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."

Click Here to Read More

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.

Click Here to Read More

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!

Click Here to Read More

It has been a beautiful couple of weeks here by the ocean: sun, warm breezes, barbeques, a deer in the garden, two eagles in tree, happy friends and passing cruise ships silhouetterd against the distant mountains. Now pause and let yourself feel the euphoria of days like these.

Yet we’ve both been around long enough to know that some days it rains. So the question becomes, "How do you extend these good feelings to the days when the weather is dismal, people are anything but enthusiastic, and your feel the zing slipping out of your own life?”

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.

Click Here to Read More

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.

Click Here to Read More

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

Dr. Neill Neill maintains an active psychology and life-coaching practice on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He is a member of the treatment team at Sunshine Coast Health Centre, an addiction treatment facility for men. He writes regular newspaper and magazine columns on healing and self growth. He holds a vision of expansion of the human store of hope, happiness and generosity of spirit.

Neill Neill, Ph.D.

After supplying your body with oxygen and water, you need "presence" for good stress management. The best practice I have ever found for getting present and then staying present for more of your day is a special kind of walk. I call it the "presence walk." It could turn out to be one of the most important tools in your mental health arsenal.

The presence walk is mechanically the same as any other walk; what is different is what you do with your mind while walking.

You have probably heard lots of different expressions about the importance of being present; for example, "Be here now!" "The point of power is in the present." But do you really understand why presence is so important?

The simple answer is that there is no trauma in the present. When we think of trauma we think of something bad that happened in the past. In other words our minds go out of present time and into the past. When we worry about something stressful or even traumatic that might happen in the future, our minds leave the present and move into the future.

Right now you are having a coffee. If you are feeling overwhelmed, it is because your mind on all the things that you have to get done– the future.

So to get your mind off past stresses or worries about the future, here is an exercise that I guarantee will bring you into the present. I’ve been using it personally for twenty years.

Go for a walk of at least 20 minutes. Walk where there are trees if you can. Trees are good because they are big and they are alive. If there are no trees were you live, try to walk where there are other live objects, the bigger the better. Large cacti will work, for example. But use whatever you can.

As you walk let your eyes focus on an individual tree as you approach it. Take in its size, its shape, its color, its texture, and any sounds or smells that come from it. Do not name it; just observe it. When you have it– it should take three or four seconds — let your eyes move to another tree and do the same thing, and then do it again, and again.

Always pick a tree far enough ahead that you never have to break your pace to finish taking it in.

If you continue this for 20 minutes, you will be fully present. The more often you practice the presence walk the more ease you will have in getting into a present time. And besides, you get all the benefits of good walk.

Getting present is key to good stress management. It is important in avoiding the buildup of chronic stress. The presence walk is a basic mental health tool, so use it often.

Dr. Neill Neill, Registered Psychologist, maintains an active psychology and life-coaching practice on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He is a member of the treatment team at Sunshine Coast Health Centre, an alcohol and drug treatment center for men. His goal is to help you to help yourself to a better life. http://www.neillneill.com

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

Dr. Neill Neill

In the spring I said to my wife Eileen a number of times, "I need a break." Well, I got my break. I fell and broke a rib in May. The pain slowed me down a lot, but the pain is almost all gone now and I’ve got most of my energy back.

Vacations (I don’t ask for "breaks" anymore.) are important to mental health, and we self-employed types are especially bad at remembering to take them. Periodically I do manage to interrupt my busyness with a vacation.

I found myself in June to be in desperate need of such an interruption. I hadn’t taken so much as a full weekend off in months. I left my work behind and took off on a 5,400 km mental health motorcycle trip by myself. It would my first real trip on my new BMW R1200RT motorcycle from Island BMW.

On vacations, not only do I get to see and do things that aren’t part of my at-home experience, but also I usually learn something new about myself. This vacation would prove to be no exception.

Click Here to Read More

Neill Neill Ph.D.

A Story of Healing 

One time years ago I was treating two young women who were both showing signs of depression and grief and in general having a hard time in life. Both lived in a large city and didn’t know each other.

Neither could afford to pay for psychotherapy so their mothers were footing the bill.

It turned out that one had suffered sexual abuse as a child and the other as a teen had been in a couple of serious accidents causing physical injury, plus some other severe trauma in the interval between the two accidents.

We focused on clearing the aftereffects of trauma and were progressing very well with the work. Both were coming out of their depression. Both were no longer grieving their losses, one her loss of childhood (sexual abuse does this), and the other her loss of a carefree healthy transition from child to adult.

Click Here to Read More