M&M Monday

Outdoorsy Girls

Whenever I say, "Do you girls want to go out?" Tabby Bobcat can be snoozing on the other end of the house, and she'll be the first at the door.

Tabby leads the way down the ramp; Maggie follows.

The morning light in this pic is extra-delicious. Sweet Maggie by the clothesline.

She ventures off a bit farther than Millie. Sometimes Millie will join her.

Not this time, tho. This is usually as far as she goes; near the woodshed.

My sweet Millie.

You can't tell, but Tabby Bobcat is behind the base of the forsythia bush there. And poor bush; she has bent some of the lower branches and played with them. She also plays with the rocks; throwing them up with her front paws.

Of course, by the time I switched angles to get a pic, the Kodak Moment was gone!

One of Maggie's other spots.

Another favourite spot of Maggie's by the wood shed.

Whereas the porch is Millie's domain.

We interrupt this M&M Monday for a Tabby Bobcat Special:

This is where Tabby likes to hang out, when she's not accosting the forsythia bush.

Couldn't resist. She's just so stinkin' CUTE.

Back to our regularly scheduled M&M Monday:

Notice the Gluten Free pasta I dropped on the runner? Maggie trotted in  & I thought, "Oh, good. She'll clean it up for me. She sat down next to it . . .

And was completely indifferent.  "MEH."

Perhaps Millie would like some GF Pasta?

But no! Not really all that interested.

Huh?

Back inside . . . 

Tabby on the coffee table. Millie says Hullo.

These are the pix from the the Big Download of 988 photos off my camera. I've been having trouble downloading. I have some wonderful springy pix for next week--I hope!  The girls have really enjoyed being outside more, except as I write this, the wood stove is fired up & roaring with the cold snap. 

I had an interesting experience with Millie this week. She gets panicky when she slides off her bed and can't get back up. Well, without even thinking, I went behind her and lifted up her lower back and positioned her back on her bed. There's NO WAY I could have done that when I first got her. She's the reason for the duct taped runners down my hall. One ferocious warning growl & snap at my hand and I never tried to lift her again--until this week. And she was OK with it. And then--THEN!  I went out the front door and when I came back, she was lying down on the bare floor. *sigh*  Again, this is why I have beds, rugs, & carpets covering the floor because it's slippery and if she gets stuck on there, it's a whole production to get her back onto a textured surface. Except. When I came in & walked to the carpet, she started to get up, but hesitated. I said, "Come on, Mil." And she did. I guess she's feeling safer an more secure.

Years ago, when I was studying with the very-brilliant Eric Jensen, he told of an experiment done with dogs where when they walked across a certain part of the floor, they got little shocks on their feet. (Horrible, I know). They only did it once or twice and then turned the shocky thing off, but the dogs continued to avoid that area. (I know. Wouldn't you?) So then they would walk the dogs over the area to show them that they wouldn't get shocked. How many times did it take before the dogs would voluntarily walk over that area? Can you guess? 25? 50? 100? 

It took 200 times before they felt safe again. Eric was using it as an illustration of learned helplessness, where a child has the ability, but has been conditioned not to respond or perform. (I had a student like that when I was teaching first grade. Repeating first grade for the third time, he was perfectly capable but just sat there like a lump; whistling way beyond passive). Anyway, my point is that it takes time to build new neuro-pathways to create a new habit. It takes practice--and especially if there is an intense emotion attached to it, like fear. I could say this is about Millie, but it's also about me. It only took one warning snap in the beginning of our relationship for me to want to avoid lifting her up. Ever.  But in the meantime, I have massaged and Reikied her almost every day; especially her lower back. So she trusts me to touch her gently and she knows I'm not going to hurt her. So maybe it was really me needing to unlearn a fearful pattern? Hmmm . . . and Millie was waiting for me.

Pattern Interrupts

Dave Dobson used to say that everything is patterns. We have productive ones & less-than-productive ones. Useful & non-useful. Bruce Lipton says that for the first 2 years of life, our brain waves are predominantly delta waves--that v. deep, unconscious state. It's a time when we soak up learning--and patterns, at a rapid rate. Eric Jensen says in Brain-based Learning that the brain needs to feel safe before it can really learn. Credit that to the only part of our brain that is fully formed at birth: the amygdala [uh-MIG-duh-la] It records everything.

Which brings us back to Dave: the primary concern of the unconscious mind (Other-Than-Conscious, as he called it) is to keep us safe. Patterns develop as a safety mechanism. And then we run them like a computer runs a program. OR:

They run us.

What do you do when you become aware of a pattern that you find less than elegant? Dave said there are no good or bad patterns. They all had a purpose at one point in time. All you need to do is to update the pattern. John Morgan says that awareness is the first step in creating a wedge between stimulus & response (pattern). And then you do something to interrupt the pattern. When I was training with Doug O'Brien in Ericksonian hypnosis, he used a v. simple pattern interrupt. He would say, Do you golf?

I have been looking at the pattern of how I make decisions. Or, to be more accurate, how I don't make decisions. I have created a sense of urgency where there needn't be one. It's something that I'm becoming aware of. It's something I need to update.

Perhaps I should take up golf.

Imagination

A technique I learned in hypnobirthing and something that John uses in his seminars is something called a "lemon convincer strategy." It goes something like this: Imagine that you're in a kitchen and there's a bowl of fresh lemons. You take one and place it on a chopping board and slice it open. You smell that lemony fragrance as it wafts up to your nose and permeates the room. You pick up the lemon and open your mouth . . . that's right . . . and squeeze in a mouthful of juice.

Can you taste it? Is your mouth watering? The point of the exercise is to illustrate how powerful your imagination is. The brain doesn't know the difference between what is real and not. Experience is experience. It reminds me of a story that Eric Jensen told in his 6-day Brain-based Learning seminar. There were some people stranded in a boat with no food and little water. When they were rescued 2 weeks later, all the people were dehydrated and had lost a lot of weight. Except for one guy. At first they thought that he had somehow had supplies that he didn't share with the others. This was not the case. What he did everyday was imagine that he was preparing and cooking 3 meals a day, just as he would in real life. He did it in real time. So he would imagine he was chopping carrots for soup and went through the whole process until he sat down at the dinner table, where he imagined he ate a full meal.

When I first heard that story I thought, Wow! I wonder if that would work for exercise!"
Perhaps that will be my next CD--The Virtual Workout. hahaha

John says, "Imagination is the force of creation." He said he's quoting someone else, but I don't remember who. It's gotten me curious about how to use my imagination more constructively. Napoleon Hill says in Think and Grow Rich, "What the mind can perceive, it can achieve."

If we can imagine it, we can create it.

Can you tell what this is?

When I saw this, it reminded me of neural pathways in the brain. It's actually a photo of a tree turned laterally. This is the kind of pathway you would see that would include learning that is now automatic, or a skill like riding a bike or tying your shoe, or a habit (good or bad). The more something is repeated, the more it is reinforced, and the faster reaction from stimulus to response.

Next week is Eric Jensen's Learning Brain Expo in San Francisco. Eric is a leader in the field of Brain-based Learning. I was supposed to be presenting at this, but will be on the road with John Morgan Seminars instead. Anyway, if you're a teacher or parent or person, you may want to check it out. It will be a fun-filled, super-packed conference with all-things-learning. While I'm not teaching in the classroom anymore, the training I received from Eric was invaluable. When you understand how the brain works, it gives a different perspective into behaviour, psychology, marketing, etc. AWESOME stuff!