Attention to Discomfort

Itching to be Distracted

Itch to Calm Your Bug Bites

Itch to Calm Your Bug Bites

There’s a web of skin between my little finger and ring finger with a bug bite, a little red, raised itchy angry spot shouting for my attention. And there’s another one on my left ankle. And another on my middle right toes, not counting the river of bumps under my right forearm. Something is is under my right shoulder blade and suddenly my left front thigh is shouting out for an  equal opportunity scratch.

By now, you’re itching, aren’t you. Don’t stop. Share the agony with me. This itch is something that I want to share with everyone. I’m bitten up from my toes to my neck, from shoulder to shoulder, from stomach to lower back. I feel like the little girl I once was who woke up one morning to discover bites all over my stomach and back because of  a hole in the window screen.

This time however, I was way more active seeking out the bugs from the meadow to the lake to the waterfall and back again. I worked at acquiring each and every bite walking up the steep slope and down the dirt path. That night my friends and I laughed at stories about bed bugs while anesthetizing ourselves with fine wine. I had a ball but next time, I’m bringing bug spray.

What do you do about bug bites? Epsom salts? Crosses made with fingernails. Share your favorite remedy…and hurry!

This is a practical attention issue, there’s nothing esoteric about it. However, for the most recent research on scratching, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/health/07itch.html.

Napping Impacts Attention

Nap to Improve Business Relationships

Napping for Business Attention

Napping for Business Attention

Remember when George Costanza in ‘Seinfeld’ had a bed built under his desk at work? It seems he wasn’t off the mark at all! Reported by Behavioral Health Care Journal this week, napping is now encouraged at the office for an increase in sociability. Finally, I can nap and quote a study that shows it’s not only good for people in the South American countries, but for everyone. Today on Oprah, Dr. Oz supported the need for 7-9 hours of sleep per night – it’s even supposed to help reduce weight! Now that’s something to pay attention to.

At the SLEEP 2009 conference in Seattle last week, researchers from the University of California – Berkeley revealed results of a study that ‘showed naps with rapid eye movement sleep refresh the brain’s perception of positive emotions.’ It seems study participants taking a 60 to 90 minute nap mid-day with REM sleep were much more receptive to happy facial expressions than those who didn’t. In fact, participants without a nap had an increased reaction to negative emotions. Have you ever been called cranky because you reacted to the way someone looked at you after 3 p.m.?

Once again we learn that we knew all we needed to know in kindergarten – a nap a day keeps you alert to pay attention.

BHC Journal interviewed two of the principal investigators of the study who were at the conference: Dr. Matt Walker, Professor of Psychology and Director of the University of California – Berkeley Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory, and senior research scientist Ninad Gujar.

http://www.bhcjournal.com/default.aspx?articleId=29692&tabid=252

Life Coaching vs. AD/HD Coaching

The following is a direct quote from a newsletter by Jodi Sleeper-Triplett of JST Coaching. She is one of my teachers.

Professional coaches provide an ongoing partnership designed to help clients produce fulfilling results in their personal and professional lives. A professional coach helps people improve their performance and enhance the quality of their lives.

Coaches are trained to listen, to observe, and to customize their approach to each individual client’s needs. They seek to elicit solutions and strategies from the client. They believe the client is naturally creative and resourceful. The coach’s job is to provide support to enhance the skills, resources, and creativity that the client already has.

AD/HD coaching embraces the ideals and core competencies of both life coaching (www.coachfederation.org) and AD/HD coaching (www.adhdcoachinstitute.org). This approach provides the structure and strategies needed to create success for clients with AD/HD, while honoring the clients as creative and resourceful individuals. In AD/HD coaching, we hold our clients more accountable and usually have a tighter plan with more frequent contact than in general life coaching. Meeting with AD/HD clients occurs at least once a week, which is more often than in many life coaching or executive coaching programs.

Business Daydreaming Believers

DayDream for Business Inspiration

Lets Become a Daydream Nation

Let's Become a Daydream Nation

A small to mid-size business owner walks in the door for another day’s work bombarded by the office crisis du jour as well as customers calling and meetings beginning to run late. How do you stay focused and what do you pay attention to first? and last? What has prepared your attention attitude for this daily management while maintaining the vision that grows the business? And is it any different for the stay-at-home mom or independent business owner? Try daydreaming, says Kalina Christoff of the University of British Columbia in Canada, http://www.livescience.com/health/090513-daydream-brain.html. Her study ”shows our brains are very active when we daydream – much more active than when we focus on routine tasks,” Christoff said.

According to one CEO, Greg Thompson of Atlanta’s Thomco, Inc., it’s the time you take away from the office that prepares you for the office, something he learned from his father, Roy Sr.. For instance, Mr. Thompson is a member of a CEO group that meets one day a month, every month. There he and the other members spend time brainstorming ideas, co-creating solutions and supporting their visions together. They invigorate each other, sharing the passion for excellence in business. But it’s also the time you allow yourself to drift and stare out the window.

What? Daydreaming in the office? It seems I was working very hard after all in school. But visionary CEO’s and small business owners make daydreaming work for them. Going back to my blog on Daniel Pink’s book, “A Whole New Mind” this is the cultural creativity that he says is able to ‘activate this right hemisphere capacity…as we transition out of the Information Age.’ The Rev. John Strickland from Unity Atlanta referred to the value of taking the biblical sabbath Sunday, June 7, 2009. He expanded the one-day concept to complete breaks from the work environment, using the sabbatical that some companies and universities give to their employees to refresh and reinvigorate their commitment to work.

What if you can’t get away? Take a mini-sabbatical and Business Daydream with me in your office! Business Daydreaming is just a call away. Let me guide you on a short daydream in your office, to refresh and lighten your day. This is a simple exercise of focused daydreaming on the topic of your choice, perhaps the problem that won’t resolve no matter how hard you think about it. Don’t think. Daydream. Put a one-hour weekly daydream on your calendar today.

What if you could take your business to the next level and Business Daydream at the same time with Maureen? Hmmm…

Attention to Your Emotions -

Are Your Emotions High Drama or Nothing at All?

High Drama at Home?

High Drama at Home?

Do your family and friends pay an enormous amount of attention to your emotions or little at all? Does either reaction stimulate more or less emotion from you? What is the value of paying attention to emotions in your world? Do you have a choice?

Growing up, my family weighed heavily in the direction of emotional overload at all times, but I come from an addictive family environment. High drama was the rule of the day. My addicted parent appeared to be in control at all times, and we created the myth that it was true. The other parent was sick a lot. We walked on eggshells in the house (read Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder by Paul T. Mason & Randi Kreger). We had fun too, but it was played out against the backdrop of this emotional dynamic. Oh, and we all live with ADHD.

Well, darned if I didn’t go and look for the same dynamic in some of my relationships outside the family. I was high drama depending on the situation – it’s like it was a cloak I took off and on. And like that cloak, now I can take on a full experience with my emotions or I can choose to spend less time with them. What I mean is that if I’m happy I can really get in to it or I can use the energy to move forward. The same is true with sadness or anger. I can stay stuck in the sorrow or I can use the information in a healing fashion and again move quickly forward.

This knowledge comes from my life long search for what’s normal with an attention challenge, but you don’t have to wait so long. When that right person, a friend or a partner pays healthy attention to you and your emotions are on green, don’t get stuck waiting. Cross over and start a new life of healthy attention habits. You can choose to leave the high drama behind. Cultivate your healthy emotions that serve a purpose by choosing to spend more time in the situations in which they will occur. What you pay attention to will grow.

How do you cultivate healthy emotional friends, partners and situations?

Link to the following article for an excellent review of emotional sobriety  http://www.bhcjournal.com/default.aspx?articleId=28362&tabid=255