Get Sh!t Done!

It seems like everywhere I look online lately someone has a new “list” to motivate me to do something.  “Top ten ways to get more done”, “5 things successful people don’t do”, “10 habits for a better marriage”, “3 things you must do now to have the career you deserve”.  Honestly, it’s starting to drive me a little nuts.  Not only do I not click on them anymore, it is becoming frustrating to me.  You don’t need a list of recommendations.  There is nothing in most of those lists that most of us don’t know about the topic.  Frankly, if you look at some of those lists and have genuinely never thought that showing up on time to work will help you, or paying attention to what your spouse is saying will improve your relationship, I’m scared for all of us.  Psychology Today online lately seems to be entirely made up of articles of these lists, and it’s a little rude.  There saying we do not have the ability anymore to sit for a few minutes and read an interesting article, life has become about bullet points. 

Primary Questions

We all ask ourselves questions.  The type of questions you ask yourself on a consistent basis can be empowering or they can be destructive.  Our mind is very interesting and complex.  It has the ability to think, contemplate, analyze, and the ability to talk to ourselves.  I am not talking about voices in your head that are not really there.  I am talking about the internal dialogue we all have with ourselves.  It is this dialogue, more specifically the questions you ask your self during this dialogue that is the key to the thoughts and opinions we have about ourselves, and often what core beliefs we develop that shape our behavior.  Unfortunately, our default programming focuses on negative dialogue.  It takes a lot of reprogramming in our operating system to fix this. 

Tough conversations about suicide in police work

My latest article on behind the badge OC talking about how police departments need to start addressing the suicides of officers in their ranks. It is a topic that is not talked about and it needs to be.

http://behindthebadgeoc.com/news/von-luft-police-need-address-causes-suicide-ranks/

Daily Stress Of Police Work

Check out my latest article I wrote for Behind the Badge talking about the daily stress of police work and the hidden health costs.

http://behindthebadgeoc.com/opinion/von-luft-daily-stress-policing-takes-toll/

Can a minimalist have a jacuzzi?

Like mindfulness, minimalism gets a bad wrap sometimes.  Both are often misunderstood, misquoted and often get people from western culture thinking that you have to sit cross-legged humming with incense burning to practice it.  Also like mindfulness, minimalism is catching fire in our western culture, and mindfulness concepts and practices are making a huge difference with people suffering from depression, anxiety and PTSD.  They are being integrated more and more into traditional Western medicine practices, this is a good thing.   

Get tactical with your awareness

While developing a workshop about coping with stress in our lives I wanted to use concepts found in many different areas of psychology including mindfulness, psychological flexibility, acceptance/commitment therapy and others.  I started to pull from different areas and developed a definition that I now use coming from my law enforcement background, and called it “Tactical Awareness”. 

Very often the process of change for a person starts with just awareness.  The old adage “stop and smell the roses” is truer today than we all realize. 

What do happy people do different?

Do “happy” people do things differently? Did they attend some secret meeting where they were told the secrets to happiness?  There are thousands of books, websites, and blogs dedicated to the topic of being happy.  However, the best way that I have found to learn something new is to model those that are already doing it well.  Working with clients, talking with colleagues and friends, and also reading a lot of those books, blogs and websites, I wanted to see if I could come up with an answer to the question, do happy people do things differently. Looking at people that report being consistently happy on psychological surveys, it turns out there are things we can identify they do on a consistent basis that points to then being “happy”.  Putting all the research and information together, here are the tops things we can identify that “happy” people do on a consistent basis: