World Domination Summit is in full swing. I woke up at 4:30 this morning, for no particular reason other than that I was so keyed up. It’s possible that WDS actually stands for We Don’t Sleep. We’re riding the bus downtown, getting ready for a full day of academies, a meetup, and dinner with my family. That’s a relatively mellow day! This is just one day in a busy week during which almost every minute is scheduled to the hilt. It’s when we have this intense desire to take in every scrap of information and engage with every possible opportunity that we feel like we’re drinking from the fire hose. The more options we have in any arena, the more likely we are to feel a sense of FoMO. I’m doing everything, but somehow there are still things I am not doing! I wasn’t there! I missed the punchline! Everyone was partying without me! I’m not in the group photo!!! Wait, was there… cake??? I don’t care what they say, I CAN be in three places at once. I am omnipresent. I can apparate at will. I am somehow going to sit in this chair in this room, stand by that window in that other room, and get swept away by a conversation over there in the stairwell. ALL AT THE SAME TIME! The brain wants what the brain wants. When I feel this way, I try to pause and remind myself of the existence of this magical thing called the Internet. I can never possibly watch every video, connect with every person, read every article, look at every meme, follow every blog, or use every app. Even if I somehow thought I could, the moment I blinked there would be a trillion new uploads. I’m able to rest with this. Still I struggle with the bleak reality that I will never be able to read every book ever written. …actually, I need a moment. I think there’s something in my eye. We were talking the other day about how much I need a time turner (although I’m not Hermione Granger; I’m really more of a Luna Lovegood). I said, “The first thing I would do is leave it in my pocket and accidentally run it through the washing machine.” Accepting that we have to do all this stuff in the time dimension is something of a lifetime-level emotional project. I’m looking at things differently after leading my own workshop. It’s a peek behind the curtain. As much as I feel FoMO about all the stuff I’m missing and all the things I won’t have time to do, I now recognize that all the speakers and presenters are also feeling a certain amount of FoMO about all the stuff they wish they had said. There’s a whole ocean of information behind the stream that comes out of that fire hose. Spending an hour or three hours in a classroom is only the tiniest drop of what that person could teach, given more time. MORE TIME! I NEED MORE TIME! I gave my workshop yesterday. In Toastmasters everyone always says there are three speeches: the speech you wrote, the speech you gave, and the speech you give in the car on the way home. On the surface, mine went well enough. People stayed for the whole thing, they took tons of notes, they laughed, they asked questions. I ran long, fifty percent more than scheduled. Still a half dozen people hung out afterward to ask more questions. As far as listener engagement, I did well. I’m trying to acknowledge myself for that. But… There was so much more I wanted to say! There were entire sections of my supposed “outline” that I didn’t even touch on! I went totally off-grid, off-script, although fortunately not off-topic. (If I’d started talking about money it would have all been over). Part of why I woke up at 4:30 was that my feeble mortal brain immediately started spinning over all the things I wish I had said. Where’s my rewind button? That’s not how it works, though. We have the moments we have. It’s life that we’re living, not waiting for the real thing to start, but the actual real thing. That’s the magnificent flaw, that we never realize until later that there was this moment, here and gone, this one half-fledged moment we had to connect and engage and experience. It’s flown off with nary a feather left behind. The rightnow bird is always on the wing. I’m giving my first workshop later today. Wish me luck! At this time last year, I had a half-formed idea and a tentative image of myself speaking to a group, specifically my fellow World Domination Summit attendees. A year before that, I wouldn’t have done such a thing under any circumstances. In fact, when I was seven years old, I was supposed to recite a verse that I had memorized at the winter recital, and I dove under the table and refused to come out until they promised I wouldn’t have to speak. My mom rightly pointed out that if I had just mumbled through my piece, I would have been done in ten seconds, and that making a scene made it that much worse. Let’s just say that I have no particular hunger for the spotlight. At a certain point, though, you start to realize that you have something important to share and that people will be better off if they know about it. That’s where workshops are sprouted. The first point is always to have something to say that is both important and interesting. People will listen to you blathering on about anything if you’re funny enough. You can do a stand-up routine about the tiniest thing, like sending a text message or ordering coffee. Note that these routines tend to be very brief. I carry a heavy sense of responsibility that if I’m performing, every minute that someone spends listening to me should be a good use of that person’s time. The larger the audience, the more expensive it is to be irrelevant or boring. One minute of hemming and hawing multiplied by twenty people is twenty life-minutes I’ve just drained away. This is why I’ve spent the last year and a half working on my public speaking skills. Most of the time, I don’t even say ‘um’ anymore, so if I’m boring it will be for other reasons. After knowing that you have an incredibly useful and interesting topic and that you have a burning desire to share it, it’s time to get specific. What will this workshop be like? Where will it be held? How long will it be? How many people can attend? What will they do? Are you going to talk the whole time, are you going to lead people through a series of exercises, or will it be a combination of both? What level of participation are you expecting? I’m a shy person - recall the table-dive anecdote I just shared - and I respect that in other people. I can easily recall all the times when even being asked to raise my hand among a group of other people raising their hands was exquisitely embarrassing. I still battle with threshold anxiety, the sense of not even wanting to walk into a room because there are people in there. *gasp* This is why one of my considerations is going to be with allowing shy people to opt out of participation. I’m not one to orchestrate a bunch of group exercises like trust falls. I like to allow the bolder extroverts to chime in, while those with a lower comfort level can observe in peace. Wait, so why is a shy person conducting a workshop? I’ve learned that I can switch into performance mode if I feel the need. This is easier to do when the message feels important enough that I’m thinking more about what I’m saying than I am about myself. I can think about myself and my feelings back at home. I try to focus on connecting with my audience. Making eye contact with individual people was really, really hard at first, but with weekly practice I’ve been training it into myself. I’m an extrovert. Note that a shy extrovert can track like an introvert in most ways. The difference is that many introverts are comfortable doing things like giving presentations in a professional setting, while they need a lot of solitude and do their best thinking alone. Shy extroverts such as myself get a charge out of being in groups, we tend to think out loud, we often prefer collaboration, but we find it hard to open up with strangers. “Once you get me going…” This is one reason that public speaking has been so valuable to me, even though it was brutally hard for the first several months. It’s exhilarating to share an idea or a story and to get a positive response from an appreciative audience. People have started taking notes when I talk, or engaging with me about my work. This is weird and unprecedented for me, but it’s also great feedback. If they keep asking for more, who am I to say no? I’m so thin-skinned and sensitive to criticism that I will definitely notice if I can’t hold the attention of the audience. Eyes up and glistening, good. Heads down, phones up, not so good. I would never be doing this uncharacteristic, challenging thing if it weren’t for Toastmasters or the World Domination Summit. I can’t praise Toastmasters enough. For a person with an acute, nausea-level dread of public speaking, there’s really no better place to go. Everyone is so encouraging and tactful, and almost every person there has felt the exact same way. When I started, I was so scared that I almost collapsed one time, and that was after I had finished my speech! It took months of concerted effort, and it remains one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done, but the results have been life-changing. Releasing a fear is one of the most powerful satisfactions in the world. As for the World Domination Summit, I can hardly begin to describe how much it has changed my life, my marriage, and how I approach problems. This is why I’m pushing myself far outside of my comfort zone and leading my first meetup. I understand how valuable my topic will be for people, and I also have a strong desire to give back to the community that has given so very much to me. PS The workshop is called ‘Curate Your Stuff’ and I’m going to put together a workbook for download. Since there were only 33 spots, naturally there may be people who are interested in the material but were unable to attend. This post is for anyone going to World Domination Summit for the first time. If you haven’t heard of the World Domination Summit before, you’re about to hear a whole lot about it. It’s entirely likely that several of your favorite authors, podcasters, and bloggers are going to be there, and we’ll all likely be talking about it all month. If you’re intrigued and you haven’t been before, look into it now and get on the waiting list for next year. Half the tickets will be sold by this time next week. All of this is to remind those of us who are lucky enough to attend that this is a rarity, a unique experience that can’t be replicated elsewhere. Life is short and when we plan, we can make the most of it. I first heard about WDS in July of 2015, right before the fifth one. It didn’t even take me three minutes to decide that WE HAD TO GO. Alas! The tickets were already sold out! I promptly put my name on the waiting list, and the day ticket sales were opened for WDS 2016, we bought a pair. My husband didn’t really know what this thing was, but he was game. We were excited and curious. The event far exceeded our expectations. We have a system when we go to almost any kind of event or party. We generally split up and go in opposite directions as quickly as we can. This way we can double our ability to meet people and absorb information. As soon as we reconvene at the end of the day, the gossip machine starts, and it doesn’t stop again until the next day. We’ve been doing this for a long time, and it served us well when we attended WDS as a couple. We went to a few academies and meetups together, and we sat together during the main stage events, but most of the time we were separate and taking notes as rapidly as we could. One of the academies, Be a Money Boss, completely changed our life. We decided to commit to becoming financially independent, even if it meant radical changes. Indeed, we did come home and make some radical changes. We sold our car, radically downsized all our stuff, and moved into a little beachfront apartment. He chased down his dream job in the space industry and now has his own private office with an actual door! I’ve doubled my client base and doubled my readership on this blog (thanks, guys!). We started getting more serious about collecting travel reward points, with two separate trips coming up where both the airfare and the hotel will be covered by travel rewards. We’ve both taken on volunteer offices in our community. Oh, gosh, what else? I know there are other things, but those are certainly some bright highlights. Don’t be judging your experience against ours. We came into the event with a certain amount of practice in goal-setting and making major decisions as a team. Marriage is a force multiplier. The point is not to rattle off a series of accomplished goals; the point is to recognize that you have the power to happen to things, that it’s within your reach to design whatever life you like for yourself. The more specific you are about what you want, what you want to do, and what you want to offer to this world, the more specific the results will be. Most people truly, deeply have no idea what they want, even for three months from now, much less a year or three years from now. The magic of WDS is that you’re exposed to a massive tidal wave of new ideas, and you get to meet hundreds of like-minded people, some of whom are quite busy being specific about what we want. There are two things to focus on. 1. Meeting people and 2. Absorbing information. Please don’t stress about what to wear (answer: clothing) or what the weather will be like (warm) or what you’re going to eat. Just wear comfortable shoes and remember to wear your badge. You don’t have to try to impress anyone. Just being at the event demonstrates that you have something in common with everyone around you. I’m a shy extrovert. I’ve been working on it really intensively by doing public speaking, but it’s still sometimes hard for me to walk into a room full of strangers. I hesitate to talk about myself. There is a long list of conversation topics that I avoid. I feel mega-awkward if anyone gives me a compliment, especially about my clothes or my appearance in general. I worry about my congenital lack of filter. What I’m learning is that when I’m worrying about myself, I’m nervous, but when I’m more interested in the other person and in the topic, I’m confident! I can redirect my attention back to my new friend, back to our conversation, and away from my weird self. I’m not there to talk about ME; I can talk to myself as much as I want back at home. I’m here to meet interesting, creative people who do awesome things. The main difference between our first year and our second year, at least so far, is that we didn’t know what to expect the first year, but now we’re participating at a more active level. I’m leading my first meetup. It’s a one-hour workshop called Curate Your Stuff. A year ago, I never would have dreamed of doing something like this, of voluntarily putting myself up in front of people. Right now, it feels entirely obvious. It was obvious that I should do it, it was obvious when and where, and it’s obvious what I’m going to say. My husband and I can both thank the World Domination Summit for teaching us how to focus and how to take bold action where we would not have before. We were able to nail down a lot of results that we wanted in a much shorter time span than we would have thought possible. We’ve noticed that there seem to be visible differences between previous attendees who have been to WDS in years past; each additional year seems to add a certain mystical quality. It seems to make people more open, more polite, able to listen more deeply, and also quite liable to take off on extravagant quests. Part of why we’re coming back a second time is that we want to find out what happens when we keep exposing ourselves to the enchanted, charged atmosphere that is the World Domination Summit. World Dominators we shall be. We’re halfway through 2017. Do you know where your New Year’s Resolutions are? I like to go through my yearly goals at least once a quarter, because I am the boss of my life and this is how I make sure to get what I want. Nobody else is going to come along and lob my goals and character improvements at me. If I want positive changes in my life, I’m going to have to make them happen by myself. I do that by deciding what I want and figuring out how it’s done. So far, my 2017 has shaped up to be radically different in every way from my 2016. My quest for the year is to BE RIDICULOUS. This started out feeling like a terrible idea, because we had a lot of ridiculous-in-a-bad-way. I continued this thread by cutting my eyeball on a plant. Yes, it’s true, I got a scleral abrasion off a bird-of-paradise. Surely there’s a metaphor there. My eyesight measured at 20/40 in that eye, and I had to get a tetanus shot, and my vision was blurry for over a week, and I had to take these horrid eye drops o’ hellfire four times a day, and I really thought I had permanently damaged my vision. The miracle of healing transpired the way that it does, and my eye is now back to 20/20. Artificially induced gratitude. THE GIFT OF SIGHT!!! I have some positively ridiculous projects simmering right now, and I’m starting to take myself and my goals less seriously and just seeing how much I can accomplish through outright hilarity. My major personal goal for the year has been to follow a set schedule. I chose it because I try to seek and destroy things that are difficult for me, things that do not come naturally, things I’m bad at, things that I kinda sorta hate. The reason is that deciding to turn around my attitude toward the most negative has been like rocket fuel in my life. A year ago, I felt nauseated when I thought about public speaking. Now I love it and I’m getting pretty good. What would be different if I actually LOVED what I HATE? Well, I really am learning to love having a schedule. The way it’s working out, I dedicate specific days of the week to different projects. I always know the best day of the week to set appointments. The amount of time each day that I spend on chores has contracted. I just realized that instead of cleaning one room per weekday, I really only have three rooms now… I like waking up early in the morning and seeing how much I can accomplish before lunch. Career goals are chugging along. Right now we’re slowly but steadily filing papers for our LLC and waiting on the geological time scale of bureaucracy. Moving forward feels like moving backward. I’ve expanded my coaching business in the meantime, and it’s been fun to add some new clients. My physical goals have been in a holding pattern. I’ve only been out running twice so far this year. I’m walking so much more since we moved that it has displaced my goal of running. I’ll simply have to accept that I have to add my running mileage to my walking mileage (currently 4.6/day) if I want to start running again. Also, I wasn’t doing P90X because our new apartment is so small, but we just rearranged the living room furniture and suddenly it looks like there might be enough room. Now to figure out how to connect the DVD player - the sort of stupid, small obstacle that one might easily use as an excuse to procrastinate on a major goal. Our home goal of “digitize, downsize, minimize” continues, even after our dramatic “move twice in 12 days” downsizing move back in March. Living in a small space makes it really obvious when unnecessary objects are getting in the way. Also, turning paper into digital information makes life so much easier that it is its own reward. Our couples goals are coming up in July… World Domination Summit, and hopefully making some pickles! We have two additional trips together scheduled in Third Quarter. When we moved, we decided to Say Yes to Everything, in terms of social invitations and anywhere we could expand our career options. The result of that is that now we’re both holding an office in our respective Toastmasters clubs, and I’ve been mentoring him by adding his club meetings to my schedule. This has given us a lot to gossip about together. As for lifestyle upgrades, I went out and bought a new $20 work bag when the strap on my old bag started shearing off. This has been transformative. It’s weird how much an organized bag helps one to follow a schedule and be early, rather than late, for everything. Grab bag, go out the door. Now I’m saving money toward my other lifestyle upgrade goal of getting the new iPhone when it comes out at the end of this year. I have already transformed my appearance, as my Do the Obvious goal, and I made such a big change so early in the year that I’ve had some time to get used to it. Now it just feels like the real me. (What a weird concept. As though a ‘fake me’ would not still be the ‘real me’ in the background). It’s occurred to me that the most obvious physical transformation I could make now would be in the form of bodybuilding. If I do get down with the P90X, I could be looking pretty alarmingly fit by the end of the year… This is the sort of thought that gives one pause. How exactly do I want to look? Do I resist certain physical changes because I’m concerned about how others would react and judge changes in my appearance? In fact, if I change my body composition in the direction of more muscle than I currently have, it would be hard for other people to complain to me with a straight face. Mostly they would only catch sight of my arms, and a little more bicep is not a crime. So I get more muscle in the midriff, and someone sees me in my swimsuit. I’m already at the “you bitch” level of visible abs. I can shrug that stuff off. Will I move forward in this direction? Will I? I have not yet done my stop goal of being the last person to pack up my tent. My husband and I are going camping this summer, so that will be an opportunity to test myself. This reminds me that I still need to replace the mesh tent window that the raccoon tore up last year! I have not done my wish of paying off my student loan yet. Now that the balance is below $5000, it’s starting to feel possible. The real problem is figuring out what to wish for after that! This is the short version of my 2017 goals, resolutions, quests, wishes, etc.: Personal: Follow a set schedule Career: LLC Physical: P90X, run five miles Home: Digitize, downsize, minimize Couples: WDS, homemade pickles Stop goal: Stop being the last person to pack up my tent Lifestyle upgrades: Phone and work bag, tent Do the Obvious: Transform my appearance Quest: BE RIDICULOUS Wish: Pay off my student loan. BE RIDICULOUS was my quest for the year, and the most ridiculous thing about that is that I didn't give much thought to the many ways the Universe would interpret this command. Every single thing I planned to do with my brand-new, freshly minted 2017 has already been completely upended. Our lives have been in total upheaval every single day of the year so far. I keep talking about the desire for transformation, and now I'm going to stop that for a while and talk about the desire for tranquility! There are certain things I don't talk about on this blog, namely personal, familial, and health events. Suffice to say that we got hit with two of the three, plus a bonus veterinary crisis. It's been...interesting. Eliding over a trillion details, my husband got an offer for his dream job, and we suddenly found that we had twelve days to move to a new city. Cut to us packing up our house in between giving our dog eye drops three times a day while he can't get his Cone of Shame through the dog door and needs to be let out constantly. Most of First Quarter 2017 was an epic disaster for us, but hey! Now we live at the beach and my husband is working in the space industry! Unconnected to any of the above, we decided to get rid of our car and try being car-free. It's been three weeks. My husband has been taking the bus to work, and he just ordered a little scooter (toy kind, not internal-combustion kind) to get around between bus stops. Our new place is within less than half a mile of almost everything we need or want, so it's been an easy transition. My major personal goal for the year was to "follow a set schedule." I choose a counterintuitive, uncomfortable goal that is contrary to doing what comes naturally for me. That's where the juicy stuff is hidden, in the radical change of perception. I used to hate running, and then I pushed myself, fell in love with it, and ran a marathon. I used to have an abiding dread of public speaking, and then (last year) I pushed myself, and started winning ribbons and learning to work a crowd. I thought, heck, what's left on the list of things I hate and also suck at? Then our life went crazy and a schedule was the least of my worries. Then the unexpected happened. Even though our new bedroom window faces west, (my parrot and) I have been waking up around 7 AM every day. We're not quite done unpacking yet, but I'm already moving toward a more natural-feeling, biologically appropriate daily rhythm. Ridiculous. My career goal has somehow been moving forward, despite everything, mostly because my business partner is a person of great dedication and industry. Sometimes just not saying no is enough to maintain momentum. My physical goals of doing P90X and running five miles have not happened yet. What has happened is that I've spent the last three weeks lifting and moving heavy objects. Moving is moving! The other thing that's happened is exactly what always happens when we move, which is that I rapidly gain five pounds from eating convenience foods. Now that we're in an apartment, the dog needs to go out at least three times a day, and we're also car-free, meaning I am walking to the grocery store about 5 out of 7 days. At this rate, I can lose five pounds in roughly... three months. [(3500 calories per pound x 5 pounds)/65 calories per mile]/3 miles per day] = not quite 90 days. Or just quit eating my stress and get more sleep. My home goal was to "digitize, downsize, minimize." I will call that a SUCCESS+. All I was planning to do was to clean out the garage! Now we don't even have a garage. Or a car. Or a yard. Or a... Our new place is awesome, but it's smaller than our tiny house, with significantly less storage. We're still getting rid of things after a yard sale and something like six carloads of donations. We haven't done our couples goals yet, which are both summertime things. Shared adversity will either drive you apart or bring you closer, and in our case it's closer. We're feeling pretty smug about living in this tiny shoebox apartment; it's like living our twenties all over again, even though we could almost be the parents of most of our neighbors. I haven't done my stop goal, my lifestyle upgrades, or my wish yet. I will say that my lifestyle has been massively upgraded anyway. Looking at the tiny postage-stamp sized square of ocean we can see from our balcony while wild parrots fly overhead definitely does not suck. My "Do the Obvious" goal for the year was to transform my appearance. I am also going to call this one an early SUCCESS. Speaking of my quest to BE RIDICULOUS, I got this wild idea to apply to be on a game show, and I actually got a screen test! Of course I didn't get selected, because I am not in the least bit telegenic. But I did go out and get my hair blown out and have my makeup done beforehand. I couldn't believe the results. Suddenly I looked both younger and smarter. My husband absolutely couldn't take his eyes off me. He took me out to dinner, and I think he spent more time making eye contact with me than he did at our actual wedding. All righty then! I learned how to straighten my hair, and astonishingly, it only takes me ten minutes. I finally have the answer to my depressingly unmanageable hair, which has been the plague of my existence for 35 years. If I'd learned to do this when I was 14, I would have had a completely different life. Now I'm 41 and I already have a completely different, completely different life. 2017 has been a very weird, whirlwind year for us so far. Topsy turvy and all that. Now we're starting Second Quarter and it's like we're the ensemble cast of a TV series that just went into a new season, like American Horror Story with slightly less horror. Now I've gone off on a mental tangent, trying to figure out whether there has ever been a TV show much like our life, but there really aren't any sitcoms about engineers, and someone else would have to play me anyway. This is the short version of my 2017 goals, resolutions, quests, wishes, etc.: Personal: Follow a set schedule Career: LLC Physical: P90X, run five miles Home: Digitize, downsize, minimize Couples: WDS, homemade pickles Stop goal: Stop being the last person to pack up my tent Lifestyle upgrades: Phone and work bag, tent Do the Obvious: Transform my appearance Quest: BE RIDICULOUS Wish: Pay off my student loan. This story might sound familiar. A broken-hearted Australian man puts his entire life up for sale on eBay. Do you remember? I saw it in the news when it was going on. What an amazing idea! I knew as soon as I saw it that I had to read A Life Sold: What Ever Happened to That Guy Who Sold His Whole Life... on eBay?. Spoiler alert: Ian Usher went out and did what most of us don't even dare to dream, which was to make a "bucket list" and then go out and try to accomplish all his goals. One of the most interesting things about this book is that Usher shares the whole picture, not just the cute-selfie parts. He can't stop thinking about his ex. He's sad and lonely sometimes, even as he makes tons of new friends. Some of his goals don't work out. He gets lost, swindled, injured, stuck in bad weather, and disappointed in various ways. Somehow, it all serves to make his achievements more remarkable. Almost everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and yet, he still pulls off some truly amazing goals. At the outset, he's in his mid-forties, and it is instructive to compare his plans with other people we might know in that age group. It's also very interesting that Usher made the money to fund his travels and outrageous goals by working a dangerous, physically demanding job with specialized training, selling his house, and spending years saving money at an unusually high rate. Three out of three of those actions are actions that average people are not willing to take. What I can't stop thinking about is the highly personal nature of the 100 goals. I read through the list, and I had done ten of them myself, including riding on a dog sled. Pretty good goals! But most of the others I would not be brave enough to do. It's a very Australian list, full of derring-do and physical challenges. This makes the book rather special. It's impossible not to start wondering what 100 items you would put on your own list, while clearly seeing that someone else's list is too idiosyncratic and personal to just... copy. It also raises questions of why certain goals that might seem obvious to someone else weren't on Usher's list. Why go to six continents when you could also go to Antarctica, for instance? Why isn't that goal on the list? Well, because it just wasn't, that's why. We're all fully entitled to have our own crazy quests and wild dreams. A lesson from the book is that goals aren't fun when they feel like checking something off a list. They must be personally meaningful, or what's the point? The magic comes with the feeling that "I can't believe I'm finally getting a chance to do this!" The world could certainly use more of this. What would happen if more people realized that the only things holding them back from living their wildest dreams were their personal possessions and uninspiring jobs? I insist on being a heretic and taking New Year's Eve seriously as a magical time for inventing Future Me 2017. This is why I'm sharing my New Year's strategic planning process. The more I refine this process and check in throughout the year, the more I do awesome things and the less often I annoy myself. The first step is to review the prior year. Where were my pain points? What were the most difficult events, who and what annoyed me the most, what would I gladly erase and forget ever happened? Where were my successes? What went well through pure serendipity? What unplanned awesomeness showed up on my doorstep? Where did I stick to my vision for the year and how did that work out? I want less of the bad (especially if it was my fault) and more of the awesome. For instance, one of the dumbest things I did in 2016 was to get a second-degree sunburn on my legs from uneven sunscreen application. I'm still blotchy five months later. I also pitched my tent on a fire ant nest, so now... now I know what fire ants look like. And feel like. One of the best things that happened was that a monkey jumped on my head, which could have been very not-awesome but which was a serendipitous peak experience. Next, I want to pick something specific to work on for each area of my life. I define these areas as Personal, Physical, Couples, Home, and Career. 'Personal' includes my end of relationships with my husband, family, and friends, as well as inner growth and fun projects. 'Physical' includes health and fitness. 'Couples' goals are choices that my husband and I agree on together, like going on a trip or expanding the garden. (No fair choosing a "couples" goal and springing it on your partner). 'Home' has to do with both the physical infrastructure of where we live, interior and exterior, and the more abstract areas of routines and systems. 'Career' has to do with my work, income, and further professional development. Most years, one of these areas will be running smoothly and one will be somewhat in the tank. I want to do a little in each area, while putting the majority of my focus where it is needed the most. I also have bonus areas: A quest, a wish, a lifestyle upgrade, a 'stop' goal, and Do the Obvious. When I'm done with my planning process, I sum it all up on a slide and put it on my lock screen, where I can see it several times a day. I go back and edit the image whenever I accomplish something, so I can see how close I've come. I do a quarterly review at each solstice and equinox. This has been working really well, and now I'm adding a monthly review period as well. I made some slides with my photography in the background, which was fun, and I love how they look. This is a summary of my 2016 projects: Personal: Join Toastmasters and conquer fear of public speaking. SUCCESS+ Career: Order business cards, start newsletter. COMPLETE Physical: Cross-training, micronutrient blood test, hopefully start running again. SUCCESS Home: Interior design, plant garden. SUCCESS Couples: Set a dinnertime, do quarterly review. SUCCESS Stop goal: Stop beating myself up on stuff, stop rage-crying in TSA secondary screening. SUCCESS Lifestyle upgrades: Use patio more for meals and writing area. SUCCESS Do the Obvious: Earn more money. SUCCESS Quest: Go to World Domination Summit, be a polyglot. SUCCESS Wish: To make a new friend. SUCCESS Making ambitious goals can have one of two effects. It can make us try harder, bringing out our inner strivers. Or it can cause us to fall into self-delusion, a trance state of fantasy in which we block out any and all external evidence of reality. When we occasionally snap out of it, we can feel so crushed by the failure of the goal to magically appear that we rewrite our self-image as that of 'loser' or 'failure.' The only things that truly matter are 'works' and 'doesn't work.' 'Action' and 'inaction.' 'Results' and 'no results.' When I give to charity, I'm charitable. When I listen to someone, I'm a good listener. When I eat vegetables, I'm taking care of myself. The human mind can only pretend to believe labels and descriptions without the accompanying behavior for a limited amount of time. Talk the walk, but then make sure to walk the talk. What I try to do each year is to choose actions that I believe I can and will take, and then judge myself by whether I did take the actions. The results may go beyond what I predicted, or they may fizzle. It's a testing lab and I'm the test subject. If something doesn't turn out as planned, then I have more years to tackle it in other ways, or to change my perception of the issue. Last year, I was ambitious, and this resulted in exceeding my goals. I didn't just crush my fear of public speaking, I started doing stand-up comedy. I didn't just get business cards made and make more money, I started a new business, got a product in stores, and made an agreement with my husband that we would work toward becoming financially independent. Now it's time to work out what I'll do for 2017. Personal: My biggest personal area right now is my free-floating schedule. Sometimes I wind up on the elliptical at 11 PM, or writing at 2 AM. This never works out well, because sometimes I find myself still awake at 4 or 5 AM, and then the ubiquitous landscaper sound effects start up at 8 AM. The greatest change in my life right now would probably come from adjusting to more of a set, diurnal schedule. When I ask myself, "What feels the most unnatural, least palatable, that I most resist?" this is that thing. What I resist is most likely where the power is hidden. It worked with running and it worked with my diet and it worked with public speaking. Will it work with a clock? Career: File papers to create LLC. Physical: I'm finally healed from two years of ankle injury, open wound, and missing toenail. I CAN RUN AGAIN! I want to complete P90X and run five miles injury-free. I want to run a 50-mile ultra marathon for my 50th birthday and I still have 8 years to train. Home: It's time to clean out the garage. In this smaller house, it's become obvious that we still have excess stuff we don't use. Time to finish digitizing and minimizing, especially books. Couples: Go to World Domination Summit for the second time. Find source of pickling cucumbers and can more pickles. Stop goal: Stop being the last person to pack up my tent. I plan to go backpacking at least twice a year, and no matter whether I'm one of two or one of six, I'm always the last to get ready. I'm pretty sure that this is related to being cold and waiting until the last minute to get out of my sleeping bag, so I'm going to get a second base layer and more hand warmers. Lifestyle upgrades: In November it will be three years since my last phone upgrade, and I plan to upgrade again. I need to upgrade my worn-out work bag. I also need to fix my tent, since a raccoon tore open a mesh window. (Thanks jerk) Do the Obvious: Work on my appearance. Now that I've been working on public speaking, I've started to realize that certain circumstances demand preparation. People look different in photographs, on video, and under a spotlight. I've been realizing that one of the major factors holding me back from various pursuits is my extreme reluctance to be captured on film. I even avoid being in pictures with friends and family because I only want to look at them, not myself. I'm going to try to reframe everything about how I think of external appearance, my negativity about fashion and cosmetics, and my perception of others' self-presentation. I'm starting by trying to look at it as a professional costume, something that will help my audience to trust my competence. Do I look like someone who can inspire, inform, and entertain? Do I look like I belong here and that I'm the appropriate person to be doing this job? Quest: I'm going on a quest to test out every single project, game, or stunt I ever thought I'd do, bought the equipment for, and then put aside. This includes juggling, riding a unicycle, and making my own pasta, among other things. I'm turning 42 in July so I might as well get some RIDICULOUS out of my system. (Or into it). My quest to BE RIDICULOUS should help me to reframe my appearance-related goal as well. I can commit without taking myself too seriously. Wish: I wish to pay off my student loan. This is the summary that will go on my lock screen: Personal: Follow a set schedule Career: LLC Physical: P90X, run five miles Home: Digitize, downsize, minimize Couples: WDS, homemade pickles Stop goal: Stop being the last person to pack up my tent Lifestyle upgrades: Phone and work bag, tent Do the Obvious: Transform my appearance Quest: BE RIDICULOUS Wish: Pay off my student loan. This book is the ultimate in possibility thinking. The story of One Red Paperclip made international news back in 2006, so it may ring a bell. Kyle MacDonald is a young slacker who has the bright idea to trade "bigger and better," starting with a paperclip and working his way up to a house. The intricacies are fascinating in their own right, as MacDonald stumbles into the media limelight and starts meeting celebrities. What I like best about the book is his irrepressibly positive attitude. It could be a textbook for the skill of possibility thinking. Cockeyed optimism does actually work from time to time! I'm a slacker, too. I bought this book at least five years ago and I just now got around to reading it. The world works in mysterious ways, however, and the Hollywood Reporter just reported that MGM is "in talks" to make One Red Paperclip into a movie. I hope it happens, because the world needs this story. Possibility thinking does not overlap completely with optimism. MacDonald is motivated by guilt that he's unemployed and that his girlfriend is paying their rent. He has frequent bouts of discouragement, feeling lazy and like this is a stupid idea. He keeps reminding himself that he's on a quest, though, and that he might as well see it through. Part of what makes this endearing is that he focuses on making trades that are meaningful to all parties, rather than chasing financial value alone. What I would love to see happen is for the Bigger and Better game to become commonplace. Due to my professional work with clutter and hoarding, I have a pretty good idea that most households are hanging onto all sorts of unused objects. A few of these are special and could find new life in a new home, where they would actually fulfill their purpose as useful things. SO MANY art supplies, musical instruments, and tubs of camping gear and other sports equipment, just moping in a corner like the Isle of Misfit Toys. SO MUCH monetary value, locked away and doing no good to anyone. We feel so poor and we feel that we CAN'T AFFORD so many things, even as we're knee-deep in stuff. What would we do if we could swap it all for our true heart's desire? If you knew you could start with a random object that was sitting around your house, and trade for the most amazing thing you could think of, what would it be? What would you give up and what would you ask for? We're a couple of days into our first juice fast. I'm going along in solidarity with my husband. This project is what I refer to as a Fact Finding Mission; it's one of many that I've undertaken out of a spirit of curiosity. I prefer to find out what something is like for myself, based on direct experience, rather than my inner sense of resistance. I'm not a true believer, not yet anyway. I thought our experiment might provide useful information to both skeptics and the hesitant. The first thing to share is that in no way could I have guessed what fasting felt like from observation. We've both been on diets, generally not at the same time, and it's similar. It's similar to other ordeals, such as Finals Week or caffeine withdrawal, which may have been undergone and then largely forgotten. It's a human failing not to have much sympathy for others, whether they're suffering something we have suffered and overcome or something with which we're unfamiliar. Doing this fast together helps us to remember that we're both struggling. The second thing to share is that it's not really as bad as all that. We're hungry but functioning. The big thing is to remember to start preparing the next juice, soup, or salad on schedule, because delaying by an hour or more turns into crashing. We're doing about double the food prep that we do for ordinary meals. My husband has to make his next day's pitcher of juice after dinner, as well as packing up his breakfast and lunch, so the first day was front-loaded with extra effort. I used to have a second-hand juicer, which I eventually gave to a friend. It created a great deal of pulp. We went out and bought a high-end blender, which is technically a different beast. It is about ten times easier to clean than the juicer and there's no pulp afterward. This was a good decision. The juice itself tends to look scary and taste fine. This may be because it IS fine, or it may be because we eat a lot of cruciferous vegetables already. I'm really not sure whether a picky eater who hates vegetables could get behind this. It's not just the juicing part but also the vast salads and the vegetable soups. You're literally eating nothing but fruit, vegetables, herbs, and a little salt and oil, so if you hate those things, it probably won't work out. (But then, consider whether your default is working out...) On the second day, I walked five miles, went grocery shopping, did three loads of laundry, moved some furniture, and made four separate dishes. This surprised me somewhat. When I went on a strict calorie-cutting diet, eating the same number of calories as on the juice fast, I felt lethargic and mopey. There is definitely something to be said for ingesting massive amounts of micronutrients and fiber, as opposed to subsisting on tiny portions of more ordinary fare. (A packet of oatmeal, a tiny sandwich, a single piece of fruit, and a dinner salad or other measured, minute quantity). Fasting has a gendered aspect. A big, hockey-playing, chainsaw-wielding man such as my husband, who has an advanced degree, can go on a strict fringe diet and make it look like little more than an interesting athletic challenge. Such stamina, such dedication! A small-framed, delicate flower of femininity such as myself sends more of a message of insanity, body dysmorphia, or narcissism. All I can say is that I know my own mind. I've done all sorts of things out of curiosity, from riding a mechanical bull to jumping over open flames. What I've found is that my own physical limitations have yet to be reached. Every time I try to do something, it turns out that I can do it. That includes running a marathon. Concern in our culture over excessive weight loss is so strong as to approach hysteria. Perhaps this is because 70% of us are overweight now, and even 25 pounds overweight looks small. Perhaps this is because most of us don't like contemplating at what age we will develop diabetes, if we don't have it already, and so we turn our focus toward health problems at the opposite end of the spectrum. This taboo aspect of physical transformation is part of the fascination for me. So few people know about the experience of being not-fat now that it's become alien and alarming. Perhaps a bit of reassurance is in order. According to the charts, I would have to lose a full 15 pounds to be underweight, and that's not happening in such a brief time period. Even if I did drop a dramatic amount of weight, say from food poisoning, I can gain a pound a day without even trying. This is not a project that is likely to result in permanent harm, or even short-term harm. My goal is not to lose weight or to look a certain way, but rather to share an experience with my husband. Although, when my goal was to lose weight, I did it and have maintained it for two and a half years. No crazy was gone. Athletes do it all the time. Actors do it all the time. Spiritual practitioners from most, maybe all, religious traditions do it all the time. Pre-Industrial people of every culture did it every winter, and do it still, in an unbroken chain that goes back before human history, before human prehistory, and undoubtedly all the way back to the beginning. Animals in the wild cannot rely on steady access to a standard amount of calories every day, in all seasons. Occasional, unintentional fasting is the way of the world for all life forms. Occasional, voluntary fasting is a common cultural trait. Both of us are over forty. We look around and see that almost everyone we know in our age range relies on pharmaceuticals to live. We have a dozen friends who rely on medical appliances, either for diabetes or for sleep apnea. There always seems to be someone we know who is going into surgery or recuperating from it. This is nervous-making. My husband just filled out a questionnaire for his health insurance at work, and it included the question, "How many medications are you on?" There was an option for "5+." Neither of us have been prescribed anything. Our blood work has come back in the healthy range the entire time we've been together. Deviating from the Standard American Lifestyle seems to be working out pretty well for us so far. The older we get, the more we start looking for healthy role models who are rocking it at our age or older, and the more willing we are to make habit changes. Our initial commitment to this juice fast is for ten days. I will of course report back on the results. Designing Your Life permanently changed my outlook. I studied history, which is more or less the exact opposite of the design field, so its impact may have been unusual in my case. There were several points that arrested my attention with their insight into decision-making. I found myself doing the exercises with real vigor. The first thing that caught my attention was the finding that 80% of people don't know what their passion is. Thus, the idea that we're supposed to follow our passions leaves almost everyone feeling like a failure right out of the gate. Failure is good, though, in the design world. It provides information about what is supposed to be only one iteration among many. That's why one of the exercises is to imagine three completely distinct versions of your own life over the next five years. When I did this exercise, I discovered to my surprise that one iteration felt both slightly distasteful to me, yet simultaneously more in line with my core values, than another. The book distinguishes between two types of problems: gravity problems and anchor problems. Gravity problems include the fact that it's hard to get rich as a poet. Anchor problems happen when we attach ourselves to only one acceptable solution, a solution that is not possible in the current situation. This was such a transformative concept to me. I was also struck by the distinction between failures that are screw-ups versus problems of weakness. Was it a simple mistake or did it come from a character flaw? That is going to blast a lot of excuses out of my head, let me tell you. The indecisive among us should pay close attention to the material on decisions. This is because "if you have too many options, you actually have none at all." Analysis paralysis means none of the options are being chosen, and thus none of them are becoming a reality in your life. As a very decisive person, this makes perfect sense to me. If every choice seems equally attractive, then it truly doesn't matter what you pick, and hesitating is just drawing out the frustration of not being able to decide. Another concept was the distinction between finite and infinite games. A finite game has an ending, like planning a wedding or losing weight. An infinite game goes on forever, like developing your personal ethical code or doing laundry. This is a really helpful idea. It can help us resign ourselves to the perpetual choreness of life, while also indicating that certain projects can be gotten out of the way more quickly if we focus more. One chapter is entitled "Failure Immunity." This scans with the concept of "obstacle immunity" from Spartan Up!. Apparently this is a thing. We're just going to have to start toughening up and changing our outlook on problems. My only issue with the book was that it started out by offering to answer questions such as how to find a job you like and how to balance career with family... but then said it couldn't answer the question, "How can I be thin, sexy, and fabulously rich?" Well, gee, why ever not?? Favorite quote: "Designing something changes the future that is possible." |
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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