Archives for February 2010

Show Your Love, Appreciation or Deep Like in Your Own Way

Photo by Robin Hutton on Flickr

One of the easiest ways to increase your own happiness is to express your love, appreciation or deep like for another person and celebrate in your own way.

With Valentine’s Day approaching, we are bombarded with ads directed at exchanging gifts of flowers, chocolate and jewelry between romantic partners.

Suppose you don’t have an intimate partner or want to share your love beyond the obvious? How about expressing your feelings and reaching out to others beyond your intimate circle.

1. Help feed the hungry or homeless on Valentine’s Day, if possible. Many of these charities require you to sign up ahead of time, so you may have to book yourself for another day. Do it anyway.

2. Buy some of those kiddie Valentine greetings that come in a set of 30 intended for school kids to exchange. Then sign your name and give to your coworkers. Trust me, they may comment, but they will smile and appreciate the recognition.

3. Make something clever using one of Avery’s free “appreciation” templates.

4. Visit a convalescent home on Valentine’s Day and spend time chatting with someone who never gets visitors. By the way, residents are not just senior citizens. There are children and teen residents there as well. Call to arrange your visit ahead of time.

5. Go through your address book and pick out someone who has made a difference in your life. Call them and tell them.

Filed Under: celebrating Valentine's Day, Happiness, volunteering Tagged With: being creative, celebrating Valentine's Day, volunteering

The Lies We Live

By Flora Leave a Comment

Photo by Ruby Glimmer from Flickr

Lies are woven into our lives from early childhood to the end of our lives. They are so pervasive that many go unnoticed and barely cause a flutter. Certain lies are so common, as a matter of fact, that we may not even classify them as lies.

Here are the most common culprits:

Oxymorons–a combination of contradictory or incongruous words

My son swears that military intellgence fits this category. The more cynical among us would also add business ethics and personal computer. But most people would more readily place pairs like white darkness, silent scream and jumbo shrimp on this list.

Euphemisms–an agreeable word used in place of an offensive one sometime to spare feelings, other times to deceive.

rest room for toilet
working girl for prostitute
pass on for die
Nazis termed relocation camp for concentration camp

Weasel words–words used to evade or retreat from a direct statement

Saying the Corvette is virtually handmade means it’s not handmade, since virtually means not in fact.

Doublespeak–a type of euphemism that is uttered in bad faith, deliberately constructed for political purposes, thus usually being used by the government or politicians

Predawn vertical insertion –used by the Bush administration to refer to the invasion of Granada by parachutists

Wastewater conveyance facility — sewage plant

Ethnic cleansing–Serbian government’s term for forcibly removing and massacring Serbia’s Muslim population

This week we’ve explored deception in many forms and situations. It’s clear that lying at all levels is a prevalent part of our lives and that all of us are culprits as well as victims of it.

The good thing about knowing better is it’s the first step toward doing better. Perhaps the knowledge you gained this week about lies can help you avoid deception in all of its forms. Let me know what you think.

First published 2-15-08

Filed Under: Deception, euphemisms, Happiness Tagged With: Deception, euphemisms, Lies

Is All Fair in Love?

By Flora Leave a Comment

Hugs 🙂 by dj itch on flickr

We love to lie to the ones we love. Deception is more prevalent in romantic relationships than anywhere else. From “No, you don’t look fat” to “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” the lies in relationships abound.

Missouri psychologist Dory Hollander reported in her book 101 Lies Men Tell Women, that 85% of college students interviewed said that they had lied to their partners about indiscretions.

A few findings from the Top Ten List of the research on lying in romantic relationships are

Deception is an inherent and necessary aspect of our close relationships
Most deception is successful because it never gets detected
We save the biggest and most serious lies for the ones we love

If the concept of lying in relationships is broad enough to cover exaggerations, what do we make of love letters and poetry? Most of us would stop short of calling them lies. In fact, we long for these exaggerations.

Who wouldn’t want to receive a letter like the one Elizabeth wrote to Robert Browning?

Sonnet #43, From the Portuguese
by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints!—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Go here if you’re up to taking some relationship quizzes.

Most of us enter marriage with high expectations, and yet half of the marriages in the USA end in divorce.
What leads to successful relationships and marriage?

After studying 168 couples from their wedding days through thirteen years, Huston, a pioneer in the psychology of relationships, launched the Processes of Adaptation in Intimate Relationships (the “PAIR Project”) and made the following discoveries:

1. Many newlyweds are not head over heels in love.
2. Couples who do begin their relationships in romantic bliss are more prone to divorce because it’s just too difficult sustaining that intensity.
3. Couples whose marriages last longer don’t have the “Hollywood-style” relationships, but are fairly lackluster by comparison.
4. Couples who continue to love and have affection for each other last longer in spite of any interpersonal conflicts that arise.

So there you have it. A few different views on love, deception and lasting marriages. What do you think?

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: Deception, Happiness, love, marriage

Fill Your Mind with Empowering Thoughts

By Flora Leave a Comment

Click the musical note at the lower right if you wish to enjoy the music along with the pictures.

Filed Under: beauty around us, following your dream, Happiness, Positive thinking, reducing stress, Silencing the inner critic Tagged With: accomplishing major goals, empowering thoughts, self-acceptance

Lies, Damned Lies and Our Way of Life

By Flora Leave a Comment

Mark Twain said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. ”

Where does that place advertising and politics? We all know advertisers lie. We expect them to lie.

We may act appalled when one of their lies is uncovered, but we know full well, for example, that no safe product will cause us to lose 10 lbs in three days. That’s why that disclaimer (that regulations force them to provide ) written in fine print races across the bottom of the screen during weight loss TV commercials. Some argue that we are co-conspirators with advertisers since we allow ourselves to be deceived.

I agree. We so much want to believe that we allow ourselves to be deceived.

Just as we suspend our belief to enjoy a movie, many of us suspend our belief for sustained periods of time.

Advertisers are the most clever liars of all because they find out what we want most and promise to give it to us. Even when their lies are discovered, we forgive them and buy their products again and again.
We all seem to want things that are fast, cheap, and good.

The truth is that we can only have two of these at a time. If something is fast and cheap, it’s not likely be good. If it’s cheap and good, it won’t be fast. And, if it’s fast and good, it definitely won’t be cheap. And yet, we keep hoping for all three.

Politicians are not as clever as advertisers at lying. Like advertisers, they try to tell us what we want to hear, but they don’t have as much money and time to craft their deceptions. So, they take the short cuts of evasion and distraction.

There is no law forbidding politicians from lying. It’s up to us to determine to believe, confirm or discover the truth of what they say.

Before we look down on advertisers or politicians for lying, you must know that lying is a common part of our everyday life. We are socialized to lie from an early age, and sometimes punished for telling the truth and rewarded for lying.

As a child, for example, it was in my best interest to tell my mother what she wanted to hear, such as when she inquired “Are you calling me a liar?” rather than to tell her the truth that she was lying. Because I lied to her, I lived to tell you this story.

What’s your take on deception? Tell the truth now.

Filed Under: Acceptable lies, Deception, Happiness, Lies, Life choices Tagged With: Deception, Lies