Feel Good

The list started last week of Classic Feel Good Songs for helping you pick yourself up off the ground, dust yourself off, and shake - shake - shake your booty. In fact, that sounds like a perfect track to start us off, again in no particular order:

11.  “Shake Your Booty” - KC & the Sunshine Band

12. “Blue Skies” - Irving Berlin

13. “Greatest Love of All” - Whitney Houston

14. “We Are the World” - Michael Jackson & Lionel Richie (songwriters)/USA for Africa (performers)

15.”All Night Long” - Lionel Richie

16.”Rhythm of the Night” - DeBarge

17. “Smile” - Nat King Cole

18. “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” - McFadden & Whitehead

19. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” -Rodgers & Hammerstein (songwriters)/Elvis Presley (performer)

20. “Holiday” - Madonna

Add these 10 Classic Feel Good Songs to your iPod. In fact, why not start a Feel Good Playlist beginning with these 10 songs and the first 10 from last week? Then every day could be a little more of a holiday (or at least have a little more holiday in it).

10 More Classic Feel Good Songs: 21-30 coming next Friday.

Why does triumph of victory feel so good?

In part because of a glorious function of the human brain that releases a neurotransmitter called Dopamine to “reward” us for achieving objectives we set for ourselves.

(Bear with me here. This is not going to be a dry science lesson, but rather a quick fix to feeling down that you can do pretty much anytime!)

Dopamine actually serves many functions in the human brain, but the one that interests us here involves the Pleasure Principle, or our natural inclination to seek out pleasure and avoid pain.

Unlike all those drugs that you have to ingest to feel good, dopamine is a feel good drug that’s perfectly legal, because it’s produced by your own brain! (which means it’s also FREE)

When you set a goal for yourself - be it something huge like getting into college or landing a raise at your job, or something simple like cleaning your room or finishing your homework - once that goal is reached, your brain is flooded with this neurochemical as a sort of reward-mechanism to motivate and encourage you to set and achieve more goals.

So how can you use this knowledge to make yourself feel good at will?

Simply set yourself an easily achievable goal -

and achieve it!

If you’re like me and you create To-Do lists all the time to keep yourself on track, then here’s a way you can maximize your efficiency and effectiveness in completing all the items on your list while enjoying the process of productivity more than ever before.

Just do the easiest tasks first.

Try organizing your list not in order of priority, but in order of ease. Start your day by clearing off the easiest items on your list, and with each completion your brain will get a nice little flood of Dopamine, making you feel good and accomplished, and inspiring you to press forward and complete more of your goals.

By the time you get to the more complex and involved tasks on your list (maybe the ones you’ve been avoiding or procrastinating for far too long) you’ll be so energized by this Dopamine effect that you’ll be ready and rarin’ to go!

That’s why scratching off items on a To-Do list (or highlighting them or checking them off - however you prefer to do it) feels so darned good!

Be warned, however - Dopamine can be addictive. So if you don’t want to get anywhere, do anything, or be the best You that you can be, then maybe this tip isn’t for you. Maybe wallowing in miserable laziness is the better option.

For me, though, I’m going to post this blog ASAP so I can get that next pleasurable rush of brain juice.

So says The Steve Miller Band and I wholeheartedly agree.

Like most of the country (and probably most of you reading this) Curry and I have come on some hard times lately. There’s a lot to be stressed about in the air, I think we can all agree (which is why I believe this blog is so needed, but I digress…)

We were both feeling particularly down about our situation and were completely worn out from discussing it to death. Emotional exhaustion best describes it, I think. (sound familiar?)

After we spent far too long stewing in our own mess, slumped in our respective seats staring off sullenly into space, Curry stood up and turned on some music: Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” as it so happened.

And out of nowhere, the two of us stood up, walked to the center of the lanai floor (lanai is a porch) and started dancing. The smiles on our faces came almost instantaneously as we flailed about. Before long, we couldn’t shake those smiles if we tried.

We only danced for that one song, but that’s all it took. Our spirits were lifted. We went on about our evening in much better moods, far more able to appreciate what we’ve got and relax a little about any imagined urgency we may have had. And last night, we both slept like babies.

So the next time you’re feeling down- or right now, perhaps, give it a try.

Get up and dance! 

You’ll be surprised how much better you’ll feel, almost instantly.

Yesterday, when I came home from work, my partner Curry (yes, Sage and Curry – no lie) told me that he had done about 20 push-ups that day. He hasn’t done any intentional exercise like that in a while (nor have I), and many people would dismiss his inspired burst as generally inconsequential to his health.

But boy did he feel good about it when he was telling me!

We all know regular exercise is one of the sure-fire ways to feel good. But that doesn’t make it any easier to commit to. To fit into our already swamped daily schedule. Who has that kind of time, or energy? Am I right?

The thing is that too many of us assume that unless we do a half-hour or more of exercise, several times a week, then we’re not really getting any benefit. We’re wasting our time and it’s just not worth it.

But that’s just not true.

Try this more realistic approach to exercise:

Do what you can, when you can.

That’s all we can ever ask of ourselves anyway. It’s far more reasonable to expect ourselves to throw a little exercise into our day than it is to create and stick to a full-fledged fitness regimen, for example:

• 5 minutes of jumping jacks, for example
• or a few push-ups
• or a quick trot or bicycle ride around the block

So for goodness sakes, take the pressure off yourself!

Don’t sabotage yourself from the myriad feel good benefits of exercise just because you’ve got no discipline  (most of us are in the same boat). Or because you’ve got no space to workout, or money to go join a gym.

Just do what you can, when you can. It all helps. Every little bit.

Just a few minutes here, a few minutes there. When you think of it:

• on a coffee break
• while waiting for water to boil
• during a commercial break on TV

And when you don’t do it, DON’T  beat yourself up for it. That does you (or your likelihood of exercising in the future) no good at all.

Don’t kid yourself. And don’t unduly pressure yourself.

Every little bit of exercise you do really does make a difference.