Category Archives: Creating Joy

Take Joy Whenever You Can

Created October 28, 2022

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

Life today: it would be funny if we were watching it on Saturday Night Live.

We used to say life imitates art. Now we can say life parodies itself. These events today are a satire on who we really are, what we’re really worth.

Mass hysteria creeps up on you like boiling a frog. Who knew we are experiencing mass hysteria right now? It helps to acknowledge it rather than keep mum and look away. The NPR-IBM Watson poll finds that 84% of Americans are angrier today than a generation ago, and 42% are angrier this year than before. The Washington Post just put out an article entitled “On TikTok, Nothing Goes Viral Like Rage”. We the media are feeding the rage when it would be more sensible to calm audiences where feasible. All this scary and angering content coming through the media without solutions being offered is pretty irresponsible.

Irony is that we put fear into people and that leads to suicides, crime, and increased drug and alcohol use. Then the latter things make us, realistically, even more fearful. It’s a self-accelerating equation.

“Fear is the mind-killer.”

–Frank Herbert, Dune

Those of us who can control ourselves need to resolve to not put any more fear into the system. There’s already enough. Adding more is not heading toward solution.

We are acting as if there can never be any negative consequences from pandering to rage and anger. As if it can’t induce revolutions, civil war, pockets of militia takeovers, splits in the police and military, all kinds of negative consequences that will not benefit us.

Thinking merely of money, for those of us in the media business, why do you think advertisers are cutting back on ad spend? Did the rage condition reach a certain level causing forecasters to report upside and downside scenarios with no notion of which will happen? Could rage amplification have had anything to do with that?

What’s a person to do? Rage is fear taking arms. Neither fear nor rage solve whatever problem drove you crazy in the first place. Fear and rage are dangerous signs that the victim is inducing self-harm using time that would be needed to solve whatever the catalyst problem was.

This is similar to not taking a problem seriously enough to actually be forced to think about how the problem could be solved and then to create and execute a plan.

We shall not soon be rid of these troubled times. They will not disappear magically with so many people and so much money polarizing emotionally. Even if the media were to lend a calming hand, some degree of trouble will still lie ahead. We need to prepare ourselves. We need to sober up from the indulgent hysteria.

The same causes as WWII, the same ideologies fighting, inclusive collaboration (Democracy) versus hierarchical meritocracy (today’s rationalization of Authoritarianism). The hierarchical part is the most obvious part of Authoritarianism, the merit part is mostly a matter of who currently has the power, the force, the money. A misleading dichotomy as all dichotomies are. The real answer we will someday realize is to balance them both together, and to do it with respect for all, not just at the end of the game, but with respect to all, at every step along the way there.

If we can sane enough of us in time, we can maybe get away with a cold war with pockets of violence and minimum fallout of all kinds, and a slow process of getting everyone to get with a gung ho program for planet Earth and a let-up of egocentric selfishness. It’s time to take seriously what the body alarms have been trying to wake us up to. The same battle of Good and Evil all over again, except both sides esteem the Good and only subconscious forces keep us apart. If God forced us at gunpoint to have a Huis Clos conversation about it (i.e., locking us up with no other option), we would probably in a matter of time see that rational discourse once it comes on the scene enables win/win scenarios to be concocted. But God is trusting us to make it work, and to make HerHim proud.

So, this is a message for those of us who would be on the side of the adults in the room to take ourselves in hand. To make contingency plans with eyes wide open and courage in our hearts. Before we can approach that we need to purge ourselves of fear and anger. In order to do that we must allocate alone time to contemplate ourselves and meditate, and learn which voices in our heads and impulses truly represent who we are, and which ones are beneath us, dead snake skin to be shorn off. Then we will be ready to lead others during the times of stress. To keep others calm and reasoning toward solutions, rather than helplessly wallowing in problem statement tantrums.

In your self-contemplation you need to first determine all of the things you are afraid of, imagine the scenes that you most do not want to see happen in your real life. Be there, feel it as deeply as you can, as if it were happening to you right now. For each downside scenario, see yourself deal with it. See how you are equal to it. You know what is right and will stand up to the moment should it ever come. Then you can feel that you are prepared and can decide actions you can take to protect your life from that scene ever happening, and then you can take those actions. Those are the sane things to do to solve the problem, do only the sane things from now on.

When you’ve done enough work on your fears to feel the courage in you and be confident of it, also visualize the scenes you would most like to live through. Appreciate those outcomes but don’t be attached to them. Because it is sane to not become attached to outcomes. Being attached to outcomes reduces the probability of experiencing those outcomes. I can’t cite proof for that but my own life has taught it to me and I hope to be able to pass it on to save others pain.

In other words, be stoic. Resigned fatalistically to whatever will come, able to deal with it sanely and constructively, wasting as little time as possible. Why be that way? Because it is pragmatic, it works in the real world, it leads to success, sanity, happiness and joy. It reduces illness and increases immunity. It lets the love out and in.

Crossing a bridge too far for some, sane stoic behavior is in tune with God’s Plan, it helps move the plan forward, whistling while we work.

The processing of fear and anger into solutions and action. The Bible speaks of any given tyrant, “but he hardened his heart” and held on to the rage bringing with it its underlying fear and attachment, and this led to his downfall. The hardening of hearts is out of control nowadays. We are privileged to live in such “interesting” times. We’re living through and collectively inputting into a historic moment – we can act shamefully or the hero/ine in us can emerge. That’s the Big Choice – the meaning of our times. The next octave of WWII, in our laps to handle.

The fear and rage are the ocean we swim in right now. It helps to tune in to your senses and be wherever you are with your environment without admitting the existence of any world beyond your senses and the immediate environment you can see. If you don’t see anything scary or that makes you angry in that scene, credit that. Cut off the thoughts and images and bad feelings associated with stuff that is not there with you right now. Only let in what is there right now. Works even better in nature. This is like an emergency switch for when you start worrying about politics and family safety. If it isn’t Here Now, stop focusing on it except when you have to prepare yourself for something specific.

Take joy at every moment when conditions permit. Choose joy. Fill your minutes and days with Joy as much as you can. Hold darkness at bay. You will be a joy lantern to others, who will like catching it.

Love to all,

Bill

Things We Do Automatically That Do Us No Good

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Created February 4, 2022

Welcome to this week’s Bill Harvey Blog.

We take certain things for granted because everyone else does these things, and we find ourselves just “naturally” doing them as well.

One example is hating. It has no beneficial effect on our own lives to “hate” specific things or people. If we don’t want those things or people in our lives, we can simply avoid them, not think about them, fill our lives with what we do want.

Hating doesn’t add any more efficiency or effectiveness to our own life. Like all negative emotions it has deleterious effects on our physical and mental health. It might give us bad dreams. It might be entangled with other thoughts and emotions in ways that are not obvious. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of precious mental emotional resources. It doesn’t add anything positive to our life. And yet we do it.

Habit. Conditioning. Imitative behavior. Fitting in with everyone else by doing what they all do. These are some of the reasons why it never occurs to us to think rationally about hating.

Hate comes from fear. We are afraid that this person or these people are going to do things that will harm the lives of myself and my loved ones, but we feel powerless to stop that from happening, so our robotical mind leaps to the hasty conclusion that our only recourse is to hate them. Hate therefore is an inner subconscious admission of powerlessness. It is better to retain a footing of having some actionable power that merely needs to be figured out and then carried out. Hate excuses us from thinking creatively about actions that might be taken. Even if such actions seem unlikely to make a difference, there is honor in focusing on action, there is dishonor in giving up and simply hating.

The other thing that stops us from thinking about stopping something like hating, is that we may assume that it’s impossible to stop an emotion, it just arises by itself, that we have no control over it.

That’s untrue. In the Observer state and in the Flow state, we can make decisions and keep to them. We are in a higher state of functioning when we are in in those states. They are apparently our natural states, and our crippled state in which we have no control over ourselves is not our natural state. We have wound up in this dwarfed version of ourselves by collectively drifting into a society that does not support our self-expression in our passion work, nor even enable us to discover what our passion work is. An accelerating society that cannot keep up with its own inventiveness.

It is never too late. We are in a position to lift ourselves out of substandard conditions. First of all, we all want it, that will help. However, we’re not in a state of unity, the kind of unity felt by billions of freedom-loving people during World War II. In that state of unity, and coming from the right place and from the good, we prevailed. We need that same unity today in order to set things right, to wind up even better than we ever were before, doing our favorite “work” which to us is “play”, not having strife with others, not having fear nor hate nor all of the other negative emotions which are so rampant today.

You are the only one who can find the hidden switch in yourself to decide to give up over reacting to everything and everyone, to forgive yourself and everyone and start fresh with everyone.

All the world needs now is forgiveness. We have drifted into hate by our loyalty to one group or another. Loyalty is a good thing. Too much of a good thing is where bad things come from. If we wish to express ourself by the groups we belong to, that’s good, but we should think big. Like loyalty to God. Like loyalty to the human race. Like loyalty to the United States of America.

Once we get stuck on loyalties of a more fragmented nature, the likelihood that it can cause harm to our lives begins to increase. The things that made us join one political party may have been right at the time, but things change, the people involved change, the agendas change, and inflexible loyalty under those conditions isn’t fair to ourselves, it’s not thinking rationally about what really moves us forward as an individual.

Judgment of others is not necessary. One can leave them to what they want to be. Hate is preceded by judgment. Neither one is necessary to our own evolution. They are both a waste of time.

Jesus said, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

Your mind can be cleansed by you yourself and it will perform better when released from irrelevancies and poisons.

If you find yourself unable to forgive yourself, ask yourself, have you learned the lesson from the situation about which you can’t forgive yourself? If the answer is no, you must figure out the lesson, and then forgive yourself, knowing that you can react the right way the next time such a situation arises. (Not forgiving yourself after learning what to do next time is a waste of time and evidence of neurosis.) This is rational self-management, like you would expect a manager to exercise over a business. This is where the higher states of consciousness operate.

If you can’t find it in your heart to forgive Republicans, or Democrats, you can’t apply the same procedure. You can’t guarantee that all Democrats or all Republicans have learned their lessons from whatever it is you hold against them. You need to forgive them in advance of such reformation. This is simply because you can only take responsibility for yourself, you can’t control others. Then what is the justification for forgiving them? Because judgment is not yours to pass. “Judgment is mine,” saith the Lord. Live and let live. You know how hard it is to be a human being in this world as it is now. You can help others by forgiving them. If you run up against someone who is unquestionably doing terrible things, and you feel it’s up to you to stop them, then do that, while still forgiving them and stopping hating them because those things don’t help.

“Even forgive a murderer? Even forgive a mass murderer?” Yes, why not, all you are doing is cleansing your own heart, mind, body, and soul, it will make you more effective, and forgiving does not require condoning.

Why make such a profound change in your behavior now, after all these years of life? Because the world is in terrible danger. Civilization is fraying. Species becoming extinct one after another. We need two things to change fast: Unity to work cooperatively and respectfully with one another, not wasting time with insults. Unity within our self, finding our ideal self and sticking to it to the exclusion of old habits. It’s the Supreme Test.

Who could be placing us into the situation of a Supreme Test? It could only be a Supreme Being.

Let’s rise to the occasion and take action toward unity instead of making little excuses, blaming and hating others, and dodging the work we have to do on ourselves to become the Supreme Self within us.

A Time for Love, Forgiveness, and Flow State

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Created November 4, 2021

In the prior issue, taking a page from Freud’s id, ego, superego division of consciousness, but altering it to suit my own experience, I defined three places you could be at any given moment:

Seated in the essence of your Self, the experiencer, enjoyer, observer, taking it all in without excessive caring, in a state of high indifference, accepting what is and gleaning whatever pleasure you could get out of it (Freud characterized the id quite differently, more like an animal)
In the current normal state of win/lose consciousness, instantly judging, always comparing to the ideal state and feeling cheated (Ego)
Beating yourself up for some perceived failing (Superego)

In the prior post we provided an exercise to help you discern which state you are in.

Now, to take it a step further, let us reveal that Flow state is when your Self (the #1 state described above) is in control of your entire being.

In my psychological theory, it is the proclivity to spend time in those other two states which is responsible for keeping us, as a race, out of the Flow state.

Come with me at least provisionally and see if it doesn’t help you experience Flow more frequently, including right now as you read this.

Spurn mundane consciousness, the life we have all been living, sucked into such attachment to conditioned target objectives that in today’s multi-challenged world, we are angry and disappointed nearly all the time, because it covers our fear of even more tragic losses ahead.

Choose the mind that is different, that is above the madding crowd, the perspective of a Plato or Aristotle or Buddha or Jesus The Christ.

Whether you “believe in” God or not, the thoughts and words of people like these have come down to us through the ages and continue to sparkle with eminent truth. Let’s take Jesus as their exemplar for the purpose of achieving Flow state as Jesus did.

We call ourselves a Christian country, and seeing the hand touch of Biden on Macron it feels like we are what we say. There is love and shared humanity in that touch, humility in the gesture and kindness in the response. These qualities are not exclusive to any one group of human beings, in my worldview everyone, in their Self (#1 above), reverberates with these loving, forgiving values.

United we stand, divided we fall, has never been more true than today. Forget parties, who did what to whom, let’s forgive it all at once, one big forgiving, and get on with it, working cooperatively to overcome the numerous threats to our existence which we ourselves have created by spending lifetimes in states #2 and #3.

World leaders, readers, I’m not saying to stop what you’re doing, by all means, keep up the great work, just be sure to always do it in the spirit of true love, friendship, and forgiveness, so as to evoke the Flow state in yourself and in all of us. The more of us in the Flow state, the easier it is for the rest of us to get there, because we’re all connected.

No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man

is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;

if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe

is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as

well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine

owne were; any mans death diminishes me,

because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

–John Donne

Let’s each of us make ourselves and the people around us happy by staying in loving forgiving Flow all the time. We can do it. It’s just a matter of learning attitude control.

Like in an airplane. The rudder and ailerons are the control surfaces, and we have controls in our hands and feet. Except you are the airplane, and the control surfaces are inside you, you have to learn to use them.

Nothing else, I predict, is going to get the human race out of this befouled nest of our own making. It will be an upsurge in understanding that the solution lies within each one of us, that it isn’t just talk, it’s science.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi just passed away very recently. He coined the term Flow. He proved it was real by training the University of Chicago (where he was head of the psychology department) hockey team to win by inner attitude control. He was an advisor to my nonprofit Human Effectiveness Institute, which puts out this free course in a blog.

Beware of darkness, as George Harrison wrote, don’t let the world get you down, when you sense anything making you feel bad realize that you have slipped into either state 2 or 3, and get back into 1. Don’t make it bad, as the Beatles wrote in Hey Jude. It is what it is. Labelling it bad immediately lowers your effectiveness and your energy level. Don’t label it at all, just let it go and spring back to 1. That is the only thing you ever need to remember.

Let me leave you with a song that is just right for the moment, sing along below.

Love to all,

Bill

Get Together

Song by The Youngbloods

Love is but a song we sing
Fear’s the way we die
You can make the mountains ring
Or make the angels cry
Though the bird is on the wing
And you may not know why

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

Some may come and some may go
He will surely pass
When the one that left us here
Returns for us at last
We are but a moment’s sunlight
Fading in the grass

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

If you hear the song I sing
You will understand, listen
You hold the key to love and fear
All in your trembling hand
Just one key unlocks them both
It’s there at your command

Come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

I said come on, people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
Right now
Right now

MAKING YOUR LIFE GREAT DESPITE NOT GETTING ALL THE BREAKS

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Created July 23, 2021

Forgive me, I must admit I wasn’t thinking of you, my regular readers, when I wrote this. I was writing this to your kids, or grandkids, or more likely to young people you may know who didn’t grow up nourished by your wisdom. Please do pass this along to anyone you know whom you feel could benefit from it, people who are having a hard time. Thanks!

67.7% of people with a net worth of $30 million or more today were not born into rich families. They made it on their own.

More than ever, some people born in poverty are making it. It’s the best time to be alive if you’re an average person without all the breaks. With the internet all of knowledge is available to you.

Now that I’ve gotten your attention by talking about money, let’s be clear that it isn’t the most important goal, it’s just something you need because of the way the world is set up. California is already beginning to move by cautious partial steps toward a guaranteed minimum income for everyone. Someday that may be the way the world works. For now, money is something to take into account in your planning, but it’s not the purpose of your life.

What’s really important is finding and doing your passion work. That also happens to be the way that you will be happier, more fulfilled, and more effective at everything in life. And it may also wind up making you the most money too, although you’d be happier doing your passion work and just getting by as far as money is concerned, than if you end up doing work that is just so-so for you, while making more money, having more one-night stands (which the culture has brainwashed young people to highly value), and owning more trophy things than your crowd.

While they may all continue to go down the other path of impressing others with mundane things, you ought to take the route that will make the most of your life, and of your gifts.

If you don’t think you are gifted, you haven’t made enough of an objective study of yourself. We all have things that we do better than most people. Things that you enjoy doing and which you do well are the clues to what you are alive to do.

Once you have studied yourself enough and have a vague glimmering or a specific idea of what you want to be doing for the rest of your life, then you need to set a first firm direction in life, select the kind of organization or the specific organization you want to work for, or you want to create. You may change course later on or not, but you need a first base to run to.

You just figure out where you could show your skills to the greatest degree, and go there, humbly learn the ropes, then stay humble.

Humility is another side of nobility.

Human collective unconscious probably programs the brain to enable humans to sense noble people. Such people are respected and their opinions sought.

How can you be noble?

Just take responsibility for doing good in every moment.

Be grateful every moment for being alive.

Be kind to everyone.

That’s all it is!

To summarize, you follow your strengths, envisioning the target state, act nobly with kindness.

A few simple rules that will take you to your destination.

Best to all,

Bill

The Human Effectiveness Institute

New tools to focus the mind, enabling higher performance

Category Archives: Creating Joy

Take Joy Whenever You Can

Things We Do Automatically That Do Us No Good

A Time for Love, Forgiveness, and Flow State

MAKING YOUR LIFE GREAT DESPITE NOT GETTING ALL THE BREAKS