Life Skills E-Book

Marian K. Volkman

• Herausgeber: Loving Healing Press
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Serie: Explorations in Metapsychology
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 252

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2005

Beschreibung

Metapsychology, as developed by Frank A.Gerbode, MD, is a subject rich in philosophy and practical application. Much of Applied Metapsychology makes use of one-on-one session work to achieve the individual's personal goals - from relieving past pain to living more fully to expanding consciousness.
Life Skills: Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology, highlights key factors from the subject and illuminates the ways that these factors can be used on a daily basis for improved quality of life, as an individual, in relationships, and in the wider world. Learn handy and usually quite fast techniques to assist another person after a shock, injury or other distress Learn simple methods for expanding your awareness on a daily basis Gain a deeper understanding of relationship and how to strengthen and nurture any relationship Learn the components of successful communication, what causes commu nication to break down, and how to repair breakdowns Gain vital keys to understanding those behaviors of other people that have previously been inexplicable to you Gain the ability to more accurately predict certain patterns of human behavior, and to be more effective in dealing with the negative ones Learn an effective tool for making important life decisions Explore human potential
Praise for Life Skills
"A concise, eminently-readable, empathic, joy-filled, hands-on text. Life Skills is a must for therapists and their clients."
-- Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
"A serious, impressive, and thoughtful work with one objective in mind: teaching how to reach one's full potential."
-- James W. Clifton, M.S., Ph.D., LCSW
"If you take the trouble to do the exercises the way the author suggests, they will change your life."
-- Robert Rich, M.Sc., Ph.D., M.A.P.S., A.A.S.H
From the EXPLORATIONS IN METAPSYCHOLOGY SERIES

Leseprobe

Life Skills

Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology

By Marian K. Volkman

Life Skills: Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology

Copyright © 2005 Marian K. Volkman and Loving Healing Press.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First Edition: April 2005 (ISBN-13: 978-1-932690-05-7, ISBN-10: 1-932690-05-0)

Second Printing: August 2005

Publisher's Cataloging-in-Publication data

Volkman, Marian K.

Life skills : improve the quality of your life with metapsychology / by Marian K. Volkman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1932690050

1. Self-help techniques--Problems, exercises, etc. 2. Change (psychology). 3. Psychoanalysis. I. Title.

BF637.B4 V65 2005

158.1 dc--22                                  2005901517

Available from: Baker & Taylor, Ingram Book Group, Quality Books, New Leaf Distributing.

Published by: Loving Healing Press5145 Pontiac TrailAnn Arbor, MI 48105USA

http://www.LovingHealing.com or

[email protected]

Fax [phone]

Acknowledgements

The practical, useable tools in this book are based on the work of Frank Gerbode, M.D. Heartfelt thanks for all of the work and care to bring the subjects of Traumatic Incident Reduction and Applied Metapsychology into the world.

Many thanks go to the practitioners (facilitators) and trainers of these subjects who have shared their experience and knowledge with me over the years. Thanks also to my wonderful clients, for your courage, your insights and your willingness to share your experience with me.

Thanks also to my esteemed colleagues and fellow seekers in all subjects that aim to increase not only our understanding of human potential, but also to expand the apparent limits of that potential.

Thanks to my parents, Arie and Ellie Klopp, who started me out on the road to the exploration of human potential.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to writers who have informed and inspired me. A list of the books I mention herein appears in Appendix B.

Grateful thanks to Robert Rich, Ph.D. No one could ask for a wiser or more insightful editor. He is innocent of any oddities of language or punctuation that remain in this volume. They are mine alone.

Thanks to the people who were kind enough to critique various drafts: Victor Volkman, Stephanie Dreher, Jennifer MacLean, and Erika Moore.

Thanks to my assistant, Jake Coffin for doing so many things to help make writing possible.

Thanks to the following people for lending me space and quiet time to write (and in some cases computers and innumerable cups of tea): Suzanne Wilson, Henry Whitfield, and Steve and Frances Bisbey.

Thanks to the people of Landmark Education for their excellent work, especially Greg Hartman, Nitzana York, and Zanzibar Vermiglio.

Special thanks to my husband Victor, without whom this work would not have been finished any time soon!

Finally, thanks to my dear family, to whom I dedicate this book.

Explorations in Metapsychology Series:

Beyond Trauma: Conversations on TIR, 2nd EditionEd. by Victor R. VolkmanLife Skills: Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology by Marian K. VolkmanTraumatic Incident Reduction: Research and Results Ed. by Victor R. VolkmanAMI/TIRA Newsletter Volumes 1-2: Selected Reprints 2004-2005, Ed. by Victor R. VolkmanTIR and Metapsychology Lecture Series(MP3 CDs) with Frank A. Gerbode, M.D., et. al.Traumatic Incident Reduction, 2nd Editionby Gerald French and Chrys Harris, Ph.D.

Series Editor: Robert Rich, Ph.D.

“To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life”

—Robert Louis Stevenson (June 1880)

Loving Healing Press is dedicated to producing books about innovative and rapid therapies which redefine what is possible for healing the mind and spirit.

About our Series Editor, Robert Rich, Ph.D.

Loving Healing Press is pleased to announce Robert Rich, Ph.D. as Series Editor for the Explorations in Metapsychology Series. This exciting new series brings you the best of Metapsychology in practical application, theory, and self-help formats.

Robert Rich, M.Sc., Ph.D., M.A.P.S., A.A.S.H. is a highly experienced counseling psychologist. His web site www.anxietyanddepression-help.com is a storehouse of helpful information for people suffering from almost any way we can make ourselves and each other unhappy.

Bob is also a multiple award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction, and a professional editor. His writing is displayed at www.bobswriting.com. You are advised not to visit him there unless you have the time to get lost for a while.

Two of his books are tools for psychological self-help: Anger and Anxiety: Be in Charge of your Emotions and Control Phobias and Personally Speaking: Single Session Email Therapy. However, his philosophy and psychological knowledge come through in all his writing, which is perhaps why three of his books have won international awards, and he has won many minor prizes. Dr. Rich currently resides in Wombat Hollow in Australia.

About the Cover

The 3-D hands were designed by Fred Himebaugh (www.FredöSphere.com) using Imageware 12. This image was then layered with Hubble Space Telescope imagery of V838 Monocerotis (approx. 20,000 light years distant) as captured on 2/8/2004. Creative director for the cover design was Victor R. Volkman.

Here's what people are saying about

Life Skills:Improve the Quality of Your Life with Metapsychology:

“This is the first time I read about Applied Metapsychology in clinical practice. I am lucky to have come across a concise, eminently-readable, empathic, joy-filled, hands-on text. Replete with examples, exercises, episodes from the author's life, and tips - this is a must for therapists (the book uses a much more benign term: “facilitators”), clients, and anyone who seeks heightened emotional welfare - or merely to recover from a trauma.”

—Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., author of “Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited”

“Marian K. Volkman's Life Skills is a serious, impressive, and thoughtful work with one objective in mind: teaching how to reach one's full potential in practical, pragmatic, easy-to-follow steps that will literally change one's life. This masterpiece of a survival guide will benefit all who turn its pages. The chapter on the importance of relationships is worth the price of the book alone, as most problems in life are relationship-oriented.”

—James W. Clifton, M.S., Ph.D., LCSW

“Life Skills by Marian Volkman is not to be read once and then put away. It is a guide to living a full, satisfactory life, a philosophy, a challenge. If you take the trouble to do the exercises the way the author suggests, they will change your life. When I edit a book, I look at words, sentences, and the way ideas are expressed and related to each other. With this book, I continually found myself thinking about the meanings the author discussed, relating them to my own experience, applying them to my own life. I think this shows the book's power. As a psychologist, I know that my work will have been improved through my reading of Life Skills.”

— Robert Rich, M.Sc., Ph.D., M.A.P.S., A.A.S.H.

“There are books for reading and then there are books for studying. This is one of the latter, and is worth studying by everyone who would like to live more happily. It offers insights into the relatively new science of Metapsychology developed by Frank A. Gerbode M.D., an American psychiatrist whose university qualifications are sufficient to share around three or four eminent experts with a few to spare. He found a way to simplify the world view to its most basic, person-centred form and developed this into Metapsychology. Be warned, this book will probably affect the way you view everything and everyone around you. People who annoyed you previously will become more comprehensible, stressful situations will be less so and wise decisions will be easier to make. Most terrifying of all—you will be more likeable as you begin to like yourself more.”

—Sue Phillips, Spiralthreads Reviews

“…This book will serve as a good resource for therapists, the general public will also find this book helpful. Topics are discussed in everyday language and explained without jargon or hidden superior attitudes. Furthermore, readers will find that the exercises that accompany each section of this book will not only help further solidify the concepts explained, but will also allow the reader to tailor his or her new findings to his or her life and particular situation. This aspect makes takes this book beyond just an excellent reference book of Metapsychological philosophies and techniques and brings these methodologies into the realm of self-help for all individuals wanting to improve the quality of their life.”

—Tami Brady, Blether.com Reviews

“Volkman's primary objective in this volume is, as the subtitle suggests, to help improve the quality of her reader's life in all of its dimensions (mental, physical, emotional) by explaining various “Life Skills” which anyone can acquire and then strengthen. Volkman's ultimate objective is to help each reader to achieve maximum fulfillment of human potentialities, whatever the nature and extent of those potentialities may be.”

—Bob Morris, Five-Star Reviews

Table of Contents

Table of Figures

How to Get the Most from this Book

Use of this Book by a Reading or Study Group

Chapter 1 — Quality of Life: What is Possible?

How Good Can Your Life Get?

Having What Is vs. Changing What Is

The Person-Centered Viewpoint

Life as a School vs. Life as Art

How do We Achieve and Maintain Our Potential?

Chapter Summary

Chapter 2 — Traumatic Stress as a Factor in Life

The Effects of Traumatic Stress

What Can be Done about the Effects of Traumatic Incidents?

Triggering of Traumatic Incidents

What is Resolution of Trauma?

Attempted Solutions to the Effects of Traumatic Stress

To Face it or Not to Face it?

Real Resolution of Traumatic Experience

Emotional First Aid – Three Simple Remedies

Chapter Summary

Chapter 3 — Predicting and Understanding Emotion

What is the Emotional Scale?

Chronic, Acute, and Projected Emotional Levels

Cause or Effect? Using the Emotional Scale as a Tool

The Predictability Factor

Using the Emotional Scale to Create Positive Effects

Chapter Summary

Chapter 4 — Understanding & Improving Relationships

Communion: A Theory of Relatedness

Understanding the Components of Relationship

Building Relationship

Types of Connection

Repairing Breakdowns

Chapter Summary

Chapter 5 — A Useful Life Model

The Domains: Spheres of Influence and Responsibility

Domains of Consciousness

Balance: How Domains and Aspects of Domains Affect Each Other

Collapse and Inversion of the Domains

Decision making as Informed by Domains

Lining up the Domains

Chapter Summary

Chapter 6 — Success

Engagement in the Process of Living

Understanding Success and Failure

It's My Universe, and Other Views of Success

Using this Model

The Danger Zone

Drudgery

Steady On: The Charms of Normal

The Thrills of Success

Chapter Summary

Chapter 7 — Understanding The Dark Side of the Force

Types of Negative Experience

A Model for Understanding the Darkest Side of Human Behavior

Chapter Summary

Chapter 8 — Awareness Enhancers & Remedies

Communication Exercises

The Orientation Remedies

Conversational Remedy

Awareness Enhancers

Chapter Summary

Afterword

Appendix A — Glossary

Appendix B — Resource List

Bibliography

About the Author

Index

Table of Figures

Worked/Hasn't Worked sample worksheet (Fig. 1-1)

Want/Don't Want sample worksheet (Fig. 1-2)

Covey's Circles of Influence & Concern (Fig. 2-1)

The Emotional Scale (Fig. 3-1)

Small Portion (about 10%) of the Table of Attitudes (Fig. 3-2)

The Predictability Spectrum (Fig. 3-3)

A Model for Communion (Fig. 4-1)

The Domains (Fig. 5-1)

The Emotions and their Corresponding Conditions (Fig. 6-1)

Relative Difficulty of Various Types of Traumas (Fig. 7-1)

A Mirrored Emotional Scale (Fig. 7-2)

Introduction: How to Get the Most from this Book

This book provides you with some fundamental Life Skills for enhancing your abilities:

To be fully present.To increase your knowledge and awareness of how life works.To bring about positive change in your mental and emotional world, which makes bringing about positive change in the outer environment much easier to do.To access more of your potential through practical exercises.

I personally detest books that tell me what to do, for example, books with suggested exercises that say something like: “Do everything in order,” or, “Write everything down; don't just think about it.” We all process information in our own ways. The exercises are suggestions only. I invite you to read and use this book in whatever way suits you best. Each time a word with a definition particular to this subject is used, it has been italicized, indicating that it is included in the glossary (see Appendix A).

The purpose of this book is to make all of these tools handily accessible for therapists and practitioners of all types, their clients, and people who wish to use them, either individually or in a group setting. This is the first book written with the purpose of making these tools available directly to the reader for use in daily life.

Life Skills is based on the practical use of concepts from Applied Metapsychology. While no one would claim that this subject contains everything you need to know about life, it does provide tools and strategies that I have found among the most useful I have ever encountered. I use the philosophy and methods of Metapsychology with my clients in one-on-one sessions. They come to me for a variety of reasons, because they are seeking: resolution and relief from traumatic experiences, better relationships, personal growth, more success, or increased awareness. Because my aim is to empower my clients as much as I can, I have taught the concepts and methods covered in this book to individuals for many years. In return, my clients have taught me much too. That is one of the reasons why I love this work, the continual opportunity for learning and insight. I invite you to explore these concepts, to try them on for size, and to see where they fit within your own wise understanding of life.

Because Metapsychology is person-centered in nature, you can incorporate these tools into your own frame of reference. What have you observed as being true? What works for you? I am much less interested in selling you on any of these ideas than I am in inviting you to think about all of these things and to draw your own conclusions.

Finally, I invite you also to consider taking the TIR (Traumatic Incident Reduction) and Metapsychology training, whether or not you have or want to have a career in the helping professions. There is a great deal to be gained from this training in terms of personal life skills. (For more details see www.tir.org and www.beyondtrauma.com.)

Use of this Book by a Reading or Study Group

Though any individual or any pair of people can effectively put the information and exercises presented here to work, this book is ideally suited to groups who read or study together. Group discussion always improves the depth of one's understanding of new material. After discussion the exercises can be done in pairs.

If you:

Ask each question of your partner.Listen attentively to his/her answer (long or short).Acknowledge that answer so that your partner knows that s/he has been heard and understood. (Something simple like, “Good” or “OK” or “All right” works best.)Refrain from comment, judgment or interpretation.Take each exercise to an end point of your partner feeling complete and satisfied.

…then you are doing facilitation

While there is a lot more to know about this subject, especially if you want to use it in a professional context, these techniques used in a personal growth context can be effective in promoting increased quality of life. When people work together like this, taking turns to do the exercises, we call it co-facilitation.

If a group were to study and practice all of this material, they would have a new set of skills, both as individuals and as a group.

If you like the idea of working this way but lack a handy group to work with, you have the option to start your own local study group. Another option is to join an online study group. To join, setup, or find an online study group, go to www.BookMovement.com and search for “Life Skills”.

1Quality of Life: What is Possible?What is Quality of Life? What is Possible in Terms of Human Potential?How Good Can Your Life Get?Is there Purpose to Our Existence and if So, What Is It?The Person-Centered ViewpointLife as a Journey or School vs. Life as ArtHow do We Achieve and Maintain Our Potential?

This book offers tools that you can use to improve the quality of your own life, both immediately and as the on-going project that life is.

Exercise 1-1:

Either as a writing exercise, talking it over with another person, or just thinking about it, invent your own definition of quality of life.Are there things that cannot be present for quality of life to be good?Once you have achieved a good quality of life, how do you recognize it?How good can it get?

Either by doing Exercise 1-1 or just thinking about it for a minute, take a look at your own ideas on the following: What makes life good? How good can it get: Emotionally? Mentally? Physically? In relation to others?

Fun, enjoyment, contentment, lightheartedness, pleasure, wonder, humor and delight must be part of the equation for the phrase “excellent quality of life” to apply.

Most of us would agree that adequate supplies of food, clothing and shelter are necessary as well for a reasonable quality of life. Until those basics are covered, people don't usually have much free attention to devote to such things as personal growth. People vary on how much money they consider to be necessary for life to be good, but most of us require a certain level of safety (in our homes, in our streets, in our environment and our economy), in order to feel that life is as it should be. Quality of relationships probably determines quality of life more surely than wealth does, once a certain minimum financial well-being is attained.

Maslow's well-known hierarchy of needs applies: Physiological needs such as food, clothing and shelter must be met first. The second need is for safety, then come our needs for society, esteem and finally actualization. Talking to a hungry person about personal growth or even trauma resolution is unlikely to meet the need that is uppermost. Once our basic survival needs are met we have attention and energy free to address the question of optimum quality of life.

How Good Can Your Life Get?

The question remains, given that every life has its ups and downs, how good can it get? Here is an inventory of components of high quality life that we can consider.

Daily Life: If you wake up each morning eager for the day and what it will bring…Physical Well-Being: If you feel good in your body, comfortable in your skin; If you get far more pleasure from it than pain; If you delight in the sensations of ordinary things: warm water on your skin, comfortable clothing, cool morning air on your face…Mental Well-Being: If you feel good in your mind, feeling that it responds well to what you want it to do; If you delight in thinking, in working to understand new concepts and in playing with new ideas…Spiritual Well-Being: If you feel good in spirit: at peace with yourself and at home in the world; If you feel challenged and interested by the demands of life without being overwhelmed by them…Daily Work: If you have a good balance in your work and your play and find pleasure in both; If you are proud of what you produce in your daily work, and happy with the payment or exchange you get for what you do…Relationships: If you delight in the relationships you have with those around you, whether that includes a spouse, parents, children, neighbors, friends, co-workers, or chance-met strangers; If these relationships bring you far more pleasure than pain; If you delight in knowing these people and know that they delight in you…Intimacy: If you have, as Washington Post columnist Carolyn Hax puts it, “…the awareness that comfortable, loving, honest, seemingly bottomless intimacy is possible”…Harmony: If you feel in balance and harmony with the world such that your survival does not diminish the quality of life of others, but enhances it…Learning: If your life includes the stimulation of learning and personal development in whatever forms you choose: education (either formal or self-designed), physical and/or mental exercises, therapy perhaps, or religious observance, reading and conversation, so that new aspects of consciousness and awareness emerge to delight you…Aesthetics: If you seek out and enjoy beauty, not just in art and music, but in daily mundane scenes and objects; If you find aesthetic experience already existing all around you: a fresh loaf of bread, the color of bricks, the slant of evening light, a cloud, a bird, and you also consciously bring it into your life: a pretty table, a well-made meal, a collection of rocks or shells…Nature: If you delight in the wonder of the natural world in its richness, variety and ingenuity…Your Identity: If you feel good in yourself: in touch with your strengths and weaknesses, comfortable with your integrity, your creativity and your very being, at the same time willing to expand and develop all of your abilities as life flows on…

If all or most of these things are true, a person has an extraordinarily high quality of life. Notice how you feel, having read that list of possibilities. It can be depressing to contemplate the ideal and notice the disparity between what could be and what is. Since life involves effort, change and uncertainty, the above is more a picture of a theoretical ideal state than a standard one can never achieve. Instead, having a concept of the ideal gives us something to aim for, and something, hopefully, to inspire us.

Quality of relationships determines qualityof life more surely than wealth does.

Having What Is vs. Changing What Is

Two abilities have profound impact on our potential to optimize the quality of life:

Our ability to fully enjoy and appreciate what is around us, what we already have.Our ability to change and adapt the actual conditions of our lives to suit ourselves.

Eastern philosophy tends to emphasize the former, Western the latter. In a well-known television series episode (you will recognize it if you have seen it), a Russian woman says to an American man, “You Americans are never happy. You have so much and yet you are never content.” Well, yes. Dissatisfaction is built into a consumer-based society. Thinking of this, we can see that it truly is not only a skill, but a great richness to have the capacity to enjoy what is. The Emotional Scale (Chapter Three) bears on this, as do the effects of traumatic stress (Chapter Two). For now, let us just consider this as a pure ability.

Exercise 1-2:

Depending on what appeals to you, go to an art museum, an antique auto show, a zoo, a public garden, a jewelry or department store, or any place where there is a large collection of things you especially like or want.To expand your ability to have and appreciate things without having to have legal title or physical possession of them, walk around choosing which things you most want to look at.One at a time, practice having them just where they are. Drink in their beauty and fine qualities. Decide that you can have them, just where they are.Do this as long as it interests you or until you feel a positive shift in your ability to have things without needing to own them.

Exercise 1-3:

For excellent practice in seeing, walk around with a camera, or pretend that you have a camera with you.

Notice what you are looking at as if it were going to be recorded as a picture.Notice the quality of light: is it sharp or soft? Notice how high the sun rises in the sky at different times of the year.Notice composition, contrast, interestingly shaped objects, and interestingly shaped spaces.

Having What Is

The drive to possess things has fueled a great deal of human inventiveness and creativity. While we can acknowledge that, in Reviving Ophelia (1995), Pipher points out that this same drive can lead to people having, “houses full of junk, and no time.” We can expand our capacity to have something beyond taking the thing home and putting it in our house or garden, where we admire it, paint it, or chop it up for firewood, as we choose. That is only one kind of having.

By enlarging the concept of possession, we can “have” a statue in a park and enjoy it fully, without feeling sad that we aren't allowed to take it home and install it in front of our own house. We can enjoy the possessions and furnishings of our friends with pure pleasure and no envy. We can enjoy the delightful qualities of another person's spouse without feeling the need to break up two families in order to fully “have” that person. Window shopping when we are feeling on top of the world can be a very pleasant exercise. Window shopping when we are feeling depressed merely adds another reason for depression – “Look at all those nice things that I can't possess.”

After this examination of the ability to have desirable things, let's look at the ability to have things that we judge as less desirable. At this moment as I sit at my computer, I can look slightly to the right and see out a window. Perfectly framed in the window, which is a very tall Italianate style window with ancient wavy glass in it and a detailed wooden frame around it, is the stalk of a very tall star-gazer lily, the buds still tightly furled and green. In front of the window is a nice old wooden chair that was my grandfather's, with a green seat in need of reupholstering. The cat likes to sit on this chair, but he can't at the moment because it is taken up by a set of files representing lots of work awaiting attention. Outside the window is a cold, gray July day. (July of course is usually one of the hottest and clearest months in Michigan.) The window is dirty.

Consider this picture with me for a moment if you will. What choices do we have here, without taking any action to change the physical environment? It would be easy to try and avoid anything in this picture which we might deem to be undesirable by projecting ourselves forward into the future, anticipating the glorious blooming of this lily plant (eleven buds!), hopefully with some sun to show off its rich color and bring out its enticing fragrance. It might be just as easy to feel that the lily is not worth looking at as it is now, before it blooms.

Even if we see the lily plant as beautiful as it is right in this moment, we might consider that the dirtiness of the window, the stack of files on the chair, or the gray, cold day, spoil our ability to appreciate it. Or, we might make a big effort to ignore what we don't like and appreciate the lily (or the chair, or the window itself) in spite of those things. Finally, we have the choice to take in the whole picture in the present and appreciate every bit of it, just as it is and each component as part of the whole.

This doesn't mean that we cannot wash the window if we choose to, or move the files, or light some candles to brighten the gloom; it just means that we don't have to do those things in order to have a good experience. If one has any lingering traces of the Puritan world-view that characterizes pleasure as sinful, the idea of working to develop one's capacity for enjoyment might seem like something wrong or at best, self-indulgent. I leave it to you to decide on that. The author Bill Bryson is extremely funny on the subject of how English people have the ability to squeeze every drop of pleasure from small comforts, and at the same time how willing they are to put up with discomforts others might consider intolerable.

If you decide that you'd like more capacity for pleasure, try Exercises 1-4 thru 1-6 on pp. 11-11.

Changing What Is

Now let's take a look at the other side of the equation, improving our quality of life by taking action to change the environment to suit ourselves. The positive side of a “This isn't good enough” attitude is the willingness to work to bring around positive change in the environment, at least from one person's point of view.

Exercise 1-4:

Look around your current environment and find something you can enjoy and appreciate, just as it is. Do this as long as you find it interesting or until something shifts in a positive direction for you.Repeat daily or as often as you like.Notice whether your ability to notice things improves over time.Notice whether you ability to enjoy what you notice improves.If you find this very hard, look for some aspect of each thing you notice, no matter how small an aspect, that you can appreciate, for example the grain of the wood in an otherwise ugly table.

Robert Rich, Ph.D. notes: “I used to uniformly dislike insects. Now I notice their beauty, enjoy their energy, and only kill those that attack me like mosquitoes and flies. I do go to some trouble to rescue one that is in danger.”

Exercise 1-5:

Think of a person who is so familiar to you that you hardly feel a need to look at him or her, someone whose habits and thoughts you know almost as well as your own.Really look at that person in a new moment and find some things to appreciate (in his or her looks, gestures, character, anything).Repeat daily or as often as you like.Notice whether your ability to notice things improves.Notice whether you ability to enjoy what you notice improves.