
SEWN
and most certainly
of one
grown or harvested. . .
Q U E S T I O N
How’s your Garden
(g r o w i n g)

Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
See you at the
SEED STORE
. . .I hear there’s a
S A L E
(if you’re interested)

A HAPPINESS DISPENSER

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The problem with
H A P P I N E S S
isn’t that we don’t have it to give
so much as that we just often
D O N ‘ T
. . .after nearly fifteen months of
social distancing
we almost shrug with an overdramatic sigh
WHAT’S THE USE. . .
WELL

If You Want to Be Happy,
Psssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
Dare Making Someone Else Happy

A new study shows that doing kind things for others is an important path to happiness. 

JILL SUTTIE, a journalist for Greater Good Magazine did a little more than pulling back the Happiness Curtain to show us what’s not so much hidden but in plain sight for us to SEE. BE. FREE in ourselves and others.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he assured Americans of their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This idea seems to lead many Americans to chase after new gadgets and hedonistic pleasures. But what if that approach is wrong? What if happiness comes from aiming to make others happy, instead of doing nice things for yourself? 

That is exactly what a recent study found.

In the experiment, college students reported on their happiness and on their sense of autonomy, competence, and connection to others—all what researchers consider “basic psychological needs” for well-being. Then they were randomly tasked to do something to either make themselves happier, make another person happier, or socialize. (Assigning one group to socialize helped determine if seeking happiness for another had an effect above and beyond simply being in someone’s presence.)

Later that day, after doing their tasks, participants reported what they did, and then filled out their happiness and needs questionnaires again. Those who’d done something to make another person feel better were much happier themselves than participants in the other groups, and their greater happiness was tied to a stronger feeling of connection to that person.

This finding was not too surprising to lead researcher Milla Titova, who says that it fits in with prior research on happiness that found giving to others makes you happier than giving to yourself—and that pursuing happiness directly for yourself sometimes backfires.

“Making others happy is more meaningful for people than just socializing with them or doing something to improve our own happiness,” she says. “When we aim to make others happier, we feel connected to them—our relatedness needs are better met—which is important for us.”

In another part of the study, she and her colleague tried to rule out the possibility that making someone else happier makes you happier because of how emotions spread between people, which is known as the contagion effect. To do this, they repeated their experiment, but this time asked participants to identify the recipient of their kindness and to say how much happier that person appeared to be. Then, they contacted the recipient and measured their actual happiness levels.

The researchers found that a recipient’s happiness level did not seem to be related to the increased happiness of the person trying to make them happy, which suggests something beyond emotion contagion is going on. However, if the participant perceived that their efforts made a difference in another’s happiness, that made them happier.

“If we think another person is feeling pretty good, that’s enough for us to feel pretty good ourselves,” says Titova. “We’re just not always accurate about assessing other people’s feelings.” 

She and her colleague also looked at how this effect might play out between strangers. People parked on a city street were approached by researchers and given two quarters for filling out surveys about their well-being. In some cases, they were simply given the quarters to keep or were given the quarters to feed their own meter before filling out the surveys. In other cases, they were told to feed another person’s meter, with some being asked to leave a note on the dashboard of the stranger’s car explaining what they’d done.

Afterward, the researchers compared the four groups’ happiness and how much their needs felt fulfilled. Those who’d put money in someone else’s meter were significantly happier than those who’d put money in their own meter or just kept the quarters. Leaving a note increased a person’s happiness even more. 

Titova thinks this makes sense, given that making someone else happier makes us happier through increasing our relatedness to them. But it could also be that people like getting credit for a good deed, too—or that the note is actually another act of kindness, augmenting connection further.

Whatever the case, it appears that doing something kind for anyone is better for our happiness than getting something for ourselves.

“It doesn’t require you know the person you’re trying to make happy, nor does it require an actual physical interaction with that person,” she says. “It still works—even with a stranger.”

This is a preliminary study, mostly done with a limited population, and Titova cautions against applying the finding to other cultural contexts. This is wise, as studies have found not all happiness practices translate to other cultures.

Still, they do suggest that focusing on making others happy may be a key to happiness worth considering. 

“It’s counterintuitive for some people, but if you’re not having the best day, you should think about doing something nice for your significant other or your roommates instead of concentrating on yourself,” she says. “That may not be what comes to mind naturally, but it’s probably more effective.”

It’s a shame
isn’t it that
once again the
EMPHASIS
has to be on an
I F
but you being
A Caring Catalyst
HAPPINESS DISPENSER
just may depend on that
IF
u n l e s s. . .

TOUCHING ART

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https://youtu.be/D6WYes7Or-E
Please Touch the Art
 
This compelling video tells the story of an artist, Andrew Myers, who is so moved by a blind man’s joy at “feeling” three dimensional art that he is inspired to create three dimensional portraits to be experienced by people who are blind or visually impaired. Why is touching artwork so taboo? According to the producers of the film, “Prior to the mid-1800s, tactile interaction was commonplace for visitors experiencing collections of art, but as museums of art evolved, rules forbidding touch became the norm.” In this film, Myers surprises George Wurtzel, a blind artisan working in wood, with a portrait. Wurtzel delights in sharing his portrait with his visually impaired students at Enchanted Hills Camp as he teaches them by example how to work as a blind artisan. Wurtzel’s philosophy that “your life is what you decide it will be” permeates the film.

It is such a simple simple question with such a profound and almost on answerable reply:  
WHAT MAKES YOUR LIFE MEANINGFUL?

Is your life ultimately what you decide you want to make it to be or what OTHERS decide they’d like to make you be?

We are all severely handicapped 

We are blind
We are deaf
We are mute
And because of THAT
Know a darkness;
Know a stillness;
Know an utterlessness
that can’t be described only experienced
And sadly, often is
And even more sadly,
Often
NEVER HAS TO BE

And The cure is when we remedy that
first of all and ourselves
we also heal it for others. . .

Test THAT

GO AHEAD

TOUCH
TASTE
SEE
HEAR
SMELL
S E N S E
beyond what
Fingers
Eyes
Noses
Mouths
Ears
can ever achieve and the
Go full on artist
Be artisan enough
To share THAT with OTHERS
So that you become the
a r t
And not just simply the artist….

A LOTTERY WINNER

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T H E Y
say you can’t win the
L O T T E R Y
if you don’t play. . .
I don’t let a lot of people know
in fact,
I believe this is the first time I
O U T T E D
this little tidbit about one,
CHUCK BEHRENS
I WON THE LOTTERY

It was Friday night
and I had to do some one stop shopping on the way home
and yes,
one of the items on my
TO GET LIST
was a Lottery Ticket
because it was creeping up to close to
$400,000.00
which like everyone knows
could do a lot of damage to debt
and a lot remedy for good
so after buying all of the
THIS’S
&
THAT’S
I was making my way up to the cashier
when I passed the CARD section
and a little guy and his dad were buying some
MOTHER’S DAY cards
and he played a little game of
PEEK-A-BOO with me
. . .of course, I forgot one other thing on the list and so
I snatched it and up to the Check Out line I went,
right behind my PEEK-A-BOO Buddy and his dad
who was getting to ready to pay for his cards
only to discover he had forgotten his wallet. . .
“Your dad is so dumb he forgot his wallet,” he was telling his son and then the he told the cashier he’d be right back. . .
It was my turn to enter the stage and repeat the only lines I never had the time to memorize:
“I’ve got this.”
“No, no sir you don’t have to do that. Really, I just live around the corner and I’ll be right back.”
“Sir, please do me a good. Let me do this for you. I’ve taken my kids ‘Card Shopping’ and forgotten my wallet and remember SomeOne doing me a good. Please, let me be selfish enough to do this. I guarantee you’re doing me a favor. I’ll feel way better for this than you.”
He thanked me
. . .yes, yes, with the words,
“THANK YOU”
but even more as he wheeled his son away in the cart
telling him just above a whisper,
“SEE, SON, I TOLD YOU THERE REALLY ARE GOOD PEOPLE IN THE WORLD YOU’LL NEVER HAVE TO LOOK FOR BECAUSE THEY’LL ALWAYS FIND YOU”

For a mere $7.55 I won the
L O T T E R Y
that night
that covered more than a lot of debt
and remedied more than just a bit of good
and
T H E Y
say you can’t win the
L O T T E R Y
if you don’t play. . .
Wanna BET?

Zzzzzzzzzing Better

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How are you been sleeping?
It’s a pretty good question during the ever ongoing Pandemic
which has literally left us
at best
R E S T L E S S

Hey. . .
You want to sleep better?
(even if it doesn’t ever mean longer)
Here’s a few blinking hints:

Research suggests that practicing gratitude, forgiveness, mindfulness, and self-compassion may improve our sleep during these stressful times. . .

JILL SUTTIE a journalist for The Greater Good shares what it seems like we’ve been sharing with each other over these past 13 months.

A lot of us are suffering from lack of sleep these days. According the Centers for Disease Control, about 35% of adult Americans regularly get less than seven hours of sleep per night, with African Americans and other minority groups sleeping even less than that. 

With the pandemic still in full swing, we may have even more sleep problems than usual. Worries about our health and safety, jobs, kids’ disrupted education, and more are keeping many of us up at night, creating fatigue and stress the next day. This could also lead to more serious mental health issues, like depression and even suicide.

Improving “sleep hygiene” is a good remedy—including going to bed at the same time every night, making sure your room is dark and quiet at bedtime, forgoing afternoon caffeine, and creating sleep-time rituals (like putting on cozy pajamas and reading a book before bed). But many people still suffer from sleep problems even after making these adjustments. And, though turning to sleeping pills can be effective, they can also be addictive, or they can disrupt our dreaming, which leads to lower-quality sleep.  

Fortunately, there may be other things worth trying to help us sleep that have more to do with our minds than our bodies. Recent research suggests that many of the well-being practices we can do to be happier also have a positive effect on sleep. Here are some of those practices. 

Mindfulness meditation

For the record, I’m not a big Mindfulness Meditation (or any other kind of meditation) guy. BUT, a recent analysis of several high-quality studies (randomized controlled trials) concluded that mindfulness meditation programs help people fall asleep more easily and experience better-quality sleep overall. 

One study conducted in Wuhan, China, actually looked at how mindfulness might be useful for sleeping better during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the study, people spent 10 days using an app that either guided them through mindfulness meditation or induced mind-wandering (unfocused attention). They then reported how mindful they were and how much sleep they got the next day. 

After taking into account other factors influencing sleep (like how much caffeine people drank, their age, or prior anxiety levels), the researchers analyzed how long people slept as the virus spread and deaths proliferated in their community. Those who practiced mindfulness and became more mindful didn’t lose as much sleep as those in the other group, likely because mindfulness protected them some from worry and rumination. Mindfulness helps people recognize and accept negative thoughts and feelings without fighting them, reducing their intensity and preventing them from spiraling out of control.

If you’ve not already tried mindfulness meditation, you can find many online resources to give it a go—including apps, which seem to be at least somewhat effective. You can also go to Greater Good in Action and try our practices—including a body scan, mindful breathing, or common humanity meditation. These exercises, besides potentially helping with sleep, have been found to reduce stress and depression and increase happiness and satisfaction with life, too.

Self-compassion

Self-compassion is something all of us could use right now, especially as lockdowns drag on and we find ourselves feeling more tired, unhappy, and unproductive than usual. Getting down on ourselves for perceived mistakes and flaws could exacerbate low-grade depression, which many of us already feel.

Self-compassion helps us to be kinder to ourselves as we go through the ups and downs of life. According to researcher Kristin Neff, self-compassion involves paying attention to our internal and external experiences (mindfulness), recognizing when we are suffering and sending kind messages to ourselves, and keeping in mind our common humanity—that we are not alone in our imperfections or suffering.

Studies have found that more self-compassionate people have better sleep, including less trouble falling asleep after a stressful day. In that study, people who were more self-compassionate were also in a better mood and felt more alert upon awakening than those with little self-compassion.

Self-compassion can be strengthened with practice, and that improves sleep, too. In one study, participants were asked to think about personal mistakes they’d made before going to bed and assigned to do a self-compassion meditation, a self-compassion writing exercise, or neither of those (as a comparison). Based on their reports the next morning, those who did a self-compassion exercise slept significantly better and ruminated less than those who didn’t try self-compassion. These practices even helped people who started out more depressed, which is good to know, given how many of us are ruminating more these days.

A new paper analyzing the results of several studies found there was “a significant association between self-compassion and self-reported sleep quality.” Though more rigorous studies could be done to confirm this, we can always benefit from practices like writing ourselves a self-compassion letter or taking a self-compassion break.

Gratitude

Feeling grateful is a good way to feel happier and strengthen our relationships. Now, it appears to help with sleep, too.

In one study, 119 young women were randomly selected to write about people and things they were grateful for each day, things that happened each day, or nothing at all. After two weeks, people’s sleep quality improved significantly in the gratitude group, and this helped improve their well-being and optimism and reduce blood pressure, too. In a recent review of gratitude exercises and their effects on physical health, researchers found that one of the strongest impacts of gratitude was on sleep quality.

One reason gratitude may affect sleep is that a grateful mindset seems to help us embrace more positive thoughts and let go of more negative ones before we go to bed. This means that it doesn’t take as long for us to fall asleep at night.

To try gratitude practices yourself, you might consider keeping a gratitude journal (or use the GGSC’s Thnx4 online journal) or writing a gratitude letter. These are designed to increase your positive thoughts and feelings, which may be key to better sleep.

Forgiveness

For some people, forgiving others is hard—especially if you equate forgiveness with letting someone “off the hook” and condoning their harmful actions. But those who study forgiveness consider it to be not necessarily about healing relationships between people, but mostly important for ourselves, helping us to let go of grudges that decrease our personal well-being.

If what’s keeping you up at night is holding on to grudges—pandemic-related or not—it could be worth considering practicing forgiveness. Though there is little or no direct research on how forgiving someone affects sleep directly, there is at least one study that found forgiving types were more likely to sleep better at night than others. Additionally, those who were more self-forgiving in the study also slept better because they were able to let go of mistakes they’d made more easily.

Forgiving someone can make us feel happier, more hopeful, less depressed and anxious, and less vulnerable to stress. And it can improve our relationships with others, especially our closest ones, which is important when so many of us have limited ability to interact with others right now. Each of these benefits is also tied to better sleep, which is all the more reason to try practicing forgiveness.

The nice thing about all of these practices is that they can be used alone or in tandem, and they don’t have undesirable side effects. Not only that, practicing these keys to happiness can have the desirable side effect of helping you become a happier, healthier person. That’s something we can all cheer about in these dark times. Just don’t try cheering right before you want to fall asleep!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
(BIG YAWN)
Sleep Tight(er)

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man