Category: FEATURED REGULARLY

Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday features.

To Boldly Go

Posted on by Senia

“To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
~ Star Trek

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”
~ Henry David Thoreau*

“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it…Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
~ Goethe

“Do not yield to misfortunes, but advance more boldly to meet them, as your fortune permits you.”
~ Virgil

“It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.”

~ Isaac Asimov

“You must play boldly to win.”
~ Arnold Palmer

——————–
A friend of mine once started a company whose name was a play on the word BOLD. That’s the way to live life – boldly.

* This quote is quoted differently on the 43 things site of what people what to do. It reads here as, “Go forth boldly in the direction of your dreams; live the life you’ve imagined.”
Henry David Thoreau on 43 things

What about the AFTER-life?

Posted on by Senia

Hey, hey, hey, what about the AFTER-life? No, not the afterlife and reincarnation. But the AFTER-life…. the little self-talk you have and I have, saying things like,

  • “Well, if I have a great house, I’ll be happy.”
  • “Once I lose 12 or 20 or 50 pounds, I’ll be happy.”
  • “After I finish my dissertation, I’ll be happy.”

The “after-this” and “after-that” life.

There are CERTAINLY times in your life when it’s effective to focus on your goal, and to say, “I am not going to dilly-dally on this yellow brick road. I am full-steam focused ahead, and I’ll be pushing on this project until I complete it.” Yes, yes, and yes! I am all for focus and self-regulation.

At the same time, what are you doing in the now-life to make yourself happy?

You will always have goals, you will always have deadlines, and you will always have emergencies. What are you doing to enjoy life in the midst of all this? Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi said on a panel at the Gallup positive psychology conference in Fall, 2005 that if he could ask every person on the earth one question, the question that he would ask is, “To what extent are you fully alive?”

What am I talking about? No, not pretty words and affirmations. I am talking about enjoying the now, noticing the now. More than anything, I am talking about you getting your personal enjoyment from the now!

  • EXAMPLE: How exciting is brushing your teeth? However, Dr. Kathleen Hall of the Stress Institute says that you can make it alive and exciting by thinking about your great smile and how much good chewing your mouth has done for you all your life. This particular detail may not work for you, but what ideas like this do work for you to make a tedious, regular task feel good, feel healthy, or feel alive in some way?
  • COUNTER-EXAMPLE: Like Seth Godin writes here, many of us would have walked by a world-class violinist if we heard him on our daily morning commute. And that’s what may make us sad about the Washington Post article, he writes: that we would probably not have noticed him either.

The main thing that I can tell you about enjoying the “now” (even in the midst of deadlines towards the “after”) is that Barbara Fredrickson’s research all points to the fact that when you are in an emotionally open state, you are both more creative and productive (broaden) and you have more reserves to deal with anything that the world throws upon you (build).

Welcome to Friday questions. Today’s question is:
What are you doing in the NOW-life to make yourself happy?

What do you do when someone doesn’t respect what’s yours?

Posted on by Senia

Hi, welcome to Question Friday. I get this question sometimes so I thought I would put it to you. Whether in working with a person who doesn’t “get” what value you’ve added, or whether passing off something you own to another person to hold on to, or whether you share an idea that you believe is just about sacred and you get it stamped out… What do you do when something you are very much attached to is treated without respect? Please add your suggestions in the comments.

Q: What do you do when someone doesn’t respect what’s yours?

More detail: What do you do when you think something has a lot of value, a lot of potential, but then someone else doesn’t treat it that way? What do you do when you pass a project on, and it is not treated well by the new owner? And what do you do if it makes you sad to have been part of the project before? What do you do when you’ve worked really hard on something, and your effort is absolutely unrewarded?

Happiness “…like a sealing process”

Posted on by Senia

“I keep remembering one of my Guru’s teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments.”

~ Liz Gilbert, on “Diligent Joy,” p. 260 of Eat, Pray, Love

The Ctrl-Z Button

Posted on by Senia
Ctrl-Z The Ctrl-Z Button changed the face of humanity.
It created a trial-and-error mentality.
It encourages try-and-see.

“I’ll format this text like so in my business cards… Oh no! Too far to the left!!!
Ctrl-Z!!!!!!!!! :) Yay!”

These all work similarly: the Ctrl-Z button, having many lives for your character in a video game, going back to a prior saved Word document. Trial and error, multiple-trial and success.

Can there be any harm in the Ctrl-Z button? Research shows that there’s not much, if any, harm. There’s some evidence that teenagers are taking more risks these days (e.g., this pdf), which some attribute to the second-chance mentality, “Sure, I might get in trouble, but I’ll get a do-over.” Restart the game. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t get a second chance. But so far, there’s no direct evidence that a trial-and-error mentality is connected to crime or harm. In fact, sociologists recently reported that video games do not cause more aggression in teens.

On the other hand, there are a ton of great things about restarting. See what Dave Seah highlights about rebooting your day. Restarting is freshness. It’s counteracting what the Made-to-Stick Heath brothers call “The Curse of Knowledge,” knowing so much about your subject that you can’t step away and be objective. If you can trigger yourself to restart your day, then maybe you can cultivate that “beginner’s mind” that Jordan Silberman writes about here and Miriam Ufberg writes about here.

I love Ctrl-Z. I love trying, going back, retrying.
The most memorable way to learn is by making mistakes. :)

First thing in the warm weather?

Posted on by Senia

We’re all a little like the Tin Man once the winter is ending … uncreaking, derusting, getting moving.

What’s the first thing you’ll do in the warm weather?!

Here are some of mine:

  • Walk around!
  • Breathe
  • Enjoy the morning sun
  • Plan some weekend outdoors things – biking, walking by the water
  • Drive with the sun roof open!

It’s Question Friday. Come on in and chat in the comments!

What to do (and what NOT to do)

Posted on by Senia

Go act! (Don’t doubt yourself.)

Laugh at yourself, but don’t ever aim your doubt at yourself.
Be bold. … Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.

~ Alan Alda

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

~ Marianne Williamson

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

~ Dale Carnegie

Do what you’re great at. (Don’t underestimate yourself.)

Insist on yourself; never imitate.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes

Don’t be humble; you’re not that great.

~ Golda Meir

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.

~ Malcolm S. Forbes