Take 60 seconds every waking hour to move—stretch, breathe, walk. It keeps your body energized and your mind clear. That adds up to 2 hours of exercise a week. No sweat, all benefit—for your whole being.
Feelings
Are you a fair or foul weather friend?
I’ve thought a lot about what it really means to be there for someone. When someone wins the lottery, you can bet their phone is ringing off the hook with congratulatory calls—they probably don’t need another call at that moment. Even when they hit a big milestone in their business, sometimes the calls come from people angling for a benefit rather than celebrating the success. I even remember times out in the Hamptons when one of my friends was spending far too much time with someone I found utterly distasteful. I suggested we mingle and speak to others, only to hear conversations fixated on that person’s money or royal title. My response, which probably won’t surprise anyone who knows me, was, “Who cares? He is a dick.” So much for that fair weather attitude—or as I sometimes call it, “sucking up.”
But here’s the real point: when a friend is in a dark place—maybe they’ve lost their job, are battling an illness, or have suffered the loss of someone dear—their phone might be silent. That’s when we truly have a chance to show who we are. I aspire to be a foul weather friend—the kind who steps up when the storm hits hardest. Far too often, people shy away in those moments because they worry about not knowing what to say, or fear that a misstep in words might make things worse. But not knowing what to say just means you haven’t yet learned the art of listening. Being present isn’t about filling the silence with words; it’s about offering your full attention, genuine care, and empathy.
For me, listening means asking thoughtful questions and then quieting my own voice to truly hear what the other person is saying. It’s not about having the perfect response—it’s about showing up silently, lovingly, and without judgment. Often, simply sitting with someone in their pain speaks louder than any words ever could.
PS: I just did a little Google search on this topic and found some twisted ideas out there—some say that people who thrive on misery are jealous of success or only reach out when they need help. I’m not talking about any of that. I spent an hour reflecting on my life to analyze who my friends are and the circumstances they face. I genuinely love when my friends succeed. I also recognize that I’m most “needed when I am needed.” I have one barometer: I choose my friends based on who I emotionally connect with—I don’t count their money.
Let’s strive to be there for one another in our toughest times, Sometimes, the most important thing we can do is simply be present and listen.
Enter at Their Speed Limit
In the bustling world we live in, where interactions are constant and varied, there’s a subtle art to connecting with others that can significantly enhance our communication. This art is known as matching and mirroring, a concept rooted in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Today, I want to dive into this fascinating technique and explore how matching or matching minus the energy of the person you’re speaking to can transform your conversations.
The Essence of Matching and Mirroring
At its core, matching and mirroring involves adopting aspects of another person’s behavior, speech, or body language to build rapport and create a sense of harmony. It’s a natural process we often do unconsciously with people we feel comfortable with. By consciously applying this technique, we can enhance our ability to connect with others, making our interactions more fluid and effective.
Imagine you’re speaking with someone who is very calm and soft-spoken. If you approach them with high energy and a loud voice, it might create a disconnect, making the conversation feel awkward or even overwhelming. Instead, by matching their calm demeanor, you can create a sense of comfort and understanding. This is entering at their speed limit.
The Power of Matching Minus
Sometimes, it’s not about fully mirroring the other person but slightly dialing back your energy to match theirs. This technique, often referred to as “matching minus,” involves subtly aligning with their pace and tone without completely mimicking them. It’s a delicate balance that shows empathy and respect for their state of being while still maintaining your own unique presence.
For example, if someone is expressing sadness or frustration, you don’t need to mirror their emotions exactly. Instead, you can match minus by adopting a more subdued tone and calm body language. This approach acknowledges their feelings and creates a safe space for them to open up, without amplifying their emotional state.
Practical Applications in Everyday Life
Whether you’re in a professional setting, such as our aesthetic doctor’s office at Precision Aesthetics, where we go to great lengths to ensure everyone’s comfort and privacy, or interacting with friends and family, mastering the art of matching and mirroring can have profound benefits. Here are a few practical tips to get started:
- Observe and Listen: Pay attention to the other person’s body language, tone of voice, and speech patterns. This observation is the first step in effectively matching their energy.
- Subtle Adjustments: Make small adjustments to your own behavior. If they’re speaking slowly, slow down your own speech. If they’re using specific gestures, incorporate similar ones naturally into your conversation.
- Practice Empathy: Show genuine interest and empathy in your interactions. People can sense when you’re truly engaged and respectful of their emotional state.
- Stay Authentic: While it’s important to match and mirror, it’s equally crucial to remain authentic. The goal is to create rapport, not to mimic or lose your own identity.
Conclusion
“Enter at Their Speed Limit” is more than just a technique; it’s a mindset of empathy, respect, and connection. By consciously matching or matching minus the energy of those we interact with, we can create more meaningful and effective communication. In a world that often feels rushed and disconnected, this simple yet powerful approach can make all the difference. Let’s embrace this art and enhance our relationships, one conversation at a time.
Remember, the next time you engage with someone, consider their speed limit. Adjust your approach, and watch as your connections deepen and flourish.
Feel free to share your thoughts or experiences with matching and mirroring in the comments below. Let’s continue the conversation and learn from each other.
With warmth and respect, John
A Post Away From Happiness
Throughout our lives, we encounter bits of wisdom—some that stick with us forever. These nuggets of knowledge can come from anywhere: a grandparent, a mentor, or a line from a book that resonates with us on a deep level. For instance, my father once told me, “As long as you are healthy, you can dig ditches and make money.” While it might not seem like the most profound statement at first, it underscored a vital truth for me—the paramount importance of health.
This simple saying from my father shaped my perspective, making it easier for me to prioritize healthy life choices. It’s a perfect example of how sometimes, the smaller sayings, not the grand declarations, are what truly change our lives.
Everyone has their own set of maxims that guide them. Perhaps this post might offer you a new one that could shift your perspective or reinforce your current path. Moreover, it’s crucial to reflect on the sayings you repeat to yourself and others. Are they positive? Do they encourage growth and happiness? If not, it might be time to let go of the negative ones.
The sayings we choose to live by can significantly influence our outlook and decisions. They can be reminders of our values and goals, helping us navigate through life’s complexities. By choosing to adopt and repeat positive and empowering phrases, we can shape a more optimistic and proactive approach to life.
Take a moment to think about the words that have impacted you. What are the sayings that have helped you the most? Sharing these can not only affirm their value in your life but also potentially inspire others. Remember, the right words at the right time can be a beacon of hope and a catalyst for change.
So, as you go about your day, consider the power of words and the impact they can have. You might just find that happiness is truly just a post away.
Practice getting triggered and how fast you can recover
I think this will work for most people. We have all gone ape shit visceral allowing a lousy cable channel to trigger us. So watch whichever one you hate and viscerally disagree with and then after you are triggered, see how fast you can recover. Its a friggin muscle. the ability to recover from being triggered, not go down the rabbit hole, not speak in absolutes ( ie they always say that do that). PS this applies to your closest relationships as well. You need to learn how to control your emotions and I cant think of a better way then to trigger yourself with something innocuous like politics and then see how fast you can recover. Then when something really important happens, like your husband crashes your Porsche, you will not get upset. You might have noticed what I did there, ladies, LOL
Am I allowed to say ladies. Sorry if that triggered you I cant help you. You are way beyond help I suggest heavy drugs, sedation and 24 hour a day medications.
PS Did you notice that Fox had the pretty female anchor? Ok now I am really asking to be cancelled.
Deviant from the Norm or Pet Peeve?
I dont know about you but I almost never get angry when its expected, but unexpected is another issue. How do you like it when you decide to leave late to avoid traffic and the road is completely closed and there is a three hour back up? I expect snow in the winter, but what the hell is going on today, Its late April? I guess I am just like Brad Pitt (heart throb). Or is it Larry David (angry old fart)? Or maybe I am just an anti nihilist.
The world does need order. As Brad Pitt said how can we survive when some Bozo is in the fast lane going slow? Or maybe its just survival. OK this is a big can of worms now opened can crawl in any direction. But I am OK with that, how about you? I love to “THINK” vs regurgitating the same thoughts as yesterday.
You do know that most of your thoughts, all 50,000 or 90,000, are the same as yesterday, right? So why did you even bother waking up if that was all you were going to do with today? Seriously the quality of your life is the quality of your thoughts. If your thoughts today are the same as yesterday, why did you even bother to wake up today? PS it gets worse. Not only are the thoughts the same, they are mostly negative. They actually have to be negative or you would’nt be reading this.
Sorry to repeat, but we need a basic understanding of our brain, as it relates to evolution, and being here, as a predicate to this conversation. So whether you believe in evolution, millions of years, or religion, thousands of years. You are not the first of your family line to be here.
Every one of your ancestors, maybe hundreds or thousands, needed a sweet tooth so they didnt eat poison and die, and they needed to store fat efficiently, and not waste energy ( be lazy). They also needed to worry about predators. We didnt always have guns, so you better worry all the time 24/7 about getting eaten
So we have established that you are a fat, lazy ice cream eating neurotic sitting on the couch, because you had to be. Its in your genes.
Today lets explore why you are fat, lazy, anxious and angry to boot. PS almost forgot, probably alcoholic too. Talk about getting glucose into your blood stream. Although a yo yo effect, hmm addicted anyone?
Sorry my brain is a little ADD. But so is yours. It is all wired together so every thought leads to another thought? The only difference is my brain is thinking. Your brain is jumping from one problem to another. Cant believe how much the brain actually does creative thinking when its not involved in protecting you by worrying about that animal ready to pounce on you. You do know that todays animal is not a lion, tiger or bear, its next months mortgage payment, the kid’s tuition, your boss, or if you are lucky, huge business loans, and your retirement account or lack of.
Wow what a bunch of interesting ideas to pursue. I believe I just gave myself a years worth of blogs. However lets finish this thought. As you can tell I have gotten good at not thinking of the dozens of real life challenges I could be worried, about and the expected doesnt make me angry, but I, and I am willing to bet a lot of us, get angry when people deviate from the norm or violate societal norms.
Heck Larry David’s whole persona on Curb Your Enthusiasm is based on that guy. 47 Emmy Nominations and 5 million viewers, and thats behind an HBO pay wall.
So here is my theory. Society does’nt exist without order. Seriously it is as big a threat to your life as the predator, running out of fuel (dont lose fat its the most efficient fuel) and your brain needing glucose or avoiding bitter, potentially poisons.
For me it feels like an aha moment. I know for all of you with what you think is bigger problems maybe not. I am totally vexed why I can be happy all day except for when that one asshole calls to sell me something and refuses to identify himself. I also agree with Larry David when the person on line for ice cream is trying 5 different ones. What the hell? that is a complete break down of society.
I expect murderers to murder, crooks to steal. But I dont expect District Attorneys to let them out of jail.
(the whole raison d’etre for Fox News. We might be on to something a lot bigger here. We all want society to work so we dont get killed. So when something deviates from the normal we absolutely are triggered to worry. It is existential.
Now if I can just remember that, so the next time I get a spam call selling solar and I ask three times what he is selling, just spit it out and he insists he is not selling he is offering me something great, I dont have to yell at him. Nor do I have to tell the next caller, “didnt your mother teach you manners? You are supposed to identify yourself when you call another person, or are you merely a bastard”. Hey Larry David, your protege is waiting, or is it Brad?
But seriously what do you think? I am going to start welcoming and publishing comments. We have a lot to think about. And I seriously wonder if others think or should I say feel, the same.
I think its wired into survival there must be some order and asking for 7 samples at the ice cream counter or driving slow in the fast lane will surely kill us. OK maybe not the ice cream samples. But if you have ever driven on the no speed limit autobahns in Europe, driving slow in the fast lane will kill you.
Google it. To this day people drive on the average 150 mph on the autobahn. I remember driving there when I was 17 and just wished when I got home that the asshole in the left lane here driving 49 miles an hour tried that shit in Germany and experienced the near death experience of someone coming up his butt at 150mph or more, and just maybe was able to slow down without killing him or her. Maybe they would think twice about self righteously sitting in the left lane even at 59 mph thinking they are the traffic cop of the word.
Life needs order and meaning it is not Nihilistic. In fact I prefer flow.
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi takes on the problem of how to live a happier life. A meaningful life is one where the person spends his time in a state of optimal experience called Flow. To live a great life, all your goals must be unified in a way that produces the maximum amount of flow.
Flow doesnt happen when people deviate from the norms or sit and shit in the left lane of your life while you are trying to finally get in the flow and enjoy your life.
A program not saved can not be restored
A mind/ pattern or program not saved can not be restored
Sorry if I am being redundant here, but I think this is the most important thing I can teach you and sometimes hearing something differently finally gives you that aha moment.
“A perfectly functioning program not saved can not be restored.” john aslanian
“A perfectly functioning human will eventually malfunction and will need to be restored”
If your brain is a computer, which it is, and you finally get the program to run right,
why wouldn’t you save it?
So lets say you are having the best year of your life, maybe its running every day or yoga or walking, or eggs for breakfast, or a shake for breakfast, or a new multivitamin or a self improvement tape, or getting 20 minutes of natural sun light every day.
Its probably a combination of a lot of things that truly resonate for you.
So here is the problem, you don’t save it. You don’t even write it down.
Three months later, heck even a few weeks later, it all falls apart, and you are miserable,
and you have no idea what you were doing when everything was going perfectly. That is because there was no pain involved, so your brain doesn’t remember.
You were feeling great. Your brain is not wired to remember normal happy feelings.
It is wired to remember pain, so you don’t stick your hand in fire. Well it pretty much ends there.
It doesn’t even remember to not date the kind of assholes that would beat you or are alcoholics.(maybe because there was also some pleasure there, but thats another subject)
We are as complicated and different and opaque as a computer program.
I wish I could do it for you. Heck if I could I would make billions and we would both be very happy. But we are all different. There is eat for your blood type, what I eat might be bad for you.
So I write down EVERYTHING; what I ate, what supplements I took and what I did.
Sure enough a few months go by, and I am off track. So as with any word processing program; word or pages or excel, I go to edit find/replace and I look for “feel great” You would write that or your own code word on those days.
Wow, you might find, “I forgot the week I felt great I was going to sleep before midnight every night and or I was eating eggs for breakfast every day.” Sometimes its that simple, You could even be allergic to what makes me feel great, so you have to do you.
But you have no prayer of reloading the good software to your life if you have no idea what you were doing to make yourself happy.
And I can’t do it for you, I am not doing yoga or eating vegan or any of the things that might make YOU feel good.
But I can tell you to write it down. You will call me to thank me. Its the single simplest thing you can do to change your life.
Its probably a little bit more like this.
You are the user. You are operating off of the software. There might be faults in the operating system that needs to be addressed. I think I am little bit ADHD. I have never sat still for more than 40 minutes in my life. So maybe I need to focus a bit more on omega 3s, DHA, and supplements for my operating system. And lets not neglect the hardware. If we are constantly pouring alcohol on the hardware, dont be surprised if it doesnt work.
But it all goes back to the software. Because everything you do that you write down, that causes you to run perfectly, will fix the operating system, and even the hardware. There are supplements that will help your liver, your brain, your blood sugar, your gut. So its actually easy to fix everything with software that helps you run smooth. Some of it, you might stumble upon by accident. You dont have to understand it. Something as simple as eggs for breakfast. You dont have to know that its a complete protein, or that it is full of omega 3s, DHA, the perfect feel good fatty acid for you brain, or that it has choline in it, thats good for your brain. You just have to notice if it makes you feel good. And the same goes for whatever else you do and eat throughout the day.
Its that simple study YOU and what makes you feel good write it down as YOUR program, Save it so you can reload it when necessary.
A Post Away From Happiness
Throughout our lives, we encounter bits of wisdom—some that stick with us forever. These nuggets of knowledge can come from anywhere: a grandparent, a mentor, or a line from a book that resonates with us on a deep level. For instance, my father once told me, “As long as you are healthy, you can dig ditches and make money.” While it might not seem like the most profound statement at first, it underscored a vital truth for me—the paramount importance of health.
My way of saying it is slightly different. “Your health is your wealth is trite and stupid, without it you are dead or in so much pain you wish you were dead”
Everyone has their own set of maxims that guide them. Moreover, it’s crucial to reflect on the sayings you repeat to yourself and others. I hear all too often negative ones. “Its all rigged” ” you have to have money to make money” “its impossible to get ahead” ” the economy sucks” Are they positive? Do they encourage growth and happiness? If not, it might be time to let go of the negative ones.
The sayings we choose to live by can significantly influence our outlook and decisions. They can be reminders of our values and goals, helping us navigate through life’s complexities. By choosing to adopt and repeat positive and empowering phrases, we can shape a more optimistic and proactive approach to life.
Take a moment to think about the words that have impacted you. What are the sayings that have helped you the most? Sharing these can not only affirm their value in your life but also potentially inspire others. Remember, the right words at the right time can be a beacon of hope and a catalyst for change.
So, as you go about your day, consider the power of words and the impact they can have. You might just find that happiness is truly just a post away.
Happiness Health and Beauty Secrets 