How to Declutter Using Faith

What on earth, you may ask, does faith have to do with decluttering?

If you'd asked me six months ago, I'd have said absolutely nothing. But now I see how critical faith is to a simple life, a decluttered home, and a feeling of prosperity and ease.

I don't mean faith in the sense of religious beliefs, though that can work if that's what works for you. I'm such an eclectic spiritual soul that I don't know how to define my "faith," but I don't think of it in religious terms. More in terms of a belief in something larger, something mysterious, something that is perfect and whole, no matter what is actually going on, and no matter how I perceive it to be otherwise. A universe that exists is enough, for me, to have faith that I can surrender to its integrity, even if I don't understand or even like it.

Here we are. Amazing.

Now, in my home, I have struggled, for years, with a yearning for a simple, uncluttered lifestyle, a clean, open and cozy place that has room to breathe and feels good and actually achieving it. I can tell you that right now I don't have that. My house is also not so bad as to be the other extreme--it is not heavily congested, it is not chaotic, it is not cramped and airless and it does not look to be the home of a hoarder.

But. I want the feeling of simplicity and space and enough-ness in my home. My discovery vis-a-vis faith and decluttering is that the only way to let things go AND not bring more than what's absolutely necessary into my life is to have faith in a universe that provides enough.

The process of getting to that faith, by the way, has taken me years. And I can discuss more of that in another post. But today, I want to leave you with the thought that if you crave a decluttered home, if you want simplicity and peace and ease in your life, you are gonna have to cultivate faith to achieve it. I really think it's the only way.

I mean, you could hire a professional organizer to come in and declutter and organize your stuff, but the only way to maintain that state is to feel differently than you did when you were in the process of cluttering your home. (And, by the way, you have to take responsibility--clutter doesn't just happen. You either make it or you allow it via various avenues, another topic for another post.)

And for me, the way I've begun feeling differently about prosperity and material possessions and all that goes along with it--money, work, buying, selling, giving and sharing--is to apply faith to the process.

If you're feeling it, tell me what the biggest obstacle is for you on your path to a decluttered, simple home? And what do you think faith could do for you regarding this area?

As always, peace to you.
Tiffany

The Secret Is Gratitude

The last post here was about 13 months ago. I was five months pregnant at the time, and now I have a beautiful, healthy 8 month old baby girl.

Man, having a baby is hell on blogging. :-)

But, a routine has reestablished itself and I'm back, feeling again like I have some things to say. I've been through some crazy things over the past few months, some traumatic, some amazing, and some just mundane.

But through all that, I've been following a plan that has kept me growing, evolving, and believing in the possibility of bliss and a rich life today, right now. And, the more I live this way, the more I believe that it speaks to the great myths and ancient wisdom traditions that point to the truth of bliss being here, always available, no matter the circumstances.

Today, I am living a life I consider to be a dream, not because it looks like something in the movies. It is a far richer, yet more humble dream: I work doing work that I love, for a few hours a week, and the rest of the time, I am with my beautiful and amazing children and my seriously fantastic (and yummy!) husband.

This dream would not be possible without the help of others, it's true, but it also isn't only chance. I have worked in many ways, consciously and unconsciously to design a life where help slots into place and is available for me to take advantage.

I want to say more about this as I go along here in this space. I look at my life, and while not perfect by any means, it is a life I deeply, deeply appreciate and feel gratitude for.

And, the thing is, every life, no matter the circumstances, deserves appreciation and gratitude. It is not too much to say that deep, abiding gratitude for what is here, for who you are, for what is, is the secret to finding bliss.

That's all I'll say for now. I hope to see you back here for more. In the comments, feel free to tell me what you are deeply and wildly grateful for right now.

Peace,
Tiffany

5 Gratitudes a Day

Every morning, my husband and I, via email, exchange 5 things for which we are grateful. We've been doing this for a little over a month, and I am pleased to report it is a practice that is already paying great dividends.

In accordance with the Shawn Achor talk I posted recently, I have learned that happiness takes some work, some practice. Or, rather, happiness is already there, waiting to be found, if only you are willing to look for it. Then, once it is uncovered, the radiance of the happiness already present in your life surrounds you and infuses you with more joy, more gratitude, more happiness.

Happy is a verb. I choose to happy my life. One of the ways I do so is by doing this quick, daily practice of five gratitudes.

Go ahead. Try it.

Today, I'm grateful for:

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. 
   
4. 
   
5.  

If you're so inclined, leave your gratitudes in the comments. They don't all have to be deep and profound, either. Just the other day, I gave thanks for automatic dishwashers. Or really good dark chocolate. The point is to look at your world and see what you feel gratitude for. 

I challenge you to do this for 21 days. If I were selling something, I'd make a money-back guarantee that you will see a positive shift in your life by the end of those 21 days. Fortunately, doing this is free. Nothing to hold you back. So...what are you grateful for today?

Peace and happiness,
Tiffany

TEDx Talk: Shawn Achor: The Happy Secret to Better Work

Wanted to share this with you. A funny, fast, inspiring talk. It's really worth watching just for his delivery and for the slides, but for those who'd rather read what he has to say, the transcript is below the video.







When I was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on top of a bunk bed. I was two years older than my sister at the time -- I mean, I'm two years older than her now -- but at the time it meant she had to do everything that I wanted to do, and I wanted to play war. So we were up on top of our bunk beds. And on one side of the bunk bed, I had put out all of my G.I. Joe soldiers and weaponry. And on the other side were all my sister's My Little Ponies ready for a cavalry charge.

There are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, but since my sister is not here with us today, let me tell you the true story -- (Laughter) -- which is my sister's a little bit on the clumsy side. Somehow, without any help or push from her older brother at all, suddenly Amy disappeared off of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. Now I nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallen sister and saw that she had landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fours on the ground.

I was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that my sister and I played as safely and as quietly as possible. And seeing as how I had accidentally broken Amy's arm just one week before ... (Laughter) ... heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet, (Laughter) for which I have yet to be thanked, I was trying as hard as I could -- she didn't even see it coming -- I was trying as hard as I could to be on my best behavior.

And I saw my sister's face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprise threatening to erupt from her mouth and threatening to wake my parents from the long winter's nap for which they had settled. So I did the only thing my little frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. And if you have children, you've seen this hundreds of times before. I said, "Amy, Amy, wait. Don't cry. Don't cry. Did you see how you landed? No human lands on all fours like that. Amy, I think this means you're a unicorn."
(Laughter)

Now that was cheating, because there was nothing in the world my sister would want more than not to be Amy the hurt five year-old little sister, but Amy the special unicorn. Of course, this was an option that was open to her brain at no point in the past. And you could see how my poor, manipulated sister faced conflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering and surprise she just experienced, or contemplating her new-found identity as a unicorn. And the latter won out. Instead of crying, instead of ceasing our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negative consequences that would have ensued for me, instead a smile spread across her face and she scrambled right back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn ... (Laughter) ... with one broken leg.

What we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven -- we had no idea at the time -- was something that was going be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we look at the human brain. What we had stumbled across is something called positive psychology, which is the reason that I'm here today and the reason that I wake up every morning.

When I first started talking about this research outside of academia, out with companies and schools, the very first thing they said to never do is to start your talk with a graph. The very first thing I want to do is start my talk with a graph. This graph looks boring, but this graph is the reason I get excited and wake up every morning. And this graph doesn't even mean anything; it's fake data. What we found is --
(Laughter)

If I got this data back studying you here in the room, I would be thrilled, because there's very clearly a trend that's going on there, and that means that I can get published, which is all that really matters. The fact that there's one weird red dot that's up above the curve, there's one weirdo in the room -- I know who you are, I saw you earlier -- that's no problem. That's no problem, as most of you know, because I can just delete that dot. I can delete that dot because that's clearly a measurement error. And we know that's a measurement error because it's messing up my data.

So one of the very first things we teach people in economics and statistics and business and psychology courses is how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How do we eliminate the outliers so we can find the line of best fit? Which is fantastic if I'm trying to find out how many Advil the average person should be taking -- two. But if I'm interested in potential, if I'm interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, what we're doing is we're creating the cult of the average with science.
If I asked a question like, "How fast can a child learn how to read in a classroom?" scientists change the answer to "How fast does the average child learn how to read in that classroom?" and then we tailor the class right towards the average. Now if you fall below the average on this curve, then psychologists get thrilled, because that means you're either depressed or you have a disorder, or hopefully both. We're hoping for both because our business model is, if you come into a therapy session with one problem, we want to make sure you leave knowing you have 10, so you keep coming back over and over again. We'll go back into your childhood if necessary, but eventually what we want to do is make you normal again. But normal is merely average.

And what I posit and what positive psychology posits is that if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average. Then instead of deleting those positive outliers, what I intentionally do is come into a population like this one and say, why? Why is it that some of you are so high above the curve in terms of your intellectual ability, athletic ability, musical ability, creativity, energy levels, your resiliency in the face of challenge, your sense of humor? Whatever it is, instead of deleting you, what I want to do is study you. Because maybe we can glean information -- not just how to move people up to the average, but how we can move the entire average up in our companies and schools worldwide.

The reason this graph is important to me is, when I turn on the news, it seems like the majority of the information is not positive, in fact it's negative. Most of it's about murder, corruption, diseases, natural disasters. And very quickly, my brain starts to think that's the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the world. What that's doing is creating something called the medical school syndrome -- which, if you know people who've been to medical school, during the first year of medical training, as you read through a list of all the symptoms and diseases that could happen, suddenly you realize you have all of them.

I have a brother in-law named Bobo -- which is a whole other story. Bobo married Amy the unicorn. Bobo called me on the phone from Yale Medical School, and Bobo said, "Shawn, I have leprosy." (Laughter) Which, even at Yale, is extraordinarily rare. But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo because he had just gotten over an entire week of menopause.


See what we're finding is it's not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.

When I applied to Harvard, I applied on a dare. I didn't expect to get in, and my family had no money for college. When I got a military scholarship two weeks later, they allowed me to go. Suddenly, something that wasn't even a possibility became a reality. When I went there, I assumed everyone else would see it as a privilege as well, that they'd be excited to be there. Even if you're in a classroom full of people smarter than you, you'd be happy just to be in that classroom, which is what I felt. But what I found there is, while some people experience that, when I graduated after my four years and then spent the next eight years living in the dorms with the students -- Harvard asked me to; I wasn't that guy. (Laughter) I was an officer of Harvard to counsel students through the difficult four years. And what I found in my research and my teaching is that these students, no matter how happy they were with their original success of getting into the school, two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or their physics. Their brain was focused on the competition, the workload, the hassles, the stresses, the complaints.
When I first went in there, I walked into the freshmen dining hall, which is where my friends from Waco, Texas, which is where I grew up -- I know some of you have heard of it. When they'd come to visit me, they'd look around, they'd say, "This freshman dining hall looks like something out of Hogwart's from the movie "Harry Potter," which it does. This is Hogwart's from the movie "Harry Potter" and that's Harvard. And when they see this, they say, "Shawn, why do you waste your time studying happiness at Harvard? Seriously, what does a Harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about?"

Embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness. Because what that question assumes is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels, when in reality, if I know everything about your external world, I can only predict 10 percent of your long-term happiness. 90 percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, what we can do is change the way that we can then affect reality. What we found is that only 25 percent of job successes are predicted by I.Q. 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.

I talked to a boarding school up in New England, probably the most prestigious boarding school, and they said, "We already know that. So every year, instead of just teaching our students, we also have a wellness week. And we're so excited. Monday night we have the world's leading expert coming in to speak about adolescent depression. Tuesday night it's school violence and bullying. Wednesday night is eating disorders. Thursday night is illicit drug use. And Friday night we're trying to decide between risky sex or happiness."

I said, "That's most people's Friday nights." (Laughter) (Applause) Which I'm glad you liked, but they did not like that at all. Silence on the phone. And into the silence, I said, "I'd be happy to speak at your school, but just so you know, that's not a wellness week, that's a sickness week. What you've done is you've outlined all the negative things that can happen, but not talked about the positive."

The absence of disease is not health. Here's how we get to health: We need to reverse the formula for happiness and success. In the last three years, I've traveled to 45 different countries, working with schools and companies in the midst of an economic downturn. And what I found is that most companies and schools follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I'll be more successful. And if I'm more successful, then I'll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting styles, our managing styles, the way that we motivate our behavior.

And the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. First, every time your brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better school, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we're going to change your sales target. And if happiness is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. What we've done is we've pushed happiness over the cognitive horizon as a society. And that's because we think we have to be successful, then we'll be happier.

But the real problem is our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we've found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You're 37 percent better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed. Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present, then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.

What we need to be able to do is to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable of. Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you're positive, has two functions. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to the world in a different way.

We've found that there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. In just a two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully. We've done these things in research now in every single company that I've worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they're grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the world, not for the negative, but for the positive first.

Journaling about one positive experience you've had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. We find that meditation allows your brain to get over the cultural ADHD that we've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at hand. And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of kindness. We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their social support network.

And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we've found is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of positivity, but create a real revolution.

Thank you very much.
(Applause)

How to Try on a Big Decision

All of my advice on making a big decision came from a person who didn’t have children. Now that I have a child, I can see how my decisions affect this new life that I’m responsible for, and let me tell you, it does complicate things. I don’t think my prior advice is invalid, but I feel like it doesn’t account for this feeling of responsibility for a child’s experiences and development.

So, as a giver of advice on decision making, it turns out I have been a huge hypocrite for nearly two years. For two years, I have been avoiding a decision about work and staying home with my son. I have been avoiding this decision by trying to do it all: I stay home and take care of him during the day, and I do my freelance work at naptime and at night, after he’s in bed.

When my workload isn’t that heavy, this feels totally manageable. I spend a few hours each day on work, and then get to bed at a reasonable hour, with enough time to talk to my husband and even read a bit.

But when things really get rolling, burnout approaches very, very quickly, and suddenly I’m cranky, tired and just feeling overwhelmed. Then, just when I think I can’t take any more and something has to give, work slows down and I feel like I can continue on.

But even when things slow down, I recognize that I am just avoiding a decision. For our family, day care isn’t the right choice. I intend to homeschool/unschool my son, so why would I send him to preschool? He is the most amazing person on the earth in my eyes, so I find it very hard to pay other people to spend time with him, when I feel like they should be paying me for the privilege of hanging out with him! (I’m only half-joking!)

Still, with much agonizing, I’ve decided to hire a babysitter to come to the house for a few hours in the morning, starting once a week, to see how it goes. The agony is not because I worry about him: The babysitter is also a mother, a smart cookie (she was homeschooled) and is very mature and responsible, not to mention the fact that she also practices attachment parenting, as I do.

The agony comes in because I perceive time in a very expanded way, which makes the day-to-day feel more weighty, I think. I often envision myself, twenty years from now, reminiscing about my son’s adorable little hands, his enthusiasm for his trains, the particular timbre of his little baby voice, and I know that I will be so pleased that I soaked up every moment. I recognize that this is a season of my life, and that it will pass, and I will one day have all the time in the world to do freelance writing, if that’s what I should choose.

But then there’s my desire to remain engaged in my work, as it is satisfying, it certainly is a help financially (though not absolutely critical to our survival) and it is something that if I give up now, I wonder if I’ll be able to pick up again. I also think there’s the matter of my son recognizing me as someone with an identity outside of mother and wife.

All of this swirls in my head at night until I’m so confused and exhausted that I just drop off to sleep.

The point is, I’m trying on a decision. I will see how taking a few hours to do work during the day and during his waking hours will be. I’ve already envisioned everything I can envision, and I am stumped. The intellectual process I’ve described can only go so far in certain instances, and this seems like one of them.

Now, I will have to experience the decision, and, more importantly, see how my son experiences the decision. If he’s happy and there are no ill effects, I can feel more comfortable with this decision. If, on the other hand, he seems moodier, clingier or is restless in his sleep, I’ll have to reconsider. (Same goes for me: If I am moodier, clingier or restless in my sleep, it may not be right for us.)

What allowed me to try on this decision was the realization that very few decisions (though there are some, and they are biggies!) are completely irrevocable or do irrevocable harm.

If this decision to hire a babysitter and get some more daytime hours for my work doesn't feel good after a real trial period, well, then, I’ll know which decision is the best one for me and my family. Likewise if it does feel good and me and my son and husband are happy and doing well. 

It’s true that some decisions are easier to try on than others. Moving, for example, is more difficult than hiring a babysitter! Marriage is a decision, yes, but it is also (supposed to be) a lifelong commitment, and one I believe should not be approached with a “let’s see how it works out” attitude. So, there are some decisions that you can try on, and others that must be made with the intuition and leap of faith approach.

But, for those smaller decisions, or the big ones that lend themselves to a trial run, it’s so good to remember that you can take the step and see how it feels. And that it’s OK if you need to change your mind.

It’s also important to realize that, when you make a decision in good faith, there is no “wrong” decision. In any moment of deciding, you make the best decision you can at the moment you make it. Sometimes it turns out that you were missing crucial information about yourself or others, so you stop, take a deep breath, and reevaluate. And if it turns out that yes, this decision you’ve made isn’t working, you make a change and start on a new path.

Remember, your peace (and/or your child’s peace) is more important than protecting the ego that might be embarrassed at having made a human mistake.

If you are in the grips of paralyzing indecision, as I was, and you think you have a decision that is try-on-able, pick a path and start walking down it. You can always turn around and find your way back to where you are right now.

Peace to you,
Tiffany

p.s. I will update you all on how this decision I’ve made works for me and my family. Only the experience will settle this particular question for me, so we’ll see how it all goes!

Remove the Arrow: A Reminder

In my last few posts I've been exploring the idea of practicing patience, no matter what life throws at you.

I want to follow up and say that while I think the six points of the Mahamudra and Practice of Patience are all very useful and very good, some are better suited to certain kinds of suffering than others.

For instance, a reader pointed out that my kidney stone pain was a sort of pain that was hard to reimagine as pleasant to someone else. While I maintain that all points can be utilized, the "This too shall pass" item was maybe best suited to maintaining calm and patience in that scenario. (At least once I knew what it was--for a time I had no idea.) Think of the six points as options, and use whichever is best suited to allowing you to cultivate patience when you really need to.

Now, it a good idea to remember that some things that cause suffering we have no control over. Kidney stone pain is one of them. (Assuming there's nothing you know about yourself regarding diet or other ways to avoid the stones, you kind of just have to suck it up and allow the body to deal with it.) Many illnesses and the loss of others in our lives fall into this category.

However, there are plenty of kinds of pain and suffering that you do have control over. Namely work situations and relationships, and bad health--physical, emotional, or financial--that's self-inflicted.

There is a relevant Buddhist parable that I'll sum up here: A man is shot with a poisoned arrow. It is causing him great pain. But before he'll have it removed, he wants to know who shot him, why they shot him, where his assailant was from, what the arrow is made of, what sort of string the bow was strung with, etc...

The point is that knowing the answers to those questions do not alleviate the suffering. Indeed, in this scenario, the man might die and still not get the answers to all his questions. The only rational, clear-headed way forward is to remove that which is causing the suffering.

So, when considering your problem, pain or suffering, ask yourself if it is something you have control over. If not, practice patience.

If, on the other hand, it is something you can change--then there is no need to martyr yourself. You have both the power and the responsibility to love yourself enough to end the suffering.

Remove the arrow. You might still have questions, but the first order of business is to draw out the poisoned dart. Then, and only then, can an inquiry into why you've been shot or how it happened begin.

Good luck, and may all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be happy and free from suffering.

Love,
Tiffany

The Consequences of Delaying a Big Decision

Mostly, you have time to figure things out. But not too much time. Too much time is really just not making up your mind, dragging out the inevitable, and, in fact, just wasting time.

So, if you have a big decision to make, or even just a small decision that feels important, get to it.

To tell you why this is on my mind, I have to tell you a story.

An acquaintance I know professionally recently announced her intention to seek a therapist. In her fifties, with a preteen son, she was unhappy, especially with her marriage. She did not know if she loved him anymore, and was uncertain whether to split up and make a new life for herself.

This was about two weeks ago.

Two days ago, I got word that her husband, also in his fifties, went into the hospital after complaining of an odd pain in his back. The next morning, while in a CT scan, the as-yet-to-be-discovered aneurysm ruptured, killing him almost instantly.

Though I scarcely knew this woman, I am haunted by this. Of course, it is simply sad, as the unexpected end of a relatively young life always is.

But what lingers for me is the thought of how neither of them will ever have a chance to say a proper goodbye to each other, and most importantly, how he will never get the chance to find a new path, full of happiness and love.

I can’t speculate on how much happiness he might have had in his life. I didn’t know him. But he was in what sounds like a broken, unhappy marriage, regardless of whether there was fault or blame to be had.

One of my favorite mantras from my yoga practice translates as this: May all beings everywhere, including ourselves, be happy and free of suffering.

I don’t care who you are, what you’ve done, what flaws you may have. All human beings—all of them—begin life as beautiful souls. All deserve happiness and peace. And unfortunately, some have a harder road to hoe than others, for a variety of reasons, both internal and external.

This is not to say that you are entitled to happiness and peace; in most cases, you have to earn it. But regardless of how you get there, as a human being, you do deserve peace.

So, back to this couple. Who the “good” partner or the “better” spouse was is immaterial. If the marriage was unhappy, each had a responsibility to end the suffering, either through authentic acceptance of reality (rather than a wishing it to be otherwise), a fundamental change of self (self-improvement to end a problem), or to end the marriage if it was irretrievable (letting go).

I am speculating, but my guess is that years of unhappiness went by in this couple’s life. Procrastinating. Searching after the cause of the problems, after faults and blame. And now fate has intervened. Some might say, “Well, the marriage is over now. Won’t the suffering be over, too?”

But the problem is that they left it up to fate (though unintentionally). The problem has been resolved in a sense, but without direct action. Without conscious decision. A passive, unsatisfying (and in this case, sad and irrevocable) solution.

This is kind of the worst-case scenario for not acting out of an honest, authentic sense of self.

So, what are the consequences to delaying decision-making? In a word, loss.

Loss of time. Loss of happiness. Loss of truth. Loss of self. Loss of authenticity and self-knowledge. Loss of agency. Loss of peace. Loss of a life.

Whatever decision you’re wrangling with, make your best effort to apply yourself to its completion. I know from personal experience that these things can take some time. But you don’t have forever. You have a little time, probably. But maybe not. You just don’t know.

But what you do know is that you can act while you are alive. If you are wrestling with a big decision, again, I say, do all you can to get to it. Don’t lose more time--and possibly your chance at peace--by putting off something you know you must do.

You deserve peace. You do. But you are also responsible for earning your peace.

Whoever you are, human, act! You are perfect in your ability to do so.

Love,

Tiffany

Do Good Work

As promised (though a little late), I have a few words to add on the subject of Mike Rowe's talk.

First of all, I couldn't agree more with his assertion that in our culture, generally speaking, work--real, hard work--is denigrated. As he says, it's explicit and implicit: in the way we're taught to think about work, the way advertising is always promising us ways to escape from work, and the get-rich quick mentality that infects the culture from the top to the bottom.

However, I think that it's not entirely fair to blame workers for feeling this way. Much of the time, workers come to a job ready to do their best, work their asses off, and feel the satisfaction of a job well done, whatever the job. However, where things go awry is when the worker is not allowed to do his job. I suppose it's true that there's some number of people who can't be trusted, but rather than micromanaging them, I say, fire them. They'll figure it out faster that way. And besides, the vast majority of people want to do a good job, and want to work hard. So there are a few bad apples? Why make life miserable for everyone else?

And yet, this is what happens. And so good, hard-working people find themselves in jobs that are controlled from three management levels above them, by people who have no inkling of what the details of the job really are.

Much like Mike Rowe's anecdote about the animal rights people in an office somewhere dictating how a lamb should be castrated.

That's why I think Mike Rowe has found that the people who do the dirty jobs are generally the happiest. They are generally allowed to do their jobs without a lot of interference or second-guessing. They are trusted to do their work. They know they will suffer consequences if they do a poor job, either in terms of job loss or job safety. They understand and are allowed to employ personal responsibility.

In the "knowledge" work that so much of the country does, the culture is nothing like the "dirty jobs" culture. And the people who work under the micromanaging egomaniacs suffer mightily for it. What do they produce? Not much. Who takes credit? Not them. Where is the satisfaction? Missing, it appears.

As a freelancer, I do "knowledge" work, but on my own terms. This makes my risks and rewards that much greater. And trust me, it is certainly not easier. But it is more satisfying, and I know that the more I put into it, the more I'll get out of it. Not so at any of my old jobs. One of my mantras is "The worst day working for myself is still better than the best day working for someone else."

One other point: Mike Rowe, in his speech, says the worst advice given to young workers is to "Follow your passion." He then goes on to talk about guys who made a ton of money improving on an old business model, or finding some niche that no one else was filling, and going into that. And he says that they are extremely happy, even though what they are doing is not the stuff of dreams.

He says these people have found success and are extremely happy. I won't question that. But the reason, I think, Mike Rowe thinks "Follow your passion" is bad advice is because we so often confuse passion with profession. Maybe your passion is singing or painting, but you can't make that your profession. I think the important thing is that whatever you're doing is coming from someplace authentic. If you enjoy business or lawyering because you are good at it and you get a lot of satisfaction from it, nothing says you have to quit it all to be an artist or musician. It's just that you have to feel passionately about whatever it is you're doing. If you're not able to feel excited and compelled by your work, well, you won't be happy. Furthermore, if your passion is something that doesn't earn money, "Follow your passion" doesn't mean you have to earn money. It means you can do that thing whenever you can, even if you have to do another kind of work for money.

Of course, hopefully whatever work you are engaged in for your living, it should be one that gives you the autonomy and responsibility and satisfaction that is the heart and soul of a good job, of good work.

P.S. As a refresher, here is a post discussing my idea of what makes work good: "It's Not You, It's Me."

It's Not You, It's Me

Do you believe in the intrinsic differences of human beings? Or do you think we're all pretty much alike, though maybe I like spinach and indie rock and you hate spinach and indie rock but love peas and classic country?

You can probably guess where I fall in this debate. I think that even though we're the same species, we have real, intrinsic differences of psychology and personality. We are not all suited to the same environments, the same expectations, the same cultures, the same societies. And when we don't quite fit, we suffer greatly in trying to do so.

For many years, this was my pattern: I'd get a job, enjoy it for a while, then something would happen and I'd slowly become miserable, and have to make a change. So I'd get another job, and then it would happen again. I'd grow bored or antsy, and my bosses would always turn on me because I was no longer content to keep doing what I was doing. For years, I thought it was my bosses' fault, and while I truly had some terrible ones, what I finally realized was this: Rabbits can breed in captivity, but dolphins can't (or rarely can).

That doesn't mean what you think it means, so get your mind out of the gutter. What I'm saying is that some animals' life force is so severely stressed and hampered by captivity that they stop functioning, even to their own detriment. I mean, if they get so bad off that their instinct for survival is shunted, that must mean that they--dolphins, pandas, certain birds, etc.--are wired very differently from rabbits and pigs and cows and other easily domesticated animals.

Languishing in the series of cubicles (cages) I inhabited, I felt suffocated, frustrated, hopeless.

I was a dolphin trying to breed (symbolically speaking, trying to create and propagate ideas) in captivity, and failing miserably. Free Tiffany! But no movie crew would be interested, since there are millions of us like this. Who cares, they might ask--why can't you just suck it up and be like the rest of society?

And I tried. I really did. I didn't want to be different, and I wanted things to be easy, which is probably why I was in denial so long about it being the job or the boss, and not me.

But it was me. It was my fault, my problem, my responsibility. And no one could fix it but me. No one was going to break me out of my confines, no activists were lobbying for my release. I had to free myself, and to do so meant that I had to honor who I really was.

I know I am Homo sapiens, but I may--like so many of you--be a subspecies: Homo sapiens independensis. We chafe under captivity, we wither under watchful eyes, we choke ourselves on chains trying to break free.

So here we are: admitting we need something different. So if that doesn't work--if the cubicle existence slowly kills us--what conditions allow us to thrive?

Here's my list, but feel free to add to it:

• Freedom to create
  
• Autonomy over our work
  
• Freedom from surveillance
  
• An environment of trust and honor
  
• An ethical environment
  
• Flexibility to design our schedules and our projects
  
• Respect for our fundamental humanity
  
• Respect for our differences
  
• An environment of fairness and justice
  
• Time to explore, investigate and satisfy our curiosity
  
• Ability to express emotion and feeling without fear of repercussion
  
• An environment that values and appreciates our contributions
  

As you may notice, this doesn't just apply to work. It applies to relationships, to governments, to friendships. How so many people manage to survive under conditions so unlike these is beyond me.

So honor who you are. If you don't fit in the environment you're in, don't blame your boss, even if she really is an A-Number One Bitch. Sure, she may be a tyrant, but she could be all sweetness and light, and unless the conditions above are satisfied, you won't do well. If you are the dolphin and not the rabbit, find your way out of the cage and out into the open ocean. Sure, there are predators out there, but what kind of a life is the caged one?

I'll leave you with this excerpt--a passage that changed my life--from a conversation Joseph Campbell had with Michael Toms in the book "An Open Life":

"There are two ways of living a mythologically grounded life. One way is just to live what I call 'the way of the village compound,' where you remain within the sphere of your people...There are, however, people who feel this isn't the whole story...It's inevitable that a person with any sense of openness to new experience will say to himself, 'Now, this won't do, the way we're living.'

On the other hand, there's plenty of reason for those who don't have this feeling to remain within the field because our societies today are so rich in the gifts they can render. But if a person has had the sense of the Call--the feeling that there's an adventure for him--and if he doesn't follow that, but remains in the society because it's safe and secure, then life dries up. And then he comes to that condition in late middle age: he's gotten to the top of the ladder, and found that it's against the wrong wall.

If you have the guts to follow the risk, however, life opens, opens, opens up all along the line. I'm not superstitious, but I do believe in spiritual magic, you might say. I feel that if one follows what I call one's "bliss"--the thing that really gets you deep in the gut and that you feel is your life--doors will open up. They do! They have in my life and they have in many lives that I know of."

So it's not them, it's you. But contrary to what they'll try to convince you of, that's not a bad thing. In fact, it's a very, very good thing.

Your fellow dolphin,
Tiffany

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How to Make a Big Decision

So much of how our lives turn out hinges on our ability--or inability--to make decisions. After all, decisions are essentially the moments before action--or inaction--meaning that over time, what you choose accumulates into a path for your life.

Mostly, these are small decisions: Should I cook or go out? Should I buy the blue or the red sweater? Should I get cable?

While these decisions are small, they are worth paying attention to, because the ripple effects can be quite big. (This is why we don't have cable--the time I could waste watching the Food Network alone boggles the mind!)

So, while it's important to be mindful of some of these smaller decisions, today I'm interested in the big ones. So, for example: Should I quit my job? Should I get married? Should I get married to her? Should I start my own company? Should I move to the West Coast?

Fortunately or unfortunately, most of us are keenly aware at the impact these big decisions can have on our lives, and so we can become paralyzed by indecision, afraid to act at all for fear of making a huge mistake. For some, this may pass, and you will find that you are able to decide. For others, the decision simply gets put off: first for days, then months, then maybe even years slip by with no action taken. Inertia becomes the only thing propelling your life.

As you may have already guessed, this is not ideal. Any power you do have over your own life is going to waste.

So how to break free of this kind of paralysis? I have used very focused visualization in the past to great effect. Perhaps this will seem obvious to many of you, but I know that it seemed like a revelation to me at the time. I hope you find this technique helpful.

Here's what I do:

1. Find a place you can lie down and be totally alone. This is likely to be your bedroom, but so long as you're lying down and no one is nearby, it will work.
   
2. Lie down, close your eyes, and breathe deeply. You need to calm your mind, relax your muscles, let your breath rise and fall from your belly and not your shoulders. You need to get into a near-meditative state, really. This can take several minutes. Be patient.
   
3. Once relaxed, with your eyes still closed, focus your mind on the decision. Put it in either-or terms. As in: I can either stay in Texas, or I can move to Arizona.
4. Pick one, and begin to construct the movie of that decision in your mind. So you decide you will stay in a certain place, in a certain job, with the social network you have. What does that look like? What do you see next week looking like? Next year? Get down to the details. Who will you be seeing often? Which bars/restaurants/offices will you be spending time in? How does this make you feel? What do you like and dislike about this option? Again, imagine this to be as real and visual as possible.
   
5. Pick the other decision, and create that movie. Once you feel like you have really explored both the images and the feelings of one option, switch to the other and do the same exercise over again. If, in this example, it's imagining something you aren't familiar with, recognize that. Imagine the moving van, and the drive into a place that's only sort of fuzzy. Imagine that you won't know who your friends will be, and so you'll have to talk to people on that getting-to-know-you level. Get down to all the practical ramifications of making that decision. Does that excite you, or fill you with dread?
6. Pinpoint your emotions. Try to put into language the emotions you felt in each scene. Get up and create a list of words that apply to each visualization. Come up with as many that apply as possible.
7. Analyze the emotions. There will likely be positive and negative emotions in each decision. But now you can figure out why you feel the way you do. For example, you may feel fear at both the prospect of staying and of leaving. But is that fear exactly the same? Is one the fear of missed opportunity, and the other the fear of loneliness and unfamiliarity? Which one scares you more? Which emotions excite you more?
8. Meditate on what you've discovered. You likely won't have a "Eureka!" moment when you've finished this exercise, though it is possible. But having gone through the practice runs in your head, the identifying and analyzing of emotions will certainly give your subconscious something to chew on. When your mind explores a decision, you may feel a tightness in your throat, or a feeling of calm. Pay attention to that. Also pay attention to your dreams. Listen to all the signs of your body and mind in relation to each decision.

As I've said before, and I'll say again, trust your self. If you need to, repeat this exercise. But if you are able to be honest and open with yourself, you will soon find that you know what it is you need to do.

If you think of your life as a movie, be the director. Your movie should be directed by you, not by inertia. So start storyboarding--soon, you'll be ready to yell "Action!"

UPDATE: I've recently expanded on this topic in this post, titled "How to Live With a Big Decision." If you liked this one, I think you'll get a lot out of that one, too!

UPDATE 2: Another entry in the decision-making category for your perusal: "How to Make a Decision, Period." I hope you find it useful.

UPDATE 3: Another decision-related entry, this time on "The Consequences of Delaying a Big Decision."