Hedy's Blog: handwriting

Look at the t bars above. Do you have a sense of which of them indicates the writer will accomplish her goals?

You’ve probably noticed that your handwriting has changed over time, may change with your moods, and is like no one else’s. Handwriting is a direct reflection of your energy at the time you write, it reflects your emotions, your health, your personality traits, and your issues. Graphotherapy is a way of changing your life by changing your handwriting. While it’s complicated and shouldn’t be attempted by novices, there is one aspect of it that is easily applied to affirmations which can really boost their effectiveness.

You probably know how feeling or visualizing the affirmation as being the case right now adds power. You may even know that writing affirmations by hand at bedtime can boost effectiveness. However, how you write them can make a big difference. Just as speaking affirmations like you believe them programs your subconscious to think they are already the case, writing them that way works, too.

The way you cross you t’s tells about your goals and your will power. Think of t crossings as the path to your goal. Is your path straight, wide and clear?

If you cross your t’s quite low on the t stem, you may be setting goals mainly to avoid failure, unless you’ve recently achieved a major goal and are resting for a while. If you cross t’s midway up the stem, the way you may have been taught, you set achievable goals that require you to stretch a bit. If they are high, that shows you like challenges and are shooting for high goals. If a few of your t bars are above the stem, it’s the sign of a visionary who looks ahead and sees possibilities. If it’s many, you may be out of touch with reality, unrealistic about your goals, like someone 5'3" planning on becoming a pro basketball player. It's really daydreaming.

So, when you cross the t’s on your affirmations, make sure they are not too low or too high. If they are, you might want to rethink your goals or how you are thinking about your goals.

If you find you are lowering the bar, or your bars are weak, you may also want to consider whether you are having too hard a time believing your affirmations. Sometimes it can help to start with “I choose to,” “I am willing to,” “I am becoming,” or “I am starting to,” then when you feel more empowered go to "I am/have," etc.

Even more important is the pressure and length you use to cross your t’s. The length indicates your staying power, enthusiasm. The pressure indicates the energy you have to get to your goal and withstand pressure. Pressure that starts strong and fades indicates someone who starts strong, but fades before completion or loses energy and interest.

A long, firm t bar is a sign of a dynamic will of someone who will put great effort to get what she wants. A bowed t bar indicates a feeling of pressure from outside, an inability to stay the course or resist outside influences. Cross your t’s firmly, straight, and with significant length. As you do it, you will feel a sense of belief, determination and empowerment. Just as you would not say an affirmation in a weak, doubting voice, don’t writing in a weak way. Either can program your subconscious to doubt. How we do things is vital. Saying affirmations or writing them without sufficient energy won't convince your subconscious. Cross your t's strongly for a clear path to success!

If you need to know more about affirmations, see Amy’s wonderful video.

Namaste,
Hedy
Awareness Transforms
The Relationship Dance Community

Sciencists say that you can’t really multitask. Sure you can walk and talk, and maybe even chew gum at the same time, but what they are talking about is attention, not those tasks you can do on automatic. You can just switch your attention more or less quickly from one thing to another.

Ok, so it just looks like multitasking when it’s really fast, but science has found some interesting things about your ability to quickly switch, and we’ll call it multitasking to make it easy. Clearly some people do it better than others. Women do it better, science shows, when having to listen to more than one thing at the same time, perhaps because we have a thicker corpus callossum connection. Women tend to be more accurate than men, while being just as productive, when they have to switch/multitask.

People between 20 and 40 are best at this. Kids, as any parent can attest, have a hard time keeping more than one thing in their mind at a time. They get so engrossed in the moment. Older people have trouble limiting the number of thoughts in their heads, perhaps because they have so many associations. However, individuals vary greatly in their abilities to multitask, regardless of age.

Handwriting does give clues to how good you are at being attentive to multiple cues, which is related. Piani and Company has worked with corporations for over thirty years, and we’ve noticed that there is a handwriting indicator that shows, unless there are counter signs in the writing, like slow writing, for example, how good a person is at multitasking.

That’s because to switch, you have to be aware that there’s something to switch to in the first place, be very aware of your whole environment. It’s like having a wide angle lens vs. a telephoto lens. Each lens has its advantages, depending on the situation and what you want to do about it, but for multitasking, you need the wide angle to notice what’s going on in your overall environment, not just the task at hand. The larger you write, in general, the wider your lens, and the more quickly you will be able to switch your attention, so the overall size of your writing is an important component of your multitasking quotient.

You may have noticed that when you are really concentrated on something, sometimes taking notes on a difficult subject, your writing may get smaller. You are devoting almost all your attention to what you are doing. You may have known some people who can be so engrossed in what they are doing that they won’t notice the house burning until their clothes catch fire. They write small or have been smoking something illegal.

However, take heart! Spiritual masters teach the importance of doing one thing at a time, being fully present in the moment, and you really can’t do that quickly, however good you are at multitasking. So multitasking may add to your efficiency at some tasks, but it won’t lead to bliss!

I’m off on a two week combination business/pleasure trip on the 31st, so I may not be able to reply to your comments quickly, but I will get back to you, one at a time.

Namaste,
Hedy
Awareness Transforms
The Relationship Dance Community

Kelly came to me panicked. For financial reasons, she had limited time to finish her dissertation, but the chair of her committee was acting as if she hated Kelly, refusing to talk with her, one of the other members was unavailable, while the third was siding with the chair!

As a former professor in a field related to Kelly's, I saw that Kelly had a good topic and reasonable approach that only needed some modifications. However, Kelly said that Alice, the chair, was refusing to help Kelly when Kelly went to her for guidance and accusing Kelly of wanting Alice to "do it for her" when Kelly tried to get help and feedback.

Kelly was at her wit's end. She had chosen her committee purely for their connections, which she hoped would help her in getting a job. While that was a consideration, she might have done better with a mix of people who really wanted to nurture students and those who had connections. Kelly said she had to finish the first part of her dissertation before she could get a new committee, and she had some people in mind. So the problem was, in Kelly's mind, how to appease the dragon (Alice) so she could escape.

Kelly had also chosen Alice because Alice had given Kelly straight A's on all her papers when Kelly had been in her classes, albeit with lots of criticisms. Kelly, a busy single mother, had done these papers pretty quickly, and was a bit surprised to get such good grades. That made her think that with more effort, she'd do really well with Alice. She couldn't understand what had happened.

Kelly had good social skills and reported tactful communications with Alice, so that led me to think of trait behavior. Fortunately, Alice had written a lot on Kelly's typed papers, and I had Kelly write me a sample write of her own immediately. When I saw it, I started laughing. It was so clear what the major problem was.

Kelly was an Interactive Thinker and Alice was her opposite, a Quiet Thinker. These traits are behind an enormous number of misunderstandings at work and at home. A trait is a habitual way of perceiving and behaving, and we assume that however we see and behave is the normal, right way to do it. "Normal is what I am."

Interactive Thinkers, like Kelly, need to develop their ideas through interaction, usually with others, but sometimes by writing (many drafts). They have to get their ideas out in the air to formulate, develop and screen them -- to figure out which ideas are worth further work and which should be dropped.

Quiet Thinkers do this entire process in their heads. They never say a word until they have the idea in its final form, ready for implementation. In meetings, they don't say a word until they've decided exactly what should be done, and when they say something, they mean they are ready to do it NOW.

Each trait has it's positive and negative side, depending on the situation. (You can read more about that in the chapter I've put in the document files in The Relationship Dance.) However, it's always a difficult situation when you are dealing with someone with the opposite trait and don't recognize what's going on!

Now it was clear to me why Alice viewed Kelly as asking Alice to Kelly's work. Alice, as a Quiet Thinker, fully developed all her ideas by herself in her head, and never mentioned them until they were ready for implementation. Alice worked everything out by herself before presenting it, and when she presented it, she felt she'd done her best and people should act on it or react to it.

Kelly mentioned ideas when they were in the seed stage, where ideas sometimes can look strange, and wanted to talk about them. Interactive thinkers love batting ideas around, and sometimes it's not clear that those ideas are directly relevant to the issue at hand.

Alice would think that Kelly had half baked ideas and wanted Alice to complete them for her. She probably thought Kelly was incompetent and wasting Alice's time. After all, any normal person (like Alice) wouldn't present something until it was complete and ready for action. Alice would not want to develop her ideas by talking to anyone else. Presenting an idea before it was ready for prime time is, to a Quiet Thinker, lazy, irresponsible, or stupid. (When people don't do things they way we would, we tend to assume the worst reasons for their behavior.)

Kelly didn't want Alice to get Kelly's ideas ready for implementation, she just wanted Alice to listen, bat ideas around with her, and tell her when she was off track. Interactive Thinkers also need Quiet Thinkers to help keep them focused and on track.

When you understand trait behavior, people with opposite traits are actually helpful to each other. For example, Interactive Thinkers can help Quiet Thinkers by pointing out possibilities they might not have considered, and Interactive Thinkers often are good at long term planning.

When Kelly had submitted those papers she'd thought weren't really fully ready, they'd been presented to Alice as fully ready, so Alice believed Kelly had done it right by presenting something fully worked out (her way) and Alice would comment on them. Kelly had never asked Alice to discuss the papers while they were in progress.

It was now clear what Kelly needed to do: only present Alice with products that appeared finished for comment. But Kelly desperately wanted someone to talk with. She'd always talked with a friend before, but the friend had died the previous year.

She couldn't think of anyone who would be appropriate, until she suddenly remembered a neighbor of hers, a professor in a related field, who had seemed very interested in Kelly's topic. She could interact with Kelly so that Kelly could feel comfortable in developing her ideas before she went to her committee and just ask them for their reactions to a finished product.

Now Kelly understood what she needed to succeed. She plans on asking the neighbor for some time and looking for other people with similar interests for interaction. For her new committee, she'll will choose at least one Interactive Thinker.

There are many aspects to these traits. They also explain people's different reactions to and behavior in meetings, and why some people love meetings and others hate them.

You can read more about these traits in the document files on The Relationship Dance, where I've posted the entire chapter from our book, Trait Secrets.

Namaste,
Hedy
Awareness Transforms
The Relationship Dance Community