Lincoln, the Future, and Psycho-Cybernetics

I recently read a good Lincoln quote: "The best way to predict the future is to create it." I like that. It goes along with what I’ve learned over the past two years regarding how to change your habits.

I believe that “first you form your habits, and then your habits form you.” For example, my eating habits, formed in my youth, helped form my middle aged girth. Oops! Who knew?

What’s a person to do? Lincoln knew: Create a new future!

But how? Here’s what I’ve been doing with great success:

I’ve developed a positive self-image via affirmations.

Self-improvement begins with how you see yourself: now and in the future.

An improved self-image starts with a new goal. But how do you find the right goals?



Use your head and heart to find out what would make you feel good about yourself. That’s what you “need” to learn. That’s a worthwhile goal!

That new worthwhile goal then needs to be re-written as an affirmation. (An affirmation is a goal written with positive words (no nots), with strong feeling words, with a personal pronoun (I), and with present tense verbs.)

Once the affirmation is written, I rehearse the new affirmation by repetition and visualization (image making or directed daydreaming).



I was already was good at visualization and repetition… it’s called worry! Mental rehearsal is simply pre-living a dream (visualization) instead of pre-living a nightmare (worry).

Because I am in charge of my habits.
I set goals, create affirmations, and use them.
I consistently review my affirmations and goals.
I spend time visualizing (image making) my good habits.





And that which was difficult (improvement) becomes easy! My habits are reformed in keeping with my new self-image, and my new and improved habits reform me! Go figure.

Too simple? Too bad.

Money, Prayer, and Burning the Old Year

I'm still not back into the groove of 2008 blogging, and I just may not ever return! In fact, I can't. Not to worry, I'll keep on blogging, but I may miss a day here and there. 2009 is a New Year. The groove of 2008 needs to give way to the new paths of 2009.

Some of my "missing" days are spent perusing other people's blogs and commenting there. That was partially the case this past week. So I've compiled three links and offerings from blogs I've visited lately. Three topics are presented: money, prayer, and the New Year. Read on!

One web-site I visit periodically is the One Minute Writer. There you are given a daily prompt and challenged to spend one of your allotted 1,440 minutes a day writing. One prompt caught my eye. It was simply: "Money. Can it buy happiness?" (I had also recently been challenged to writing cinquains over at Rambles from my chair, so I offered my post in such a poem (2,4,6,8,2 syllables... 5 lines).

A Monetary Cinquain

Money:
What can it buy?
Surely not happiness!
But godliness with contentment?
Great gain!

It was interesting to read the responses of others, most of who agreed that money cannot buy happiness. I did find one contrary opinion that was thought provoking, and I spent a bit of time checking out the contributor's blog. (It’s All Good at her blog: Rawan’s Random Thoughts.) She said:

"Money DEFINITELY buys happiness, without a doubt! I don't know to many truly happy people who have no food, shelter, or clean clothes. Now do you need A LOT of money to be happy? No, but to say that you can truly be happy without money is just non-sense! Being with family makes you happy? Well it takes money to travel to where they are (because I don't know to many people who have their ENTIRE family within walking distance.) and you need money for those Christmas dinners and fun vacations and adorable outfits worn in the pictures. Money makes memories a lot of the times."




Besides The One Minute Writer, I sometimes contribute over on a page called Pictures, Poetry, and Prose Here a prompt is offered via a photo and a phrase. The picture below appeared with the prompt, prayer. How could I resist? So I wrote...

Photo by Basir Seerat
visit Basir's photo blog at
http://www.basirseerat.blogspot.com/

Prayer: a conversation held with God, whom we assume cares, listens, and responds.

But just whose prayers does God listen to? Does God care enough to hear this woman's prayer? (She's a foreigner, probably not Christian.)

How big is your God? Have we forgotten this story from Acts...

"At Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion in what was known as the Italian Regiment. He and all his family were devout and God-fearing; he gave generously to those in need and prayed to God regularly. One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. He distinctly saw an angel of God, who came to him and said, "Cornelius!"

Cornelius stared at him in fear. "What is it, Lord?" he asked.

The angel answered, "Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God."

God takes note of the prayers and actions of those who make an effort to communicate with him.

How big is God? Big enough for Cornelius. Big enough for the woman in prayer at this door. Big enough for me. Big enough for you.

I thought the piece on prayer was a good one for a Sunday Morning Post.



The final topic is just a link about ringing out the old year and ringing in the new. It was one of several I found helpful. The whole concept of starting fresh has spurred me on towards Spring cleaning in January, both figuratively and literally. (My home and garage are now less cluttered and I have "new" sofas.)

My favorite line from the poem, Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye, is "so few things are in stone."

If you don't follow the link, here's a short quote,

"So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone."

Happy New Year!

Laughter, the Best Medicine

After a stressful post-vacation week back at work, I had a conversation that really cheered me up. In fact, I had one today and one yesterday. In both conversations I had a good laugh: a whole series of laughs.

(Thanks, I needed that.)

So this post goes out to all of you who make people laugh. You rock!

Unfortunately, some of the best comedy comes at the expense of another. Both of my recent encounters with humor had to do with individuals who were recounting their personal series of unfortunate events. They weren't earth shattering unfortunate events, just very funny. (Sad, pathetic, funny.)

I'll give one example: a fellow teacher was sniffing a bit at lunch. Because I'm sensitive and caring, I inquire, and sure enough she has a cold, and it's getting worse, not better. Ahhhh. So sorry.

How bad is it? Her eyes were watering.

How bad is that? She couldn't focus well enough for the students to use their whiteboards to show their answers. As a result she had to get a lot of verbal answers.

But it gets worse?

Her ears were getting stuffy, so she couldn't hear too well. Ahhhh.
How bad is that? She couldn't hear the students in the back of her classroom, so the class spent the day answering in unison. (Now that's funny.)

Her head was throbbing, her ears were stuffed, her eyes were watering, and it gets worse...

She couldn't take any medication because she's pregnant. Ouch!

(Now, partially why this is so funny is because it's so pathetic. My heart went out to my co-worker, but the more we talked, the more I laughed. And it gets worse.)

She was sick, getting sicker, and she was very tired because she was working on 4 or 5 hours sleep. Why?

Because Mid-Eastern Christmas was the night before, and she and her Middle-Eastern husband had to attend an annual trip to church with his family: from 9 pm to midnight. And then a traditional family dinner at her mother-in-law's. She got home at 1:30 am. And she didn't sleep very well.

How sad is that? (And funny, to hear her tell it.)

Her only remedy was to go workout at a gym after work. (Yes, that was her solution.) Although she felt worse after the workout, she slept well and came back feeling a bit better the next day.

(I, ever the sensitive one, noticed, inquired, and complimented her on her improved health. We smiled and laughed again.)

I don't know why it is that watching or listening to the foibles of friends is just so darned entertaining, but it is.

Often enough I provide the foibles, so it's fun to see someone else outdo my mishaps. It's funny when they do, and it helps me put my problems in perspective.

Sometimes it sucks to be me, but sometimes, it sucks to be you! And that's just funny.

Adapt or Die!

Changes at work made me want to take up arms, so I cleverly began to read a chapter called “Gaining Control Over Change” from my Secrets of Consulting book by Gerald M. Weinberg.

I expected to get some good advice on how to get people to see things my way, instead Jerry informed me that the best way get changed is to resist change. His answer to managing change was to embrace it.



Another name for embracing change is adaptation. Jerry points out that some organisms adapt in order to survive an increasingly hostile environment. This is also called evolution. Hmmm…



I can manage change by embracing change in an adaptive manner. (Or I can become a dinosaur. And perhaps extinct.)



Those who resist change often begin to act in ways that make them change a lot. Rats. That’s what I’m trying to avoid: big change.



Amazingly, Jerry’s advice on embracing small change in order to survive was comforting. It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but it was one I needed.

That’s why I went to Jerry’s book. He knows stuff.

(Pictures are from an outing Dec. 27th 2008 at the Fullerton Arboretum)

Fear, panic, and hysteria!

Some things just bug me. You know the type of thing that gets under your skin, makes you wake up at night, makes you compose arguments, makes you crazy?



I've been fighting that feeling a bit, so I liked this quote from a Daily Slang widgit:

Snow hysteria: When the populace's fear of a snowstorm creates traffic jams and general panic way before any flakes even fall. Usually turns out to be a totally disproportionate response to a minor snowstorm.

We don't get snow hysteria in So Cal. (It was 38 degrees last night: brrrrr.)

But I fight these things: work hysteria and relationship hysteria. (These things don't require snow.)




What helped me in the quote above was this phrase: "Usually turns out to be a totally disproportionate response to a minor snowstorm."

Ahhhh... a totally disproportionate response to a minor event.

That's what I sometimes fight. I forget what the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says: Don’t Panic!

Just thinking that my response might be totally disproportionate helped me get a bit more perspective and a bit more relaxed, less hysterical.




Note to self: Beware of allowing minor fears escalate into a disproportionate response of panic and mild hysteria. Beware of snow hysteria and its look-a-like cousins.

New Year... "New" Sofas from CraigsList

I often check myself to make sure I'm practicing what I preach. Yesterday I talked of ringing out the old year and ringing in the new. Well, I followed up that meditation with some action: I got some "new" sofas.







It began innocently enough: I was checking CraigsList in preparation to selling my daughter's 1967 VW bug. But as one thing leads to another, I looked at VWs, but then lamps, then living rooms, then sofas, then living room sets. I found a nice set of used leather sofas for $425. How good a deal was that? Very good.

We got a 6' sofa, a 5' love seat, two large overstuffed chairs, and an end table.

Of course as one thing leads to another, it also meant that I had to rearrange patio furniture, promote one sofa to the patio, another sofa to the closed in patio, and two sofas to the garage until trash day.

Then there was the problem of picking up the new sofas after withdrawing cash the night before. I rented a truck, contacted my nephew, picked up the truck, picked up my nephew, picked up the sofas, paid for the sofas, transported and unloaded the sofas, and then rearranged furniture for a bit. (Then I returned my nephew!)

The new year has brought a new look to my living room and several other rooms. How sweet it is! (Now I have to keep the cats from "breaking in" the new sofas.)



If you've never used CraigsList, check it out. You can get some good deals. But beware... good deals can lead to a goodly amount of work!



Today, I'm back to work after a two week, fun filled, action packed vacation. And it's a good thing... I can use the rest.

Sunday Morning: New Year

Yesterday I did a lot of reading, mostly researching a question of word origin for a friend's blog. In the course of my research I rediscovered a website/blog that I had heard about some years ago. That blog's New Year's post contained a poem about ringing in the New Year, but it also makes reference to ringing out the Old Year. (Ring in the New Year -- a link to a poem that reflects hope and shows how little things have changed over the years.)

I like the idea of ringing out the old year. Annual vista points are important, but I feel that there is an imbalance: too much reminiscence, not enough call to action, too much melancholy and not enough hopeful determination, too much looking back and not enough looking forward. What are we to do?

One of my favorite phrases from the Bible is one that says, "forgetting those things which are behind, I press on..." (This is also a good excuse for being forgetful.)




The context is an older Christian, writing from a Roman jail cell, contemplating his future.


I have not yet reached my goal, and I am not perfect. But Christ has taken hold of me. So I keep on running and struggling to take hold of the prize.

My friends, I don't feel that I have already arrived. But I forget what is behind, and I struggle for what is ahead.

I run toward the goal, so that I can win the prize of being called to heaven. This is the prize that God offers because of what Christ Jesus has done.

What I like in this is that forgetting what is behind is an option. We learn from the past, treasure the memories, but we don't live there. We don't live in the future either, but the future inspires us to move forward in the present.

Sometimes it feels like my "get up and go" got up and went. So I return to passages such as the one quoted above to inspire me to live large in the coming year. To ring out the old, to ring in the new, and to "run with patience" the course marked out for me. See you on the jogging path of life!

Happy Sunday!