Live-Large

This may sound strange, but downtime can lead to “down” time (down, here, meaning depressed).

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, in his book Flow, discusses how an inactive mind often fills itself negative thoughts, what he terms “psychic entropy.” In an effort to ward of negative thoughts and feelings, people tend to occupy their minds with something, anything, to keep their attention from these unpleasant notions.

Csikszentmihalyi notes that most people (specifically Americans) occupy a substantial amount of their leisure time with watching the television (according to a Nielson study in 2006, the average American watched 4.5 hours of TV a day[1]) , which, according to Csikszentmihalyi, does little for the human psyche—as there is no challenge or reward in the passive activity of the mind (essentially the mind is in neutral). The reward in watching television comes in people’s ability to expend minimal effort while being able to keep their negative thoughts from creeping into the mind.

What might be an alternative?

Keep busy.

There are those who would disagree. Many people might think, for example, that we Americans are often too busy already. We spend forty plus hours at work and then fill our lives driving our children to piano lessons, soccer practice, play dates, etc.

I am such a parent (actually, my wife is). The resulting frenetic action leaves both of us exhausted. By Friday night, we’re dragging from so much activity that it takes both days of the weekend just to be physically/mentally able to return to work.

Yet some psychologists have linked being active with being happy[2], and, as the adage goes, “idle hands are the Devil’s tools,” so, in short, bumming around may sound like a dream for an exhausted mother, but too much bumming around 1) frees a mind to consider negative thoughts and 2) may lead to depression and/or boredom (psychic entropy).

The trick, then, is to keep busy doing enjoyable activities—something you feel you want to do, not have to do.

Try a few of these:

~Pick-up or return to a hobby: If you have a choice between watching the fifteenth rerun of a Seinfeld episode or taking up woodworking, try woodworking. If you already have a hobby but haven’t done it in awhile, dust off your skills and get busy.

~Reconnect with friends: Spend time socializing with some good friends. Meet at a local eatery and spend a couple of hours catching up.

~Play a board game with your kids: Instead of driving all over town in a mad dash to fill your children’s lives with every conceivable pastime, spend the evening playing a board game. My wife and I recently bought the board game Clue®. We’ve had a wonderfully fun time of connecting with the kids.

~Volunteer for a favorite cause: How much joy would you bring into another person’s life (and your own) if you spent a couple hours of time giving of your energy and effort to bring ease and comfort to someone else? I have volunteered hundreds of hours to special causes over the years, and it feels great. Pick your favorite cause and show up. They’ll put you to work!

~Read a book: Any book. Csikszentmihalyi has studied the difference in how people feel while watching television and while reading a book[1]. Books bring far more pleasure than watching the television. Pick a favorite author or a book you’ve heard a friend mention lately.

Filling your life with enjoyable activity is going to bring a new dimension to your life. If you feel the doldrums settling in, “get out and blow the stink off,” as my sister says.

Live Large!

Sources:
1. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper Perennial. New York.
2. Fordyce, M. The psychology of happiness: A brief version of the fourteen fundamentals. Cypress Lake Media.

Photo by: flik

Have you ever been in a bad mood and have someone try to make you laugh? I’m sure that you know, as I do, that you can’t be in a bad mood if you’re laughing.

Not only can laughter erase a bad mood but it also has a slew of other benefits. The University of Maryland Medical Center discovered that laughter can help:
• Reduce stress
• Lower blood pressure
• Elevate mood
• Boost the immune system
• Improve brain functioning, and
• Protect the heart [1]

In essence, any potential damage that can be caused by stress, depression, anger, or anxiety can be undone by laughter.

“The Doctor says, ‘You’ll live to be 60!’ ‘I AM 60!’ ‘See, what did I tell you?’”
—Henny Youngman

“If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.”
—Steven Wright

How many times do you laugh in a day? I mean really laugh…the laugh-from-the-belly-until-your-eyes-water-up kind of laugh.

Here are some suggestions for helping you experience a good laugh:

~Rent a movie that you know will make you laugh: It doesn’t have to be appropriate (as long as you’re watching it with others who share your sense of humor). My wife and I bust a gut while watching Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. This is a totally inappropriate movie (not for children), but Laurel and I often come close to peeing our pants while watching it.

~Buy your favorite comedian’s newest CD.

~Hang out with friends who make you chuckle.

~Read a funny book: If you don’t know which authors might be humorous, ask friends or the helpful clerk at Barnes and Nobel.

Better yet, how can you build a life around laughter? Try some of these ideas:

~Work on your sense of humor: You may not be the type that causes raucous laughter at the water cooler, but everyone can look for the humor in every situation. Those with good senses of humor look for what’s funny in the moment. Just be sure not to laugh at someone but with them.

~Lighten up: Being so serious can actually cause a heart attack (eventually). If you want to be happy and have a shot of living a long, healthy life, let the annoyances of life go. As the old adage goes, “Will this matter in a hundred years?” Learn to laugh at life’s vagaries.

~Be mischievous (to a point): Be quirky. Make stupid jokes. Play harmless pranks that make everyone (including the target of the joke) laugh.

~Seek out laughter: If you see people having a good time, join them.

~Make it a goal to belly laugh five times a day. If you haven’t almost wet your pants from laughter today, seek out an opportunity to do so. The search is well worth the effort!

Laugh to live, and live large!

Reference: www.helpguide.org/life/humor_laughter_health.htm

Photo by: craigallyn

The pursuit of living large is very much linked with the pursuit of happiness, of living life to its fullest. One suggestion of how to live life to its fullest was made by Dr. Michael Fordyce in The Psychology of Happiness when he recommended that people create a master list of fun[1].

Take a moment to do a quick mental scan of the activities you really enjoy, the things you really have fun doing.

If I were to think about my list of fun, it would include scuba diving, writing creatively, driving my motorcycle (when I’m not riding it to and from work), eating at a really nice restaurant with my wife or with friends. I could probably go on for a good while.

Dr. Fordyce’s goes on to state that happy people fill their lives with as many of these fun activities as possible. They are constantly thinking about and striving to live a life full of fun, which then leads to their living happier lives.

One might imagine, however, that there would come a point when a fun activity loses its luster. Say, for example, riding my motorcycle.

When I ride my motorcycle through a particularly scenic route when I have nowhere in particular to be, I can get lost in moment of man and machine. I have a ball. Take the same activity but put me in the middle of rush hour after a long day of work, and that fun activity is just a means of transportation.

Take, as another example, sitting down and watching a good movie, which happens to be an item on my wife’s fun list. The first movie seems to be a decadent little treat, an escape from the daily grind, but, if she were to sit through five movies in a weekend, not only would her backside be squawking but so too would her conscience. Work needs to be done, and what was an enjoyable activity becomes a waste of valuable time.

Seen from this perspective, the fun list is best varied and taken in moderation.

Another dynamic of the fun list is the cost associated with having fun. I truly enjoy scuba diving. While I was in Nebraska (amazingly), I could dive often and for little money, but, since coming to Arizona, I have yet to dive, even though the ocean is less than a day’s drive away. My “fun” activity has become too expensive to enjoy on any regular basis. I have to pick and choose when I can reasonably dive.

How can you do the items on your fun list while keeping to a budget (which is a larger question when considering the entire philosophy of living large)?

This is a concept that I’ll look at in the near future, but it is important that the basic idea of the fun list is still valid: if you partake in more activities on your fun list, you will live large more often.

Here are some ideas to make that happen:

~Create a master list of fun: Fill it with every conceivable enjoyable activity that you can think of—the more the better. Fill it with big productions and small five minute activities. Fill it with costly activities that you might be able to do once a year and free activities that you can do weekly or even daily.

~Vary the activities that you choose from the list: Don’t overdo any one particular activity. Variety is the spice of life. Review your list regularly and chose activities that strike you as novel or interesting. Look to do activities that you haven’t done in awhile. Challenge yourself not to repeat any one item in a week or a month.

~Budget for your fun: If you have some items on your fun list that might break the bank or send you into deep debt if you did them too often, don’t cross them off your list as being impractical. Put yourself on a budget and stash a small amount of money into a savings account at regular intervals. When you have enough in the account to take part in that fun activity, live it up (and take lots of pictures)!

~Share your list: Do you have any fun activities in common with those close to you or with those who you work with? If so, plan activities with your friends and family. If you all have camping on your list, take a group camping trip. You might also find that others around you share similar interests, which creates a bond between you that will lead to a friendship or that might lead to a closer friendship than you have already.

~Research the items on your list: I firmly believe that adventure begins in the mind. If you have a desire to travel, research some great travel adventures that you might be able to take. I’ve often thought of walking from Alaska to Cape Horn (if you don’t know where that is, look it up). Doing so is obviously not possible in one sitting—or perhaps in a lifetime, but that doesn’t stop me from looking up routes, researching folks who have driven the course, reading about the climate in the areas that I’d be walking through, etc. I have done some of that, and I’ve enjoyed every minute.

~Have fun with your master fun list: Play with the concept. Add to your list. Have great fun checking off an experience that you’d consider a once in a lifetime activity, or have as much fun putting hash marks by the items you can do regularly. The point behind the master list of fun is…to have fun. Be imaginative. Be playful.

My hope for you is that you take the time today (or soon) to actually sit down and create your list. Then I hope that you set about using it.
Live Large!

[1] The Psychology of Happiness: A Brief Version of the Fourteen Fundamentals. www.gethappy.net

Photo by: truello

Okay, so I was in a pretty foul mood this last Sunday. It seemed that everything was conspiring to tick me off. Ever have one of those days?

I felt like a big hypocrite, given the focus of Live-Large. Then again, into every life a little rain must fall. It is what we do with that rain (which came to me in the form of a foul mood) that’s important.

In my search for ways to live a happier life, I have learned coping mechanisms to reject the rancor that occasionally sours my mood, but none of them were working for me that day.

Some time after the fact, I looked back at my dark mood and tried to figure out what got me upset and what contributed to keeping me there.

~I couldn’t find space: I couldn’t find the space to allow the anger out and the calmness in. I felt barraged by lunacy on every corner (from bad drivers to my kids—who seemed determined to cause mischief).

~Mounting frustration: Since recently moving to Tucson, my wife and I have spent time trying to reestablish our lives. Things that we’d taken for granted in our last home (such as who to see for a hair cut or which church to attend) are just not working out here. I know that this takes time, but it’s occasionally frustrating. As we struggle with these issues, the frustration that I feel can catapult me into a bad mood, as was the case this last Sunday.

~Exhaustion: I painted my bathroom over the weekend. Actually, I’ve been working on that bathroom for a week, and it still isn’t done. The work is highly detailed and backbreaking. With my energy levels low and my pain levels high, I had a small window by which to operate without losing my temper. I was simply tired and needed a rest.

Once I was in my bad mood, I realized it right away. I could feel my jaw get tight and my face become flushed with my emotion. I also knew that the work of getting myself out of the bad mood rested squarely on my shoulders.

“I can do this,” I said to myself. “You know how to get out of a bad mood.” And I do…intellectually, but changing one’s state of mind is not always easy. In fact, it could be among the most difficult tasks a person sets about doing, but what’s the alternative…remain miserable?

When I finally got some space, both physically and mentally, I was able to begin decompressing. When I was able to sit down and rest, not only was I able to regain some energy but my resiliency to irritants also increased. The final piece, that of reestablishing the routines of my life, is going to be more difficult, but I know that I need to push through the occasional bouts of aggravation to find the peace of mind on the other side of that effort.

When faced with situations like mine, don’t kick yourself for how you feel. It’s important to accept that you can’t be happy all the time, yet it’s equally important to learn how to reject the anger and irritation so that you can reclaim your happiness and peace.

Live large!

Image by: Dan4th

When my grandfather died, my Uncle Ted made a simple but profound statement of my grandfather’s life: “Dad died having played all of his cards.”

Wow! How many people can have that said about them? More importantly, how did it happen?

Perhaps the simplest answer is that he had a vision of what a well-lived life would look like, and then he set about making it happen.

What do I mean by a vision of a well-lived life?

Here are some examples:

~Live a value-based life: My grandfather had very clear values. He knew what was important to him, and he kept those things central in his life. Love, family, dignity—simple words but they were absolutely central to his life. Find what’s valuable to you and make it the focus of your existence (i.e. spend your time, energy, and effort toward these things).

~Have a short list of wants: This is perhaps the most challenging to people in our society. My grandfather lived simply. He learned an early lesson of not wanting things; rather, they wanted a quality of life: happiness, a loving family, health, opportunities to have special memories with those they loved. The fancy car in the driveway, the vacation home, the expensive club membership did nothing for him. A barbeque at home with his children and grandchildren, a simple road trip to the Grand Canyon in a tent meant the world.

~Know what you want to experience in life: My grandfather loved traveling and seeing the world. He also had an insatiable curiosity of the world around him. He knew what he wanted to experience in his life. He took his time, saved his money, and pursued his goals with tenacity. If you know what you want to experience, it is easier to make plans to make it happen.

~Strive to do and be your best: My grandfather was a math teacher and farmer. These are not the glamorous jobs that offer six-figure salaries (typically), but he loved his work. He felt that he was needed. The position matters less than how you approach your work and your life. If you strive to do your level best every day, if you look to push your skills and continue to grow in your profession and as a person, you will be someone of distinction because pushing hard to do your best is an uncommon quality. If you work hard and do your best, you’ll be able to live with pride in your work and live with a sense that you gave it all that you had. A clean conscience makes a soft pillow.

~Always look on the bright side of life: Life is going to have its troubles. Guaranteed! You can either dwell on how life has handed you rotten apples, or you can focus on your blessings. My grandfather was a dedicated optimist. This takes more effort than one believes. It is easy to be negative and hard to be optimistic. You have to actually train your mind how to look for the good in every situation. It takes discipline not to allow negativity to swamp your perspective.

Probably the most important lesson my grandfather taught me was that life is a choice. You can live it small or live it large. You only have one life, so why spend it unhappy?

I’d love to hear from you! What have you witnessed from those who’ve lived a life well led.

Live Large!