http://flickr.com/photos/pshab/422895344
The comments are interesting, too.
As I teach in my Time Management workshops, living frugally is a fundamental success skill. Frugality increases the odds of your getting to live your mission, while spendthriftness increases the odds that you will live beyond your means, go into debt, and never escape from the consumerist treadmill.
Frugal people create options and freedoms for themselves. They don’t have to take the job with the long commute, or stay in the one with the abusive boss, just because it pays more. And they can often afford to work part-time or take a sabbatical so that they can work on their artistic, activist, family or other goals.
The fine students at Knox College show us what to do . Be sure to read the long dialog at the bottom where a student asks Ashcroft what’s the difference between our use of waterboarding, and the Japanese use of waterboarding on American soldiers during WWII, which was deemed a war crime.
A hallmark of what I teach, and coach, is that you create positive behavioral change by providing encouragement and showing people (or yourself) how to build on existing strengths – the positive reinforcement approach. And you don’t create behavioral change by criticizing or bullying. At best, bullying creates short-term change, but the behavior typically reverts as soon as the student is away from the bully, and long-term the student can develop an aversion to the bully and everything s/he stands for. Think of the parent who forces their kid to practice piano for hours every day – and the kid grows up and never touches the keyboard.
The “positive reinforcement” approach is common wisdom among enlightened teachers, coaches, parents, bosses, etc. Here are two examples of it in action:
Many people lose their ability to hear high-frequency sound as they age. You may have heard about the British company that was using high-frequency sounds to drive off loitering teens – the sounds apparently sound incredibly shrill. I say apparently” because “this page lets you test your “auditory age” and my aged ears couldn’t hear the tone at all.
The rest of the story is also fun: some kids converted the tone into a cellphone ringtone that they could use in school and other illicit venues without the adults knowing. The kids in one school were busted when a 24-year-old teacher heard the ringtone.
I have a niece who has Celiac, so keep an eye out for relevant info. These links are excellent:
from the Boston Globe, an excellent personal narrative about living with it
the Globe story mentions an organization for Celiac sufferers, Healthy Villi that looks interesting. It’s Boston-based, but has great information and good links that should help everyone.
This month’s More magazine has a memoir that hit home with me, and will with many of you, too, I suspect. My So-Called Genius is the story of a woman, Laura Fraser, who…well, I’ll let her tell you:
“I learned the word precocious long before other kids my age. By the time I was 5 or 6, I had heard it often — I was always younger than everyone around me and ahead of my peers. Being defined by a long, difficult adjective made me special; it made me, in some essential way, who I am.
“I read early and voraciously, squirreling away splendiferously big words to spring on adults whenever I needed attention, which was often. I thrived on being called “smart” and “cute.” A psychologist said I had an IQ of 165, a number I thought was as immutable as the color of my eyes. I whizzed through school, skipping grades, racking up awards and honors. By 15 I was writing a column for my hometown newspaper. All the way back in third grade, my teacher told me I would become a great writer — at an early age, of course — and that’s just what I figured would happen.
I recently finished Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison, the brother of Augusten Burroughs, who wrote Running with Scissors. I couldn’t get through Running…: it was well written with lots of clever bits, but seemed like an unending and ultimately pointless freak show. Look Me in the Eye, however, is a book I raced to get through, eager to see how the story played out. It’s Robison’s memoir of his life as someone with Asperger’s Syndrome, and a deeply interesting, engaging and insightful book.
Asperger’s, as you may know, is a high-functioning form of autism that often manifests itself as technical brilliance combined with poor social skills. Robison was a classic case, apparently: brilliant with machines, but for many years unable to make many friends. He spent a few glamorous years designing smoking guitars and other stage effects for the rock band Kiss ; then settled down to a more mundane life as an engineer with companies such as Mattel.
Try implementing one change, whether it’s…
Replacing the incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents
More buying less tips here and here Or just buy used from CraigsList instead of new.
Willpower can be Exercised Like a Muscle
I really recommend you check out this New York Times article on willpower . Excerpt:
“The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others. The good news, however, is that practice increases willpower capacity, so that in the long run, buying less now may improve our ability to achieve future goals — like losing those 10 pounds we gained when we weren’t out shopping.
“The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task…
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