Marjorie R. Barlow, Ph.D.

Someone asked for my latest reading list. Here are the books Paul and I are studying these days:

1. Prairie Home Companion Pretty Good Joke Book for the laughs.

2. The Living Universe by Duane Elgin, which gets us into cosmic thinking.

3. The Spontaneous Healing of Beliefs by Gregg Braden provokes us to examine our beliefs.

4. The Art of Extreme Self Care by Cheryl Richardson is her latest book on self-care and self-love.

5. The Heavens Declare, The Dove in the Stone, and The Web in the Sea by Alice O. Howell, whose lovely grandmotherly approach to all things of the soul are juicy treasures to read. She is my favorite Jungian writer on Astrology, which I am still studying. After 10 or more years, I know little.

6. In preparation for Laurence Hillman’s workshop at Red Corral Ranch in September, I am reviewing old books on Astrology: The New Way to Learn Astrology by Basil Fearrington and Intuitive Astrology by Elizabeth Rose Campbell. Alignments and Planets at Play by Laurence himself.

7. Living Your Strengths by Winseman and Clifton and How Full Is Your Bucket? By Don Clifton and Tom Rath, and Strengths Leadership by Rath are ongoing books I use in Strengths Coaching for Interface Flor, Inc.  and others.

8. The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein (How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future) is comfort for parents of the under 20-age group.

9. Excuses Begone! By Wayne Dyer summarizes what I am coming to believe—that our beliefs actually create our life. Another book that lead me to that thinking is The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton.

10. Breakthrough by Suzanne Somers enlightens us on the need for bio-identical hormone therapy.

11. If It’s Not Food, Don’t Eat It! Is a no-nonsense guide to an eating-for-health lifestyle, which we are attempting to follow.

That same person who asked about our reading list, wanted to know how we manage the time to read all these books. One of my top five Strengths is “learner” and that makes reading or any kind of knowledge very motivational to me. I hunger to learn and pursue learning like it is candy. So, any trip to a good bookstore is like a trip to a candy store. We have evolved into routines that support reading and study. Just as homework was a part of early school life, so the continual learning cycle is a daily process. Our schedule simply includes books. Some of the above we are literally reading to each other. Some we read in solitude. Our morning looks like this: 6:30 rise and shine, then our daily 7:00 a.m. apple and coffee or tea while we read and journal. Then breakfast and exercise. We both get to our work at around 9 or 10 a.m. Lunch is separate and on our own. Afternoons, Paul works on his Play Therapy project and I take calls. At 5:00 we stop for Happy Hour, which may be a glass of wine or cold water. The day ends with dinner and a walk around the neighborhood. Ideally we play a game of cards at 9 p.m. and go on to bed by 10:30.

So, there you have a day in the life of Paul and Marj Barlow at our new home in Buda, Texas. I would love to read about your day, also. I am so happy when I get to know you better. Thanks for reading this and I am hoping you will respond.

How is your portfolio doing?  If your 401K looks like mine, it has been severely reduced in the last few weeks.  I am looking at a different kind of portfolio.  This one is suggested in a brilliant new book, POSITIVITY, by Barbara Fredericks, Ph.D., who deals in research into positive psychology.  That is right down my alley, since I am totally convinced that the Strengths-Based approach is the best way to go through life.

The Economic Portfolio can be very different from an Emotional Portfolio.  What if you also kept files on your emotions?  And, especially on your positive emotions?  Fredericks shows us how to do that in her book.  So, I am today setting up an Emotional 401K, with shares that are named Joy, Gratitude, Serenity, Interest, Hope, Pride, Amusement, Inspiration, Awe, and Love.  Out of that will come more expansion in my mind and my imagination.  It will also bring forth more creativity, not to mention better feeling tones.  The charts can plot my experience on a daily, minute-by-minute flow.  Gratitude is easy to keep in the upper levels.  Amusement is a great emotional stock for everything tragic can also be quite comical.  Serenity can be purchased with meditative thinking….  You get the gist of this, I hope.

Make your own chart of emotions and remember, you can choose the positive ones.  All it takes is to change your thinking and your believing!  Yes, that’s hard to do, but in this day of worry and stress, it is worth the doing.

Most of our friends and family know that Paul and I read a lot of books.  Every day, we begin with our daily apple, green tea or coffee, and a delicious reading from many interesting books.  Yes, we read out loud to each other, and sometimes get caught in long discussions that make for a later breakfast.

I like Duane Elgin’s books.  Two of them are, “Promise Ahead” and “Voluntary Simplicity”.  In the first, he describes our evolutionary growth as a human species.  We are near the end of our adolescence and just might grow up in time to save our planet from an evolutionary crash.  He says we could even have an evolutionary bounce!  I like that and want to do my part in making sure we bounce instead of crash.

In Voluntary Simplicity, I like the questions on consumption:

1. Does what I own or buy induce and promote activity, self reliance and involvement, or does it invite passivity and dependence?

2. Are my consumption patterns providing basic satisfaction–or do I buy much that I don’t really need?

3. How tied are my job, my life, and my life style to installment payments, repairs and maintenance, costs, and the expectations of others?

4. Do I consider the impact of my consumption patterns to other people and the whole earth.

Thinking on these things, I came to a nice conclusion: Our life is active, involved, satisfying, and increasingly responsible in a sustainable way for this earth.  Nice to ponder what more we can do to add to sustainable living.

for relationships, (by Harville Hendrix)
Getting The Love You Want

Keeping The Love You Find

Receiving Love

for conscientious parents, (by Hendrix and Hunt)
Giving The Love That Heals

for Strengths Coaches:

Positive Psychology Coaching (by Deiner and Dean)

How Full Is Your Bucket? (by Tom Rath)

StrengthsFinder 2.0 (by Tom Rath)

Vital Friends (by Tom Rath)

Authentic Happiness (by Martin Seligman)

Now, Discover Your Strengths (by Donald O. Clifton and M. Buckingham)

for managers:

First, Break All The Rules (by Buckingham and Coffman)

The One Thing You Need To Know (by Marcus Buckingham)

12–The Elements of Great Managing (Wagner and Harter)

Presence (by Peter Senge and others)

Theory U (by Otto Scharmer)

for anyone wanting to organize “stuff” at the office, home, and life:

Getting Things Done (by David Allen)

For personal self growth and goal achievement:

All the Abraham-Hicks books (especially “The Amazing Power of Intention”)

For women who want to understand feminine psychology:

Goddesses in Everywoman (by Jean Shinoda Bolen)

The Millionth Circle (by Bolen)

Crones Don’t Whine (by Bolen)

by Alice O. Howell:

The Dove in the Stone

Jungian Symbolism in Astrology

The Web in the Sea

Jungian Synchronicity in Astrological Signs and Ages