A longtime reader emails me every five years or so, to say that he still thinks of me every morning when he makes his bed. Back in 2009 I wrote a post about the psychological benefit of immediately making your bed when you wake up. (It’s an easy little mission that gets you shaping your day right away – a foolproof first move to carpe your diem.)

There’s a different reader I think of on a daily basis, one who invited me to visit him at his home in Norway. While I was there, he gave me an AeroPress coffeemaker and showed me his brewing method. After spilling hot coffee grounds all over his kitchen on my first attempt, I got the hang of it. I still think of him for a moment every single morning, when I stir the grounds with the bamboo stick he gave me.

When I’m at the car wash, I always think of my dad, because he once said, “Nothing gets clean without the foamy brush.” I always use the foamy brush and my car always comes out looking great. It’s a bit of my dad’s insight living on in me, among many other bits.

I like that things work this way. Ideas and ways of doing can zap between minds, and make a home in the new person. From there they can zap to other people’s minds and so on. After you die, someone may still be tying their shoes your way, or making chicken soup your way — maybe whole families of people, who knows.

Take my ideas, please

I publish blog posts here hoping that I can zap some of the best things I’ve discovered about being human into other people’s minds. I write weird posts about obscure mental practices because I want people to do them. If people do them, they might really get them, and if people get them, the ideas I’m trying to get across here can finally deliver their value.

I want people to do these odd practices because the cost is so low compared to the benefit. Playing the secret ally to strangers, for example, takes thirty seconds of your attention here or there, and can transform your relationship to public spaces, strangers, and society as a whole. Imagining the disappearance of your friends (or your socks) for ten seconds can make almost any ordinary moment feel like a gift. That’s a very good deal! I want people to be doing this stuff after I’m dead and gone.

Different people click with different ideas of course, but if you’re a regular reader, presumably you must believe there’s something actionable here for you, something you could pick up and make a part of your life.

Ideas don’t work as long as they remain ideas

Many readers say they print out their favorite Raptitude posts, presumably in the hope that doing so will turn the initial spark of recognition, the feeling of “Hey, I should do that!” into a thing they actually do in their lives. The reader in Norway showed me a binder he made of some of my posts. A few people have mailed me copies of bound books they made from their favorites.

I’m always printing out other people’s ideas too, hoping this will somehow make the epiphany permanent, that it will zap the idea into myself and make it a thing I do. If you do that too, you know that printing or highlighting some wise words doesn’t usually make them into a thing you actually do and live by. The books on my shelves are full of page tabs and underlined sentences that affected me when I read them, but few of them changed how I live.

An idea doesn’t do anything until it becomes actions. Printing an idea on paper makes it more tangible, but keeps it in idea form. Ultimately it has to leave the realm of words and get printed onto your motor neurons. If it doesn’t, the spark of insight fades and nothing comes of it.

In my experience, it works like this: if I act on an idea a few times – such as I have with Tolstoy’s do-your-25-miles-and-rest idea – and it pays off, there’s a good chance it will become a part of how I live. If I only read it and tape it to the wall, hoping to remember and act that way when it counts, it’s unlikely it will ever make it out of idea form.

Two ways to get past “ideas only” mode

With this in mind, I’ve been focusing on forming an active community around Raptitude. Instead of just broadcasting my ideas to the world, I’m getting people together to try them out in their lives, and talk about what happens when they do.

I wish I’d made this a priority earlier. As you might know, my last experiment birthed an ongoing “Renunciation Club”, where people give things up for a month, breaking habits and forming new ones. (Go here if want to try that.)

There’s also been a lot of interest in the upcoming Raptitude Field Trip 2, which is great, because these virtual field trips are most direct way to discover what I’m really getting at with this blog.

For those who missed the first one, it’s where a bunch of readers take Raptitude practices “into the field” (i.e. your life) to see what happens. I give you easy how-to instructions, you go and try them, and (if you wish) report how it went in the forum.

They’re all simple perceptual exercises, having to do with how you meet your day-to-day experience. Most of them take less than one minute at a time, but they can change the tone of your day, and if you do them regularly they can improve whole areas of your life, as they have with mine.

The Field Trip is a fun and lightweight mini-course for helping people discover the hidden riches in day-to-day life, which is what this blog is all about. I try to keep the whole program about as cheap as ordering a large pizza.

You also get to chat with your fellow readers, who are a keen and helpful bunch. And me, I’m there too.

Three things to know about Raptitude Field Trip 2

You can sign up for the new Field Trip today. A few things to know:

1. If you did participate in the previous Field Trip, this one is all-new. Same format, all new practices.

2. The official start date will be February 10, and you can do it at your own pace.

3. This isn’t a thing you need to schedule time for. The lessons are short and the practices take a minute or two here and there. You play with them when you’re out and about in the world.

Sign up now | How does it work?

[What people said about the first Raptitude Field Trip]

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