Critical or Calm?

There's an old expression - "Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy?". 

Something similar can be asked in regard to the practice of calm. 

When I criticise people, places or things, I do find that it can lead to agitation. Especially if I verbalise this to others - and even more so if the criticism is about them! In conversation with a friend today, we talked about how easy it is to turn our criticism on others when we might actually need to be looking more closely at ourselves.

This reminded me of a great little card handed out by 12 Step Programs like AA. People can keep these in their pockets as a reminder of how they can stay spiritually on track - one day at a time. This is one of my favourite lines from that "Just For Today" card:

Just for today I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress becomingly, keep my voice low, be courteous, criticize not one bit. I won’t find fault with anything, nor try to improve or regulate anybody but myself.

Being courteous and avoiding criticism are two things you can do to choose calm today. Trying to change anyone but yourself is such an anti-calm thing to do! If you have nothing nice to say try saying nothing or, better still, find something nice or positive to say if you can. It trains your brain to run along a different track, creating more positive thoughts, energy and acceptance.

When people feel less judged and more accepted you'll probably find they're calmer around you too. Again, it is clear to see that calm is contagious. So, let's spread it!


I'm going to try it now:

Thanks for reading and by the way you look fabulous today :)

Could Calm be Contagious?

In the recent series Making Australia Happy there was some discussion about how we can catch a mood - or pass one on. In fact their website even has a Happiness Map.And you can find out more about these kinds of projects under the Happy Planet Index. 

I'm going to ask myself: "What mood do I want to pass on?" I noticed today as I drove in peak hour traffic in Melbourne that I was cranky about someone cutting in - but then I realised I could choose not to be. So I did. Nice :)

The University of Cambridge has this great article about mood mapping across geographies.... It makes me wonder.... can we create States of Serenity, Precincts of Peace, Neighbourhoods of Niceness, what about entire Countries of Calm? Yes! It appears we can. Let's try it.

Mapping personality types across countries ....

Ongoing research by Dr Jason Rentfrow, at the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, and Dr Sam Gosling, at the University of Texas, aims to examine geographic variation in personality. In a large-scale project partially funded by the US National Science Foundation (NSF), data collected by online survey from over three-quarters of a million individuals in the USA revealed that personalities are not randomly distributed but are clustered into distinct geographic patterns.