Category: ALL POSTS

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Ninja NY and TOMB Boston

Posted on by Senia

I’m a huge fan of interactive entertainment, i.e. fun with real activities. Here are two great places.

1) I’ve been here and love to take my friends here. This is TOMB, an interactive adventure. An interactive, who-done-it, move-through-three-chambers, and solve-puzzles adventure, done in groups of 10-15 people. Love it!

2) Ninja Restaurant in NY (haven’t been yet, but want to go): the waiters hide and surprise you and jump out at you and the food includes swords that you need to pull out. Here is a video about it, and I heard about it from this link about 10 unusual restaurants:

Ray Gone Away

Posted on by Senia

He sang to himself.
In front of 10,000 people, he sang to himself.

Stage lights reddish-orange. Words muffled by his beard.
My friend said, he is shy and doesn’t like to see the audience.

The sitar-like dobro alternately squeaked and bellowed
hallowed violin music.
Drums backed up his rhythm guitar strumming,
the guitar sitting high on his button-down shirt,
like a mantle on a statue of a musician

who might have been in performance for an audience.
But he was not. The audience is irrelevant.
A performer without performing, he speaks a Mantra.
He says, Gone Away. From Me.

Who Is Happy?

Posted on by Senia

There’s a great 1995 article by David Myers and Ed Diener: “Who Is Happy?”

“In study after study, four inner traits mark happy people: self-esteem, a sense of personal control, optimism, and extraversion.”

How are you doing on:

  • personal control (do you generally feel in control of your life?)
  • optimism (do you generally believe the future will be even better than today?)
  • self-esteem (do you generally respect your actions? [or this question])
  • extraversion (do you generally make a point to meet with friends?)

Each of these traits is actually acquirable and increasable, which is the most interesting part to me.

The Self-Esteem Question

Posted on by Senia

What is the question you can ask yourself to know whether you have self-esteem? After discussion with a positive psychology colleague of mine, here is his suggestion, which is fascinating to me. (I don’t usually write about bad-feeling situations or scenarios on my site, but this post is on that map of a sphere below the equator of happy and pleasant thought.) You can ask yourself:

  • Why aren’t you loveable?

What’s your answer? Pause a second … What do you think? What’s your answer?

Exactly. In a way, it’s such a manipulative question because the high self-esteem answer to it is, “No, forget it, I’m extremely loveable.” And the low self-esteem person will go looking for answers where there don’t need to be any.

Here is another question:

  • How often do you doubt your actions and thoughts?

The high self-esteem person will sometimes doubt, and will just as often or more often be secure and comfortable with his own thoughts. Both questions lean the answer towards choosing the negative thoughts in your head – both questions are manipulative in that sense, which is why they seem to get to the question about self-esteem.

Q: What are your favorite ways of being creative?

Posted on by Senia

Here are Christine Kane’s 21 favorite ways to be more creative. I like many of them: the 20-minute walk, the go-see-a-gallery, go-hear-live-music. My favorite suggestion of hers is “read poetry aloud” (I found Christine’s blog through this post on the Life Coaches blog).

Q: What are your favorite ways to be creative?

* Sleep in on the weekends – best ideas around 10am on a lazy wakeup
* Get in front of an easel with paint
* Walk on the beach with a notebook
* Go hiking by myself
* Go to a music concert, symphony or chamber
* Read beautiful language
* Also, read Haruki Murakami and Isaac Bashives Singer

…And your ways? Would love to hear what you think! Great weekend to you!

Not-Perfect Quotes

Posted on by Senia

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing.
~ Harriet Braiker

Once you accept the fact that you’re not perfect, then you develop some confidence.
~ Rosalynn Carter

Sometimes… when you hold out for everything, you walk away with nothing.
~ Ally McBeal TV show

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything,
That’s how the light gets in.
~ Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem” lyrics

Posted on 12-15-06 for Thurs, 12-14-06.

Ask Early

Posted on by Senia

I was reading Dave Seah‘s story about Ulrick the Bee, and I like this second part of the story where Tiffany appears and she ask a lot of questions!

Once of the best lessons I ever received was, “Ask Early.” When I was working on Wall St., my mentor was a woman who was very accomplished in her department, and a wonderful, kind, great person. I met with her early in my career at the company, and she gave me a great piece of advice. She said:

Ask early. Ask about anything that you don’t know. Because if six months have gone by and then you ask about something that should be simple and clear and easy, then you will seem to be slow and lagging behind. Then the quesiton will be, “Oh, you don’t know that yet?” Ask early. There is great simplicity to that. If you don’t know, ask.

My father also told me many times, three of the most beautiful words in English are “I don’t know.” And then finding out is fascinating.

Posted on 12-15-06 for Wed, 12-13-06.

Not-Perfect

Posted on by Senia

Not-perfect is real.

Imagine two stories:
STORY 1: A girl lives on a farm with her Aunt Em and her Uncle. Everything is pretty outside. She goes to sleep. She wakes up. Her dog jumps into her arms. Everything is fine. Oh, yes, a little boring maybe.
STORY 2: A girl lives on a farm with her Aunt Em and her Uncle. Everything is pretty outside. There is a tornado. She finds herself in another world and her house has killed the wicked witch of the west. She needs to get away, and there are bad guys, and crazy monkeys, and three adventurers who come with her. The man who is supposed to get them out of there is frightening. Everything seems lost, and then she finds the wizard of Oz, clicks her heels and comes home and wakes up.

A little more drama in story 2, eh? I want to make sure I keep drama in my blog posts. I want to make sure I show you in writing what I think the cool parts are and what the issues are. I don’t want to be too didactic. I don’t want to be too simple and obvious. I want to write a mystery, like Haidt in most chapters of The Happiness Hypothesis. I want to write a love story, like The Dot and the Line, and I want to write what’s fun!

But sometimes, I want to write and write and write and do more and more research before presenting it. This is the leftovers of junior high school perfectionism. Actually, everyone who knows me would say that I am not a perfectionist. I’m not. But in some things, I have the leanings of one.

And there are other bloggers out there who say similar things! That’s why I’m writing this down and why I made the repeated goal of writing daily! It’s about a hint of an idea. It’s not about a thesis! (…um, that’s an exclamation sign to me, not to you).

I have such a mini-struggle with blogs sometimes. There are so many fascinating ideas in the positive psychology literature, and I’d like you to see them all! Or, well, the really interesting ones anyway.

Here’s what Charlene Li of Forrester says about losing – and finding – one’s voice:

So I’ve vowed to follow Nike’s mantra and “just do it”, or in this case, to “just blog it”. Damn the idea of quality and depth of analysis — I’m better off getting something out there and getting your reactions to it. So here I am, writing a stream of consciousness and finding my voice again. … So hang on, I’ve got a lot of pent up ideas that I want to explore. I don’t promise well-formed ideas or deep insights in every post, but it’s the best that I’ll be able to do.

Christine Lane writes about the 17 things she knows about creativity. I like number 11 and 17:

  • 11 – Blogging is creative. I think blogs have become so popular because bloggers get to just write. They get to see the big deal of not making it such a big deal. …
  • 17 – Creativity is about showing up, not perfection. If you want to be more creative in your life, if you crave a more artful life, start small. Make cards for people. Make ugly cards. Call them “Ugly Cards, Inc.” Write bad poems. Call them “Bad Poems, Inc.” I bought a thank you gift for a friend of mine recently. And it sat on my desk for weeks because I was waiting to find “the perfect card.” Knowing what I know about Energy Drains and Creativity, I finally got so frustrated with myself and my perfectionist that I just ripped a piece of paper off a Kinko’s notepad. I folded it. On the front of the “card,” I wrote: “Beautifully crafted card with the perfect sentiment expressing exactly how grateful I am for your presence in my life.” And I opened the “card,” and on the inside I wrote: “…with the perfect little punch-line inside to make you laugh and feel good about yourself.” And I sent the card and package. And it brought my friend great joy. She loved the card.

And, of course, I am a fan of the dailyness of Fred at AVC, whom I first read about on Evelyn’s blog.

Cool, see you soon.

Posted on 12-15-06 for Mon, 12-11-06.

Q: Which is your seesaw balance?

Posted on by Senia

One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good – he and the world is saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad – he and the world is destroyed.
~ Maimonides

People have different axes along which they find balance. Most people feel when they are in balance about many axes in their lives. The above quote is about feeling the moral balance, and leaning in the good direction. People can also feel balance, for example, in these parts of their lives:

  • Physical
  • Mental
  • Emotional
  • Adventure
  • Alone-time
  • Fun vs. Work

And in each case, people can lean towards the good direction of balance. For example, if you wanted to feel YOUR OWN VERSION OF BALANCE (and I think balance is very personal) in “Fun vs. Work,” then you might resonate well with these words:

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
~ Robert Fulghum

If you wanted to keep your balance in the physical part of you, you might aim to get to the gym more, to eat more healthy foods. Different people have different needs for balance.

Today’s Question:
In which part of your life do you feel it is most important for you to have balance – and then after that, other things fall into place?

Specifically, your answer might be “stress balance” – when you have enough stress to keep you challenges but not too much so that you go nuts, that may be the optimal stress balance. It might be “alone-time balance,” a good balance between doing things on your won and with friends. Your answer might be “mental balance,” a good balance of being challenged mentally and being calm mentally. It might be “moral balance,” a good balance of making the correct and right decisions in your life.

For me, as long as I do good things physically, and as Maimonides said, “with the scale tipped to the good,” then the other parts of my life fall in line. Which balance is most important for you?!

And let’s end with some very important thoughts on balance! Especially as the temperature is going to be in the 30’s in the Northeast, in the U.S..

The balance of nature is reached when heating the house costs as much as going south for the winter.
~ James H. McGavran