Category: work fulfillment

Overwhelmed by Your To-Do List? How to Decide What to Do Now

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.” ~Proverb

I’ve been mentoring writers for years, and one problem many of them run into is that they have so many ideas and projects that they don’t know where to start. They may want to write for big-name magazines, draft a novel, sell a nonfiction book, start a blog, and write an e-book.

Each of these projects has dozens of to-do items associated with it. Where to start? They’re so confused that they do nothing at all.

I sometimes have the same problem myself: I’ve been a freelance health writer since 1997, but recently I’ve been studying to add certified personal trainer and wellness coach to my repertoire. So my task list is long and varied, from stocking my personal training studio to pitching article ideas to creating motivational handouts for my new clients.

When I think about all I have to do—and everything seems to have equal priority—I can’t decide which task to get started on, so I do nothing.

When you’re confronted with an arm-length to-do list, ask yourself these questions:

How Much Time Do I Have?

Figure out how much time you have to spend right now, and slot in the item you think you can get done in that time—even if you’re working on the project “out of order.”

If you have 10 minutes, use that time to read a chapter in a personal development book, meditate, or read a few blog posts in your industry to keep up with the news. If you have an hour, you can get your exercise in, do prep work for tonight’s dinner, write a blog post, or call that friend you’ve been meaning to catch up with. (more…)

August 22, 2011
How to Carve Time for Yourself and Pursue Your Dreams

“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” ~Etty Hillesum

There was a time that I wished I had more than 24 hours a day to finish everything in my long to-do list. I have a full-time job editing news stories for a media agency while tending to my side business as a content marketing strategist for entrepreneurs.

That’s just the work thing. Like most single women in Asia, I live with my parents, so I do my share of household chores. I’m also writing my thesis for my masters in anthropology.

I had such a crazy schedule that I had this feeling of being literally crushed under a heavy pile of work. I wondered if I was just spinning my wheels, or if it was even worth it.

I decided then to make some changes so I’d feel less overwhelmed. After reading books and blogs on time management, goal setting, and productivity, I accepted that, while I can’t have more than 24 hours a day, I can give myself one day each week to forget my workload and just focus on myself.

My free day is my time to read, watch DVDs, and go to the gym. This me-time is as important as my work days, as it recharges my energy. It also clears my mind so I can focus on my goal of transforming my current side gig into a full-blown business.

(more…)

August 14, 2011
6 Commitments to Maintain Momentum with New Projects

“When you begin to touch your heart or let your heart be touched, you begin to discover that it’s bottomless.” ~Pema Chodron

I always wanted to travel to exotic places. When I received an all-expenses-paid invitation to Bangkok after a conference accepted a paper I wrote, I jumped at the chance to go.

I brought my camera and lugged it around in an oversize fanny back worn backwards. Looking like a dork is a small price for the opportunity to catch the wonder of a moment.

The conference became a yearly event, and the overseas flights provided time to reread the Canon manual for umpteenth time. My mind is a sieve for numbers and buttons that require complex mathematical equations performed in an instant. I’m lucky to catch a great shot one-tenth of the time.

Most times I stick to photographing sumptuous statues of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. I am willing to wait hours for a shaft of light to strike them just so. Then I take a ridiculous numbers of shots just in case.

I’m not a techie, but this pursuit keeps butting me up against long lists of directions on computer screens with hieroglyphics that could make decoding an Egyptian tomb look easy.

While compiling my first photographic book I vowed to keep my cool at the computer. No ranting or raving at the keyboard; none of the usual expletives or threats to decimate the motherboard. I got more done than I ever could have imagined.

Now the ante has been upped with my second book on Guanyin, a female deity capable of the greatest love under the direst circumstances. But has she ever faced the endless void of interminable options on the Internet without the hope of a human touch?

In a moment’s notice, she can shift shapes to lift us out of a tough situation and firmly plant our feet on the road to enlightenment—or Kansas if necessary.

Guanyin inspired me to make a second promise to myself: to be kind to every person I encounter—even after days of questing for a techie to solve problems that I’m incapable of describing without using phrases like “what-cha-ma-call-it” or “thing-a-ma-jig.”

I knew that I could occasionally come across as brash when I asserted myself. That made this second commitment essential for my effectiveness. (more…)

August 8, 2011
Being Kind When It’s Seen as a Weakness

“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” ~Samuel Johnson

When I worked in the corporate world, I didn’t focus on a race to the top. I enjoyed the day-to-day work of running a product line, finding opportunities for new markets, and helping managers in other countries launch similar lines tailored to their markets.

My approach was to be ethical in all aspects of the work, to have concern for the people I was working with to achieve results, and to share the credit appropriately. This was not the latest “management style,” nor was it proven.

The most senior managers saw the bottom line increase and gave me more responsibility and a promotion, while immediate supervisors discredited me since I was not like them.

A transfer to Asia fortunately took me out of the quagmire of home office politics. I felt the freedom to continue managing in a way that was natural to me: to encourage my teams with kindness, cooperation, and credit while we increased market share and the bottom line.

My staff felt safe and enjoyed their work. The division prospered.

However, my immediate superior didn’t value my approach. He viewed it as a sign of weakness that I was caring and thoughtful, and that I cooperated and shared with each colleague. (more…)

July 25, 2011
Leaving a Secure Job When the Risk Feels Scary

“It’s not who you are that holds you back. It’s who you think you’re not.” ~Unknown

Over the past four years, I followed a career path that felt soulless.

As I moved from city to city, climbing the corporate ladder, I noticed that, ironically, the bigger my paycheck, the emptier I felt. Something about advertising felt lifeless, cold, and desperate to me.

But I ignored this feeling and worked over it, drank over it, binged, exercised, and ate over it.

I pressed forward like a steel freight train on a mission to find my happiness. When I got to that new level, the thing I thought would make me happy was still just a few more achievements off, just a couple more dollars away. I was always looking “out there” to find my peace.

I had convinced myself that this was the best way to live my life. It became normal to cry in the bathroom at work. It wasn’t until I got laid off one year ago, from my big marketing job in Chicago that I recognized miracles do exist.

I picked up my depression and moved to the West Coast. I bought my dream car, adopted a dog, and landed a perfect boyfriend—and then I took another job in marketing.

It was only a few weeks until the fear-ridden depression started to nudge up against me. The cry festivals picked up again, and I walked around like a shell of a human being.

I would arrive to work lifeless, cold, and afraid to listen to my inner voice. I would say to myself, “I went to graduate school for a marketing degree, so I better stick to this.” But it just wasn’t what I wanted.

I was pretending to be the corporate climber. The more achievements, awards, cities, clients, and money I could get, the more I could say I was worthy. It was all a big circus, as I quietly hid myself behind the illusion of success and fulfillment.

I secretly longed for freedom. Every day I would sit under the fluorescent lights and cry inside.

I felt like a caged animal that wanted nothing more then to break free. But fear, and fear alone, was holding me back. Then one day I arrived to work, and the cage doors propped open. (more…)

July 18, 2011
How to Find Happiness at Work in 6 Steps

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” ~Dalai Lama

A few years back, I worked in a medical practice.

I’d always been fascinated with medicine, and the position allowed me virtually free reign within the practice. I was able to sit in at the operating room during procedures, learn about the medical billing process, chat with patients in the physical therapy unit, and much more.

Basically, the position was a great fit for me, but I still wasn’t happy at work.

Even though I had exposure to many areas, I was rarely given the responsibility I thought I deserved. My opinions seemed to count for very little, and I only had a few friends within the practice—if you could call them that.

Even though I was in a good job in the field that I loved, I still left each day feeling a little less happy with my decision to work there. I didn’t hate my job, but was this really what I was hoping for? I would think things like, “Is this as good as it’s going to get for me?” Or “Is this job going to make me happy, or am I going to be stuck in neutral forever?”

It’s easy to fall into this trap of mediocrity. In the beginning, you might be excited to start something new. But pretty soon you fall into a routine, and then one day you wake up and feel like you’re sleep walking through each work day.

The good news is that life doesn’t have to be perfect for you to find happiness at work. Here are six ways that I turned the sadness ship around and found joy at my job.

1. Develop a social circle.

One of the key indicators of happiness is having a strong social network.

It’s easy to hate your job when you don’t know your co-workers. And it’s even easier to keep hating it if you continue to avoid them. The situation isn’t going to change if your actions stay the same. (more…)

June 26, 2011
3 Things That Limit Your Potential and How to Overcome Them

“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.” ~George Sheehan

Here’s the routine: wake up, do my work, watch TV, and go to bed.

This was a regular day in my life not long ago. It was not too eventful and not overly challenging, and to be the honest, the less challenging it was, the less stress there was for me—at least that’s what I thought.

I had been working online for a few years, and my income was not up to where I wanted it to be. In fact, it was pretty far away from the numbers I had floating around in my head! But still, I went through the same motions everyday, hoping that one day I’d reach those numbers through hard work and perseverance.

I am a big believer in taking action to create the life you want, and at that point I thought I was taking action.

I would work hard during my day writing articles, perfecting my website’s SEO, and posting in forums. I did this daily because my schedule on the wall told me to do this to be successful. It even told me what time to stop doing one thing and start doing another.

Occasionally, I would read articles from other online marketers and bloggers about link building and networking. Even my husband, who is involved in real estate, would talk about that relationships he was building and how it helped him with his business.

But I kept brushing those ideas off because they were outside of my comfort zone. (more…)

June 15, 2011
Find Your Calling: 5 Steps to Identify Your Purpose

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” ~Rumi

When I was young, I fell in love with Africa. It was an unsophisticated and amorphous love, not directly related to anything in particular about that vast continent. I now see that the point of my love affair with Africa was to deliver my first calling to me.

Merriam-Webster defines a “calling” as: “…a strong inner impulse toward a particular course of action especially when accompanied by conviction of divine influence.”

My first calling was to connect with people who seemed very different from me. It took me to rural Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer, where I developed close friendships with my fellow villagers. It led me to people who were way outside of my socio-economic and my cultural demographic.

As with most callings, mine gave me a way to bring more love to the world. I wanted to get beyond language, class, gender, and culture; I wanted to experience human connection at its most raw and basic.

My first calling taught me that empathy heals and nourishes all those it touches, and that I could spread love by simply being available to hear another person, whoever they are.

Just because we have callings doesn’t mean they’re easy to follow. I declined the advice of others who saw my calling as naïve or even dangerous, and those who thought I should get a real job or do something closer to home.

I also stared down many of my own “shoulds” and fears in order to go ahead and join the Peace Corps.

It was hard to understand what the calling was when it first began to whisper in my ear. I found myself confused about what it meant, while at the same time growing surer that I would figure it out as I followed its lead. Sometimes the calling delivers clues that no one but you can decipher.

What I learned in Africa was that being true to myself meant trusting the process as it revealed itself, knowing that it was “right” for me at that particular time in my life. (more…)

June 14, 2011
Lifestyle Design: How to Create Your Life As You Want It
“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” ~George Eliot

If you read a lot of blogs or are even remotely tech savvy, it’s highly likely you’ve heard the term “lifestyle design.” Perhaps you’re wondering just what the heck it means, and how you can do it, too, just because it sounds so enticing!

In a nutshell, lifestyle design embodies the attempt on your part to design a life of your choosing, whatever that looks like. It’s your life, your plan, and you call the shots.

Just because your parents lived in a small town, got married at 17, and worked a 9–5 for 30 years, that doesn’t mean you have to do the same.

You have choices and, with the growth of the web, your choices have compounded exponentially. You control your life and what happens in it, and, once you realize that fully, you give yourself room to grow, experiment, and begin designing the life of your dreams.

You could almost call it a sort of “movement” as so many folks are jumping on the bandwagon, going location-independent with their businesses, and truly making waves as they fuel their passions.

And if the term lifestyle design throws you off, you might even call it “finding your purpose.”
- Why are you here?
- What do you want to achieve in this world?
- What excites you?
- What do you love to do most?
- Where would you most like to do it?
- Who would you most like to do it with?
- What sort of impact on others do you hope to make doing what you do?
These are all questions a lifestyle designer might ask themselves before embarking on their journey of exploration and adventure.

As humans, we all look for meaning in life, searching constantly for an answer to the “why am I here?” question. We want to know what the point of it all is, and how we can make our time here on this earth amazingly relevant. (more…)
June 5, 2011
Creative Types: How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

“Just as much as we see in others, we have in ourselves.” ~William Hazlitt

Most days I am a dedicated writer and artist, focused and working away with my oh-so-happy hands.

Most days I feel inspired to share adventures and insights from living in Paris for over two years while going to graduate school. Or referencing the intense spiritual work and personal growth I’ve experienced in recent years. Or describing how I quit the unfulfilling rat-race to focus on my passion and my life dreams.

Most days I have confidence and pride in my personal creations and feel pretty darn good about my creative ideas. Most days I am on a roll.

Then there are the other days.

The days where I spend too much time on the Internet looking at what other people are doing and comparing their brilliance to my efforts. The days where I find myself at a library staring down the rows of books, wondering if my writing is enough. The days where I count numbers and look at blog data that isn’t quite impressive yet.

So many people are already acclaimed writers, bloggers, artists, and creative experts. Is there even room for one more?

On those days, my head gets spinning in creative comparison, and I can’t get out of it. My energy plummets down, down, down, as if sinking to the ocean floor. (more…)

May 30, 2011
Take a Chance: Seize That Opportunity in 4 Steps

“It’s not who you are that holds you back, it’s who you think you’re not.” ~Unknown

Have you ever paused at a podium, feeling your hands shake as you speak to the senators before you? Have you ever laced your skates, shuddering as you heard your name announced as the next skater to compete? Have you ever found out about an amazing opportunity (say, a chance to post on Tiny Buddha), only to realize that you’re terrified to try?

I’ve been in all these risky scenarios, so I know how intimidating they can be. By definition, risk-taking doesn’t guarantee that you’ll attain your desired result. However, there are a few things you can do to optimize your chances of succeeding when an opportunity comes your way.

1. Get yourself prepared (and keep your eyes open).

Malcolm Gladwell said it in Outliers, and I’ll say it again: It takes time to achieve expertise. To be precise, it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become a true proficient. This is no small investment of your life energy.

As such, it pays to spend time thinking about the kinds of opportunities you want to prepare yourself for.

If you’re an advocate, what do you want to say to those senators? Start saying it now, even if you’re speaking to an empty room at first. If you’re a figure skater, what elements do you want in your Olympic program? Start practicing those elements every day.

Once you have seriously invested yourself, and have discerned what kind of opportunity you’re looking for, keep your eyes open, because opportunity has a strange way of showing up once you’ve prepared. Said opportunity may be unexpected (the best ones are), but if you’ve put in the time beforehand, you can seize the opportunity when it arises.

Nevertheless, it’s also essential to… (more…)

May 29, 2011
Discovering Your Purpose and Reaching Your Potential

“There are two great days in a person’s life—the day we are born and the day we discover why.” ~William Barclay

The word “capacity” has many definitions. It can be summarized as the maximum measure of innate potential and the ability to understand and demonstrate one’s optimal capability and power in a specified role.

Ultimately, capacity is your gauge of purpose and potential. How much is in you? How much are you utilizing, and how much is untapped?

The capacity of a storage item—how much it can hold—depends upon size, depth, sturdiness, adaptability, and intended purpose.

These ideas are relevant to us in determining how we can fulfill the true longing of our hearts, continue to push the limits of our fears, and boldly meet our own capabilities for living well.

Size is the expanse of our dreams and visions for our lives—the boundaries we see or do not. Depth is the infiniteness of our soul’s desires and our connection to something deeper.

Sturdiness pertains to the strength of our resolution and integrity—the beliefs that sustain us in spite of everything. Adaptability is how willingly we are to follow our own paths and deal with uncharted territory.

An intended purpose—that’s when we know without a doubt what we believe we were made to do. Then it’s not a matter of how, but rather how soon. How soon will you wait to step into this perfect fit, this divine capacity? (more…)

May 11, 2011
Why Some Dreams Don’t Lead to Happiness

When I was 24 years old, I learned that some dreams are actually avoidance tactics, and some discouragement is a very good thing.

I was relatively new in New York City, and I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of failing if I tried to pursue my passions. I’d learned a lot about failure in the six years prior, and the only thing I knew for certain anymore was that I had to become someone important.

When I arrived at my interview for marketing job—as it was so descriptively advertised on Craigslist—I was surprised to find a room full of people and a whiteboard that read, “Who wants to work smarter, not harder and earn six figures?”

I did!

If I had the money, I reasoned, I’d have the freedom to do whatever I want with my life. The money was a smart dream. It was the path to everything and anything.

A 22-year old girl named *Aida led us through a 45-minute presentation. She told us how she recently bought her own home while helping other people find financial freedom, too.

That’s where we came in. We would sell phone and internet packages to our friends and family members, and recruit other people who wanted to do the same thing.

Every time we made a sale, we got paid. Every time those other people made a sale, we got paid. Every time the people they recruited made a sale, we got paid. And it only cost $499 to get involved.

That’s where she started to lose me. What kind of company asks you to pay them $500 to make sales for them? She told me that it cost because it was our own business—our investment, our tax deductions at the end of the year, and our profits.

I was skeptical, but I wanted to believe in the possibility of achieving massive success so that I could eventually do something big—and I loved the idea of helping other people along the way. (more…)

March 21, 2011
Overcome the Fear of Success: 6 Ways to Start Thriving

“He is able who thinks he is able.” ~Buddha

How would you answer the question: “Are you successful in life?”

I know many people who would say that they are not successful; at least they have not reached success in the areas that feel important to them. I have been one of those people.

One day I asked myself “What keeps me from being successful?” It took me a while to come up with the answer but I realized that I was holding myself back.

Why? Well, maybe I was afraid that when I started something I would fail. Maybe I was afraid that I was not “one of those people” who get everything they go after. Maybe I felt that I didn’t deserve success in life.

The truth is that I didn’t believe that I was able. I was not able to be successful, able to be happy, or able to fully enjoy my life. Does this scenario sound familiar to you?

If you want to be truly successful in life (and who doesn’t?) then first of all you have to learn to believe in yourself. If you do not think that you can be successful, then who will?

Life success does not mean that you will not fail but it means that your mistakes will teach you something and show you a better way to get what you want. (more…)

March 20, 2011
10 Steps to Simplify Your Work Life

“Life is actually really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ~Confucius

While I have always piled a lot on my plate professionally, I’ve recently introduced more varied elements. Formerly, I may have devoted a long workweek to freelance writing, but I’m now juggling writing, consulting, editing my upcoming book, and promoting my recent eBook.

I’ve noticed that the biggest complication to my life isn’t necessarily the full, varied schedule; it’s how I think about that busy schedule.

Sometimes I let my to-do list overwhelm me, carrying the weight of the whole through all of the parts.

So, instead of just answering an email, I’m responding, thinking about the blog post I want to write later, worrying about the magazine deadline I might not make, and planning to be more effective so that I can get everything done without having to worry so much.

That’s something I sometimes do.

But on other days, I remind myself that I can’t worry my way out of worrying, and that the most effective use of any moment is to fully do whatever it is I’m doing. The rest will get done later. That, I’m learning, is the most important part of simplifying.

The first step in simplifying anything starts with how we think about it.

Of course, there’s a lot more to simplifying work than that (which I realize is ironic given that the subject matter is simplification). (more…)

March 17, 2011
6 Tips: Work/Life Balance for People with Big Dreams

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.” ~Thomas Merton

The vast majority of people I know have two different types of work: the kind that pays the bills and the kind they wrap their heart around.

For some people, those are one and the same, but often that takes time, dedication, and a willingness to blur the traditional boundaries that separate work and social life.

Because let’s face it: It’s not always easy to make a living doing something you love.

The first challenge is to figure out what that is, and it’s often complicated by what we think we should do based on what other people think and what we’ve done up until now.

The next step is to figure out how to do it smart. It’s all good and well to decide to you want to run an online fitness, beauty, or personal development empire, but unless you have a unique value proposition and a solid idea of who needs your services and why, you could end up just spinning your wheels.

And then there’s the easiest part, which is simultaneously the hardest: the choice to work on your dream every day, knowing there are no guarantees and that it may take a long time to make the kind of progress that allows you to devote your full-time energy to your passion.

This has been my experience with Tiny Buddha, and it’s the same with people who have contacted me for help with their blogs. Everyone wants the freedom to do more of what they enjoy and less of what they don’t.

What makes this kind of complicated is that turning a passion into work can sometimes strip the joy out of it, particularly when you give up freedom now in the pursuit of freedom tomorrow.

Really, that’s what we’re doing when cram our hours full of tasks that leave little time for play and decompression: We’re deciding tomorrow’s possibilities are more important than today’s.

So, what’s the balance, then?

How do you allow yourself sufficient time to create that thing you visualize—whatever it may be—while also allowing space for relaxation, spontaneity, connection, and the simple act of being?

I recently asked on the Tiny Buddha Facebook page, “How do you create work/life balance?” I’ve chosen the responses that resonated the most strongly with me and used them in shaping this post: (more…)

February 23, 2011
Living Like You Were Dying

“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it’s worth watching.” ~Unknown

A professor once told my class, “In order to live your life to the fullest, you must think about your death every day.”

At the time, I felt too busy to think about my death because I was consumed with law school applications and endless deadlines. But the words came creeping up to haunt me one day.

After I graduated, I moved to Boston to work at a law firm downtown before attending law school the following year. I wanted to be a lawyer because I thought it would be a lucrative, challenging career, allowing me to live what I thought would be a “fulfilled life.”

At first, I was thrilled to be a full-time employee at a law firm, but as time passed, I realized that it didn’t make me happy. And I was surprised. For so long I thought it was what I was meant to accomplish. It was hard to consider that perhaps it wasn’t the right path for me.

I just wasn’t happy at my job. I felt like I was missing the days and living for the weekends. I worked eleven hours a day, I never saw my friends, and my relationship was crumbling.

I expressed this issue to many of my coworkers, and most of them said something along the lines of, “That’s life.”

Still, I felt certain the “real world” didn’t have to make me feel so unhappy and unfulfilled. I also knew that it might be hard to change directions, but if I didn’t, I would never feel any different.

Suddenly, like a ton of bricks, my professor’s words came to me, and for the first time I thought about death.

Immediately, I thought of my Uncle David who died when I was younger. David was living in Los Angeles, pursuing a career as an actor. When I reached middle school, he died of AIDS. He was thirty-eight years old.

Being young, I had always thought about how his death affected my family, particularly my grandmother, but I’d never thought too much about what things were like for him before he died. (more…)

February 23, 2011
How to Discover Your Super Powers to Find Meaningful Work

“Happiness comes when your work and words are of benefit to yourself and others.” ~Buddha

It seems like the vast majority of people compartmentalize themselves.

There are the people they show to family and friends, built upon authenticity and genuine passions, and the people who wear work-appropriate masks to make a living from day to day.

I understand how this happens. It’s not easy to identify the work that would feel meaningful for you, discover how you can get on that path, and then consistently take action to create the life you visualize.

Recognizing what you want to do can take time, and the process of pursuing it can feel discouraging at times. We have immense power in creating what we visualize, but nothing is guaranteed, particularly when you want to do is something lots of people struggle to do.

Still, what I’ve learned these past couple of years is that a joyful journey leading toward an uncertain destination is far more fulfilling than a meaningless journey headed toward something clear and specific.

It isn’t necessarily the achievements that make us happy; it’s a sense that we’re spending our time in a way that leverages our talents and aligns with our passions and values. (more…)

January 30, 2011
When to Go with the Flow & When to Expand Your Comfort Zone

“Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold.” ~Herbert Spencer

I’m actually much more of a proponent of “going with the flow” then going against it. And sometimes forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do can be considered going against the flow.

But I do that for a different reason, and not everyone would agree.

I have two schools of thought. On the one hand, expansion is inevitable. We’re always called to become more than we are in life. It’s the nature of being human.

On the other hand, there’s something called “homeostasis.” Like a thermostat that’s set to a certain temperature, it will always self-regulate. If it gets too hot, the air will kick in to bring it to a cooler temperature. If it gets too cold, it will start flowing hot air. Whatever the gauge is set to, the thermostat will regulate.

Similarly, there’s an unconscious process within us that self-regulates. We have relationship set points, money set points, and weight set points. We have comfort zones—sometimes ones that we’re completely unaware of.

That’s why people who win the lottery can go back to being at the same level of income or bankrupt in less than six years. Their unconscious financial set point didn’t change because they won a million dollars.

Like the thermostat programmed to monitor the gauge, their unconscious thermostat brought them back to where they were comfortable. They can win millions and within years, they are back to where they started.

I suspect that if you redistributed the wealth in the country and equalized it among all people, it would re-distribute exactly the same way within three years, according to people’s set points.

I say all of that to say this: Yes, expansion is our nature, but we also come up against our own homeostasis—our own comfort zone. We don’t want to move out of what we know. (more…)

January 10, 2011
Productivity and Happiness: Why Are We So Busy?

“Life is what happens when you are making other plans.” ~John Lennon

There have been times in my life when I believed all my happiness revolved around how busy I was. If I was busy, I was using time wisely. If I was busy, I was proving to myself that I was valuable. If I was busy, I was creating the possibility of a better life in the future. Any threat to my productivity was a threat to my sense of hope.

Being busy didn’t make me feel happy, but it created the illusion that I was somehow building a foundation for that feeling someday, somewhere, when I could finally slow down and be free.

Most of us are fiercely defensive of our busyness. We have processes to streamline, goals to accomplish, promotions to earn, debt to eliminate, exercise regimes to master, dreams to chase—and hopefully along the way, people to help and inspire.

We multitask, even when it means not truly being present in an activity we enjoy, and maybe even feel guilty for blocks of unplanned time in our schedules. We look for productivity hacks and apps, join forums to discuss ways to get more things done; and when we do aim to simplify our lives, even that undertaking involves a lengthy to-do list. (more…)

December 13, 2010