Getting Back On Track

Does it ever happen to you? You get your good habits and positive rituals established and, at sometime during the year, you get off the constructive path?

I was sick for a few weeks, including the first week of vacation in Florence. I came back to a flood of tasks and appointments. So, for quite a time, I got off my morning “water, meditation, yoga, TED-talk” routine. Because of that, my good old muscles have shortened again, I run around a bit dehydrated and my center is askew. Goodness!

Now, this morning, I fought all the distractions my mind shoves into my little head and started my routine again. My thoughts kept reminding me that I have this-and-that to get done before now-and-then. My deal with myself to take on only one of my lost routines at a time was put to an exhausting test.

One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. Getting back on track, little by little. My wee post-it notes help remind me.

Watch this space…

P.S. TaDAA! I did my duolingo.com last evening and I haven't forgotten my Italian yet. And I just finished my morning ritual again. Step by Step, getting back on track.

Italian Women

Ah, Italian women.

I say that even though I am a woman. 

I like the way they look and carry themselves. So I've decided to become one.

Well, no, it doesn't really work like that. But I can fake it a bit.

Italian women adorn themselves with jewelry. Check.

So I went to the Ponte Vecchio where the gold shops are and bought myself a gold necklace, a collier. Umm, looks nice even on my wrinkly neck. Then I bought a gold bracelet from Swarovki. Whew, I'm smokin'.

So now, when I go out, I adorn myself with jewels. My earrings, gold watch, bracelets, two rings and collier. Even if I am only zipping up the street to the store.

Then I ask somebody something in Italian. Really suave-like. "Dove posso trovare un 
bancomat qui vicino?" 
(Where can I find an ATM machine/hole-in-the-wall here close by?) 
And I attentively pretend I've understood the answer.

I mean, am I cool or what?

Most Italian women are slender. I don't see how they resist the gelato and the amazing 
dolci and pastries. And it seems like everybody eats pasta and get by with it. 
You’d think they’d pile on the pounds, but the opposite is true. Basically Italian women 
don’t eat junk, they’d rather not eat than put anything substandard in their mouths and a thoughtful, consistent approach to mealtimes, sitting down three times a day and rarely snacking, means they keep their trim figures. Quality over quantity. 
No check here for me.

Italian women have a sense of style. They seem to have this innate ability to put clothes together and look good. They don’t overdo it either, in fact, they even flirt with conservatism, but in Italy you will rarely see a badly dressed woman. (You see a lot of badly dressed American girls though!) Italian women don’t just throw something on, and there’s a coherence in what they wear, a look. And it gives them confidence, even the very plain or average looking Italian woman moves with a certain confidence and that is in itself very attractive. I guess this means I'll be tossing my Sketchers and clogs.

Women are in general more emotional, but Italian women ride the extremes of human existence in their emotional ‘intelligence’. Everything they say sounds like a dramatic story. Now that I can understand some Italian, I realize that the passionate exclamations some of them are emanating are simply the grocery list! Check here if I'm not in Germany. There, I'm the undercooled business lady.

Italian women all seem to be university educated with masters and PhDs for fun. They almost all speak at least three languages and incredibly, the do it all while looking fantastic and being ultra feminine. A professional Italian woman is the kind of colleague you want on your team, a brilliant communicator, inventive and resourceful, when she says she’ll get something done, you know it’ll be done. 
I could get some checks in here if you count my weak Eyetalian as the third language.

Italian women have a great sense of humor. Perhaps they’re used to deflecting the unwanted attentions of the Italian male, but most Italian women are equipped with a witty and disarming sense of humour. They differ from their male compatriots in that they're more than willing to laugh at themselves. Hey! Check here. Not for the deflecting part but I love to laugh. And have been known to show some educated humor here and there.

Hmm, looks like I've still got some work cut out for me. Non mi arrendo mai.

A dopo.

Here I am in Florence again.

Here I am in Florence again.

It is one of my favorite cities and I'm enjoying just being here. There is no need to cast myself into the masses of tourists at the many wonderful sights the city has to offer. I've been to most of them before and now I'm allowing myself to take in Italian life.

This week, I get up early, do my Power Hour (Mighty Morning) and then hop on a bus for the trip into the center of town. Forty minutes later I get off and climb the endless stairs of a palazzo for my Italian lessons. I am investing in private lessons which are much more demanding. Maybe I'll "get" this language after all!

I am staying at a house through airbnb and what a difference to hotels it is! I can use the kitchen for my special breakfast and light suppers. There are two baths and three other guests. I can use the dining room and the living room and my bedroom is quite spacious. And it all costs about a third of what I'd pay at a hotel.

The only thing I'd like to change here in the city are the dog toilets - those are the sidewalks! I have to look down constantly and often see evidence of people who didn't. Need I explain? In Germany, dog owners get fined if their dog poops on the sidewalk and the owner doesn't get rid of it.

It is really amazing to see how slender most of the Italians are. I don't think they go into McDonalds the way the tourists do. Italians have "breakfast" of coffee and croissant, the lunch is leisure and has one or two courses and I'm not sure about dinner. I never go out in the evening to eat. I suppose the restaurants are full. At any rate, Italians don't snack the way overweight countries do.

I met a woman who has taken off for a year here in Italy. She and I went over to Bologna on the train and she zips between the French Riviera and Berlin. Now she has rented an apartment here until August. She quit her job, ditched her leeching boyfriend, rented out her house and sold her car! Now that is a fascinating woman. She wants to spend most of her time this winter writing a genealogy book.

The world is full of amazing people!

Morning Rituals to Give Your Life More Pazääng!

Mighty Mornings

There are several things you can do to get the day going in the direction you want. These are rituals, habitual activities that affect your life in a positive way.

To make the next day the best ever, you need to start the evening before.

Evening before: Create your (next) day before you sleep.

1) Write down three tasks that you want to get done before noon the next day.

This helps you filter all the to-dos on your list to pick out the three most important tasks. That is the secret of priorities. There are too many things to do and you can’t do all of them. What ARE you going to do tomorrow that makes a positive difference?

2) Day scripting: Write a script about how you want to be and act the next day.

Here you simply write out the way the next day is going to be. This will give a guideline to your brain that it will work on while you are asleep. You don't need to write a novel. If you read the finished script out loud and visualize it, the effect is even more amazing.

3) Gratitude recitation

Now that you are cuddled up in your bed, run through as many things you can think of that you are thankful for. For instance, I’m always thankful for the fact that I even have a (comfortable) bed to sleep on! And, I’m glad I can let myself slumber when I am tired (generally!). Once your brain gets used to this ritual, all sorts of delicious “gratitudes” will pop into your head. Don’t dwell on these things; Just appreciate them and let them flow on. This will keep from stimulating yourself so much that you can’t sleep!!

Morning

1) Drink several glasses of plain water right away. Your body is fairly dehydrated after sleeping.

Make a Happy Hour Ritual. This isn’t about margaritas and it's in the morning, but in the most practical terms, you will create a time to recharge, rejuvenate, and inspire your mindset and joy in a way that transforms your entire week.

2) Meditate (however long you want and can), observing your breath. Open yourself to the “silence” between breaths. Focus with a quiet und clear mind, perhaps one minute, perhaps ten...
Finish the meditation with a short gratitude celebration. (You might try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYP_W49o1vQ or something from thehonestguys on youtube.)

3) Learn (read for 30 minutes if you can) Focus on growing you as a person. (You might want to share this knowledge with others. Just don’t “force-feed” anybody.)

4) Do yoga or some sort of exercise to get your body revved up. Even if you only do a few stretches and jump up and down a bit, move that body!

5) Journaling: Get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper or onto the computer. (Writing down problems by hand, though, seems to be immensely therapeutic.) Document your thoughts, ideas, lessons learned, improvement motivation, etc. This could become one of your most fulfilling habits.

Questions to ask yourself

I don’t do this every day. Several times a year is great for me but you might like to do this ritual more often at first. I find writing the questions and momentary answers conducive to an incredible increase in motivation!

Question1: How can my life get better? finances, relationships, physical condition, spiritual, emotional...

Question2: What are the possibilities to get this ‚better’?

Question3: What would it take for this to happen?

Have a great day!

     

The Power of Ritual: Conquer Procrastination, Time Wasters and Laziness

by Scott H Young

Life is wasted in the in-between times. The time between when your alarm first rings and when you finally decide to get out of bed. The time between when you sit at your desk and when productive work begins. The time between making a decision and doing something about it. Slowly your day is whittled away from all the unused in-between moments.

The solution to reclaim these lost middle moments is by creating rituals. Every culture on earth uses rituals to transfer information and encode behaviors that are deemed important. Personal rituals can help you build a better pattern for handling everything from how you wake up to how you work.

Unfortunately, when most people see rituals, they see pointless superstitions. Indeed, many rituals are based on a primitive understanding of the world. But by building personal rituals, you get to encode the behaviors you feel are important and cut out the wasted middle moments.

Program Your Own Algorithms

Another way of viewing rituals is by seeing them like computer algorithms. An algorithm is a set of instructions that is repeated to get a result. Some algorithms are highly efficient, sorting or searching millions of pieces of data in a few seconds. Other algorithms are bulky and awkward, taking hours to do the same task.

By forming rituals you are building algorithms for your behavior. Take the delayed and painful pattern of waking up, debating whether to sleep in for another two minutes, hitting the snooze button, repeat until almost late for work. This could be reprogrammed to get out of bed immediately, without debating your decision.

How to Form a Ritual

I’ve set up personal rituals for myself for handling e-mail, waking up each morning, writing articles and reading books. Far from making me inflexible, these rituals give me a useful default pattern that works best 99% of the time. Whenever my current ritual won’t work, I’m always free to stop using it.

Forming a ritual isn’t too difficult, and the same principles for changing habits apply:

1.    Write out your sequence of behavior. I suggest starting with a simple ritual of only 3-4 steps maximum. Wait until you’ve established a ritual before you try to add new steps.

2.    Commit to follow your ritual for thirty days. This step will take the idea and condition it into your nervous system as a habit.

3.    Define a clear trigger. When does your ritual start? A ritual to wake up is easy–the sound of your alarm clock will work. As for what triggers you to go to the gym, read a book or answer e-mail, you’ll have to decide.

4.    Tweak the Pattern. Your algorithm probably won’t be perfectly efficient the first time. Making a few tweaks after the first thirty day trial can make your ritual more useful.

Ways to Use a Ritual

Based on the above ideas, here are some ways you could implement your own rituals:

1.    Waking Up. Set up a morning ritual for when you wake up and the next few things you do immediately afterwards. To combat the grogginess after immediately waking up, my solution was to do a few pushups right after getting out of bed. After that, I decided to sneak in ninety minutes of reading before getting ready for morning classes.

2.    Web Usage. How often do you answer e-mail, look at Google Reader or check Facebook each day? I found by taking all my daily internet needs and compressing them into one, highly efficient ritual, I was able to cut of 75% of my web time without losing any communication.

3.    Reading. How much time do you get to read books? If your library isn’t as large as you’d like, you might want to consider the rituals you use for reading. Programming a few steps to trigger yourself to read instead of watching television or during a break in your day can chew through dozens of books each year.

4.    Friendliness. Rituals can also help in communication. Set up a ritual of starting a conversation when you have opportunities to meet people.

5.    Working. One of the hardest barriers when overcoming procrastination is building up a concentrated flow. Building those steps into a ritual can allow you to quickly start working or continue working after an interruption.

6.    Going to the gym. If exercising is a struggle, encoding a ritual can remove a lot of the difficulty. Set up a quick ritual for going to exercise right after work or when you wake up.

7.    Exercise. Even within your workout you can have rituals. Spacing the time between runs or reps with a certain number of breaths can remove the guesswork. Forming a ritual of a doing certain exercises in a particular order can save time.

8.    Sleeping. Form a calming ritual in the last 30-60 minutes of your day before you go to bed. This will help slow yourself down and make falling asleep much easier. Especially if you plan to get up full of energy in the morning it will help if you remove the insomnia.

9.    Weekly Reviews. The weekly review is a big part of the GetThingsDone system. By making a simple ritual checklist for my weekly review I can get the most out of this exercise in less time. Originally I did holistic reviews where I wrote my thoughts on the week and progress as a whole. Now I narrow my focus towards specific plans, ideas and measurements.

Clear Your Stuff – Clear Your Mind

Science has proven that being surrounded by clutter interferes with the brain’s ability to process information and is a continual source of stress.

You might think you happily coexist with that messy desk, but neither your brain nor science would agree with you!

Researchers at the Princeton University Neuroscience Institute published the results of a study they conducted in the January issue of  The Journal of Neuroscience that relates directly to uncluttered and organized living.

From their report “Interactions of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Mechanisms in Human Visual Cortex”:

Multiple stimuli present in the visual field at the same time compete for neural representation by mutually suppressing their evoked activity throughout visual cortex, providing a neural correlate for the limited processing capacity of the visual system.

Or, to paraphrase in non-neuroscience jargon: When your environment is cluttered, the chaos restricts your ability to focus. The clutter also limits your brain’s ability to process information. Clutter makes you distracted and unable to process information as well as you do in an uncluttered, organized, and serene environment.

The clutter competes for your attention in the same way a toddler might stand next to you annoyingly repeating, “candy, candy, candy, candy, I want candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy …” Even though you might be able to focus a little, you’re still aware that a screaming toddler is also vying for your attention. The annoyance also wears down your mental resources and you’re more likely to become frustrated.

The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other physiological measurement tools to map the brain’s responses to organized and disorganized stimuli and to monitor task performance. The conclusions were strong — if you want to focus to the best of your ability and process information as effectively as possible, you need to clear the clutter from your home and work environment. This research shows that you will be less irritable, more productive, distracted less often, and able to process information better with an uncluttered and organized home and office.

Clutter’s Impact on Your Brain

Whether it be your closet or office desk, excess things in your surroundings can have a negative impact on your ability to focus and process information.

Material objects have a tendency to crowd out the emotional needs they are meant to support. When you introduce new items into your life, you immediately associate value with these items, making it harder for you to give them up in the future. This psychological connection to things is what leads to the accumulation of stuff.

A team of UCLA researchers recently observed 32 Los Angeles families and found that all of the mothers’ stress hormones spiked during the time they spent dealing with their belongings. Similar to what multitasking does to your brain, physical clutter overloads your senses, making you feel stressed, and impairs your ability to think creatively.

4 Ways to Master Clutter

There are millions of sources of information and things for you to consume so it’s important to figure out a way to control these streams so you have more time to do things that matter.

1. Apply Constraints

One of the principals of good design is constraint. You can apply this same theory to create a system for mastering consumption. For instance, set a limit for how many people you follow on Twitter, how many books you buy, or how many apps you own.

There will always be more information available than you can consume so set limits so you’re no longer simply trying to just get through it all but rather enjoying more of what you consume.

2. Use Small Storage Spaces

Cutting down on your storage space can do wonders for limiting consumption. Try cutting your closet down to 10 hangers or force yourself to use a small bag when you travel. Do you really need a walk-in closet or a rack for all your shoes? Try constraining your storage spaces and you’ll quickly identify what you really need.

3. Conduct a Monthly Review of Your Closet

Every month, review your closet, looking for items you haven’t worn. If it’s summer and you have t-shirts, shorts, or shoes that you aren’t using, put them in a bag to sell on eBay or Craigslist or give them away.

Another option is to try and get rid of one item a week until you’ve cut your belongings down to the things you actually use.

4. Remove All Files From Your Desktop Daily

If you work on a computer, having a cluttered desktop every time you turn on your computer can give you a constant uneasy feeling. At the end of each day, remove every file from your desktop. If you don’t have an immediate place to move the file, create one folder on your desktop and drop the stray files in there.

Do the same with your desk furniture, also.

Clutter, whether physical or digital, is something you’ll always have to deal with but it can be controlled. Finding ways to steer the streams of consumption in your favor will give you a sense of power and a freed mind, leaving room for you to create and experience life.

Files on your computer, notifications from your Twitter and Facebook accounts, and anything that goes “ping” in the night competes for your attention. This creates a digital form of clutter that erodes your ability to focus and perform creative tasks.

‘When you have to-do items constantly floating around in your head or you hear a ping or vibrate every few minutes from your phone, your brain doesn’t get a chance to fully enter creative flow or process experiences. When your brain has too much on its plate, it splits its power up. The result? You become awful at:

- filtering information

- switching quickly between tasks

- keeping a strong working memory

The overconsumption of digital stuff has the same effect on your brain as physical clutter.

(Mark Hurst, author of Bit Literacy)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3iwcU7lLx4

Don’t let the seasons pass without strategic purging.  The problem is that much of a family's stuff has no permanent home. Since no one knows where to put anything, it spreads across all available real estate (the coffee table, the counters, the floor).

When the house is decluttered and clean, you have this feeling of freedom.  It's all about volume control and systems. Keep physical stuff to a minimum.

And rather than perpetually clean and organize, use an established set of tools and routines that allow you to quickly straighten up, find things you need, and don’t waste more time than you absolutely must maintaining your dwelling.

Design a "mail center": three stacked letter trays on the counter into which mail will be sorted immediately upon entering the house. One tray is for open bills and other matters needing attention, one is for things requiring input, and one (the top and most easily accessible) is for notes and reminders.  Invitations to upcoming social events, meanwhile, get an upright magazine file. When you are tempted to abandon new mail to make lunch or grab a phone that's ringing off the hook, just remember, "Later is the best friend of clutter." In other words, you can't always let the urgent take precedence over the important.

Focus Your Fridge

Uses clear plastic trays (Fridge Binz; Organize.com) to separate cheese from condiments from baking supplies. When you grill outside, simply grab the entire condiments tray. Bonus: No need to scrub dried maple syrup from the far corners of the fridge.

Standardize Your Food Storage

To avoid accumulating a drawerful of mismatched plastic containers in ten colors, use just one brand of food storage container so lids will always fit (OXO LockTop set; Organize.com). Stack just a few sizes in a cabinet for easy access. Most people only really use three or four of these containers anyway, so there's no need to keep hundreds.

Use Easy Counter Canisters

To keep the dried lentils, beans, quinoa, flour, and other ingredients readily available, store them in a set of stainless steel canisters with “windows”(Organize.com). This way you always know what you have—and friends could easily pitch in with the cooking.

Rethink Your Linen Closet

Warning: Your mind might be blown by organization guru Peter Walsh's brilliantly simple linen system. To store his uniform white sheets, he folds fitted sheet, top sheet, and extra pillowcases inside a pillowcase of the same set. Needless to say, he never has to ransack his closet for an elusive match.

De-Junk Your Junk Drawer

Instead of being jammed in a kitchen drawer, household necessities like rubber bands, pencils, and glue should be stacked in clear, labeled boxes of varying sizes (Zak! Designs canisters; Organize.com) inside a cabinet. This makes things easy to find.

Clear containers make it easy to see what needs replacing. Even better, their labels discourage the stashing of miscellany. They don't allow you to overload your junk drawer with junk.

Establish a Free-Money Box

Let yourself be inspired by the sheer dollar amount of unused gift cards and rebates you might find stashed around your house. Corral various coupons, gift certificates, free gym passes, and vouchers into a brightly colored box (Bigso storage box; Organize.com), which you can riffle through for relevant bargains when you go shopping.

You might have fun with these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BT3r-U1dv0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulb8IM_3K_Q

Retail Therapy – good or bad?

You know the phrase, “When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping”? There just may be some wisdom in that.

A survey conducted by TNS Global on behalf of Ebates.com found that more than half of Americans (52%, including 64% of women and 40% of men) admit to engaging in “retail therapy”—the act of shopping and spending to improve one’s mood. This echoes a previous study, published in the Journal of Psychology and Marketing, that revealed 62% of shoppers had purchased something to cheer themselves up, and another 28% had purchased as a form of celebration.

But beyond the quick rush provided by making a purchase, is “retail therapy” actually therapeutic? Renowned San Francisco therapist Peggy Wynne, who is known to personally appreciate the mood-boosting quality of a great pair of shoes, says that it can be. “We all enjoy a little retail therapy now and then,” she told me. “In small, manageable doses it can soothe the soul. Shopping isn’t a problem when it’s done in moderation.”

I wouldn’t exactly use the word “therapy” to describe the effects of shopping. Actually, it is just a “mood booster”. And everyone can agree that “stuff” won’t make you happy in the long run. Yet, if done in moderation, shopping can be a great pick-up. Maybe we should separate "shopping" and "buying" for the ones of us with too much STUFF.

In most consumer interviews, online shopping is increasingly mentioned as a type of mini mental vacation. This makes sense. It’s a relatively mindless, relaxing activity, and since many times the browsing session ends without anything being purchased, it’s often harmless as well. As a bonus, when faced with a difficult decision or arduous task, short breaks like these can actually improve performance and decision-making. Studies show that our unconscious mind continues to work out problems while we’re engaged in a different activity, provided we don’t switch over into tricky multi-tasking—juggling several things at once and not focusing on anything deeply.

Relaxation, Escape and Social Connection

When people think of the benefits of “retail therapy,” concepts like escape, entertainment and rejuvenation are usually at the top of the list.

When on vacation, I love to stroll the streets of Florence, Rome, Hong Kong or Bankok, just looking at the sights, the people and the fashion. Going into the stores with the country's inhabitants relaxes me. I never 'stroll' anywhere except in vacation.

If there’s one antidote to emotional distress, it’s human connection. We’re a species that’s meant to be with others. Whether that takes place over dinner, at home, or at the mall, it’s therapeutic.

Shopping can be therapeutic. Uncontrolled buying, on the other hand, can lead to clutter and even hoarding. 

Last evening, after two tiring days of seminars and teaching (all fun though!), I walked over to the mini-mall close to my apartment. I “invested” in an ice-cream cone (just store the results on my hips) yet felt I wanted to BUY something, maybe as a reward for all this fatigue.

Then I stopped myself, went into the supermarket and bought some nice wine. One glass was a nice enough reward and I don’t have to store anything.