Monica Berg's Blog, page 34

Think Well, Be Well

Given obvious world events, we’re all bombarded with names like Birx, Fauci, Moderna, and Johnson(s). Right now, I’m focused on Mayo.

According to the Mayo Clinic, “positive thinking helps with stress management and can even improve your health.” That article header on their website caught my eye, given my interest in both positivity and health. The correlation is not news to me, but it certainly bears another look.

The Mayo Clinic Staff cited studies showing that personality traits like optimism and pessimism affect many areas of your health and well-being. Positive thinking that usually comes with optimism is a key to effective stress management. Effective stress management, in turn, is associated with many health benefits.

I find myself surprised at how much resistance people have to the idea that we have the power to heal ourselves. ‘Surgery heals, medicine heals, I can’t heal myself.’ Certainly, doctors are often necessary in the healing process, but what happens when you fracture a pinkie or pull a muscle? The doctor sends you home with the advice to rest it and let it heal. Your body (you) is mending your broken bones and stitching together muscle fibers, not the doctors.

A study conducted in a suburban Pennsylvania hospital determined that post-operative patients with a hospital room view of trees and grass had shorter recovery stays and fewer complications than patients whose windows faced a brick wall. Other studies indicate that people with deeply held religious beliefs had better prognoses than their less devout peers. If something as simple as seeing a nature setting can enhance the healing process, why is it so difficult to believe that we do in fact have a great deal of control over our health and healing?

The way we think about our health affects our health. The old adage ‘worried sick’ is a very real thing that we all do to ourselves. Herbert Benson, a Harvard Professor & the President of the Mind Body Institute in Boston reports that surgeons are wary of people who are convinced they will die. 10 years ago researchers stumbled on a striking find. Through surveys, they found that women who believed they were prone to heart disease were nearly 4 times more likely to die of heart disease than women with similar risk factors who didn’t hold such fatalistic views.

In other words, it had nothing to do with the usual heart disease indicators, such as age, cholesterol or obesity. It came down to their belief. Think sick, be sick.

Conversely, when you believe in your ability to be healthy and also your ability to heal yourself in the event of trauma or illness, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. In 1954, researcher Julian Rotter developed the concept of locus of control. (Locus means location.) This phrase refers to a person’s belief in whether they control their lives (internal locus) or if they believe that events and life outcomes are largely beyond their control (external locus).

Patients who were identified as having an internal locus of control (believing that they largely controlled their destiny) showed improved physical and mental health and a generally higher quality of life over those patients identified as having an external locus of control (believing that events outside their control were the overriding factor for how their lives unfolded). Internal locus of control patients suffering from HIV, migraines, diabetes, kidney disease and epilepsy fared better and maintained a higher quality of life than their external counterparts. Have certainty in your ability to heal yourself and think healthy to be healthy. Kabbalists teach that certainty is the knowing that whatever we encounter in our life, no matter how unpleasant or difficult, is there to benefit our spiritual growth. Certainty doesn’t happen when things are great.

According to the Mayo staff, researchers continue to explore the effects of positive thinking and optimism on health. Health benefits that positive thinking may provide include:

● Increased life span

● Lower rates of depression

● Lower levels of distress

● Greater resistance to the common cold

● Better psychological and physical well-being

● Better cardiovascular health and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease

● Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

Whether that positivity enables better coping with stressful situations which reduces harmful effects on your health or if positive people simply tend to live healthier lifestyles, I am not seeing a downside to facing whatever life throws at us next with anything other than a smile and a determination to thrive.

The post Think Well, Be Well appeared first on Monica Berg.

I disappoint people; you should, too.

My 18 year old just graduated from high school, but because of the pandemic, her Senior prom had been cancelled. Her classmates organized a make-up Senior prom, and though unofficial, entailed all the pomp and circumstance of high school prom–hair, makeup, dress shopping, the whole nine yards. Miriam looked stunning.

Not too long after arriving at ‘the prom’, I began to receive text messages. The affair, looked forward to with such anticipation, was a bit of a disappointment. Add to that, Miriam was getting a headache, and she just kind of wanted to go home. (Who hasn’t been there?!) I asked her what was stopping her, and she explained that she didn’t want to be a buzzkill. In essence, she didn’t want to disappoint her friends by leaving early. I assured her she wasn’t a buzzkill; after all, she wasn’t asking anyone to leave with her.

So, she left. Ultimately, she decided she didn’t want to disappoint herself more than she didn’t want to potentially disappoint other people. Proud Mom moment!

Do you know how many events, parties, and gatherings I’ve stayed at far past the moment I felt like going home? Honestly, I couldn’t begin to count the number. It’s something I’ve worked on, and now I have a bit of a reputation for Irish goodbyes.

About an hour after going home, Miriam was feeling much better after loosening the tied-too-tight red halter dress she’d been wearing. She received a text from her friend, who earlier in the evening, shared the same feelings of dissatisfaction that Miriam felt.

S: Where are you?

Miriam: Home.

S: You are an icon.

Isn’t it funny? All the things we have done, places we have stayed far longer than we wanted to, all in the name of not disappointing others. Clearly, many of those situations would not have disappointed a single soul. Even if it did, would it really matter in the big scheme of things? It turns out the only one disappointed was me.

On the flip side of that coin, there are countless situations in life where what we do or don’t do genuinely has the power to disappoint other people. I and many, many other people like me dislike letting other people down, and I have stretched the limits of my time, body, and sanity to try to not disappoint anyone.

It begs the question, does that mean that one of my core beliefs is: it is my job to not disappoint anyone.

No! So why do so many of us live like it’s our job to make sure nobody else is disappointed? It’s an impossible, unrealistic, and unhealthy belief and one that shouldn’t be allowed to stand.

Yet, we agree that:

1) It is awful to disappoint people

2) It is awful to overextend ourselves to avoid disappointing people

Those two beliefs, equally held, are in direct contradiction to each other. So, what is the answer?

Disappointing people is okay? I love the idea of being completely comfortable with disappointing people. Yet, and here comes the other side of the same coin, I am a little uncomfortable with feeling like I’ve disappointed anyone.

As I was researching this topic, I found that one of the most common things that people with depression say is that they feel like they’ve disappointed everyone in their lives. WOW. While I am sure that this is not an accurate statement, after all, depression causes us to see through only the darkest of lenses, it really drives home how deeply we internalize the pain of disappointing others.

Merriam Webster defines disappointment as: “unhappiness from the failure of something hoped for or expected to happen.” That sounds like an unmet expectation, but the good news is that we can manage expectations.

Be clear in advance about what you are willing to take on, with precise language. If you agree to help plan a surprise party specify in great detail which tasks you will be responsible for. Other times we are expected to do something because we have been doing it regularly. If your partner expects a Friday night dinner, but you won’t be home until late Friday night, give them a heads up earlier in the week. Hunger and disappointment will be averted, and you always feel more disappointed when you are really hungry. If your mother is expecting a home-baked Mother’s Day cake decorated to perfection, just as you’ve done in years past, but you stopped enjoying making them long ago, tell her in advance that you are going to pick up her favorite cake from a bakery she likes. That is far better than the other alternatives:

A) stay up all night baking and spend the whole day exhausted and feeling resentment for doing something you really didn’t want to do

B) show up with a bakery bought cake and wait for Mom’s disappointed comment

Following through on our commitments is inherent to our character and integrity. But what about the more insidious cases of colleagues, partners, or friends setting their own expectations of us simply because that’s what they want out of the relationship. It’s being set up for failure. How can we possibly fulfill their expectations when we didn’t even know what they were? Those moments are opportunities to break out of the cycle of feeling like we somehow didn’t measure up, that we let someone down. Disappoint them. Just let their unrealistic expectations and presuppositions about you crumble. You didn’t sign up for this.

Then, do yourself a huge favor and stop making commitments you can’t or don’t want to fulfill.

There are times you will have to disappoint someone. But you can choose to disappoint them a little right away by saying no, or you can disappoint them greatly down the road by agreeing to take on more than you can realistically handle.

I need to pause here and clarify that I do and always will show up for my friends, family, and colleagues in ways big and small. Sometimes that requires me to push myself to do more than is comfortable for me that day, and I will continue to do that. Relationships are important, and they require care, attention, and thoughtfulness. Be mindful of where and how you are showing up powerfully, fully present, with the intention of sharing and not just showing up to meet expectations or avoid disappointment. Basically, if you’re at the party, be at the party fully for the right reasons.

I prefer to disappoint someone a little initially by never signing up for the responsibility in the first place. Don’t want to spend the weekend with your siblings in a one-room cabin in the mountains? Say no. Prefer not to bake 8 dozen double chocolate chunk peanut butter crunch cookies for your kid’s bake sale fundraiser? Say no. Don’t want to attend the party/conference/dinner you’ve been invited to. Just say no. It’s uncomfortable at first, but like a muscle, the more you use it, the more natural it becomes. Decline kindly and firmly. Thank them for thinking of you. You don’t even have to explain why you are declining; in fact, it’s better if you don’t.

Being honest about your capabilities, refusing to accept expectations you never agreed to, and managing the expectations of others is a great way to stay in the good graces of others, but more importantly, it is a way in which we honor ourselves by avoiding unnecessary stress and sleepless nights. It’s how we stop disappointing ourselves.

The post I disappoint people; you should, too. appeared first on Monica Berg.

Risk, Ambiguity, and Embracing the Illogical

Last night, I made a list of a few things that I’ve done, not knowing how they would turn out. In roughly chronological order:

● Fell in love

● Married at 23 after a whirlwind nine months of dating

● Got pregnant four times, including intentionally three months after giving birth to a child with Downs Syndrome

● Moved to NYC with a three-month-old and three kids all attending different schools

● Got a dog (his name is Miles, and he is a furry bundle of adorable, oft-misbehaved, unconditional love)

● Wrote a couple of books without planning to be a writer

The marriage has been my rock for 24 years. The children are my joy. Despite losing my mentor Rav Berg and my dearest friend Annie and my father’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s while packing and unpacking our houses, NYC now feels like home.

The point is all the most important decisions we make are a gamble. There are no guarantees that marriages will be peaceful, children will be healthy and happy, books will be well received, or friendships will be reciprocated. But the alternative is unimaginable.

Yet, risk breeds worry. “What if things don’t work out,” our brain asks, usually at 4 AM.

But what if they do?

“Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?” – Margot Fonteyn

Dame Margaret Evelyn de Arias, better known by her stage name of Margot Fonteyn, was a prima ballerina for the Royal Ballet. She began studying ballet at age four, and I like to think she knew of what she spoke in the above quote.

I love to dance, though I’ve certainly not mastered ballet. What many consider the most delicate, feminine, graceful of dance forms requires a singular focus and willingness to subject the human body to something approaching torture. Stress fractures, Achilles tendonitis, and sacroiliac joint dysfunction are just a few of the ugly pains that many young women (and men) heap upon themselves to achieve something beautifully ethereal.

Taking calculated and incalculable risks is part of what allows all of us to participate in something unique and wondrous. When taken simply as numbers and equations, life events like marriage and bearing children are wholly illogical. The chances of divorce, complications in labor, or accidentally raising the next Ted Bundy exist, and without the very human tendency to embrace the illogical, we might not have many of the great love stories in history.

I was at my son’s high school graduation this week and watched as Josh and his cohort of special needs classmates proudly received their diplomas. I was awash in the sense of unplanned perfection of that moment and enjoying the pomp and circumstance, but my attention kept veering to the parents around me, equally swept up. I knew that I wasn’t the only parent in that gathering who thought to themself that this wasn’t what they imagined would be their experience of parenting. We all expect that where we place our effort and desire will be the spot we imagined it to be. This is, in fact, never the case.

In 2015, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University published a paper titled: “Information Gaps for Risk and Ambiguity” that used thirty pages to describe, among other things, our hard-wiring to differentiate between risk aversion and risk-seeking. They posited that it comes down to something called an “information gap,” defined as “a question that one is aware of but for which one is uncertain between possible answers.” They wrote that gamblers are more prone to seeking out risk when the gamble itself is pleasurable to think about, which is why many people who purchase lottery tickets do so over time; it is a way to continue savoring thoughts of eventually winning.

If that doesn’t sum up dedicating your life to ballet, dating, choosing a mate, or debating how many children to have, I don’t know what does. The risk in all of those is worth the reward to so many of us. Okay, maybe not the ballet example. There aren’t many Arabesques thrown about by random people.

I would be remiss not to point out for my female readers and fathers of daughters that women, in general, get the short end of this risk-seeking stick. Many studies have shown that women are, over time, pushed to be more risk averse than men by social environments and our cultures. As Kipling said: “Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is?” I believe that men and women could all benefit from taking a few extra chances every day.

Risk can be frightening, but I don’t believe in living life in fear. I am well aware that anything can happen in ways that seem arbitrary and random. That is part of the thrill, dread, and confusion of our lives on this plane. But I think it’s a wasted life to fear the unknowable, to not participate in things you enjoy because something we conceive of as bad might happen. If we live a risk-averse existence because of fear, we are also living a joy-averse existence.

We can’t control what happens to us, and worrying about our lack of control is a useless endeavor. This is why it is so important to live every day to the fullest extent of our capability — to remove the fears that separate us and to make appreciation the order of every day. As I looked around at the faces of other parents at Josh’s graduation, I recognized and related to exactly this sentiment. When our unique children came into the world, the challenges were clear and, in my case, emphasized by doctors and others around me. What fundamentally changed and shaped me was seeing the way Josh navigated his world and the way he sees the beauty, openness, and possibilities in all things.

No matter the risk.

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New Moon of Cancer: Feelings and Truth

The New Moon of Cancer is an interesting time for anyone who likes dichotomies and ironies. It is known as one of the negative months, rooted in din (the Hebrew word for law or judgment). But as Rav Berg taught, it is sometimes the experience of judgment that allows you to transform that negativity into mercy and positivity.

I’ve been reading over my past writings on Cancer and thinking of the worst form of judgment which I still believe is self-judgment: that we are not enough and that we cannot accomplish wonders. It’s an illusion rooted in feelings, which are typically at the forefront of any conversation about Cancer. We feel our way through the emotions of this New Moon. Blessing, meet curse.

Feelings and emotions help us derive meaning and purpose in our lives because we are built to be tellers and receivers of stories. Whether you believe in a divine Author or chance evolution, we have survived millennia and flourished because we can tell stories, suss out the morals, and apply them to our lives. But occasionally, that muscle is too well developed. Let me give an example.

A friend of mine converted to Judaism more than two decades ago. The Rabbi who oversaw his conversion warned him of the Beth din – literally the “House of Judgment” – wherein a council of three elder rabbis would grill him on his knowledge of Torah, of Jewish customs, and his intentions for joining the Tribe. As the day approached, he became more uneasy. He knew more commandments than many kohanim; the priestly tribe descended from Aaron. He could recite the necessary prayers and had a pat answer for why he wanted to convert to Judaism. He was intellectually ready for whatever the House of Judgment could throw at him. But he felt inferior. He had told himself this story and engaged, no, overcharged, his feelings of mediocrity. He believed that no one could possibly want him as much as he wanted to be accepted. He had an illusion of himself as less-than.

The day of the Beth din came. He shuffled into the chamber and faced the three old, wise men. They asked him why he wanted to convert. He mumbled his pat answer. They asked him his favorite Holy Day. He swears he answered Purim because his mind blanked. The rabbis looked at each other, shrugged, and accepted him into Judaism. My friend blinked in a way he would later describe as stupid. After a moment of deafening silence, one of the rabbis joked that he was tall and it would be good to have some height in the group. It wasn’t until halfway through his mikvah that my friend stopped laughing at the feeling of being drafted for a JewISH basketball team and realized that so much of the negativity and fear that had preceded that day was borne out of the story he had told himself that he wasn’t enough.

Cancer is a good opportunity for us to pause and remind ourselves that feelings are confusing enough as they are without us clouding them with beliefs. You can feel angry. You can feel happy or ecstatic. You can even feel hungry. But when you start saying and thinking things like “I feel that I should…” or “I feel I am…,” you are veering into the realm of opinion and assertion and out of the point of this month: the focus on actual feels, as my millennial friends would say.

Cancerians are an emotional group, and I love them for that. We can all learn a thing or two from the shells they build around their sensitive underbellies. And we can learn more from the sensitivities themselves. Emotions are data. So this month, I encourage you to scientifically extract the data of your emotions from the false narratives and opinions you’ve built up around yourself. The biggest illusion that emotion-based stories manifest is the illusion we have of ourselves. Even on our best day, the day we are not facing a House of Judgment, what we believe we are capable of and where our strength lies is a fraction of what’s possible.

The hardest and most important thing you can do on this New Moon is to transform your negative thoughts and false beliefs into truth. Tap into the truth of who you are and not the outdated, outgrown feelings of who you are.

It’s the baby and the pacifier parable. If you’re a parent, you have no doubt dealt with a child who believed that they could not survive without their binky. You, as a grown, cognizant, mature, completely together adult, know that the child isn’t going to crumble without their pacifier, and their emerging teeth will be all the better for its absence. I vividly remember the “pacifier going bye-bye now” parties I held for both of my daughters and have watched fellow mothers go so far as to tie their children’s pacis to balloons to bid farewell. (Not great for the environment.)

We see our children not only as their creators but through the eyes of our Creator. We realize they are stronger than they can imagine and so we see no true pain and sadness when we take something as simple as a binky away. Would that we could see ourselves with the same eyes of kindness and faith. Would that we could treat the removal of obstacles in our own lives with the same joy, determination, and understanding.

The next time you feel something negative about yourself, challenge it. Investigate it. Use the din/judgment inherent in this month to judge your feelings instead of yourself and unlock the ability to grow and believe in your destiny. Utilize the power of Cancer to set yourself up in the next week, month, and year to break into a new level of worth.

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Good Hearts and Messy Minds

Oh, to be misunderstood. And I know I’m not alone in this.

For years, what people thought I meant or took away from a comment was not the truth of my intention, and I couldn’t understand where the disconnect was. I later learned that the consensus was that some believed I was untouchable, unaffected by pressure or judgment. Even the fact that I exercised every day led some people to believe I couldn’t possibly be as spiritual as my husband if physicality was that important to me. While I didn’t exactly care about the judgment and occasional sideways glances when I wore shorts for a morning jog, it certainly got me thinking. And boy oh boy, did I think.

I thought: how odd for people to think I was superficial or vain because I liked to work out. After all, everything is body, mind, and spirit. I thought about how dismissive some were of Michael to imagine I had somehow duped him. I wondered what kind of miracle I’d have to perform to make the doubters believe that I was serious about my spiritual work. I imagined the ways I would need to express vulnerability in order to prove I wasn’t an impenetrable block of granite.

And then it clicked. I was thinking too much.

“If you say something to three people and then ask them what they heard you say, you will most likely get three different answers, none of which may even be correct. The reason for this is that most of us hear with our mind, and we interpret what we received through a filter of who we think we heard and what we think we heard. Today, take the time and decide to listen with your heart. You may even receive the message you were asking for.” – Karen Berg

There it was. There was a misalignment of heart and mind in the way I was communicating. That quote has stuck with me for years, and I’ve been slowly peeling away the layers of knowledge that lie within it. I think those words were a guide not just for listening but for the ways we project ourselves.

When our hearts and minds are misaligned, we find ourselves off-balance and misunderstood. The heart becomes overly emotional, or the mind forgets to check in with the heart. While this is poison when processing the words and actions of others, it is equally damaging to what we communicate about ourselves.

I believe in balance. Spend too much time strictly in your head, and the truth is lost in the mind’s attempts to justify or validate what you’re saying. That is the playground of the ego. Too much focus on the heart, and you’re unable to clearly articulate your truth as it invariably comes across as overly emotional.

Between partners, friends, and family, problems frequently arise not because we don’t know the other person well but because we don’t fully understand ourselves. If our ego has overpowered our emotions or our heart has overwhelmed our mind, we are primed to tell ourselves stories that affect our ability to express ourselves effectively. The only way to completely weed out the negativity of false thoughts about ourselves and retain positivity and truth is to channel those thoughts evenly through the mind and the heart, weighing them both logically and kindly.

Once you’ve created that balance and are able to clearly see yourself in all of your past, present, and future glory and pain, you will approach the world with a sincerity of purpose. You will have unlocked a floodgate of deliberate, investigated actions and words that are rooted in a place of self-understanding. You will still be on the receiving end of a lot of ire, and someone will inevitably flip you off in traffic, but if you can work to maintain the co-mingling of heart and mind, you will be your most genuine self.

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The Long Life of Past Experience

There is growing evidence that we don’t just pass on our smiles, our eye color, our heights, or our ability to sprint. We also share the knowledge of past experiences, deeply encoded in our RNA. And if there is a better reason to deal with your own hurt besides the knowledge of what you inadvertently pass on, I haven’t found it.

My daughter, Abigail, turned 8 this week, and it got me thinking about planarians, the flatworms that thrive in freshwater, saltwater, and in the soil of many continents. Someday, when she’s older, I’ll tell Abigail why she made me think of worms.

In the 1960s, a researcher named James McConnell led an effort to prove the biological process dubbed “memory transfer,” a chemical basis for memories that can be passed to offspring via flesh and RNA instead of the traditionally accepted full nervous system in which it was previously theorized memory lives.

McConnell, et al., exposed planarians to bright light and electric shock, cut them in half, and recorded the reactions of the regenerating worms. Brutal and hopefully disallowed by modern science, the experiments showed that we pass on intense pain and, more importantly, distinct knowledge to those we create. While many of McConnell’s peers rolled their eyes and poked holes in his findings, more recent scientific efforts have upheld the idea that not all memory is stored in the mind and we are, like the flatworms, passing along so many pieces of ourselves we don’t suspect.

Three years ago, scientists did a similar, if slightly more humane, experiment on snails and were able to transfer memory via RNA injections from sensitized hosts to test groups. This modern research goes hand-in-hand with writings on things like intergenerational trauma. The evidence has mounted that we are in many ways held captive by the pain of those who have gone before.

In 1966, Canadian psychiatrist Vivian M. Rakoff, MD and colleagues documented high rates of psychological distress among children of Holocaust survivors. In the years since, researchers have assessed anxiety, depression, and PTSD in trauma survivors and their progeny, with Holocaust survivors and their children the most widely studied longitudinally.

In the early 1980s, Yael Danieli, Ph.D., co-founder and director of the Group Project for Holocaust Survivors and Their Children in New York, identified at least four adaptive styles that she and others observed among Holocaust survivors. Examples include “victim,” people who have difficulty moving on from the original trauma and are emotionally volatile and overprotective, and “numb,” those who are emotionally detached, intolerant of weakness in others, and who maintain a “conspiracy of silence” within the family. Other styles include “fighter” and “those who made it.”

Whether the trauma that lives in your genetics is a holocaust, war, famine, alcoholism, or abuse, I believe in the unending power of consciousness. When we bring consciousness to things, especially things that are uncomfortable or challenging, we become empowered within them. So, there is no sense in burying the pain.

That is a spiritual principle borne out by science. The difference between what psychologists call post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic growth is our consciousness. Post-traumatic growth is the positive psychological change experienced as a result of struggling with highly challenging life circumstances. Psychologists insist that this “growth” does not occur as a direct result of trauma, but rather it is the individual’s struggle with the new reality in the aftermath of trauma that is crucial in determining the extent to which post-traumatic growth occurs. It demands the re-evaluation of one’s core beliefs, which has become one of my favorite exercises.

So snails and flatworms and my daughter.

My life is built around the study of change, the efforts guided by Kabbalah and a goal of never-ending evolution that will help me work to perfect myself. As I get older and, more apropos, as my children age, it becomes more clear that I am on this journey not just for myself. I recognized early on that I come from a line of people who suffered and had the consciousness of victims. I had to fight that tendency and choose a different consciousness. It is something I recommit to always choosing, as sometimes those moments of darkness creep back in.

I passed along a thousand years of horror and triumph and mediocrity and miracles to my kids, and that lives within them now. But I don’t believe that intergenerational passages and memories end with RNA and science. I believe that I can continue to illuminate their lives with each choice I make. They may be their own people with their own lives, but in a tight hug or wrapped in a blanket on movie night (current favorite on repeat in our house: Harry Potter), they still breathe in my cells and take a bit of me and my history and my ongoing journey with them.

That is me at my most positive. In darker moments, I have wondered if my early struggles with anorexia and fearfulness have somehow marred my progeny. I think that’s a worry that is nigh-universal for parents who know a bit about transferred memory and have taken the time to inventory their own concerns. But as I looked at Abigail on her birthday, cake frosting at the corners of her grin, I was recharged and calmed once more. I believe that there is a path through generational trauma and memory transfer. I believe as we better ourselves through fearless change, we can pass on wonders.

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Making Sense of Memory

How can our senses catapult us to the past and connect to our emotions in such sneaky ways?

“… I carried to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had let soften a bit of madeleine. But at the very instant when the mouthful of tea mixed with cake crumbs touched my palate, I quivered, attentive to the extraordinary thing that was happening inside me.” – In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust

That passage from Proust’s 1913 novel has been the subject of more than one college term paper and gave us the term “Proustian Moment” – a sensory experience that floods our minds and heart with memories we thought we had long forgotten or buried on purpose.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a Proustian moment of my own. In Los Angeles for my father’s shiva, my eldest daughter entered the room wearing one of Dad’s old jackets. As I embraced her, old familiar smells filled my nose, a jolt of electricity coursed through me, and tears ran down my face. I was suddenly twelve again, hugging him as he left for work. I was seventeen, falling asleep next to him on the sofa. I was twenty-two, talking about my upcoming wedding and discussing songs for the father-daughter dance. The scent of my father brought forth a kaleidoscope of images I haven’t accessed in ages. I suddenly became curious about the psychological and biological reasoning behind Proustian Moments.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History, in collaboration with the Harvard Brain Science Initiative, hosted a panel discussion titled “Olfaction in Science and Society” in 2020. The consensus among the professors and chairs was that smell and memory seem to be linked closely due to the brain’s anatomy.

As Colleen Walsh wrote, reporting on the event: “Smells are handled by the olfactory bulb, the structure in the front of the brain that sends information to the other areas of the body’s central command for further processing. Odors take a direct route to the limbic system, including the amygdala and the hippocampus, the regions related to emotion and memory. ‘The olfactory signals very quickly get to the limbic system,’ Murthy said.”

Of course, any time science realizes how we function on a primal level, someone is trying to make a buck off of it. Colognes and perfumes can immediately snap us back to an old flame. Olfactory branding agencies will often advise hotels and corporate offices to pump their own signature scents through a building’s air ducts to help guests and clients connect on an emotional level with a brand.

Dawn Goldworm, a co-founder of one of those agencies, explains on her website that Nike’s signature scent, for example, was partially inspired by the smell of a rubber basketball sneaker as it scrapes across the court and a soccer cleat in grass and dirt. Her stated goal is to create “immediate and memorable connections between brands and consumers.”

Goldworm says that smell is the only fully-developed sense a fetus has in the womb, and it’s the one that is the most developed in a child until around the age of 10 when sight takes over. Since “smell and emotion are stored as one memory,” said Goldworm, childhood is when you create “the basis for smells you will like and hate for the rest of your life.”

Everything in life has a meaning, a reflective representation of greater and lesser things. Far too often, we walk through the world, undervaluing our experiences and exchanges. When we fail to engage fully, we allow ourselves to not take full responsibility for our actions, and we miss out on so much life has to offer. But if you work to connect the dots, conscious and subconscious, entire worlds will open up to you.

Hence why the old familiar smells of my father’s jacket did such a number on me that day. It was a perfect union of familiarity, the sting of a fresh loss, and a connection to some of the happiest moments of my life with a kind and wonderful man. I have had those moments before. I’ve written about the sound of his briefcase clasps snapping open and shut HERE, but I never thought to read up on the why until now.

As much as faceless corporations try to subtly influence our connection and behavior, there is no substitute for the musty oak beams in your childhood home, the sickly-sweet grease stains in the carport from your first apartment, the citrus shampoo that your ex-girlfriend used, or the tattered leather jacket of a loved one.

RETHINK MOMENT: When’s the last time you spent a day consciously aware of the smells of the world around you? How often do you think a stray smell triggered a memory and you didn’t realize it?

The post Making Sense of Memory appeared first on Monica Berg.

Shavuot: Holding the Eternal

If Death were no obstacle, how could we allow ourselves to accomplish anything less than miracles?

I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. A month has come and gone since my father’s passing, so that makes sense. I’ve been looking at it as a spiritual and psychological process, rarely slipping into morbidity. As Shavuot approaches, my thoughts veer toward Death with a capital D, the unseen force that not only affects the physical body but is also responsible for the demise of relationships, prosperity, and happiness itself. But Shavuot isn’t about Death. It is about the Revelation of an undying energy that has existed since the dawn of humankind. It is about standing in the totality of the Creator’s Light, and in that flame, Death doesn’t stand a chance.

And then along comes Eckhart Tolle.

“Death is the stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’ — and find that there is no death.” – Eckhart Tolle

I had to re-read that line twice as I revisited The Power of Now. Each time I see it in unyielding type, I think of another way it applies to me and, most likely, all of us. We get attached. It’s normal and human and rooted in our DNA that helped us evolve into a species that values its old and young alike and gain the perspectives of both.

But evolution can go too far sometimes. It can lead us to a place that works physically but hampers us spiritually. Great Buddhist teachers have pontificated on attachment and its ability to lash us to the lives that we can see and experience in a tactile sense, depriving us of something far more profound.

Tolle described a Death that is useful, but I think the power of Shavuot grants us a way to supercharge that detachment and “stripping away” as we find ourselves in a place much more unified to our Source at this time of year.

I rarely quote two people in my blogs, but David Foster Wallace, in his commencement speech at Kenyon College, elaborated on just this point:

“In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already—it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.”

And that’s it, isn’t it? We get so connected to these concepts of what we strive for and what we think we love that we forget to put in the work to truly elevate ourselves, and we run out of our limited time on Earth.

Karen Berg liked to tell the story of when God wanted to give the Torah to the people at Shavuot. The angels became angry and said to God: “Why would you want to give the Torah to people? To finite beings that are corrupt, mean, and do all the negative things that finite beings do?”

And God answered the angels: “My beloveds, you were put into this world to do my bidding with no free will of your own. These finite beings which I have created were given the ability to choose between Light and darkness. This is a tool I have given to them to bring their souls back to me, so that they may appreciate the harmony that can exist in the total unity of the Creator and the created.”

Shavuot is a window that allows us to tap into a unique energy that can help us choose between Light and darkness. It is an opportunity to touch immortality; to choose to live in unadulterated truth, growth, and change. It is a moment to shed everything that is not us and receive a Revelation of what we can be when we are fully connected to the divine.

So, what are we doing with this moment of energetic cohesion?

RETHINK MOMENT: What part of yourself can you detach from to become the person you want to be?

The post Shavuot: Holding the Eternal appeared first on Monica Berg.

New Moon of Gemini – Crossing the Desert With Your Twin

We all have an instinct for what Gemini means, and some of you (looking at my single female friends now who consistently swipe left on Geminis) think it’s all bad news.

There is a duality that pervades the energy of this New Moon that is exciting and useful, and that bifurcation is something I very much enjoy diving into this time each year. I hope that these New Moon writings gain as much traction as my other blogs and posts, as I believe that the more people who participate and put effort toward something outside of ourselves, the more we can manifest creative energy.

Let’s start with desire and effort. Flip sides of the same coin. These two concepts, melded together, contain a prerequisite for drawing Light, blessings, and available opportunities. As the kabbalists teach, these times we mark by moons and holy days are inextricably bound to times in which revelations were made in the distant past. And if you hold to the teachings of the Bible or simply love a good calendar, this is the time when the Jews fled Egypt and entered the desert.

I dislike the desert and have since childhood. If camped in one for a few days, a sense of worry and unease falls over me. I used to question this feeling and possibly judge it a little. Most people love the desert, and as an outdoor-loving, sporty person, I wondered why I felt so uneasy. Imagine my delight when I discovered the Zohar backs me up on this. It asks why things don’t grow in the desert and answers by saying it is the place where negativity reigns. You get the feeling that this is a place the Light would flee from you… well, I do anyway.

But the opposite is true. Just as the revelation at Sinai happened in the middle of the desert, many of our greatest shifts and changes happen smack dab in the midst of our own proverbial deserts.

If we desire the greenest oases in our lives (a perfect partner, a career we love, enlightenment…), we must cross years of hard, blistering sand to reach them. The desert is a metaphorical representation of the low points of our lives. The desert is a lonely, hard-scrabble place we do not want to be, but it is a necessity. So, the first question of this New Moon is, obviously, how much time am I willing to spend in my own desert? The Zohar tells us that the Israelites couldn’t have received the Light they did anywhere else in the world, save a place devoid of Light and life; the most difficult place. So, each time we turn away from the places, people, and things that make us the most uncomfortable, those are the moments we potentially give up on our desires and ultimately our growth.

Since we’re in the New Moon of Gemini, let’s talk about the second gift of this month. Hint: it’s tied to the zodiac sign of Gemini itself: two equal beings. You and the you that you want to be. You and your lover or friend. You and the Creator. The Zohar says that a person doing the spiritual work, transforming, helping, and sharing, is in effect creating the Creator. By entering the desert and putting in the effort to evolve, you are actually manifesting the Light that you wish to receive.

That’s the secret of the twins of Gemini. We are the imperfect creature clawing our way toward perfection and the perfected self, waiting with open arms. Our relationship with God, the Universe, or if you prefer, the Great North Wind that made the Vikings, is a relationship of twins. We are not merely connecting to the Light; we are helping to create it.

Back to the desert. We often don’t focus on being an active participant in creating the Light when things are going our way. We have a tendency (after all, we’re only human) to think that when we need that boost from the universal source that we will simply up our game. It doesn’t work like that, and our occasional sojourns in the deserts of our lives can remind us of that. Simply being kind for a day or holding your tongue in an argument may seem like a great deal of work for some, but when you are trying to fill a wellspring in an arid world, it’s clear that so much more is required. We shouldn’t wait to fill that reservoir of Light until we need it. Think of it as finding a dress for a party you haven’t been invited to yet.

My son, David, was driving through a literal desert on his way from Los Angeles to Arizona when he, unfortunately, received an object lesson in this abstract idea. Cruising along the highways (at the speed limit, I’m sure), a rock suddenly smashed through the windshield of his car, showering him in glass. In shock, his first thought was that someone had aimed at him from the side of the road. One could assume that filled him with a mixture of anger and fear, the classic sense of “why me…what did I do to deserve this?” But his next thought, in his own words, was: “this is a wake-up call.” He realized he needed a full reservoir to handle unforeseen situations like this.

The twins of Gemini remind us of the duality that exists in each of us; the want and the wanting to simply partake without the effort. But the twins also remind us that we are partners in making the world – and the life that we live – better than we found it. Hopefully, Gemini will help you feel a little less lonely on that journey.

RETHINK MOMENT: Using your twinship with your Source, how can you double down on your efforts to achieve a life worth living and make your desert bloom?

The post New Moon of Gemini – Crossing the Desert With Your Twin appeared first on Monica Berg.

Being Your Best By Doing Nothing: A Journey Into Non-Time

If I asked you to do nothing for fifteen minutes, could you?

I’m going to let you in on a secret: I’m writing my next book. It is a long, arduous, fulfilling process that makes me indescribably happy and keeps me up late at night. Don’t ask when it will be done; it’s a book, not an apple strudel.

In the stretch since my previous project, Rethink Love, I have evolved in countless ways and grown as a person and an author. One of the ways in which I have solidified my process, and perhaps more importantly found a name for that part, is in the concept of non-time.

Albert Einstein was a theoretical physicist. I am a change junkie. His thesis, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions, is nothing like what my book will be. He broke apart, in his mind, journals, and gargantuan chalkboards, the very fabric of space-time. I dive into the wonders of the universe from a spiritual springboard and try to enlighten the people around me and the readers of my blogs and books.

Many of Einstein’s greatest ideas came to him while bobbing along the water in his 23’ sailboat on a breezeless afternoon. Contrary to popular opinion, Steve Jobs was an exceptional procrastinator, given to daydreaming and seemingly absent noodling on ideas that would revolutionize work and play. They both excelled in the field of idea incubation, utilizing something researchers have come to call “non-time.” This is where I want to take a page from both Jobs’ and Einstein’s books.

I don’t sail. I work out two hours a day, six days a week. During exercise classes, my thoughts sometimes break through, shouting that I really ought to be at my desk punching keys or scribbling furiously on a legal pad, but it’s during those workouts that I get most of my best ideas. I even carry a small journal to jot ideas, connections, and stories that come to me in my non-time.

These moments of deliberate lack of creative effort are, I’ve found, integral to my work. I believe that the best, most important things I have to say are inspired and honed by a connection to my Source. Whether Einstein believed the same about his work on general relativity or not, we all can benefit from moments of withdrawal from the constant pressure to perform and a connection to the stillness of the world beyond.

And that’s what I want for you. I want to encourage you to take a moment to allow yourself to let go of the demand that our world puts on us to churn out content. The perfect analogy of imperfection is the Twitch streamer who loses followers if she isn’t Live fifteen hours a day. She is the ultimate exponent of the culture we’ve created that equates our worth with the time of our lives we are obviously and clearly productive. But the research into non-time by neuroscientists like David Strayer runs counter-intuitive to that toxic concept of always-on, always-producing, always-talking.

David Strayer, a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in multi-tasking, did a fascinating study of Outward Bound students. He gave half of a group of hikers a creativity quiz prior to sending them backpacking into the wilderness. The other half were tested on their fourth day in, cleansed of their screens and the pressures of the material world to post, comment, and like. The second group scored a whopping 50% better on the Remote Associates Test, which asks people to identify word associations that aren’t immediately obvious, than the first cohort, suggesting scientific proof to what many of us instinctively know: we are better, more creative, and more in tune with the universe and our place in it when we allow ourselves the room to unplug.

Strayer chalked up his findings to several things: exposure to nature, strenuous exercise, and electronic abandonment. These are all wonderful elements of non-time. Non-time is a chance to sit in silence or a maddening crowd without the expectation of performance. We are giving ourselves leeway to think or not, to connect or not, in order to warm ourselves in the Light to which we belong without the stress of being “on.”

I believe non-time is useful for writing my next book. I believe it is useful in a kitchen remodel. I believe it is useful in the soft skills of parenting and loving your partner fully and finishing a crossword puzzle.

The greatest function of our brains is not thinking or creating new worlds. Our minds are incredibly adept filters. Without volition, they sort through (in my case) decades of information, input, memories, and knowledge. Giving your brain brief stretches of non-time allows it to synthesize and incubate ideas that would otherwise go unexplored. When you’ve given your mind (and ideally, your spirit, heart, and soul) a chance to breathe, it can and will reward you with your own “Eureka!” moment, as Jessica Stillman wrote in Inc.com.

But here’s my word of warning. Non-time is not the sole key to success. Einstein, Jobs, you, and I must feed our minds and souls constantly so that in those moments of blissful window-staring, the subconscious has tinker toys to construct, crash, and rebuild into new and exciting worlds. We are made to expend effort creating a more perfect life and more perfect versions of ourselves. I’m simply taking solace in the fact – and hope that you do as well – that occasionally our effort can appear effortless.

RETHINK MOMENT: What are you doing to recharge? And when was the last time your efforts to recharge felt like, well, effort?

The post Being Your Best By Doing Nothing: A Journey Into Non-Time appeared first on Monica Berg.