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and One Pill Makes You Small…

February 17, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell 6 Comments

Alice through the Looking Glass
Alice through the Looking Glass (Photo credit: sammydavisdog)
 …so don’t swallow that pill!

If you’re playing small, making yourself small, or trying to convince yourself and everyone else that you’re too small to make a difference or to be worth bothering with, just stop it.

Undoubtedly you have reasons for playing small, but the reasons don’t matter.

A hundred people may come up with a hundred different reasons, but they’re all in futile pursuit of the same basic stuff:

Safety
Security
Contentment
Satisfaction
Certainty

Pursuit of these things is futile because they are either impossible to get or impossible to get and keep—ironically, especially by playing small.

If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster. –Clint Eastwood

People who are playing small are usually also pursuing happiness, but they would prefer not to be disturbed. Maybe this is the source of the idea of being happy as a clam—or happy as a clam at high tide, which is the complete idiom, high tide being the time when clams are least likely to be disturbed by clam diggers. Unfortunately being alive and being disturbed kind of go hand-in-hand unless you’re living in some kind of protective bubble.

If you’re aiming for safety, security, contentment, satisfaction, and certainty, what are you willing to give up in exchange? Are you willing to give up your freedom? Your vitality, energy, and power? The possibilities for joy, adventure, creativity, spontaneity, and aliveness? Are you willing to give up your life? How afraid are you of failing, making a mistaken, losing, getting hurt, having to expend too much effort, being outside your comfort zone? Have you set most of your expectations of yourself so low that even when you meet them it merits nothing more than a yawn?

You’re bigger than that. Maybe its time to try taking the other pill, metaphorically speaking.

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Filed Under: Beliefs, Brain, Consciousness, Happiness, Living, Mind, Purpose Tagged With: Certainty, Consciousness, Contentment, Happiness, Happy as a Clam, Living, Playing Small, Safety, Satisfaction, Security

Constraints

January 2, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Split rail fencing Yosemite Valley alongside o...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Constraints give your life shape. Remove them and most people have no idea what to do: look at what happens to those who win lotteries or inherit money. Much as everyone thinks they want financial security, the happiest people are not those who have it, but those who like what they do. –Paul Graham, programmer, writer, investor

Filed Under: Creating, Finding What You Want, Happiness, Living Tagged With: Constraints, Happiness, Living, Money, Paul Graham, Working

Happiness

November 24, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 2 Comments

Happiness
(Photo credit: Rickydavid)

The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life, and when by means of great wealth homo sapiens can gratify all his whims without effort, the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. The man who acquires easily things for which he feels only a very moderate desire concludes that the attainment of desire does not bring happiness. If he is of a philosophic disposition, he concludes that human life is essentially wretched, since the man who has all he wants is still unhappy. He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness. —Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness

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Filed Under: Finding What You Want, Happiness, Living, Meaning Tagged With: Bertrand Russell, Happiness, Living, Meaning

What Do You Want? redux

November 11, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 8 Comments

What do YOU want?
What do YOU want? (Photo credit: MaestroBen)

Right now. Right this moment. What do you really want?

It sounds like a simple question, but it’s often a difficult one to answer. So instead of answering the question what do I want? we answer a different question, an easier one, such as

  • What do I need?
  • What do I want that I think I’m capable of getting?
  • What do I want that’s practical?

Some of those might seem like reasonable approaches, but they sidestep the actual question.

Identifying what you want isn’t an excursion into narcissism. The fact that so many of us are unable to answer this question with any degree of conviction doesn’t indicate  we’re selfless beings who aren’t concerned with our own wants and desires. To the contrary, the less clarity we have about what we really want in life, the likelier we are to settle for—even grab at—whatever gratifies our immediate, short-term desires.

But it’s impossible to be truly satisfied if you don’t know what you really want.

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman talks about this phenomenon of answering an easier question than the one that was asked.

If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 [the unconscious] will find a related question that is easier and will answer it. I call the operation of answering one question in place of another “substitution.”

Substituting an easier question for the question, what do I want? has consequences that can be deadly—or at least deadening. If you can’t allow yourself to identify what you want in life, you diminish your possibilities dramatically. You lose touch with yourself. Your view of the world becomes narrower. You settle for less. And maybe every once in a while you’re kind of unpleasant to be around.

Could you want something that’s impossible (or seems impossible) to have? Of course! Wanting isn’t synonymous with having. The act of wanting something won’t somehow magically bring it into being, no matter how hard you wish for it. On the other hand, if you don’t even know what you want, then you’ve pretty much guaranteed you won’t go after it. It’s unlikely that everything you want will be impossible for you to have. So why not be honest with yourself and acknowledge what you want, whether or not you think you can have it?

When you ask yourself this question, throw reasonableness out the window and try answering the hard question instead of an easier one. If you keep doing that, the hard question actually becomes easier because you don’t have to keep censoring yourself. If it turns out that you want impossible, improbable, barely imaginable, or highly unlikely things, congratulations! You’re already a winner.

30 Days

Here’s a simple exercise to help you uncover what you want:

For 30 days, preferably consecutive, write “What I really want” at the top of a blank page and then list 15-20 things that you want right then and there. They can be small, medium, or large; material or ephemeral; practical or pie-in-the sky. Don’t put an inordinate amount of thought into creating your list. Write down whatever occurs to you. Repetition is the key. Date your list. At the end of 30 days, you’re likely to have a pretty good idea of what’s important to you and what you want. If not, do the exercise for 30 more days.Enhanced by Zemanta

Filed Under: Brain, Choice, Finding What You Want, Meaning, Purpose Tagged With: Choice, Daniel Kahneman, Happiness, Knowing what you want, Meaning, Thinking Fast and Slow, What do you want

Music Will Save Me from Myself

August 28, 2013 by Joycelyn Campbell 6 Comments

Cosmo's Factory
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Having declared an intention to maintain my equanimity—and why didn’t I think of this before now?—I have been looking for ways to keep reminding myself that this is my intention and to assist me when situations arise where I’m in danger of losing it.

The last time something pushed one of my buttons, I remembered how powerfully music can affect mood and state of mind. So I created an Equanimity Playlist: 25 songs that make me feel good or lower my blood pressure—or both. They range from the ridiculous (or corny) to the (at least in my opinion) sublime. It’s much more satisfying to turn the music on than it is to throw a stapler across the room (not that I actually do that with any regularity…anymore).

Here’s my list:

For a Dancer (Jackson Browne)
Coming into Los Angeles (Arlo Gurthrie)
I Heard a Rumor (Bananarama)

When You Awake (the Band/Acoustic version by Rick Dank)

Sail On (The Commodores)
Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby (Counting Crows)
Lookin’ Out My Back Door (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
Save Tonight (Eagle Eye Cherry)
Uncle John’s Band (Grateful Dead)
Rise Up (Indigo Girls)
Mexico (James Taylor)
Take a Minute (K’naan)
What It Is (Mark Knopfler)
Peace Like a River (Paul Simon)
Half a World Away (R.E.M.)

All This Time (Sting)

I Want You (Bob Dylan)
Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Van Morrison)

Who Says (John Mayer)

Birdhouse in Your Soul (They Might Be Giants)
A Thousand Beautiful Things  (Annie Lennox)
High Tide or Low Tide (Bob Marley & The Wailers)
Human Nature (Michael Jackson)
Terra Nova (James Taylor)
Kathy’s Song (Eva Cassidy)

Many of these songs have been lifting me up for decades, from Michigan to California to New Mexico, and still do it for me today.

What songs would you put on your Equanimity Playlist?Enhanced by Zemanta

Filed Under: Consciousness, Happiness, Living, Meaning, Mind, Mindfulness Tagged With: Equanimity, Happiness, Living, Mindfulness, Music

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