Friends,
Welcome to my 17th newsletter. In the last newsletter I summarized the first seven letters I have written over the past four years. In this I will try to capture briefly the next eight letters. There is a link after each summary that will enable you to see the original more detailed letter. Hope this is of value.
Those of you who have stuck with me and found these newsletters of interest … THANK YOU!
Newsletter #8: Forgiveness
This and the next newsletter deal with two skills that enable one to live with peace about the past. To refresh your memory, here is the model of all the 13 skills leading to peace with the past, confidence in the future and joy in the present.
Forgiveness is one of the most important of the 13 skills that enable one to thrive or to be happy, and yet it may be the most difficult. Forgiveness is actually two separate skills, forgiveness of others, which is about releasing the desire for vengeance, and forgiveness of self, which is about achieving self-esteem. The letter provides more detail about forgiveness and a tool to help one practice these two skills.
Newsletter #9: Gratitude
The second skill of the past is gratitude. This skill is important as it seems to underly all the other skills of happiness. As Cicero pointed out “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.” Live with gratitude and we almost by definition live with joy. It may also be one of the least practiced, which is strange considering it is one the simplest of the 13 skills to practice
With the advent of social media, we now live in a world where we have become experts at counting other people’s blessings. Getting back to counting our own blessings and becoming more grateful is the focus of this newsletter.
Newsletter #10: Conscious Capitalism
I believe there is a profound evolution that is happening in the US business community and around the world. At the core of this evolution is the recognition that capitalism has a much broader role to play than merely creating shareholder/owner wealth.
In 2010 a non-profit was formed – the Conscious Capitalism Organization – founded on the belief that business must work to create value for all stakeholders: customers, employees, and their families, suppliers, owners, communities within which they operate and to sustain the world we all inhabit. In August of 2019 the CEO’s of the largest corporations, and members of the Business Roundtable, adopted a new statement of the purpose of a corporation declaring that companies should not only serve their shareholders but also deliver value to all their stakeholders. The conscious capitalism organization could have written their statement.
The newsletter provides more details concerning this evolution and its implications to the world business community and its leaders.
Newsletter #11: Facing the Future with Confidence
Newsletters 8 and 9 dealt with the past and this one deals with the future and enables us to face whatever the future holds with confidence and tenacity. The four skills for the future are:
- Faith – A belief about a positive future that stands without evidence. It is a fundamental attitude that if we do our part the universe will bring us, not necessarily what we want, but it will always bring us what we need to face that future. Without faith, our minds will conjure up all kinds of negative scenarios about the future.
- Optimism – Optimism is a close cousin to faith. Optimism is believing in positive outcomes, to be hopeful about the future. Optimism and happiness are closely correlated. Optimism also leads to greater resilience in the face of setbacks.
- Flexibility – As we envision the future most see a pathway forward to where we wish to go. The problem is that we see only one pathway forward. The key is to be flexible such that we move with the evolving future. Helen Keller captured it well: “When one door to happiness closes another almost always opens, but we are so fixated on the closed door we fail to see the open door.”
- Openness – This last skill is openness which may be the most difficult of the four. Try as we might, sometimes the future just turns out very differently than we hoped or expected. Having the ability to accept a new reality, to be open to a life curve-ball, is a wonderful skill and one that is essential to facing the future with confidence.
Newsletter #12: Abundance
This newsletter is directed to those readers who think of themselves as highly competitive. In it, I seek to convince the reader that being highly competitive is not a beneficial trait to happiness or to success in business or most any other field. My guess is I won’t be successful in convincing these readers of this since it took me some 20 years, after being identified as “exceedingly competitive,” to realize how much this trait held me back in both my business endeavors and in my ability to live with joy … to be happy.
Fundamentally there is a very different perspective that leads to greater success than being competitive. It requires that we move from fear to love, from scarcity to abundance, from comparison to self-confidence … from competitiveness to cooperation. I found this to be a very difficult transition, one that took years (in fact I don’t think I am all the way there yet), but a transition that is vital if one is to flourish and help those around us to flourish as well.
Newsletter #13: Emotions
Emotions, both positive and negative, are short-lived experiences that determine how we feel, think, and act. They, therefore, play a critical role in our lives. The word “emotions” comes from the Greek word “emote” or “to move.” Seems right.
We each experience both positive and negative emotions, but most of us experience far more negative emotions than positive emotions, and far more than we need to. In a sense, we are Velcro for negative events and Teflon for positive emotions.
Yet the happiest among us experience, both subliminally and consciously, more positive emotions. This newsletter delves into why positive emotions are so beneficial and provides tools to enable us to experience more of them.
Newsletter #14: Thriving in the 2nd Half of Life
This newsletter is an introduction to the book I released this past January by providing a condensed version of the book preface. The book by the same title as the newsletter endeavors to share how, to live successfully, the second half of life has to be different than the first half. It covers the same 13 skills of the first book, Happiness the Art of Living with Peace Confidence and Joy, but puts these skills into the context of the 2nd half.
Newsletter #15: Dialogue & Discussion
At the foundation of successful organizations are effective relationships, which in turn require effective communication. When we verbally communicate with others, what comes most naturally is discussion, but the discussion is often not the most effective way to communicate. What can be much more effective is a communication skill known as “dialogue.” One need simply look at the origin of the two words to know they convey two very different concepts. Dialogue comes from the Greek words “dia” and “logos,” essentially “meaning flowing through.” Discussion on the other hand comes from the Latin word “discussus,” the same Latin roots for “percussion” and “concussion,” meaning “to shake” or “smash apart.”
The newsletter seeks to capture how one behaves during discussion versus during dialogue and provide tools to enhance you are your organization’s ability to dialogue.
Several people found this chart helpful.
I hope this has been helpful. For me, creating these newsletters has fostered a lot of personal growth! If you have any thoughts, please feel free to share them.
Wishing everyone a healthy and joyful holiday and 2022.
–Douglas. A. Smith
“Joy is the gift of love.
Grief is the price of love.”
— Valerie Kaur
From the bookshelf!
Books I am reading and highly recommend.