Neill Neill, Ph.D.

I have long argued that more optimistic people live happier more fulfilling lives. This is basic positive psychology. We maximize our sense of wellbeing by focusing on what we want, not on what we don’t want. Optimistic people seem to have a brightness of the future. Their more pessimistic compatriots worry about the future.

Today I read an interesting New York Times article about mortality among optimistic versus pessimistic older adults. It was entitled "Yet Another Worry for Those Who Believe the Glass Is Half-Empty." It starts off with, "Now, it seems, pessimists may really have something to worry about: their health."

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Neill Neill, Ph.D.

I just read an inspiring post on a friend’s blog: "50 Ways to Find Serenity During The Holidays (when serenity is the last thing on your mind!) ". This is a good time of years to think about reducing holiday stress, or to put it in positive psychology terms, enhancing calm and serenity.

The topic is a bit unusual for Coach Maria; she typically writes about business topics. Maria Marsala is a business coach who calls herself "The Resource Queen." If you are in business, her sites are a goldmine of practical information about being successful with your business, so do get on her mailing list.She leads her article with

In the normal course of living, we sometimes feel "overwhelmed", "burnt out" or "stressed-out". I know I do, which is why I created this special list of things to do when I’m feeling less than peaceful. And around holiday time those feelings sometimes feel even more unmanageable.

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Friends and family sometimes tell me I work too much.

It’s true I spend a lot of time at what conventionally would be called work: seeing clients in my private practice, teaching and seeing clients in alcohol and drug rehab, writing regular columns for two newspapers and a magazine, and writing for my very active website, Practical Psychology for Capable People. None of this feels like work, but it does demand a lot of time just like "real work" does.

I tell others all the time that they need downtime to relax, recuperate, recharge and expand their perspective. I tell them to pursue something they are passionate about, just so long as it has nothing to do with work and lifts their spirits and leaves them feeling positive.

After all, taking downtime and using it well is a piece of positive psychology.

But does Dr. Neill practice what he preaches? You be the judge.

One of the ways I get that positive charge when I want to be completely off the work radar is going for a ride on my motorcycle. And the longer the ride, the better!

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The answer comes from positive psychology. It lies in taking conscious control of something that you are already doing on a ’sunny day,’ and then extending that action to every other day until it becomes a habit.

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By Dr. Neill Neill, Registered Psychologist

There have been some deeply personal things going on in my life that during the past few weeks have made me feel at times like my life is on hold.

My son is gravely ill.

My firstborn son, Richard, is gravely ill at age 41. He’s in the capable loving care of his wife, Tracey. He is receiving excellent daily palliative care from an outside support team. But he lives 3000 miles from where I live.

My wife Eileen and I visited him in early October when it appeared he had only days to live. He has rallied somewhat, and I’m planning another trip within the next two weeks. At this point he thinks he will make it until my next visit.

And that is why I have this feeling of being on hold.

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By Neill Neill, Ph.D

I just finished reading an interesting article by Dave Shearon about positive psychology in the workplace, "Sure they’ll think you are smart, but will they want to work for you? " published in The Positive Psychology News Daily.

He talks about how happiness and being positive are downplayed in the workplace, yet he goes on to say, "Positive psychology researchers have shown that happy, optimistic, hopeful individuals, in addition to living longer and healthier lives and having better relationships, are also more successful." If you’ve ever wondered about ‘looking smart,’ read his article.

Mr. Shearon gives positive-psychology-based seminars to lawyers. I am a professional psychologist, so I wondered if the same comments apply to my profession. I concluded that indeed they do.

Because of confidentiality issues, I cannot observe directly other psychologists at work with their clients. But I do hear reports like "He’s really intelligent, but I didn’t feel hopeful when I left," or "She’s smart, but I don’t think she’s happy."

I was once criticized by a supervisor for laughing in sessions with clients. But for the last number of years I’ve been in solo private practice and haven’t had the constraints of a supervisor. I am by nature a happy, positive person and going solo has been a fascinating experience.

I perceive some interesting things to have happened over the course of my practice.

• First of all, the amount of laughter in my sessions has increased year by year, while the tears shed by clients in my sessions have decreased. (Some weeks produce no tissue in my wastebasket.)
• Secondly, the number of sessions it takes to help my clients through what brought them in the door has steadily decreased over the years.
• Thirdly, my local reputation as a psychologist/healer has grown over the course of my practice. My referrals are the people with the most severe problems.

I love positive psychology. Thank you Dr. Martin Seligman for legitimizing my work.

Neill

Psychologist Dr. Neill Neill maintains an active psychology and life-coaching practice on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He focuses on self growth, healthy relationships and life enhancement after addictions. He is the author of Living with a Functioning Alcoholic - A Woman’s Survival Guide. Get on his list for notification that he has posted a new article and receive his free report, "Personal Change."

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Dr. Neill Neill

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As I explained in Part One, Dr. Pati Beaudoin wrote an excellent article about the movie and book, The Secret, and has given permission to post it here. If you haven’t seen The Secret, do see it or read the book. (There are links at the bottom of this page to buy either from Amazon.com.)

It is turning out to be, not only an exercise in positive psychology for some, but an important contribution to their psycho-spiritual growth.

Pati’s analysis of The Secret makes the principles more understandable and therefore more practical for self help. I have posted her article in two parts and this is the second part.

Watch for Dr. Beaudoin’s forthcoming book, 
Letter to Husbands From a Wife.

The next important level of truth is the beginning of the solution. It is what your conscious mind can do about the problem of relative power described above. When you focus on a positive that you want to attract into your life – maybe a loving relationship – the next step is, as The Secret teaches, to focus on that as much as possible, and to include the positive emotion. But there’s another step. As those positive thoughts gain a little size and power, they bump into their mismatches in your unconscious blueprint. To continue the example above, “Thank you for my husband who treats me with loving respect” bumps into the more powerful “all the ways people abuse me.” What the conscious positive does is highlight the unconscious negative, making it conscious.

This is very good news. You may not think so, because you may have been trained to think you should never notice a negative. But one of the secrets behind The Secret is that you must find the hidden negatives in order to transform them into positives. Those unconscious negatives not only have the power of repetition over time, they have the power of locked-in emotion. All the hurt and pain, fear and anger we have stored away with “all the ways people abuse me” keeps it locked firmly in place, sending out its attracting rays even when we don’t mean it to do so.

You can focus only on the positive if you choose – and it will be like a pea nudging the earth out of its orbit. Or you can cleanse the wound of the negative, moving into the center of the pain and transforming negative to positive. Then you are using the power you have in your unconscious mind to move in the same positive direction your conscious mind has chosen. This is more like the earth learning a newer, better orbit from the pea.

Those who say this sort of transformation is easier to describe than to experience are a little bit correct. It’s uncomfortable to move into the center of the pain, and I recommend you hire a good counselor or psychotherapist who is not afraid of intense emotion.

Once you have begun to transform the negative into positive, attracting positive into your life becomes much easier – but watch out! There’s another secret behind The Secret at this level. Your little conscious mind may think it knows what is best, and may wish for abundance – but the abundance you will attract is determined by a much wiser level of consciousness – your soul. You may send out attractants for abundance, thinking you need more money in your life, but if your soul knows you are ready for another type of abundance, it will come. Maybe your soul knew that you were about to get sick, and so it will attract abundant good health.

And that is the next level of depth in the secrets behind The Secret: The attracting should be aimed from the soul rather than the small conscious mind. I call it “small” because it’s quite short-sighted, having the limited view of a single lifetime and very little idea of its part in the greater scheme of things. It has a worm’s eye-view of what is important, and tends to be materialistic and – let’s face it – selfish. Your greater self – your Self or your soul – knows better. The bad news is that if you do all this transformational work to make your conscious mind send out more positive thoughts and then focus only on material gain, it may well work. This can lead to a kind of self-seduction, as in “Oh, look at how good I am! I am able to attract all this material wealth into my life, so I must be a good person, all positive.” The seduction in this lies in the material reinforcement of pseudo-spirituality. Having gone part-way in transforming the unconscious thoughts, the self-seducer traps herself in spiritual materialism, using material attraction as proof of spiritual transformation and creating an ego trip out of that alleged spiritual transformation.

The good news is that if you do the transformational work in the unconscious and send out thoughts of positivity and abundance for the soul, you will automatically attract into your life whatever your soul knows is best for you. At times that will be what your little consciousness might wish for – joyful relationships, good health and money. Other times it will be things you didn’t know you needed – a traffic jam, maybe, that prevents you being further up ahead where there’s a collision. And at other times – and really, all the time – it will be attracting the best experiences for your soul’s journey through our earthly classroom.

And the final and deepest level of the secrets behind The Secret – the best way to send out those positive thoughts is during meditation. One of the effects of meditation is to bring together all the parts of the mind to focus together. How much more powerful could you get?

So you see, The Secret isn’t wrong – it’s just the tip of a much more multi-leveled, complex secret… that will never be a secret again… and that is the best news of all.

Dr. Pati Beaudoin is a Licensed Psychologist who practices in Roswell, GA.   She has taught internationally on such varied topics as hypnosis, family violence, and energy psychology.  She is the author of Letter to Husbands From a Wife, which is due to be published in summer of 2007.

The Book        The DVD