Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness: Love

Showing posts with label Love. Show all posts

November 26, 2015

Ringo Starr Reflects On His 35 Year Marriage - Updated

Legendary musician Ringo Starr is “beyond blessed” to still be married to wife of nearly 35 years Barbara Bach.

The former Beatles drummer met the one-time Bond girl on the set of the film Caveman in 1980 and married a year later. And after more than three decades together, their bond is stronger than ever.

“There’s no escape … I think I love Barbara as much (today) as I did (when we met),” he gushed to People magazine. “And I’m beyond blessed that she loves me and we’re still together.”

Ringo, 75, performed on the classic Beatles track All You Need is Love, and for Barbara there couldn’t be a truer sentiment.

“I love the man, and that’s it,” the 68-year-old added.

The pair has accumulated a lot of belongings together and, having now settled in Los Angeles, they have decided to sell off a lot of their precious memorabilia to raise money for charity.

“It’s time to let go,” Ringo explained.

Some of the items on sale include a guitar given to Ringo by band mate John Lennon, and an outfit Barbara wore in The Spy Who Loved Me opposite Roger Moore.

However, one of the biggest sellers is sure to be the first ever copy of the band’s 1968 album, The Beatles – more commonly known as the White Album due to its minimalist packaging.

It sold for $1,076,288!

Each unit of the record came with its own serial number stamped on the cover and Ringo is the owner of White Album No 0000001. Bidding on the record starts at $20,000 (£13,276), but it is estimated to fetch up to $60,000 (£39,670).

The items will be up for auction between 3-5 December (15) at Julien’s Auctions in Beverly Hills, with the proceeds of the sales benefitting Barbara’s charity, the Lotus Foundation.

With many thanks to Noise 11

Picture credit for Barbara Bach: Smooth Radio

Posts on James Bond Movies:
Burt Bacharach Brings Back The Hits: From Marlene Dietrich to Glastonbury

The Latest James Bond Movie - SPECTRE And How The End Of The Cold War Changed Spy Fiction - Updated

23 James Bond Themes And How They Charted

Why The FBI’s J Edgar Hoover Snubbed James Bond

James Bond: Around The World With 007

Some Movie Cars:Aston Martin DB5; Falcon XB GT; Cooper S; Moke; Ford Ute

Other posts on The Beatles:

Freda Kelly Recalls Her Days of Working With the Beatles - "Good Ol' Freda"
George Harrison - My Favourite Beatle - "My Sweet Lord" Live
New Beatles Band May Form With Sons
George Harrison and Ringo Starr - It Don't come Easy
For sale: Beatles recording that led to the biggest mistake in music history
Ravi Shankar and George Harrison - Two Music Legends
Was John Lennon Really a Genius?
Ringo Starr: Solo Beatle's lonely art club brand
Becoming The Beatles
Sir Paul McCartney Gaining Back Rights To His Music in 2018, 2019?
John Lennon Reveals Torture of Beatles 'Let It Be' Album In Tape-recorded Interview Now Up For Auction
The Beatles Visit To Australia 1964 - Powerhouse Museum Exhibition
John Lennon's Childhood Home To Be Auctioned - Update: Sold for £480,000
Tom Pinch: Time - Lapse Portraits of Paul McCartney and John Lennon
Beatles’ Royal Variety Performance: Fifty Years ago!
John Lennon Set To Stir Up US Stamp Collectors
8th August 1969: The Beatles Waiting To Cross Abbey Road
‘Man on the Run’: New Book About Paul McCartney After The Beatles
Arthur Alexander: The Forgotten Songwriter Who Inspired The Beatles, Bob Dylan And The Rolling Stones
George Harrison's Apple Years Box Set To Be Released
The Art of McCartney Project
Glyn Johns: Defining That Classic-Rock Sound
Fender Stratocaster: A Design Icon At 60
The Traveling Wilburys: Their History
George Harrison and The Bee Gees To Receive Recording Academy Honors
Sir Paul McCartney To Induct Ringo Starr Into Hall Of Fame
'American Pie' Lyrics Sell For $1.2 million In New York
Lost Beatles US Concert Movie Blocked From Release

Beatles’ First Recording Contract to Be Auctioned For An Estimated $150,000
The Three Lennon-McCartney Hits That Went to No. 1 Without Lennon or McCartney
Cilla Black's Biography On TV
Bob Dylan Named Greatest Songwriter Ahead Of Lennon and McCartney According To Rolling Stone
John Lennon Born 75 Years Ago Today
George Harrison's Catalogue Is Now Streaming
George Harrison: Tribute GeorgeFest Is Coming
John Lennon's Long-Lost Gibson J-160E Guitar Sells for Record $2.4 Million

John Lennon's Rock 'n' Roll Album - Update: Vale Sir George Martin

The Beatles Anthology: Streaming Now.
George Harrison Makes Guest Appearance On Eric Clapton's New Album

Unseen Beatles Footage Released
George Harrison - This is Love
Celebrating The Beatles' Revolver 50 Years On
The Beatles: Eight Days A Week - The Touring Years
The Beatles 'Love' And Cirque du Soleil
Long Lost Live Beatles Exhumed!
Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles; It was 50 years ago today ...
Celebrating George Harrison

The Beatles 1 To Be Reissued With 50 Videos

October 13, 2015

Orangutan Adopts Tiger Cubs

How cute is this?

With many thanks to Myrtle Beach Safari on You Tube

More on Myrtle Beach Safari here.

December 01, 2014

The Look Of Love: It’s All In The Whites Of Our Eyes

THE eyes are windows to the soul. What could be more obvious? I look through my eyes on to the world, and I look through the eyes of others into their minds.

We immediately see the tenderness and passion in a loving gaze, the fear and malice in a hostile glance. In a lecture room, with hundreds of students, I can pick out exactly who is, and isn’t, paying attention. And, of course, there is the electricity of meeting a stranger’s glance across a crowded room.

But wait a minute; eyes are balls of jelly set in holes at the top of a skull. How could those glistening little marbles possibly tell me about love or fear or attention?

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science suggests that our understanding of eyes emerges very early. Human eyes have much larger white areas than the eyes of other animals and so are easier to track. When most people, including tiny babies, look at a face, they concentrate on the eyes. People with autism often don’t pay attention to eyes in the same way, and have trouble meeting or following another person’s gaze. All this suggests that we may be adapted to figure out what our fellow humans feel from their eyes.

If that’s true, even very young babies may detect emotions from eyes, especially eye whites.

The researchers, Sarah Jessen of the Max Planck Institute and Tobias Grossmann of the University of Virginia, showed seven-month-old babies schematic pictures of eyes.

The eyes could be fearful or neutral; the clue to the emotion was the relative position of the eye whites. (Look in the mirror and raise your eyelids until the white area on top of the iris is visible, then register the look of startled fear on your doppelganger in the reflection.) The fearful eyes could look directly at the baby or look off to one side.

As a comparison, the researchers also gave the babies exactly the same images to look at but with the colours reversed, so that the whites were black. They showed the babies the images for only 50 milliseconds, too briefly even to see them consciously. They used a technique called event-related brain potentials, or ERP, to analyse the babies’ brainwaves.
The babies’ brainwaves were different when they looked at the fearful eyes and the neutral ones, and when they saw the eyes look right at them or off to one side. The differences were particularly clear in the frontal parts of the brain. Those brain areas control attention and are connected to the brain areas that detect fear.

When the researchers showed the babies the reversed images, their brains didn’t differentiate between them. So they weren’t just responding to the visual complexity of the images; they seemed to recognise that there was something special about the eye whites.

So perhaps the eyes are windows to the soul after all. I think that I just look out and directly see the table in front of me. But, in fact, my brain is making incredibly complex calculations that accurately reconstruct the shape of the table from the patterns of light that enter my eyeballs. My baby granddaughter Georgiana’s brain, nestled in the downy head on my lap, does the same thing.

The new research suggests that my brain also makes my eyes move in subtle ways that send out complex signals about what I feel and see. And, as she gazes up at my face, Georgie’s brain interprets those signals and reconstructs the feelings that caused them. She really does see the soul behind my eyes, as clearly as she sees the table in front of them.

By Alison Gopnik

With thanks to The Australian

July 15, 2014

Making Up Is Hard To Do

YOU had an argument with someone you love. Now what?

There is a definite wrong way to make up and go forward after a fight, therapists and psychologists say: Apologize quickly and move on.

Instead, it is crucial when repairing a personal rift to address the underlying issue. Fail to reach a resolution on the argument itself — not just the hurt feelings it caused — and you will end up fighting again in the future about the same thing. Even worse: You’ll likely end up arguing about the argument.

Throughout 28 years of marriage, Kim and Dexter Hardy say they have argued about “everything,” including money, the children and their in-laws. For years, their fights were very emotional and took a long time to get over. Mr Hardy would say things that were sarcastic or hurtful. Ms Hardy would yell or cry and sometimes throw things on the floor (once it was eggs). Then she would leave, slamming the door behind her. Often, the tension lasted for days.

“The biggest thing in making up is to understand that conflict is normal in a relationship,” says Hal Shorey, a clinical psychologist and associate professor for the Institute for Graduate Clinical Psychology at Widener University. Dr Shorey studies personality and works with couples in private practice as well as people in conflict at work. “You don’t want to avoid it. You want to manage it.”

Admittedly, some people are comfortable with tension. They want to talk out problems
Others avoid conflict at all costs. Some want it over immediately and need reassurance that all is fine (even when it’s not). Others refuse to address the situation at all and finish every disagreement with the same response: total silence.

Research shows that these approaches typically break down along gender lines. A 2003 study in the journal Personal Relationships — one of the largest on the topic to date — found that, across 62 cultural regions worldwide, men reported higher levels of attachment avoidance relative to women. There are always exceptions, of course. But, in general, men seek to avoid negative emotions and conflict more than women. Women like to talk through problems Men want to move on.

A note about makeup sex: Men love it. Women? Not so much. Research shows that men are more sexually aroused after a major relationship conflict (and are more likely than women to use sex for stress relief). In contrast, women “find it more difficult to isolate themselves from the relational context while having sex,” says Gurit E. Birnbaum, a psychologist, sex researcher and associate professor at the School of Psychology at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel.

According to Dr Shorey, of Widener University, there are five steps to a successful “makeup.” And they revolve around one central question that each person must ask the other: “What do you need from me?”

The first step: Wait to talk. “You don’t want to have a discussion while the other person is still hot,” Dr Shorey says. “I can’t tell you how many people will think it’s better to say right away: ‘I’m sorry. I was a jerk.’ And the other person says, ‘Yes, you were.’ And then the argument escalates again.”

If the other person is really trying to avoid a discussion altogether, wait until things have calmed down and then say, “I’d like to talk.” If the argument was really intense, he suggests making up in a public place, such as a restaurant. And never have these discussions in front of the kids.

Next, give up the idea of being right. Don’t focus on the examples or details from the fight; those will be right or wrong depending on your perspective. Instead, focus on the other person’s feelings. “What can never be wrong is how the other person feels,” Dr Shorey says.
Third, mirror the other person’s position by verbalising your understanding of how he or she feels. This helps you focus on the other person’s needs. For example, you can say: “I understand you are hurt because I went out without you last night.” And ask if you are correct.

“A lot of people don’t want to apologise because they don’t want to admit that they did anything wrong,” Dr Shorey says. A good approach: “I am sorry I upset you. I don’t think there is anything wrong with me going out last night, but I can see why you feel hurt and how it would be better for me not to go because I don’t want you to feel bad.”

An important point here: Never use the word “but” in an apology. “I am sorry, but …” undermines the entire purpose.

Don’t get offended by your partner’s feelings. If you apologise and the other person says, “Yes, you really behaved badly,” just nod your head. The goal is to accept responsibility for how you made someone feel.

Finally, explain to your partner that you really care about him or her and are willing to modify your behaviour. (A hug, touch on the arm or eye contact all go a long way here.) Both people must show that they understand each others’ needs and are willing to try and meet them. “If the other person knows that you really care,” Dr Shorey says, “most of these larger issues will resolve.”

Accept that it may take some time for you both to feel better. And make a pledge to check in later, after a certain amount of time has passed, in order to monitor progress. “Hey, I heard how I hurt you and have tried to change and how am I doing?” never hurt.

For the Hardys, years of arguing took its toll. They felt disconnected. Ms Hardy says she got tired of the anger and frustration she was carrying around.

The couple began to attend marriage workshops, read self-help books, and model themselves on older couples they thought communicated well. They learned they have different makeup styles. She needs space to calm down. He likes to talk out issues.

They have developed several strategies to move past an argument. The first is decompression time: Ms Hardy will excuse herself and go into another room or leave the house so she can “finish huffing and puffing,” she says. The next is fact time: Each will remind him- or herself about the good qualities of their spouse. Then, instead of a short, “I am sorry,” the apologiser will say exactly what he or she did wrong.

“We don’t always have to agree, but we have learned to respect one another’s opinions,” says Ms Hardy, a 47-year-old motivational speaker.

“We have become a great model for our children,” ages 27, 25, 21, 18, says Mr Hardy, 54, who is a Baptist pastor. “There is a greater sense of oneness in our relationship now.”

By Elizabeth Bernstein

With thanks to The Australian

And just for Jessica - David Cassidy's version

June 27, 2011

How to be THE LUCKIEST GUY ON THE PLANET in 4 Easy Steps

by James Altucher

I told my dad, “I’m a lucky guy.” He said, “But are you lucky in love?” I was six years old. Love was the most disgusting thing in the world to me. What the hell was he talking about? Love was living in another neighborhood at that time. Or another planet. It would be years before Love stuck its ugly little nose into my house and said, “hello, anyone here?

Luck was all about rolling the dice. Or finding a quarter on the ground. Or seeing a double rainbow after a quick storm.
But now I’m different. I’m constantly checking in and out of the Hospital of No Luck. I’m older. I need luck to be constantly transfused into me or I run out of it. Without luck, I’m dead. For me, good luck equals happiness.

On a scale of happiness from 0 to 10, I think I’m about a seven or eight. But that’s a big improvement. When I was lying on the floor here, I was probably about a zero. Or at different points in this story, I was maybe at negative. So I’m trending upwards. I get lucky when I stick to three simple goals:

My ONLY Three Goals in Life

A) I want to be happy.

B) I want to eradicate unhappiness in my life.

C) I want every day to be as smooth as possible. No hassles.

That’s it. I’m not asking for much. I need simple goals else I can’t achieve them.
There’s been at least ten times in my life that everything seemed so low I felt like I would never achieve the above three things and the world would be better off without me. Other times I felt like I was stuck at a crossroads and would never figure out which road to take. Each time I bounced back.

When I look back at these times now I realize there was a common thread.

Each time there were four things, and only four things, that were always in place in order for me to bounce back.

Now I try to incorporate these four things into a daily practice so I never dip low again.

THE DAILY PRACTICE
A) Physical – being in shape. Doing some form of exercise. In 2003 I woke up at 5am every day and from 5-6am I played “Round the World” on a basketball court overlooking the Hudson River. Every day (except when it rained). Trains would pass and people at 5:30am would wave to me out the window. Now, I try to do yoga every day. But its hard. All you need to do, minimally, is exercise enough to break a sweat for 10 minutes. So about 20-30 minutes worth of exercise a day. This is not to get “ripped” or “shredded”. But just to be healthy. You can’t be happy if you aren’t healthy. Also, spending this time helps your mind better deal with its daily anxieties. If you can breathe easy when your body is in pain then its easier to breathe during difficult situations. Here’s other things that are a part of this but a little bit harder:

Wake up by 4-5am every day.
Go to sleep by 8:30-9. (Good to sleep 8 hours a night!)
No eating after 5:30pm. Can’t be happy if indigested at night.

B) Emotional– If someone is a drag on me, I cut them out. If someone lifts me up, I bring them closer. Nobody is sacred here. When the plane is going down, put the oxygen mask on your face first.

Family, friends, people I love – I always try to be there for them and help. But I don’t get close to anyone bringing me down. This rule can’t be broken. Energy leaks out of you if someone is draining you. And I never owe anyone an explanation.

Explaining is draining.

Another important rule: always be honest. Its fun.

Nobody is honest anymore and people are afraid of it. Try being honest for a day (without being hurtful). Its amazing where the boundaries are of how honest one can be. Its much bigger than I thought. A corollary of this is: I never do anything I don’t want to do. Like I NEVER go to weddings.

C) Mental – Every day I write down ideas. I write down so many ideas that it hurts my head to come up with one more. Then I try to write down five more.

The other day I tried to write 100 alternatives kids can do other than go to college. I wrote down eight, which I wrote about here. I couldn’t come up with anymore. Then the next day I came up with another 40. It definitely stretched my head.

No ideas today? Memorize all the legal 2 letter words for Scrabble. Translate the Tao Te Ching into Spanish. Need ideas for lists of ideas?

Come up with 30 separate chapters for an “autobiography”. Try to think of 10 businesses you can start from home (and be realistic how you can execute them)? Give me 10 ideas of directions this blog can go in. Think of 20 ways Obama can improve the country. List every productive thing you did yesterday (this improves memory also and gives you ideas for today).

The “idea muscle” atrophies within days if you don’t use it. Just like walking. If you don’t use your legs for a week, they atrophy. You need to exercise the idea muscle. It takes about 3-6 months to build up once it atrophies. Trust me on this.

D) Spiritual. I feel that most people don’t like the word “spiritual”. They think it means “god”. Or “religion”.

But it doesn’t. I don’t know what it means actually. But I feel like I have a spiritual practice when I do one of the following:

Pray (doesn’t matter if I’m praying to a god or to dead people or to the sun or to a chair in front of me – it just means being thankful. And not taking all the credit, for just a few seconds of the day)
Meditate – Meditation for more than a few minutes is hard. It’s boring. Here I give tips for 60 second meditations. You can also meditate for 15 seconds by really visualizing what it would be like meditate for 60 minutes. Here’s a simple meditation: sit in a chair, keep the back straight, watch yourself breathe. If you get distracted, no problem. Just pull yourself back to your breath. Try it for 5 minutes. Then six.
Being grateful – I try to think of everyone in my life I’m grateful for. Then I try to think of more people. Then more. Its hard.
Forgiving – I picture everyone who has done me wrong. I visualize gratefulness for them (but not pity).
Studying. If I read a spiritual text (doesn’t matter what it is: Bible, Tao Te Ching, anything Zen related, even inspirational self-help stuff, doesn’t matter) I tend to feel good. This is not as powerful as praying or meditating (it doesn’t train your mind to cut out the BS) but it still makes me feel good.

My own experience: I can never achieve the three “simple” goals on a steady basis without doing the above practice on a daily basis.

And EVERY TIME I’ve hit bottom (or close to a bottom, or I’ve been at some sort of crossroads.) and started dong the above 4 items (1991, 1995, 1997, 2002, 2006, 2008) magic would happen:

The Results
A) Within about one month, I’d notice coincidences start to happen. I’d start to feel lucky. People would smile at me more.
B) Within three months the ideas would really start flowing, to the point where I felt overwhelming urges to execute the ideas.
C) Within six months, good ideas would start flowing, I’d begin executing them, and everyone around me would help me put everything together.
D) Within a year my life was always completely different. 100% upside down from the year before.

More money, more luck, more health, etc.

And then I’d get lazy and stop doing the practice.
And everything falls apart again. But now I’m trying to do it every day.
Its hard to do all of this every day.

Nobody is perfect. I don’t know if I’ll do all of these things today. But I know when I do it, it works.

You will rule the planet if you follow me on Twitter.

With many thanks to Altucher Confidential
H/T: J.R.

June 05, 2011

Your Ego and How it Can Affect Your Life

So what is your ego you ask? It is that part of your brain, and a rather silly part,that makes you always think you must finish on top!

Whether it is having the last word, winning an argument, or even causing someone emotional pain while trying to prove you are right.

(Of course you may well be right but this isn't a nice way to do it.).

Most of the time when arguing with people who have a different perspective, or are simply a little stupid, you cannot win in any case.

Some people will simply never get it no matter how many provable facts you come up with. It can be very draining and a waste of your time.

As someone once said: “ 5% of people think, 15% think they think, and the rest would rather do anything than have to think”. (Skip Ross).

Essentially ego makes you waste your time and energy and prevents you from moving forward in your life.

It stops you from actually believing in yourself, your instincts, inner voices and what we now call ‘vibes’.

How many times do we dismiss ‘vibes’ only to discover later that we should have taken notice of them?

If you think deeply about some of the decisions you have made in the past you may even acknowledge that these were purely ego-driven and were, in fact, a big mistake!

Your ego often provides you with silly excuses that help you justify the things you do. It prevents you from thinking things through thoroughly and can lead to what I can “unintended consequences”. These are usually bad.

I think we see this a lot from our politicians – just one example that comes to mind.

We may also see many examples from our work colleagues and family members.

Ego keeps you in a state of immaturity.

In other words it is the opposite of your “higher self” or soul.

That is why you have to be very aware of not acting on ego-driven advice.

Your higher self is desperately trying to help you get to who you want to be, who you are capable of being.

You must learn to love yourself and constantly push your ego out of your thought processes as much as you can. Loving yourself is not an “ego thing”. It is necessary for your success.

Your ego restrains you in every possible way.

Try and learn to live without it and communicate with your higher self instead.