Crossing the floor

First an apology, then some news.

This is an apology to everyone whom I've been slow to respond to.

There...now the news (and explanation)

I bought a Mac...not that there's anything wrong with that...

I've been spending most waking and some dreaming moments in the last week or so transitioning my life from my beloved Toshiba Portege M200 Tablet PC to my new MacBook Pro. It's been an interesting trip so far and I'm very happy with my choice. The downside is that, as any PC owner can tell you, that moving stuff from 'old computer' to 'new computer' is painful and time consuming.

Well...when you're going from PC to Mac, it's more painful, more time consuming, more expensive but to be honest, somewhat of a relief.

The basic tools inherent in the Mac are so easy a real person could use them, and the operating system is extremely solid. The battery claims to last about 5 hours (I'm thinking it'll do 4 no problem which is about 3.5 more than the old one) and it has another very cool feature that was the clincher:

I am right now typing this inside a little PC window in my Mac. That's right - embedded in my Mac is a program called 'Parallels' that allows me to run a program that runs Windows XP in it.

I can share files between this Windows and my Mac, and whatever won't work on the Mac will actually work quite nicely on this little PC window...

so I get the best of both worlds.

Okay - back to the salt mines. Accelerated Learning Days 1 and 2 run this coming Saturday and Sunday. Hope to see you there.

For those waiting for e-mails, I'm on it...

An Epidemic of Diagnoses

A couple of blog posts back, I made the distinction of guarding your 'I ams', differentiating between your behaviours (I dos) and your identity (I am).

So tonight I read the New York Times op ed page and came across an article written by three doctors who bring to light the epidemic of over-diagnosis happening in the USA. Here's a sample of the article:

This epidemic is a threat to your health. It has two distinct sources. One is the medicalization of everyday life. Most of us experience physical or emotional sensations we don’t like, and in the past, this was considered a part of life. Increasingly, however, such sensations are considered symptoms of disease. Everyday experiences like insomnia, sadness, twitchy legs and impaired sex drive now become diagnoses: sleep disorder, depression, restless leg syndrome and sexual dysfunction.

Perhaps most worrisome is the medicalization of childhood. If children cough after exercising, they have asthma; if they have trouble reading, they are dyslexic; if they are unhappy, they are depressed; and if they alternate between unhappiness and liveliness, they have bipolar disorder. While these diagnoses may benefit the few with severe symptoms, one has to wonder about the effect on the many whose symptoms are mild, intermittent or transient.

The entire article is here I recommend the read, but keep in mind the differences between I am and I have and I do.

I've probably mentioned it before but it bears repeating. When Ronald Reagan was asked about his diagnosis of prostate cancer, he replied, "I don't have cancer - my prostate does."

amen

Confirm your e-mail

Just a quick bit of additional info:

After you send the email to burningbowl@aweber.com you will get an e-mail from 'hugh' that says:

"We received your request for information from the burningbowl group. Before we begin sending you the information you requested, we want to be certain we have your permission.

-----------------------------------------------------------
ONE-CLICK CONFIRMATION BY VISITING THE LINK BELOW:"

All you have to do is click the link, and you will then receive the instructions. It makes sure that you don't subscribe to anything you don't want. Helps reduce the spam...

Sorry for any confusion.

The NLP Burning Bowl Ceremony

Wow that was cool.

Your requests to get the worksheets from my NLP Burning Bowl process to help change behaviours was overwhelming.

Overwhelming enough that I've given up sending the attachments and in self-defense have created an 'autoresponder' to take care of the requests.

If you want to get the worksheets, send an e-mail to burningbowl@aweber.com, you will receive them automatically by e-mail in about a minute.

I also created one follow-up e-mail to remind you to let us know how it went.

So break out your resolutions and send an e-mail!

New Year's Resolve

Last year we ran a course called GoalGetting. It was quite successful, and most if not all the participants noticed some nice shifts in their lives.

One of the things I created for the course was a worksheet that I think would probably be useful for anyone at any time, but even more helpful at this time of year.

I've written extensively here on the difference between behaviours and intentions; that people DO things for themselves, and whatever happens TO us is merely a byproduct of their own self-interest.

In this process that I'll call "The Burning Bowl", we differentiate between our own behaviours and intentions.

It goes like this:

Take a sheet of paper and create 3 equal columns.

• Title the 1st column "Old 2006 Behaviour"
• Title the 2nd column "Positive Intention"
• Title the 3rd column "2007 New Behaviour"

In the 1st column, list all the behaviours that did NOT serve you well in 2006. Examples could be illness, anger, jealousy, self-pity etc.

In the 2nd column, going one by one, write down what the intention of the behaviour was. So if the behaviour was 'self pity', then positive intention could have been, say, to feel comforted. Go through all the behaviours.

Next, in the 3rd column, write down a better alternative. What is a better way of feeling comforted? (good question huh?) Write it down.

Now, take a new sheet of paper and put 2 columns. Title the first one: "When I want to feel" and the second, "I will"

Under the "When I want to feel" column, write down all the positive intentions from the other sheet. Under the "I will" column, write down all the 2007 New Behaviours.


Sign and date the sheet and put it up somewhere you can see it throughout the year.

The last step would be to take each of the 2006 old behaviours and ceremonially light them on fire and say thanks but no thanks to each of them...

If you would like a copy of the worksheet, send me an e-mail; I'll be glad to send it along to you.


From Jennifer, Jack and myself, we wish you and your families the very best in 2007.

Hugh Comerford