Emotions are tricky. We have them all the time, a wide variety, often shifting quickly, other times settled and static. Our daily existence gives rise to everything from love to anger to fear to graciousness to relief to …, well, a long list. At any moment if you simply look inside you can identify at least one and perhaps several emotions within. These emotions are quite useful, or at least were in our developmental past. However, they all can get in the way some of the time.

This week I would like to discuss two emotions in particular that get in the way for the vast majority of people far more often than they should. They are the emotions we attach to possession: envy and jealousy.

Quite simply, envy is wanting something we don’t have. It can be an object, a concept, a social or political status, a relationship, wealth; anything really. If you observe someone having something that you don’t have, and you find yourself longing for it, you are experiencing envy.

Jealousy is the thought of losing something you value to someone else. It is most commonly associated with relationships, especially around sexual fidelity, but it just as readily applies to physical objects, a concept, status, a relationship, wealth; the same list as above.

Both of these emotions evolved for good reason. In a hunter-gatherer environment, acquiring resources and holding them from others leads to a stronger long-term likelihood of survival. These emotions drive us to build our resource inventory. The downside, however, is that these emotions lead us to take that which is not ours or horde that which we have enough of. At some point, we have enough resources for our purposes, and our energy is better spent doing something with those resources rather than trying to gather more or protect what we have.

Within relationships, especially, these emotions run rampant. I know a lot of people who wish they had the perfect mate and continually feel envy of the relationships they see of others. Jealousy is even more noticable: a married man or woman talking to or befriending a member of the opposite sex is quickly seen as cause for alarm. Whatever the cause, envy and jealousy quickly spiral into very strong motivating forces, leading people to make harmful and dangerous choices.

But what is it that makes these so acceptable? Why do we encourage these emotions as a society? Why do we reinforce or cater to them within ourselves?

I believe these emotions are useful only in the first few seconds they are felt. Every emotion is valid when it is first experienced, there is no such thing as an inappropriate emotion. There is such a thing as losing emotional control. And these emotions, envy and jealousy, are very easy to get trapped in.

What is something you’ve felt envious of recently? That first sensation of envy is a great thing: it is a message from your subconscious that there is something missing in your life (though it might not be the thing you were envious of). Envy can, if you let it, help you understand your wants and needs more clearly. It can assist you in prioritizing your efforts and decisions. Feel it, receive the message it brings. And then release it.

Feel jealous? About what? Again, that first sensation from your subconscious tells you that you need to redirect your attention for the moment. It can help you understand what is important to you, what you fear losing, what you value enough to protect. Feel it, receive the message it brings. And then release it.

When you feel envy or jealousy, you have an opportunity to dig under the surface and gain great insight into you, into the world. By paying attention to the source of these feelings, you take on the role of conscious observer, where you can find deeper meaning and truth in your life. Each of these will tell you what your fears are, what your values are.

What is it you want from someone else? The car they drive? This is only the start. Ask yourself, ‘What do I really want?’ and ‘If I had this, what would that give me?’. You will often find that it isn’t the car that you want, but rather the way people look at you when you drive it. What else can you do to get that response? Better yet, why do you feel the need to be looked at in the first place? These questions are far more valuable than having the car will ever be.

What are you afraid of losing to someone else? The love of another? But love must be given freely, not expected or demanded. Jealousy in a relationship is often a signal to you that you don’t trust the other person. So the real question, then, becomes ‘Why is it that I don’t trust this person?’ Meditate on that for a while and you’ll learn far more than you will from calling them every couple hours to check up on them.

So long as you utilize these emotions, observe them, hear the messages they carry, they are valueable. When you dwell in them, feed them, or otherwise strengthen them, you take away their usefulness and live from reaction, from unconscious response. They transition from being useful to being useless, and quickly they become destructive to you and the people around you.

Use them to your advantage, then let go of them.

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From the editor

It’s been a while since I’ve asked anyone to tell me what they would like to read about, and it’s been a while since I’ve heard any new suggestions.

Please use the feedback form on the website and tell me what you’d be interested in hearing more of. Do you appreciate issues focused on food, diet, and exercise? Do you prefer messages of a more spiritual nature? Which articles mean the most to you?

I look forward to hearing from every one of you!

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

Recently, I went for a hike in the Chugach Range just outside of Anchorage, Alaska. As I was heading up the hill, it started to rain.

I was very aware of a shift in my attitude from the past, as I stood there and enjoyed the rain on my body rather than ducking for shelter or trying to re-arrange my clothing to keep the water off. My clothes got wet, my skin got cold, and I loved the sensation as the weather gyrated through a myriad of conditions before settling again on overcast.

Martial artists teach a concept referred to as ‘mind like water’. When you throw a stone into a pond, how does the pond respond? Totally appropriately to the stone: it reshapes and adapts in the moment, it dissipates the force, then it quickly returns to calm. The pond is not anticipating the stone, nor does it ignore it; instead, it responds to the stone exactly when needed and only as much as is necessary.

Like the pond, I chose to respond only as much as was necessary. I knew the rain would not hurt me and that keeping dry was not necessary to my survival. I had long ago decided that being dry was not the key to happiness, that getting wet was a good thing. I could have run for the nearest bushes, but why bother? The rain was enjoyable. Instead of reacting to my environment, I responded to it. My response was to enjoy the change, to allow the new sensations and experience them and relish in them. Instead of worrying about what wasn’t ‘right’ in the moment, I defined ‘right’ to be the moment in whatever form it took.

In what ways is your mind not ‘like water’? What stresses you? Where do you overreact to the changes going on around you? When do you miss an opportunity to be present in the moment because you have a different expectation about how the moment should be?

The value of expectation is that you apply yourself towards creating an experience that is important based on your goals. This is one of many pieces that allow you to accomplish and produce in life. This is a good thing. Sometimes.

Most of the time it is better to let go of expectation and just be.

When I was a child, my grandmother had a plaque on the wall that said “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This quote from Reinhold Niebuhr is just another way of reminding us to be present to the world and to life, to not worry so much about the little things, to enjoy the moment as it presents itself.

Stop anticipating. Let go of your anxiety when things aren’t the way you want them to be. Be the pond, live with a mind like water.

Other news

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• Another ‘blame biology’ article: Pulling back the curtain on stage fright [www.msnbc.msn.com]
• Next thing you know, pets will start planning early demises for their owners: Wealthy folks are turning pets into hairy heirs [www.msnbc.msn.com]

From the editor

I missed another summer in Seattle this year. The weather was warm the day I arrived, but it’s been cold, grey, and overcast most of the time since that day. Today it is raining, with the sharpness to the air that usually means wind and heavy rains are just a few weeks away.

We had a joke in Anchorage when I was growing up, “Summer was great this year: it happened on a weekend!” Well, with all my traveling, I haven’t seen a Pacific Northwest summer in 3 years now. Even though they are longer than a few days, I’ve just been gone too much to experience the best part of the year.

I’ll miss this place. I’ll make a point of visiting when the weather is good next time.

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

How many times recently have you beat yourself up over things you’ve done wrong? Face it, we all are very good at criticizing ourselves over the mistakes we make, the things we forget to do, and any number of other faults we perceive in ourselves.

How often do you celebrate the things you do right? Ever?

A funny thing about the mind is that it believes what it hears often. When we pick on ourselves constantly, we eventually convince ourselves that we are not worthy, that we don’t deserve it (whatever ‘it’ happens to mean), that the world really is against us, that (insert your self-doubt story here).

But this is by choice. You can choose the script you use just as easily as you can choose the clothes you put on in the morning. We’ve spoken about this before.

An important step that we haven’t talked about before is celebrating the successes in life. To counteract the times you punish yourself for doing something wrong, it’s important to congratulate yourself for all the things you do right. Pat yourself on the back. Throw yourself a party. Take yourself out to dinner. Buy yourself a gift. Give yourself an afternoon off.

Did you get up on time every day this week? Celebrate! Did you grill the steak ‘just right’? Celebrate! Did you knock out three things on your to-do list for the day? Celebrate!

Every time you congratulate yourself, you build esteem and self-confidence. With greater confidence comes higher productivity, greater mental clarity and focus. With these traits you get more done right, and you have more reasons to congratulate yourself. It’s a fantastic positive-feedback loop for the soul.

Have you ever noticed how much top-level athletes celebrate? While their egos may be over-the-top, a big part of why they are so successful at their sport is that their internal dialog is self-supporting. You can even see it during a competition: the ones who have positive dialog look powerful and play well, and the ones who fall into a self-critical loop look defeated long before the game is over. A quick celebration in the middle of a performance boosts the mind and increases the likelihood of a great outcome.

Congratulations don’t have to be extravagant, they just have to be meaningful. Do something you like for a few minutes, without guilt. Reward yourself for every little thing you do right or well, and you’ll find you get more right and complete more well. Practice celebrating anything you can think of, and you’ll build a habit that will repay you thousands of times over.

Cheers for being you! Hip, hip, HOORAY!

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• Whew! I don’t have to be worried anymore: U.S. free of canine rabies virus, CDC says [www.msnbc.msn.com]

From the editor

I’m trying to get everything packed up for my next move. My wife and I are traveling to Korea to be English teachers for a year. I’ll be leaving in a little over a week.

So once again I am putting everything in storage, dropping in on all my friends for quick social calls to catch up on life, and otherwise scrambling to get all my business in order so that I can get on a plane for another continent.

As always, I’ll continue to publish issues wherever I am. I’ll be in the center of some very ancient teachings and traditions, so topics in the coming months will probably be influenced by my new learnings. I look forward to whatever the move may bring!

If you’ve ever been there and can recommend sights to see or things to do, I welcome your suggestions.

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff

If you’ve ever been hiking in the woods, the outback, the jungle, or anywhere else away from the city or suburbs where you live, you are certainly aware of the importance of carrying your own water. If you can’t carry enough water, you are probably familiar with ways to purify the water you come across. The two most common methods are to use a filter to remove impurities or to use tablets (such as iodine) that kill anything living in the water you collect. They each are good enough to be common; however, they also both have drawbacks that make them less-than-ideal for many circumstances.

Filters have several problems, the biggest of which are that they don’t necessarily filter everything and they are hard to clean and maintain. A filter works by simply having tiny passages that water can pass through, but everything over a certain size will get stuck and not make it through the filter. The smaller the holes are, the more effectively the filter works. On the other hand, small holes clog quickly with everything they are filtering, especially very fine sand and dirt particles. Filters that are selective enough to block most of the tiny viruses and bacteria that a hiker should be wary of clog regularly and require a lot of effort to keep clean. Additionally, every time you want water, you have to perform a bit of manual labor to pump that water through the filter. It’s a lot of work to use, a lot of work to clean, and large to carry.

Tablets are also popular for exactly the reasons filters are not. They are small and lightweight, and all you do is drop a tablet in your bottle and let it sit a while. The problem here, though, is that it takes a while to be effective. The tablet will kill anything living in the water (and many viruses, too), but you may have to wait 30 minutes from when you get to a water source until you can drink the water you collected. If that weren’t enough, it also drastically affects the taste of the water you’re drinking (have you ever tasted iodine?). Still, for many they are preferable to carrying and using a filter.

A relatively new method, however, is to use concentrated oxygen in an electrolyte form, called aerobic oxygen. Like tablets, it’s lightweight and small (I carry a two-ounce bottle that’s about the size of a film canister) and is effortless to use. Like the filter, it works instantly and leaves the water tasting fresh. You fill your water bottle, put in about 10-15 drops of the aerobic oxygen solution, shake it once, and drink. One small bottle will last weeks in the wild.

Aerobic oxygen changes the chemistry of the water so that organisms are unable to live in it. It has no taste, no odor, and no color. It is harmless to your system, and in fact some believe it might help boost your digestive system’s ‘good bacteria’ count. It works instantly when you add it to a bottle of water. As a side effect, it seems to boost the overall oxygen content of your blood, so you have more energy too (in fact, it’s often sold as a supplement for athletes for this very reason).

It can be hard to find aerobic oxygen: it’s not carried in most shops, and I’ve only found a few online sources for it. Once you find a source, though, it’s relatively inexpensive. For the effectiveness and convenience, it can’t be beat.

If you’re going out for a day hike or an extended camping trip, I highly recommend you use aerobic oxygen for your water purification needs. Once you try it, I doubt you’ll ever go back.

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• Sounds like we’ll all explode like in the game ‘Lemmings’: World facing ‘arsenic timebomb’ [news.bbc.co.uk]
• One more unnecessarily quoted headline phrase, just to make it three: Lung disease rates ‘on the rise’ [news.bbc.co.uk]

From the editor

I’m sure at least one of you has wondered how I got giardiasis if I was using aerobic oxygen and it’s such a great product. Well, I’ll tell you.

The very last night I was out, I came across a water source and didn’t have my water bottle with me. I’d been jogging for an hour and didn’t know how much longer it would be until I had access to water again. I drank about a cup of water using my hands from a stream that was probably contaminated with all sorts of things (I could taste traces of animal runoff, and there were horse and cattle grounds all around the stream I was using). The odds of the water being clean were close to zero.

So why did I drink it? Well, like I said, I didn’t know how long it would be before I had access to water again, and I’d been exerting myself heavily leading up to the stream. As an additional factor, I had misunderstood one aspect of the use of aerobic oxygen and thought I could make up for the missed dose at a later time that day. I knew the water was contaminated, but I thought I could counter the effects in a couple hours. Boy was I wrong.

Given the same circumstance again, I would probably have consumed water anyway. I was surprised to get giardiasis, but my need to hydrate was high enough that the right decision was to drink.

Next time I’ll just make sure I have my bottle with me at all times.

Happy Labor Day!

Healthy thoughts,
Jeff