Nothing left to prove is usually discussed in the context of accomplishment. I’ve come to find the virtues of this concept is the personal context. As in, my personality has been so thoroughly proven, deviations from it are seen as just that: deviations. Just as the professional experiencing a career bump isn’t viewed as the “bump,” so too is the person who no longer, for whatever the reason, can live up to being himself viewed as being this new, lesser form.

This safe space is only available to those who were so true for so long. The accomplished professional doesn’t actually covet the excuse – he wants to still be performing – and neither does the person who wants to reclaim who he is, but there is still comfort in the leeway.

Unless you think giving money to homeless people actually solves problems beyond the immediate, tipping our “front line” service workers is not some great panacea either.

If you actually think workers are underpaid (hint: they aren’t), tipping only allows employers to further depress wages.

Being guided by the “well, it’s the least I can do” spirit isn’t the worst thing ever, but it does often prevent honest conversation about hard problems.

It’s clear enough that grand, life-changing goals are quite hard to meet. Your resolve begins solidly, but in no time at all, desires intervene and adherence crumbles.

AA attempts to combat this decay with a “one day at a time” ethos. This can work … until the ruse is grasped: you peer ahead and remember days become weeks become months become years and that “one day at a time” is just an alternate expression of a chilling reality where you are asked to change behavior forever.

Forever is never easily reconciled. This is true for both things we like (i.e., love) and don’t (i.e., deprivation). Lent avoids this biggest-of-big asks. You only have to change for 40 days. That’s it. Then, normalcy can resume. Whenever you start to waver, you know relief is around the corner, and that knowledge changes the internal calculation dramatically. Suddenly, you can hold out à la your toughest heroes.

Then day 41 hits and you did it! Ain’t nobody faulting you for some good old-fashioned splurging. For a certain type of person, though, the 40 days have reduced such desires. Why not run it back? Did I even desperately miss that which I thought I couldn’t live without?

So that certain person repeats the process just ’cause. The renditions begin blurring together with one noticeable difference: the compulsion to return to the pre-Lent state diminishes inversely with the number of “Lents” completed. Do this enough and further doesn’t seem forever.

It drives me crazy that people expect Donald Trump to change, that they still are aghast when he is who he has always been.

But do I do this in my own life? Do I expect people to change and evolve beyond their long-proven natures? If so, I should stop. Like, now.

All frustration comes from other people not behaving the way you want them to. 

Phone “addiction” is filled with far too much unrewarding wandering: rather than doing “nothing,” you might as well do “something,” so you scroll and click to pass time.

TV “addiction” is far more dangerous because there is such an abundance of content that’s richly rewarding, that’s truly more pleasurable than so much of “real life.” How does anyone ever sleep with so much good stuff to watch?

Though I guess “abundance” is quite subjective. If you spend enough time in either “addiction,” you reach the same point of unrewarding wandering. Worse still, there may well be a terrible price for extended trips into the passivity that’s endemic into screen consumption: you lose your own creativity.

(more…)

All ya gotta do is deprive yourself.

Wanna have the best lunch in what feels like centuries? Don’t eat for a week. Or, more plausibly, eat bare essentials for a week, and then eat “normal” foods again.

This is low-hanging joy available to anyone with a modicum of discipline.

on changes in people’s appearance – the reflex is too natural.

This reflex overrides any sense that the comment is often entirely devoid of substance and has been uttered by dozens of others too.

“Wow. A new beard.” What is the point of this?

is the joy in breaking it.

I’ve got a way to preserve the most precious resource of your fellow humans. Spouses, managers, friends, kids, parents, teammates, co-workers, enemies: it works for all of them. The catch is that it costs you some of your most precious resource. It may even amount to a net drain on the whole. Still, I think it’s worth it. You can give it a try the next time you have a question. All you have to do is suffocate your instinct to ask for help. In fact, do not ask anyone for his time unless you have first invested time to find what you need yourself. And that is the way to save people’s most precious resource.