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Hypnosis is the willingness to follow instructions during a heightened state of suggestibility. You can also think of it as a trance or state of focused concentration.

The main principle of hypnosis is to put the subjects into a suggestible state of mind and an implant the desired suggestions. In some cases, you do not want your subjects to be aware that they are being hypnotized.

Hypnosis works best when the subject is relaxed and free of tension. It is helpful, if they are in a comfortable atmosphere and relaxed state of mind.

When you are hypnotizing someone voluntarily, you can simply ask them to a cooperate. Have them try to become aware of the areas where they are tense and focus on them. Get them to concentrate on relaxing.

When you are trying to secretly hypnotize someone, you can still try to reduce tension and get them relaxed. Avoid places where there are distractions such as loud noises or bright lights.

the real secrets of effective hypnosis is inward focus and getting the subject into a state of suggestibility, or trance. When they reach that state of being in a trance, you can begin implanting suggestions.

There are many courses and books that will show you the secrets to hypnosis. You can also find these secrets at websites such as hypnosis-x.info, or by searching the Web.

Almost everyone of us once or twice in our lifetime experience an anxiety attacks. Sometimes we don’t even know why it happens. Let’s look at what are the things that we should and should not do under anxiety attacks.

1) Don’t tell yourself that you are dying because you are not.

Sometimes under a severe anxiety attacks you may feel like you are dying. Just calm down because you are not dying. When the attacks is over everything is back to normal.

2) You are not suppose to breathe from the chest. Under this condition your breath should come from the abdomen.

Breathing from the chest during an anxiety attacks will make you feel dizzy and also numbness in certain parts of the body. You are supposed to take a deep breath from the abdomen.

3) Keep thinking positively.

It is natural for you to have negative thought during the attack such as I am fainting now or I cannot breathe. Try to turn the situation around since negative thinking will breed fear and worsen your situation.

4) Keep feeding your mind with positive thinking

Keep telling yourself that you are going to get through this soon. Anxiety attacks is indeed temporary. By thinking positively the whole experience is easy.

5) Get help from the health care professionals

There are arrays of health care professionals that should be able to assist you in coping with anxiety attacks. Mental health professionals such as psychiatrist, psychologist, counselors and social workers are always available.

6) Share your problems with the loved one and with people whom you can trust.

Getting your problems out of your chest would relieve half of your burden. People who are close to you could provide comfort and help to alleviate your problems.

7) Follow your doctor’s advice. If you have been prescribed with medication, then take your medication on time and follow the routine that has been scheduled by your health care professionals.

Don’t be helpless.

You have all the help you need out there. Put yourself together. Take charge of yourself, be positive get into action gear and go. You have the right to live a happy and worry free life.

9) Be happy. There are others that are with you.

Support group is a great resources to learn from as well as contribute your opinion and share your experience. I’m sure you could find many support group that suit you in your locality.

10) Open up your mind. Learn more about anxiety and panic attacks.

There are abundant of learning materials that you can benefit from. Countless to say from printed materials such as books and magazines to electronic materials such as CD’s and DVD’s

The word psychic pertains to a group of people with the capacity to use their mental powers to see something beyond the ordinary. Psychics have the innate psychic ability which allows them to see the future, allowing them to make predictions regarding future events that could happen to their clients. The word psychic has Greek origins. It originates from the words psychiokos and psyche which means “that which is mental” and “soul.” Fortune tellers are also considered psychics.

In the mid-nineteenth century to the present, Modern Spiritualism became prominent in the United States and the United Kingdom. The movement’s distinguishing feature was the belief that the spirits of the dead could be contacted by mediums to lend insight to the living. The movement was fueled in part by anecdotes of psychic powers. As belief in the supernatural grew, so did the number of psychics. Their services quickly became available everywhere, from carnivals to psychic hotlines to even the Internet. Yes, nowadays psychics have their own websites where even tarot readings can be conducted online.

The world-wide-web (Internet) has advanced so rapidly and has spread across the entire planet like a tree that roots itself within the ground. In the past, psychics have used various means to telepathically answer questions about your past, present and future. With the rapid growth and ingenuity of the Internet, psychics are now able to use this

From marriage problems to dream analysis, household issues to love problems, past lives to guardian angels. Some online psychics can even conduct holistic therapy for people. An online psychic can also help people make positive and life-changing decisions by studying the person’s traits based on the horoscope or the alignment of the stars.

For those who just want to try out psychic readings or cannot afford a holistic package, availing of the online psychic’s mailing list for email-based readings and some such. That part is also available as extras to the aforementioned services, though this time the psychic will charge you extra for that. Also, psychic chats are charged by the minute, so be advised to write down your questions, or else the psychic will be predicting a large amount of debt on your part.

While fear is unpleasant its job is to protect us from danger. When you face a threatening situation, adrenaline pumps through your body in order to help you flee or fight whatever danger you are facing.

A panic attack occurs when this fight or flight response is set off out of context and without a threatening stimulus. It can one of the most terrifying and confusing psychological experiences a person can have. Symptoms include trembling, sweating, nausea, dizziness and shortness of breath. One in 75 people will experience panic attack at some stage of their lives.

The symptoms of panic attack last 10 minutes on average, but can range from as little as 1-5 minutes to lasting hours in the cases of reoccurring panic attack.

You can treat your panic attack. Here are some ways to help manage them.

* Breathe with the abdomen and diaphragm. Take long, slow and deep breaths.

* Try to be in the present moment. You can do this by concentrating on what is happening to you in present moment and not worrying about what could happen to you in the future.

* Accept the panic attack - acknowledge that the panic attack is happening to you, that you are not going to die and that it will soon past.

* Accepting the symptoms - don’t fight the symptoms or try to make the better. Instead allow time to pass and simply acknowledge them

* Inside your mind, say reassuring things. Eg. “I can be anxious and still deal with this situation”, “This will soon pass” and “I can deal with this, even though I don’t like it”.

* Seek Relief - go to a safe place.

* Talk with a supportive person.

* Rational Emotive Therapy (RET) and Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) are two types of psychological techniques that have had proven results in helping panic attacks.

Programs You Can Do At Home

There are several great home-study program available for panic attack sufferers. These have been developed by former panic attack sufferers and teach people with the condition to treat their problems without drugs. They are an excellent way and inexpensive way to treat panic attack by incorporating the techniques in to your everyday schedule.

It is easier to get a psychological degree than a psychiatric one. You will not need the extensive medical school training required of psychiatrists. However, you will not be able to prescribe medications to your patients. For some psychologists, this is a negative, but to some it is a bonus, as they aren’t required to learn about the latest drugs. But drugs now can be prescribed by general practitioners, so you must provide another vitally needed service. Drugs can’t do their work without counseling. This is especially true in the specialist field of addiction psychology.

Reasons to Choose this Therapy

Some therapists choose to go into addiction psychology just because addictions are such a prevalent problem in modern society. Drugs are much easier to get than ever before and many mistakenly believe they offer a pain-free way of escaping internal pain. These drugs include alcohol, prescription drugs and illegal drugs like heroin or opium. But people also get addicted to sex, abusive relationships, work and food. Whenever something takes over a person’s life to the point where they would risk anything in order to fulfill that desire, then they are addicted. Sadly, you will never lack work if you choose to specialize in addiction psychology.

Online Or not in Person?

You usually need to already have some sort of therapists’ license before you can enroll in addiction psychology degree programs. Because of the crammed schedules of the usual therapist, online schooling is becoming more and more of an attractive option. Some colleges and universities will offer you the choice of attending a class in person or taking an online course. Depending on the individual program, you may be eligible even if you don’t have a therapists’ license, but a degree in special education or human services.

Trade schools and universities are run like a business, which means they will work with you to try and get you to go there. This means that if you ask for financial aid help, they are likely to bust their guts trying to help you out with grants or loans. If you decide to get a loan from your bank, the college should be able to help you with the paperwork. Check with the individual financial aid department of each college or university that offers addiction psychology degree programs you are interested in.

Creating a psychology specialist degree like one in addiction psychology looks incredibly impressive on your resume. And, unlike some other specialist degrees, what you will learn can relate to real life skills in many fields. An addiction psychology degree can open many doors to not only your career, but a great way to help those in need.

You, like everyone, have memories that can affect how you feel. You can remember a happy memory and feel a bit of the happy emotion. Just as you can remember a sad memory and feel the sadness.

There is a definite connection between what our memories have stored and how we generally feel. If there is very strong emotion associated with a memory, a person may tend to feel that emotion in some way, constantly, below the surface.

Memories with traumatic emotions can cause disorders like post-traumatic stress and depression. They can also cause other disruptions in your life like problems with anger, fears, and stress.

While medication is commonly used for these issues, it only attempts to dampen the symptoms rather than treat the cause. The issue rarely goes away with this type of treatment.

The key to long term help with these issues would appear to be the emotional association with the memory. What would happen if that association could be erased, reduced or even changed?

There is a medication being researched called propranolol that acts as an “amnesia drug”. It is being used to directly disrupt the connection between our memories and the emotions associated with them.

Described in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, they talk about psychiatrists at McGill University and Harvard University using the drug to disrupt the memories of trauma victims. The drug reduces the emotional connection with the memory while leaving the conscious part of the memory.

With this process, people still have the memory, but the emotion is reduced or detached. The potential problems with this process, such as permanence or side effects, are not known.

It all seems a little too sci-fi to me, when there are more reliable, established, and safer methods available.

In particular, hypnosis. Hypnosis seems better suited for this process since, when in hypnosis, you are using the emotional part of your mind. This is very evident when working with traumatic memories from childhood. When re-experiencing memories from childhood a person often ‘feels’ younger than their current age. You tend to experience memories with the same age of mind that you originally experienced the situation.

Before using hypnosis techniques to address a strong emotional memory, the hypnotist needs to be appropriately trained. With a trained and experienced hypnotist, the process is reliable, quick and effective.

This process is essentially about gaining perspective on the experience and the client’s part in the experience. This process will often create a sense of distance and separation from the memory. A memory, minus the negative emotions.

How angry do you get when your health professional tells you that your chronic pain is “in your head”, or that it’s your fault for “creating the pain” with your thoughts?

If you suffer from ongoing chronic pain you are a long way from being alone. Chronic pain rates have more than doubled in the last 40 years and we’ve got to the point now where around 1 in 3 people suffer, over 60% of doctor visits are due to chronic pain severe enough to prevent people from working, and where the cost of failed treatments for chronic pain is estimated at over $10 billion a year in Australia alone.

Are you like most people who’ve tried the drugs or even surgery and found that they’re right back to square one, or that the side effects are as bad as or worse than the pain?

Also like millions of others, have you been sent along to a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy program because your pain specialist has given up and told you the pain is in your head?

Sometimes they may even have told you that it’s your anger that’s creating the pain! What they need to realise is that it’s the failure of the programs that has given rise to your righteous anger! But how did it come to this?

It’s not really your doctors’ fault, or the fault of your health professional or therapist, because in most cases these people, although highly knowledgeable and highly experienced, are quite unaware of the failure rates of the treatments they use. For example, CBT is often described as the “gold standard” for treatment of anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. And yet objective assessment of studies show that it has the same failure rate as placebo!

You may be getting angrier as you read this, and that’s your right, but anger is only useful if it leads to action, and in this case is only useful if it leads you to do something about your chronic pain that gives you the reduction or elimination of the pain that you so wish for. So use your anger to galavanise you into learning a simple self-treatment process that has a very high rate of success, and tell everyone about it, including your doctors, so that we can get it to more of the people who need it the most.

A NEW WAY TO DEAL WITH CHRONIC PAIN

So your pain specialists don’t know that their methods have a high failure rate. Something most of them do know but try to resist, is that you are not deliberately causing your chronic pain. That it might be in your brain, but that it’s certainly not under your control! For your doctor to say that you should use willpower to change yourself or to control the pain is incredibly silly, and also brutally nasty.

Other facts that your health professionals will freely admit to, but almost never include in their therapy, involve lifestyle factors that contribute to pain.

The big reason why most pain specialists “bomb out” with their treatment is that chronic pain is almost never just about the muscles, or the nerves, or the joints, for example. And it’s nothing like acute pain. Brain scans demonstrate that chronic pain behaves very much like emotional pain, and isn’t necessarily related to injury.

Once we understand this, we see immediately that a huge number of things can cause or increase chronic pain. Even things that you’re not consciously aware of, and you can read more about this shortly.

This is why any chronic pain treatment must support the whole person, not just the “lump of meat” that feels the pain!

A new understanding of chronic pain, proven by brain mapping and clinical research, has shown the way to treatment that works.

HOW CHRONIC PAIN OCCURS

Chronic pain is very different from acute pain. Acute pain is what we feel immediately we are damaged, or experience an injury of some kind. Acute pain is directly related to the wound or damage. Chronic pain usually arises at or near the acute phase (although it may surface years later) and isn’t related to the injury, because it persists even though healing is complete. Chronic pain often makes no sense at all, and this just adds to the suffering of the patient, especially if they’re being hounded or harrassed over a workers’ compensation action!

So chronic pain, unlike acute pain, doesn’t have a direct correlation with the level of injury. Spine studies are notorious for helping us understand this important fact. For years now we’ve known that people with no spinal damage can have strong back pain, and people with massive spinal deterioration or damage can have no pain or disability at all! So no-one can guess just by looking!

Chronic pain isn’t caused by actual physical damage - it is caused by the nervous system. To put this very simply, the nervous system becomes over sensitised much like a car alarm that goes off just because of a little breeze.

Except that your nervous system is much smarter (because it can and does learn) and more complex than a car alarm. It can go off because you have stress, or because it’s a cool day, or because you’re wearing prickly fabric, or because you sat down, or because ……. it goes on and on.

We use the term “pain pattern” to describe what is actually happening when your nervous system creates chronic pain, and we do that because it’s a reliable action. You feel a certain way, or a certain event occurs, and “bang”, here comes that pain again, or here comes that flaring again. The right name though isn’t “pain pattern” - it’s “conditioned response”!

Most people with chronic pain have a complex range of conditioned responses that need to be identified and desensitised. This means really learning to notice your environment and body feelings, and you’ll be surprised how easy and even fun that can be!

HOW CHRONIC PAIN CAN BE KNOCKED OUT FOREVER

Like other health practitioners, we’d been told that it was difficult or impossible to knock out these types of conditioned responses. A lot of people still believe this, despite the massive amount of solid evidence to the contrary! In fact conditioned responses are a breeze to work with, once we understand how!

It turns out that conditioned responses can only survive if they get to replay themselves without interruption or distraction. If we “trigger” a conditioned response at the exact same time that we “trigger” other responses, we easily interrupt the pain pattern and it quickly weakens and disappears, without any effort on your part.

This doesn’t mean triggering the pain, of course! We’re not interested in anything that does that! What it does mean is getting hold of thoughts and feelings relating to the pain, and focusing very precisely on those at exactly the same time as you might be tapping on your head, or singing a song, or smelling different smells. The trick is to use simple, easy multi-sensory stimulation over the top of your thoughts relating to the pain. You can learn to do this very easily for yourself, and we call the program BMSA, or Brief, Multi-Sensory Activation.

WHAT CHRONIC PAIN PATIENTS SHOULD EXPECT FROM THEIR PROGRAM

The BMSA Chronic Pain Program has a success rate which is very high, around 80-90% of people. You won’t need to wait months to know whether it will work for you, because over 50% of people notice improvement immediately. Another 30-40% of people can take a few days to notice a result.

Overall, around 50% of people are able to totally eliminate their chronic pain. A further 25% of people reduce their pain by at least 50%, allowing them to cut back their medication and at the same time freeing them to be more active. A small number of people (perhaps 2%) get no result whatsoever and to date we’ve been able to explain that this is due to surgical considerations (eg hip replacement required).

And unlike what you may have heard from other clinicians, we’ve never blamed a patient for their pain!

For some people the program seems like a miracle, but we’d urge you to complete the whole program anyway. It’s very important to track progress over time and analyse those records. The usual experience is that the patient does still get some pain, and they do still get some flaring, and both can vary in intensity and duration. But the clear trend will be that your chart shows a decrease in pain, a decrease in flaring, a decrease in intensity, decrease in medication, and increase in activity which you can do with ease.

The end result that you want is surely complete elimination of the pain, or a very big decrease in the pain, so that you can get your life back, and leave those days of suffering way behind!

Recent research has generated new conceptions of learning in five distinct areas. New information about human learning has being investigated by psychologists and views of how effective learning proceeds have shifted to focus on students’ understanding and application of knowledge and away from the benefits of diligent drill and practice. Accelerated Learning has adopted these practices to change the way in which learning occurs for the better.

The five areas of Accelerated Learning involve Memory Processes and the structure of knowledge, early learning foundations structure of knowledge and memory, analysis and problem solving, self regulatory and metacognitive processes and community participation and cultural experiences in early learning and each can play and important role the whole learning experience and its successful outcome.

Memory Processes and the Structure of knowledge. Accelerated Learning requires an understanding of the nature of organized knowledge and Knowing how learners develop coherent structures of information has been particularly useful in understanding effective thinking and creativity.. Memory has come to be understood as more than simple associations; encompassing many different aspects including, episodic memory and procedural memory. As well as understanding the function of short term memory,

Analysis of problem solving and reasoning. Accelerated Learning theory can now account for how learners acquire skills to search a problem space and then use these general strategies in many problem-solving situations. One of the most important influences on contemporary learning theory has been the basic research on expert learners. There is a clear distinction between learned problem-solving skills in novice learners and the specialized expertise of individuals who have proficiency in particular subjects.

Early foundation. Scientific studies of infants and young children have revealed the relationships between children’s learning predispositions and their emergent abilities to discover strategies for problem solving, organize and coordinate information, make inferences about the learning environment and bring these to new learning situations.

As a result, teachers and the education establishment are rethinking the role of the skills and abilities children bring with them to school. To make the most of Accelerated Learning educators need to address the different skill levels children bring with them, one size does not fit all. The development of creative methodologies for assessing infants’ responses in a controlled research setting has done much to shed light of these early learning experiences.

Self-regulation and Metacognitive processes. Accelerated Learning also requires individuals be taught to regulate their behaviors. Self motivation and self regulation are important skills that need to be brought to any learning environment. These regulatory activities enable control of one’s performance via self-monitoring. The activities include such strategies as planning and time management, predicting outcomes for the learning task, noting failures in understanding or comprehension, and using existing knowledge to enhance the learning procedure.

Cultural experience and community participation. Participation in social practice is a fundamental form of learning. Accelerated Learning involves becoming attuned to the limits and possibilities and the constraints and resources that are involved in the practices of the community and the learning environment. Learning is promoted if the social norms value the search for understanding.

Early learning is assisted by the supportive context of the family and the social environment, through the kinds of activities in which adults engage with children. These activities have the effect of providing to toddlers the structure and interpretation of the culture’s norms and rules, and these processes occur long before children enter school.

There is nothing better for self-esteem than building self-esteem. As strange as that sounds, it is that simple.

Much of the population feels left out, as if on the sidelines. They feel that only people who had it from the start still have self-esteem, or perhaps they were well-liked as kids and and it stuck with them into adulthood. They always succeeding at at anything because they were “so loved”. The fact is, “it just ain’t so”.

Usually, it is the opposite of what we think the dynamics are of self-esteem. The gorgeous blonde in elementary school with the long pony tail, who maybe relied totally on looks for self-esteem grows up, has a few kids, gains weight, hair falls out and the rest turns gray from dealing with the hyper children and maybe a workaholic husband and she sits at home now and watches soap operas and drinks a bit too much, remembering the good old days when life was simpler.

Much is expected of children of successful and/or famous parents. One thinks this may give them a “free ride” onto the high self-esteem track when it usually does just the opposite. In fact, many rebel and get into destructive habits to find their own voice, and never grow out of it. No self-esteem found here

I will go back to basics. Self-esteem can do wonders for your self-esteem. That might not make sense if you feel your self-esteem has diminished for whatever reason. My point is, it can be learned for the first time, or re-learned in a whole new fashion.

Maybe you were the star athelete and wore the right clothes, made applauded every time you through a touchdown pass. You kept your grades up and you got consistent positive feedback. This helped your esteem. That is often how we get it early in life. But it is no longer that way in adulthood. Later in life, you landed a high paying marketing job and you hate it. The pay all goes to an ungrateful wife who spends it on fashions and takes vacations with her group of friends. And took your self-esteem with them, while you stayed home and drank beer and watched the game on television.

The simple fact is, that in adulthood, we have to create our own self-esteem. We do not necessarily receive all the unconditional love, attention, and acknowledgment of our deeds we did when we were younger. We can’t do it in a day, and there is no one path in which to build it.

Even on a depressing day, drive yourself to a soup kitchen and volunteer. Visit a shut-in; run an errand for someone wheelchair-bound. Tutor a childwith his/her homework. Do something positive to get outside of yourself. You will not get back your self-esteem most likely in one day. But if you find yourself making it a habit of helping others, you will slowly find your self-esteem rising. It is a natural consequence of helping others and getting outside oneself. Maybe it’s physics. The universe works in this fashion. We can fight it or join it.

The battle with low-self esteem can last a lifetime. Some never win. If one tries just a little, they usually do win. One day, not long ago, I looked up and I was turning fifty and had a major heart attack so I was becominging more aware of my mortality. Me? A major coronary? That was what other people had, not me. My ego loves me to think I’m so unique. So I took a week and analyzed my life. I took, (as Richard Dreyfus’ book in ‘What About Bob?’, baby steps. I studied. I researched. I learned. I even went back to college online. I volunteer to help the elderly and shut-ins learn the Internet and a few have even enrolled in universities in their 60’s and 70’s.

It is an interesting experience, to experience higher self-esteem, especially when one never had it. I fall into that category. I take it slow and easy. I enjoy the learning process. It has nothing to do with money or fame. It has to do with knowing me, and, finally, learning to like me, and maybe even love me, so I can love others.

Many people have had it much rougher than me. I have endured much in my life including homelessness, and I am certain there are many others who have even meaner stories, so if I can do it, anyone can. I just take a little time out of each day and do something positive, or create something, work on one of my projects, write a story like this one, to build my self-esteem. I may miss the mark some of the time, but I try to learn to do it right the next time, and still, I take time for myself to do just a little something positive for me or someone else, or both, for no pay, even if they insist.

In ten years of doing this, I feel I’ve made me a better person, and given that, made the world a little better place.

Londons Times Cartoons was my first stab at building self-esteem. It helps other people people laugh, hence help build their own self-esteem which is contagious. I get emails often and that helps my own self-esteem. In addition to my main cartoo site I own stores like LTSuperstore, RickLondonCollection, Justfunnygreetingcards,Justfunnycoffeemugs, Justfunnyaprons, Mirthgirthbirth, RickLondonwear, Justfunnymousepads, Justfunnyhoodies, etc. Business is brisk. People love to laugh and build their self-esteems, or give gifts to others to help build theirs. I am a very grateful person and a lucky one too.

When we are around humor or feel humorous, we don’t take life so seriously. If you do not feel you are a funny person, that is okay. Simply expose yourself to humor, on a daily basis. As time goes by, changes eventually happen, for the positive. They did for me, and I was definitely not a funny person.

But don’t do it all at once. Remember, baby steps, a little bit each day, and in a year, you’ll look back wondering who that sad person was (that was once you).

A female friend sent me a private message not long ago and asked me my secret to happiness. There was a long pause. She typed the sound (in text) of the “Jeopardy” theme song in between final jeopardy as if I were running out of time for the answer.

Growing up, I really never remember people seeking me out for my grand sense of humor or light-heartedness. I was a mixed up kid like so many children of the ’60’s and carried a good bit of that rebellious baggage with me into adulthood. Maybe therapy was a good thing. I learned my boundaries and limitations. I could not change the world. I could barely change me. Learning those limitations makes life simpler. And the simpler I am, the happier. Controvery used to appeal to me. It does no longer.

Psychologists tell us we are not all, but part of a product of our environments. I did not grow up in a happy environment. Nor did a lot of others. I don’t even use the word dysfunctional anymore, since it is such a common phrase and it seems everyone “had it at one time or another”. But those days are way in my past and I have had many happy and joyful experiences since that time. Many were small and many monumental. They each added up to my happiness, I suppose.

Of course what is happiness to me might not be happiness to Vladimir Putin or Bill Gates or Woodie Allen or Sally Field. I just drew names out of a hat. My happiness depends on all sorts of factors, and if they are not all like ducks in a row, it does not mean I am sad. If one option of my being happier is not available, I will try another, until I feel better that moment than I did the moment before. It is all a series of actions that seems to make me happier, from walking in nature, to being kind to children and animals and the elderly, to studying and learning something new to holding hands with my girlfriend.

To go back some centuries before that, even Shakespeare said, “To thine own self be true”.

With this in mind, let’s count how many ways we compromise our happiness, or make certain it does not happen. We take jobs which are terrible but pay well. We do not like our co-workers and they do not like us. We do not like our boss and he does not like us either. We get married and have kids out of peer pressure. All our friends and associates did it, but we were not ready, or the opposite. We decided not to get married as we grew up in an unhappy home, and we would “show our parents with sweet revenge” (That was my modus operandi for many years). Suddenly it occurred to me they didn’t care what I did as long as I was in the pursuit of happiness. Besides, they were deceased. Or we spend too much on credit to impress someone or a lot of people and then feel the pressure as the bills come.

We learn some mighty lessons from these “failures of adulthood” and I do not say that judgementally. I am no different than anyone else in this arena. I have changed careers many times (put on new masks) until I found the one that fit me. It worked and I am much happier. I didn’t say happy. I dont know if I am or not. But I am usually optomistic.

I try to think of the great DeNiro line (to his psychiatrist Billy Crystal) in the movie “Analyze That”. “It’s a process, doc”. Of course out of context it is not funny, but in the movie it’s a scream. And life and happiness, getting more of both, is, indeed a process, and can be a painful one at that. But the risks are worth the rewards.

When I simplify my life and make myself healthier, I make myself available to more emotionally available people. That part is my responsibility. I cannot ask the universe to do it for me. It won’t. I have to do the legwork. It is fine to pray if you are a believer (and I am), but whether you are or not )a believer), the legwork still has to be done.

Don’t quit your day job, but learn new subjects. Start a hobby. It might turn into a business one day. You never know. That is what happened to me. I started creating cartoons as a hobby, never thinking in a million years it would be more than a hobby. Ten years later it is the largest offbeat cartoon website on the Internet, Londons Times Cartoons with ten niche and superstore gift shops, and over 100,000 funny gifts and collectibles bearing our cartoon images. It was only because I was true to myself. I no longer have or want my day job, thank you very much.

Working in the field of humor, comedy, or cartooning is not the answer necessarily. It may be if that is what you desire. Whatever field you choose, expose yourself to it. It has been proven that it becomes a part of us. Before you know it, if you’ve watched enough comedy films, seen enough funny Internet or newspaper cartoons, read enough jokes, etc., you find your mind thinking in funnier ways. It really has that effect.

Mom discovered she had leukemia in 1995. I began researching and found a book by retired surgeon Dr. Bernie Siegel who wrote a best-seller in the 1980’s, Love, Laughter, And Healing. He had incurable brain cancer and exposed himself to many comedy movies, videos, cartoons, books, etc. He didn’t know if it would help heal him, but he knew he would at least get to laugh in his final days. Within a few years, the cancer was in remission and he still is alive and writing two decades later. I have talked to him several times on the phone, when mom was sick, and he gave me some direction as to what life is about. I truly believe the humor had much to do with her attitude and longetivity. (she outlived a few of her doctors).

Aside from a Gary Larson Far Side exhibit about a decade earlier, that may have had the most impact on my launching of my cartoon site, which lures 4000 vistitors per hour and my webstores which do a brisk business. My friends tell me they visit them often and it helps them in their daily lives. Whether this is true or not, I like to think it is, and it helps me in developing my own feelings of joy.

So please, give the gift of laughter today, whether its a joke, a book, a cartoon gift, or comedy video. Pass It Forward, as they say.