It's Brutal Honesty Time

This is not the blog I intended to write today. My intention was to write an uplifting article about the remarkable power of resilience, but I had to finish another assignment first. This is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and I had to write an article about dangerous websites that promote eating disorders.

As I was researching these websites I felt my insides literally churning. As I wrote about the need to instill in teens and adolescents messages of body confidence, hope and self-esteem, I came face-to-face with a brutal truth: I was disingenuous.

For years I've written, spoke, , trained about the importance of understanding one's self-worth. I even coined the phrase that self-worth is one element of the equation that makes for self-esteem: Self-confidence plus self-worth equals self-esteem. And let me tell you, I talk the talk about this pretty darned well. I encourage people to look at themselves in the mirror, to look straight into their eyes and tell themselves one good thing about themselves every day. I have them do this exercise to build a list of characteristics and traits that comprise their self-worth. And I encourage them to do this exercise with their children, too, because I do believe that if one is clear about one's self-worth, it is harder for one's self-confidence to be shaken. Or if one's self-confidence is shaken, rattled and rolled, you will be able to pick yourself up off the floor much quicker.

I also write, speak, teach, and train about the importance of exploring one's life story and getting to the truth of the habits that do not serve you. Our adult conception of the world comes from within and is self-directed. And so we need to look back at those early lessons, those habits we have developed, and determine if they serve us or if they do not serve us. And then we must ask ourselves: Is this the kind of person I want to be? I teach this because I do believe that it is in examining and understanding the larger context of our lives that we can live a more flourishing life.

So, why have I been disingenuous? Okay... Here it goes. (Read full article here)

How Taking One Small Step Can Change Your Life

Can taking one, small step really change your life? Proponents of kaizen think so. (And for the record, so do I.) Kaizen is a means of making great and lasting change through small, steady increments. Kaizen's practical roots are based in the Japanese management concept for incremental (gradual, continuous) change (improvement): breaking tasks into small, manageable steps.

However, kaizen is also a way of life philosophy based on making little changes on a regular basis; it's about finding new, creative, and effective ways to improve one's life... from tackling the mundane to managing our stress to attaining our life vision.

Case in point ... (Read more)

Giving and Receiving With Grace

In the coming weeks, the No. 1 question most of us will be asked is, "What did you get?" While the Christmas season is rooted in the Christian faith -- a faith that teaches benevolent and charitable giving -- Buddha, too, offered a succinct lesson in giving and getting.

When we give to others, we give without expectation of reward. We give without attachment to either the gift or the recipient. The practice of giving is thought to be one of the most basic human virtues, a testament to the depth of our humanity, and for Buddhists, one's capacity for self-transcendence.

Author Karen Armstrong makes the observation that the concept of self-transcendence is bound up with the golden rule: "Treating others as you yourself would like to be treated." When we transcend our limited self, this rule becomes an inherent part of our own nature, and other people an extended part of our own reality. For this reason, learning to receive is equally vital.

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A Lesson In Resilience

On a brisk September day in 1620, 102 passengers and a crew of roughly 30 left England embarking on a grueling 66-day journey marked by disease and death. According to history, the Pilgrims undertook the voyage to escape religious persecution in England. The Mayflower, originally destined for the mouth of the Hudson River at the northern edge of England's Virginia colony, went off course and settled in Cape Cod Bay. All surviving passengers moved ashore and colonized at Plymouth.

What we learn from the Pilgrim story is a remarkable example of the resilience. The resilient pilgrims had the ability to look at critical situations in a new way, finding creative approaches toward solving a problem.
(Read more)

Life Is What You Do

In 1969, Joseph Stein together with John Kander (music) and Fred Ebb (lyrics) adapted the novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis into a Broadway musical. The show opens (and ends) with the song "Life Is," with lyrics that bolster Alexis Zorba's credo that you must grab life while you can.

In 1978, I was a graduate student and teaching assistant with the philosophy department at Miami University. One interdisciplinary course that I taught was "Confronting Death." During class one day, I asked my students, "If you were given the option to know when you were going to die, would you want to know?"

While some said no, others were adamant about their yes. Pressing on a bit I then asked, "What would be the benefit of that knowledge?"

Many students thought it would help them to plan their lives. I recall comments such as:

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Have a joyful day everyone. And remember to live a flourishing life.
Rita
www.ritaschiano.com

To learn more about how you can live a flourishing life, please visit my web site, www.liveaflourishinglife.com.

How Distracted Are You?

It is not surprising that modern day life is often referred to as the "culture of distraction." We are bombarded with information 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And yet, most of us cannot get enough. We channel surf, search the Web, talk and text, drive and text, drive and talk, drive and talk and text. It is no wonder we are driven to distraction.

The term "multi-tasking" originated in the computer engineering industry, and refers to the simultaneous execution of more than one program or task by a single computer processor. What we engage in is human multi-tasking -- the performance by an individual of appearing to handle more than one task at the same time. The operative word being "appearing."

When you stop and think about it, the human brain is really quite amazing. According to a study conducted at the University of California, San Diego, the average American consumes 34 gigabytes worth of information a day, that's about 100,000 words. Now, clearly we don't parse a full 100,000 words each day, but that rather staggering figure does infiltrate our eyes and ears and minds via the Internet, television, radio, iPods, text messaging, cell phones, video games, Wii and oh so much more.
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Have a joyful day everyone. And remember to live a flourishing life.
Rita
www.ritaschiano.com

To learn more about how you can live a flourishing life, please visit my web site, www.liveaflourishinglife.com.

Connect With Your Friends

When is the last time you heard the voice of a friend or loved one who you don't see regularly? How often do you find yourself thinking, "I need to give (fill in the name) a call" and then days, weeks, even months later you have the same thought because you never made the call?

One of the main reasons we don't make the call is because "life" gets in the way -- family obligations, kids ballgames or concerts, household tasks, to name a few -- and we let those friendships slide. While we have good intentions to get together, to share a meal, we unintentionally keep delaying and delaying that get-together or phone call, putting it off to tomorrow, the next day, and then the next. And as the old maxim goes: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Time slips past us much too rapidly. I learned this lesson all too well and too painfully a few years ago. I had a lovely friend named Lydia. She didn't live that far from me -- about seven or eight miles away. Whenever I would bump into her at the grocery store, or see her at a gathering, I'd relish our brief time together.
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Have a joyful day everyone. And remember to live a flourishing life.
Rita
www.ritaschiano.com

To learn more about how you can live a flourishing life, please visit my web site, www.liveaflourishinglife.com.

On 9/11 Anniversary, Channel Your Stress Positively

It was about 7:15 a.m. Mountain Standard Time when the phone rang that Tuesday morning, Sept. 11, 2001. We were packing our suitcases, preparing for the second leg of our Colorado vacation. Suddenly, a cry rang out from upstairs. "Turn the television on! Hurry! Something horrible is happening!" As our friends scrambled downstairs, we bumped into one another in the rush to get to the television in the adjacent room. The screen came to life, and the first image I saw was the instant replay of United Flight 175, the second plane, flying into the south tower. I watched in horror over the next hour as the twin towers burned and then crumbled to the ground.

New York City had been my home several years before moving to Massachusetts. I had attended business meetings in those towers, ate at the Windows On The World restaurant. I knew tens of thousands of people worked in those buildings. And the most horrifying thought of all -- I had family and friends who worked there. Despite my psychological paralysis, I kicked into gear, calling the car rental company to see if I could change my local use contract to a one-way, 2,000-mile trip with a drop-off in Massachusetts. All I wanted to do was get home.

As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on our nation draws near, we find ourselves bombarded with a multitude of "Remembering 9/11" documentaries and special reports featuring images ...

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Have a joyful day everyone. And remember to live a flourishing life.
Rita
www.ritaschiano.com

To learn more about how you can live a flourishing life, please visit my web site, www.liveaflourishinglife.com.

How Well Do You Weather Life's Storms?

Willa Cather wrote: "There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." How well we weather the tempests in life, how quickly we bounce back from adversities and calamities, depends largely on our level of resilience.

Research on resilience has shown us that people who cannot deal with their emotions may become more narrow-minded and rigid in their view of themselves and their place in the world. A lack of understanding of our personal histories -- what Aristotle called the habits that serve us and the habits that don't serve us -- keeps us from adapting when new stresses affect us. We fall back on old thought patterns, old behaviors that keep us spinning our wheels and stuck in the muck and mire of dysfunction. You know the scenario: Different situation, different set of circumstance, same old lousy outcome.... (Read full blog at The Huffington Post and AOL Healthy Living.)

Live's Little Annoyances (Don't Let Them Get To You)

Critical, and sometimes life-altering, situations can happen that throw us totally off kilter: losing one's job, developing a serious illness (oneself or a loved one), or natural disasters such as floods, paralyzing snow and/or ice storms, hurricanes or tornadoes. How well we weather these devastating, out of our control circumstances depends on the strength of our resiliency.

Resilience, as defined by the American Psychological Association, is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of stress. It is the ability to "bounce back" after a major disruption in our lives.

Yet, there is another realm of situations, also out of our control,... (Read full post at The Huffington Post and AOL Healthy Living.)

8 Ways To Bring Stillness Into Your Life

Deepak Chopra wrote: "Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence."

Noise is a prime environmental cause of stress. Noise pollution triggers the body's stress response, releasing stress hormones into your autonomic nervous system. In recent years, stress hormones such as adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol have been used in noise studies to gauge the association between noise exposure and heart disease, hypertension and stress. (Read full post at The Huffington Post and AOL Healthy Living.)

Letting Go of Yesterday's Hurts

If you can tell a story about how you were wronged last month, last year, five, even 10 years ago with the same vehemence, anger and ire, then you have not let go of it! What happened has happened. What was done is done. Over, finis.

Like a dog with a bone, we can gnaw on old wounds or injustices, reliving every detail over and over, thereby keeping them raw in our minds. Picking at our painful past keeps us from healing psychically and emotionally and threatens our physical health. Letting go increases physical and emotional well-being.

Read full post at AOL Healthy Living and The Huffington Post.