Money Doesn’t Make You Happy!
“Remember that very little is needed to make a happy life.”
–Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor and Philosopher, A.D.121-180)
I recently wrote about a common myth: thinking that there is a connection between income level, health and longevity. Once you have passed a certain low threshold, this connection between income and health does not hold. Quite obviously living in abject poverty in the Horn of Africa or on the streets of New York is associated with all manner of physical and psychological challenges, but once people have reached a certain economic level there are other far more important determinants of health. We cannot use longevity as a justification for capitalism!
We now have a new piece of research that is also intuitively obvious: there is no link between wealth and happiness. You have only to look at the unhappy lives of so many people in the public eye to see that for yourself, and you have probably seen it in people around you. Many wealthy people are profoundly unhappy and some get into substance abuse or other high-risk activities.
Why should this be? People often tend to exaggerate the contribution of income to happiness because they focus on conventional achievements when evaluating their life or the lives of others.
Like success, happiness is subjective.
When taking stock of your life, it is a really good idea to try and score your levels of happiness, balance and satisfaction along five dimensions: physical, psychological, social, subtle and spiritual. In the book and CD program Healing, Meaning and Purpose, I give some very precise ways of doing that. There’s not much point in living in a big house on a hill, if you are rattling around in it on your own. What contribution are you making? And what will be your legacy?
“Happiness is the very nature of the Self; happiness and the Self are not different. There is no happiness in any object of the world. We imagine through our ignorance that we derive happiness from objects. When the mind goes out, it experiences misery. In truth, when its desires are fulfilled, it returns to its own place and enjoys the happiness that is the Self.”
–Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic and Spiritual Teacher, 1879-1950)
Technorati tags: Happiness Wealth Ramana Maharshi
Dissing Descartes
Every clinician has been asked the question, “Is the pain in my body, or is it all in my mind. Am I imagining it?” I have seen countless students and young doctors get themselves into a hopeless tangle over that question. And the answer to “is it the body or the mind?” should be “Yes.” If a person is suffering, they are suffering, and pain coming form the mind is every bit as real to them as pain coming from any other part of their anatomy.
But hidden within this question is a mistake that can be traced back to the French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes who, in 1641, proposed that there was a neat split between the soul and the body. He actually envisioned an independent soul that inhabited and interacted with the body by opening little trap doors in the brain. This later became interpreted as a neat split between the mind and the body. He was by no means the first person to propose this. Twelve hundred years earlier Numidian-born Theologian, Saint Augustine of Hippo proposed something very similar. This idea of a clear split has informed our thinking for over three hundred years, yet it is probably wrong. And as with the opening question about “is my problem in my body or in my mind,” it has great practical implications: falsely locating the nature, origin and priority of symptoms.
Another practical implication of this artificial split is that by imagining a mechanical clockwork universe divorced from mind or spirit, we have removed value and meaning from the world. Indeed, some scientists take an extreme view, and say that there is no place for value, purpose or meaning in the universe, and that they are simply artificial creations of the mind. I have had some interesting discussion with people who have gone to far as to say that consciousness itself is no more than a set of reflexes in the brain. It will not surprise you to hear that I believe that they are wrong. when scientists say that they have found that the temporal cortex of the brain lights up when someone is having a religious experience, that does not mean that you can reduce a person’s faith and belief to a lit-up piece of brain. It is merely that the area of the brain corresponds to the experience.
I am a firm believer in the notion of nonduality, that essentially there is no fundamental distinction between mind and matter. Consciousness is the primary underlying force in the Universe. There is a very good resource here. So why do I take this position?
1. Personal experience of nonduality
2. The insights of modern theoretical physics
3. Independent, empirical research from a number of reputable scientists around the world. I have just constructed a list of recommended books at Amazon.com. You can access it here. If you take just a little time to examine the research reported in these books, I think that you will begin to be convinced as well.
“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
–Aristotle (Greek Scientist and Philosopher, 384-322 B.C.E.)
Technorati tags: Descartes Mind and Brain Duality Nonduality
Understanding Attention Deficit Disorder as a Long-term Challenge
Regular readers will know that I am a huge advocate of natural and non-invasive methods of treatment whenever possible. But sometimes we reach an impasse, and the only option is to use pharmacological or other types of conventional intervention. But even then, it is a mistake to assume that physical treatment alone will be sufficient to help the individual and their family: it is only sensible also to address the psychological, social, subtle and spiritual dimensions of the person. And we must never lose sight of the positives: some people who have health challenges are transformed for the better, and some “illnesses” may carry gifts with them. I’ve talked about the creativity of people with bipolar disorder and schizotypy and the empathy and innovation that may accompany attention deficit disorder.
There is often a fine balance between the positives and negatives of an illness and the types of help that may be of greatest value.
I have just been involved in a common discussion at this time of year: a young person has quite bad attention deficit disorder (ADD). Since she started pharmacological treatment not only has she risen from being a failing student to getting all As and Bs, but the quality of her life has improved dramatically. Unfortunately, she has been told that she only needs to take her treatment when she feels that it is necessary to complete her schoolwork. Many healthcare providers continue to believe that ADD and ADHD are just academic problems. There is a very good new review article that discusses this misperception in some detail. Prescription patterns show that the majority of school-age children are only being treated from Monday to Friday, and from 7AM to 3PM. Why does this matter?
There is excellent and extensive research about the consequences of non-treatment, and most of it has nothing at all to do with school. If people with ADD and particularly with ADHD are left untreated, they are more likely to:
1. Develop substance abuse
2. Be involved in a serious accident
3. Engage in illegal activities
4. Contract a sexually transmitted disease
5. Have an unplanned pregnancy
6. Become separated or divorced
The article makes a point that we have often discussed with families: these consequences of non-treatment are events that primarily occur outside the school environment. So withholding medicine just when it is needed the most may be a risky business.
We are now seeing increasing evidence that successful pharmacological treatment reduces these consequences of untreated ADD/ADHD to the rates found in the general population. Simply using appropriate medications can protect people from adverse consequences of these problems both now and in the future.
I think that we should look at ADD in the same way that we look at an illness like diabetes. In diabetes, the high blood glucose and elevated lipids are not themselves the problem. They may cause symptoms, but the real danger lies in the long-term physical consequences of high glucose and lipids. It is these that can be so devastating to the person with the illness, causing the so-called complications of diabetes, such as retinopathy, kidney and heart disease.
Similarly ADD/ADHD may cause symptoms – such as problems in school – but it is the long-term consequences that can cause such problems. Children and adolescents, and for that matter some adults with both illnesses don’t realize that these are the main reasons for treatment.
There is a common myth that adults know that they need to take their medication, and so they do. Hands up anyone who has only taken half of a course of antibiotics!!
There is very striking study of adults with ADHD who were asked to do a simulated driving test while on and off their medicines. The people in the study rated their driving performance just the same whether they were on or off their medicines. Despite the fact that when they were off their treatment they were an astounding five “standard deviations” worse in terms of driving safety and responsibility! For people not used to looking at statistics this may not seem like much, but the difference is astonishing. You would not want to share the road with an untreated person with ADD.
We know that within the first three months of treatment 50% of children and adults will have stopped their ADD/ADHD treatment and most studies agree that by 18 months, the figure is around 80%.
We need to get the message out that:
- ADD and ADHD can create some nasty long-term problems if not adequately treated.
- For a host of reasons, most people will stop their treatment, so plan for it, and don’t just wait for it to happen.
- Adequate treatment consists of a lot more than giving medication and hoping for the best.
- People need psychoeducation.
- They need to learn coping strategies.
- The family needs to know how to help and how to deal with the problems that someone with ADD/ADHD may be causing them.
- And people need to know how and when to use medications and how to integrate them with non-pharmacological strategies.
Technorati tags: Attention deficit disorder Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder Substance abuse Treatment
The New Creative Mind
As you will have seen by now, I’m intrigued by creativity for it’s own sake and because it is a fundamental property of sentient systems. Therefore creativity is an innate skill that we all share, but it can be developed to an extraordinary degree.
I’ve come across a very interesting article about what is being called the New Creative Mind. The suggestion is that it is a blend of Analytical, Expressive, Curious and Sensual dimensions that need to be integrated into a thinking process. There’s a pretty accompanying graphic that is not, I think, meant to point to specific regions of the brain. At least I hope not!
Expanding the usual framework of creativity, provides this model with some real merits. Though I think that it needs a little more: creativity is usually spurred by a question, fired by a passion to know the answer, and delivered by the creation of a new dynamic structure that needs both knowledge and skills to manifest it. This applies whether we are trying to construct a scientific model, be more creative in how we develop and maintain a relationship, or create a work of art.
"Creativity is an activity, not a gift.”
–Peter F. Drucker (Austrian-born American Economist and Management Consultant, 1909-2005)
Technorati tags: Creativity
Your Mind and Your Brain Know the Difference Between the Real and the Imagined
I have just seen a psychologist do a spot on television where, in the middle of some otherwise great advice, she repeated a well-known piece of nonsense: “Your brain can’t tell the difference between organizing your closets and organizing to prepare for a disaster.” This notion that the brain and the mind react the same way to real and imagined events has launched hundreds of self-help programs, but is dead wrong.
We have loads of evidence that the brain is extremely good at telling the difference between an image in external space and something that you are visualizing in your mind’s eye. Your brain wouldn’t be much good to you if it couldn’t tell the difference between an imagined event and the real thing!
Here’s just one example from many. I’ve written about empathy before: a crucial attribute for healthy functioning. There has been a debate going on for many years now: how can you put yourself into some one else’s shoes? Does it somehow involve merging our own view of the world with someone else’s? A new study sheds important light on this topic.
When you are empathizing with someone you can imagine how they perceive a situation and the feelings that they experience as a result. When you imagine someone else’s pain, is it the same as imagining pain on oneself? Many of us become quite emotional when we hear about something sad, but is the genesis of the emotion the same as it would be if something sad is happening to us? These experiments used functional magnetic resonance and participants were shown pictures of people with their hands or feet in painful or non-painful situations and instructed to imagine and rate the level of pain perceived from different perspectives. These results show that imagining someone else’s discomfort or one’s own, activated different regions in the brain. People did not somehow merge themselves with their image of the other person.
That makes good sense: we need to be able to keep ourselves separate from other people, until we have gained a high degree of internal control. I have known dozens of empaths and psychics who have been damaged by being unable to separate another person’s experiences form their own. Many have come to see me as patients, because they were experiencing the distress of others around them. They were helped not by medication, but by energetic work and training in how to control their gifts.
“All persons are a puzzle until at last we find in some word or act the key to the man, to the woman; straightaway all their past words and actions lie in light before us.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Poet and Essayist, Known as America’s Teacher, 1803-1882)
Technorati tags: Imagination Empathy Brain Psychic
Creativity and the Brain
In 1826, the great German physicist and physician Hermann von Helmholtz proposed that there are four stages to creativity: incubation, illumination, preparation and verification. There have been many attempts to modify this four-stage model, and we now think that the ability to make new connections is a key factor in creative innovation – a composite of incubation and illumination that can be best defined as an ability to understand and express new order and inter-relationships. As the South African Poet, Novelist and Editor, William Plomer put it, “Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.” Professor Kenneth Heilman from the University of Florida has presented some very interesting ideas about the mechanisms of creativity. He points out that creative innovation requires intelligence, specific knowledge and special skills and an ability to develop alternative solutions: what we call “divergent thinking,” the ability to break away from received wisdom. Each of these four factors will not be enough on their own. I have known many people who have announced that they have developed a new theory of the universe, but who did not have the knowledge or skills to be able to do anything with the idea, and to test whether it was sound.
There has recently been further analysis of a region of the brain of Albert Einstein. This region is of particular interest because Einstein is known to have had a form of dyslexia and this area is involved in language. In Chapter One of my most recent book, I pointed out that there is a great deal of interest in “glial cells” that were long thought to be no more than supporting cells, but have now been discovered to have key roles in some neuronal activity. Einstein had a significantly higher number of glial cells than controls, and it may be these cells that were responsible for his ability to make connections and to excel in spatial rather than linguistic reasoning.
The other point that I would like to make is this: there is a stereotype that creative people are undisciplined rebels. In fact nothing could be further form the truth: what they are actually doing is creating more order in the universe, by making new connections and creating new structures.
Technorati tags: Creativity Albert Einstein Brain Glial cells
Attention Deficit Disorder, Allergies and Membranes
There has been a long-running debate about the relationship – if any – between allergies and attention deficit disorder (ADD).
As long ago as 1991 a paper seemed to indicate that there were higher rates of hyperactivity in the parents of children with allergies as well as increased rates of allergies in children with ADD. Recently a study from New York seemed to show higher rates of allergic rhinitis in children with ADD. The problem with all this is that we are looking at two common problems and trying to sort out a genuine connection can be tricky.
I started thinking about this problem again, after a recent report that some children had symptoms of hyperactivity, inattention, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and excessive daytime sleepiness as a result of sleep-disordered breathing. But what was remarkable was the number who improved after they had their tonsils taken out. The tonsils are one of the first lines of defense in the immune system, which is why they so often become enlarged with infections, or for that matter in any kind of immunological reaction. Now I’m not much of one to take out tonsils unless there’s a really good reason, but it is certainly an important observation for anyone who has a child with behavioral or cognitive difficulties: he or she may not be sleeping properly.
I have seen quite a number of people who had physical and psychological problems, including headaches, depression and attentional problems, who turned out to have either allergies or environmental sensitivities, and when those were addressed, the symptoms resolved. I have also seen some people who followed the notoriously difficult Feingold diet with some success, even though the research doesn’t seem to be very supportive of elimination diets. And I’ve seen just as many people who got no relief at all from elimination diets.
I have just done a detailed literature review on the topics of allergy and attention, and I don’t think that we have enough evidence to suggest that everybody with attention deficit needs to see an allergist. But what this highlights is that not all people with attentional problems or hyperactivity have ADD. They may have attentional problems because of sleep disturbance, depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and a range of other problems.
There is some exciting research indicating that one of the problems in many cases of ADD is a disturbance in the normal functioning of cell membranes. If that is correct, it may be that there are disturbances in the membranes of both neurons in the brain and membranes of cells in the immune system. That link is not entirely proven. But it has received further credence by the finding that some children and adults with ADD seem to show improvements of both attention and immune function when they take omega-3 fatty acids. I have recently been hearing some encouraging reports from people who have used the Omega-3 Formula made by Omegabrite (And no, I have no link with the company!)
Technorati tags: Attention deficit disorder Allergy Atopy Hyperactivity Tonsils Cell membrane Omega-3 fatty acid
The End of Life As We Know It?
Your humble reporter was discombobulated to read a recent report from E3: the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
It appears that hordes of young men – yes they were virtually all young and male – were far more interested in the electronic games on display than they were in a number of quite attractive young dancers and models who graced the event. Though we have not one iota of interest in the orientation of the assembled company, on statistical grounds alone we would expect that at least some of these young men should be wired to take an interest in presumably intelligent members of the opposite sex. Yet they seemed to prefer playing with their silicon monsters and joysticks.
Perhaps the gamers are all too cerebral to be interested in young models who may be unable to tell a bit from a byte. But in the midst of all the sage commentary about the expanding gaming market and the ready accessibility of computer games to people who have access to not much else in the way of entertainment, our thoughts meandered off in a different direction: we have been wondering if we are here witnessing some form of natural selection at work….
Technorati tags: Evolution Relationships Sexual attraction
Happiness and Resilience
For more than two decades, my main focus has been on ways to help people become more resilient to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. To enable people to withstand anything that’s thrown at them: physically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. And not just to withstand them but to use adversity as the impetus for growth.
Adversity is a fact of life: it cannot be controlled. But we can control how we react to it.
This is such an important concept.
So many people try and make themselves stronger and stronger, yet there will always be something that can overwhelm the most powerful defenses. I knew of two martial artists in Hong Kong who claimed that they could defeat anyone. They were incredibly strong and had exquisite technique.
Which did not help them one bit when some villains shot them from behind by.
I have come across others who have spent their lives eating and exercising and still dying prematurely. What was the problem? They had not learned the arts of resilience, which include adaptability, flow and seemless integration with the Universe.
Over the next few days I am going to introduce you to some of the techniques that we have developed for enhancing psychological and physical resilience, before going on to reveal some of the secrets for strengthening the subtle fields of your body, and how to maintain dynamic relationships, not just with another person, but with your Higher Self.
One of the manifestations of resilience is happiness, so before we start, I would suggest that you try this small test that was published by the BBC by arrangement with Professor Ed Diener, from the University of Illinois who designed it.
Technorati tags: Resilience Happiness Flow Relationships
Intuition, Coincidence and Synchronicity
The other day I was enjoying a pleasant dinner with some Indian friends, and we got onto the subject of the history of Kashmir. With us were some American friends who knew little about the subject, so we gave them a quick update on the history of the region. A few minutes later we had moved onto something else, and I mentioned that I had just met an Indian-born English businessman with whom I may collaborate on a project. And that I had just recalled that he and his parents were originally from Kashmir. Later, as the valet brought my car round, the song playing on the radio was Led Zeppelin’s classic song Kashmir.
Some might say, "Ah ha! A Synchronicity!" But they would be incorrect, and this leads us to consider the role of intuition in synchronicity. For an event to be a synchronicity, it must be meaningful. Let me give you an example. I received a flier from Sounds True, a wonderful company in Boulder, Colorado, that specializes in materials to aid personal and spiritual development. I’m a good customer, so they send me a lot of invitations to examine new products. This one was a program by Stephen Wolinsky called Quantum Psychology, and it was based upon the teachings of a Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, an Indian Spiritual Teacher and Exponent of Jnana Yoga and Advaita Doctrine, who lived from 1897-1981. As far as I know, I had never come across this sage’s teachings before. The material looked interesting, but I had a lot to read and listen to, so I wasn’t convinced that I’d have the time to dedicate to the program. Then, no more than an hour later, I was looking for an unrelated item on the Internet, and up popped Sri Nisargadatta’s name. Shortly after that, I picked up a book on chess, and the author – Jeremy Silman – had dedicated his book to Sri Nisargadatta. A chess book: not some arcane treatise on Indian philosophy. This was enough for me. I always let my intuition do the walking, so I ordered, and Stephen’s material was indeed excellent and provided me with some tools that I could use in my service to other people.
So always keep an eye out to see if the Universe is trying to tell you something, but don’t fall into the rut of assuming that everything is always meaningful. As Sigmund Freud once commented, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Coincidences are just that, and it is only when they become meaningful that they can be classified as a synchronicity.
I recommend to students that they should get a small journal or diary and spend just one week watching for coincidences, and then seeing if any of them become meaningful. This is a great exercise for your intuition, and it helps with your powers of discrimination: by making notes ahead of time, it helps you to avoid the trap of the self-fulfilling prophecy.
Technorati tags: coincidence intuition synchronicity Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj Stephen Wolinsky Quantum Psychology self-fulfilling prophecy
