This book is going on my Top Ten list for productivity. It answered a lot of questions and made a lot of connections for me. It's obvious that Cal Newport knows how to achieve the state of deep work, and he's had the grace to put it all in a book so that the rest of us can figure it out, too. It may be of particular value to chronic procrastinators; that's where I found the most insight. Newport talks about "shadow work," a term used by Steven Pressfield in a slightly different sense. Pressfield says we turn to shadow work when we cave in to Resistance and seek to avoid our true work. Newport defines shadow work as everything tangential to, but not essential to, our true work. Email and unproductive meetings are two of the major offenders. Ideally, our professional work aligns with our true calling in this world. Either way, shadow work is helpful neither in a practical nor in a metaphorical sense. Newport recommends that we offload it, negotiate our way out of it, delegate it, get it out of our job descriptions, or work on it only at unproductive times of day. I wake up dopey and disoriented in the morning. I don't feel fully mentally alert until around 10 AM. Knowing this, I have learned to do undemanding tasks when I first wake up. That's when I start the laundry and read my email. Email for me is almost all newsletters, bank statements, and alerts for things like veterinary or dentist appointments. It's all busywork or information I can skim for the 20% that I find useful; I can blast through it and save for later anything that needs my full focus. It would be silly of me to use a time of high mental alertness to fold laundry. The reason I do it at all is because I focus better in an orderly environment. The reason I do it when I do is that I'm not going to get anything amazing done during that time of day, regardless. Deep work is a potentially revolutionary concept for chronic procrastinators. I think Newport hits the nail on the head when he talks about deep work as a mental state; it's the elusive feeling that procrastinators want to be feeling when we are doing what we are supposed to be doing, i.e.: working. It really is a magical altered state. The thing is, we do feel this feeling of deep work, but we only tend to be absorbed in that manner when we are doing non-work things, like reading, playing games, or crafting. We know intuitively that we could be feeling it when we are doing real work, but it doesn't come automatically, and we don't know how to induce it. Newport explains how in Deep Work. He uses examples from highly productive, highly successful people, some of whom overcame the tendency toward procrastination. I loved this book, and it has had me doing some serious analysis of my work patterns. Most highly recommended. I’m bossy and I have a big mouth. It keeps me out of more trouble than it gets me into. Note that if I were a man, the same characteristics would be called by different names. Maybe I’d be an ass or a jerk; more probably I’d blend right in as an ordinary, assertive person. I believe it is a duty to speak up when something important needs to be said. If I am competent at something that will contribute meaningfully, I will step up and do it. Both of these traits can sometimes be unsettling to others. They survive. I offer what I have to offer, and whether other people appreciate my effort is outside my control. My attitude determines who prefers to be in my circle. I’ve never dated anyone who hit me. I chalk this up to being bossy and having a big mouth. Anyone who wants a timid, submissive woman to control will know in a few seconds not to bother with me. Timidity is probably a coping mechanism for many people (not just females) who have learned to keep their heads down to avoid attention. The natural reaction would be to fear angering someone who might then lash out. That’s understandable and true. Better to simply stay well away from control freaks and people with anger management problems. Nobody gets a second shot at a temper tantrum with me. Raise your voice in anger and the trust is gone. Bye. I’ve known too many people who tolerated violence and abuse. There are far more people out there who treat everyone as an equal and would never intentionally harm someone. Find one of them, or just be alone. Don’t waste a second on someone who is mean, controlling, or scary. I married the biggest, hairiest man I could find. He’s awesome. Part of the reason I married him is that he encourages my independence. He says he fell for me the day I threw a shoe at him. He likes the part of me that wants to climb ropes and jump over open flames. He worries about me sometimes, but that doesn’t mean he tries to stop me from doing whatever I want to do. I found him one day with a satellite photo, tracing over the route I run when I visit my family, looking at the tree line. (The only trouble I ever got into up there was stinging nettle). He sometimes uses location sharing to spot me when I’m walking in our neighborhood. We travel and backpack, both together and separately, and he knows I can take care of myself in most situations. Every situation I’ve ever been in so far, at any rate. His inclination is always to help me learn a new skill rather than to try to talk me out of something. I used to think it was my job merely to contribute to group harmony. I would sit back and try to make sure I wasn’t riding herd on everyone. I know my forthright manner can be taken differently by different people. Then something changed. I was at the airport early in the morning, on my way to my nephew’s high school graduation ceremony. I checked my email. The ceremony started early that evening, a weeknight. I realized that if we didn’t eat dinner early, we’d be leaving after 9 PM and most restaurants would be closed. There would be over a dozen of us, and it was nearly an hour from the site to my parents’ house. I’d be arriving straight from the airport – no time to cook ahead. Hangry alert! This thought chain went through my mind in about 90 seconds. I pulled up a map of the school and realized it was less than a mile from the venue where my husband and I had our wedding reception. I checked their hours and looked over the menu. Then I sent out a group text suggesting that we all meet there at 5 PM for dinner. I got on my plane, sweating a bit at how pushy I was being. Who was I to pick the restaurant and order everyone around? I landed at my layover, checked my phone, and saw that EVERYONE APPROVED. What?? We all had dinner, the food was great, and all the special diets were accommodated. My nephew got his diploma and everyone cried. The end. It seemed like maybe what I was seeing as pushy was simply a useful application of my secretarial skills. I decided to experiment by trying it again. My family is a large one, and we’ll descend on a restaurant like a swarm of locusts. It’s common for us to show up in a group of 12-16. We get into some pretty vigorous discussions over where to go and what to eat, only to find out sometimes that the place we had chosen wasn’t open that night. In my mind, cooking for 12 is easier than finding reservations for 12. I grabbed the ladle. I chose a menu and we went to the store a day ahead. I texted everyone that I was making Mexican casserole and salad, I already had the ingredients, and I was putting the pan in the oven at 6. Weirdly, we were all sitting around the table eating hot food before sundown. Nobody so much as whispered a word about why I was so darn bossy. Their mouths were too full of second helpings. Random people in a group tend to wander around listlessly without a plan. I’ve worked with actors, dancers, and musicians, and often their talents will lie fallow until someone presents them with a specific call to action. A lot of people need a director, conductor, or producer before they can feel inspired to perform. It’s the same when working with volunteers to do something like arranging or putting away chairs. Everyone is ready to help but nobody knows where to start or what to do. When a natural organizer such as myself walks in, everyone relaxes. How about if we space them like this? Will someone help me move this over there? Let’s get this cleaned up. Coaching is the same way. People wisely turn to a coach when they can’t quite figure out how to get on track, when something they want to do isn’t automatic or obvious yet. It wouldn’t work if I kept my opinions to myself or waited to be asked just the right specific question. They hire me to push them a bit and to ask questions that may shake up their status quo. With kindness, with consideration, with authority. My husband likes to quote me on an anecdote from the vacation where he proposed to me. We were going sea kayaking on a windy day in spring. As we walked up to the tour building, I saw a sign and read it out. Small craft advisory. I looked at our kayak. “Is this not, a “small craft”?” None of the tour operators said anything. We all went out and had a pretty rough ride into choppy waves. I fell out four times and sprained my ankle. If I had it to do over again, I might not have gone that day; later experience led me to question the competence of the guides. I wouldn’t go hiking with them, that’s for sure. I was young and I questioned my right to speak up in an uncertain situation. Now, I wouldn’t. “Guys, I don’t know about this.” I meekly opened my mouth, didn’t get much of a response, and meekly shut my mouth again. Whoops. Recently, I took point on a backpacking trip. I’ve never cared what place I hiked in line; we’re all going to arrive at the same time or negotiate otherwise. I can keep up a pretty stiff pace, but I don’t need to go as fast as possible. There is always someone who wants to walk in front and be in charge. *shrug* This time, I was the fastest. Someone needed to go ahead and reconnoiter, and I was… the obvious choice. I took off into the darkness, and it struck me that there I was, alone in the woods, nothing but me, my headlamp, my pack, and my trekking poles. I knew exactly what to do. I even understood just why someone would want to buy and carry a machete (and the next time I went to REI, I did). I felt competent. I felt competent doing something that would have terrified me a few years earlier. I understood that my comfort in this situation was a gift I could give to my friends. Taking the lead made their lives easier, at little cost to me. Ultimately, leadership is a gift – an act of service. There can be a temptation to want to seek power for the sake of power, to be in charge for ego gratification, and there can be some moral hazards there. That doesn’t work out well in the long term. Step up because something needs to get done and someone needs to do it. If someone else is handling it effectively, support that and stay out of the way. Endorsing someone else’s plan can also be a form of leadership. If nothing else, manage yourself and your own life. Be the boss of yourself. Be the boss of yourself, and don’t let anyone else try to take over that job. I was having a conversation with a close friend the other day about body image. We both realized that nothing about my outlook fits the cultural narrative about body composition, shame, and empowerment. It’s really like I’m speaking a different language. I used to be fat and chronically ill, so losing weight was part of a major victory in reclaiming my body for myself. I always thought that would be important and valuable to share, to let others in my situation know that there are ways out. It hasn’t proved motivating for most people, though. Telling my story tends to make people who aren’t in optimal physical condition feel defensive and irritated. I’d like to explore why that is. First off, the health angle absolutely does not inspire most people. It’s exactly like talking about saving for retirement, getting enough sleep, or not texting and driving. Everyone knows this stuff already. It comes across as one more lecture. Coming from the defensive position, the feeling is that I CAN’T EVEN LISTEN TO THIS RIGHT NOW. You don’t know my life. Don’t judge J. Even talking about how much better and easier everything is after making these changes is not something that overwhelmed, resentful people want to hear. Yeah, just rub it in my face why don’t you. Second, everyone doubts the data. Skepticism is a good and healthy thing, and I always applaud that. I do wonder, however, whether we’re skeptical about the right stuff. What results are we getting? How’s that working out for you? Say someone has sleep apnea and also falls into the category of severe obesity. Maybe weight has nothing to do with it whatsoever. *shrug* Maybe it does. Basing your behavior around one belief or the other is a gamble. Better hope you’re right. To me, it’s like Pascal’s Wager, in which he states that the cost of believing in a non-existent deity is less than the cost of disbelieving in a real deity and then spending eternity in Hell. I would say that a secular version of this concept is useful for every major decision in life. For instance, I remarried, although we have both been divorced and the statistical risk of our marriage failing is discouragingly high. I decided that the cost of missing out on a happy life with the man I love is higher than the cost of possibly having our relationship not last forever. I save for retirement, even though I might die this very afternoon, because the cost of putting aside a little for old age is less than the cost of being elderly and poor (and possibly ill and frail) for decades. If I’m wrong, I’d rather be wrong the smart way. I’d rather keep believing in love and communication than live alone as a cynic. I’d rather die with money I never spent than live in desperation when I’m too old to work. I’d rather exercise more than I “need” and “deprive myself” of hundreds of pounds of added sugar in my food than revert to being sedentary, overweight, and ill. Again, it’s a gamble, and I’m always going to place my bet on the side of the happiest, smartest, and/or most successful people. These are things that make sense to me. What does this have to do with shame, though? We’ve already established that people don’t care about the health argument, and even people who do have serious health issues will resist nothing harder than the idea that lifestyle is related to their problems in any possible way. I know I did. I was a resister, too. I just didn’t have a shame problem. Well, I did, but it wasn’t about body composition. I was bullied pretty severely throughout my school years, almost all about my appearance. My hair. My clothes. My body hair. My shoes. Whether I did or did not smell bad. I don’t like talking about it because this big black ball of solid tears starts to form in my chest. I still don’t trust anyone to give me an honest compliment. If someone so much as glances at something I’m wearing, I assume they’re inwardly laughing at me. Once you’ve seen people physically pointing at you and encouraging their friends to laugh out loud in joyous group ridicule, you start suspecting it everywhere. It’s true that people adore mocking, shaming, and humiliating others. That’s why there’s a People of Walmart website, and it’s where internet flame wars come from. We’ll ridicule people for mispronouncing words, misspelling something, using improper punctuation or grammar, and all sorts of other things. A perceived misstep in behavior can result in tens of thousands of comments, tweets, and memes aimed at public shaming. Never go viral for the wrong reasons. We think shame is a useful, important social tool, as long as it’s directed at others. We believe in it. For some dumb reason, we seem to think that shame will correct other people’s behavior, even as we know firsthand how incredibly painful and debilitating it is when we feel it ourselves. This is one reason why I say shame makes no sense. We know it doesn’t work. We know how negative, even crippling, it is. It’s a form of fairytale justice, though, and we think that as long as we’ve suffered our share, we’re sure as heck going to make sure people who Deserve It More are going to be meted their appropriate volume, with maybe an extra scoop just to be sure. Body shame is just one aspect of this. What I’m hearing is that many people feel devastating shame about how their bodies look. They don’t match what we see in film, on television, in advertisements, or on the runway. They feel frustrated by their available fashion choices. They won’t wear swimsuits on the beach. They may or may not have been taunted, hassled, insulted, mocked, or lectured about their appearance. (It’s a moot point, because as long as it happens to one person, we all know it’s possible and may be coming our way any minute). Shame in one area tends to spatter all over anything. Someone who feels ashamed of her body may also be ashamed of everything else: the way her house looks, the state of her finances, her education or career, her lack of Pinterest perfection, her parenting if she has children. Taking in new information or perspectives, or even thinking or talking about these topics, tends to rip off the scab and cause more shame to leak out like pus. I know I don’t want to tell you all in public that my childhood nickname was Medusa. I did it, though. Shame is just a cloud of smelly vapor that burns off and dissipates in direct sunlight. Part of why I never felt ashamed when I was obese is that I let go of any attachment to the idea of Being Pretty when I was a little kid. I figured that if everyone I met was so hateful and cruel about every part of my appearance, then I just wasn’t objectively good looking. I decided to let it not matter. I wanted what was important to be my intelligence, hard work, and academic results. I wanted to be nice, friendly, and compassionate… “unlike all you nasty people,” she shamed inwardly. I built my identity around other positive things. I realized that hotness or whatever would not last a lifetime. Many of the vicious little 12-year-olds who tried to ruin my young life probably quit being cute or popular shortly after high school graduation. That’s the thing. Adults are certainly capable of far greater bullying and much more creative psychic torture, but these were children. Why should I let the opinions of children, formed in the 1980s, have any effect on my life today? What’s funny is that at 41, I’m probably on the top end for looks. I have the taut body of a marathon runner. My thighs are noteworthy. I never dreamed of such a thing as body pride when I was a sensitive, weepy, socially ostracized teenager. Now, I know that my body is capable of very impressive feats of strength, endurance, agility, and balance. I’m traveling the world and earning race medals. Objectively, I look AMAZING. It’s much more important that I FEEL amazing, but hey, I’ll take it. I’m intensely proud of my body because of everything it can do, because of its healing powers, and because I’m walking proof that it’s possible to beat chronic pain and illness. Also, my husband thinks I’m sexy, and that’s not a bad thing. If someone who bullied me around, say, 1986 happened to show up in my café today, and we recognized each other, that would be interesting. If she happened to have gained a bunch of weight, and she envied my newly athletic build, I would laugh my gorgeously tiny little butt off. If someone who had shamed me felt shamed next to me, I admit, I’d take some gratification from that for a day or two. Then I would just feel sad that she was ruining her own life by not enjoying it. Fat, thin, doesn’t matter. Pretty, plain, doesn’t matter. These are not moral values. They’re superficial. We get that, right? When we think about it, we know that integrity, loving kindness, and accountability are things that really matter. Whether we’re honest with ourselves, whether we live up to our own values, whether we’re emotionally present and available to the people we care about the most – that’s why we’re here. If we let a bit of cellulite take over more space in our thoughts, we’re taking our attention away from our loved ones and our purpose in this world. Shame makes no sense. It doesn’t do anyone any good under any circumstances. All the wrong people feel it. (If you carry more shame than a serial killer or human trafficker, think on that). We dish it out even when we know how hard it is to take it. Shame can stop us from going to the doctor, saying Yes to love, moving forward in our careers, or even enjoying a day at the beach. Look around. Notice how many other people there are who are the same size as you. So freaking what? Smile at them, high-five, and make friends. We get more of whatever we focus on. That means more shame leads to more shame. We have to drop a manhole cover on that. We have to let it go. The only way to feel empowered and develop true body pride is to develop a vivid, intense image of what you want, and put your focus and effort on that. Whether that’s bold fashion, perfect hair, the ability to shellac people at every dance battle, being able to put your foot behind your head, doing a cartwheel or a handstand, or having visible abdominal muscles, pick something and go for it. Just please, for the love of all that is holy, call out your shame for what it is, drag it into the light, and watch it disappear. I know why we surround ourselves with stuff. Because we’re bored. We can’t think of any reasons to clean up that are interesting enough to actually get down and do it. We’re totally okay with doing almost the exact same things almost every single day. We’re fine with having the same things to vent and complain about. We’re good with having the same unfinished projects, open loops, and procrastinated chores from one week to the next. Wake up. Go to work. Come home. Eat. Get maximum amount of screen time. Lather, rinse, repeat. There are thousands upon thousands of things we could be doing with the physical space that we’ve claimed with our clutter. We simply choose to leave it filled up with stuff because we don’t have any better ideas. I’m a horrible snoop. When I walk around town, and someone’s garage door is up, I always take a peek. Here in the US, almost every garage looks about the same: full of boxes with a goat trail over to the washer and dryer. Sometimes there will be one that’s set up with a “bedroom” space or two. People sleep out there in the heat. That’s interesting, but maybe in a bad way? What else do I see? Surgically immaculate space with nothing but a car, a laundry area, and a rack of mops and brooms. A woman’s kickboxing practice area. (I’d offer to make friends with her, but unfortunately we were already planning to move). Various weightlifting gyms. Various motorcycle and custom auto shops. Various wood shops. Ping-pong tables, pool tables, air hockey tables, foosball tables – open and actually in use. The neighborhood social hub, with a dozen laughing people in their 20s and a couple of hookahs and bean bag chairs. What I’ve noticed with the working garages is that they’re all really cool in their own unique way. The guys who run custom vehicle shops usually have a bunch of signs, neon, and often a mini fridge. The many gyms I see in use are clean, well-lit, and usually playing music. The dens of socializing tend to have chairs and party lights. It often seems like the garage is the center of the home, that at least one household member spends more time out there than the rest of the house put together. The only thing they all have in common is that they’re not boring. They’ve all been carefully arranged for maximum use and enjoyment. Patios can be the same way. Everyone in my 1930s-era suburban neighborhood has a back yard. Tiny SoCal yards, but yards all the same. Some people have a lot of yard parties and barbecues. Others don’t. Some have them filled with stacks of rubber tubs covered with tarps. We can thank whoever remodeled our rental house for putting in a covered patio with a ceiling fan and leaving behind a great outdoor dining table and chairs. It’s the first yard I’ve had that makes me want to be out there all the time. In fact, I like it so much that I took a picture of it and put it on the lock screen of my phone. There’s nothing out there but the table, the fan, and my parrot’s climbing tree, but it looks perfect to me. Noelle loves it so much that she resists every time it’s time to go back inside, even if it’s getting chilly and windy. Why do we buy things we don’t need? I think it’s usually because we’d rather be at that particular store than back at home. Every store tends to be better organized, cleaner, and better lit than most people’s home living areas. It’s the same reason we like to go out to eat, even when the food is contributing to problems such as our rapidly expanding debt. We don’t have to fight over who does the dishes and we don’t have to clear counter space first. Home and hearth aren’t nurturing, relaxing spaces where we feel our most fulfilled. Our homes are instead places of irritation, resentment, frustration, and boredom. When we got back from Spain, we realized that we physically hadn’t sat on a couch in three weeks. We had been everywhere in planes, trains, buses, ferries, funiculars, and taxis. We had slept either in sleeping bags or the beds of four-star hotels. We had climbed a few hundred flights of stairs. What we hadn’t done was to simply sit on a couch. It was a revelation! We wallowed in it. We were jet lagged, so we unapologetically lounged all over it with our dog. A month later, it had somehow transformed from Cushions of Wonder to plain old ordinary couch again. We’re careful, though. We put our planning focus, after maxing out our retirement contributions for the year, on travel. That means whenever we pick up an object and think about buying it, we see the price tag in terms of what experience we’re trading off. The two of us took a day trip to Morocco for about $65. We could spend the same amount on an average Saturday by going out for breakfast, picking up Starbucks, going to a movie, and buying a bucket of popcorn. Or I could spend it on a single pair of shoes that were too uncomfortable to even wear. We could also fritter it away slowly on sodas and bags of chips. It’s the same money, but we’re more likely to notice the impact when we plan a peak experience versus letting it trickle out on dumb stuff over weeks or months. We didn’t clean out any closets while we were in Spain. We didn’t clean out the garage, either. That’s because we didn’t have to. We have the money to go on cool trips every couple of years because we don’t spend it fighting everyday boredom the rest of the time. We don’t have to clean out closets all the time because we don’t fill them with stuff. These things are connected. We build our lives around activities other than shopping, screen time, and procrastination. I sometimes rush to work ahead a bit, because I like leaving an immaculate house before locking the door for a long trip. We keep the house clear because we’re paying for the smallest house we could find, and we physically don’t have the space to fill with anything we don’t actively need. Our version of a life worth living doesn’t include a bunch of extra physical possessions. What could you do with your space that would be more interesting than the way it is now? Clear out a storage unit and use the money to take a class, or to free yourself from the shackle of debt? Clear out a “spare” room, scour the house top to bottom, and start renting the space on AirBnB? Have an empty room for dance or yoga? Have a home office and start seeing clients? (Bookkeeping, palmistry, or what-have-you). Clear out the garage and make a robotics laboratory? (Oh, that’s us). What’s the most interesting thing you can think of doing? If you’re not doing it, what could you do to make it happen? My guess is that it would include freeing up either space, money, time, or all three. What’s stopping you? Perception and reality almost never match. We feel it when we’re misinterpreted, criticized, unfairly judged. We are less likely to feel it, or even know about it, when we misinterpret, criticize, or unfairly judge others. We’re so sure that their motives are different than ours would have been in the same situation. We were constrained by the situation, while they did it on purpose. (It’s called the fundamental attribution error). It’s even worse when all we have to go on is appearance. How can we figure out how to react to strangers, based only on their clothes, facial expressions, and body language? The good news in all of this is that we can choose different ways of presenting ourselves, and when we meet new people, they won’t know otherwise. I’m trying to get over my fear of public speaking this year. At first, all I wanted to talk about was how nervous I felt. I was so overcome by this uncontrolled physiological reaction. I felt like I needed to explain why my legs were shaking, my hands were shaking, my face was turning red, and my voice was constricting. Two things happened. First, I kept getting feedback that if I hadn’t said anything, nobody would have been able to tell that I was nervous. At all! Really?? How was that even possible?? Second, I met more people in the club who told me that they felt the exact same way when they started. Some still did. They all seemed cool and confident up there. This matched stories I have heard about celebrities who throw up before every performance out of sheer dread. Feeling the physically nervous sensation isn’t fatal; it’s just something to plan around. It’s already getting easier. I don’t clutch the podium anymore. I’ve decided to stop talking about how nervous I feel and just shut the door on that. It doesn’t interest anyone except me. Nobody can tell. Another thing I have learned through being in a public speaking club is that ordinary people have absolutely astonishing stories. One survived fourth-stage cancer and multiple brain surgeries. Two were given university educations by parents who were uneducated farmers. One runs an arts organization in an agricultural community. Every single person has the kind of life story that could be turned into the movie of the week. When they drive around town or stand in line, none of that is visible. We never realize how amazing people are when we cut them off, interrupt them, or take the things they say personally. None of us go around wearing signs that list off our good deeds, our sacrifices, our struggles. As a result, all of us feel bereft of consideration and compassion. We want it, yet it’s so hard to give it out in the same proportion we wish to receive. When I was ill, I felt that I had to carefully, painstakingly tutor everyone I met in how my illness worked. These days, we talk about how many spoons we have. I needed people to know that I had a limited capacity. What I also had was a limited capacity to listen. Generally, I was not the worst-off person in the room. I watched what this looked like several years later, when two acquaintances met for the first time. The one wanted to talk about her chronic fatigue. The other countered that she had an appointment with her oncologist the following week. This is what we do. We start this lose-lose competition, one-upping each other over who has the hardest time in life. I’ve heard the same thing in conversations over who had the most deprived childhood. When my husband and I met, we had a bit of that about which of us had the worst divorce. We all carry our own burden of pain and confusion. What happened? Why did it happen to me? How do we make sense of suffering? How can we manage under all the excessive expectations of the world? We want to make sure everyone knows how things are for us. We never know all the times the people around us have refrained from telling their own stories, from upstaging us with their scars and disasters. Nobody can tell. Nobody can tell how much patience and kindness we have to exude, unless they catch us in the act. Nobody can tell how many times we’ve reached out to be there for someone who needs us, unless we do it for them. Nobody can tell how much love we have in our hearts unless we demonstrate it. Nobody can tell during the ordinary moments when we look stressed out and distracted. Nobody can see through our bad moods. Generally, nobody is going to give us the benefit of the doubt, even if we’ve worked hard to give that benefit to others. We become suspicious and stingy when we could be open and generous. Underneath my exterior, I feel like a scruffy ragamuffin. When people casually glance at me, I feel like I’m 12 years old and they’re getting ready to rip my Halloween costume, throw rocks at me, or take turns spitting in my drink. I walk into a room with my chin up and my shoulders back. I fake the confidence I rarely feel. Nobody can tell. I wear a size zero, and nobody can tell I used to be obese unless my stretch marks are showing. All I have to show is my outer appearance and my smile, or lack thereof. Nothing about me shows my personal history. Sometimes, my appearance even disguises my attitude, as I’m prone to a serious expression that doesn’t match how I feel. The only time anyone can tell anything about the person I am is when I’m doing my best to listen. Hopefully I look as open and alert as I feel. Probably I don’t. Unless I communicate it well, nobody can tell. What if we could only activate the best in others through pronounced courtesy? What if everyone had a level we never saw, that could be brought out only by a level of profound consideration that we never show? What if we really did get back only what we gave out? What if every interaction we had was first shaped by our attitudes and expressions? I wonder this when I see pictures of my thinking face, my reading face, or my listening face. Why can’t I successfully look the way I feel on the inside? What if nobody ever does? Whatever is going on behind most people’s faces, inside most people’s hearts, is a mystery. Nobody can tell. |
AuthorI've been working with chronic disorganization, squalor, and hoarding for over 20 years. I'm also a marathon runner who was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and thyroid disease 17 years ago. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesArchives
January 2022
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