Remember the post on “15 Minutes a Day” back at the end of October? I said I had two goals to work on in this very limited regular time: be able to do 20 push-ups and reach C above middle C, both by the end of the year. Today I did 13 push-ups, the most I have ever done in my life, I’m sure. (No, that’s not me in the picture, or even a stylized version of me.) So I’m on track to get to the 20. Yes, they’re just girly push-ups. (The spellcheck on this site seems to think that “pushups” isn’t a word.) But they’re my girly push-ups!
General Interest
The Science of Doing It Yourself
The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home by Dan Ariely, Harper, 2010. Go to Ariely’s website to read more about him and his work. I have linked specifically to his pages on this book.
I am in the process of re-reading portions of Upside; my husband brought it home from the library and I swiped it. There are long sections in which Ariely describes various experiments that he and his associates set up to test human reactions in various situations, many of which I’m skipping because I’ve read them before. But the parts of the book that are well worth re-reading have to do with Ariely’s personal life, both the extraordinary (being badly burned at age 18 and having to go through years of hospitalizations, treatments, and surgeries) and the mundane (figuring out how to put together an IKEA toy chest). In my usual mundane way, I’m going to concentrate on the latter. . . .
Wisdom from Emily Dickinson
To make Routine a Stimulus
Remember it can cease —
Capacity to Terminate
Is a Specific Grace —
Of Retrospect the Arrow
That power to repair
Departed with the Torment
Become, alas, more fair —
Capacity to Terminate
Is a Specific Grace —
Of Retrospect the Arrow
That power to repair
Departed with the Torment
Become, alas, more fair —
Sometimes Emily Dickinson makes me tired. Why all the dashes? Why all the obfuscation? Can’t she vary her meter a little bit? (Most of her poems can be sung to the tune “Amazing Grace,” not that she necessarily knew that.) After getting the first half of the above poem in my inbox in the daily e-mail I get from Gretchen Rubin, I was so intrigued that I did a little research both on Dickinson herself and on the poem. What a strange little person she was! . . .
“Do the Next Thing”
Here it is, the start of a new work week. I’m sitting in my somewhat- messy kitchen, getting the “next thing” done–writing today’s blog post. This past weekend I was privileged to attend a conference at my in-laws’ church. What a wonderful experience to hear two godly women, one with Parkinson’s disease, one with a son recovering from a heart transplant, speak about their faith. But now . . . guess what? I need to put some of that great teaching into practice. Otherwise, to use an analogy I’ve heard many times, I’ll be like the Dead Sea. Know why that body of water is so salty, so devoid of life? . . .
A Flash of Insight about my Personality
I have thought many times that the worst thing in the world for me is to get up in the morning and think, “There’s nothing that I absolutely have to do today; I get to set my own schedule.” At the end of the day I almost certainly will not have accomplished many, if indeed any, of the tasks on my to-do list. I will have started out the day with good intentions, but I won’t have lived up to them.
Back in the summer of 1986 I had what I guess would be called a sabbatical. . . .
Talk More, Listen Less
“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?” David Martyn Lloyd-Jones
We’re always told to listen more and talk less, aren’t we? The one exception to this rule is in our interactions with ourselves.
Saying “No” Can Be a Positive Action
I’ve written a couple of posts quoting Anne Ortlund, on her book and on her ideas of stripping down our lives. Sadly, she’s no longer with us, but her heritage lives on in her books. (The first link is to her Amazon page.) Today I was struggling (as usual) to get myself going on what I needed to do, and I was reminded of her idea that says,
This is what life-planning is all about. Under that wonderful umbrella of “if God wills,” we need to decide where we suspect he’d like us to go. We need to see what provisions are necessary for each leg of the journey, and get them. Then we need to say “no,” “no,” “no,” daily all the rest of our lives to . . .
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Love Must Be Tough: New Hope for Families in Crisis by James Dobson, originally published in 1983 by Word Publishing, now available in many different formats and from many sources.
Here’s a question for all of you readers who think Aretha Franklin’s song “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” is about, well, respect. It’s sung by a strong woman who doesn’t stand for any nonsense from her man, right? Take a look at some of the actual lyrics, minus all the great music:
Do You Follow Your Own Rules?
I write in chapter two of my book, “How Our Emotions Work” (see sidebar for ordering information), that one source of happiness/unhappiness is how well we keep our promises to ourselves. If we cave in and break a promise to someone else there are often consequences, but what happens when we don’t keep our word to ourselves? We are diminished in our own eyes. We feel bad. We berate ourselves: “Why did I do that?” Our blood sugar levels go up. Whatever.
There’s No Art to Find the Mind’s Construction in the Face
I’ve been mildly obsessed of late with the Phantom of the Opera. If you’re a reader of the posts over on the music blog page, you’ll remember that my chorale is singing a piece from the musical and that I was trying to find out the reason for the Phantom’s disfigurement. I mentioned the novel Phantom by Susan Kay, which I have now read and which reminded me of another novel that revolves around appearance, especially facial appearance, Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. Lewis’ novel is a re-telling of the Psyche and Cupid myth but is narrated by Psyche’s older sister, Orual, who is as ugly as Psyche is beautiful. The main characters in both novels cover their faces, one with a mask and one with a veil. And for both characters there is no reason given for their ugliness or deformity; it’s simply the way they were born, and it has profound effects on their lives. Neither one can ever have a normal romantic relationship, although both fall in love. It’s a very intriguing concept: that someone can be intelligent, talented, and sensitive, as both of these characters are, and yet be doomed to live apart simply because of the arrangement of their facial features.