The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die by John Izzo

Psychologist John Izzo interviewed seniors who had a reputation for wisdom to find out what they knew about happiness. He describes the ideas he gleaned from these interviews in his book The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die (also a five-part television series that aired on PBS).

As the title suggests, Izzo doesn’t shy away from discussing death. He suggests it is important to remember that live is short and our choices define our lives. We all want joy, contentment, connection and purpose. We can learn from the example of people who have achieved such lives and have a more satisfying life as well.

First, follow your heart. You will not be happy if you try to be someone else. You can be more authentically yourself by living intentionally and examining your life to see if you are doing what matters to you.

Live without regrets. You can forgive yourself for the mistakes you make (if you try), but you’ll likely regret the important things you left undone. Encourage yourself to take worthy risks in life. If you love someone, put the work into fixing a broken relationship.

Love is incredibly important to a happy life. Make room for people in your life and practice loving them. Love is more than a feeling toward others; it is kindness and generosity.

Almost everywhere I look, I see books, articles and television segments on mindfulness. Izzo suggest that a kind of mindfulness—living in the moment—is practiced by happy people. Recognize that every day of life is a gift and we should enjoy it while it is here.

Finally, give. Giving is a way to connect to something larger than ourselves. It is a path to purpose, love, and joy.

Izzo isn’t simply concerned with giving advice; he wants to equip people to apply that advice. One of the ways he suggests this can be done is by paying attention to the way we want to live. Each chapter ends with a short list of questions that are collected in one of the later chapters. Izzo suggest reading and answering these questions in a weekly time of reflection. Often all we need to do to make the changes we want is to intend to do it and remind ourselves of that intention.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The 4:8 Principle by Tommy Newberry

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

The 100 Simple Secrets of Happy People by David Niven

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Think 4:8 by Tommy Newberry & Lyn Smith

Izzo, John. The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008.

Rewire Your Anxious Brain by Catherine M. Pittman & Elizabeth M. Karle

We can face all kinds of situations that cause anxiety. For some of us, that anxiety can be overwhelming and get in the way of living the life we want. Feelings of anxiety are produced in the brain as a response to triggering circumstances, and we can retrain our brains to lessen our anxious responses. Psychologist Catherine M. Pittman and her co-author Elizabeth M. Karle explain this in Rewire Your Anxious Brain.

The authors devote quite a bit of the book to describing the workings of those parts of the brain most involved in our sense of fear and anxiety. These are the amygdala and the cortex.

The amygdala has a lot of control over our fight, flight or freeze response. It is centrally located and well connected in the brain, so it can produce a powerful response before our thinking mind—the cortex—can figure out what is going on. In addition, the amygdala has its own emotional memories, independent of the cortex, so you may have an anxious response to a stimulus you have little conscious awareness of.

A big part of dealing with anxiety is retraining the amygdala. This can be difficult because it involves exposure to situations that produce anxiety. When you face those situations and see that there is no negative impact, or that they were less than you expected and you can handle it (you didn’t die), your amygdala learns that these situation aren’t so threatening and it will stop producing anxious responses. The authors show how you can take this in steps, starting will less anxiety-inducing stimulus and working your way up, but it may be faster to dive into the deep end.

Retraining the amygdala can be aided by relaxation. The book describes several relaxation practices.

Though the amygdala is always involved in producing anxiety, the cortex can be the source of it or can perpetuate it. Retraining the cortex is mainly a matter of changing your thinking. When you recognize anxiety-producing thoughts, you can change what you are thinking. You might use countering thoughts that you prepared for the situation or you might distract yourself by thinking of something altogether different. Mindfulness is a helpful practice in that it helps you to recognize that your thoughts are not necessarily the reality and you can remain peaceful while the thoughts come and go.

The book is a mix of science and how-to aimed and helping anxious people find relief. The authors strongly suggest that you get help, and I think this is a reasonable suggestion. If anxiety is interfering with your life, you will probably benefit from the aid of a professional. This book can help you understand what is happening and what can be done about it, but you may need some help to actually adapt them your own needs and put them into practice.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

The Relaxation Response by Herbert Benson with Miriam Z. Klipper

Secrets You Keep from Yourself by Dan Neuharth

The Solution by Lucinda Bassett

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Pittman, Catherine M., & Elizabeth M. Karle. Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic & Worry. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2015.

The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need by Paul Pearsall

Self-help books are baloney. Psychologist Paul Pearsall didn’t go that far, but he encouraged readers of his book The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need to have a healthy skepticism about the advice and claims of self-help books. Much of the standard advice in the genre is unsupported by research and sometimes just wrong.

Pearsall’s chief criticism of self-help is its focus on the personal and individual. He argued that there is more joy and fulfillment, along with better solutions to our problems, to be found in the interpersonal and relational aspects of life.

Good relationships are largely a matter of the value you place in them. If you want to others to like you, find ways to like them first. To get love, give love. To find a partner, become someone who would be a good partner. Look for the best in others and overlook their faults. Lasting, loving relationships are based on commitment, not passing, emotional passion.

Another important aspect of Pearsall’s perspective is that there is much to be said for accepting life as it is, good and bad, instead of buying into self-help’s striving for the perfect life.

Life is never going to be perfect anyway. There is no reason to make yourself crazy trying. Instead, aim for a good life of deep enjoyment and engagement. Life is chaotic. Remain calm and learn to enjoy the messy reality. Practice mindfulness; accept the facts of life as it is, but do not passively accept the interpretation you may receive from others. You find the great pleasures and great challenges of living in thinking for yourself.

The themes of relationships and mindful acceptance run through all the chapters of the book. In addition to those areas already mentioned, Pearsall address health and work.

If you’ve read a lot of self-help, you may feel burdened by the gap between where you are and where self-help authors say you can be. Pearsall’s book may be an antidote for that. At the very least, reading it may put things in perspective and help you give yourself a break.

Paul Pearsall also wrote

The Beethoven Factor

Toxic Success

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat

Pearsall, Paul. The Last Self-Help Book You’ll Ever Need. New York: Basic Books, 2006.

The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman

More than 1 billion people do not have access to clean drinking water.  Australia has suffered a decade-long, continent-wide drought.  Even seemingly water rich places, like Atlanta, Georgia, can’t get enough water.  Many are talking of a global water crisis.  Except, as Charles Fishman aptly states it in The Big Thirst, “There is no global water crisis, there are a thousand water crises, each distinct.”

I think the story of Atlanta and Lake Lanier, as told recounted by Fishman, is especially instructive.  Lake Lanier on the Chatahoochee River is the source of 75 percent of the water used by Atlanta, 5 million gallons a day.  A drought in 2007-2008 brought the level of the lake dangerously low, prompting downstream states to sue over the amount of water Atlanta was taking.  The federal court declared that Atlanta had been illegally receiving water from the lake and had to find another source.  Atlanta has a lot of resources, barely tapped conservation efforts, reuse, and alternative supplies, but with a lack of political will, leadership, and vision, it leaders threw up their hands in impotent defiance of the court and whined they must have Lake Lanier water.  When the lake was built, Atlanta passed on paying for a piece of it thinking it would never be needed, and now they think they can’t live without it.

Part of the point Fishman makes it that water crises are more often than not political crises.  There is a lack of political will and sense of necessity, even though the problems can be plain and the solutions within reach.  The Big Thirst includes examples from around the world (the United States, India, and especially Australia) where people are facing water problems.  Happily, many of them have taken a more realistic and reasonable approach than Atlanta.

Fishman is going for something deeper, though.  Our political and economic stumbling in the area of water management stems for our cultural relationship with water.  It is obviously necessary for life.  We also consider it beautiful, it is part of our landscape, and in some places it has important religious significance.  Even so, we have difficulty understanding the value of water, comparing one use to another, assigning responsibility for its distribution and quality, acknowledging the infrastructure needed to have water when and where it is needed.  It the West, where for the last century we have enjoyed incredible access to abundant water, we hardly ever think about water unless we have some professional connection to it.

We can’t continue to be mindless of water.  The systems of water abundance we built in the last century aren’t sustainable without major ongoing investment.  In light of climate change, they may be altogether unsustainable.  Even without climate change, much of our water policy dates to a time of unusual water abundance.

Fishman encourages water mindfulness.  We need to reconnect to water.  In part, this reconnecting means understanding what it means to have water in our homes and in our streams.  It is also connecting to how critical water is to food, energy, commerce, health, and almost every aspect of life.  Our decisions about water need to be rooted in reality.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Blue Revolution by Cynthia Barnett

Elixir by Brian Fagan

Water by Marq de Villiers

Water by Steven Solomon

When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce

I’ve also written about Atlanta and Lake Lanier at Infrastructure Watch:

Courts Could Affect Uses of Lake Lanier

Georgia Appeals Lake Lanier Decision

Georgia Loses Lake Lanier Battle

Judge Winnows Down Central Question in Lake Lanier Case

Fishman, Charles.  The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water.  New York: Free Press, 2011.

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The Big Thing by Phyllis Korkki

A large creative project of the type Phyllis Korkki references in the title of her book The Big Thing can be hard to finish, or even start. Korkki identifies several characteristics of big things that make them challenging.

-Big things are personally meaningful. The dread of failing or falling short of a dream can keep us from crossing the finish line, or even the starting line.

-They have no deadline. It is your personal project that you get done on your own schedule.

-They are large and complex. At first, the structure of the thing you want to create may not be clear in your mind.

-They require sustained concentration and effort. It can be hard to keep going and going, especially in the face of the other challenges of taking on a big thing.

Creative projects are not just novels, movies, painting or other thing we typically think of as art. A healthy relationship, especially marriage and family, can be a creative undertaking. Other types of creative goals might lead to you to organize people and resources to make a difference in the world.

In order to find a way to complete her big thing, Korkki looked into areas that you might not find in other get-things-done type self-help books. For instance, she looked at the effects of health and sleep. Along the way she received coaching in breathing, posture and mindfulness. The bottom line is that if you’re going to have the energy, stamina and mental clarity you need to finish a major creative work, you’ll need to take care of yourself.

She also found that constraints were helpful. For her, her sense obligation help her design constraints around accountability to her editors and others. My background is engineering, so I tend to think of creativity in terms of dealing with constraints and how they can be overcome or possibly used to achieve a purpose.

Creative projects are rarely the work of one person. Korkki gives credit to her agent, her editor, and the many people at her publisher who turned her words into a book. Ego can get in the way of working with other and Korkki offers advice on how collaboration can work.

Something I found helpful was Korkki’s advice on figuring out when to let something go. Get real with yourself. Do you have the motivation, especially if you must learn and practice something new to achieve your creative goal? Are you committed to work on it regularly? Is it worth the sacrifice you’ll need to make? You may find that something else is more important to you, or that you don’t realistically have the desire to push through the obstacles that will inevitably show up. Instead of torturing yourself because of what you’re not doing, put you energy and talents into something else you want to do.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck

Korkki, Phyllis. The Big Thing: How to Complete Your Creative Project Even if You’re a Lazy, Self-Doubting Procrastinator Like Me. New York: Harper, 2016.

Rapt by Winifred Gallagher

Our brains can’t process all the stimuli to which we are exposed.  It selects to be more strongly aware of some stimuli that seem important and to suppresses awareness of others. It is like a spotlight that illuminates every detail of an actor and the scenery immediately next to him, but leaves the rest of the stage in twilight or even completed darkness. This process is attention.

Our experience of life is what we pay attention to. This is the thesis of Winifred Gallagher’s book Rapt. We may not always be happy, be can nearly always be focused and choose to pay attention to what brings us peace, joy, and a sense of meaning in the moment.

We have two types of attention. Gallagher calls the first “bottom up” attention. This is the our instinctive attention to things in our environment that are novel, potentially dangerous, or a potential opportunity.

Top down attention is intentional focus on what we choose. Our intentional focus can be very powerful, drilling into our target while leaving us unaware of things that might otherwise seem obvious. Gallagher recounts a humorous experiment in which subjects were asked to watch for a certain activity on a video. The subjects completely missed a man in a gorilla suit dancing around in the video because their top down attention was so intensely trained on the task they were instructed to pursue.

In the same manner that attention raises or lowers awareness of physical stimuli, it adjusts awareness of our own thoughts and feelings. Bottom up attention tends to focus on the most and least pleasant feelings, our highs and lows. Our top down attention can focus on any thought of feeling we want.

In turn, our thoughts and feelings affect our attention. When we are negative, our focus narrows to take in just a little. Feeling bad make our problem seem like the only thing in the world. Positive thoughts and feeling expands our attention, allowing us to take in more information. It switches us to mental broadband that allows us to be aware of more of our world both inside and out.

Attention is important to every aspect of life. Relationships are inherently paying attention to others. Intimacy in relationships is built on building common, positive experiences from paying attention to the same thing and to each other. Success requires intense, long-term attention to our goals. Fulfillment arises from taking on just-manageable challenges that hold our attention. Creativity involves a calm mindfulness that does not so much capture an idea as allow it to unfold in our awareness. Motivation comes from sorting out the competing voices in our mind and listening to the ones that advocate for our goals.

Our attentional style is shaped both by our genes and our culture. A significant part of what and how we pay attention is learned. Because of this, we can learn new ways of attending and direct our focus in new directions. If we learn to pay attention to positive emotions and opportunities for positive action, we can change our experience of life to have more peace, joy, and fulfillment.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

Change Your Brain Change Your Body by Daniel G. Amen

The Genius in All of Us by David Shenk

Love and Respect by Emerson Eggerichs

The Mindful Way through Depression by Mark Williams et al

Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer

The Procrastination Equation by Piers Steel

Quiet by Susan Cain

Succeed by Heidi Grant Halvorson

The Thinking Life by P. M. Forni

Gallagher, Winifred. Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. New York: Penguin, 2009.

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