Consistency

Slobs Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Clutter!

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How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your Home’s Dirty Little Secrets by Dana K. White of the “A Slob Comes Clean ” website and blog.  Title link is to the sale page on her website and is not an affiliate link.  I will be honest and say that the only reason I ran across the book (in its audio form, read by the author) was that it showed up in the “recommended for you” section on Hoopla, the public library app that I use quite a bit. Hmmm. Did Hoopla know something about me? I don’t really remember downloading any housecleaning books from them, but you never know.

And by the way, before I go any further (or farther–I never know which one to use): the word “slob” is her word, not mine.

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Do the Boring Stuff

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healthy, relaxing breakfastAnother great podcast today from Liz Craft and Sarah Fain’s “Happier in Hollywood,” their podcast about life as TV writers living in Los Angeles. I would encourage you to listen to the whole thing. (One instance of bad language very early on, BTW.) Anyway, they have a guest this week, Melissa De La Cruz, a mega-best-selling author of young adult fiction. (Who knew? Not me.) But Melissa’s fabulously successful career came at the cost of a stroke.

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15 Minutes a Day . . . 

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Clocks showing 15 minute period highlighted  . . . can change your life.

I use the above quotation in the opening to chapter 8 of my book, “The Big Effect of Small Actions” (read this sample chapter here.)  The whole idea of doing a small action over and over again, building up cumulative benefits, is so simple and yet so hard, at least for me.  As I’ve said many times before, I don’t want to do small things consistently; I want to do big things inconsistently.  I want drama and stress and adrenaline.  But living my life that way is extremely counterproductive. I need to take a few minutes and re-read the chapter in my own book!

From the Sublime to the Mundane

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Yesterday I took on the Big Question of free will vs. fate.  Today I’m talking about cleaning out my Sonicare toothbrush.  No one can accuse me of being in a rut!

Here’s the thing:  The inside of the head  of this appliance gets gunked up with this black stuff, toothpaste residue, and it drives me crazy. ( Yes, I do rinse out the bristles.  It still happens.)  So I periodically spend 10 minutes or so cleaning it out with q-tips, but at some point it’s just hopeless.  Recently I replaced the head, as you’re supposed to do every three months (but who does that, really?) and I determined that I was going to keep it clean.  So now, every time I use it, twice a day. I unscrew the top from the base, rinse it out inside, and shake out the water before screwing it back on.  Takes about 30 seconds, tops.  So far it seems to be staying clean.  No more black gunk.  A good illustration, once again, of the principle that it’s easier to keep up than it is to catch up.  (I will spare you the description of how awful my sink stopper gets because I let hairs go down the drain instead of cleaning them out.  You don’t want to know about that, believe me.)

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The Accountability Conundrum

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As everyone in the known universe knows, Gretchen Rubin’s new book on habits, Better than Before, came out last week.  While Gideon was getting his MRI on Friday at the hospital I walked over to the Tattered Cover Bookstore to buy my copy and get my admission ticket for her appearance there tomorrow night.  I’ve been reading it kind of slowly, trying to savor it and take it all in.  I even plan to do something very rare for me:  go back and highlight the most important ideas.

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Scheduling Strategies

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Some of you reading this will want to hit me over the head with your Day-Timers(c) when I say this, but the fact is that I have altogether too much control over my time.  I work from home, my only child is 20 years old, and my husband is a laid-back kind of guy.  Don’t get me wrong:  1) I have lots to do, and 2) I’m not complaining.  It’s just that I get to choose when to do most of the things I have to do.  And I’m very, very bad at making those choices.  Why is that?  Because I’m what Gretchen Rubin calls an “obliger.”  I will kill myself meeting an outside deadline because I respond readily to others’ expectations.  But I have a terrible time responding to my own.

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Keep on doing . . .

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. . . the small things.

I know.  I’ve written on this subject before.  And I hope this particular story doesn’t come across as trivial.  It struck me as an interesting object lesson, so I’m passing it on.

The picture is of the diamond stud earrings that Jim bought me for our 12th anniversary.  (Diamonds for the dozenth, you see.)  [Please note: When we moved this site to a new platform I lost a lot of images, including this one–and I’m too lazy to take a new one!] I must admit that I did sort of tell him that I wanted these.  Anyway, they’re very beautiful, and I wanted to wear them all the time, but I also wanted to be able to wear my regular earrings, so the only solution was to get another set of piercings on my ears, which I did.  It took quite awhile for the new holes to heal, but I persisted.

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A Beloved Classic

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Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman by Anne Ortlund, originally published by Word Books, 1977, available in many other formats and editions.

Well!  After the Great Book Cleanout of several weeks ago, I couldn’t find my copy of this book and was very distressed to think that I might have thrown it out.  I do go back and re-read it periodically, and it means a great deal to me, so I was greatly relieved when it turned up.

I quoted Anne in the “eliminate and concentrate” post last week.  She was a tremendously talented and energetic woman who was a pastor’s wife, author, composer, and speaker.  I’m sorry that I never got to hear her speak in person, but reading this book is almost as good.  I would strongly urge you, if you’ve never done so, to get hold of a copy.  It’s quite short, only 132 pages in my edition, so you don’t have to make a major investment of time to read it.

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Some good news, but . . .

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. . . no free pass.

I wrote early in January about my higher-than-expected blood sugar levels and my intention to be very strict about sugar intake during the month and then get the further testing the doctor recommended.  The second test was done on Feb. 3 and I got the results later in the week.  Fasting blood glucose was 99, which is just one point below the 100-125 range that is considered pre-diabetes, so I’ve apparently moved back down out of the danger zone.  But not by much.  My insulin level was 2.6, which is apparently quite good.  If you have high fasting insulin levels, especially above 5.0, you almost certainly have insulin resistance; that is, your cells don’t take up glucose easily and so your pancreas has to pump out more and more insulin to get blood sugar down.  But of course you have to have enough insulin.  I’ve been finding it difficult to get a good take on how low is too low.  There was no indication in the report that anything was amiss with this number, though, so I guess I’ll take it as okay.

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Further small thoughts . . .

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. . . on the importance of small things!

I quote here an example given many years ago by Sparky Pritchard, then an associate pastor at my church.  He was talking specifically about Bible study, but this analogy could apply in many areas:

Sometimes people ask what they should do when they don’t feel like reading the Bible, or don’t feel as if they’re getting anything out of it.  I tell them that you don’t always enjoy it.  Sometimes your Bible study time is like taking your vitamins:  totally unexciting, but you know it’s good for you.  Other times your experience may be more like eating a bowl of cold cereal:  It’s nourishing and somewhat tasty, but not all that great.  But then you experience the Bible as if it’s peaches and cream.  Here’s the thing, though:  you never get to that dessert stage without being willing to go through the vitamins stage.  In other words, you have to be consistent:  do the (seemingly) small thing of being in the Word daily.

Just as I said a couple of days ago:  the small series of faithful actions adds up.