happy

Happy Monday

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Well here it is the start of another work week.  It’s now fall and the it’s cooler now. The leaves are falling off the trees and stuff looks like it’s all dying.

Geez. I used to hate this time of year. Summer’s over and school is well under way. You know what happens then? You start feeling crappy.

Are you having one of those days when you’re feeling beat down, run down, turned down, turned off or used up?

A lot of us are feeling that way lately and no wonder. The economy has tanked, things like houses – if you still have one – (remember those big square things with roofs?) are loosing more and more of their value while at the same time our food costs are rising.

Yikes!  How much can we take.


But hey, take some comfort, it could be worse. You could have been the brains behind the Yodeling Meter. First introduced in 1925 this clever but seemingly useless device was put together especially to measure the pitch of the human yodel. Maybe I’m just thinking like a marketer but I suppose it could have been a real scream during those summer weekend-long parties over at uncle Joe’s place.  Especially after a few of his bootlegged beers.

I don’t know how many of these were sold but I’d doubt if it covered the cost of the prototype, this professional promo photo, and the two lovely models.

Seriously though, if you really are feeling a little less than you’d like to, you should see this.

More power to you.

David's signature

Mindset Immunity and Happiness

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Freud: Happy? "No, just less miserable."Photo of Sigmund Freud

For a long time now, particularly ever since I discovered the phenomenon of mindset immunity, I've been very interested in human happiness. Or should I say lac of it. (See I suspect that there might be a happiness deficit in the world today.) I had a hunch that there might be tons of people just like myself who are interested in happiness and how to make it stick around longer.

As I researched the topic of happiness I, naturally, ran into many references to the field of psychology. One in particular was Sigmund Freud. He was known widely as the founder of psychoanalytic school of psychiatry, a branch of medicine where it's practitioners try to make their patients better through analyzing things like dreams but Freud, as it turns out, was quite a pronounced pessimist and I'm guessing not that very happy a guy himself.

Flooded with clients who had lost their joy of life I think in time he must have caught what ever unhappiness bug it was that they had. Whatever the case it must have resulted in a man who eventually concluded that happiness and hope might be close in the dictionary listings but that's about as close as they got. Check out what he had to say about happiness:

  • "It's a doomed craft. It's propelled by infantile aspects of the individual that can never be met in reality."
  • "One feels inclined to say that the intention that man should be happy is not included in the plan of creation."

Whoa! And he was a doctor!

I think that old Sig should have forgotten his head and had is gut examined instead. If he had perhaps he'd now be listed among today's innovative researchers like Dr. Michael Gershon. Dr. Gershon you see is a professor as well as chairman of the Anatomy and Cell Biology department at Columbia University Hospital in New York City.  He's the guy who noticed that the human gut contains large amounts of feel-good chemistry and brain cells exactly like the one's found in the head.

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Failure: Like the lemon tree.

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Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.

Lemon Tree – Lyrics by Peter, Paul, and Mary (Popular folk-singing group of the 1960’s)

Lemon tree with fruit

If you lived, like I did in the era of the 60’s, you would quickly recognize these lyrics as belonging to the popular folk-singing group Peter, Paul, and Mary.

I came across this song on YouTube recently and I thought how relevant it is – in a reverse sort of way – to failure.

We all know only too well that unlike the lemon tree failure is not so pretty.

In fact it really sucks.

It hurts our heads and ruins our day and yet… and yet, I’ve come to understand that its “fruit” is so masterfully designed as a portal to higher learning that it’s now become, and in reality has always been, essential if any of us are to reach any success in our lives at all.

Mickey Rooney, the acclaimed actor whose career spans over 75 years, said: “You always pass failure on the way to success”.

I feel like I’ve passed a lot of failure in my life. So perhaps I, like a lot of folks, have a love/hate relationship with failure. I’ve come to know it well. Thirty years of trying and falling short in my efforts to bring my radical theories about human motivation and empowerment to you and have left me with no choice but to press on every day and learn to do it better.

It’s a matter of mindset.

Hasn’t your life been like this? Hasn’t it been like this for almost everyone you know?

Take a close look at it. You’ve had successes. But every one of them has undoubtedly been preceded by a failure. Some big some small but a foundation of failure is what lies beneath all achievement.

Like the roots of a fruit tree.

More power to you all.

POll: How are you feeling today?

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springy-pen-straight

“How the heck are you doing?”

I asked an acquaintance whom I hadn’t seen in a while.

He appeared outwardly optimistic but in a fatalist kind of way. Further discussion revealed that he was indeed somewhat worried about his job security with the local newspaper.

“They say it’s the worst economic downturn this generation has ever seen” he said, confirming my impression that he was preoccupied about something.

But this reaction was the exception. Often times if I meet someone and I introduce the subject of the current economic troubles they tend to clam up. It becomes obvious that they’d rather talk about something else.

Anything else. It’s making it difficult to get a good grasp on how people are coping.

Last week GM in Oshawa Ontario permanently closed its truck plant after 60 continuous years of operation. 2,500 workers
lost their jobs. Chrysler is set to axe a raft of dealerships in the US and GM will soon follow that action here in Canada.

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