Happiness

There has been a lot of talk about happiness lately.  One night on World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, he shared a study that indicated that as women age they get unhappier, while the reverse is true for men.  It was stated that women concentrate on career and having a family and once that is essentially behind them, they become unhappier as life goes by.  I have heard of studies that indicate men are happier being married, while the reverse is true for women.   Researchers have been looking at country happiness and the US was not the happiest of them all.  I state this not to agree or disagree (though I disagree that I am getting unhappier as I get older – it’s been quite the opposite).

For more than three years now, I have really been soaking up research, articles, books, blogs, interviews about positive psychology, happiness, courage, and resiliency.  It’s been a fascinating journey for me.  As someone who has been to therapists for various reasons (after college, after my divorce, etc.), I have spent plenty of time looking back.  I don’t think there is anything wrong with looking back to understand your present, but eventually you need to start looking forward.  Positive psychology has been that catalyst that has assisted me in looking forward and is what took me into coaching.  It is my calling and I never would have found it without changing my perspective.

I hope you are on a quest toward something – it’s one of the healthiest and happiest ways you can be.  To be a searcher, a learner, a discoverer of your own life is a real motivator. If you are interested in learning more about Happiness Clubs in your area, click here. If you are in the Omaha, Nebraska area, join me.

The No Impact Man

Have you heard of this book? This blog? This guy?  Well, now you have!  Check it out.

The book was a great read but more than that, I really appreciated Colin’s honesty about this project.  It definitely makes you look within and see how you are living your own life.  I was impressed in so many ways and shocked too.  I dog-eared a ton of pages and it had a profound impact on me.  I hope you will read the book or check out the blog. Or even go see the documentary from their yearlong journey.

His wife and child also participated and to read his wife’s perspective on this via a column in Business Week (reposted on his blog) was also brutally honest about her life and the changes this yearlong experiment had on her as well.

I am sure some of you wonder about my latest movies and books. Between Food Inc., Better Off, and now The No Impact Man, you would consider me a very organic, vegetarian, of the earth kind of person. Well, I am trying to be. I don’t often eat meat and never cook it.  I do wish to be more reliant on farmers markets and other similar farm options year over year.  I think it takes each of us to make adjustments and just keep making them.

To Kindle or Not to Kindle – Follow-up

I first became aware of Amazon’s Kindle in April of 2008. I explored it and thought it was interesting.  I considered it but thought it was too early to make a buy and held off. I reconsidered again in March of 2009 (both times blogging about it).  I went back and forth based on feedback from those that did have it and even looked at some of the upcoming purchases I wanted to make to see if it was offered on the Kindle. I again held off.

Well, Amazon has had a few new iterations since then and the price has come down considerably. I have looked up numerous books I would like to read, old and new. There are classics that are free to download – how cool – and many books on my wish list now on Kindle.  Despite already making plans to mark my 40th in a very unique and substantial way, I decided to purchase this as a combo birthday present (another one!) and Christmas gift.

Do you have one? Are you happy with your purchase?  Mine is charging as we speak. I have downloaded a number of literature classics I haven’t read in a long time as well as one on the bestseller list.  I noticed that some of my textbooks could also be downloaded at a ridiculous savings over the hardback.  What a way to spend a snowy afternoon in Omaha!

What is your theme?

I have received a few emails lately from readers asking in different ways what my specific blog theme is and where I get my ideas for topics. I thought they were both interesting questions and got me thinking.

What is my specific blog theme? Do I have one? I read quite a few blogs and am an active subscriber to at least 30 or more.  I love to read their posts via Google Reader over breakfast. Some I get via email.  Some folks have very specific themes, like productivity, marketing, saving money, home organization, workplace issues, leadership, etc. All of their posts are specific and refer back to their main blog theme in a very consistent way. It is in large part while I subscribe; I like hearing their perspectives on certain themes or issues.

It’s interesting, I do have a blog for my company that is specific to leadership coaching and related topics. So, I understand the questions I received.

But my personal blog is more about life in general. I tend to write about things that have happened to me or things I have observed. From my perspective, I just want to have the opportunity to share my dorky view of the world based on my own experiences or just things about myself in general.  This really comes in any form and is not predetermined by a specific topic or issue that every post revolves. What do you think – is that distracting to you as a reader that my posts can range from talking about the greatness of the holidays, or books, or movies, or school supplies, or life and whatnot? Feel free to share your comments or email me!

NOTE 9/19/09:

Read a post via email today from Write to Done talking about blog theme’s in which his lead into his post stated “Blogging and writing shouldn’t be just about talking about what you did today, or rambling about things in general — at least, not in my mind, not if it’s done well”.  I found this interesting but it is a sentiment I don’t agree.  I think the point of blogging is based on the writer. If you are like Leo Babauta, his desire with his blog is enlighten but what seems even more prevalent to me over the past few months, is his overwhelming desire to sell things especially his books and ebooks.  That is his prerogative and I don’t dislike him for it. It has however changed my personal desire to read his blog and have done so with much less frequency due to this feeling like I am being sold to.

What you choose to do with your blog and its content are entirely up to you.  Do what you want and be happy with what you do.

Books, books, books

As many of you know, I am avid reader of books. I read a variety of genres, from mystery to non-fiction to fiction to history to plays, not to mention a plethora of topics within those genres.  I am huge fan of Tom Stoppard and wrote an undergrad thesis for graduation on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.  I was able to see one of Horton Foote’s plays in production in Chapel Hill and meet him after. Good stuff. To say I read a lot is really an understatement.  But to see a recent blog post by Seth Godin and how much he reads, well, he puts me to shame. I feel no competition and it will not spur me on to read more than the average 3-5 books/week I usually read.

In fact, for the past month or so, I haven’t been reading very much at all.  The call of nature has been too strong and I have been outside enjoying the fall-like weather intermixed with some nice summer days.  The allure of such beauty has been hard to ignore or stay away from and therefore, harder for me to think about reading, even on my deck.

As I looked over Seth’s one-page review of books, of which one I had read review about a week or so again for The No Impact Man that is high on my list to read, I was caught by the realization that I hadn’t been reading as much.  Then I realized that my blogging has become sporadic and not as consistent as usual. It made me wonder about the ebb and flow of life.   Is this a product of trying to enjoy the last bit of summer?  I am not heading back to school, so I don’t necessarily need to squeeze out the last bit of freedom before the hum drum life of school starts.  I am always in school (or so it seems).

Is this a reflection of where my mind is now?  Are my thoughts not as defined not as they usually are and my mind is taking a bit of a vacation? Maybe. I can’t say I haven’t need a mental break.  Ultimately, I chalk it up to the ebb and flow of life. We all go through it at different times.  We are on the hamster wheel then we take a step off for a while. Sometimes we are very engaged; other times not.  I don’t think my taking a little time to change normal routines is a bad thing actually. Change of perspective can be a very beneficial thing. I have had many ideas percolating and maybe they are not ready to gestate yet.  I don’t know what is the reason; but I know this, it’s another fantastic day out there and despite the work that will be done today, my lunch will be spent outside as will my evening.  Hope you can do the same.

The Art of Nonconformity and Twitter

I seem to hear two things about Twitter lately.  First, those that say they have no idea what it is or what is the point. And ultimately think it’s a waste of time. The others love it and are either just getting used to it or are die-hard converts.

I am in the second camp. I have been using it since I don’t know even know when. I have met some great people through the site that I have subsequently met in person. I have also been able to talk with some researchers in the field of positive psychology that previously the closest I had gotten to them was by reading their research or their books.   To me, Twitter is an awesome tool to connect, socialize, share, network, or brand build. Or all of the above.  I use it mostly for connecting and sharing, especially when it comes to all things Omaha.

I was a fly on the wall of the SXSW conference, through all of the connections I have that were there for the conference earlier this year.  Now, I get to see some of these same persons vying for a spot at next year’s SXSW as panelists.  By the way, please vote for Silicon Prairie to be one of those panelists!

Recently, I have become attached to @chrisguillebeau and his blog, The Art of NonConformity.  He shares his tips for traveling, as well as great bargains he uncovers. He shares other awesome tips, such as how to use the social web to your advantage.  He is a very unique voice and I have enjoyed reading his stuff. I would never have learned of him if it weren’t for twitter.  For those of you interested in his latest offering about getting your message out to the world, click here.  Check out his latest post on authenticity. It’s a heckuva lot better than a post I wrote on the same topic a few years ago.

So for you who don’t understand it, think it useless or a time waster, that’s fine. But me, I have been able to talk to and meet some amazing people, which has greatly enhanced my world.

It was a very good year …

1969. It was a VERY good year.  Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. Huge.  Out of this world huge.  The space program was supported by the country and it was a time of great pride.  Then there was Woodstock. How could you not think of Woodstock, especially with the new movie coming out. By the way, the book it was based on was a good read.  Another big event – I was born. See, told you, it was a very good year!   Here are some really cool facts about 1969 that you know, with a few thrown in you might not know:

• The first men on Moon, Neil Armstrong & Edwin Aldrin, Apollo 11
• Woodstock Festival held in NY August 15 to August 18th
• Supreme Court rules that the 1st Amendment applies to public schools.  Pop quiz – what’s the 1st Amendment?
• 1st temporary artificial heart
• The first test flight of the supersonic Concorde
• 1st flight of the Boeing 747
• 1st Wendy’s opens
• Last public performance of the Beatles, Paul marries Linda, John marries Yoko
• Last issue of Saturday Evening Post – no more Normal Rockwell covers
• Phil Esposito becomes first NHL Player to score 100 points in a season
• Golda Meir becomes Israel’s 4th Prime Minister
• New York Yankees’ Mickey Mantle announces his retirement from baseball
• Hurricane Camille strikes U.S. Gulf Coast kills 255
• Charles Manson commits Tate-LaBianca murders
• Mary Jo Kopechne dies at 28, in Ted Kennedy’s car
• “Sesame Street” premieres on PBS
• First ATM
• Wal-Mart incorporates
• GAP is founded

That’s right, 1969 was a very good year indeed and these are just some of the big highlights. There are many, many more.  Looking back at history can be an educative experience and not everyone likes those. But it can also be incredibly fun and enlightening too.  Hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane with me!

Are you uncommon?

We all have our quirks and idiosyncrasies.  This is what makes each of us who we are. It is also what can drive each of us batty, but that’s another discussion!

Over the past ten years, I have noticed one thing about myself that others think is really uncommon and they find me quite odd for it.  I do not like being given grades.  I know, many people would love to get an A by doing little work, or doing the minimum.  Not me.  I noticed this most profoundly in my MBA program.  One professor in particular didn’t give feedback on papers, just your grade and a small comment, like good job (B) or great job (A).  It got to the point in which we all realized that she had made her mind about each of us early on based on our participation, our personality, and our first paper submission. After that, you were branded. If you happened to be branded as an A student, this was how things would go for you in every class you took with her.

This really bothered me.  I know I am a big geek because I actually want to learn, but I also want real feedback. I want my professor to be genuine in their feedback about how I could have done better or could have enhanced my point better, etc. if that was the case. I find it hard to believe that there wasn’t something to comment on when in other classes, I was getting comments on my papers about these very things.  To be honest, once you get to grad school, grades really do become less important and it is more about the learning and the application. The application to your current job or for many, to a future job is paramount; not that getting all A’s isn’t a nice thing too!

But it gets worse in doctoral programs, or at least in some. I have seen more professors give grades than who give comments and are invested in challenging the student to go further and think deeper.  In the recent past, I submitted a paper in which I highlighted a date so that not only could I verify that I entered it correctly, but to make sure the source was updated if needed on the reference page.  This was not noticed or caught, nor graded down for not only not checking but not updating my source on the reference page. Based on the grading rubric, I should have lost points for this. I did not.  My paper received all of the possible points that it could.  I should be elated right?  Instead, I wonder if the professor even read my paper. Had he read any of them? I was getting 100’s on every paper I submitted. This seems impossible to me.  Although I have been given compliments on my academic writing ability, this seems too good to be true.

What I am left with is doubt about my papers.  Are they hitting the mark? Am I applying the principles and theories with relevant support?  But more than this, even more than being given a grade, I am disappointed in the professor. I have lost respect in him.  I no longer see him as an educator. And as an educator myself, this is a big blow.

Some of my friends know, based on a prior rant, that I have been questioning my doctoral program.  The goal in achieving this was to push myself to learn more, to research different paths based on some of my organizational questions, and to ensure my ability to teach at the university level (not just as I am now, but through retirement).  These goals have not changed, but my motivation to achieve them in the current setting sure has.  I wish I could be less uncommon and just push myself intrinsically to meet these goals and let the other stuff go. Or maybe I need to become even more uncommon and ignore the grades aspect (extrinsic motivation) and focus on my own goals.  Ahh, but that is just not me.

Three Effective Ways to Enhance Your Willpower

I am a Zen Habits fan. The blog is full of wonderful ideas, but mostly I love how real it is. Who and what we learn about Leo is who he is. I think this is the way it should be when you write. The greatest compliment I have ever received came when someone told me they could hear me talking as they read some of my work.  That I could speak to them via my writing was a priceless gift for me. And that gift is many years old and it’s still awesome!

In the spirit of being real, the post below was written by Ian Newby-Clark of My Bad Habits and was shared on the Zen Habits blog. I wanted to share it again here as I think it is a great read. I love the inclusion of research studies (always a fascinating part of any article, book, or post), as I am a research geek. Enjoy!!

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Control yourself! We all say it, mostly to ourselves. We say it when we ‘indulge’ in behaviors that cause short-term gain for long-term pain. And guilt. I cite many of the usual suspects: eating the wrong things, being lazy, staying up too late, drinking too much. There are others, of course. Why do we do such things? After all, aren’t we entirely in control of ourselves all of the time?

Nope.

Research tells us that willpower is a limited resource. Each of us only has so much of it. The studies demonstrating this are rather ingenious. I will share one of my favorites with you, though there are many more.

You are a student at a mid-Western university and you are in a psychology experiment apparently concerned with taste-testing. The experimenter seats you at a table. In front of you is a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. There is also a plate of radishes. Your stomach is growling because, as instructed, you didn’t eat anything last night.

The experimenter asks you to taste-test the radishes. You are not to taste the cookies. In fact, don’t even touch them! No cookies for you! Next, the experimenter asks you to help out another experimenter with a puzzle experiment. You start working on the puzzle. It’s rather hard …

Times passes …

You are having trouble solving the puzzle. Undeterred, you press on.

More time passes …

You still can’t solve the puzzle! You sometimes get close, but then you make a mistake and start over. Eventually, you give up. When the experiment is over, you learn a couple of interesting facts. First, the two experiments, taste-testing and puzzle-solving, were related. Those sneaky psychologists! Second, some people taste-tested the cookies. Lucky ducks!

Persisting at the frustratingly difficult puzzle takes willpower. But will the radish-eaters and cookie-eaters have the same amount of willpower? The experimenters think that the radish-eaters have less will-power than the cookie-eaters because the radish-eaters had to resist grabbing a cookie. So, the radish-eaters should give up on the puzzle sooner than the cookie-eaters. That’s what happened.

That study, and dozens of others like it, show that people only have so much willpower. When you have to control yourself, there is less willpower available to you for other parts of your life. This fact is a good one to know because people who lose their will-power often do things that they would rather not. They become aggressive, sexually impulsive, and give up too early on puzzles.

This has nothing to do with being physically tired. Your self-control is at low ebb when you are mentally exhausted. So, what lessons can we learn from what the science is telling us? How can we be in more and better control of ourselves more often? I have three tips:

1. Anticipate and plan for your times of low self-control. Now that you know that self-control is a limited resource and that depleting it means less for later, you can do some anticipating and planning. For example, make sure that you’re not in the chips and cookies aisle of the grocery store after a long day at work. Don’t start on your tax return after a frustrating commute.

2. Exercise your willpower muscle to get more of it. Roy Baumeister, one of the leading researchers in this field, thinks that willpower is like a muscle. Exercising a muscle in the short-term leads to its exhaustion. In the long-term, though, exercising a muscle causes it to grow. In fact, there is some good evidence that exercising your willpower, though temporarily depleting, means that it will be stronger in the long run. So, push yourself. Things to do that will deplete your willpower:

• Work on a tough to solve puzzle;
• Watch a funny movie but resist the urge to laugh;
• Watch a sad movie but resist the urge to cry.

3. Drink some orange juice. It turns out that glucose is one of the key ingredients that your brain needs for effective self-control. Willpower. It’s not just for breakfast anymore!

I hope that you find my message enlightening and helpful. Some of you, I am sure, will be disappointed to learn that your capacity for self-control is less than infinite. You do have willpower, just not as much as you might like. But now you know how to get more!

Read more from Ian Newby-Clark at his blog, My Bad Habits.

Are you a life-enricher?

I was in the bookstore the other evening, doing something I haven’t done in a while.  I let my curiosity run amok and looked at a ton of different books among the stacks.  I don’t do this very often because if there is one material weakness I have, it is books. Oh sure, you already know about my love for office supplies, but honestly, I do without very easily. I don’t know why, but checking out the stacks at the local library isn’t as fun as it used to be.  Plus with budget cutbacks, their hours are more limited than ever (which I think is a shame).  Doesn’t anyone remember the RIF (reading is fundamental) campaign??

I pulled a few books to look at more and settled into a chair.  One book in particular caught my attention and one of the lines halfway in caught my attention.  Simply, it asked, are you a life-enricher?

It stopped me short. I would love to think I am, but am I?  Do I question myself based on my daily perception or overall, throughout my life?  Then I started wondering if I surround myself with life-enrichers.  I am sure the other people in the bookstore wondered what I was doing because I was no longer reading the book but just sort of staring off into space at this point.

Here’s what I think.  I don’t think you can really start examining this within yourself until at least college, but definitely after that point.  It helps to look at yourself in big chunks of time, like the first half of the year, the prior year, etc.  Right now, I can say that for the past few weeks, I have been an inconsistent life enricher for both myself and others.  Sometimes, I just don’t have the positivity for my life, which in turn doesn’t allow me the positivity outward to others.  However, if I look at myself for the first half of this year, I have been.

But I also think when it comes to others, I have been lucky that most of the persons I have surrounded myself with are life-enrichers. They are loving, kind, fun, funny, challenging, intellectually motivating, creative, and inspiring.  Hmm, you think, she said most.  Well, not everyone in my life is enriching, but I think that there are some persons in your life that are there no matter what (at work, etc.) and maybe the lesson we can learn from those types is to appreciate the life-enrichment in ourselves and others. I know that’s what I have been doing!