We put a lot of pressure on an emotion that can be just as easily evoked by a warm donut
I grew up in Houston, Texas, which is to say, I have tasted the world’s best donut. Shipley Do-Nuts: sweet, pillowy poufs of buttery gold that make all other donuts taste like old tires. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but only a little.
One morning during a lull at work, a coworker and I drove to Shipley’s for breakfast. Waiting in line, I clapped my hands like a small child waiting to ride a pony. My coworker raised his eyebrow. “How sad,” he chuckled, “that a donut makes you so happy.” For a moment, I felt ridiculous. Then, I had a thought…
Trying to build a habit can backfire if you fall for the ‘habit trap.’
These days, when someone says they want to form a “habit,” what they often mean is that they want to make drudgery effortless. That is, they don’t want to actually do the work, rather they want to have done it — past tense.
- “I want to build a writing habit” really means, “I hate writing, but I’ve always wanted to write a book.”
- “I want to make exercise a habit” is code for: “I hate exercising, but I want to have already worked out so I can feel and look better.”
- “I want to make a habit of getting up…
How to stop agonizing over your career choices
As I get older, I get cheesier. Phrases I scoffed at as a Gen-X’er are now words I’ve come to live by.
Take the cliched term “core values.” Up until my forties, I equated those two words with hollow corporate mission statements recited by executives who, inevitably, put earnings above any list of morals allegedly guiding them. “Don’t be evil?” F-you.
But I think there’s something magical in listing your own personal “core values.” For me, it’s made professional strategizing a whole lot simpler. Rather than agonize over which projects to pursue and which to politely decline, I can refer…
In a time of great uncertainty, a dose of pessimism can be a balm
When it comes to my nationality, I often play both sides of the fence, or perhaps more appropriately, the Atlantic. Though I’ve lived in the UK for ten years and have British parents, I spent the first 21 years of my life in the US, where I was born. I hold passports to each country.
As such, my shifting cultural loyalties can feel like a table tennis (or ping pong) match. I have a well-rehearsed diatribe about why I don’t live in the US and don’t plan to go back: guns, the ludicrous and ruinous healthcare system, poor infrastructure, no…
From the mother to the teacher to the waiter, we have had enough
We are Simone Biles. And Simone Biles is us. A day after the Olympian announced her withdrawal from the women’s gymnastics team final — and later the individual all-around — the Internet devolved into ridiculous chatter about the star athlete’s “toughness.” (Jesus, the woman has four gold medals.) Stepping back instantly re-ignited the debate over whether Tokyo 2020–2021 should have even happened — is the world ready? Are the athletes prepared? Should we be doing this yet? It also made Biles the poster girl of a very acute American identity crisis that is playing out all over the nation —…
None of them have anything to do with money, fame, or success
How do you compare to the person you were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago? Are you kinder, braver, more principled? I’m fifty now, and those metrics matter to me. But that wasn’t always the case.
In my twenties, I lusted after money, job titles, and sex as trophies of a successful life. Those success criteria now seem laughable and childish. Yet, many of my peers still chase after the same cravings that drove them in their twenties. They’re frustrated with life. They feel left behind even though they’re rich. They’re aggrieved despite being blessed and privileged.
That’s what happens…
4 practical ways to make the ordinary feel extraordinary
It was time to say goodbye to the Formica table that had graced my kitchen in Chicago, in New York and in suburban Los Angeles. The thing had so many memories tied to it, though — irrationally long dinners with friends; a brunch date with my friend Jo and her octogenarian aunt; countless letters penned on it — that I hoped it’d go to someone really cool.
I got lucky. S— answered my ad. Later, she sent me a text of my table looking happy in a corner of her home, with a plant on it and everything. We started…
How I’m fighting my critical inner resistance, one day at a time
There is a buzz in my brain. A hum. Like, when you go to a hotel room that has a kitchenette in it, and the low sound of the refrigerator keeps you up all night until your boyfriend sits bolt upright in bed and maniacally rips the plug out the wall? You know, like that.
The hum is restless anxiety of ‘needing to get stuff done’. It’s similar to that nagging sensation when you feel like you forgot something, but you’re not sure exactly what.
When I listen closely and intently, the hum starts to have a needling voice that…
What a computer game about life has taught me about life
The turn of the 20th Century to the 21st Century was marked with many things — Y2K, the Sydney Olympics, Beanie Baby hysteria and ill-fitting jeans.
But none have impressed themselves as deeply into my psyche than the computer game franchise, ‘The Sims’.
First released in 2000, ‘The Sims’ was conceived by American game designer Will Wright, the mastermind behind a slew of highly successful simulation games in the 1990’s like ‘SimCity’, ‘Sim Theme Park’, and the oft-overlooked ‘SimAnt’. In each game the objective was to build, monitor and maintain the simulation of a complex system with many moving parts…
Maybe there’s something you’re trying to hide
If you ever consume information about nutrition, relationships, fitness, or productivity, then you know that people often make things overly complex. Sometimes complexity is necessary but often it is not, and it can make things worse rather than better.
On the supply side, many people make things complex so they can sell them. It is hard to monetize the basics. But come up with an intricate and sexy-sounding approach to pretty much any endeavor and people will pay — and often a lot — for it. But what about the demand side? …
Forge
A publication from Medium on personal development.
