Happiness is so elusive. We all want it, our country was founded on our unalienable right for the “pursuit of happiness”, but we are always just below the mark. It’s not that we are necessarily unhappy; we just aren’t as happy as we could be.

Now that January has passed, New Year’s resolutions have fallen by the wayside. Best-selling author, Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project, part memoir, part self-help, lays out a guide for how she systematically achieved happiness in a year.

After extensive research, from Zen philosophy to Benjamin Franklin’s own system of self-improvement, Gretchen has done the legwork into what really works to alter behavior enough to reach a higher level of happiness. Rather than spending an entire year on one or two changes, Gretchen devotes one month to one large goal, each with bite-size steps to achieve that goal.

Gretchen is candid in her success (and failure) each month. Her openness helps you have an ally in your own quest for happiness. It is easy to fall into step alongside her.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change It

by Charles Duhigg

Random House (March 6, 2012)

As you get over 60 you begin to see your earned self in the mirror. Gradually, you begin feeling the results of your behavior. You may have consciously chosen earlier to build habits that have now become automation in your lifestyle.

Your habits may have changed you into something that now might not feel right or intended. You begin to understand how, as an old guy, you’ve gotten to where you are. The option of rebuilding reconstructive patterns is a choice you can make.

It’s obviously difficult to find and practice new helpful routines whenever you recognize the habits that got you worn out. I’ve found that breaking down old unconscious habits to be difficult, but it seems even harder to stick with new ones even though they add to life’s pleasures.

The Power of Habit has come along to help those like me to chisel away at a father time’s work. It’s about creating new patterns (constructive and conscious) so that they become automatic as any other routine.

Habit change is grounded in two basic rules. First, find the oblivious cue and second, clearly define the reward. Studies have found that people who have successfully started new exercise routines stick with their workouts better if they find a specific cue. My cue for exercise right now is 7:15 a.m. Research on dieting that predetermines cues (i.e., planning meals in advance) helps define rewards and more consciousness of behavior results.

The Power of Habit is divided into three sections.

Part One: The Habits of Individuals

Individuals are explained by using loops: cue, routine, reward.

These loops can become instilled in our behavior, then become unconscious and lead to cravings and addictions. Habits can be changed by changing the loop, keeping the cue and the reward the same but changing the routine.

Through consciously changing the routine, you can build new and more constructive habits yielding a similarly rewarding experience.

Part Two: The Habits of Successful Organizations

I found this section to be the most interesting. I think anyone interested in doing better work should read this section. Work is so constant that bad habits can seem almost acceptable to the individual. Unconsciously, bad habits unfairly affect coworkers which bring down the whole group work ego, individually and collectively.

Example: The powerful effects of cell phone in our social media age feed the desire to be distracted from your work efforts. Constant interruptions leading to non-productivity in your work day. An unconscious phone habit (or addiction) is a poor routine for maximizing rewards from effort.

Our work habits are so important because the product is also reflected in our ability to have a positive lifestyle outside of work.

Part Three: The Habits of Society

Duhigg uses Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus project to explain his point on group habits. For us Southerners, this example is insightful and easy to relate to. This fine book concludes by addressing our free will and the responsibility we have for ourselves. We choose for ourselves the amount of awareness we have about our habitual behaviors.

I think anyone interested in self improvement would benefit from reading The Power of Habit. I feel we all could use more habit awareness, increasing the ability to have more good habits and a happier, more actualized life.

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (Random House, March 2012)

‘”What about mamma?”  The woman psychiatrist asks her patient, another woman, who is lying on a divan in the early 1960s.  “What about mamma been doing to you, dear?  I know she’s given you the enemas,”  the psychiatrist continues.  “And filled your bladder up with cold water, and I know she used the flashlight on you, and I know she stuck the washcloth in your mouth, cotton in your nose so you couldn’t breathe…What else did she do to you?  It’s all right to talk about it now.”

“My mommy,” the patient answers groggily.  She is in a hypnotic trance, induced with the help of the psychiatrist.

“Yes.”

“My mommy said I was bad, and…my lips were too big…she slapped me…with her knuckles…she said don’t tell Daddy.  She said to keep my mouth shut.”

“Mommy isn’t going to ever hurt you again,” the psychiatrist answers.  “Do you want to know something, Sweety?  I’m stronger than mother.”‘

These are the opening lines of Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan a book about the three (or nineteen) women behind one of the most famous multiple personality cases in history.

Meet Shirley A Mason from Dodge Center, Minnesota: artist from a young age, only child in a devout Seventh-Day Adventist family with a nervous, controlling mother.  This is the young woman who would later claim to have sixteen different personalities while in the care of the famous Dr. Connie Wilbur.

Sybil Exposed takes you through Shirley’s life, Dr. Wilbur’s psychiatric practices and the writing career of Flora Schreiber, author of Sybil.  The book tells the story of how these three women meet and end up in business together to create the cultural phenomenon of Sybil.

You the reader get to decide if Shirley really did indeed suffer from multiple personalities or if these women were only out to get their own.

by Zita

The Procrastination Equation: How to Stop Putting Things on Off and Start Getting Stuff Done

by Piers Steel, Ph.D.

Harper Collins (2011)

For the last few months, I’ve been thinking about why distractions, so constant in modern life, keep us from having authentic face-to-face experiences. It seems every experience is interrupted by someone informing us of something consequential or not. Often these interruptions seem to caused by device hypnosis. I think this psychologically distracting habit is interesting especially when this behavior seems to destroy concentration and even to the point of producing rude self-centeredness. In the workplace, interruptions lead to poor customer service and can infringe on other coworkers’ time and focus.

Procrastination has been identified as not just a delay but an irrational one. That is when we voluntarily put off tasks despite believing ourselves to be worse off by doing so. We know we are acting against our own best interests. Self-deception and procrastination go hand and hand, exploiting the thin line between couldn’t and wouldn’t by exaggerating the difficulties we face and come up with justifications even if we don’t vocalize them.

Procrastination is to suffer from weak impulse control, lack of persistence, lack of work discipline, lack of self-management skill, and the inability to plan ahead of time. Even after starting, a procrastinator is easily distracted. Putting off responsibilities inevitably follows. This behavior is especially rude and counterproductive in the work environment. It’s almost like a learned helplessness which decreases the pleasure and quality of life, and its source is likely procrastination.

Impulsiveness shares the strongest bond to procrastination, for example, cell phones are responded to by people who act without thinking. Those who act on impulse are more likely procrastinating. In the retail world, impulse results in unwanted purchases leading to impulse buys and decreasing the customer’s opportunity for good service. Our love affair with the present moment and immediate gratification is the root of this process.

So attached it seems are cell phones and computer that they seem embedded, not only within people’s lives but that they are an actual part of their body, even to the extent that when they are not around people can experience a phantom limb syndrome, for example, a faux cell phone arm. Americans on the average watch 4.7 hours of TV. By doing this, the TV is controlling part of our mental body. Does this create a faux TV brain?

In the short term, we can regret what we do; but in the long run, we regret what we don’t get done.  When interrupted by a device, it takes approximately 15 minutes to refocus. About two hours of our work day is lost to interruption and less productivity, i.e., entertainment for the employee paid for time. Could this be called shoplifting or just stealing?

If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Every indecision brings about delays in usually costly and unproductive efforts. These types of effort produce drudgery and decrease the flow of total engagement which in turn decreases creativity. A bigger picture understanding is clobbered by this narrowness of effort, thus producing less work success and reward.

Proper goal setting is the smartest thing you can do to battle your own procrastination. Framing our goals breaks down big picture success into short term objectives. Routines get stronger with repetition, and so does the habit become stronger every time you slack off or interrupt yourself with your cell phone, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you protect and nurture your routine with good habits, it will eventually protect you.

If you are in a small business and want good service generated by right-minded efforts that lead to you enhancing your community, I suggest Steel’s book. Managing your time and those you employ correctly eventually makes your efforts have longer constructive effects for your business and your community.

If these ideas interest you, your time reading The Procrastination Equation will give you plenty to think about.

Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy by David Richo (Shambhala, 2010)

Trust is defined as “a firm and hopeful reliance on the fidelity, integrity, or in the ability of a person or thing.” It is not dependency but rather an inner assurance, a confidence that gives us a sense of security, a reliance on reliability. Trust happens in the present and connects past experience with future possibility. Trust can be damaged at anytime. The foundation of trust is “I trust myself with whatever you do.”

Being a fan of David Richo’s work, I jumped to read his new book. I finished reading Trust some time ago, however, it’s taken me a while to come to terms about writing my thoughts on this broad and deep book. I don’t recall reading a book solely devoted to trust before.

The way we trust openly reflects our inner self and from which we learn and grow. Our declaration of our history of trust is essential in understanding ourselves and growing in intimacy with those we love. Learned through our experience we cannot always trust ourselves, our neurotic ego shield is constantly a blink away.

Richo’s new book is about how to trust and how to be trustworthy. He explains four directions our trust can take:
1. toward others

2. toward ourselves

3. toward reality

4. toward a higher power or spiritual path

He explores trust groups by helping us understand the difference between the way a child trusts and the way adults trust. As we grow in our understanding of trust, we become more adept as setting boundaries so that we are not taken advantage of.

By explaining intelligent distrust, we grow in our capacity to trust. By studying our shadow, we gradually thin the effects of youthful trust factors which influence our neurotic reactions and hinder the present.

My previous Richo reading has helped me in a large way to understand my adult self. Daring to Trust helps you consider, understand and forgive injustices you have created–those that have caused you harm and mistakes you have made towards others. Coming to an understanding with trust worthiness enables you to view your loves ones, family, partner, pals, and coworkers in a growing, sharing way basically centered around genuine love and care. I cannot express enough to David what seriously reading this book has meant to me. This is a book to share with all, especially those who have been dealt hurtful blows by others. For those readers who feel comfortable with others, reading Daring to Trust helps you see why you feel more secure.

It would give me great pleasure for Lemuria to host David in Jackson and to make our community more aware of his excellent work. I have no hesitation in recommending his books to any of Lemuria’s readers. His efforts will have effects if you take his insight to heart and practice awareness in your daily activities.

Our community of Jackson could use his influence and insightful awareness.

Click here for a full listing of David’s books.

Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely (Harper, 2008)

Dan Ariely defines predictably irrational: Our irrationality happens the same way again and again; our irrational behaviors are neither random or senseless, they are systematic and since we repeat them again and again, predictable.

Predictably Irrational (PI) addresses imprinting, why we stick with decisions once they are made. In running a small business in a highly competitive marketplace, it is important to learn about consumer behavior and loyalty. PI is thought-provoking as it addresses why and how consumer ch0ices are made. Lemuria wants our readers to understand their reading choices. We encourage those decisions to be made consciously, with book purchases adding the highest reader value for the time spent.

Ariely explores why we stick with decisions once they are made. Reading his case studies allows us to reflect on our own habits and understanding their results. Irrational behaviors are neither random or senseless, they are systematic and predictable. We often make the same mistakes over and over again responding to the basic wiring of our brain. Two sections that spoke to me were the explorations of predictably irrational as an explanation of our consumer and workplace habits.

As we spend our money, most transactions have a downside, but when something is free we forget the downside. Free gives us an emotional charge that causes us to perceive that the free item is immensely more valuable than it really is. Ariely asserts this is because humans are intrinsically afraid of loss. From a consumer perspective, one association I have with “free” is with Amazon shipping which causes us to fall into the trap of buying something we don’t need but emotionally think we want. As consumers actualize, I feel manipulative strategies of the “sucker punch” marketing will become less influential in the future. Marketing “Free” and “Sale” should digress as consumers become more aware of these deceptive tendencies. To buy in excess just because something is free or on sale is another predictably irrational behavior.

On the other hand, how often do we experience marketing that tells the consumer that a high price is simply the high price of ownership, the high price of a social relationship, or the high price of being unique–causing us to pay more than we feel we should. This causes more emotional loss than we gain from the product or the experience.

I especially enjoyed Ariely’s section on predictably irrational in the workplace. He addresses procrastination and self control at work and why we lose this fight so often. Giving up our long term goals for immediate gratification is procrastination. We forget the problems these poor choices cause fellow workers whose tasks are dependent on others time lines. All good small business owners know that everyone has problems with procrastination. Management’s job of getting workers to recognize and admit their weaknesses is difficult. However, those workers that deal with these issues responsibly are in better position to utilize the tools to overcome their work flaws, thus doing a better job and increasing their take home rewards.

The author also addresses dishonesty and what we can do about it. He explains the method to our madness of being prone to steal when cash is not involved. Cash ties in a directness to a person which is more prohibitive than not paying on charge accounts. Or, the idea that you would steal music off the Internet easily but wouldn’t consider shoplifting a CD from a store. I wonder are publishers going to have this problem with e-books in the future.

Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational is an easy-to-read cultural study. If you like reading Malcolm Gladwell, this might be a book for you.