Tag: tips

Posted on

Joy in Your 70s

In a culture obsessed with youth and beauty, it’s good to be reminded from time to time about the grace and wisdom of the older population. Mary Pipher does just that in “The Joy of Being a Woman in Her 70s”. A small excerpt:

By our 70s, we’ve had decades to develop resilience. Many of us have learned that happiness is a skill and a choice. We don’t need to look at our horoscopes to know how our day will go. We know how to create a good day.

We have learned to look every day for humor, love and beauty. We’ve acquired an aptitude for appreciating life. Gratitude is not a virtue but a survival skill, and our capacity for it grows with our suffering. That is why it is the least privileged, not the most, who excel in appreciating the smallest of offerings.

Appreciating “the smallest of offerings” is a skill and habit that everyone, regardless of age, could benefit from cultivating.

Posted on

A Pile of Stuff with a Cover on It

Am I the only one watching Marie Kondo’s new Netflix series descriptively named Tidying Up With Marie Kondo and wondering how much joy the stuff in my life can really spark?

Don’t get me wrong. I like my stuff. I use stuff all the time. But the standard Kondo advocates is to keep only the things that “spark joy.” That seems like a tall order for a blender, a screwdriver, or a pair of socks, but maybe it’s just me.

As I meditate on whether my desk lamp “sparks joy” or just helps me see what I’m doing, I can’t help but think of George Carlin riffing on how we keep needing bigger and bigger places to store all the stuff we accumulate, until we go on trips, where we pack smaller and smaller versions of our stuff until we get down to the bare essentials. It’s funny. You should watch it (if you don’t mind some adult language). I’ll wait: George Carlin Talks About Stuff

As I think about it, maybe Kondo and Carlin both are saying the same thing: we don’t need as much as we think we do.

Every object in our lives adds weight. If nothing else, every object has to be stored. If we move, it has to be packed and transported. Maintenance and cleaning are generally required. We have to keep track of where everything is, what it does, and why we have it. For any individual thing, that overhead might not be too bad. But multiply across the number of objects in your life and the mental overhead starts to add up.

It’s hard to know whether something “sparks joy” or not, but maybe Kondo’s mantra isn’t a bad shorthand for thinking hard about why we have the things we have or want the things we want. If something no longer serves a purpose in your life, maybe it’s time to let it go and free up the mental overhead that goes with it. If a new, shiny thing will not make you better off in some concrete way, maybe it’s better not to acquire it, or at least wait until you know what it will do for your life and how it will do it.

I don’t think I will ever achieve the tidiness perfection that Kondo preaches, but I know I can do better about being careful about the stuff I let into my life. Time and attention are our most valuable assets. Only the things that matter and make a positive difference improving our lives deserve either.

Posted on

Is it better to give or to receive?

Ed O’Brien from the University of Chicago and Samantha Kassirer from Northwestern University gave research participants five dollars to spend on themselves or on others, but there was a catch: the money had to be spent on the exact same thing. Unsurprisingly, over time, buying the same thing over and over again quickly got old, but interestingly, buying that same thing repeatedly for others didn’t.

Here’s how Professor O’Brien described the findings:

If you want to sustain happiness over time, past research tells us that we need to take a break from what we’re currently consuming and experience something new. Our research reveals that the kind of thing may matter more than assumed: Repeated giving, even in identical ways to identical others, may continue to feel relatively fresh and relatively pleasurable the more that we do it.

The Association for Psychological Science has a good summary in The Joy of Giving Lasts Longer Than the Joy of Getting.

Posted on

Today, I Affirm

Today, I woke up and declared, “This is going to be a great day!” I didn’t have any particular reason for saying that. Today wasn’t special. Actually, it was quite ordinary. And that was the point.

One of my resolutions this year is to start each day with a positive affirmation. It’s a modest goal, but often small goals are the best. And given enough time and repetition, modest changes can have big results. At least, that’s what I’m hoping.

What specifically am I hoping to achieve with starting my day with a positive affirmation? A few things:

  • Improve my mood and energy levels. If I say something positive out loud, my brain is more likely to believe that things are going in the right direction.
  • Remind myself to exercise, as Viktor Frankl puts it, “the last of the human freedoms” to choose my own attitude, no matter the circumstances, and take charge of how I approach life and the world.
  • Inspire myself to make the positive affirmation come true by putting in the work necessary to achieve my goals.
  • Prove that I can keep my promises to myself. I told myself I would start my day with a positive affirmation, and lo and behold, I am.

Not every day has to begin with the same affirmation. Some days I might start with “today, I will write a post for my blog” or “today, I will show more love to my dogs” or “today, I am grateful for my health and the health of my family.”

The specific words aren’t what’s important. What’s important is saying the words, with a positive spirit, every day, like I promised myself I would.

To help keep myself on track, I’ve set a recurring reminder on my iPhone to ping me at the same time every morning. If I missed my daily affirmation when I wake up, I have a second chance to recover. It’s a simple system, but it works.

I encourage you to work positive affirmations into your daily routine and fill your affirmations with your best aspirations for yourself. At worst, you’ve lost a few seconds of your day to a silly saying. At best, you’ve set yourself up for a happier, more fulfilling day, and if you string enough happy, fulfilling days together, that can add up to a pretty good life. No guarantees, of course, but it’s a gamble that seems like a good bet to me.