Hello, and thank
you for dropping by the newest issue of our e-zine!
We hope that your October has started well, and that
you're able to
make a great deal out of this beautiful and amazing
month!
The
ultimate lesson we all have to learn is unconditional
love, which includes not only others but ourselves as
well. -Elisabeth
Kuebler-Ross
It
is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides
them--character, the heart, generous qualities,
progressive ideas. -Feodor
Dostoevsky
Seek
not to change the world, but choose to change your
mind about the world. -A
Course In Miracles
There
have been men and women in every generation who have
longed for a better day and who have been willing to aid
the forces which they believed would hasten that day.
-Arnaud
C. Marts
The answer to
our multitasking dilemma is to take a conscious, analytical
approach. We need to allow the disruptions that add speed,
but avoid the ones that detract from it. A basic
psychological premise states that some stimulation or arousal
increases our productivity, but too much reduces it.
Gloria Marks, a researcher at the University of California,
relates the principal directly to multitasking: "You
would expect that a certain amount of multitasking would
increase arousal, perhaps leading to greater efficiency.
But too much will produce declining performance." To
simplify our lifestyles and cut back on unnecessary drag, we
have to take control over what interruptions we accept and when
we choose to accept them--when to multitask and when to focus.
The first step
is to evaluate the importance of each task and decide whether to
let it be interrupted. Is the interruption more important
than the current task? Is it worth a half-hour's lost
productivity? This may seem a no-brainer, but we don't
always take the time to apply priorities to interruptions.
In a recent survey, 55 percent of workers said they opened
incoming email almost immediately, regardless of how busy they
were. But if we consciously assess the importance of the
interruption and decide it's worth the switch, our behavior and
results will more accurately reflect our priorities.
For decisions
about multitasking, ask yourself whether it's best to stay fully
engaged in the activity at hand.
If your child is
telling you about his day in school and you get a text message on
your cell phone, you should probably resist the urge to check the
message immediately; your child takes priority. But if
you're working on a long-term project and a client emails you with
an urgent question, your general productivity, work relationships,
and well-being probably won't be compromised if you accept the
interruption--in fact, they could suffer if you choose to ignore
it. Being conscious of these distinctions helps us to reap
the benefits that come with being fully engaged in moments of
significance--whether those moments are meetings with clients,
conversations with friends, or experiences with family--without
relinquishing the benefits of multitasking.
Next, we need to
examine the total number of interruptions we allow and how often
we multitask. Researchers at the University of Oregon found
that our memories are compromised when we let constant
interruptions distract us. The brain's memory and
organization centers can be damaged when flooded by stress
hormones--a common reaction to multitasking or
interruptions. By juggling too many tasks or allowing too
many distractions, you condition your brain to stay overstimulated,
weakening your ability to concentrate. Not only is
productivity (and therefore speed) compromised, but so is valuable
skill--being engaged when it can benefit you.
Finally, we need
to assess what kinds of tasks we're trying to perform
simultaneously. Multitasking is a good option only if what
we're doing is unimportant or simple enough that the decreased
brainpower (remember, it's cut in half when we do two things at
once) won't negatively affect our productivity or results.
To handle more than one complex task at a time, the brain, because
of its inherent information processing limitations, simply must
slow down. Otherwise, errors multiply and we end up taking
twice as long, or longer, to complete each task. One task
dominates the other in terms of brain function and attention, so
we're not really doing two things at once, we're just toggling
between the two tasks--each interrupting the other.
In the workplace,
excessive multitasking and unexamined interruptions hurt
productivity. So what can organizations do to avoid
slowdowns? Find ways to help employees take a step back and
focus, when they need to, and devote time to the high-value work
you want them to do. Some companies designate time each
week, each month, or each quarter for work only: no
meetings, no expectations for immediate response, no
pop-ins. Dow Corning sets aside one meeting-free week each
quarter. IBM reserves time on Fridays for employees to focus
on work they might otherwise have to complete outside regular work
hours. If such time is to be used effectively, interruptions
must be kept to a minimum. Doors should be closed, employees
should refrain from checking emails every five minutes (unless
it's essential to the job), and nobody should be stopping by to
share information that could be provided in an email or at another
time.
We
have some
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through them comes back to the site
in one way or another. Just click on the picture
to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and
non-fiction!
There is no
need to be unhappy. There is no need to be sad. There is no need
to be disappointed, or oppressed, or aggrieved. There is no need
for illness or failure or discouragement. There is no necessity
for anything but success, good health, prosperity, and an
abounding interest and joy in life.
That the lives
of many people are full of dreary things is unfortunately only
too true; but there is no necessity for them to be there.
They are there only because their victims suppose them to be
inevitable, not because they are so. As long as you accept a
negative condition at its own valuation, so long will you remain
in bondage to it; but you have only to assert your birthright as
a free man or woman and you will be free.
Success and
happiness are the natural condition of humankind. It is actually
easier for us to demonstrate these things than the reverse. Bad
habits of thinking and acting may obscure this fact for a time,
just as a wrong way of walking or sitting, or holding a pen or a
musical instrument may seem to be easier than the proper way,
because we have accustomed ourselves to it; but the proper way
is the easier nevertheless.
Unhappiness,
frustration, poverty, loneliness are really bad habits that
their victims have become accustomed to bear with more or less
fortitude, believing that there is no way out, whereas there is
a way; and that way is simply to acquire good habits of mind
instead of bad ones--habits of working with the Law instead of
against it.
You should
never "put up" with anything. You should never be
willing to accept less than Health, Harmony, and Happiness.
These things are your Divine Right as the sons and daughters of
God, and it is only a bad habit, unconscious, as a rule, that
causes you to be satisfied with less. In the depths of our being
people always feel intuitively that there is a way out of our
difficulties if only we can find it, and our natural instincts
all point in the same direction.
The infant, as
yet uncontaminated by the defeatist suggestions of his or her
elders, simply refuses to tolerate inharmony on any terms, and
therefore demonstrates over it. When the infant is hungry he or
she tells the world with a confident insistence that commands
attention, while many sophisticated adults go without. Does the
infant find a pin sticking in some part of his or her anatomy?
Not for him or her a sigh of resignation to the supposed
"will of God" (it is really blasphemy to say that evil
or suffering could ever be the will of God, All Good), or a
whine about never having any luck, or a sigh that what cannot be
cured must be endured. No, the defeatist view of life has not
yet touched the babies; their instincts tell them that life and
harmony are inseparable. And sure enough, that pin is located
and removed even if everything else has to come to a stop until
it is done.
But
"shades of the prison-house begin to close about the
growing boy," and by the time the child is old enough to
think rationally, the Race habit will have trained the child to
use reason largely in the inverted way.
Refuse to
tolerate anything less than harmony. You can have prosperity no
matter what your present circumstances may be. You can have
health and physical fitness. You can have a happy and joyous
life. You can have a good home of your own. You can have
congenial friends and comrades. You can have a full, free,
joyous life, independent and untrammeled. You can become your
own master or your own mistress. But to do this you must
definitely seize the rudder of your own destiny and steer boldly
and firmly for the port that you intend to make.
What are you
doing about your future? Are you content to let things just
drift along as they are, hoping, like Mr. Micawber, for
something to "turn up"? If you are, be assured that
there is no escape in that way. Nothing ever will turn up unless
you exercise your Free Will and go out and turn it up for
yourself by becoming acquainted with the Laws of Life, and
applying them to your own individual conditions. That is the
only way. Otherwise the years will pass all too swiftly, leaving
you just where you are now, if not worse off, for there is no
limit to the result of thought either for good or evil.
People have
dominion over all things when they know the Law of Being, and
obey it. The Law gives you power to bring any condition into
your life that is not harmful. The Law gives you power to
overcome your own weaknesses and faults of character, no matter
how often you may have failed in the past or how tenacious they
may have seemed to be. The Law gives you power to attain
prosperity and position without infringing the rights and
opportunities of anyone else in the world. The Law gives you
Freedom; freedom of soul, and body, and environment.
The law gives
you Independence so that you can build your own life in your own
way, in accordance with your own ideas and ideals; and plan out
your future along the lines that you yourself desire. If you do
not know what you really want to make you happy, then the Law
will tell you what you want, and get it for you, too. And the
Law rightly understood and applied will save you from the danger
of what is called "outlining" with all its risks and
limitations.
The Law will
endow you with the gift of what is called Originality;
Originality is the doing of things in a new way which is a
better way, and different from anyone else's way.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
A
new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn;
it can be stabbed to death by a quip, and worried to death
by a frown on the right person's brow.
Charlie
Brower
Humility
I want always to be humble, but it's a very difficult road that
arrives at humility. It's too easy to want to be right, to
want to be recognized as having been right, or powerful, or kind,
or particularly insightful. We like to be recognized by
other people, and our egos like it even more than our spirits or
our minds do. The struggle to remain humble really comes
down to a conflict with our own egos--and if we're unable to put
our egos in their right place, we'll continue to seek the approval
and admiration of others instead of doing things because we know
that they're right and proper.
As much as I wish to be humble, there's that other part of me that
wants people to recognized all of the work that I've put in,
getting to where I've gotten. That part of me wants the
respect that comes with accomplishment, and it really is not at
peace with being treated just like everyone else, even people who
haven't put in nearly as much work or who haven't accomplished
nearly as much. It's a part of me that I'm not too fond of,
but a very real part nonetheless.
I remind that part of myself that all that I've accomplished, I've
accomplished because other people have paved the way before
me. I also tell it constantly that I'm very fortunate to
have the skills and abilities that I do have, and that I did
nothing at all to earn them. I might have worked to develop
them, but that effort was mostly for self-gratification rather
than for other motives that might have been more altruistic.
It's important that I stay aware of my motives if I'm to be
realistic about what I've done and why I've done it.
True humility is
intelligent
self-respect which keeps us
from thinking too
highly or
too meanly of ourselves. It makes us mindful of
the
nobility God meant us
to have. Yet it makes us
modest
by reminding us
how far
we have come short
of what we can
be. -Ralph W. Sockman
The desire to
be recognized for what we've accomplished is a very
important motivator for many of us, and we learn to
expect recognition--even demand it, in some
cases--as we grow up. The major problem with
this approach, though, is that we learn to be
motivated extrinsically rather than intrinsically,
which means that all we do is motivated by
others--either their advice, their directions, or
their praise. Humility, though, is a state
that allows us to be motivated simply by the act of
doing, with no thought at all about how others are
going to react. This isn't a form of arrogance
or of being inconsiderate, though--rather, it's a
way to approach life that allows us to see what
needs to be done and then doing it, without being
concerned about whether others praise us for having
done it or not.
Humility is also a question of perspective, for how
we see the world shapes how we are, just as how we
are shapes how we see the world. This world is
a beautiful, marvelous place--that would do just
fine without us. The fact that we're here is a
fantastic gift that we've been given, not a license
to exert our will over creation. When we
realize that we're here to help to contribute to the
well-being of the world, we can see our place in
this world more clearly. Realizing that we are
but tiny specks in the vast realm of creation should
not make us feel weak and insignificant, for we are
neither. Humility allows us to realize just
how small we really are, but just how much potential
we have to contribute to our world at the same
time. After all, a beautiful puzzle is the
result of many small pieces working together to
create a whole; likewise, our worlds would be
incomplete without our personal contribution, but
the contributions of others is just as significant
and just as important as ours.
Being humble reminds me that I know very little
about this world of ours. I know very little
of other people's motivations and reasons. I
know very little of the long-term effects of
actions. My perspective, my knowledge, and my
intuition are limited. That doesn't make me
less worthwhile as a person, but it does remind me
that there is much, much more to this life than I'm
able to take in with my senses--so why should I
spend so much time trying to control things?
Humility is the highest of all virtues.
You can destroy your egotism
by developing this virtue alone. You can influence people.
You can become a magnet to attract the world. It must be genuine. Feigned humility is hypocrisy.
-Robert Collier
If I'm humble,
I do not put unrealistic expectations upon others,
and therefore I don't set myself up for the
disappointment that doing so causes. If I'm
humble, I don't place myself above others, and thus
I don't set myself up for the fall that doing so
sets us up for. If I live a humble life, I
don't build a shelter of material goods that really
does nothing to help to make me happy or content
with life. My humility helps me to see the
needs in other people, for it allows me to listen to
them and to do my best to understand them. And
other people do respond well to this trait of
mine--they like being around other people who don't
try to put them down to make themselves look better,
and who aren't always involved in subtle games of
one-upmanship that the humble person simply doesn't
need to play.
Humility has suffered from the unfortunate tendency
of some people to characterize it as weakness.
Since the humble person doesn't feel a need to exalt
him- or herself or to force others to submit to his
or her will, that person sometimes seems to be more
passive and less effective in life. The lack
of aggression or even assertiveness, though, should
by no means be seen as a lack of strength. In
fact, it takes the greatest strength we have to go
against the grain of our self-indulgent societies,
to march to our own drummers when the whole world is
telling us that we should--that we must--march to
theirs. Finding our own fulfillment in a world
that wants us to buy its fulfillment is a huge
challenge, one that humility can help us to meet
because we're not constantly involved in dealing
with the conflicts that so many lifestyles
constantly create.
We experience humility not
because we have fought and lost but
because humility is the only lens through which great things can
be
seen--and once we have seen them, humility
is the only posture possible. -Parker J. Palmer
Practicing
humility demands that develop a healthy perspective
on life, and that we allow ourselves to practice
acceptance of life as it is. Yes, there are
things in life that need to be changed, and we can
even be the bringers of change, but causing change
through humble means is much different than trying
to exert our wills on others. A humble
change-maker helps others to see the need for change
instead of telling others what needs to be changed
and how it needs to change. But acceptance of
the world allows us to focus on our own spheres of
influence, and allows us to give to the world the
best we have, without feeling disappointment when
we're not rewarded for our giving.
I want to be a humble person, and the fact that I've
wanted this for a long time but still have made
modest inroads into being truly humble is an
indication of the difficulty involved in living a
humble life. I'm still caught up in
possessions and asserting my will in many situations
in which I later realize my will wasn't
necessary--though not nearly to the extent that I
used to be. Humility is a way of being that
allows life to be life, and that permits us to enjoy
it just as it is, without feeling that we have to
modify it in order to make it more enjoyable.
From a humble place, I can give more to others and
they can find it easier to accept what I have to
give, for there will be no demands on them for
return. Humility is a difficult goal to strive
for, but a truly worthy one.
Simply
to have all the necessities of life and three meals a day will
not bring happiness. Happiness is hidden in the unnecessary
and in
those impractical things that bring delight to the inner person. . .
.
When we lack proper time for the simple pleasures of life, for the
enjoyment of eating, drinking, playing, creating, visiting friends,
and watching children at play, then we have missed the purpose
of life. Not on bread alone do we live, but on
all these human and heart-hungry luxuries. -
Ed
Hays
These
words from Albert Schweitzer changed my life, and they may
change yours: "You are happy. Therefore
you are called to give up much. Whatever you have
received more than others in health, in talents, in ability,
in a pleasant childhood, in harmonious conditions of home
life, all this you must not take to yourself as a matter of
course. You must pay for it. You must render in
return an unusually great sacrifice of your life for other
lives."
Clara
McBride Hale, or "Mother Hale" as she is called,
loves children and when she began finding abused, abandoned,
and even infants infected with the AIDS virus, she took them
in and loved them as her own.
In
1969, Mother Hale opened Hale House, a shelter for children
and a lifesaving environment for young drug-addicted
mothers. In recognition of her contribution, President
Ronald Reagan named Mother Hale an American Hero in 1985.
An
attitude of creative giving can become the greatest creative
force in the world. When we consider all that others
have done for us since the world began, we become stimulated
and inspired to do something for the world. In a deep
sense we owe the world a creative spirit. There are
millions of ways, great and small, that creative energy may
be put to work.
Success
in life is too often measured by what a person
acquires. More meaningful is what a person
contributes.
And
this goes beyond the contribution of money to the
contribution of ideas, plans, methods, ideals, visions,
projects. Behind all material progress is mental and
spiritual progress. The creative thinkers start the
ball rolling. They visualize programs and goals.
They dream dreams. They help people to grow.
And
in a personal way they enrich themselves in something more
than dollars. They contribute love, hope, courage,
faith, peace, and joy to others. Such a spirit of
contribution has broad and long-lasting influence; a depth
of true success is experienced that can be attained in no
other way.
Go-givers
are far more effective than go-getters, and when you give
ideas, you give the most precious gifts life has to offer,
for everything begins with an idea!
We must
be willing to get rid of
the life we've
planned, so as to have
the life that is waiting for us.
The old skin has to be shed
before the new one can come.
Joseph Campbell
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
™
