[english]What can I do differently today? Usually we

do repeat over and over again the same

actions, the same way to go to work, the

same thoughts in our mind, the same idea of

future and everyday is not really different

from the day before.
The same brings the same.
What not try a new thought today?
What about thinking that today will be

different?

Try it.
[/english]
[french]Que puis-je faire différemment aujourd’hui?

En général, nos répétons inlassablement les

mêmes actions, le même chemin pour aller

travailler, les mêmes pensées dans notre

esprit, la même idée de notre futur et

chaque jour n’est pas vraiment différent du

précédant.
La même chose amène la même chose.
Pourquoi ne pas essayer une nouvelle pensée

aujourd’hui ?
Et si nous pensions vraiment qu’aujourd’hui

sera différent ?

Essayez[/french]

[english]What best metaphor to explain that causes are producing effects?
If you sow a tulip, you can’t reap a bluebell. If you want a bluebell, sow a bluebell bulb. If you are aware of the cause-effects process in your life, you start choosing more carefully the bulbs that you pick for your future garden colors and smells.
It is all up to you and it is as well a great opportunity to step out of the victim role.

Happy gardeners, enjoy the harvest.[/english]
[french]Quelle meilleure métaphore pour expliquer que les causes produisent des effets ?
Si vous plantez une tulipe, vous ne pouvez pas récolter une jacinthe. Si vous voulez obtenir une jacinthe, plantez un bulbe de jacinthe. Si vous êtes conscient du phénomène de causes a effets dans votre vie, vous commencez a choisir avec plus de soin les bulbes que vous choisissez pour les couleurs et les odeurs de votre futur jardin.
Tout est entre vos mains et c’est aussi un excellent moyen de sortir du sempiternel rôle de la victime.

Joyeux jardiniers, profitez de la recolte.[/french]

[english]If you stay at the surface, you are having

nice and sunny moments but as well terrible

storms, big waves and strong winds.
Go under the surface and let go, go deeper

and deeper where it becomes calm and quit,

where the storm can’t reach you.
You don’t have to spend all you time in the

deep water but do not spend all your time on

the surface. At least know that there’s a

quiet place under the surface where you can

take a rest, regenerate and find peace.[/english]
[french]Si vous restez a la surface, vous avez de

bons moments calmes et ensoleilles mais

aussi des orages terribles, des vagues

gigantesques et des vents violents.
Allez sous la surface et laissez aller,

allez plus profondément et encore plus

profondément ou les choses deviennent calmes

et tranquilles, la ou les orages ne peuvent

pas vous atteindre.
Vous n’avez pas a passer tout votre temps

dans les profondeurs mais ne passez pas tout

votre temps a la surface. Sachez au moins

qu’il existe un endroit calme et tranquille

sous la surface ou vous pouvez vous reposer,

régénérer et trouver la Paix.[/french]

January is the first month of the year and for a lot of people a depressing one, long and cold.

Still it’s a moment of life we can probably do something with.

For a lot of people, Sundays is a day they don’t like. After all it’s only 14% of the week that they don’t like. There are 86% to enjoy which is not so bad.

Most of us are working 5 days a week, leaving another 14% to enjoy out of work.

But, Sunday is generally a day we don’t work. Does it mean that most of us prefer to be at work?

Concerning January, it’s only 8% of the year that you perhaps don’t like.

It’s much better except if you combine January and Sundays, and this means that you want to zap 22% of your life. On an average life time of 78 years, it’s only 17 years wasted.

Perhaps there are moments in the day that you don’t like either and that we could remove as well if you don’t like it.

But let’s stop here. After all, we’re nearly in February.

Enjoy the reading and the end of January.

Denis

Feed back or fight back?

You probably noticed, that communication is a challenge and that the more feelings are involved, the more there are risks of confrontation.

Each experience you live is tainted with colour, depending on the way that you have been living it: it’s a good or a bad experience. So many times in a day, something is happening and you will feel it in a very unique and personal way. It will depend first on whom you are, what has been your life, what happened to you just before and your mood at this precise moment.

In other words, you can never predict exactly the way someone will react to your statement or attitude. In the same way, you may react very badly to something that would have been insignificant the day before.

The most delicate situations are with people really close to you, where there are strong emotional implications.

Most of the time, we don’t share our feelings with others. Especially when something happens and it hurts: it can be a statement, a comment, a joke, or a criticism…

We will very often react to hide the real result and the pain that has been caused. Socially, we react as if we can’t show true feelings. We’re supposed to be strong and insensitive.

At work, it’s very obvious. A comment from your boss can be absolutely devastating for you, but you will not show anything. Instead, you’ll react as if nothing happened.

Your relation to your boss is your relation to authority, which is very close to your relation to your parents as a kid.

Unconsciously, for a lot of people, there is a neurotic relationship with the boss.

There are unconscious expectations toward the boss to be the one telling you how good you are.

If he’s making a comment on the quality of your work, you’ll take it very easily at the wrong level.

Instead of taking it as a comment, it will be taken personally, at a personal level.

Everything that happens to you, day after day, is generating emotions and feelings.

If you don’t clean it up, in a way or another, you keep emotional rubbish, exactly as you could do in your kitchen.

Imagine keeping your rubbish in your kitchen for weeks and weeks…

There’s different ways to clean up. It can be just to think about it and let it go, to go to the gym regularly or any other personal way.

The other option is to express your feeling to the person concerned if possible immediately after the event.

When you choose to express yourself, you usually tell the person how bad he has been with you, you judge, you accuse and the person in front of you will feel attacked immediately.

You share in fact the result of your initial feeling instead of sharing what really happened for you and the way you have been feeling.

Did you notice how many people are aggressive driving their car?

They’re expressing the results of what hasn’t been expressed to the boss, to the partner, or who ever else: it’s the expression of emotional rubbish none recycled.

We usually express the result of bad emotions rather than the original emotion.

We get back everything but what we really need. If I’m grumpy and aggressive, people in front of me will rarely be kind to me, even if behind the grumpiness I’m sad and need a big hug: we call that parasites emotion. Expressing an emotion instead of another

is generally a very good way to feel worse.

Express your feeling without expecting anything back. Give choice to the person, and allow him/her to listen instead of defending him/herself.

On the top of this, the quickest you express yourself, the less frustration you carry.

Most of the time, it’s our ego that stops us from acting healthily, expressing our feelings.

“What would he think if I admit that I was hurt?”

“I will appear as a weak person”

So, the only way is to accept our feelings and not to carry rubbish for the wrong reasons.

In a relationship, a good way to move on is to talk, to put things on the table, when it is not yet old enough to smell like rubbish.

It’s the degradation of feelings, after turning it over and over again in your head or stomach that make it smell bad, that makes you overreact or punish on an unfair way.

If you can change the way you’re dealing with feelings, when you’re hurt, you can change very quickly the cause-effects in your relationship and avoid a lot of conflicts.

Express your emotions and not the result of your emotions.

Dear All,
This month, there are a few changes: first the name of the Newsletter. In fact it is not a news letter but a thoughts letter or simply a letter.
Instead of my face, I asked a friend to use one of his great paintings for my letter and he kindly accepted.
After A wonderful September, I thought that it was probably time to speak about October.
I’m kidding. We have better to do than talking about weather…

Enjoy your reading.
All the very best.

Denis

TAKE YOUR TIME!

Life is short, so short.
Getting older, it seams that time accelerates more and more every year. In a way, it’s good to celebrate my birthday so often, but still…
I guess that it happens because we loose track of time, lost in our day to day life, just a day after another.

As a Therapist, I’m accustomed to tell my clients, especially to end a session in hypnosis:
“During the next 2 minutes, you can take all the time of the world”.
It just gives a feeling of long comfortable time in a 2 minutes frame. The best is that it’s working.
Just try that at least twice a day during work hours.
Give yourself a 2 minutes break during your day at work. Just take all the time of the world: do nothing, close your eyes and just listen, feel and take your time: you are alive!
I believe that it is more our perception of time than time itself that maters. You know how certain moments seam to last for ever when others are escaping like send in your hands.

We can keep going, acting as if we’re eternal, running every day as if it will last for ever, or remembering that our days are counted, we can think seriously about our life.
The fantasy of the eternal young time is so powerful today that it is an amazing market to make money on fears, hopes and believes.
What have we done to our old wise characters? Where are Yoda, Merlin, Christmas Father and all the others?
Now it seams more fashionable to have Kate Moss, Jude Law and even virtual characters like Lara Croft as models.
Can we become wise in the body of a young person, or in an old body looking young?
I have no answers, and I am just asking questions on subjects that are essential to me.

Aging every day a little bit more, everything is pushing us to find ways to stay fit, look younger and be healthy.
The pressure is very high and it is a very efficient brain wash from society.
Because this journey is very short, can we reasonably waste so much time on a day to day base.
I have the feeling that this pressure, race against time, is a good way to keep us busy, docile, good tax payers.
If we’re starting questioning, the system could be in great danger. It’s better to keep us in the dark, in front of TV.
Time is precious because limited.
How long would be the right life?
How many years do we need?
How ever long it is, will it be enough when it will be time to go?
Is it a question of time or just to put away the inevitable issue?

It is potentially my last day on earth. I have no idea of the moment when all of this will end.
If I don’t take my time now, tomorrow will perhaps be too late.
If I keep running, I’ll be running faster and faster, trying to catch the moment that I missed because I was running after it.

Slow down and enjoy!
Did you ever think about the words “to take time”?
What does it mean? Isn’t it strange?
You can take your time as you can take a train or a break or a lesson or what ever you can hold.

Take your time, grab it, and embrace it.
If you don’t, nobody will and it will be lost for ever.

Enjoy your life, TAKE YOUR TIME!

DEAR THOMAS

Thomas has been made Saint a long time ago and all what we know about him is: “I believe in what I see”.
What a tuff start, isn’t it?
And still there’s so many people going to psychics for predictions, including presidents…
Following Thomas idea is probably the best way to escape the disappointment of having believed in something, in Father Christmas and having been abused, lied to, and having been stupid to believe without proof.
The problem is that human beings are build on believes.
Even to believe that something is not true is a belief.
What is the risk in believing? What is the worse that could happen?
Disappointment probably, or it’s just out of our world map.
The map is not the territory and we all have a different one, which is our representation of the world.
Sometimes, we can pass something or someone we know and not even see him.
Pay attention to what’s going on around you. There is perhaps some information out there that we’re missing because we don’t pay attention.
The way that we look at things is giving us a certain idea of what we look at, but are we seeing what we’re looking at the way it is?
We will never know.

What if we have to believe our dreams to see it happen?
What if we have to believe in Human Nature to see it improve?

Watching TV every evening is a sure way to believe that Human Nature is deeply depressing.
It is true, Dear Thomas, that you we don’t see thousands of amazing things that happen every day, all around the globe, and for real.
So, does it exist if we don’t believe that it exists?

If you are a Thomas on earth, pay attention, things are perhaps not the way you think they are.