Maximize your springtime as a sensuous experience. Launch yourself completely and playfully into this fantastic season. You’ll simply feel great, make yourself smile from the inside out and hone your “savoring” skills. Spring is the perfect time for you to immerse yourself in a natural, sensory experience.

Make your life richer and more pleasurable by exploring spring with all five senses—or more accurately, all seven.

Be Watchful. Spring has sprung early this year—after a mild winter across the U.S. There’s a beautiful, lush layer of light-green growth that has fluffed the tree branches and shrubbery, and tender, leafy shoots and colorful early blooms are everywhere. The spring season in all of its glory is a sight to behold. The color, texture and movement of this visual splendor create opulence and intensity. Be present—go outside or sit beside an open window—and take in the vivid greens and yellows and pinks and purples. Watch the wind blow the tender leaves and watch the branches sway back and forth. See the raindrops slowly form puddles in shallow places on the lawn or stone path or sidewalk. Experience springtime with your eyes.

Listen Closely. Layer your sensory experience by becoming more aware of the auditory splendor around you. When you watched the wind, did you hear the leaves rustle or the whoosh of the harsher wind that blew in the spring storm? The tweeting and twirping of songbirds is a predictable image that poets use to evoke spring, but listen more sharply: do you hear the raindrops outside your window or on your rooftop? Do you hear the laughter of children playing outside, coaxed out of their houses by the warmer weather? Unless you live in a tropical place, you’d forgotten the whining drone of leaf blowers and weed-eaters until a new spring called out landscapers like a small army summoned for active duty. Listen: your neighbor is singing while she plants her container garden with tomatoes, peppers and kitchen herbs. The unique sounds of spring are infinite.

Be Mindful…by getting In Touch this spring. Turn some soil in generous mounds with your hands—even if your gardening is from a bag of potting soil. Join the Landscaping Army and pick up twigs and broken branches under a grove of trees and feel their rough bark or jagged edges. Run your fingers tenderly along the edges of a flower petal. Feel the rush of water through the garden hose—the primal energy of nourishing your grass or garden with fresh water. Consider this, too: the reaching and bending you do during your spring chores outdoors adds another level of sensory experience called kinesthetic experience. If the winter restricted your outdoor fun to brisk walks, the springtime offers your body—arms, shoulders, back and hips—the chance to lift, crouch and bend as you clean up outside or arrange your outdoor furniture for another year of having fun and making memories with family and friends on your deck, terrace or poolside.

Catch a Whiff of springtime. When I imagine the scents of spring, I conjure up the scent of confederate jasmine, of freshly mown grass mixed with wild onions, of smoldering hot charcoal briquettes. Spring rains saturate the whole landscape with a distinctive smell of earthen moisture, and the soil beneath your feet gives more easily under your weight as you walk in a pasture, garden or park. Breathe deeply and slowly as you relax in the spring air and notice the difference between the heavy weight of humid air and the light crispness of the air on a cooler spring day. You’re feeling even more alive than before; enjoy it.

Taste the Lusciousness of spring fruits and crisp vegetables. Spring introduces fresh, crisp, tender tastes to our palates and conjures up such delicious sensory memory, too. Notice the moist nectar of spring berries as you swallow each juicy morsel and feel the sensory sensation of organic experience: the awareness of your body’s internal function. You feed your body delicious tastes as your mouth, tongue and tummy register sensory delight and the satisfaction of gustatory pleasure. Your plate is a colorful and delicious array of new tastes, bursting from a dormant winter when your meals were created from a different sort of comfort food. Berries, spring lettuces, tender root vegetables—your spring smorgasbord is fresh and fantastic. Indulge in the tastes of springtime.

Be a pleasure-seeker this season. Experience springtime with a fresh perspective and a new awareness. Captivate yourself by its sensory beauty and splendor. As Joseph Campbell once said, “People aren’t really seeking the meaning of life. We seek the experience of being truly alive.” Seek that experience in the pleasure of this season then. Immerse yourself sensuously in springtime and feel

Truly Alive,

Dr Mell

Let’s give a nod to connecting in this “Springtime for Lovers” and explore how positive relationships make us happier. What the World Needs Now is Love, Sweet Love.

Connecting to others is significant to a flourishing life. Period. Measurable science confirms this truth. Positive relationships are the R in Seligman’s PERMA formula for well-being (PERMA Online), and the ability to Connect scores among the top five factors in the landmark study on well-being conducted for the Foresight Programme (BIS/UK). “No person is an island…” tells us we’re all connected, so why not find more happiness here?

Cultivating new relationships or improving the ones you have presents ways to show how you can capitalize on your Signature Strengths to make your life richer. Glance at your Survey Results (VIA Strengths Survey) and look specifically for your strengths in two categories: Strengths of Humanity and Strengths of Justice. The two key phrases here are “between people” and “among people.”

Strengths of Humanity—the qualities that fortify relationships between people—are love, kindness and social intelligence. If you’ve identified these strengths from your VIA Results, notice where they fall among your top 24. You might work with your life coach to boost kindness to improve your work relationships by discussing the misperceptions with her that people have that only weak, ineffectual people show kindness at work. Study results and experience tell us that the strongest, most socially adept leaders at work model kindness as a way to communicate empathy for others and to build a more positive culture “among people.” Is this misperception a stumbling block for you?

The ability to build a positive culture among people is the bridge to Strengths of Justice. Citizenship, fairness and leadership are the three qualities that define these Signature Strengths. Creating a greater sense of fairness can improve your family dynamic, for instance. Consider ways you can address moral dilemmas your family faces. Moral dilemmas are opportunities to discuss short- and long-term consequences with your life coach, examining the choices that people make and the impact those choices potentially have. What is fair? What attitude and actions can you model that will foster justice and a sense of fairness among your family and make you feel happier?
Building positive relationships doesn’t have to be wildly complicated and can certainly be sources of comfort and joy. Once you’ve identified your Signature Strengths, you have the tools in-hand to begin new relationships and improve the ones you already count on. Think of how much better our lives and our world will be when we become expert at establishing trust, finding balance and sustaining mutual respect and understanding! We will create richer, happier relationships we have and hold and make a better world.

With All of My Love,

Dr Mell
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Foresight Programme. The Division of Business, Innovation and Skill. http://www.bis.gov.uk/foresight

Seligman, Martin E P. The Center for Positive Psychology. The University of Pennsylvania. www.authentichappiness.org.

VIA Character Survey at http://www.authentichappiness.org

Picture two male figures in the cartoon’s examining room: the doctor in his lab coat is recording answers on a clipboard as he poses questions to his lumpy patient with a big, flabby belly, sitting on the exam table in his skivvies: “Okay, Any history of physical activity in your family?”

Ooo…Ouch!  Clearly, NO history of any physical activity in that family. It’s funny, but how would you answer honestly? Are you more like the fleshy patient or his smug, smarty-pants doctor?

For the love of springtime and sunnier days and feeling happier, simply move. You don’t need to do anything more than start adding some extra steps to your daily routine to start looking more svelte in your examining gown.

Careful that you’re not buried in the avalanche of advice about exercise and well-being. From New Year’s Eve through swimsuit season every year, there’s a steady drumbeat from advertising and infomercials and magazine promos for the latest diet ingest-ibles, slimming gadgets with catchy names like XYZ3000 and bloody SYSTEMS for crunching your abs and carving your thighs and convincing you that you need to drop a big bucket of money and your job and all of your significant relationships and devote yourself to getting into “The Best Shape of Your Life.”

Move out of the way of that avalanche, Love: Simply Move. Just by adding a few extra steps to the ones you walk each day, you can begin to feel better. Honestly, it’s just that simple and inexpensive. Most reasonable people with good health and wellness advice will tell you to start just like that. Just add a few extra steps to your daily stepping. Here’s proof this easy start is a recipe for feeling better and living longer: it comes from research documented in a terrific book my daughter gave me titled Fifty Secrets of the World’s Longest Living People (Beare, 2006).

The book presents results from significant longevity studies that reveal the habits of people in five places around the world “where people often reach their 100^th birthday and the number of centenarians per 100,000 people is as much as three times higher than in the United States” (xix). These places aren’t wealthy enclaves where the super-rich wear fancy workout clothes and have other people do their sweating and starving for them. The healthiest people in the world walk almost everywhere they go! They live and work outdoors most of their lives, spending time growing crops or fishing in fresh air and sunshine. They are also fond of sports and leisure activity and enjoy martial arts or a night of dancing to folk music after a light supper and glass of red wine. As the author says, “You will be hard-pressed to find exceptionally long-lived people who don’t take plenty of regular exercise” (192).

The key for us is to start simply by adding some extra steps and pursuing the self-satisfied feeling of accomplishment we get from them by searching for more and more ways to skip the elevator and take the stairs or park in the farthest space away from the storefront and push the shopping cart over the extra distance. Little by little, you’ll start feeling better and taking more pride in looking and staying fit.

Put some SPRING in your step, Love! Simply move.

Much Love,

Dr Mell

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Baure, S (2006). Fifty secrets of the world’s longest living people. New York: MJF Books.

In my Springtime for Lovers, when the spring season makes the whole world feel alive and crisp and fresh, let’s choose delicious food and cook and eat with awareness and experience a new way of tasting and truly savoring what we eat while we experience the joy of food. Accept the challenge to explore and savor the smells, textures and flavors of food. Start now—or begin again. Let’s take nourishment for the love of luscious.

Beyond eating as a matter of sustenance, we can enjoy eating as a rare and wonderful pleasure of life. Eating is not an ordinary task—another chore that we approach with resignation, disgust, or dread. Many of us relish in the whole process of eating: thoughtfully preparing menus, considering the seasonal harvest and new or traditional recipes; selecting the freshest, most nutritionally rich ingredients; preparing food with playful passion and the best tools we can afford; and serving ourselves and others with loving hearts and hands. In this way, the celebration of food and eating is living in a poem—living in a state of grace.

Food is more than fuel and a way to stave off hunger. Decide right now to spend this springtime with a fresh approach to food. For your inspiration, consider Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. The book’s authors—Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist philosopher and Chueng, a Holistic Nutritionist—pair the practice of mindfulness with the latest nutritional information for healthy eating—that is, of being fully aware of what is going on within us and all around us to draw attention to what and how we eat. A food writer for Booklist offers the following about Savor:

They explore the physical, psychological, cultural, and environmental barriers that may prevent us from controlling our weight, and readers are encouraged to savor food in order to fully nourish both the body and the mind. Savor includes guided meditations on everything from eating an apple to coping with stressful situations and offers advice on selecting and preparing food, staying active and avoiding self-criticism. Complete with a discussion of why healthy eating is also good for the environment, this is a uniquely insightful and positive program for wellness: a book of tested wisdom, practical action and intellectual, emotional, and spiritual nutriments. –D Seaman, Booklist

Yum: what a wonderful way to spend springtime! For the Love of Luscious, add Savor to your reading list and savoring to this Springtime for Lovers, and while you’re perusing your gardening guides and seed catalogs and Rites of Spring menu planner, fall happily, heartily and helplessly in love with the sensual experience of good eating.

Bon Appetit, My Sweet!

Dr Mell

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Nhat Hanh, T & Chueng, L (2011). Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. New York: HarperOne.

Dr Mell_Love the One You’re With

The Dr Mell Spring 2012 Celebration of Love salutes your first and purest love: You! “Love the One You’re With” is your cue to esteem yourself—lavishly and continuously—giving your most tender, patient and adoring attention to your Self. Loving the One You’re Always With means caring for yourself first and foremost, honoring your unique and wonderful qualities and cultivating the hopes and dreams you hold most dear. In positive psychology terms, the best way to love yourself, connect lovingly with others and richly cultivate your best life is to identify and foster your signature strengths.

One of the most compelling testimonies that illustrates this power is one told by Aren Cohen, a psychologist who put the power of positive psychology to work for her in graduate school. After many readings and lectures establishing that statistically married people in stable relationships tend to be healthier and live longer than their single counterparts, Aren decided to put research into action, steep herself in loving kindness and find the man of her dreams.

How did I change my life to make it ‘exactly the right moment’? First of all, thanks to what I had learned…I was becoming a happier person, more attuned to my own spirituality and to reasons to celebrate gratitude. I kept a gratitude journal, and I started using goal-setting for the future and visualizing what I wanted. I wrote my list, starting with phrases ranging from ‘I will find a man who is…’ to ‘My guy will be….’ I used visualization techniques, including meditation and collaging. My collage had words and images outlining how I wanted my life to be. Finally, I chose my favorite love song, the James Taylor version of ‘How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You),’ and every night before bed for the three months before I met my husband, I listened to it religiously, as if to serenade love into my life. The words ‘How Sweet It Is’ were also on my collage, right above the words ‘Bridal Suite.’ (qtd. in Seligman, 2011)

Aren’s collection of strategies and action plan were successful, you see: her husband, Andre’, appeared in her life at exactly the right moment. Once you’ve identified your signature strengths, you and your Life Coach will follow the formula that was so successful for Aren. While you may work on professional and financial goals as well, you’ll likely want to create some goals and activities that help you build more positivity with your significant other and/or your friends, family and acquaintances.

If you’re familiar with the “Laws of Attraction” or have read The Secret and its appeal to readers to “See, Believe, Receive,” you notice some parallels with Aren’s impulse to find love and to implement practical strategies to achieve it. In very elemental terms, positive psychology makes no secret of your power to craft your happiness and truly flourish. Aren harnessed the power of the cluster of signature strengths of Humanity and Love: “kindness and generosity and loving and allowing oneself to be loved” (2011). So, what’s the first step for you, Love? Here’s the link: Engagement Questionnaires: VIA Survey of Character Strengths.

Naturally, I hope you invite me to join you in shaping your vision and using your strengths to find love, meaning and accomplishment, but whatever path you choose, I assure you that you’re worth it. Find your passion and follow your heart. Seize the love you want from your best life.

With Loving Kindness,

Dr Mell

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Seligman, M.E.P. (2011). Flourish: A visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. New York: Free Press.

The Positive Psychology Center at The University of Pennsylvania. Dir. Martin E.P. Seligman. http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx

Happy Springtime!

It’s springtime: time for love, no matter your age, stage or situation!

In spring, when tender, green shoots and tiny flower buds appear with a promise of re-birth and renewal, the whole world sings of love. Seize the moment and give the world a big bear hug! There’s serious evidence that shows your generous impulse will make you feel better and live longer.

Do you need concrete science for proof? How about scientific evidence from measurable data reported in an expansive, 50-year study? Consider the work of Case Western Reserve University’s Institute for Research on Unlimited Love (Institute Official Site). Researchers documented and reported on a decades-long study that shows that high school students who were considered giving had better physical and mental health in later life. According to Dr. Steven Post, president of the Institute, “Charity in high school leads to better physical and mental health in late adulthood. We’ve known about the impact on mental health, but the data on physical health is relatively new and could only have been produced from long-term studies.”

Have some fun with this! Let me suggest a good read and a quick and interesting quiz for you to take on love and longevity; they’re from the same source, Why Good Things Happen to Good People by Dr. Post and Jill Neimark (2007). The authors provide a summary of the new scientific data on the life-enhancing benefits of caring, compassion and kindness. When we love our neighbors as ourselves and give generously of our time, toil and talents, “everything from life satisfaction to self-realization to physical health is improved” (2007). We live longer, are less likely to be depressed or anxious, express a sense of general well-being and actually are more likely to experience good fortune.

Take the online quiz, adapted from The Love and Longevity Scale, to rate yourself on ten different giving behaviors. You can use it as a benchmark to determine whether you need to weave more generous behavior into your life and become a happier, healthier person or whether you’re always in “The Spring of Life,” a Lover of Humankind. Here’s the link: Love and Longevity Quiz

Spring has sprung, My Friend: Seize the Day! You’ll feel better and live longer.

Happily Yours,

Dr Mell

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Post, S & Neimark, J (2007). Why good things happen to good people: The exciting new research that proves the link between doing good and living a longer, healthier, happier life. New York: Broadway Books/Random House.

One of the most response-provoking blogs I’ve published lately was one titled “Attachment is a Monkey Trap,” about Letting Go. First, thank you for taking the time to read it and respond if you did, and secondly, I can summarize it here if you’d like to read it later: “Loving without caring is challenging but important to our well-being and satisfaction with life.” Particularly for Silver Sages (Who are Silver Sages?), my target audience of 50-Somethings and Older, we are uniquely prepared to reap the benefits of Loving without Caring.

Loving without Caring? How are we better prepared to do that at 50+ when we’ve likely acquired more relationships over time than we had when we were younger? Our effort is what counts, not the number of relationships we’ve acquired. We can do it is my point, and when we do, we are happier.

Loving without Caring means extending your tender concern to someone without allowing his/her autonomy to be misidentified with yours. One of the simplest and most profound truths I’ve shared with others is from Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, that is: “Don’t take anything personally.” (The small book is a terrific, easy read and so resonant.) You can love without caring by not allowing your personal identity, values or choices to get confused with others’—by loving people and wishing them well and not mistaking your love for the ability to influence or, worse yet, to control what they feel, say or do or what happens to them. Love them without caring: detach from mistaken notions about control and from trying to change people or the consequences they face.

Would you prefer an alternate phrase, like Loving without Carrying? The same principles hold true. As we mature and grow in experience and wisdom, we become more and more capable of loving others without feeling an undue responsibility for their choices or their destinies. This is where Gray Matter matters most. When we’re older, we can love without carrying more readily—even though we continue to form more and more relationships as we age. We have the Gray Matter to understand that people change themselves and that we lack control in making others comply with our direction or live by our standards.

Consider this: by the time I was 50, my children had completed their formal education and were living on their own, and my parents were well into their golden years. Most of my acquaintances, friends, and clients celebrate that birthday in similar life circumstances. The natural course of life is to prepare ourselves to let go, and in leaning into that natural impulse, we are more aware of the fleeting nature of relationships—with or without blood bonds—and we use awareness to truly savor the feelings we experience in loving or friendly attachments and value the time we spend with others.

Our wealth of experiences and greater depths of self-awareness and wisdom allow us to become loving and serene—connecting with others enthusiastically and in some cases spiritually but never mistaking our love for more than what it is.

With Love and Light,

Dr Mell

Much like gratitude, practicing kindness can make your life richer and add to your ability to truly flourish. Huge positive gains have been measured in gratitude studies, both for the study participants asked to express their appreciation and for the people who receive their thanks. “The Gratitude Letter” is a commonly used coaching activity that creates this marvelous exchange of gratitude and affirmation (Lyubomirsky et al, 2004).

Kindness fosters similar sorts of gestures and positive feelings, so you might assume that random acts of kindness create win-win situations, but you might also be surprised at the complexities at work in how people feel and why they act kindly.

Since the 1980s, researchers have conducted more than 25 significant studies exploring empathy and altruistic acts of kindness, questioning two sides of an interesting debate: (1) Do people perform acts of kindness purely for their selfish benefit—to boost their egos or avoid feeling guilty for not showing empathy; or (2) Do people act kindly from genuine feelings of empathy, making personal sacrifices for selfless and altruistic reasons? It’s a fascinating debate if you like to analyze why people feel the way they feel or do what they do. One of my go-to experts on positive psychology, Dr. Ben Dean, has explored the debate from research and practice.

According to Dean, the theory of “universal egoism” holds that every act of kindness is ultimately done for self-satisfaction. He cites Batson and others (2002) from a lengthy study in which they established three primary reasons why people perform kindnesses for their own benefit:

• Helping a homeless person or comforting a grieving friend relieves the physical and psychological discomfort we feel when someone else needs support;
• Helping someone else allows us to avoid the shame and disapproval of loved ones, friends or peers; and
• Helping someone else—especially someone most likely to reciprocate—allows us to build social goodwill and potential benefits, too.

These three explanations make sense logically, but don’t fully explain why people sometimes take great personal risk: pulling a perfect stranger from a fiery wreck or overpowering a mugger who assaults a disabled person or a child. Why are Good Samaritans so good?

Research from studies compiled over the last 30 years supports the other side of the debate: that most people are motivated to selflessly relieve the suffering of others if they can. Consider these explanations in support of this: If relieving the tension from physical and psychological discomfort was our sole aim, we would most often escape the situation and run the other direction. Time and time again, studies reveal that avoiding social shame and disapproval—social sanctions—don’t explain why we commit random and deliberate acts of kindness. Studies also substantiate that, whether we feel certain that our kindness will be reciprocated or not, we feel kindly toward others and extend a helping hand, a hot meal or often much more.

Clearly, science supports our elemental need to feel empathy for someone else’s suffering and to act kindly to alleviate it. Kindness then, like gratitude, is an emotion and an impulse to act that is soulfully human and fosters positive emotion, the potential for authentic connection with others, and a limitless spring of satisfaction and goodwill.

Be kind to yourself and others then. Naturally, you will.

With Love and Light,

Dr Mell

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Batson, C D, Ahmad, N, Lishner, D A & Tsang, J (2002). Empathy and altruism. In C R Snyder & S L Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of positive psychology (pp. 485-498). New York: Oxford University Press.

Lyubomirsky, S, Tkach, C & Sheldon, K M (2004). Pursuing sustained happiness through random acts of kindness and counting one’s blessings: Tests of two six-week interventions. Unpublished data, Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside.

All the Best Always! Dr Mell

Dr Mell_Letting Go 031912

CLICK ABOVE and VIEW     DR MELL!

Attachment to pleasure and ultimately to life itself is our inborn survival instinct. We necessarily attach ourselves to food, shelter and clothing to sustain and protect our lives. The trouble with attaching to life or pleasure or other people means we cling to suffering instead of living in love and light. Life ends, pleasure is fleeting and our relationships with other people begin and end, too.

A clever and very telling illustration of attachment trouble is the story of A Monkey Trap:

In the south of India, people used to catch monkeys in a very special way. Actually, they let monkeys catch themselves. What they did was cut a small hole in a coconut, just large enough for a monkey to put its hand in, and then, fix the coconut to a tree and fill it with a sweet. The monkey smelled the sweet and squeezed his hand into the coconut, grabbing the sweet. When he tried to take the sweet, he found that his fist did not fit through the hole. Time after time, the monkey refused to let go of the sweet and held himself prisoner until he was caught. (Chodron)

Our very survival depends on grasping and letting go: think of a little baby learning to feed herself as she reaches with her open hand and grasps a crisp green bean with her tiny fist, puts the food in her mouth and reaches out with her open hand to grasp another bite.

Love and pleasure and material possessions and a whole host of other things in life can only provide us with well-being and life satisfaction if we learn how to grasp and let go. We experience deep and loving hugs from our sweethearts or close friends by holding tightly and letting go, enjoying affirmation in a loving embrace. If I cling to someone I love, I smother my freedom to give and receive. If I cling to my material possessions and define my worth by the quantity and quality of my “stuff,” I smother my freedom to give and receive and crush my ability to truly esteem myself.

A few years ago, my little girl had become a woman and was engaged to marry a kind and handsome young man. My little girl I’d watched with love and adoration as she learned to eat her green beans and shine at her dance recitals and march in graduations with her honors class was getting married and moving from my home forever. What was my unattached and loving heart to do? I held her closely and kissed her cheek and let her go, smiling through and through as she walked confidently toward her new life and her own expanding joy.

My Monkey Ways? Believe me, I’m not perfect. For a fleeting moment when my daughter announced her engagement, I thought: My “sweet” is stuck in that coconut, and I must take her and keep her. But how could I? She was never mine, and my detachment was the most loving thing I could do for both of us. In life’s most spectacular passages and the smallest ones day-to-day, I aspire to be the best me I can be—and limit my monkeying around for times of pure pleasure.

With a Deep and Loving Hug,

Dr Mell

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Chodron, P (2007). Always maintain a joyful mind. Shambhala. http://pemachodron.org