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What is a pleasure walk, and why should you take one?

February 10, 2014 Written by Curt Rosengren

What if a simple walk could change your whole outlook on the world?

I just finished listening to Kristin Neff’s book, Self-Compassion. In it, she described an idea that sparked my interest – taking a pleasure walk.

Here’s a snippet from a document on Neff’s web site describing the idea:

The goal of the walk is to notice as many pleasurable things as possible, slowly, one after another. Use all your senses—sight, smell, sound, touch…maybe even taste.

How many happy, beautiful, or inspiring things can you notice while you’re walking? Do you enjoy the fresh air, the warm sun, a beautiful leaf, the shape of a stone, a smiling face, the song of a bird, the feeling of the earth under your feet?

She encourages us to dive into noticing with gusto.

I few weeks ago I wrote about a gratitude-based mindfulness experiment. Taking a pleasure walk is another great way to aim your attention and focus on the positive.

It’s not about a syrupy attempt to make things positive that aren’t. It’s about giving our minds the opportunity to practice noticing what’s good.

On occasion I get into the habit of writing my dreams down first thing in the morning. After a few days of doing that, a funny thing happens. I start remembering more dreams. It’s like my mind realizes that I’m paying attenti0n, so it decides it had better start remembering those dreams.

The same thing happens when you practice noticing what’s good. The more you notice, and the more consistently you notice it, the more you naturally notice what’s good.

And when you naturally notice more of what’s good, guess what that does to your outlook on life?

In a way, it’s like sculpting your perspective. As you add more of the positive, you start to have less room for the negative.

I’m not suggesting that this is a magic-wand, just-add-water approach to a positive attitude. But it’s definitely another tool you can easily put to use to consciously craft your outlook.

The positive is there, whether you choose to notice it or not. Given that, doesn’t it make sense to take advantage of it?

So if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s time for a walk.

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Why I’m falling out of love with passion

February 6, 2014 Written by Curt Rosengren

Since 2001, my work has focused on helping people create careers and lives that energize and inspire them. So what’s the deal with the headline of this post? How could I be falling out of love with passion???

Well, perhaps it’s not so much that I’m falling out of love with passion per se (my definition of passion: The energy that comes from bringing more of YOU into what you do). I still think passion is as important as ever.

It’s really more that I have fallen out of love with the almost manic focus on having more passion, more happiness, more, more, more!

Somehow the idea has developed that we need to shoot for a 100%, Mach 10, All-Fabulous-All-the-Time Life.

And that would be great if it had the slightest thing to do with reality.

But it doesn’t.

Whether you’re looking at your career, your relationships, your health, or any other area, life is a series of ebbs and flows. Sometimes it’s up, sometimes it’s down.

The self-help world’s insistence that everything stay Up creates the impression that if you’re not jacked through the roof in Up mode, something is wrong with your life. Or worse, something is wrong with YOU.

Maybe it’s more accurate to say that my love is expanding. Yes, I’m still head over heels about passion, and happiness, and all those lovely states of being. But I’m increasingly seeing the need for it all to be built on the foundation of decidedly less sexy ideas.

Ideas like being present in the moment. Like gratitude for what you have. Like accepting and even embracing what is, however challenging. Like learning to love your situation exactly the way it is. And learning to love yourself exactly the way you are.

One of the most limiting beliefs I see out there is the dichotomous view that we have to either madly scramble to improve, or sink into the mire of stuckness with a less than preferable situation.

That’s complete crap. Here’s a different take on it. You can both aspire to improve and learn to occupy your current situation fully, compassionately, with love. One doesn’t negate the other.

In fact, learning to occupy the present moment more fully, fighting it less and accepting it more, makes more room for the improvement you aspire to. You’re not wasting so much time and energy struggling and resisting, which means you have more to put into the changes you want to make.

Take a look at your own life. Do you see any either/or beliefs around growth and change versus accepting and embracing what is? If so, what impact does that have? Could you explore taking a both/and approach to it?

I’m not likely to stop talking about passion, or happiness, or being energized. But more and more I’m seeing contentment, grounding, and a proactive acceptance not just as a way to plug an energy leak  and eliminate a source of discomfort, but as a way to create the space for your pursuit of growth and goals to thrive.

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Try a gratitude mindfulness experiment

November 1, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

How much do you have to be grateful for in your life? Even if things are going sideways and life is dumping a big steaming pile o’ trouble on your head, you’d probably be surprised at just how much there is when you really pay attention.

The other day as I headed out to a coffee shop to do some work, I decided to do an experiment and spend the trip there noticing things I could be grateful for. What came out of it was simple, always-available gratitude practice I want to share with you.

None of what I came up with was earth-shattering. It didn’t leave me quivering in gratitudinal bliss (yeah, I know that’s not really a word, but it should be). But it did keep my attention focused on what’s positive and just how much there is to be thankful for when I make the effort to notice.

A partial list, from what I can remember:

  • My home – a place to stay warm and dry
  • My car – allowing me to easily get from here to there
  • The beautiful fall day
  • The colors of the leaves
  • Coffee
  • The fact that coffee was there and so readily available to me
  • The fact that I was noticing so many things to be grateful for
  • My health and mobility
  • The physical sensations in my body as my muscles worked to shift gears in my car
  • Music
  • Musicians
  • Coffee (oh wait, did I say that already? I think it’s worth another mention.)

I realized what I was doing was a kind of gratitude-based mindfulness practice. Since then I have been finding small pockets of time – a trip to the store, a walk in the park, doing the dishes – to play with the idea.

I love so many things about this practice, like:

  • It’s bite-sized. It’s small enough that you can immerse yourself and stay focused on gratitude for the duration.
  • It can be applied any time, anywhere. You don’t have to make a special time to sit and do a gratitude meditation, or write in a gratitude journal. You just do it as you go about your business doing things you would already be doing.
  • You can do it multiple times per day. The bite-sized nature of it means you can play with it again and again and again in any given day.
  • It helps build a gratitude habit. The more you focus on gratitude, the more you will find to be grateful for. This is a great way to condition yourself to notice gratitude opportunities.

Try it out! And when you do, I would love to hear how it goes.

(And if you need some help to get your noticing revved up, try these 17 gratitude prompting questions and 17 more gratitude prompting questions.)

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Energize your life, Gratitude
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Is it time to empty your clown car?

March 27, 2013 Written by Curt Rosengren

How much time do you spend in the present moment? I mean really spend, right here, right now. How much time are you present to what’s happening without a running commentary about the past or future?

If you’re like most people, the answer is most likely “precious little.” We’re constantly running stories about what happened in the past and what might happen in the future. And that doesn’t leave much room for us to experience what we’re actually experiencing.

The crowded present

Some time ago I was talking about this with a client, who was packing the conversation with negative what ifs about the future and dragging experiences along with her from the past. At one point I laughed and said, “Your present is getting REALLY crowded.”

All these stories from the past and future were crowding out her ability to live in the possibility created in the present moment. They shut off avenues of exploration, and created a view of the world based on things that didn’t actually exist.

The clown car

Last week, I was having a similar conversation with a client and that same “crowded present” idea came up. “You know those competitions they used to do where they would see how many people they could fit into a car Volkswagen Bug? That’s kind of what your present looks like.” She laughed and said it was more like a clown car.

clown car2

It was a great analogy. And it happens to all of us. There we are, trying to get somewhere, and we have all these uninvited clowns – baggage from the past, worries about the future, etc. – along for the ride. Big clown feet flapping on the brakes. A clown stretched across the front seat and hanging out the driver’s side window with a noisemaker, obscuring our vision. A cacophony of voices lobbying for a dozen different directions other than our intended goal.

How about you? Are you driving down the road with uninvited clowns in your life?

Where to look for clowns

Here are a few place to look to see if you have any clowns riding along.

Limiting beliefs based on past experience

The past is frequently a poor predictor of the future, but we often treat it like an all-knowing oracle. Let’s say you have tried something and failed. A clown would be an unsubstantiated belief that failure is likely again in the future, just because that’s what happened in the past.

Limiting beliefs about yourself

The limiting beliefs you hold about yourself have the potential to turn into such a big and powerful clowns that the car bursts apart and the wheels fall off. So these are important clowns to be aware of. Beliefs like not being good enough, or not being someone who succeeds in ______, or being someone who is destined to fail, or not being someone who _____, or any one of a million other negative beliefs we create about ourselves can be some of the biggest, mangiest, ugliest, obstacle-creating clowns in the car.

Flawed assumptions

Assumptions help streamline your life. If they’re flawed assumptions though, they can unnecessarily limit you. For example, assuming that nobody wants to help. Or assuming that nobody would be interested in _____. Or assuming that what you want to do wouldn’t work anyway, so why even bother.

Limiting beliefs about the way things are

Clowns abound in our limiting beliefs about the way things are. “That’s just the way it is. That’s just the way things have always been for me. There’s nothing I can do about that.” All examples of limiting beliefs that can often be blown to pieces when we start questioning them and exploring options.

This is by no means a comprehensive list of where you’ll find clowns lurking, but they’re a good place to start looking.

Do you see any clowns in your own life? What effect are they having on your travels?

Getting rid of your clowns – or at least getting them under control – frees up space in the present moment, makes room in your car for more helpful passengers, and lets you see where you’re going with an unobstructed view.

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Brought to you by Curt Rosengren, Passion Catalyst TM

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Overcoming obstacles, Personal development
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