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Posts Tagged ‘positivity’

How to Try to be Happy

Posted in Life, tagged , , , on November 11, 2010| 16 Comments »

To celebrate my birthday this year, I had a Data barbecue party.  In lieu of gifts, I asked each guest to be prepared to share some interesting knowledge with me.  They could tell me about something about which they were an expert, or something they had read recently, or go on Wikipedia and randomly pick a few facts.

The party turned out surprisingly well, and I was fascinated by the variety of data presented to me.  One friend brought some rope and taught me how to make some basic knots; another gave me a list of Amazon’s top-selling titles ranked by their readability scale; a nurse practitioner friend of mine shared strange and cool facts about the body.  The information itself was interesting, but equally interesting was the choice of subject that each of my friends made.

One of my friends talked to me about happiness.  He had been involved in a personal happiness research project over the past several months.  His gift was telling me the number one most effective technique he had found for increasing personal happiness.  (Which, by the way, ranks in top gifts received ever.  Who needs a bunch of stuff if one knows how to be happy, right?)

His discovery was very simple, and I recognized it right away as a technique I have sometimes used myself, never knowing that I had accidentally stumbled upon Knowledge.  Now this advice is permanently lodged in my head, readily accessible in case of emergency (or just general unhappiness). Ready for it?  This is what he told me to do:

Think of five things that you’re happy about.  Do this every single day.

Read it again.  Its very simplicity is what makes it so effective.  It’s not very difficult to think of five happy things.  And it doesn’t take very long.  And yet in the process of so doing, you’re restructuring the way your brain works.

Fast forward to now.  I’ve been having a bit of a tough time lately.  For starters, I’ve been really sick.  And my tooth broke.  And it just went on from there.  At a certain point, the snowball effect kicked in when the negative thoughts built on each other, and suddenly I felt negative about things I wouldn’t normally have a problem with.  I was framing the story of my life from an unhappy point of view, and I’d lost all sense of perspective.  Eventually this led to insomnia, which just served to feed the cycle further.  Rinse, wash, repeat.

Or maybe not.  Because instead I remembered my friend’s present to me.  Before bed I took a soothing hot bath and told my husband every single good thing about the past year I could possibly think of.  Not just five, but all of them.  Luckily, once I get started I’m very good at thinking of positive things.  I think this skill might be part of the reason why I’m happy a lot.  (Also because little things make me pretty happy, and after a while little things add up.)

I slept soundly that night, and the next day I felt ten times better, and therefore much more able to deal with the real challenges I was facing.  The next night, I only thought of a couple good things, but that was enough because I had spent the whole day framing my life in a more positive way.  I had believed what my friend told me at my party, but it took dramatic results for the knowledge to really sink in.

Do I think that anyone who tried this technique would get equally fast and dramatic results?  No, probably not.  I’ve spent years programming my mind to think more positively, after all.  But I do think it’s a worthwhile exercise.  People spend so much time worrying and hurting and complaining and seeing the bad side and being self-critical.  Setting aside a few minutes for happiness sounds pretty reasonable.

Have you thought of five things that make you happy yet?  Feel free to share them in the comments.  Or e-mail me and tell me about them.  Or keep them to yourself.  As long as you think them, that’s what matters.

 

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Writing Life: Fringe Benefits

Posted in Writing, tagged , on November 9, 2010| 6 Comments »

I’ve talked in general about disappointment, I’ve mentioned the rigors associated with beginning to write.   Today I’d like to talk about some of the upsides of being a writer, and specifically of living the “writing life”.

What is the writing life?  The answer varies from person to person.  For some writers, it can mean getting up at 5am to write for two hours before going to work and then coming home in the evening to play with the kids.  For others, it can be working part-time and spending the extra hours writing.  Some writers are the full-time caretakers of their kids and also write.  And some writers are writing full time.

I don’t mean to romanticize the writing life or downplay any of the real difficulties involved in being a writer.  Sometimes, though, it’s good to remember the positives.  So without further ado, here are some of the side benefits of being a writer:

1. Schedule flexibility: Writing doesn’t need to happen during business hours, so this means you can squeeze it into your schedule however you please.  Sure, the squeeze might be difficult to manage at times, but it’s amazing how versatile some writers become.  You have the early 5am writer mentioned above and the late-at-night I-don’t-start-writing-til-midnight writer.  Some writers work during school hours and some write in ten minute increments around their other obligations.  There are the weekend warrior writers and the write-every-day-without-fail writers.  Ultimately, you get to decide what works for you.

2.  Working from home (or anywhere else you want): Some people don’t like working from home, but I love it.  It means I get to hang out with my dog, be surrounded by useful books and reference materials, and pop in a quick load of laundry while I work.  I also love that I can grab my laptop and work from anywhere.  The muse struck me in Maui, so I sat outside on the lanai and wrote a story.  I feel like getting out of the house, so I pop over to a local café.  Flexibility of location is a major perk.

3.  Writing community: This is one of my favorite fringe benefits.  I love writers.  Yes, I am completely biased, but the writers I’ve met have, on the whole, been intelligent, curious, and supportive.  They are my fellow dream spinners, tale tellers, and idea unfolders.  The process of narrative is about creating meaning and order from chaos, and the people engaged in such a process tend to have thought about aspects of life and the world very deeply.  Also writers often know lots of random and interesting facts, so they make great party guests.

4.  Research: Mmm, research.  A wonderful and enabling reason to go on non-fiction shopping sprees on Amazon, spend way too much time surfing the internet, or make a trip to a shiny university library.  Plus research gives you an excuse to try activities you’d never otherwise do or travel to places you wouldn’t have gone (budget allowing, of course).  Plus sometimes you learn more than you expected.

5.  Challenge: I love a good challenge.  In college, I sometimes said the reason I’d decided to study music was because it was difficult enough that it kept me continuously engaged and striving to be better.  Writing is the same way.  There’s always something new to learn, some new technique to try, some aspect of your writing that can be improved, a new story to tell.  I’m constantly able (and even encouraged) to stretch my brain and explore my capabilities further, which means I stay excited about the work.

6.  Regular Creation: I had to end with this one, which is, of course, not a side benefit but rather a main cause of becoming a writer in the first place.  One of the best parts of being a writer, in my mind, is the satisfaction that comes with writing a daily word goal or time quota, finishing that story or novel, or brainstorming a new promising idea.  The writing life ultimately revolves around—you guessed it—sitting down and writing.  And if you love the process, then it can be a rewarding life indeed.

Thinking about a benefit of the writing life that I’ve missed?  Comment and let me know.

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Your Dreams are not Mine

Posted in Arts, Life, tagged , , , , on October 21, 2010| 7 Comments »

She works for a video game company, writing in a universe she’s loved since childhood.  In return for doing this job she loves, she gets a salary, vacation days, health benefits.  This is a dream.

She discovered the story of a brave boy in New Orleans, who during Hurricane Katrina drove a busload of people to safety.  Lack of publisher interest didn’t make her lose faith in her story and the courage of this boy, and she decided to self publish to make sure his story was told.  This is a dream.

She worked on her novel for several years, joined a critique group, participated in the writers’ community, and kept trying.  Her debut novel is coming out in the spring of 2012 from a major publisher.  This is a dream.

He made his own publishing deal with a small press and has his second novel in a series (third book total) coming out in 2011.  He was nominated for a Hugo, and was invited to be Guest of Honor to a regional convention.  This is a dream.

She started her own business, which would allow her to support herself comfortably only working halftime.  She spent the rest of her time engaged in whatever creative projects struck her fancy.  This is a dream.

Her dad wants her to attend an Ivy League college she couldn’t afford.  She wants to study voice, composition, and writing and live abroad for awhile.  She’s like an echo of myself, but she’s not.  This is a dream, and it’s hers.  Here’s hoping she gets to live it.

Allow people to live their own dreams.  Every dream is as different as the dreamer, and each one is valid and special in its own way.  When we look down on someone else’s dream, it’s because it threatens something inside of us.

We can do better than that.

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Keeping Productive through Tough Times, or How to Survive the Fuchsia Hammer of Doom

Posted in Life, Writing, tagged , , , on October 5, 2010| 8 Comments »

The weekend before last, I was having a writerly conversation with a group of writerly friends.  One of them was expressing heartfelt admiration of a mutual friend of ours, who, he said, had totally mastered the problem of emotion getting in the way of writing.

Even if you’re not a writer, you probably know about this little problem.  It’s when you have a to-do list a mile long, or angelic plans to clean out your closet today, or work projects to complete, or writing to accomplish.  And then something happens.  It doesn’t matter exactly what something is (a particularly disappointing rejection letter, bad personal news, someone wrote something nasty about your favorite hat on Facebook, or what have you); the salient feature of the something is that it’s completely upsetting and derails any work you had plans to accomplish that day (or that week, that month….)

Back to my writerly conversation.  I thought to myself, “Well, that’s great, but it’s not so difficult really.  After all, when I’m writing a first draft of a novel, I’m pretty reliable about cranking out my daily word count in spite of everything else going on.”

Be careful what you think to yourselves, my friends, because four days later, life took a swing at my head with an oversized and ridiculously colored hammer (I think it was fuchsia, but it took me so much by surprise I wasn’t at my observational best).  And before I knew it, I was eating my words.  Imagine me staring at the blank page that was supposed to be my blog post the next day.  Not so difficult, huh?  How could I possibly write an entertaining and interesting blog post with a pounding head (the hammer struck pretty hard, apparently) and emotional turmoil swirling in my brain?

Well, obviously I managed, since I published a blog post last Thursday.  And equally obviously, I’m managing again with this post.  But now this pesky problem has earned my interest.  Life is, in my experience, going to knock me down every so often; how do I keep my productivity in the face of these challenges?  Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1.  Manage expectations. So maybe I won’t get everything done on the to-do list today after all.  But if I can prioritize the tasks that are really critical, or pick a couple tasks that I feel more confident I can manage (this may be errands, or reading the next chapter in my current nonfiction book, or cooking dinner), then I won’t completely lose momentum and will be better set up to deal with tomorrow.

2.  Take a break. Anything I need to accomplish will seem extra overwhelming while I’m in the heat of strong emotions.  If I can take a short break and do something soothing (play the piano, take a walk, read something fun, play mindless computer games), I’ll be in better shape to tackle what I need to do.

3.  Vent. I’ve recently read that venting actually makes a person more angry instead of less, but even if that’s the case, I find it helpful.  Just knowing someone is on my side comforts me to the point where I have a clearer head.

4.  Channel your emotions into your work. Maybe that anger can give you the extra burst you need to put all those packets together.  Or maybe your disappointment will encourage you to send out that story again.  Or maybe you can use what has happened as inspiration for your blog post (hmm, now you see what I’m up to, don’tcha?)

5.  Compartmentalize. If you can get this down, it can be golden (as long as you don’t take it to extremes, of course).  As I’m writing this blog post, I’m still upset.  If I stop to think about it, I can feel the headache, the neck tension, the tightness in my stomach, and I can dwell upon exactly why I’m feeling the way I do.  Or I can not stop to think about it right now and write this blog post instead.  It’s not that I’m not upset, it’s that I can push the upset off to the side while I complete this task, or even several tasks.  At some point, I’ll have to stop and deal, but it doesn’t always have to be right now.  Believe me, if what you’re upset about is important, it’ll be there waiting for you when you finish.

6.  Find the silver lining. Yeah, I know I just wrote about this, but it too belongs on the list.  Finding a good point, any good point, can be crucial for managing your mood, especially once you’re over the initial shock of whatever is going on.  And if you can manage your mood, then writing (or project planning, or programming, or making phone calls) won’t seem quite so hard after all.

Anyone else have any ideas on how to keep on task in the face of emotional difficulty?  Anything you find particularly effective?  I eagerly await hearing about your experiences.

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Dealing with Disappointment

Posted in Arts, Life, tagged , on July 8, 2010| 14 Comments »

As a response to my post last week on planning, I was asked to speak more specifically about managing disappointment, and I promised to write this post.  Ever since, I have been simultaneously rubbing my hands together in glee and shaking in my culottes at the prospect of talking about a topic I find so important and difficult.  Disappointment is something that needs to be talked about more – and at the same time, it’s often an uncomfortable place to go in a conversation.  So I’m hoping to open up this blog to talking about it in a nonthreatening way.

First, I have to acknowledge the first advice I’ve heard from many people about disappointment: manage your expectations and create concrete goals that depend on yourself to complete and are therefore more in your control.  So for example, you set a goal to attend ten auditions this season instead of a goal to be cast in a leading part.  This is good advice; if you can shut down disappointment before it even happens, you’ll be a happier person.  But it’s also advice that ignores the deeper emotional heart of the issue, which is that sometimes we’ve planned perfectly well and we’re still plunged into the depths.  Sometimes things go horribly wrong for no reason; sometimes things go horribly wrong for a perfectly good reason.  Sometimes we mess up, make huge mistakes, get our hearts set on something we simply can’t have right now.  It happens, and sweeping these experiences under the rug invalidates the very real suffering they cause.

It’s not just a problem for those following artistic pursuits either.  Relationships go south.  Family behaves in unaccountable ways.  Vacations get canceled.  People move away, or are too busy to see us.  We get passed over during the promotion cycle.  The last episode of Battlestar Galactica was a travesty.  And on and on and on.  More often than not, we pretend to the outside world that none of this is going on.  But it is, trust me.  Disappointment is a fact of life.

So what are some ideas of ways we can deal?

  1. Have a support system, or at least a support person. I tell my husband about almost all of my disappointments.  He quite possibly gets sick of hearing about them, but it makes me feel a whole lot better to know there’s someone on my side no matter what who will urge me to keep going.
  2. Get the disappointment physically out of your body. Scream, cry, take up kickboxing, run around the block, jump up and down, hit your pillow.  In my experience, this becomes more important the bigger the disappointment you are suffering.  If I receive a short story rejection, I just sigh.  That one breath is enough for me to let it go.  If, on the other hand, someone is unkind to me, I might need to rant about it for awhile to get it out of my body.
  3. Allow yourself to feel the disappointment, and then give yourself a treat to acknowledge that you took a risk and made an attempt. This can be sugar, my personal favorite, or something you buy for yourself, but it can also be something simpler that doesn’t cost money or calories: Give yourself an entire evening to read a good book.  Take an outing to the ocean/park/mountains/your favorite scenic destination.  Take a hot bath.  Spend quality time with your pet.  Paint your toenails.  Play your favorite video game.  Play the piano.  Whatever floats your boat.
  4. Embrace your stubbornness. I’m not kidding, and I love this one, having been termed stubborn since I was a small child.  “They” say that the opera singers who succeed are not the ones that are most promising in terms of ability as much as the ones who will persevere through anything.  So embrace this personality trait, and keep it in check by being careful to set realistic goals.
  5. Allow time to pass. I hate this one, because there’s nothing you can do to make it happen except wait.  But the passage of time does have the amazing effect of putting your disappointments into perspective.  In the meantime, you can be proactively working on something else.  Sometimes, as in the case with writing, you can start work on the next story or novel.  Sometimes, as in an ended relationship, you can focus on some other aspect of your life that’s been neglected (ex. start spending more time with your friends, give more time to your hobby of painting/discgolf/fill in the blank, etc.)  Give yourself the reassuring feeling of forward momentum while letting the passage of time work its magic.
  6. Learn from your experience, and use it to help yourself grow. This one is the most important for me personally.  After I’ve suffered a disappointment, I ask myself: How can I do better next time?  What can I practice next that will help me improve?  What could I change in my behavior that might make this go better next time?  Are there warning signs I can look out for that I didn’t recognize this time?  What are my priorities here?  Is there a system I can institute that would solve this kind of problem in the future? (This last one was particularly useful for running a business, let me tell you.)

The reason I think these questions and this period of self-reflection is so important is that it allows me to transform my disappointment into a learning experience I can regard positively.  Sometimes this works even if I didn’t learn a whole lot, just by going through the cause and effect chain.  So when I look back on it, instead of thinking only of how horrible it was, I also think, “But if it weren’t for this happening, I wouldn’t have been able to do _______.”  If I hadn’t written the musical which never got produced, I would never have had the courage to write my first novel.  If I hadn’t worked at a lot of office jobs I didn’t like, I wouldn’t have considered opening my own business.  If I hadn’t learned all those interpersonal relationship skills, I wouldn’t have as happy a marriage now.  If I didn’t get all my stories rejected so often, I wouldn’t be as good a writer.  When something bad happens, which is a marker for disappointment, I try to use its momentum to push myself forward instead of allowing it to hold me back.

All right, I’m going to open the floor.  I’m really interested to hear about disappointments you’ve had and how you’ve overcome them.  Or alternately, you can talk about disappointments you are currently facing and things you might try to deal with them.  Be kind, be courteous, and be real.  And thanks for joining me in talking about such a difficult topic.

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