"I believe that he is absolutely right, that a race to the future defeats what is precious, the present, and that we may be robbing our children of their precious present for the sake of the future, and perhaps for the sake of political satisfactions much more selfish and insidious."
"Although extremely persistent people are usually passionate about their work, that doesn't mean that the passion always comes first. Perseverance, notes Duckworth, can itself foster passion. Often the most fascinating aspects of a topic (particularly a highly complex one) become apparent only after deep immersion, to a level 'where you understand it and are enlivened by it.'"Doug often talks about the importance of doing...doing something, anything that interests you. Having goals is great, but their primary value is in inciting directional action...getting you doing stuff that will lead to other interesting stuff. This is certainly part of what I got out of Paul Graham's undelivered commencement speech -- find interesting problems and projects and actually work on them, regardless of how "real life" may intrude. He also recommends finding difficult problems and questions to pursue, which reminds me of one of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's conditions for flow (total engagement in an activity) -- a level of challenge sufficient to stretch (but not way exceed) your skills. If I remember correctly, he studied high school students who achieved the flow state in subjects like math that they didn't enjoy, but the challenge helped them engage.
"But really, I'd encourage anything the kid is interested in. And this is where the controversy is... whether "good parenting" is about taking a heavy hand in steering your kids toward a responsible means of making a living, vs. being supportive of their passions that might ultimately lead to a life of being, well, a starving musician. (Or whatever the equivalent is for any other pursuit that my parents would have considered a 'nice hobby, bad career choice.')"The comments are piling up on the post, and many of them are worth reading as well. One of the problems with this discussion (wherever it comes up) is that it tends to assume a polarization in the choices available, between university leading to boring (but decent-paying) work on one path or happy (but starving) artists following their passions on the other. Most conscientious middle-class parents want nothing more than to offer the best of both paths (financial security from the former, happiness and passion from the latter), but are generally clueless about how to foster that ideal set of characteristics for their kids' future.
"The church has lost sway, and the state has retreated behind the single rationale of promoting economic competitiveness with its overtones of Darwinian selection (a major source of unhappiness in itself with its vision of life as a competitive struggle). That leaves the market a free rein to describe happiness - the new car, new sofa, new holiday - and to manipulate our insecurities around status.
Leave things as they are and the state will increasingly have to pick up the bill for how consumer capitalism effectively produces emotional ill-health - depression, stress, anxiety. Leave things as they are and the state is part of the problem, promoting a set of market values that produce emotional pollution."
Thinking about the future can often trigger morbid thoughts, but there's something powerful about seeing how much life you might have left. The death clock helps with this process of reflection, projecting your possible demise based on some basic lifestyle factors. "If you don't value what society values - success in the monetary - and you're not feeling like your career is fulfilling, then stay-at-home work feels great. Museums on weekdays! Afternoons in the park! Playing with cooking! It is true that in the domestic life, work is never done. I set boundries and routines for myself to cope with that.
HOWEVER. I know this is me, this is now, this is my preferences and lifetime. I also know that it would *Piss Me Off* if anyone tried to tell me I couldn't be a Software Engineer due to my gender. I'm good at my job -although obviously it's not working for me long term.
Here's the reality, though: I won't ever put in a 60 hour week. Even if I got my bliss job and was making $80,000/year as a pundit, I wouldn't put in a 60 hour week. I wouldn't travel away from my family for weeks and weeks every year. So I feel like there's not a lot of room for me anywhere of importance in society because I'm not out there enough to be important."
"Those with low job satisfaction are most likely to experience emotional burn-out, have reduced self-esteem and raised anxiety and depression. Environmental factors can contribute to the incidence of many human diseases. However, the new findings show that there is a clear link between job satisfaction and mental health."
I've often thought about how cool it would be to be able to create a fairly accurate picture of a future life. Physical appearance is a key part of our identities, and I think it would be fascinating to see what I might look like in my late 50s, which is why I need to try The Amazing Aging Machine. "In this fashion I've inventoried my physical and aspirational assets and, likewise, feel taken care of, if not disappointed that many of the things I would have valued so highly a few years ago I am willing to forego. Me, being the practical person that I am, wonder if I can't get anything for some of these former achievements, accomplished more out of fear and survival instincts than faith and love, on eBay.These few sentences are just loaded with smart references to how we envision the arc from our present and past lives to future possibilities. How well can we inventory our own aspirational assets? How many of us could articulate our own life concept, rather than just living by the twists and turns?
I'm disappointed that the world is not always going along with my program, the one I had plotted so carefully, thinking it was all meant to be because it flowed so powerfully from me. I'm convinced that my life concept is still a good one, but apparently there will be more plot twists and challenges thrown in."
"While people still do have children during their (supposed) years of highest production, these children often spend more time in daycare centres than family environments. The parents are often driven by a two-income lifestyle that fragments their family time into discrete pieces. The idea of quality time it seems to me is really a retrieval of the desire to belong, and possibly an excuse for not belonging enough."
"What she talks about here--goals taking on a life of their own--is a very real trap. The same is true with many planning systems; we need to understand who we are and what we're about, and realize that values come first. If our goals are revealed to be out of sync with those values--or our understanding of those values changes so they are--we change the goal. Putting the goal down and committing to it makes it more likely to be achieved; however, we must understand we are committing to what the goal represents to us. The goal is a means to realize our potential and productively apply our values; it is not an end in itself."He was also bouncing off a great related post about getting what you want on another interesting blog: overexcitable.
"Just because technology makes it possible for us to work 10 times faster than we used to doesn't mean we should do it. The body may be able to withstand the strain -- for a while -- but the spirit isn't meant to flail away uselessly on the commercial gerbil wheel. The boys in corporate don't want you to hear this because the more they can suck out of you, the lower their costs and the higher their profit margin. And profit is god, after all. (Genuflect here, if you must.)"
"Here I was, a really smart kid with lots on the ball--gifts that I hadn't even begun into tap yet--and I thought my life was over. I graduated from high school fearing the worst. I might eke out a few years in minimum wage jobs and then...magically expire. And it didn't help matters that I had a high school counselor for four years who gave me the excruciatingly mixed message of steering me toward a slate full of college prep courses only to tell me my senior year that she thought I had a great future ahead of me...as a legal secretary."Thanks to Jory's ThirdAge Carnival for the pointer.
"Oh, and there’s a little hidden bonus in this vision thing of ours – you get to keep all that money you’re currently dropping into your gas tank. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll spend some of that “free cash” on local businesses like restaurants, coffee shops, florists, movie theaters, continuing education programs, concerts, and art galleries. Up goes your quality of life. And up goes the health and well-being of your home town and its residents."
"Who came up with that? Work like crazy doing something we're not passionate about so we can accumulate enough money to pay the bills from our stress-caused illnesses while we complain about what we should have done when we were still young."I guess he wrote a manifesto a few years ago called Think Arete, and turned it into a site focused on an ancient greek word for the process of self-actualizing and striving to reach your highest potential. The site has wonderful quotes, notes and articles like this one about writing your goals. Lots of wisdom there, and it looks like he even offers consulting using his philosophy.
"Think of a time when you were so busy that you drifted away from others. How did you feel? More human or less? Think of a time when you were strongly linked to others. How did you feel then? The paradox is that when we have a difficult challenge in front of us, we often default in the doing and lose the connections and hence our power."This connects directly to some of the thinking I've been doing about gaps between our stated values and how we actually choose to spend our time and money, and flies in the face of what we're learning about happiness. Rob's also pondering what kinds of lifestyle decisions we'll be making five years from now if the price of gas goes up a buck a year.
"In contrast to that state of flow, I've found that following a career path that is out of alignment with who we really are can cause a steady hum of anxiety and effort, just to maintain the status quo."
"Few upwardly mobile people in the modern rat-race society can live without an alarm clock. Increasingly, time becomes the most precious commodity in society where achievement is often associated with speed and perfect time-management. However, alarm clocks introduce two harmful side effects: stress and sleep deprivation.Thanks to Will for the pointer.
The art of time-management makes it possible to live at high speed with the alarm clock on your side and actually be free from stress. However, the societal damage inflicted by alarm clocks used to regulate sleep is unforgivable. An alarm clock that interrupts your sleep damages your memory, your ability to learn, your mood and temper, your relationships with other people, your ability to focus and your overall intellectual performance!"
"Sometimes we make bets on our futures. We decide that the future's so bright we need shades, rather than going nowhere. We grow, rather than stagnate. We engage questions, rather than edicts. And we'll even take a job with a riskier, less-well-paying company to do vitally fulfilling work."She also finishes off with a a question/challenge:
"How about you? Have you ever left a position to continue to grow and innovate? Or, gasp, even work pro bono because you were passionate about the vision (only because we're bootstrapping; I don't condone lining other's pockets on my sweat)?"
"Hot Jobs - Cool Communities is a report card of the hippest places to live and work based on the metrics that matter to a new generation of talent."I was interested in the variables they used to identify and evaluate their cool communities -- just loaded with lifestyle factors, and why shouldn't these concerns trump all others?
"The third decade is a time of emotional and spiritual adolescence. Whereas the first twenty years enable us to mature physically and mentally, we remain relatively undeveloped in our adult relationships and connectedness to meaning. In the crucial third decade, individuals are expected to shift from being 'cared for' to 'taking charge' of their own existence. This means learning how to be a good worker/parent/friend, finding a way to sustain yourself, and getting involved in fulfilling life activities that enable you to be who you are. Developing these capacities is not a simple task."It's easy to criticize the twixters, yeppies and other awfully named twenty-somethings in a sort of extended adolescence, pointing out their inability to get on with their grown-up lives, but I like how Doug explains the different landscape they face now.
"However, most of my generation is finding that neither what they are nor what they had planned to be are sufficient to reach their goals (not to mention out of alignment with each other to begin with). We are guilty of having bought the hype of the pop culture at the same time as--in many cases--having done everything that would have assured at least middle-class prosperity in generations gone by, only to find that the educational system and much of our forebears' 'wisdom' no longer applies."
"Of course, I still have no idea what to do, other than my already considered ideas. Their tests, self-evaluating quizzes, and 'learn about yourself' assessments, all carefully weaved through, gave me some answers as to what careers are for me and which aren't."
"Fifty-six percent of students entering Penn State's main campus graduate in four years, the highest rate in at least a decade and a share that is 14 percentage points higher than two years ago.This seems to contradict a lot of the data I've been seeing about increasing dropout rates, longer times to complete degrees, and multiple major switches. They also talk about one of the possible reasons:
Included are students who studied abroad, tackled multiple majors and faced all the other stresses that caused most of their predecessors in the 1990s to switch to five-, six- or even seven-year plans."
"Tom Mortenson, a higher education policy analyst, argues the upswing should surprise no one. He says students who take longer -- usually the poor -- are being pushed toward community colleges and proprietary schools as many four-year campuses hungry for prestige target better prepared applicants, who tend to come from wealthier backgrounds."
"The key to a happy life is to accomplish things that you really feel like are good for somebody beyond just you. Nothing else will do it. A lot of people think happiness is about lots of time to play. I was a manic kayaker for a long time. And there were some people who just managed to arrange their whole life around kayaking and of course, we were all insanely jealous. But then, with the benefit of hindsight, that choice doesn't work out so great and I think it is because it's all about you. OK, maybe you like kayaking, but what are you going to be proud of at the end of the day? You may pass the time more or less pleasantly, but you're not going to feel too good about it. The same thing is true with getting rich." -- Green developer and Mindspring Founder Charles Brewer, interviewed in the Premiere issue of Worthwhile magazineYou could substitute "mountain biker" or "snowboarder" for kayaker and this would apply to me more directly. You could substitute your favourite leisure activity to make it personal, and I'm sure we all know people who are HARDCORE into the things we enjoy, perhaps even inspiring the same kind of jealousy he talks about. I've always included these types of pursuits as part of self-actualization, but are they really? Maybe if you're training to achieve professional status? I've occasionally blamed parenthood for forcing me out of my hardcore leisure focus, but I wonder if I would have tired of it eventually if we hadn't had kids.
"They were suffering from enormous isolation. They'd chosen that fate for themselves by living in 5,000-10,000-square-foot houses where, you know, the desire was to have space and a certain amount of privacy and solitude. But eventually they realized it was making them miserable. They were craving something that money couldn't buy."
"We need to create an honorable, pluralistic ethos according to which we acknowledge that many people are dissatisfied with many things in our society – fine, we welcome dissatisfaction as the source of craving for the good. But we never accept whining or criticizing of others or critiques of “society.” If you don’t like it, go fix it, go create a world, a community, a sub-culture in which your ideals can be instantiated, realized, in which you can show us what your vision of beauty and nobility looks like. Create a new social reality, so that I can see your dreams come true. I want to see a world in which billions of dreams are coming true constantly."
"Recently, I have suggested another aim: happiness (Noddings, 2003). Great thinkers have associated happiness with such qualities as a rich intellectual life, rewarding human relationships, love of home and place, sound character, good parenting, spirituality, and a job that one loves. We incorporate this aim into education not only by helping our students understand the components of happiness but also by making classrooms genuinely happy places.Via Stephen
Few of these aims can be pursued directly, the way we attack behavioral objectives. Indeed, I dread the day when I will enter a classroom and find Happiness posted as an instructional objective. Although I may be able to state exactly what students should be able to do when it comes to adding fractions, I cannot make such specific statements about happiness, worthy home membership, use of leisure, or ethical character. These great aims are meant to guide our instructional decisions. They are meant to broaden our thinking—to remind us to ask why we have chosen certain curriculums, pedagogical methods, classroom arrangements, and learning objectives. They remind us, too, that students are whole persons—not mere collections of attributes, some to be addressed in one place and others to be addressed elsewhere."
"I knew I could do it—it was hard, yes, it's true. But if chipmunks can climb to the sky, so can YOU!" Chipper said, punctuating his message with a thumbs-up sign and a wink.
According to Dr. Roland Gibson of the American Council For Literature & Ethics, Chipper's core message—that people can be or do anything they want—is a fallacy widely perpetuated in children's books.
Benjamin Hunnicutt, a historian and professor at the University of Iowa, argues leisure time has become "trivialized" while work has been "elevated to the modern religion," a way for people to define themselves and find meaning in their lives.
As a result, he says, time off can lead to a feeling of emptiness and boredom.
Surveys find that many Canadians - almost one in five - blame a lack of cash for not taking holidays.
"Those of us in business for ourselves, especially microbusinesses (the very small), find it really hard to take any time off at all. And when you do sneak in a Saturday off, or a long weekend, there's no guilt like the guilt of thinking about what you could be doing right then to generate cash, or build up inventory, or improve your personal infrastructure (like putting away all those old file folders, or organizing your PC files, or doing some research about the future)."
"The looting seems so instinctive, so without purpose (except for the survival necessities of course - what is the immediate survival value of a flat screen TV and a mink coat? What value does such a thing have in a flood? Why waste time and energy acquiring something so useless when food and water is in short supply? One wonders just how close under the surface the possibility for this lies in places where there is a great disparity of wealth."
"But it's a paradox of the play mentality that the more enthusiasm you have for your self-chosen activities, the more of those activities seem to be on offer. Which leads to a counter-intuitive truth: you need more energy for a player's lifestyle, not less.
Time spent freely surfing on the web crowds your brain with ideas. Lengthy conversations with fellow players at odd times in the day suggest new projects, new angles on things. Your mind-maps teem with possibilities. And where the worker worries whether they'll ever attain the life they want (see the smokers in BBC2's The Smoking Room), the player's anxiety is whether they can realise all the opportunities that life presents them with."
"There's a growing hunger for community in the country -- an appreciation for relationships and civic responsibility. A realization that since we can control so little of what is happening in the outside world, what we can control closer to home matters more than ever. Citizenship vs. consumerism."I keep blathering about values and how most of us aren't very good at aligning our lifestyle decisions with our core values -- I think the hunger they talk about here is right in the middle of that tension. I'm looking forward to seeing the result of this excellent project.
"There is such a divide between what we believe, what we value, and how our leadership conducts public policy. We are desperately seeking a return to a society that is life-affirming, supportive of community, and respectful to the environment."
"We would, for example, expect a proliferation of the arts. Enough people live today at less-than-starvation wages in order to be able to write, paint, sing, act and perform any manner of cultural pursuit; with guaranteed income even more of them would do so. We would expect a proliferation of scholars and philosophers: with the requirement to work no longer driving people into cookie-cutter training programs, people would pursue their own aptitudes and interests. We would see many, many more restored cars, hand-crafted furniture, four-table restaurants, home gardens and home restorations, as people engaged in the sort of creation and building that interests them.
We would, ultimately, see a wealthier society. It would consume less, but what it consumed would be better. We would see much greater emphasis on production efficiencies, as the labour surplus currently existing would no longer pose a barrier to technological innovation. And we would see a happier society as no person would ever need to live in fear of economic ruin or starvation. There would be a much greater sense that we're all in this together, a much greater willingness to cooperate and share, a much stronger sense of family and community."
"Together the new content doesn't just simulate the whole college lifestyle, it genuinely impacts the game as a whole. Sims who take the time to go to college will gain tons of skills and new friends that will give them a huge head start in their future careers. They'll also get bonuses to help them score higher in life, such as extra 'want' slots. 'Lifetime Wants' are also added into the core game, and if your Sim can achieve these incredibly ambitious goals, he or she will attain a permanent platinum mood."
"An extra 1.1 million Americans dropped below the poverty line last year, according to the US Census Bureau. There were 37 million people living in poverty in 2004, up 12.7% from the previous year."Are those numbers not completely disturbing? Do we need any clearer indication that something is very, very wrong with the way things are going? This little piece of analyis makes it even more bizarre:
"The rise in poverty comes despite solid economic growth in 2004, which helped to create 2.2 million jobs in the US."It looks to me like the measures of economic growth we're depending on aren't reflecting the reality on the ground. Perhaps it's time to take a closer look at Bhutan's attempt to measure and foster gross national happiness instead of assuming that all economic growth and activity is a positive thing.
People tend to rationalize bad things, quickly adapting to new realities. They also visualize future events in isolation, but real life teems with many experiences that dilute the impact of any one. This means winning the lottery doesn't make people's lives stellar, but they recover from romantic breakups much quicker than expected.
"If you knew exactly what the future held, you still wouldn't know how much you would like it when you got there," Gilbert says. In pursuing happiness, he suggests "we should have more trust in our own resilience and less confidence in our predictions about how we'll feel. We should be a bit more humble and a bit more brave."
"life is all about building. it's not a neat & tidy process with a firm completion date to look forward to - it's a messy, ever evolving project of weaving together what we want and making it work."I like the recognition of ambiguity -- it's a reminder that a focus on planning your future can lull you into thinking that everything will fall into place if only you have everything figured out up front. When I'm talking about a tool to help you create future lifestyles, it's not really about creating the perfect one, it's about mixing and matching and finding interesting combinations that inspire you to take those all-important first steps toward something.
"That is, if your consumption lowers my happiness, then I must consume more to keep up. As a result, we all end up consuming more than is socially optimal. Because consumption uses up resources, we would all be better off if we consumed less and released those resources for other purposes that more effectively promote our happiness, such as more resources deveoted to community endeavors, or more time spent with friends and family. The consequences for society are perverse, then, when relative income effects dominate."I've been bumping into that exact issue, and obviously it's not an easy one. I was also nodding along with one of their concluding statements that asks the best question:
"Given that most individuals spend a substantial fraction of their adult lives working to earn income -- some at jobs they dislike -- one wonders why income does not have a greater effect on happiness. Neither the absolute nor the relative income effect is very large. Why do we work so hard to earn money if there is no guarantee that riches bring happiness?"
"While some of this material is covered in the other books, what makes this book special is the chapter in which Schor presents her own research study. Her subjects were 300 fifth- and sixth- graders living in or around the Boston area. Each student took a 157-item survey that assessed not only the child's involvement in consumer culture but also measures of physical, and mental, well-being. Schor's main conclusion is deeply disturbing. She writes that high consumer involvement is a significant cause of 'depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and psychosomatic complaints.'"Like Bowling Alone, which brilliantly (and systematically) links TV culture to the decline of civic engagement over the past 50 years, Born to Buy creates a compelling link between the time kids spend watching TV to consumerism and from those measures of consumerism directly to a general decline in well-being. Heavy duty.
"One has moved from a major global metropolis to the Island and another away from a big city to a smaller one. They both told me how uncomfortable they are with the slower pace and with what appears to be the low brow culture.
They miss being Busy.
What is it about 'Busy'. Ask someone how they are and you will often get the response 'Busy'. No one tells you what they are doing, they just comment on the process of their activity. The saddest part of the Busy addiction is that usually busy people are involved in activity that ends up nowhere."
"The research analysed the responses of 11-year-old children, in their first term of secondary education, to a question about whether or not they planned to stay in education after they were 16. Some 11% said they would definitely leave, and 67% said they would stay on. The remainder were not sure. These results were then compared with the actual outcomes for the same young people.
Of those who said they would leave, two thirds actually did so. While of those who said they would stay on, almost four-fifths actually did so. Girls were more likely to stay on than boys, and young people from families in middle class occupations were more likely to stay on than other young people. Both these differences were also apparent in the earlier expressions of intentions."
"'Yeppies are unsure how to achieve their ambitions so they experiment through a shopping-style approach, trying to find the perfect job, the ideal relationship and the most fulfilling lifestyle.'
They postpone big, life-altering decisions until they feel they have exhausted all their options. 'It will be increasingly regarded as normal for young people to continue "Life Shopping" well into their late twenties and thirties. The way things are going, by 2012 thirty will be the new twenty as the "official" age for transition to adulthood; people getting married in their twenties will be regarded as too young or too immature to make such a big decision,' Fox said."
"These days, we expect to actively enjoy our work, and feel that we have failed if enjoyment is not forthcoming. Ever since the Sixties, we have had it drummed into us that we are entitled -- even obliged -- to seek personal fulfillment in every aspect of our lives."
"By age 2, their daughter, Lydia, had a schedule of structured daily activities. Soon after, the lessons started: piano, French, fencing, and so forth. They wanted Lydia to have every advantage in the competitive climb. Lydia's sweet, but she's uncomfortable when there is 'nothing to do.' She'll declare, 'I'm bored,' while flipping on the tube. She waits for her folks to tell her what's next and then plows through the weekly schedule. When I ask her if she's having fun, she stares at me blankly.
While I don't agree that everything bad is good for you, Lydia's life reminds me that everything good can be bad for you. Flo and John haven't prepared her for the future but for today's workplace in which success and happiness depend on excellent performance according to prescribed criteria. This approach is making plenty of people miserable. According to the latest Conference Board report, only 14% of U.S. employees are very satisfied with their jobs; 25% say they're just showing up to collect a paycheck; and 66% say they can't identify with their employer's business objectives. Why get our kids ready for a world that's already in cardiac arrest? What will replace it?"
"Thus evolution has built two contradictory motivations into our nervous system: pleasure, which is the well-being we feel when eating, resting and procreating; and enjoyment, which is the exhilarating sensation we feel when going beyond the requirements of survival (Csikszentmihalyi, 1993; Ryan and Deci, 2000; Waterman, 1993). Pleasure is a powerful source of motivation, but it does not produce change; it is a conservative force that makes us want to satisfy existing needs, achieve comfort and relaxation. It is the motivation that makes us look for material resources to improve the quality of life – after all these are scarce and everyone wants them, so they must be valuable. The concreteness of material goals also makes them seem more real than more complex goals. But the improvement that money, power, and comfort produce is often simply that of removing momentarily the anxiety we all experience when confronting mortality and finitude. 'More stuff' promises security and comfort, even when the benefits are short-lived and we need ever more stuff to regain equanimity in the face of the slings and arrows inherent in living. There is nothing wrong with seeking pleasure in material goals, but individuals for whom it becomes the main reason for living are not going to grow beyond what the genes have programmed them to desire."So pleasure, in this sense, does not equal or lead to happiness. We get pleasure from a new toy or outfit, but it probably doesn't contribute much to our long-term happiness. The activities that are more likely to yield more lasting happiness tend to be more challenging and connect us to the people around us.
"At age 34 when – on a long weekend with friends where I was completely absent and struggling to get through a difficult deal (for a company that eventually failed) – Amy turned to me and said 'I’m done. I’m not mad – I just can’t do this anymore. You either have to change, or it’s over.'"I haven't much liked the idea of work-life balance because it seems to imply an either/or, rather than some sort of integration that acknowledges work as one component of a rich life full of relationships, creativity, learning, and relaxation...work-life balance always makes "life" sound like the remainder, or what's left over after work. That said, this is a great overview of the types of changes he had to make to save his marriage and make his lifestyle work. Thanks to Will for the link.
"An application of all this that intrigues me is in assessing how we should (and can) change ourselves. I tend to agree with many of you that if we are to have any credibility as change advocates we need to be a role model, we need to show not tell people what needs to be done. We need to be the change. So do we start by a navel-gazing process that entails some personal, individual decisions and bold actions? Or, if our relationships and networks define us, do we start by first finding or redefining the circles, the communities to which we (and others) belong and then let those new and altered communities redefine and change us?"He's approaching the complexity of relationships in exactly the right way, I think. We tend to view the strands of our lives (work, marriage, friendships, leisure, etc.) in isolation, as if a decision made in one strand wouldn't affect the others...or worse, thinking that a change in one would miraculously fix problems in others without any real sense of why that might be.
Are you tired of your present job, your current community, or the terrible weather around you? Would you like to discover the perfect place for your style and interests? Thanks to advances in technology and the economy, more people than ever are choosing where to live based on the factors that really matter to them – the weather, schools, recreational activities, cost of living, and general quality of life. At FindYourSpot.com, you can discover the perfect place for you AND find a great job, a great real estate professional, a great house, great travel deals...all in one central location.That last part reveals a bit about the business model, I think. I suppose they're hoping to make some money on job/travel/real-estate referrals and interest-based marketing, which is fine. What I love about this model is that it is a relatively simple way to envision what your life might look like someplace else, getting you thinking about the weather there, jobs, house prices and lifestyle factors. The implementation isn't super slick, but the concept is great.
"You don't buy free agents anymore, you sell them on the merits of joining your team. Lifestyle, climate, city, coach, teammates, chance to win a championship and a dozen other variables have become the new determining factors in who plays where."
"My parents were born in the time of the Great Depression. They lived in very challenging times. As a result, many their age have a toughness, respect, and appreciation for life that is less visible in the age group of my peers and children. They cherish their relationships, not their stuff. They seldom seem bored or uninterested with life. They can adapt. They radiate true character.
My generation is once removed from a tough existence. Our parents protected us from the pains they suffered. So many of us grew up 'cared for'. Unintentionally, our parents denied us the opportunity to learn adaptability, consideration, and appreciation for small pleasures. We don't really know tough. So we make it up, fighting over things and 'who said what'. We have more who are still searching, still blaming, still waiting for something they cannot define.
My children are twice removed from tough times. We were even more protective of our kids, shaping their existence to foster their 'self-esteem'. Our kids are even less tough than we were, demanding that the world adapt itself for them or they will be 'unhappy'. It should not surprise us that we see less character and more queen bee in our children. It is predictable that a pampered generation will not seek commitment, delaying long-term anything to squeeze in a little more self-indulgence."
Living consciously means getting more of what really matters in life, being aware of what’s going on around you, finding balance, and having a little fun while you’re at it;I've occasionally railed against our vague assumptions about and implicit adoption of the American Dream, so this vision is welcome. It also reminds me that I keep meaning to post about Rifkin's The European Dream, a book I found fascinating a couple of months ago. Worth skimming, for sure.
Buying wisely means becoming a positive force in the marketplace, using your purchasing power to support business practices that are safer for the environment and better for people;
Making a difference is all about making sure your citizen voices are heard, being active in your community and letting policymakers know where YOU stand.
Ryan, Sheldon, Kasser, and Deci (1996) argued that the pursuit and attainment of some life goals may provide greater satisfaction of the basic psychological needs than the pursuit and attainment of others, and that those providing greater satisfaction would be associated with greater well-being. Specifically, T. Kasser and Ryan (1993, 1996) distinguished between intrinsic aspirations (i.e., goals such as affiliation, personal growth, and community contribution, which are closely associated with basic need satisfaction) and extrinsic aspirations (i.e., goals such as attaining wealth, fame, and image, which are more related to obtaining contingent approval or external signs of worth, and thus are, on average, expected to be less likely to yield direct need satisfaction and may even distract from it).Basically, they go on to show how pursuing (and even achieving) external measures of success like wealth and fame do not tend to make people happy, at least compared to the sense of well-being they get from pursuing (and achieving) goals related to more intrinsic measures like personal growth and community contribution. Seems kind of obvious, but don't you think most of us tend to focus more of our time/money on the former (extrinsic aspirations)?
"As we say so often, work can now go to people, rather than people having to commute to work. We’re willing to bet that these Census Bureau findings have a lot to do with the fact that more and more people are choosing where to work first, based on things like cost of living, weather, quality of life, local schools, and potential peers – and only then do they start worrying about finding work."
"Being logical women, we did a cost-benefit analysis of the previous 9 years and, while the benefits were high, the costs were high too -- and growing. Both of us made similar decisions: We walked. Katie is starting her studies for her master's degree full time in the fall. I slept for about six months, fell into consulting, and realized I loved being an independent."It's nothing new to recognize that many of us get more in tune with what we actually want when we're feeling more grown up, but I really love the approach at the beginning of the quote -- I don't think we're very good at doing that sort of cost-benefit analysis on all aspects of our lives. It made me think that doing the analysis on the past would be a fine place to start, but even better would be to build skills in doing the cost-benefit analysis on our ideas for the future lifestyles.
"I thought about how tired I’d been in the past just working for money, with no personal investment in the outcome. I thought about how I’d always had a plan in the back of my mind that all of the work I was doing in the present was for the purpose of building my future profile, of earning my right to quit the boring stuff and do what I was passionate about, whatever that was."Read the whole thing -- this is great writing about important stuff.
"Particularly in urban and coastal areas, these local bubbles are characterized by a frenzy of speculation, home turnover and large margins between median house prices and median incomes. In California, for instance, the median household income is $53,540, but the median house price is currently $488,600. To qualify for a traditional fixed-rate mortgage for such a house, a buyer would need to earn almost twice the median income.
In part, house prices are being pushed up by those purchasing multiple homes—three-fourths of all homes for sale are bought by owners of multiple homes, with the intention of converting them into rental units, or “flipping” them back onto the market after remodeling in order to turn a profit. Those in the working class who are seeking to buy are thus effectively and systematically out-priced by the voracious demand of speculators, driving demand, competition and prices still higher."
"The most unsettling aspect of all these credit card transactions is that many Americans don’t see their income as a spending cap. About 43% of U.S. families spend more than they earn, according to a Federal Reserve study. And on average, Americans spend $1.22 for every dollar they earn, according to Myvesta.org."
David Then and Now is fascinating. It's an art installation rotating through bus shelters in Winnipeg right now. Each bus stop gets two side-by-side portraits of the same guy (all named David) taken 10 years apart. It's interesting to view them in in sequence, to see how much difference a decade makes on our outward appearance at different life stages. This isn't so very lifestylism-oriented, but there's something important about projecting our current selves out into the future...and this art helps you get into that mental space.
"The source of career design and work is ultimately our life path, not imposed social expectations. Living a life and building a career based on some shallow conceptions of success will clearly lead to unhappiness and a sense of loss, if not illness itself. In other words, a career and the work we do within that career is simply a by-product of something far greater and far more powerful - our inner passion for the mystery of life itself."
"This all stems back to the ridiculous age of 16 - the age that the government of Ontario has decided for us all that we must start thinking about our 'careers’. It starts with a short course worth half a credit that they appropriately named 'Career Studies'. The purpose of the course was to fill out aptitude tests and browse career cruising websites so we could find careers that were ‘right’ for us. Of course, the definition of ‘right’ used was just plain wrong. Filling out a standardized test and looking up careers based on it makes absolutely no sense."
"Of course, being on one's life path, or following one's bliss, does not in any way mean that life is without problems and challenges or pain and anguish. But the possibility of happiness and contentment is ever more present in the face of the inevitable difficulties life will present. And the energy we bring to trying circumstances is more resilient - more purposeful - when we are in tune with our inner selves."
* Career passion (of course)
* Financial abundance - having "enough"
* Time abundance
* Love
* Health
* Being present
* Meaning
"Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backward, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever—because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference."I don't necessarily agree with all of this, but it is definitely true that it's basically impossible to connect the dots looking into your future. How much can we learn from the connected dots of others?
