Lee Gomes at the Wall Street Journal wrote an interesting article the other day: Why We’re Powerless To Resist Grazing On Endless Web Data. Like many headlines, this one exaggerates for the sake of effect, but Gomez does present some food for thought. He suggests that the human mind is as hard-wired to notice new information as a cat is hard-wired to chase a laser spot. He says that explains why some people get “addicted” to the Web.
He talks in terms of websites, but the allure of new information also extends to e-mail, watching TV, listening/watching/reading the news, and even to chatting on the cell phone. We’re all different and have our favorite forms of stimulation. Mine happens to be solving puzzles/problems. Last week I mentioned I had started doing some Word Jumbles to warm me up for doing my income tax, but I really got hooked on doing them. I didn’t worry about it too much, I just indulged until I finished the book so it would no longer sit around tempting me. But that excitement was powerful.
And power like that isn’t bad. It’s simply motivation we can learn to use wisely. I turned my fascination with problem solving into a career. My favorite nightmare used to be that I had to go on a business trip and couldn’t pull myself away from work to go home, pack, and rush to the airport. By now I’ve learned to be careful setting goals and making To Do lists…I recognize my tendency to be compulsive and simply plan around it. The trick is to have more than one thing that can grab my attention. For instance, it’s easy to pull myself away from projects to exercise every day because I have interesting DVDs to watch while I use my NordicTrack treadmill. It’s simply a matter of balancing one pleasure against another to be highly effective.
I learned this trick years ago when I stopped a preoccupation with food by finding something I enjoyed even better than eating. It took quite a while to find it…as the saying goes, “Sometimes you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince.” But it turned out learning to play the piano stimulated the pleasure centers in my brain enough to do the trick.
They realize that the quality of our lives depends on how we focus our energy and our attention. They try to align their thoughts and actions with their values. They know how to motivate themselves to take action.
The first step is awareness, not only uncovering what we really want in life so we have a direction to go in, but also noticing what grabs our attention so we have the power to get there.
What about you? What grabs your attention? How can you harness this power wisely? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.
Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen.
—Barbara Sher
I realize that humor isn’t for everyone. It’s only for people who want to have fun, enjoy life, and feel alive.
—Anne Wilson Schaef
There’s an old Sufi story about accepting imperfection:
Mulla Nasrudin decided to start a flower garden. He prepared the soil and planted the seeds of many beautiful flowers. But when they came up, his garden was filled not just with his chosen flowers but also overrun by dandelions.
He sought out advice from gardeners all over and tried every method known to get rid of them but to no avail. Finally he walked all the way to the capital to speak to the royal gardener at the sheik’s palace.
The wise old man had counseled many gardeners before and suggested a variety of remedies to expel the dandelions but Mulla had tried them all. They sat together in silence for some time and finally the gardener looked at Nasrudin and said, “Well, then I suggest you learn to love them.”
An Experiment in Loving the Weeds
Learning to love the weeds in our lives…that’s an idea worth playing with. The big challenge for me this week was working on income tax. So to get in the proper frame of mind I thought of my new role model and asked, “What would a dolphin do? How would he handle it?” Another way of asking this question is “How can I get this done and enjoy the process?” Once I looked at it this way, the answer was easy. I love puzzles such as such as Word Jumble and Sudoku, and parts of doing income tax isn’t that much different. It’s just figuring out what part of the tax code applies to us and where to put the information we’ve accumulated during the year. That’s mostly a word-logic puzzle, so I did some warm-ups with Word Jumble…it seemed to activate the same part of the brain that I would be using. And it got me into the ideal problem-solving state: a curious mind in a relaxed body. I also cleared off the dining room table so I could spread out my papers and not have to fumble through them to find what I needed. And I allowed myself plenty of time so I could take a break as often as I wanted. Results
On the whole the experiment worked well. I enjoyed it, and I didn’t get frustrated when I had to think for a while to figure something out. That meant the process probably went a lot faster than if I had been pushing to get it done.
The only downside was I got hooked by Word Jumble and spent more time playing with that than I had intended. But that’s a topic for next week’s blog! I think it went so well not just because I approached it with the right attitude, but also because I’ve been practicing that mindfulness…a curious but patient mind in a relaxed body… a lot this past year. All those hours working on my two blogs (this one and the one at Cheerful Monk) have really paid off.
So, can we enjoy the weeds in our lives? As we can see from the pictures above, dandelions can be beautiful if you stop to look at them rather than being upset because they’re “ruining” your garden. And I dare say, there are probably a lot more things in my life that I can enjoy if I just stop fighting them. So I suppose the stress-hardy thing to do is take Nasrudin’s attitude—by all means try to get what you want. But if that doesn’t work, do your best to love life just the way it is.
This site is presented as food for thought. Please share your views in the comments section.
Thanks to bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.
Every survival kit should include a sense of humor.
—Anonymous
Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.
—Edward de Bono
I came across a delightful story about a dolphin this past week. Two pygmy whales, a mother and calf, were disoriented and stranded off a beach down in New Zealand. Rescuers had been trying to help, but the whales were getting more distraught, and the situation looked hopeless. Then Moko, a local dolphin, came in. She pushed herself between the humans and the whales and led the whales out to sea. In just a few minutes she accomplished what the humans had failed to do in about an hour and a half.
The story reminded me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, where Hobbes the tiger says, “It makes you wonder why humans think they’re such big, screaming deals.” It also reminds me of an article, written by a dolphin trainer, I read years ago. He said he was just starting to train a new dolphin and brought over some fish to feed it. The dolphin was a quarter way around the pool and indicated the trainer should come over there to do the feeding. The trainer insisted…no, the dolphin had to come to him. So the dolphin good-naturedly did, and the trainer felt pleased and in control. Except that about a week later he suddenly noticed he was feeding the dolphin exactly where the dolphin had been that first day. There was no contest of wills. The dolphin had just patiently and subtly gotten his way. Even though the trainer didn’t use Hobbes’ exact words, you could tell from the article that he agreed with the sentiment. We humans do have an exalted opinion of ourselves. It would be more appropriate to lighten up and have a bit of humility.
Be patient and bide your time when it’s appropriate
Generate new ideas and opportunities for yourself
Enjoy the adventure of life and have friends to share it with
It seems to me that dolphins come by that naturally. So in the future if I start to get thrown by difficult people and situations, I’ll just ask myself, “How would a dolphin handle this?” Hopefully that will quickly get me back on track. Let’s face it, life is a lot easier and more fun if we have a bit of humility and a good sense of humor.
Please share your experience in the comments section.
Thanks to Robert and Jackie for commenting on last week’s post.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary.
—James Madison
The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.
—James Madison
All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.
—James Madison
This month the topic for Robert Hruzek’s group writing project is What I Learned From…the Law.
A gazillion or so years ago, when I was young and naive, I was driving on the Stanford campus one sleepy Sunday morning. I came to an intersection with a visibility of several blocks in all directions, and there wasn’t another car in sight. So I slowed to a crawl in the spirit of the stop sign, and proceeded on my way. Unfortunately, even though there was no other car in sight, there was a police car parked in a driveway behind some bushes. The policeman saw me even though I hadn’t seen him, so he stopped me and gave me a fatherly lecture about the danger of making “rolling stops”. He assured me that I was risking the life and limb of not only myself but of other human beings if I didn’t come to a complete and utter stop at every stop sign I encountered, no matter how many cars there were or weren’t on the road, and no matter how good the visibility. Being a sensible young thing I listened respectfully and thanked him for the warning.
Now I didn’t insult his intelligence by assuming he actually believed every word he uttered. I mean, it must have been boring for him just sitting there with nothing to do. I imagine my coming by must have been a welcome relief. On the other hand, I decided obeying stop signs would be less of a nuisance than getting a lecture or a ticket, so I would mend my errant ways.
I had a chance to test my resolve a couple of weeks later. I was driving on the edge of campus, on a meandering road that had one stop sign after another. There was no side traffic, but I dutifully stopped at each sign. I was comforted by the fact that the only other vehicle on the road was the police car behind me. I didn’t think of him as an enforcer, I would have been stopping anyway, but it was nice to know he was sharing my misery. Yeah, sure. After the second stop he turned on his flashing lights, went around me and sailed through the rest of the stop signs without even slowing down. He clearly had better things to do with his time. I had to laugh at my outrage. Of all the injustices in the world, this is the one that made my blood boil.
It didn’t change my opinion about rolling stops, though. Sensible or not, I obeyed the rule because I didn’t want to draw my attention to myself. Keeping a low profile around policemen struck me as a good strategy. Except for one time a few years later. I worked about ten miles from where I lived, and I couldn’t sleep one night. So about 3 o’clock in the morning I decided I might as well drive in and get something done. But once I was on the freeway, I wondered if that had been such a good idea. One car seemed to be following me…every time I changed lanes, so did the driver. I was a nervous when I took the off ramp, so I purposely ignored the stop sign at the bottom. I checked for traffic but scarcely slowed down.
There was some justice in the universe after all…a policeman was there to see me. When he pulled me over I told him what was going on, and he followed me to work and made sure I got inside safely. That incident more than made up for the previous two…the rule had come to my rescue when I needed it. I now had a much better appreciation for the law, although not quite in the way the police had hoped.
Lessons Learned
So what did I learn from those experiences with the law? Basically The Traits of Stress-Hardy, Resilient People, especially Item 4: Life and people are imperfect, so don’t let it throw you. Have a long-term perspective and keep your priorities straight. Don’t waste your energy on things you have no control over. Focus on what’s really important to you and don’t be distracted by the foibles of other people.
What about you? What experiences have you had with the law? What have you learned from them? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments section.
Thanks to Ellen and bikehikebabe for commenting on last week’s post.
Thanks again, Robert, for doing this series once a month. I’m a loyal fan.
We hear a lot these days about how happy people not only have more fun in life, they also live longer. Does that mean we should worry about our health when we’re unhappy? A recent WebMD article indicates it’s best to lighten up. It’s not being happy every single minute that counts, it’s knowing how to be proactive rather than being a passive victim in life.
1. They have a sense of meaning, direction, and purpose. They are value-centered rather than reactive and defensive. They understand that emotions are great sources of energy and motivation but are often poor guides for action. Instead these people use their values as guides.
2. They realize that the quality of our lives depends on how we focus our energy and our attention. They try to align their thoughts and actions with their values. They know how to motivate themselves to take action.
3. They don’t judge themselves or others harshly when things go wrong. They focus on what they want, not on what they don’t want.
Don’t forget, too little stress is as harmful as too much stress. Don’t try to live in a little cocoon of completely positive thoughts. Notice what’s going on in the world and in your life. Sure, that will cause you some stress at times, but the goal isn’t to eliminate stress it’s to optimize it. Notice what things you have control over and what you don’t. Focus on those areas where you have some influence. Know what you truly value in life and use the energy of stress to help you express those values in the world. That’s the attitude that leads to both health and happiness.
So, what about you? How do you focus your energy and your attention? Please share your thought sin the comments section.
Thanks to Sue, Ellen, bikehikebabe and Joseph for commenting on last week’s post.
