Time for another experiment. This one I’ve been meaning to do for a long time. The idea behind it has made the rounds for a few years now and I’m not the first to do it, but I think the concept is fascinating and brimming with potential.
One day Will Bowen, a mild-mannered Missouri Reverend, challenged his congregation to develop their habit of gratitude by going 21 consecutive days without complaining or criticizing.
His method was quite simple and ingenious: Read More
I forged my own blade yesterday, from an unassuming piece of plain steel. With some expert instruction, I pounded it on an anvil, ground the blade down, fitted it with a brass hilt, polished and sharpened it. The handle is made out of native timber that was salvaged from a dismantled insane asylum. Read More
The first week of January is a natural time to look back. Just as the earth begins another whirl around the Sun, we can’t avoid confronting the reality that yet another sizable chunk of lifetime has been sealed and locked away in the archives. We don’t get many of those chunks, seventy or eighty if we’re lucky, so it makes sense to step back, look at how we’ve spent this last one, and adjust the sails if necessary.
A family member had a great idea and passed it on to me. This time of year, we should all come up with the year’s highlights, much the way they do for sports, news, and the arts. It’s a good way to identify exactly what the year means to us when we consider the big picture, zoomed out far enough that we can only see the brightest bits.
So here’s the deal. I’ll post my top five highlights of 2009, and hopefully you will be inspired to post yours, either in the comments below, or on your own blog if you’ve got one.
Approach it however you like. They can be things you started or finished in 2009, decisions you’ve made, experiences you’ve had or any other memories that stand out. All that’s important is that they serve to represent to you this particular chapter in your story, whether you’ve been authoring it consciously, or haphazardly. Read More
There was a moment last week when I found myself standing on a beach I never could have imagined. Bookended by two cliffs was a great, smooth expanse of the most otherworldly sand. It was like a Neapolitan ice cream of fine golden sand, exotic black obsidian grains, and clear, saltlike crystals.
In the distance, perhaps a hundred metres away, a ferocious surf pounded, sending the occasional sheet of water sliding halfway up the beach and back into the sea, leaving different artwork in the sand each time. Read More
So I get on one wagon and fall off another.
My third official Raptitude experiment, 30 Days Without Drugs, was a resounding success in my eyes. I accomplished my goal and dismantled a persistent problem in my life. I’m now much less inclined to compromise my state of mind with the offhanded use of alcohol and caffeine. Now a month since the experiment ended, my lifestyle seems to be permanently changed for the better.
But during that time, I’ve slipped into an apathetic attitude towards food intake. I find myself eating more, and more often.
My workout routine also fell off the map, as it was already starting to by the end of my slightly less successful kettlebell experiment back in May and June.
As a result, I’ve put on an unappetizing ring of midsection fat. It shrunk while I was working out regularly, but now it’s back, trying to make me its permanent home. I want to get rid of it, which means getting rid of the habit that put it there. Read More
Everyone gets drilled with certain lessons in life. Sometimes it takes repeated demonstrations of a given law of life to really get it into your skull, and other times one powerful experience drives the point home once forever. Here are 88 things I’ve discovered about life, the world, and its inhabitants by this point in my short time on earth.
1. You can’t change other people, and it’s rude to try.
2. It is a hundred times more difficult to burn calories than to refrain from consuming them in the first place.
3. If you’re talking to someone you don’t know well, you may be talking to someone who knows way more about whatever you’re talking about than you do.
4. The cheapest and most expensive models are usually both bad deals.
5. Everyone likes somebody who gets to the point quickly.
6. Bad moods will come and go your whole life, and trying to force them away makes them run deeper and last longer.
7. Children are remarkably honest creatures until we teach them not to be.
8. If everyone in the TV show you’re watching is good-looking, it’s not worth watching. Read More
When I sit down to write an article for Raptitude, I always try to pick a topic that I can resonate with at that particular time. I’ve got a folder full of great ideas for posts. At any given time, I’m only in the right headspace to write something decent about maybe ten percent of them. The topic has to match how I feel or else it’s just talk.
I write about gratitude when I’m feeling grateful, I write about reverence when I’m feeling reverent, and I write about misery when I’m feeling miserable.
I’m in a difficult place at the moment, and so most of my thoughts are about a particular type of difficulty. My lease is up at the end of this month so I have to be out, and I’m having trouble finding a new place to live. I can’t sign a new lease because I’ll be gone traveling this fall. I’m scrambling to find a decent home within my budget in a decent neighborhood. I don’t know what will happen, where I will go, only that I can’t remain where I am.
Things will work out I’m sure, but there is an ever-present sense of uncertainty, all night and all day. Read More
I feel very blessed. I seem to be drawing a small but growing group of some of the most thoughtful, intelligent readers around.
I appreciate you all very much, you’ve done more for me than you know.
I had a lengthy article all ready to go for today, but I’ll post it another day. I won’t fill your head with my opinions this morning, there will be plenty of those later.
Instead, I’ll just take this chance to wish you a good day. And I mean you, as a person. Have a great Friday, really.
Whatever you have on your plate on this particular day, I hope it’s not too troublesome for you. But if it is, know that it matters to me too, because I like you.
If there’s anything I can do for you from my computer chair that won’t get me fired, send me an email.
Thank you all for coming, I’m honored.
Photo by jRa7
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Rich man crying ‘cause his money is time / Poor man smiling ‘cause he knows he ain’t blind
~ Sam Roberts, “Brother Down”
I can remember more than one night I spent wide awake as a child, frightened from a scary movie or some other show I wasn’t supposed to watch. As scared as I was, I knew from experience that the night would eventually be over, and I would be fine, but that wouldn’t dispel the fear. No matter what kind of reasoning I could summon, the fear wouldn’t budge, and I’d be trapped in that awful situation until the sun came up.
Waking my parents to tell them I was scared would do no good. They could only comfort me for a few moments, then turn out the light and leave me again, vulnerable to any and all zombies or giant reptiles that happened to invade my room.
Once they’d left I’d have no choice but to hide completely under the covers, the edges tucked under my body, so that if a wandering bedroom carnivore did happen to eat me, it would just bite cleanly through this neatly packaged child without my having to ever see it happening. I figured that ensuring a sudden and speedy demise was the best I could do in those hopeless situations.
This was not a frequent occurrence but it did happen from time to time, and each time I ached so badly for nighttime to be over. It always came so slowly. I yearned for the sun. It didn’t really matter what the next day would contain, as long as it was light out and there were other people around. I would take anything: unloading the dishwasher, helping my dad organize the garage, standing in line at the 7-11… anything but to be here, alone in the dark. Read More
My mom left out a few lessons that a lot of other kids got. Certain common habits, I just never developed because nobody taught me.
In the last few years I’ve become more and more interested in people, and I pay more attention to passers-by when I’m out and about. One thing that always enthralls me is seeing children learn from their parents. A wide-eyed and curious child, watching his mother’s actions and words, is a powerful sight to behold. It affects me today in ways it never had before. Now that I’m older and firmly in the habit of examining my habits, I can see how crucial those moments are in shaping a kid’s life.
What the parent does in those moments, in front of her vulnerable, impressionable child, is a far-reaching act of creation. How she interacts with her own world is probably the greatest factor in determining how that child will deal with his own life when he’s free to make his own decisions. Read More
I'm David, and Raptitude is a blog about getting better at being human -- things we can do to improve our lives today.
This is one of the coolest concepts, thank you! (Also, love FlyLady!)