THE KINDNESS FACTOR

October 19, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

How 30 Days of Kindness

Made Me a

Better Person

is an article that Cecilia Meis published back in January 2017. . .but it couldn’t be more timely than if it was written one moment before you started reading this Blog post. . .

Cecilia begins the article by admitting: “I don’t know his name, but his messy, shoulder-length hair hides a pair of hauntingly blue eyes. It’s a warm September day in New York, but he’s sitting under a mountain of ragged bits of clothing, towels and blankets. In one hand, he loosely holds a piece of string attached to the neck of a small, mangy-looking dog lying next to him. In the other hand, he clutches a nearly empty bottle of cheap vodka. His bright eyes briefly glance at me without recognition or focus. I don’t know what makes me pause.

My initial thought is to give him money, though I just avoided eye contact with the last 10 people, sputtering that I didn’t have any. And my mom’s words come to mind: “He’ll only spend it on drugs or alcohol.” So I turn to the closest Nathan’s stand and buy him a hot dog, chips and soda.

When I approach him, I feel awkward, my donation insignificant. As if I’m offering a glass of water to a man trapped in a burning building. Is he more of a ketchup or mustard guy? The absurd thought turns my face hot. What comfort will a nutritionally deficient meal with a side of dehydration be to a man who sleeps on cement and spends a life generally invisible to the world?

But when he sees my outstretched hands, he smiles, dropping the bottle and leash to accept the meal with shaky fingers. We don’t exchange any words, but his smile lingers with me.

Can random acts of kindness
actually increase and sustain happiness. . . ?

Cecilia goes on to tell us that it’s only the sixth day of her month-long challenge to find the joy in making someone’s day every day, and up until now, she had felt like a failure. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but rather questioning whether seemingly small gestures were actually accomplishing my goal. Can we really find joy by giving to those around us? Can random acts of kindness actually increase and sustain happiness?

Turns out they can, but there are exceptions. To find lasting happiness through generosity requires a suppression of our ego, an analysis of our motives and a reflection on how these acts alter our perception of the world.

How Generosity Benefits Us

As children, our parents tell us to make up for misbehaving by doing something nice for someone. As adults, we help friends move into a new house; we bring hot meals to new mothers; we might even donate time or money to local charities a few times a year. After all, it’s naturally uncomfortable to see a friend (or stranger) suffering or in need. Call it karma or mojo, but these acts are generally reciprocated. We receive tax breaks, returned meals and favors, thank-you notes. Tit for tat.

But what about pure, altruistic generosity, without the expectation of receiving something in return? What about being a true Caring Catalyst just to be a mere Caring Catalyst? Some researchers argue this type of generosity doesn’t exist. But Cecilia set out to see whether she could learn to give without the promise of getting. She made lists of various kind acts and placed reminders on her bathroom mirror, her work computer, her car dashboard: Make someone’s day today!

Cecilia’s first act of kindness was buying coffee for the woman behind her in the drive-thru lane at Starbucks. In fact, her first few acts were buying something for someone—lunch for an old friend, a copy of her favorite book to a stranger—but they didn’t make her feel much of anything. The recipients were grateful, but she wondered if she was actually making their day, and was that really boosting her happiness?

At the end of each day, she reflected how being kind made her feel. She dug for tangible proof of her growth. Some days felt more significant: buying cough syrup for the two coughing boys in pajamas at the pharmacy, for example. Their father, who had dark circles under his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose as his credit card was declined a second time. She said couldn’t tell whether he was more embarrassed or grateful, but she’d like to think he slept a little easier that night, and left the pharmacy feeling pretty good.

Countless studies tout the physical, mental and social benefits of receiving generosity. But until the 1980s, the effects on the giver were relatively unknown. Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., a psychology professor at UC Riverside and a leading happiness researcher, conducted a study in 2004 to determine whether committing five random acts of kindness would increase positive emotions. The short-term study revealed promising results with heightened levels of positive emotions, particularly in the participants who carried out all five acts of kindness on the same day. Spreading the acts over a week, Lyubomirsky theorized, led to a repetitive and often unoriginal pattern that either didn’t change the level of positive emotions or, in some cases, even lowered it.

Admittedly, Cecilia said she experienced some form of generosity fatigue around the second week of her challenge. It’s easy to float through the day wrapped up in our own heads, focusing only on what directly impacts us. Consciously searching for new and different ways to improve someone else’s day was more difficult than than maybe any of us could possibly anticipate. We just don’t face that challenge often in society. But then when Cecilia admitted that when she did the nice deed, she nearly always felt a boost of happiness afterward. A 2009 study by social psychologist Jorge A. Barraza, Ph.D., and neuroscientist Paul J. Zak, Ph.D., attributes this to a release of oxytocin, the feel-good chemical in the brain.

According to the study, when people feel empathetic, they release 47 percent more oxytocin into their hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for emotion and memory. The participants felt the urge to act generously—particularly toward strangers. As Matthieu Ricard, Ph.D., a Buddhist monk and best-selling author, writes in Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill: “When we are happy, the feeling of self-importance is diminished and we are more open to others.” Studies show people who have experienced a positive event in the past hour are more likely to help strangers in need. This explains why we help people, even at a cost to ourselves.

In the late ’80s, the term “helper’s high” was used to describe the euphoria feeling associated with volunteering. Beyond happiness, generous people also experienced enhanced creativity, flexibility, resilience and being open to new information. They’re more collaborative at work; they’re able to solve complex problems more easily and they form solid, healthy relationships with others.

Generosity allows us to forget our own self-importance.

As Stephen G. Post, Ph.D., happiness researcher and founder of The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, writes, “It may be people who live generous lives soon become aware that in the giving of self lies the unsought discovery of self as the old selfish pursuit of happiness is subjectively revealed as futile and short-sighted.” Generosity allows us to forget our own self-importance, even temporarily, and look outward to uplift those around us who, in turn, often uplift those around them.

Shawn Achor, a Harvard-trained researcher and The Happiness Guy at SUCCESS, calls this the ripple effect. Our behavior, he discovered, is literally contagious. “Our habits, attitudes and actions spread through a complicated web of connections to infect those around us,” he writes. That’s why we sync up with our best friends, often finishing each other’s sentences and reading each other’s thoughts. It’s also why one negative attitude can spread like a disease across an office and infect everyone’s mood.

So are happier people more generous, or does generosity make us happier? Rather than thinking of it as a cause-and-effect relationship, consider happiness and generosity as intertwining entities. “Generating and expressing kindness quickly dispels suffering and replaces it with lasting fulfillment,” writes Ricard, the Buddhist monk. “In turn the gradual actualization of genuine happiness allows kindness to develop as the natural reflection of inner joy.” Helping behavior increases positive emotions, which increases our sense of purpose, regulates stress, and improves short- and long-term health. All of that contributes to a heightened level of happiness, causing us to feel more generous, creating a circle of happiness and generosity.

Why We Aren’t Generous All the Time

Cecilia admitted she failed twice during her month-long challenge. What began as a positive and energizing morning was quickly derailed—a negative social media post, a complaining text, an overwhelmed co-worker. she would refocus her thoughts and tried to make this her kind act for the day. Maybe her questions are our golden questions: What if I can turn this person’s day around? What if I can help him see the positive side of his situation?

What happened? According to Paul Bloom, professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University and author of Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, she had confused empathy with compassion, resulting in empathetic distress and burnout. Empathy requires feeling what others feel, “to experience, as much as you can, the terrible sorrow and pain,” whereas compassion involves concern and a desire to help without the need to mirror someone else’s anguish.

It turns out, you can be too nice. Psychologists Vicki Helgeson and Heidi Fritz created a questionnaire revealing that women are more likely to put others’ needs before their own, often resulting in asymmetrical relationships as well as an increased risk of depression and anxiety. When we experience empathetic burnout, we often shy away from generosity altogether. Feeling taken advantage of, we retreat inward.

Researchers have also theorized that every kind act is ultimately done to benefit ourselves in some way, even subconsciously. This concept, coined “universal egoism,” offers explanations that are easier to accept than true altruism: a desire to help others void of selfish motives. For example, there are multiple situations that can be initially perceived as true altruism but at its core, the kind act is governed by selfish motives. Ben Dean, Ph.D., psychologist and founder of MentorCoach in Maryland, offers three such examples:

It’s a natural response to feel uncomfortable when we see someone suffering. But rather than help in order to ease their suffering, we help them to ease our own discomfort.
In an attempt to protect our fragile egos and reputations, we don’t want to be viewed as insensitive, heartless, mean, etc. So we help others even when we might not feel an urge to improve their well-being.
We perceive there to be some form of personal benefit from the act, either short- or long-term.

The question remains:
Is there a truly selfless act of kindness?

The question remains: Is there a truly selfless act of kindness? And does it even matter where our motivations lie? The homeless man in New York still ate a hot meal, and the two little boys at the pharmacy didn’t stay up all night coughing. Isn’t that what matters?

We aren’t consistently generous for a multitude of reasons, but in the traditional corporate setting, the prevailing enemy of generosity is the fear of appearing naïve. (And the possibility of going broke.) After all, isn’t the nice guy the one who finishes last? So we become “Givers” as Adam Grant Ph.D., details in his best-seller Give and Take. In the modern workplace, we are no longer solely evaluated on our work performance, but rather on how we interact as a cohesive unit and how we contribute to the organization as a whole. In fact, Grant’s research reveals this new business landscape paves the way for Givers to succeed and Takers to be left behind. By helping others, we help ourselves.

The important thing to remember is that Givers—especially those predisposed to putting others’ needs before their own—need to know their boundaries. Grant says it begins with distinguishing generosity from its three other attributes: timidity, availability and empathy.

At the risk of sounding cliché, Cecilia admitted that her month of generosity did make her happier. Something about waking up and consciously planning to act selflessly lightened my step and made the morning drag easier to bear. Something about a stranger flashing a smile (albeit a confused one) as she handed them a dog-eared copy of her favorite memoir gave her an energy boost that a triple-shot latte never could.

For a precious hour or so every day, the fear, anxiety, stress and doubt of daily life didn’t plague her thoughts. She stated that she briefly forgot about herself, and it was intoxicating. Friends responded to her seemingly arbitrary good mood with confused laughs.When did being happy without reason become a cause for concern? she wondered. . . ?

Maybe, she thought, her heart was in the right place when she gave the blue-eyed man a hot meal. But maybe, she wondered, her ego was directing her actions that night in the pharmacy checkout lane. And maybe she avoided generosity toward her close friends and co-workers because it was more difficult. Buying coffee for a stranger is easy, detached and allows for a clean exit. Gently pushing a friend to divulge her source of anxiety after she says “I’m fine” is not. After all, altruism and honest self-reflection take time and practice.

Ultimately, thirty days of generosity didn’t make Cecilia a different person, but she did feel different. She didn’t actively look for ways to be generous, but noticed the opportunities anyway. Like the sticky note residue on her bathroom mirror, she could see gentle impressions of her growth where she least expect it: during rush hour, when she gave the benefit of the doubt to the woman cutting into her lane; after a long day of work, when she made time for the struggling friend who needed to talk; and, most important, in the moments when she forgot herself and realized the joy to be found in caring for the people around me.

SO. . .
What does this have to do with us?
N O T H I N G
u n l e s s
we make it
SOMETHING

Go Ahead. . .
GIVE IT A GO
Blame it on the Season
. . .the One that’s Coming
and in essence, never ending
UNLESS YOU SAY SO
TAKE THE 30 DAY KINDNESS CHALLENGE
and
PROVE IT. . .

MAKE MISTAKES

October 17, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

If our Lives are like Books
We no doubt have many
LINES
PARAGRAPHS
PAGES
CHAPTERS
LARGE SECTIONS
we would rip out
So others would never see them
and we just might be able to forget them
b u t
if we could just learn from our mistakes
(especially the ones we make repeatedly)
we just might find
that we have no regrets
but some
MONUMENTAL MEMORIES. . .

L I F E and it’s MEANING

October 5, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

Meaning in Your Life

Sounds like a haunting kind of a headline, doesn’t it. . .
BUT
isn’t that what we’re all trying to find
with every turning page in the book of our lives. . .

Struggling to find a sense of meaning in life?
Researchers have identified three different pathways to it

Feeling that your life has meaning is fundamental to the experience of being human, and people who feel this way tend to be healthier and happier. Given the importance that most people place on meaning, how might we cultivate the feeling that life is meaningful?

For most of the 20th century, philosophers, psychologists, and psychiatrists argued that meaning in life is a rare, profound experience, attainable through an active search, deep self-reflection, or some other arduous way of creating meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. But we now know that most people, most of the time, report that their lives feel more meaningful than not. Although actively constructing meaning may be required in some cases—for example, when your world is turned upside down after a traumatic event—cultivating meaning in life may be as simple as detecting the meaning that is already there.

Researchers’ definitions of meaning in life typically incorporate three themes: the belief that your life and contributions matter to others and yourself, the feeling that your life makes sense, and the feeling that you are actively pursuing fulfilling goals. Other research further corroborates the idea that significance (mattering), coherence (making sense), and purpose(orienting toward goals) represent three interrelated facets of, or perhaps direct pathways to, the experience of meaning in life.

Based on those three pathways, here are some relatively simple things you can do to maintain or enhance your experience of meaning in life.

The experience of significance in life

There is great comfort in believing that your life and actions matter in the grand scheme of things. This conviction is referred to as “existential mattering” and is a strong component of the experience of meaning in life. While the concept of existential mattering often evokes images of famous (and infamous) people who have done extraordinary things in their lives—like Mother Theresa, Cesar Chavez, or Bill Gates—many people gain a sense of mattering through avenues more easily traversed.

Research shows that feeling that you have made a positive influence on others is, unsurprisingly, almost always associated with the belief that your life is meaningful. Existential mattering then is often rooted in a sense that you matter to others—from helping strangers in need and providing social support to loved ones, to simply being a reliable friend.

The feeling that your life is significant is related to more than feeling that your actions are influential to others. Significance is augmented when your behaviors, or experiences more broadly, matter to yourself. This aspect of significance is related to psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s idea of finding beauty and meaning in life through lived experience. For example, the experience of meaningfulness can be found by enjoying riveting musical performances, being in awe of natural beauty, or simply appreciating an authentic interaction with another person.

One way to perceive more significance in your life is to actively seek out intrinsically rewarding experiences, like (re)connecting with nature or people who make it easy to express your true self. Moreover, many cognitive or emotional regulation strategies, such as practicing mindfulness, savoring the positive aspects of situations, cultivating a grateful disposition, or learning to evaluate your experiences more positively, naturally foster the detection of significance in your life experiences.

Although such experiences may lead the self to feel small in the context of vastness, they may also remind us that we belong to that vastness—that we are an indelible part of the wider universe in which we exist.

Sensing coherence

Coherence is the feeling that your life makes sense. For most people, most of the time, understanding life isn’t a problem requiring a solution. We are natural sense makers, automatically comprehending most situations effortlessly. In fact, a likely reason we don’t think about meaning in life too much is that our lives simply feel right (that is, things simply make sense). Our lives are embedded in a natural world characterized by regularities—sunrises and sunsets. We overlay these regularities with our own routines—morning coffee or an evening walk. The regularities of life provide the rhythms that undergird the feeling that life is meaningful.

Of course, life does not always make sense. For example, you may feel a sense of incomprehensibility after experiencing trauma or, counterintuitively, trying too hard to understand why your life has meaning.

Of all of the facets of meaning, coherence likely represents a basic psychological need. Similar to the anguish we feel when our need to belong is thwarted, our world seems to fall apart when things suddenly do not make sense. Restoring a sense of coherence during these times can be challenging and often requires feedback and reassurance from others (like a therapist or parent), as well as the mysterious healing power of time to help the mind restore a sense of equanimity. Reconnecting with the natural order of the world, reinstating routines that give structure to life, and finding respite in the arts may help you make sense of life again.

Although the inability to make sense of your life can detract from the experience of meaning, simply making sense of it doesn’t necessarily mean that life will feel meaningful. It is easy, for example, to think of an individual who possesses a cynical belief about how their life has unfolded. This worldview may help the individual make sense of their situation and life more broadly, but it seems unlikely to foster the belief that their life is full of meaning. This example illustrates how meaning is not simply about “connecting the dots” but also finding beauty in the picture that emerges.

Imbuing life with a sense of purpose

“Clear eyes, full hearts (can’t lose)” was the mantra of the Dillon Panthers, the fictitious football team familiar to fans of the popular TV show “Friday Night Lights.” One reason clearing one’s eyes, and subsequently filling one’s heart, is a successful strategy for football players and, perhaps, everyone is that people in this psychological state can pursue their goals with a greater sense of purpose. Feeling a sense of purpose helps us sustain motivation though the thick and thin of everyday life, and purposeful people tend to be more satisfied with their lives and even live longer. Purpose, therefore, is tied to both the quality and quantity of our existence.

One factor that facilitates purposeful action is possessing a clear reason for engaging in whatever you are doing. Knowing the “why” of your actions can infuse even trivial behaviors with value. Nietzsche famously noted that the person “who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” By developing a clear reason for pursuing a goal, the “how” of your goal-directed actions becomes more tolerable (and often more enjoyable) because those actions are now connected with a more long-term objective. For example, although most students would rather socialize with friends than study before an exam, clearly understanding that this minor hedonic sacrifice will help them obtain a rewarding job down the line should make it easier to commit to exam prep.

Even as your nose is firmly “to the grindstone,” clear eyes can be trained on a broader life dream. The overarching reason for existence can be found in “God’s plan” or a life calling, but a sense of the why of behaviors is not limited to such grand experiences. Taking time to reflect on your life dreams—to write the next chapters of your life story—can help to connect everyday life and daily goals to broader aspirations. Instead of wandering aimlessly, having “clear eyes” gives you a sense of direction and the motivation (a full heart) to help you achieve your goals and allow those accomplishments to imbue your life with meaning.

Some reasons for goal pursuit may be better than others, though. A person who feels they should perform a task only because their supervisor asked them to do it is unlikely to enjoy a sense of purpose while performing that work. Instead, purposeful behaviors are by definition pursued for more intrinsic reasons, often related to core aspects of one’s identity. For example, people may volunteer at a homeless shelter for various reasons, but the person who does so because they feel their actions are consistent with an internalized value of helping others in need are more likely to derive a sense of purpose from the experience.

The capacity of meaning to allow us to wake up every morning and do what needs to be done requires that meaning be present even in suffering. And this is where a sense of purpose is powerful. Although all human lives matter, they all also end and, in the grand scheme, may not hold the promise of a place in history, threatening our sense of significance. Similarly, although life very often makes sense, random, senseless events do occur that can destabilize our sense of coherence—from natural disasters to random acts of horrific violence. But purpose may be the facet of meaning that is least dependent on happenstance. No matter the circumstance, purpose—the capacity to invest in goals—is available, promising to imbue life with meaning.

Although it may be common folklore that ardently searching for, and effortfully creating, meaning in life is the primary way to truly experience this sought-after feeling, research suggests that most of the time meaning is actually quite easy to detect. Trying to understand why our life is meaningful may serve a function when life becomes incomprehensible, but ultimately it may never yield a satisfying answer. Meaning is not just found in one place. It is all around us—in our relationships, work, and spiritual and religious beliefs, as well as through the appreciating of life itself.

AMBIENT STRESS

August 17, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

Feeling Off? It Could Be ‘Ambient’ Stress

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. . .?

Jamie Ducharme, a reporter for Time Magazine tells us that Americans’ mental health tanked during the first year of the pandemic. More than 36% of U.S. adults experienced symptoms of anxiety or depression in August 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By January 2021, the number was above 40%.

It’s not hard to see why. A novel and scary virus was spreading without vaccines to slow it. Cities and states were in various degrees of lockdown for much of 2020, with many people forgoing special occasions and visits with friends and family. Isolation and fear were widespread, and people had every reason to feel acutely stressed.

But even as lockdowns lifted, people got vaccinated, and life resumed more of its normal rhythms, many people continued to feel…off. In an American Psychological Association survey published in October 2021, 75% of people said they’d recently experienced consequences of stress, including headaches, sleep issues, fatigue, and feeling overwhelmed.

Now, more than two years into the pandemic, many people still haven’t bounced back. One reason could be “ambient stress”—or “stress that’s running in the background, below the level of consciousness,” says New York-based clinical psychologist Laurie Ferguson, who is director of education development at the Global Healthy Living Foundation, a nonprofit that supports people with chronic illnesses.

“There’s something amiss, but we’re not registering it all the time,” Ferguson says. “We’re always just a little bit off balance. We kind of function at a level like everything’s fine and things are normal, when in fact, they’re not.”

In a 1983 article published in the journal Environment and Behavior, researcher Joan Campbell described ambient stressors as those that are chronic and negative, cannot be substantively changed by an individual, usually do not cause immediate threats to life (but can be damaging over time), and are perceptible but often unnoticed. “Over the long run,” Campbell wrote, these stressors could affect “motivation, emotions, attention, [physical] health, and behavior.”

Campbell cited examples like pollution and traffic noise, but it’s also an apt description of this stage of the pandemic. In March 2020, the pandemic was an in-your-face stressor—one that, at least for many people, felt urgent and all-consuming. Two years later, most people have adapted, to some degree. Most people are vaccinated, the news isn’t broadcasting the latest case counts 24/7, and life looks closer to 2019 than 2020. But, whether we’re conscious of it or not, we’re still bearing the psychic toll of two years of death, disease, upheaval, and uncertainty, as well as smaller disruptions like changes to our social or work lives, Ferguson says.

Even ambient stress can have health consequences, as Campbell pointed out. Humans evolved to deal with short-term stressors, but we’re not as good at coping with chronic stress, explains Laura Grafe, an assistant professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College. Chronic stress has been linked to conditions including high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep issues, and mental health and cognitive disorders.

Constant stress can also compound the effects of other stressors. “Everything else just seems worse with the chronic stress of the pandemic going on in the background,” Grafe says.

Ambient stress doesn’t have to zap all the joy from your life, though. In a 2021 study, Grafe and her co-authors examined how pandemic stress and coping strategies affected sleep. Her team found that a person’s sleep quality wasn’t necessarily dictated by their overall level of pandemic-related stress, but rather by how well they coped with that stress. That suggests stress, itself, isn’t necessarily the problem—it’s unmanaged stress.

When stress becomes so routine that we stop acknowledging it, we’re less likely to manage it effectively. As Cambell wrote in 1983, “coping is most likely to occur when the stressor is still novel.” Halfway through 2022, many people have abandoned soothing hobbies like bread-baking, yoga, and knitting that they adopted in spring 2020.

That’s why it’s important to develop sustainable coping strategies, says Niccole Nelson, a postdoctoral research associate in the University of Notre Dame’s psychology department who has also studied pandemic stress. “There’s no single coping strategy that is inherently good or bad,” Nelson says, but it’s often helpful to mentally reframe a stressor as less threatening. That’s difficult to do with something as serious as the pandemic, but Nelson suggests trying it on a smaller scale: finding ways to appreciate the positive aspects of working from home, for example. (Grafe suggests mindfulness exercises and cognitive behavioral therapy to cope with stress.)

Giving your brain new stimuli can also help during a prolonged period of stress, Ferguson says. Even small changes, like eating something new for breakfast or taking a different route for your daily walk, can introduce some healthy novelty. Physical activity is also a tried-and-true stress reduction tactic, she adds.

Simply noticing and naming your ambient stress can also go a long way, Ferguson says. “Even people who have gone ‘back to normal’ still have that ambient stress running, and they may not realize they’re a little more short-tempered, or they’re a little less hopeful,” she says. “It’s subtle, in many ways, and harder to notice” than full-blown pandemic stress, but just as important to manage.
Have you noticed maybe what you haven’t always recognized. . . ?
Maybe the best way to see the
Ambient Stress
in yourself
is just to
S P O T
it in
A N O T H E R. . .

A HOPELESSLY DEVOTED CARING CATALYST

August 12, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

I was in college and trying to pay my way through as best as I could when of all things my grandmother, Vi got me a job that no one knew the implications. It was working at a Pipe/Tobacco store where I sold expensive Meerschaum pipes down to ones that look like Popeye would toke on in between downing cans of spinach.

The real behind the scenes stuff was the great stuff. . .I would cover for Charlie my boss, who was either out cheating on his wife or playing poker with the boys when his wife would call and he’d look the other way when I took REESES CUPS and SNICKERS for dinner; it was a good deal made better when the Pipe shop would close and I would go a half of a block down the street to his retail store where he sold a host of mostly unnecessary plastic objects and a few vinyl records. It was there that I sold hundreds of Olivia Newton-John’s records:

I never tagged her as Country-Western but that’s the section Charlie wanted to peg her under and I spent a lot of time hitting the cash register tune of glorious sales for him and her.

THIS is hardly what anyone would remember about Olivia Newton-John after hearing of her death earlier this week. WHAT IS BEING REMEMBERED AND CELEBRATED is just what a ferocious Caring Catalyst she has always been. Having been diagnosed with Breast Cancer well over 30 years ago, she never took the “WHY ME?” stance or the “I WILL NEVER DIE” denial position; Olivia made sure that something way past her last song would not just be remembered but used her platform to become an advocate, a Caring Catalyst for all cancers–spending tons of time, energy, and money building research organizations, clinics, and more.

Craig Marshall is a guy I met through National Speakers Association who often tells the story:

There’s still Olivia Newton-John…. When I was a monk, I had an coaching session with a man that told me the saddest story I ever heard. He’d been in a car accident, which killed several of his children. His wife was in a coma for months and then died. He lost his job and his dog died. It was sad beyond words. But when he ended telling me his litany of loss, he paused and looked at me and whist-fully said, “But you know what? There’s still Olivia Newton-John!” Years went by, and I found myself sitting at an outdoor restaurant table in Malibu, designing a book cover with my good friend Fred Segal.

After discussing some graphic possibilities, Freddie said, “We’re guys. We need some different input,” and he yelled over to two ladies sitting at a nearby table, “Come over here please.” They came over, sat down, and Fred started asking them about what they thought his book cover should look like. After awhile, for whatever, reason, everyone at the table got up and began talking to friends who’d entered the restaurant, leaving me alone with this poised blonde lady with an English/Australian accent. It suddenly hit me, and I said, “Are you Olivia Newton-John?” and she said yes. I told her, “I’m so glad to meet you because I want to share with you a story of a man who lost almost everything in life, but clung to you as his only inspiration.”

Olivia was always charming, and I ended up hosting several workshops at her home. She was always thoughtful, genuine and just lovely.

I don’t know why people hope their departing loved ones “rest in peace”. I wish for Olivia great music, great fun, and great friends. Her smile is what I’ll remember. It was so dazzling that she never needed to wink. Like that guy, I also believe that there will always be Olivia Newton-John.

ONE OUT OF ONE OF US DIES
is one of the harshest realities ”
any of us with a pulse
will ever wrestle
B U T
there’s something that
goes beyond the Life
we live here
and that’s the
L I F E
and that’s the
E X I S T E N C E
we inspire
in others
even make possible
way after we are gone
. . .that’s a huge part of what it means to be a Caring Catalyst
to begin in others
what will outlast us and even them
but never goes into extinction
as long as we keep sharing our very Best
for the Best of everyone else. . .
Yes, there’s still Olivia Newton-John
a Hopelessly Devoted Caring Catalyst

WE ARE A GENTLE, ANGRY PEOPLE

August 1, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

There are many different covers of this song but I like this version because it reminds me what we know, what we know we know, what we’d bet our lives that we know but for the LIFE OF US never act like we know. . .

WE ARE ALL INSTRUMENTS IN THE SYMPHONY OF THIS UNIVERSE
and the WE ARE AT OUR BESTS when we not only play in unison and harmony but when we just merely play together. . .
WE NEED TO BE THE CHORUS we already long have been and need to be now, UNMUTED, UNDILUTED, PURE, UNADULTERATED, UNFILTERINGLY US. . .

The video starts quietly but builds. I love how the singers end the song. ENJOY!

(My sincerest gratitude and appreciation to G ALA Choruses.)

AGE(LESS)

July 29, 2022 By ChuckBehrens 2 Comments

In the past couple of days I have been reminded
YOUR BIRTHDAY IS COMING UP
and
MAN, YOU’RE GETTING OLD. . .
Luckily
I’ve never been much about
(PERSONAL–MY OWN) Birthdays
and even less about
GETTING OLD
albeit I’m not all that crazy
feeling/seeing/experiencing
the many different ways
the body sneakingly
betrays
when
out of nowhere came
T H I S:

“I asked an elderly man once what it was like to be old and to know the majority of his life was behind him. He told me that he has been the same age his entire life. He said the voice inside of his head had never aged. He has always just been the same boy. His mother’s son. He had always wondered when he would grow up and be an old man. He said he watched his body age and his faculties dull but the person he is inside never got tired. Never aged. Never changed.
Our spirits are eternal. Our souls are forever. The next time you encounter an elderly person, look at them and know they are still a child, just as you are still a child and children will always need love, attention and purpose.”

~ Author unknown & Photography by Rita French
A CALENDAR
WILL NEVER MAKE YOU OLDER
only your
FRAMED IN MIND
can do that. . .
One of the greatest things
hospice has taught me
c o n t i n u o u s l y
since I began
waaaaaaay back a few calendar pages ago in
1994
is out of all the things
L I F E
can take from you
as it
e x t r a c t s
from you
EVEN ON A DEATH BED
my love
and my ability to kindly share it
(especially to share IT)
T H I S
is what it means
not to get older
but become more
much more than an
AGE(LESS)
So I’m just not looking forward to having a few more
Birthday Candles lit
but blowing a few more
o u t. . .

FUNNY BUSINESS

July 22, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

A few years ago I became a
C L L
. . .that’s right,
a real bonafide
CERTIFIED LAUGHTER LEADER
even though
LAUGHING
and attempting to make people
H A P P Y(IER)
has been a life long pursuit of mine. . .
enter the infamous JOYOLOGIST
STEVE WILSON and his beautiful bride, Pamela
I attended their WORLD LAUGHTER TOUR

Steve Wilson| Psychologist | The Joyologist | Cheerman of the Bored
Director-National Humor Month
http://www.worldlaughtertour.com
http://www.humormonth.com
http://www.stevewilson.com
http://www.laughterfoundation.org
Skype: s_h_wilson
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/World-Laughter-Tour/57984062492
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevehwilson
Twitter: (@joyologist)
Phone: 614-855-4733
Blog: http://www.laughterandhumor.blogspot.com

and it was literally
LIFE CHANGING. . .
I have had the privilege/pleasure of actually hosting several LAUGHTER SESSIONS and have shared some of those techniques in several of the presentations I do and believe me, no pun intended. . .
THIS IS NO FUNNY BUSINESS,
in fact the one simple-start-using-it-at-this-very-second-give-a-away
IS FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT. . .
That’s right, even fake laughing for a mere 15-30 seconds gives you all of the health benefits of actually laughing as if you were watching your favorite comedy or having a laughfest with your friends. . .
In fact, SMILING has the same kind of benefits, especially when you feel the least like cracking a smile. . .
and yet even FAKE SMILING opens wide those big Carotid arteries that supply the head and neck with oxygenated blood and instantly changes your mood and demeanor. . .
FUNNY BUSINESS

This past Sunday, Steve DIRECT MESSAGED me the image below

It made me take a look at a pile of books I had in a corner section of the library I have in my basement and WHAAAAAAA-LAAAAAAAA I found this

Lord Is a Whisper at Midnight https://a.co/d/bW9xGyH

book that I hadn’t opened in a while but slid in a chair on a rainy afternoon and let it READ ME as much as I pursued it. . .
FUNNY BUSINESS

I was COLOR BLINDED no more and the smiles weren’t fake

THANK YOU, STEVE WILSON
for HOW-TO
that made the WANT-TO
feel kind of
F U N N Y
naturally. . .

The Power of TEARS

July 6, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

Sometimes it’s not the
OCEAN’S WAVE
but the think stream of an ongoing
T E A R
running down your face
that’s the saltiest. . .
DOES IT MAKE IT ANY LESS
S A L T I E R
IF IT HAS A MEANING. . . ?

How Tears Help Us Overcome Barriers to Empathy

A new study reveals how tears shed by members of socially disadvantaged groups can elicit empathy and support. . .

ASHWINI MURALI is an undergraduate at UC Berkeley studying molecular and cell biology and nutritional sciences, and she is a course assistant for the Bridging Differences and The Science of Happiness at Work MOOCs. In her free time, she enjoys reading about and applying positive psychology principles to her life and has shared with us some important insights. . .

Recent data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees shows that the number of refugees seeking asylum has more than doubled in the past 10 years, with an estimated 84 million people displaced from their homes. Many of these refugees have immigrated to new countries where they may struggle to assimilate and learn the language. In some places, refugees and immigrants become the target of hate crimes: In the United States, for example, crimes targeting people of Asian descent jumped 339% in 2021.

How can we improve empathy and increase kindness toward newcomers? That’s the question tackled by a new study published in the journal Emotion. Magdalena Bobowik and her colleagues investigated a particularly overlooked aspect of behavior toward underprivileged groups: the role that tears play in evoking empathic responses.

The study took place in Spain, where Romanians and Moroccans are dominant immigrant groups. Participants (all native-born Spanish undergraduates) were split into three groups, each of which was shown a Romanian man displaying either neutral, sad, or tearful expressions. The results revealed that participants seeing the tearful expression reported more warmth toward the man, but not more discomfort.

In a similar fashion, researchers then asked participants to rate the face of a Moroccan man—but this time with a fourth expression, where the man was displaying happiness by smiling. In this experiment, researchers found that people were more likely to want to approach the man when he was smiling, and when he was shedding tears. However, they rated the man as less competent when he was sad.

A final experiment involved Syrian refugees. They showed participants a man who was introduced as being from either the same Spanish province as the participant, or as an immigrant who had just moved to the country from Syria. This man displayed either a neutral, sad, or tearful expression, like before.

The results? Whether the man was Spanish or Syrian, participants reported increased feelings of warmth toward him when he was crying. Participants were also more willing to approach and donate money when the Syrian man was crying, compared to when he simply looked sad.

Thus, the study suggests that tears from a member of an underprivileged group are able to heavily influence the emotional response of those who may not normally be so sensitive to socially disadvantaged groups in their country. This may be explained by the way in which “emotional tears shift the perception of a person from being a member of another social group to being included in one’s group category (possibly at a higher level of abstraction, as ‘a human’),” as the authors speculate in the paper.

These findings are in line with other studies that show how exposure to a tearful face increases people’s willingness to share resources. This may be due to the fact that tearful faces are rated as more trustworthy than neutral faces with no tears.

It may also be significant that the researchers asked the participants to see one man, not many. “We have an easier time feeling empathy for one person than for large groups of people,” says Diana Concannon, a psychologist and crisis response expert, in a recent interview. This is likely a result of our brains being unable to comprehend numbers above a certain threshold—so, for instance, the difference between 1.1 million and 1.2 million becomes increasingly difficult for us to visualize. Increased exposure to negative events can also contribute to feelings of desensitization.

This is what makes the findings of the study on tears so valuable: because it recognizes that we still retain the power to empathize with those who may be different from us, and that perhaps this effect is strengthened when we focus on one individual at a time.

It seems like the World has given THE WORLD lots of reasons to cry lately, doesn’t it?
WHICH MEANS
IT HAS GIVEN US LOTS OF REASONS TO NOT JUST NOTICE
BUT ACTUALLY FEEL EMPAHTY
AND TO ACT
or. . .
IS THE EVIDENCE BASED DATA
w r o n g
YOU MAY BE THE PROOF
(either way)

The New SEVEN WONDERS of the World

June 27, 2022 By ChuckBehrens Leave a Comment

“Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it’s what they bring to the world that really counts.“ – Anne of Green Gables

In today’s fast-paced world, that feels more and more like a merry-go-round on a roller coaster got amok, it can be easy to lose sight of what’s important. . .

No, wait. Let’s take that back. 🙂

It’s not really about our world being fast-paced, but maybe as we get older, WE become fast-paced. . . ?

It seems that as a child we intuitively knew the simple things that made life
amazing. . . .

And as adults, it sometimes feel like we have so much to do, so much to be, so much to have. . .

So much so that we need reminders of what it is like to live in a more present, aware, conscious, fulfilling way.

We all need reminders to bring us back to our true selves, and to the miracles present in our lives every single day.

We’ve been often told and most likely been shown, in our World it takes a Village with the subtle reminder that a Village exists in each of us that desperately needs shared/united with the Villages we find in others. . .

UNITE THAT
and you’ll never have to
W O N D E R
about the
W O N D E R S
that make each of us up
that uses the golden strands of
t o u c h
t a s t e
s e e i n g
h e a r i n g
f e e l i n g
l a u g h i n g
l o v i n g
to weave a new tapestry
intermeshing ourselves forever
into the fabric of each other’s lives
never to unravel again. . .
W O N D E R
NEW
WONDERS

Can random acts of kindness actually increase and sustain happiness. . . ?