Get Happy, Be Happy, Stay Happy

I just finished reading Words That Work — It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz. He makes the point of the subtitle over and over and over.

I’ve also been rereading articles on how people typically read on the Internet. Most don’t read word-for-word or ponder what’s on the screen. They scan. Their eyes jump around. You’re lucky if someone reads every word on your Web page or blog post with rapt attention.

These communication lessons were driven home this week. People have been misunderstanding my post The Shocking Truth About The Secret and the Law of Attraction. The provocative headline meant to grab attention had set people up to interpret the rest of the post as a slam against the film. I don’t know how many people read the concluding paragraphs, where I advocated critical thinking over emotive reasoning.

So I rewrote the opening paragraphs. I hope this time I make my message clear!

Yeah, I know. I’m still on a roll about The Secret. But I’m feeling less frustrated now. I’m really happy to read the clarifying statements from two of the physicists in the film.

From the Newsweek article:

On a scientific level, the law of attraction is preposterous. Two of the “teachers” in the film are identified as quantum physicists, which they are, although on the fringes of mainstream science. One, Fred Alan Wolf, is mostly an author of science books with a quasi-mystical bent, and the other, John Hagelin (who has run for president on the Natural Law ticket), is affiliated with Maharishi University of Management, in Fairfield, Iowa, which does research on transcendental meditation. Both of them, contacted by NEWSWEEK, distanced themselves from the idea of a physical law that attracts necklaces to people who wish for them. “I don’t think it works that way,” says Wolf dryly. “It hasn’t worked that way in my life.” Hagelin acknowledges the larger point, that “the coherence and effectiveness of our thinking is crucial to our success in life.” But, he adds, “this is not, principally, the result of magic.”

Wolf said he used his time in front of the camera to talk about the relationship between quantum mechanics and consciousness, but all that evidently wound up on the cutting-room floor. What he might have said is something like this: modern physics says that atomic particles influence one another in ways that violate our ordinary understanding of space and time, a phenomenon called “quantum entanglement.” The question is whether quantum signals can be perceived on the scale of something like a neuron, a brain or a human being. Overwhelmingly, physicists dismiss this idea. A minority, very much out of the mainstream, think it’s worth investigating, and a few claim to have experimental evidence that thoughts can influence physical objects, such as the circuitry in a random-number generator. But the effects are tiny, on the order of a few hundredths of 1 percent. And there’s no evidence you can use it to move a BMW into your driveway.

Let the record show that I like and respect Fred Alan Wolf and John Hagelin. And Dean Radin of IONS. And the researchers at PEARS. And many other scientists doing research in quantum mechanics and consciousness who risk their reputations and research funding every day. Because I do know what is at stake, and I do know what they actually say, I’ve been going bonkers over the “scientific” claims and the misrepresentations in The Secret.

Let the record also show that I am not a sourpuss who is against a “positive” message or that I just don’t get it because I’m a “skeptic.” I’m after the truth — whatever it is. Among a slew of well-deserved criticisms, I believe that The Secret did a huge disservice to those who are seriously researching consciousness and other great mysteries.

Update 03/12/07: From the horse’s mouth: Read Fred Alan Wolfe’s blog post

Shaking Riches Out of the Cosmos
New York Times

Decoding the Secret
Newsweek

If you’re into personal growth and know the frustration of getting unbelievably stuck, you’ll love this “Escalator” video. The metaphor is hysterical, as well as a great reminder to be gentle with ourselves and others when gears grind to a halt.

Watch the video at YouTube

Yes, we can get this paralyzed. People will look at you in amazement and say things such as, “What is your PROBLEM? Just put one foot in front of the other! Sheesh!” But we’re stuck for a reason, whether or not it makes sense to you or anyone else.

I started the You! Unplugged! Show to help people discover why they get stuck, why they’re having difficulty creating the life they want, and what to do to get unstuck. C’mon over!

Do you compare yourself to others who seem to have it all? Do you put yourself down? Do you believe you are lacking in some way?

Sometimes we hold onto hurtful messages that tell us we’re not smart, capable, attractive, deserving, etc., etc. If we heard those things as kids, we didn’t have the maturity or the insight to know that those things might not be true — because big people tell you how things really are, right?

So we internalize those messages, and even as adults we can pull them out and keep believing them. “If you do that, you ought to get a second opinion!” says Cynthia McKenna, a licensed professional counselor.

On my personal development show, I talk with Cynthia about learning to accept ourselves — and what happens when we don’t. Visit You! Unplugged! to listen to the interview.

This entry is from The Secret Versus Science forum. It’s a response written by Bob Collier from the Parental Intelligence Newsletter. I think he touches on many of things I have a problem with as well.

Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 3:13 am

Essentially, I agree with you, so perhaps I can attempt to explain as clearly as I can what my particular beef with The Secret is.

Going back to I think it was middle or late 2005, I read the story of Rhonda Byrne discovering Wallace D. Wattles’ book The Science of Getting Rich and being inspired by it to make a movie, apparently to be called The Secret. I was thrilled.

Why? Because The Science of Getting Rich is a book that’s played a very significant - and very positive - part in my life. You can read all about that in the current issue of my online newsletter.

So. At the time I first read about The Secret, I assumed it was going to be a movie about the philosophy of Wallace D. Wattles, right?

Now, in The Science of Getting Rich, first published in 1910, Wattles presented his philosophy in a metaphysical context (which has been a problem for me - more on that in a minute). He was part of the ‘New Thought’ movement and believed, essentially, that we’re all connected to each other, not figuratively but literally, at a subconscious level and that our thoughts can go out into the world and influence the behaviour of other people at a distance.

At the time I first read The Science of Getting Rich - that was 1985 - I believed in such things. These days, I believe that the fact that everything is energy doesn’t necessarily mean that ‘we’re all one’.

It seems to me that most people on this planet are entirely ignorant of how relatively small our personal consciousness is compared to our brain’s activities overall. Our present moment awareness may often seem like ‘the whole world’ to us, but, in the big picture, it’s a pinprick of light in an ocean of darkness. I estimated once, very roughly, that for every brain cell involved in producing our personal consciousness, there are about ten million brain cells doing something else related to our behaviour in our immediate environment. Furthermore, recent research has found that our brain not only absorbs huge amounts of information moment by moment that we’re never aware of, but also the information is absorbed at an unconscious level first, before our brain then transmits to our conscious awareness the information deemed important enough for our attention (see the work of Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert, for example).

Anyway, getting back to The Science of Getting Rich and The Secret. Because of the metaphysical context of the ideas I read about in The Science of Getting Rich, I’ve always been somewhat reluctant to discuss them with other people (and I didn’t get rich, but that’s another story). That was despite the outstanding success I achieved by applying the philosophy presented in the book to parenting my daughter throughout my years as her full-time stay-at-home dad (from when she was a baby until she started school). My wife - the mother of our two children (who have both benefitted over the years from what I learned from The Science of Getting Rich) - has never read the book. I published my parenting newsletter for two years before I wrote about the book’s importance in my life - the book that had been the source of my own parenting philosophy! - and that was only because I came into contact with a guy called Tony Mase, a “serious student” of the work of Wallace D. Wattles (www.constructivescience.com), who talked me into it; otherwise I might never have mentioned it to this day.

So, when I read that somebody was making a movie about The Science of Getting Rich (so I thought at the time), I was really looking forward to sitting my family down in front of the TV in due course and sharing with them the philosophy of Wallace D. Wattles, so that they might understand what the ideas are and how they work and that they’re not that weird after all. Which, in themselves, they’re not, because, regardless of the metaphysical context in which they were presented to me, they all have perfectly rational neuro-psychological explanations. In other words, you don’t have to ‘believe in God’ or anything like that for the concepts in The Science of Getting Rich to generate positive results in practice. They do that anyway if you apply them.

When The Secret was finally released, I went straight to the website to watch it. That’s when I discovered that I couldn’t because I live in Australia. But I was able to order the DVD, which I did, and I noticed there was a forum where people could discuss the movie. It was called Powerful Intentions. So, while I was waiting for my DVD (which I didn’t get in the end, but, again, that’s another story), I joined the forum to find out more about what was in the movie. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that The Secret forum was dedicated to the teachings of Abraham-Hicks.

So, naturally, I wanted to know what had happened to The Science of Getting Rich and the philosophy of Wallace D. Wattles. Apparently, they’d been totally discarded. The Secret was all about Abraham-Hicks and something called ‘The Law of Attraction’.

And The Law of Attraction was what exactly? I never found out. In answer to my questions, all I got was hippy dippy stuff. Until, that is, the Abraham-Hicks Fan Club started ignoring my questions and I left.

Such woolly mindedness is not unusual, I’ve since learned. It seems that every single member of the Abraham-Hicks Fan Club ‘kind of knows’ what ‘The Law of Attraction’ is when they see it but they can’t explain it to me in a way that makes sense.

But, they insist, it’s still a ‘law’. “Just like gravity.”

Do we know exactly what the Law of Gravity is? You bet we do. And the precise action of that law can be demonstrated for everyone to see - and that demonstration can be replicated endlessly by anybody, anywhere at any time. You don’t have to choose whether to ‘believe’ in it or not.

Can we do anything remotely like that for ‘The Law of Attraction’? Pigs might fly. So, what kind of ‘law’ is it really? A somewhat amorphous one, apparently.

Now, as Kevin Hogan has written, it’s “pretty impossible to talk about something that you don’t have a definition for.”

And I would add to that that it’s pretty impossible to talk about what The Secret movie is actually telling us when its ‘message’ is being constantly fudged according to the questions that are being asked about it.

Fudging the movie’s message is what the Abraham-Hicks Fan Club is outstandingly good at. I had weeks of it at the Powerful Intentions forum. Joe Vitale did nothing but fudge in our exchange of views at his blog in I think it was July last year.

In the article he wrote in response to the Kevin Hogan article that stirred up this current hornet’s nest, Joe’s doing it again. Now, apparently, the movie isn’t The Secret. It’s just one secret out of an undisclosed number of secrets. Really? And I thought it was The Secret to everything. Isn’t that what it says on the movie website’s home page and in the movie itself?

Now, apparently, the movie “may be guilty of leaving out some important extra steps”. Tell me about it. And what else?

One of the most important things the movie left out was its true intention. Which is to promote a perception of reality ‘channeled’ from a group of ‘higher beings’. Only it couldn’t say that, could it? The Secret is supposed to “change humanity”, and a sizeable proportion of humanity might just laugh if it knew the true origin of the movie’s ‘Law of Attraction’. So, we had the concealment of that and got the ‘quantum flapdoodle’ instead. Turning The Secret into What The Bleep Do We Know’s baby sibling.

So, is Joe Vitale a quantum physicist? Or Bob Proctor? How about Bob Doyle or Mike Dooley? Nope. But they can certainly talk about quantum physics as if they know what they’re talking about. There are two actual quantum physicists in the movie. One of them is Fred Alan Wolf, the larrikin boffin from What The Bleep. If anybody was going to say something daft about quantum physics, it would surely be him. Surprisingly, he didn’t say anything daft in the movie itself, but it turned out that one thing he (reportedly) did say after the movie was released was, “I don’t believe in a law of attraction. The first I heard of it was in the film.”

In other words, here we have a quantum physicist who appeared in The Secret telling us that quantum physics is nothing to do with any ‘Law of Attraction’. How can this be, when The Secret is telling us that it’s quantum physics that has proven the existence of ‘The Law of Attraction’?

Well, the answer to the conundrum of ‘The Law of Attraction’ is that it’s a metaphor. That’s why it means different things to different believers and why there can be no agreement on a precise definition that would make sense to a third party non-believer.

One way of looking at a metaphor is that it’s a story our brain conjures up to explain events for which it has no existing explanation. ‘The Law of Attraction’ is a useful metaphor for all those events that come into our experience that seem to correlate with our thoughts but we don’t actually know how they occurred. So, maybe you’re thinking about money and you happen to find a ten dollar note in the street. Nothing wrong with anyone saying “It’s the Law of Attraction”. Other people might say things like “It’s a gift from God” or “Lady Luck is smiling on me”, without necessarily taking those statements seriously or feeling the need to justify the use of such terms to the world, but simply using them as a means of communicating ideas that would otherwise take too many words to describe.

The human brain thinks in metaphors A LOT. More frequently than most people realise. And metaphors, by their nature, are often highly symbolic.

Problems occur, however, when we mistake our metaphors for real things. Unfortunately, the kind of person who believes that the experiences that more or less match their thinking come into their life from outside of the self (as in ‘The Law of Attraction’) - rather than simply from outside conscious awareness, until they notice them (as in the ‘Attraction Principle’) - is the kind of person who’s prone to making that kind of mistake.

It’s been very telling in my experience of the Abraham-Hicks Fan Club that, every time somebody suggests a more rational explanation for an event attributed to ‘The Law of Attraction’, the response is virtually always that the explanation is somehow an effect of ‘The Law of Attraction’. Selective awareness? That’s ‘The Law of Attraction’. Law of large numbers? That’s ‘The Law of Attraction’. Coincidence? That’s ‘The Law of Attraction’. It’s a total no win situation for rational people.

Since, according to the Abraham-Hicks afficionados, we’re all creating our own personal universe as we go along, how could any sane person ever demonstrate that any event is independent of ‘The Law of Attraction’? It’s impossible. According to The Secret, whatever happens to us, we’ve ‘attracted’ it into our experience. Even though, in objective reality, this is saying nothing more than “If something happens, something happens.”

That’s why Kevin Hogan is right when he says The Secret is a dangerous, dangerous movie. It deceives the viewer into believing things that simply aren’t true. And though you might well come away from watching it feeling great, do you have any idea exactly what you’re supposed to do next? Apart from hand over some money to one of the so-called ‘teachers’ for ‘further information’, that is.

And where has it all left us?

We have a feel good movie that has all the right ideas totally lost in a fantasy context.

We have a movie that’s deceiving the public by pretending to be scientifically based when, in fact, it’s based on New Age tosh.

We have a movie that set out to “change humanity”, screwed up completely and will probably only be remembered in the end for the divisive controversy it generated.

We have a movie that skeptics will crucify, thus making it more difficult for non Abraham-Hicks proponents of ‘positive thinking’ to communicate genuine ’success techniques’ to the world.

We have a movie that has alienated people like myself - who are NOT the negative-minded losers that some people would have you believe are the only people criticising The Secret, but people who should have been ‘fellow travellers’.

In the beginning, I would have been more than happy to help promote The Secret to the world, if it had been what I had once anticipated it would be. Now I don’t want to be associated with it in any way, shape or form, and I would suggest that any sensible person should cross the road when they see it coming.

Thanks for posting your point of view, which, as I say, I essentially agree with, and I hope my response wasn’t too long!

Bob

The Parental Intelligence Newsletter
http://www.parental-intelligence.com

Love him or hate him, you gotta love Dr. Phil’s bottom-line question: How’s that workin’ for you?

Obsessing day after day about The Secret and the so-called “law” of attraction is driving me nuts and putting me in a bad mood. My bottom line is this:

• I don’t believe the LOA is a law.
• I don’t believe in channeled entities or their messages (in case you don’t know, people claiming to channel entities are behind the “truths” in The Secret and What the Bleep).
• I believe that some LOA teachers are having a great time magnetizing money out of people’s wallets and credit cards.
• I’ve personally witnessed the incongruent behaviors of several LOA teachers when it comes to THEM parting with their money.
• I believe that the philosophy can be dangerous on several levels.
• I’m really bothered that LOA believers aren’t using critical thinking.
• I’m really bothered that a lot of critics are resorting to fallacies to prove their case.
• I’ve personally witnessed the damage some of the LOA teachings cause, including the tearing apart of families.

Okay. I hope this is the last time I feel compelled to write about this subject.

(Note: These are my opinions and hot buttons. Not arguments.)

In my bio I state that I’m an “armchair” philosopher. I need to change that to “high chair” philosopher.

For the past couple of days I’ve been reading posts and comments on a real philosopher’s blog at zaadz.com. A philosopher who is into what I’d call high-octane, alternative spirituality and consciousness. He and others in this rarified realm are discussing The Secret, and its teachers and teachings. They’re debating the merits of just letting those who are drawn to The Secret learn and grow out of this infantile spiritual phase without their assistance versus extending a compassionate, helping hand and point them in the right direction.

I have a difficult time understanding half of what they say. They are very sophisticated, a group of enlightened intelligentsia. While they are cavorting around in the higher realms, I’m still in my freakin’ playpen fiddling around with colorful plastic blocks, apparently.

Whoever said “There’s nothing new under the sun” was probably right. The reaction to The Secret is serving as a great illuminator of modern society’s thinking, and not much has changed since those words of wisdom were recorded.

Perhaps we will always be groping around trying to find the truth about who we are, why we are here, what is the purpose of life, how does the universe work, what is our role in what appears to be an unfolding drama. Perhaps we will always have people and groups and institutions who claim to have it all figured out. Perhaps we will always be graced with the spiritual have’s and have-nots, the unwashed, unenlightened masses and the uber, awake luminescent ones — and everything in between.

Me? I’m going to crawl back to my playpen and have fun with my toys.

The eulogy below made its rounds in emails, blogs and Web sites last year. My mom saw it again while cleaning out files and decided to send it to all her children. I received it yesterday via snail mail (imagine that!). In an interesting coincidence, as I held the unread copy in my hand, I was standing in a neighbor’s driveway shooting the breeze about the dismal state of schools.

One man insisted that the real problem was the lack of discipline in the classroom, not a lack of funding. Another man, a former teacher for 35 years, agreed but added that the discipline problems start in the home and spill into the schools. We all agreed that it’s a tough situation to deal with. And as we meandered into discussing other tough issues, we all agreed that there seems to be a lack of common sense at play across the board.

Here is the eulogy. You might not agree with every point, but it does represent the sentiment of people who are simply fed up.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm, life isn’t always fair, and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouth wash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer Panadol, sun lotion or a sticky plaster to a student; but could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims.

Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar can sue you for assault. Common Sense finally gave up the will to live after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason.

He is survived by three stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, Someone Else is to Blame, and I’m A Victim. Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone.

If you still remember him, pass this on. If not join the majority and do nothing.

hot button: an emotional and usually controversial issue or concern that triggers immediate intense reaction
m-w.com

The Secret is causing more than a few meltdowns. Count me among those who just can’t get over it.

I’m obsessed with the appearance of the film’s producer and a cast of Law of Attraction teachers on Oprah. I’m equally obsessed with the reactions to the film and the Oprah show from people ranging from Secretons to concerned Christians, bemused observers to outraged, venom-spewing critics, puzzled viewers to seasoned LOA practitioners, uncritical thinkers to exasperated skeptics.

Are we dealing with a Pandora’s box, or a beautiful gift from the Universe with a big red bow? Are we seeing nothing more than a clever marketing scheme? Or perhaps just the imaginations of well-meaning dreamers gone wild?

Who knows? I’m inclined to believe no one knows right now.

Just to be clear: I’m not dismissing or attacking The Secret, the producer, the LOA teachers, Oprah, true believers, or anyone else. What I am attempting to do is to raise questions and encourage critical thinking. And calm down and understand my own intense reactions.

All our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike — and yet it is the most precious thing we have. –Albert Einstein

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them. –Baruch Spinoza

Blogging expert Andy Wibbels, a “Secret skeptic” who has posted his colorful opinions about the film, is running The Secret Movie 30 Day Challenge.

To sign up for the challenge, go to http://andywibbels.com/the-secret-movie-30-day-challenge.

What is The Secret?

The Secret (2006 film), from Wikipedia

Law of Attraction, from Wikipedia

Abraham-Hicks, Esther Hicks, from Wikipedia

Official Website

The film’s claim:

A New Era for Humankind

The Secret is released to the world! This ground-breaking feature length movie presentation reveals The Great Secret of the universe. It has been passed throughout the ages, traveling through centuries… to reach you and humankind.

This is The Secret to everything - the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted.

In this astonishing program are ALL the resources you will ever need to understand and live The Secret. For the first time in history, the world’s leading scientists, authors, and philosophers will reveal The Secret that utterly transformed the lives of every person who ever knew it… Plato, Newton, Carnegie, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Einstein.

Now YOU will know The Secret. And it could change your life forever.

Recommended sites and blogs:

Cosmic Connie, Whirled Musings

Blair Warren’s Crooked Wisdom

The Secret Lie - Exposing the Great Law of Hoax | Links to sites and articles

Articles by Kevin Hogan about The Secret:

The Secret - The Truth Behind the Lie (Part 1)
The ‘Secret’: The Truth Behind the Lie of the Century (Part 2)
Understanding the Secret ‘Law of Attraction’ (Part 3)
The Real Secret

Have you heard about The Secret, the film about the Law of Attraction? Did you see the film’s producer and several Law of Attraction teachers on Oprah?

In my travels around the Internet, I’m finding a lot of people who are hopping mad and a lot of people who are thrilled with their newfound knowledge. And they’re not afraid to tell you what they think. That’s great. But I’m also finding that many resort to using fallacies to prove their conclusions.

So, in the interest of promoting critical thinking, I present two lists below. These are statements I see people making to argue their conclusion.

Here are 10 reasons why the Law of Attraction is true!

1. It’s true because Oprah believes it’s true.
2. It’s true because lots of people that I like and respect say it’s true.
3. It’s true because all my friends say it’s true.
4. It’s true because all those experts on the film say it’s true.
5. It’s true because Einstein and a bunch of other physicists say that everything is energy.
6. It’s true because I intuitively feel it’s true.
7. It’s true because I really, really want it to be true, and I usually get what I want.
8. It’s true because my pastor told me it’s true.
9. It’s true because I think people need to be more positive and get a life.
10. It’s true because I’ve seen it work in my life.

Here are 10 reasons why the Law of Attraction is not true!

1. It’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
2. Oprah thinks she’s God and all her viewers are nuts and believe anything she says.
3. The producer and all those teachers are greedy and just want your money.
4. I haven’t seen it work in my life or anyone else’s.
5. My pastor told me it’s not true.
6. I intuitively know it’s not true.
7. It makes me sick just watching the film.
8. No one on the film can be trusted.
9. Everyone in the film is a [fill in the blank] idiot.
10. No one I hang out with believes it.

Believe me, I’ve had to remind myself about emotive reasoning as I’m tempted to say things from the second list. I’m also holding my talking stick in a very tight grip.

As a lover of truth and the scientific method, as well as someone who has experienced firsthand the incongruent behavior of several of the featured Law of Attraction teachers, this whole Secret thing is quite a challenge to deal with.

To learn about fallacies, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy.

See also: The Secret: Hot, Hot, Hot Button

What I really need is food that will help me stop obsessing over The Secret on Oprah, but at least these might help calm me down and give my poor brain a rest.

Foods To Calm You Down Fast

Holiday bills arriving in heaps? Lurking taxes turning up the tension? No Valentine in sight? Regardless of the cause, there’s an almost Alice in Wonderland counter-intuitiveness to the goodies we turn to for comfort. Instead of soothing our frayed nerves, many of them ultimately make us feel worse.

Take the classic-curling up with a pint of ice cream. It’s a total backfire. Why? Sweets are insidious: After the initial rush, the body’s insulin response kicks in, causing a sudden blood sugar drop that triggers the release of stress hormones. Soon you’re feeling more jangled than you were before you inhaled that whole container of Chunky Monkey. And alcohol, of course, is a wolfish stimulant in calm sheep’s clothing.

But true comfort foods do exist.

1. Berries, any berries

Eat them one by one instead of M&Ms when the pressure’s on. For those tough times when tension tightens your jaw, try rolling a frozen berry around in your mouth. And then another, and another. Since the carbs in berries turn to sugar very slowly, you won’t have a blood sugar crash. The bonus: They’re a good source of vitamin C, which helps fight a jump in the stress hormone cortisol.

2. Guacamole

If you’re craving something creamy, look no further. Avocados are loaded with B vitamins, which stress quickly depletes and which your body needs to maintain nerves and brain cells. Plus their creaminess comes from healthy fat. Scoop up the stuff with whole-grain baked chips-crunching keeps you from gritting your teeth.

3. Mixed nuts

Just an ounce will help replace those stress-depleted Bs (walnuts), give you a whopping amount of zinc (Brazil nuts)-it’s also drained by high anxiety-and boost your E (almonds), which helps fight cellular damage linked to chronic stress. Buy nuts in the shell and think of it as multi-tasking: With every squeeze of the nutcracker, you’re releasing a little bit of tension.

4. Oranges

People who take a 1,000 mg of C before giving a speech have lower levels of cortisol and lower blood pressure than those who don’t. So lean back, take a deep breath, and concentrate on peeling a large orange. The 5-minute mindfulness break will ease your mind and you’ll get a bunch of C as well.

5. Asparagus

Each tender stalk is a source of folic acid, a natural mood-lightener. Dip the spears in fat-free yogurt or sour cream for a hit of calcium with each bite.

6. Chai tea

A warm drink is a super soother, and curling up with a cup of aromatic decaf chai tea (Tazo makes ready-to-brew bags) can make the whole evil day go away.

7. Dark chocolate

Okay, there’s nothing in it that relieves stress, but when only chocolate will do, reach for the dark, sultry kind that’s at least 70% cocoa. You figure if the antioxidant flavonoids in it are potent enough to fight cancer and heart disease, they’ve got to be able to temper tension’s effects.

(Comment from Lana: Chocolate can help relieve stress by causing the release of feel-good neurotransmitters including endorphin and serotonin. Overindulging, though, can undo the benefits.)

I’ve been having a lot of second thoughts about flying. I don’t know how much of what I’ve read is true, but even what I do know is true is problematic. Here are things that bother me:

• Lack of proper oxygen levels

• Circulating germs and viruses

• Pesticides

• Cramped seats

• Regulations regarding restroom access

• Parents who won’t control their kids

• Drunk passengers who try to sell you the latest MLM opportunity

And now this in today’s news:

Air passengers have no recourse

After being stuck for 11 hours on a parked airplane during a snow and ice storm, JetBlue passengers found out there’s nothing they can do about it. There are no government regulations limiting the time an airline can keep passengers on grounded aircraft.

But thankfully,

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Thursday she will introduce a bill to give passengers the right to get off the airplane if it’s been on the ground for more than three hours past its scheduled departure time.

I’d prefer a bill that allows me to get off the airplane if it’s been grounded for 30 minutes. But I’ll take what I can get.

Learn more, get involved in airline passengers’ rights at http://www.strandedpassengers.blogspot.com.

With all the love in the air yesterday (February 14), I was inspired to enhance the good feelings by eating a big ol’ peanut butter cookie at Starbucks. Then at the grocery store I was seized with the desire to buy a bottle of Pinot Grigio, wine snobs be danged. Ahhh, what can be finer than watching an Arizona sunset while sipping a glass of wine?

Well, for starters, not drinking the wine! For whatever reason, I had “forgotten” that wine and I don’t always get along. I spent the night enjoying a racing heart, sporadic sleep and crazy dreams. And, no, I’m not feeling all that happy at the moment.

Note to myself: Read the following description of the chemical cocktail called wine the next time a bottle calls my name.

Wines

Red wines are rich in chemicals that are potentially troublesome. Non-nutrient amino acids such as tyramine are abundant in red wines and cheddar cheese. This favorite party combination can leave you with headache, confusion, and odd, inappropriate behavior. Tyramine may accumulate in people who have sluggish MAO enzyme activity. Tyramine acts something like a fight-and-flight hormone, increasing heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, all with a sense of anxiety or panic. Drugs that inhibit MAO are prescribed as antidepressants and increase the toxic effect of ingested tyramine. The drug is prescribed along with a low tyramine diet which admonishes you to avoid red wine, beer, cheese, chocolate, bananas, yeasts, vanilla, and other neuroactive amine-containing foods.

Additives

Chemical additives used to control the fermentation process further complicate AB’s. Allergenic sulfites are commonly used as disinfectants and bleaching agents in wine making. Sulfites such as Cambden tablets are used to stop fermentation. Methyl glycol has been deliberately added to some wines to sweeten the taste; Other wines have been recalled because of high pesticide content. Distilling of fermentation brews reduces the chemical load, but volatile products pass through the distiller along with alcohol. Only the water-clear AB’s, like vodka, are relatively free of the chemical mix.

Food Allergy

All of the foods which are used to produce AB’s by themselves can cause many of the symptoms of AB use. The “allergic” responses to cereal grains, grapes, and yeast all may cause physical illness associated with mental and behavioral aberrations. The adverse effects of alcohol beverages are a complex of problems such as alcohol poisoning, yeast allergy, grain or fruit allergy, nutrient deprivations and metabolic distortions. Sensitivity to the chemicals in AB’s varies considerably from individual to individual. Many alcoholics are hypersensitive to ABs and modest ingestion triggers powerful brain-confusing effects and flip-flops. Generalized illnesses may follow AB ingestion. These illness patterns are typical of food allergy and demonstrate that alcoholism is an illness that exceeds the drug effects of alcohol alone. AB abuse damages digestive function and makes the digestive tract leaky to large molecules. This increased permeability is likely an unrecognized mechanism for the production of AB-related disease.

Source: http://www.nutramed.com/alcohol/abchemistry.htm

As if we didn’t have enough challenges contending with flaws in forecasting the emotional impact of future events (see related post), we also have to contend with subconscious programming.

Your genetically programmed instincts and your beliefs learned from parents, teachers, church and others in your very early years (up to age 5) form the subconscious mind. Your subconscious, operating behind the scenes, primarily drives your behaviors — for good and for bad. It’s hard to be happy, for example, if you have hidden DVDs playing in your head that say you don’t deserve to be happy.

I know this isn’t news. But what may be new to you is that today we have innovative techniques to update the subconscious. Ways to clear out harmful programming. Methods to erase painful effects of trauma, no matter at what age trauma was experienced and got locked into the mind and body.

Want to learn more? Listen to my interview with Susan Kimball, a psychotherapist in Florida who uses Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) in her practice. Also visit the NET site.

According to Daniel Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, “Our ability to simulate the future and to forecast our hedonic reactions to it is seriously flawed, and that people are rarely as happy or unhappy as they expect to be.”

How many times have you convinced yourself that the grass is greener on the other side? Or that if such-and-such a thing happened, you’d be devasted, or happy beyond your wildest imagination? I do this type of mental predicting all the time. And, just as Gilbert illuminates in his article Affective Forecasting…Or…The Big Wombassa: What You Think You’re Going to Get, and What You Don’t Get, When You Get What You Want, no matter how many times the real experience has provided a different outcome or feeling than expected, I’ve continued in my self-deception.

Well, now I have a heads-up. Not that I want to start fooling around with Mother Nature completely — you never know what personal ecological damage you may cause if you continually work to outsmart yourself. Yet it appears that we can safely use some tactics to help us make better decisions about our future, such as talking to and observing people who are doing or have done something that we’ve forecasted would be enjoyable or make us happy.

Gilbert writes:

If you were trying to decide whether you should take job X or job Y, you might try to imagine yourself in each of them, but you might instead observe people who have job X and job Y and simply see how happy they are. What we’ve discovered is that (a) when people do this, they make extremely accurate affective forecasts, and (b) no one does this unless you force them to!

Try this thought experiment: You’re going to go on a vacation to a tropical island. It’s offered at a very good price, and you have to decide whether you’re willing to pay. You are offered one of two pieces of information to help you make your decision. Either you can have a brochure about the hotel and the recreational activities on the island, or you can find out how much a randomly selected traveler who recently spent time there liked his or her experience. Which would you prefer? In studies we’ve done that are modeled on this thought experiment, roughly 100% of the people prefer the kind of information contained in the brochure. After all, who the hell wants to hear from some random guy when they can look at the brochure and judge for themselves?

Nonetheless, if you actually give people one of these two pieces of information, they more accurately predict their own happiness when they see the random traveler’s report then when they see the brochure. Why? Because the brochure enables you to simulate what the island might be like and how much you’d enjoy it, but as I’ve mentioned, these sorts of predictions are susceptible to a wide variety of errors.

On the other hand, another person’s report enables you avoid these errors because it allows you to base your predictions on real experience rather than imaginary experience. If another person liked the island, the odds are that you will like it too. There’s a delicious irony here, which is that the information we need to predict how we’ll feel in the future is usually right in front of us in the form of other people. But because individuals believe so much in their own uniqueness—because we think we’re so psychologically different from others—we refuse to use the information that’s right before our eyes.

If you want to be a better affective forecaster, then, you would do well to base your forecasts on the actual experiences of real people who’ve been in the situations you are only imagining. The more similar to you the person is, the more informative their experience will be, of course. But what’s amazing is that even the experience of a randomly selected person provides a better basis for forecasting than does your own imagination.

Gotta run! I have a bunch of phone calls to make…

Daniel Gilbert is the author of Stumbling on Happiness. Looks like I have another book to buy!

Do you know what makes you happy? Daniel Gilbert would bet that you think you do, but you are most likely wrong. In his witty and engaging new book, Harvard professor Gilbert reveals his take on how our minds work, and how the limitations of our imaginations may be getting in the way of our ability to know what happiness is. Sound quirky and interesting? It is! But just to be sure, we asked bestselling author (and master of the quirky and interesting) Malcolm Gladwell to read Stumbling on Happiness, and give us his take. Check out his review below. –Daphne Durham

Several years ago, on a flight from New York to California, I had the good fortune to sit next to a psychologist named Dan Gilbert. He had a shiny bald head, an irrepressible good humor, and we talked (or, more accurately, he talked) from at least the Hudson to the Rockies–and I was completely charmed. He had the wonderful quality many academics have–which is that he was interested in the kinds of questions that all of us care about but never have the time or opportunity to explore. He had also had a quality that is rare among academics. He had the ability to translate his work for people who were outside his world.

Now Gilbert has written a book about his psychological research. It is called Stumbling on Happiness, and reading it reminded me of that plane ride long ago. It is a delight to read. Gilbert is charming and funny and has a rare gift for making very complicated ideas come alive.

Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future — or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We’re terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that’s so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of fascinating — and in some ways troubling — facts about the way our minds work. In particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of imagination. We’re far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our imaginations aren’t particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren’t nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think.

I suppose that I really should go on at this point, and talk in more detail about what Gilbert means by that — and how his argument unfolds. But I feel like that might ruin the experience of reading Stumbling on Happiness. This is a psychological detective story about one of the great mysteries of our lives. If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me. –Malcolm Gladwell

No offense intended by listing my favorite cartoon dog, Scooby-Doo — I have no idea what Scoob has to say about The Secret and the Law of Attraction (LOA). All I know is that the blogosphere is buzzin’ about The Secret film since its producer and several LOA teachers appeared on Oprah last week. I watched the show with amusement and amazement, which quickly turned to frustration and anger.

My husband and I have dozens of books that teach the Law of Attraction in its various forms. We’ve attended conferences to explore the concepts. Our conversations are often peppered with LOA-type lingo, partly in jest, partly being serious. I believe in the principles of cause and effect and reaping what you sow. I believe that your thoughts and beliefs determine how you perceive and experience the world — this is backed by science. And I believe that interesting, inexplicable, mind-blowing things can happen once you set your mind on a goal.

But I don’t believe that the “Law of Attraction” is a law. Who says it’s a law? How can you prove that it is? You can’t.

What about the claim that you send your thoughts as vibrations out into the universe, thereby attracting the same vibration? You can’t prove that either. And sorry, but quantum physics doesn’t prove it, as several LOA teachers claim.

Here’s the teaching that really takes the cake: You create every single bit of your reality. The good, the bad and the ugly. Even the truly despicable and horrendous. The unspeakable. You, and only you, are responsible for what happens in your life.

What makes me angry is that these teachings are presented as immutable laws, facts, truth. Why is there such a dearth of critical thinkers? Why are so many people willing to believe without proof? I’m not saying that the Law of Attraction can’t be true. I’m saying call it what it is — a concept that hasn’t been proven.

These teachings are not innocuous. Get ready for the almost predictable backlash — and not just from the usual quarters.