Lawlady's Divorce Blog

Goals

What are your goals?  Do you even have goals?  Have you experienced the weird reality of finding yourself in the moment that you dreamed of years before?

The new agey community believes heavily in "manifesting" - their word that, from what I can tell, stands for making something happen without a big poster board and action items on sticky paper.  "Wow, look what happens if I just make it a priority and intend a result!"

An equally strange result happens over on the conservative side, where people are busily  goal setting and achieving and often make the mistake of failing to make sure in advance their goal is something worth achieving.  Sometimes I wonder if those people I see at the gym at 5:00 are really happy.  They're there.  Clock work.

So the trick between the two extremes is:  _______.   To be honest, I'm not sure of the answer.  But here is something to try. 

What if you were to think of life in terms of swimming at a lake.  A lake with lots of tributaries and little islands and floating docks.  Arriving, you could stay put with your book and cooler, enjoying the day at the lake.  Or, you could set yourself a goal.   "Hey, let's swim out to that dock over there."  Then another destination and another.  Swimming would be the weekly grind getting something achieved, Saturdays would be the refreshing break upon arrival.  Sundays would be when you turned your gaze to figure out "what next?" 

It dawned on me a few years ago that Sunday family dinners are about grounding your week, so that you have a reference point to orient yourself on the journey of  life.  "Wow, this week was long.  So much has happened, and here I am again, right back where I used to be."   Regularity of check-ins help a person better compare week to week.  I see this playing out similarly for the person who regularly watches the sun rise.  "Look the sun is rising yet again.  How different I am today for this sunrise, then I was for last week's sunrise."   

Regular events that are bigger than ourselves act as reminders for how far we have come.  They trip our mind back to the beginning point, a vantage from which we can best view our current project.  And anything that reminds us of where we are in the journey, and where and why we are headed next, is a good thing. 

I believe that the best part of a rigid goal system is to remind ourselves- "Oh yah, that's what I am doing here and here is where I'm  headed" - when we get temporarily mind-fogged and forget our priorities.  Having said that, a goal without heart and room to bend to accomodate life would be a dull march to somewhere.  It's the weaving that is critical.  Weave some life around your goal pole.  Picture of the May pole or a decorated football field goal post comes to mind. 

Change

I admire people who can change a habit. I think changing habits is the hardest thing to do.  Why are we so governed by the indiosyncratic ways we do things?

We live in an ever changing enviroment.  Every day we face situations unlike any we have faced before.   This revolving novelty requires a fresh set of eyes and a blank-slate perspective if we are to handle life head-on.

So why the habits? 

• To give us control over the environment.   With the environment feeding us a steady diet of change, it feels good to have some certainty. 
• To provide a safety-helmet until we are prepared to meet life undefended and highly responsive.
• Laziness.  It's easier to coast in the status quo then to move up and on.

But to hunker down and stay put is, eventually, the same as stepping off the ledge and going down.  Stay in place too long while the current of life flows onward and you finally end of behind where you started. 

They say that the rate of change is coming faster with the internet, better and more pervasive time-management systems, and  round-the-clock cells phones, pagers and instant messaging.  Even school children are instructed in palm pilot usage and schedule their play dates.  I believe that the survivors in the next turn of our collective time wheel are going to be those people who master the art of the quick change.  Someone who can identify in April something isn't working  and by August have completely turned around their unproductive habit. 

More glory to them. They will be certifiable masters of personal development. 

Chair 3

Ernie, Ernie, Ernie

The arms won't turn on this $1,300 chair!  I tried to push the arm lever but it only made me worry I might break it off.  It didn't feel like it wanted to move. Sort of like how my knee felt when the body-hating Iyengar instructor tried to get me to straighten my legs.  "No way man, not moving there."

Ernie, I'm worried I'm a bit co-dependent to you as my chair-man.  I feel I need your here in my office every day easing my chair relationship.  It doesn't like me quite yet.   Please come and facilitate! 

Sigh,

I know you are miles away in Texax with that sexy accent. 

S.Q. 

Chair 2- Know your Consumer

I just looked down and noticed that the chair levers (on my new chair) come with labels.  I don't think that manufacturers can underestimate the low level of attention creative people give to machanical devices.  We, creative folk, simply do not go around mind-melding with metal and plastics.  For 18 days now, I've been sitting on this chair, pulling at any lever I can reach under the chair adjusting height and forward tilt by trial and error . For the first time today, I actually looked under the chair and noticed (clear as a new email in the in-box), the levers are labled:  tilt, up/down, back, slide.  Groovy man.

It makes me think of all the other things employers don't know about shoppers and consumers.  Take for example, the need for shopping carts and baskets placed around stores.  Impulse purchasers stop inpulsing once their arms get full and they are at the back of the store.  Game over, unless a basket/cart miraculously appears. Same goes for hand baskets.  Game over once you have filled up.  Who wants to go all the way to the front to switch from a basket to a cart.  Eeeek.  It makes you feel guilty that you have overspent.  Don't remind me I'm a compulsive spender.  Ease my spending upgrade, don't thwart me by requiring me to do a 3 minute walk to the front of the store. That's just enough time for the angel in my mind  to lecture me about my saving's plan I just implemented. 

I wish I could remember the title of the  book I read over Christmas.   Something about "How we Shop."  The most fascinating anthropoligcal study on consumerism I have seen.  Probably at the center kiosk at your local Barnes and Noble.  Excellent Read!!!

Chair 1

A few months ago, I responded to an annoying ergo-chair spam message in my in-box.  I got a cheerful response back from in-house counsel Ernie.  Evidently, it wasn't spam as defined by some new law.  He was a charmer, and I'm a sucker for charm.  He got me to agree to blog about his ergonomic chair he was going to send me.  I got my new chair.  All pretty spring green to match my grass-colored walls.  The chair is pretty good. Custom ordered to fit my butt.  The only probem at this point is I'm sure that my ergonomic adjustments are correct.  I sit with one butt cheek on the hump  (imagine a fluffy bicycle seat) and my legs crossed.  I think I needed the foot rest, but I felt too undeserving to ask the nice phone operator to throw in a foot rest as part of the free-stuff deal in exchange for blogging.  I was too cheap to buy myself one.

I think Mr. Ernie over at the Ergo4me company needs to send out a specialist to make sure you are sitting in your chair correctly after arrival. I suspect their team of on-site orthopedist would shudder at what the average civilian does in his or her holistic office chair.

Ernie, come adjust me before I get carpal tunnel sitting in your new chair!!