Quote of the Month: "The stars would love to influence your future but they are powerless against your well-established patterns of behavior." -Horoscope in The Onion

Funny Podcast of the Month: Ask a Ninja (askaninja.com or through iTunes). Two guys with a video camera and an Apple computer decide to create a video podcast in their NYC apartment. Looking for a hook, they get a ninja costume and the rest is history. I laugh and am amazed at every episode. Ninjas rule! (I am ninja, he is ninja, she is ninja too . . . I hear that theme song quite regularly in my head now ater watching a bunch of episodes in a row).

Cool Research of the Month: Shifting perceptions as weight-loss and fitness strategy

Alia Crum and Ellen Langer from the Harvard Psychology department did an experiment in which they matched two groups of hotel room cleaners (84 subjects spread across seven hotels). These housekeepers get many hours of exercise per day (cleaning on average 15 rooms per day, each taking 20-30 minutes to clean; they are pressured to finish the cleaning task quickly), but do not typically think of themselves as doing exercise. The experimenters told the cleaners from four hotels that they were getting the amount of exercise the surgeon general recommends to maintain a healthy lifestyle and the ones from the other hotels were not told anything. When the researchers returned to measure the results a mere four weeks later, they found that the women who had been told they were exercising enough had lost an average of two pounds, that their blood pressure was almost 10% lower as a group and that they were significantly healthier in measures of body fat percentage, body mass index, and waist-to-hip ratio. No such changes were noted in the control group. It's not clear whether the housekeepers who were told they were exercising enough instituted other changes that facilitated the healthier outcomes or those results were mainly due to a shift in perception. In any case, that is an amazing result for such a short follow-up.

Source: Crum, A. & Langer, E. (2007) "Mindset Matters: Exercise as a Placebo," Psychological Science, 18, 2.

As usual, you have my permission to copy this handout and distribute it. If you want to  use it in commercial activities (i.e., anything from which you make money), contact me for special permission.

Bill O'Hanlon, M.S., Possibilities, 223 N. Guadalupe #278, Santa Fe, NM 87501
PossiBill@aol.com, www.billohanlon.com

This era has been called "The Age of Attention," since so many things are vying for our attention (television, radio, the Internet, video games, movies, family, work, etc.). Your attention can be a powerful force and it behooves you to manage it wisely. Where you put your attention often expands that area in your awareness and in your life.

Many years ago, there was a rumor going around in a certain Western state that there was some pollutant in the air that was causing pockmarks on car windhsields. A panic set in and investigations were begun. The investigators measured pckmarks on windhields in the state in which the rumors were rampant and in a state with a similar climate and level of pollution in which there was no concern. They found the exact same number of packmarks per square inch in both states. The difference was that once people heard the rumor, they noticed the pockmarks for the first time or they noticed them much more. This same phenomenon can be used in a positive way in your life.

Find a focus
Decide an area of your life you would like to have expand. It might be more exercise, better eating, more time with your family, more leisure time, more creative work, more reading, being more responsible about spending money or something else entirely.

Record activity or attention to that area
Get a little notebook and carry it around with you for a week or two. Whenever you get a chance, as soon as possible after you notice it, write down anything you have done related to that area. If you have to wait until evening to jot it down, do that. At the end of the week, notice whether this area has expanded in your life.

Add a small amount each day to this area
Commit to spending as little as five minutes each day doing something related to this area. Commit to doing this for small time periods, such as a week or two. You can always continue it if it is working, but commiting to too long a time period may be a set up for failure.

In spare moments, think about this area
While waiting for an appointment, while riding the bus or subway to work, while waiting for the bath to fill, while waiting for the kids to get bundled up and into the car, use these moments to focus briefly on what you would like to do or have done in this area.

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