There once was a writer of Romance /
Who had a stance on love at first glance. /
It was hard for him to believe /
Or even try to conceive /
That it could be done while still wearing your pants.
Lee Child | December 28, 2019 – Air Mail
Given the enduring consistency with which Lee Child delivers sophisticated, gripping novels, you’d think he reads crime fiction and nothing else. Somehow, though, the British author, best known for his Jack Reacher thriller series, finds time for books he groups in the “random” category: “I grew up reading, before the Internet, before book-club culture, before any kind of recommendation network, and I became addicted to random finds—books I had never heard of, fields I had never thought about, avenues I had never explored,” says Child, whose new Jack Reacher novel, Blue Moon, is out now from Delacorte. This addiction has not gone away, and today Child allots about a third of his reading for random books. “True randomness is hard for the human mind to achieve,” he adds, “so lately I have enlisted my wife to bring me finds that are random to her, and thus doubly random to me.” Here, four of her latest successes.
Annals of the Former World, by John McPhee
A 4.6-billion-year geological history of the landmass now called the United States, beautifully written, always engaging, profoundly educational, and overwhelmingly humbling, in that our brief spark of existence really is nothing, compared to what came before and will come after.
When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought, by Jim Holt
Truthfully not 100 percent random, because I already knew Einstein and Gödel, but the book is mostly not about them—it’s about anyone who moved science and math down the field. The Los Angeles Review of Books called it a perfect bedtime book, which it was—the prose is clear and the touch is light; I would read an essay a night, making sure I totally got it, and then I would go to bed. The next morning some of it would come back to me, half-remembered, vague, but somehow magical—everything a great bedtime story should be.
Vacuum in the Dark, by Jen Beagin
Randomly selecting a novel stands a better-than-random chance of coming up with something like this, because this is where the talent is right now, and the passion and the energy and the ideas—whip-smart women writing whip-smart books that are simultaneously deep and funny. Balancing the two is harder than it looks, and Beagin does it better than most. This is her second novel, and I’m looking forward to her third. It won’t be a random find.
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, by Hallie Rubenhold
Jack the Ripper is one of history’s greatest true-crime obsessions. Who was he? Why did he do what he did? That stuff has been debated endlessly. This book, instead, is about his victims. Usually, and conveniently, they have in the past been written out of the story as common prostitutes, but they weren’t, Rubenhold shows us. They were five separate women with five complex lives, and hearing their stories feels like justice done, in a way. Crime is about the victims. Maybe it wasn’t a random choice. Maybe it was editorial input.
My New Year reading resolution? Less guilt for giving up on books | Books | The Guardian
Sat 11 Jan 2020 03.00 EST
Source: My New Year reading resolution? Less guilt for giving up on books | Books | The Guardian
As we enter 2020, and I enter your lives as a regular columnist, here are my reading resolutions for the coming year. First, I have to read more. The political climate feels mighty exclusionary, and reading narratives unlike our own seems the best way to access different perspectives, and to remind ourselves that the society we live in holds so many different stories.
Resolution two: as someone who mostly reads non-fiction for fear of accidentally adopting someone else’s voice, I’m getting back into fiction (fear be gone, Candice, get over yourself), plus poetry and plays. Inua Ellams’s powerful transposing of Chekhov’s Three Sisters from Russia to Nigeria at the National Theatre reminded me that a script offers a unique narrative; movement and tone are still there, but the starkness of description allows us to focus on exactly what’s being said.
My third resolution is to stop reading a book if it doesn’t vibe with me, give it to someone else, and to remember that guilt is a wasted emotion. But before all of that, let’s try and get through winter. Why is summer seen as prime reading time? What else are we going to do in January but lock ourselves away and read? Or listen. I’m listening to Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Virtue and Vengeance. Bahni Turpin’s voice brings the words to rich and transporting life.
• Candice Carty-Williams wrote Queenie and co‑created the Guardian 4th Estate BAME short story prize.
Photo finish Friday (and haiku): “New Year”
Gentle are the hopes
Open are the promises
Lighting the New Year.
Monday morning writing joke: “Writer in the Kremlin”
There once was a writer in the Kremlin
Whose words were always dissembling.
No matter what he’d say
The writer would explain it away –
Even when Trump was Putin dwelling.
Want a Happier, More Fulfilling Life? 75-Year Harvard Study Says Focus on This 1 Thing
We’ve already uncovered the key to long-term happiness and fulfillment.
Source: Want a Happier, More Fulfilling Life? 75-Year Harvard Study Says Focus on This 1 Thing
[Editor’s note: While not directly related to writing, this information can be used to build and understand characters in your writing. Or to be thankful for those who help you write.]
Positive Alacrity is the art of creating micro-experiences that have an emotionally uplifting impact on others. But I’m getting ahead of myself …
A quick Google search for “secret to happiness” brings up over 7,500,000 results.
That’s a lot of people writing about and searching for something that, according to a groundbreaking Harvard study, has already been found.
That’s right: Thanks to Harvard’s Grant and Glueck studies — which tracked 724 participants from varying walks of life over the course of 75 years — we’ve already uncovered the key to long-term happiness and fulfillment.
The answer? Our relationships.
Here’s Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development:
“The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”
In other words: The quality of our life — emotionally, physically, and mentally — is directly proportional to the quality of our relationships.
But there’s a catch. If there’s one thing most of us have learned, it’s this: Just knowing a lot of people isn’t enough.
True fulfillment in relationships is about genuine connection, and one of the most efficient ways to form that connection is by practicing what we at Mindmaven call Positive Alacrity; a skill we define as creating micro-experiences that cause an emotional uplifting in others.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Relationships
Did we really need a 75-year study to tell us relationships are important?
Probably not; I bet many of you already knew that. So why do we so often struggle to treat many of the most important relationships in our lives with the reverence and priority we know they deserve?
For example, do any of these situations sound familiar?
- When under stress, you may have a tendency to be ruder to your spouse than you’d ever dream of being to a complete stranger.
- When building a business, you’re willing to work 60-hour weeks but somehow never “have time” to check in with lifelong friends.
- Speaking of business: You may fail to consistently and proactively invest in deepening the professional relationships that might provide the breakthrough opportunities you need.
So why do we do this? Because …
Although many things in life are deadline and urgency driven, relationships almost never are.
As a result, they’re often one of the first parts of our lives that we neglect until we “find the time.”
The good news is, building those deep, meaningful relationships isn’t as daunting or time-consuming as it may sound. In fact, by focusing on one habit, anyone can build more fulfilling relationships every day.
The Secret Factor Controlling the Quality of Your Relationships
But what determines the level of fulfillment we find in our relationships? It isn’t simply “knowing” the other person.
What makes you feel happy or fulfilled isn’t the relationship itself, but the interactions that make that relationship up.
Here’s what it comes down to: The only path to achieving the goal of a fulfilling life is to have fulfilling relationships, and those relationships can only be created by consistently connecting through meaningful interactions.
Let me illustrate with a few examples.
#1: “I just want you to know how much I appreciate you.”
John’s wife Sarah welled up with tears as she read the unexpected thank you note her husband had written her before he left on a 6:00am flight for a business trip.
John — the CEO of an aggressively growing startup — thanked his wife for all the support and grace she’d given him over the last three years as he worked long hours to reach his — and his company’s — fullest potential.
The short note left Sarah feeling appreciated, loved, and truly known by her husband.
#2: “Thank you for sacrificing your time for our vision.”
Hannah, a recent intern-turned-engineer at a public company, felt pleasantly surprised and greatly affirmed after Erin, the CEO, walked over to her cubicle specifically to say thank you.
Without prompting, Hannah had recently pulled an all-nighter in order to ensure a backend patch was completed on time to restore server stability. And even though Erin’s visit was shorter than 30 seconds, the fact that the interaction was focused solely on thanking Hannah left her feeling appreciated for stepping up and excited to work for the company.
#3: “So you never have to lose something again.”
Cole — a die-hard Atlanta Falcons fan — laughed in amusement as he wrote back “Thanks, but I hate you lol ;)” to Rob, a friend who had sent him a Tile following the Falcon’s 2017 Super Bowl loss so he’d, “never have to lose something important again.”
The practical joke made Cole smile and deepened the sense of connection and friendly rivalry the two of them shared.
The Science-Backed Power of Positivity
Here’s the key takeaways from those examples: Each time, someone performed a small, lightweight gesture. For example:
- John’s handwritten note to his wife,
- Erin’s 30-second interaction, or
- Rob’s quick email and gift.
And despite the ease of each interaction, they all delivered an uplifting sense of connection to the other person.
But perhaps the best proof of the power of interactions comes from Dr. Martin Seligman’s famous Gratitude Visits. For those unfamiliar, Dr. Seligman — founder of the positive psychology movement — introduced the concept of Gratitude Visits in a University of Pennsylvania study.
Here’s how it worked: Participants were asked to write a 300+ word letter of gratitude to someone in their life, and to then visit the recipient and read the letter aloud to them.
Simple though that may be, the effects were profound: Although Gratitude Visits were one of many positivity practices recorded in the study, they were the only practice that had participants reporting increased happiness and decreased depression for a full month after completing the action.
And while I fully support the practice of Gratitude Visits, they come with a challenge: Most of us don’t have time to sit down and write a 300-word letter every time we feel positive or grateful.
So I figured if Gratitude Visits are truly one of the most fulfilling things we can do, there must be a way we can simplify it into a habit that can be practiced daily.
Building Happy, Fulfilling Relationships with Ease
The solution? Positive Alacrity.
At the end of the day, this concept’s all about consistently delivering small, simple experiences that leave people feeling genuinely uplifted. So how do we do this? It all comes down to a single habit:
When you think something positive and you genuinely believe it, voice it.
As simple as that habit may be, we believe the impact of Positive Alacrity is as profound as Gratitude Visits, with one distinct advantage: That same simplicity allows you to practice it anytime, anywhere, with practically anyone.
Why? Because most of us already think positive thoughts on a daily basis. For example, I wouldn’t be surprised if you often thought things like …
- “That’s a really insightful way to look at the situation,”
- “I really appreciate the way she listens to me,” or
- “Wow, he handled that ordeal really well.”
Pause a moment and test it for yourself: When was the last time you thought something positive? I’d venture to bet it was within the last 24 hours.
The problem is, we often let these thoughts come and go without ever practicing Positive Alacrity. But when we forgo voicing these thoughts to others, we cheat ourselves out of a valuable opportunity to enrich our relationships in three key ways:
- When you voice positive thoughts, you make the recipient feel emotionally uplifted.
- This feeling elevates their appreciation of you and the relationship you share.
- Because you were the source of that interaction, their emotional response creates an incredibly fulfilling sense of happiness and satisfaction in you.
That last part’s key: By uplifting others, we inadvertently uplift ourselves. Why? Because …
The effects of Positive Alacrity go both ways.
For instance, remember the example above with Hannah the CEO and Erin the engineer?
As a seasoned leader, Erin closely observed Hannah as she thanked her for working so diligently on that patch; so she noticed as Hannah’s expression slowly shifted from shocked confusion to recognition and, finally, to realization.
Seeing Hannah’s cheeks flush, smile spread, and eyes gleam made Erin realize she’d just delivered something truly meaningful, and Hannah’s reaction created a tremendous sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in Erin as the one who delivered that interaction.
If you’ve ever been in a similar situation to Erin’s, you probably understand exactly how she’s feeling, and know just how uplifting those feelings can be.
When you practice Positive Alacrity, you’re not only uplifting others. Above all, you’re uplifting yourself.
Positive Alacrity in Action: Mastering the Habit of Intentional Positivity
The action itself is simple: Think something positive? Voice it.
But until we turn that conscious action into an unconscious habit, we won’t be able to fully leverage it to impact our relationships and enrich our lives. And that all starts with a shift in awareness.
By default, positive thoughts often slip through the cracks before they ever reach conscious acknowledgement, let alone vocal affirmation. So how do you become more aware? By becoming intentional.
Once you’ve become aware of a positive thought, consciously label it “Positive,” then ask yourself: Do I genuinely believe this?
If you believe it, voice it. Positivity works so long as it’s perceived as genuine, and as long as you truly believe what you’re saying you can usually count on a positive outcome.
Habitualizing and Compounding the Secret to Happiness
Keep in mind: As with any new habit, practicing Positive Alacrity is probably going to feel a little clumsy or unnatural at first. But as long as you genuinely believe what you say, it doesn’t matter how awkward it comes out because it’s real.
The most important thing is that you’re voicing it. And if you’re able to push through that initial awkwardness, I can practically guarantee the process will become second nature in no time.
So how do you start? Thankfully, the practice is as simple as the theory. Try following this three-step process to utilize Positive Alacrity today.
- Recognition: Think of something positive that happened within the last 24 hours, then ask yourself: “Who was the cause of (or involved in) this experience that I could thank or compliment?”
- Specificity: Ask yourself: “What specifically did I like or appreciate about this experience/situation?”
- Action: Now, voice it. Pay this person a face-to-face visit. If that doesn’t work, call them. If you can’t call them, then text or email them; immediately, before you finish reading this.
Keep in mind: The steps above are an example of how to leverage Positive Alacrity retroactively, but it’s even easier to perform as you move forward in your day-to-day life.
The only thing you have to do is increase your ability to recognize these thoughts as they occur, then voice them as you become aware of them (rather than once a year when the holidays roll around).
John, Erin, and Rob are prime examples of these principles in action:
- While getting ready to leave on his business trip, John looked over at his sleeping wife and realized just how appreciative he was for her continued understanding about his hectic travel schedule. So instead of just grabbing his jacket and heading out the door, John went over to the study, picked up some stationery, and wrote Sarah a short note expressing those feelings.
- After learning of Hannah’s all-nighter, all Erin had to do was have a 30-second conversation genuinely thanking her. The only risk she took? Potentially being a few seconds late to her next meeting.
- And as the Falcon’s loss made Rob realize how long it’d been since he and Cole talked, the only actions he had to take were writing his friend a tongue-in-cheek note and asking his assistant to mail it off along with a package of Tiles.
John, Erin, and Rob all spent less than a minute acting on their positive thoughts, but the uplifting emotions from those simple interactions have the potential to last for months.
And what about Sarah, Hannah, and Cole, the recipients of those interactions? They’re probably going to walk through the rest of the day feeling uplifted and empowered. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if, later that same day, they provided a similar experience for someone else.
That’s the Pay-it-Forward principle in practice:
A single positive interaction can have a multiplicative effect, building and spreading further than you’d ever imagine.
Ultimately, those simple interactions are the heart of Positive Alacrity and the foundation for meaningful relationships. And, as that 75-year Harvard study taught us, those very same relationships are the secret to lifelong happiness and fulfillment.
Want to master the art of Positive Alacrity to revolutionize your relationships and enhance your life? If this was intriguing and valuable to you, and you’d like to learn more …
Click here to learn how to incorporate Positive Alacrity into your day-to-day life!
About the Author:
Patrick Ewers is the founder and CEO of Mindmaven, an executive coaching firm and educational platform focused on helping startup CEOs, executives and their team members achieve their fullest potential by delivering exceptional experiences to the most valuable relationships in their network.
Check out his blog, then follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn for more content like this.
Filed under 2019, character, character study
Why Do We Gesture When We Talk?
We all know people who talk with their hands. Turns out there’s quite a bit of research around the relationship between language and gestures.
Source: Why Do We Gesture When We Talk?
In the early 1970s, David McNeill, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago, was giving a talk in a Paris lecture hall when something odd caught his eye. There was a woman in the back of the room moving her arms in a way that seemed to convey exactly what he was saying. It took him a moment to realize that she was speaking, too, and another to realize that she was an interpreter, translating his words into French. For McNeill, that moment of confusion sparked an insight that would lead to a lifetime of research: Gesture and speech are not as separate as they seem.
Gesture researchers have spent the past 40+ years uncovering how movements (like a cupped hand rotating in space or a finger tracing a path through the air) are intimately tied to speech. Regardless of their spoken language or culture, humans gesture when they talk. They gesture even if they have never seen gestures before—people who have been blind since birth do it—and they gesture even if they’re talking to someone on the phone and know no one can see them. When speech is disrupted—by stuttering, for example—so is gesture.
In fact, gesture is so tightly bound to language that differences between languages show up as subtle differences in gesture. Whether a language puts information on the verb (“He flies out” in English), or on a particle outside the verb (“He exits flying,” in Spanish) will affect where the gesture for “flying” appears. In English, it will last only for the duration of the spoken verb: flies. But in Spanish, it will spread over the whole sentence, or even multiple sentences. In other words, the way you package your thoughts into speech is also how you package them into movement.
Researchers are especially interested in the times when gestures don’t match speech. The mismatch can be a valuable window to what’s going on in the mind. Susan Goldin-Meadow, another University of Chicago psychologist, has led a decades-long investigation of so-called speech-gesture mismatches. For example, until about 7 years of age, children don’t understand that if you pour a tall glass of water into a shorter, wider glass, the amount of water stays the same. They think the shorter glass contains less water. When asked to explain their reasoning, some children will say, “This one is shorter,” while gesturing that the glass is wider. That discrepancy shows they subconsciously grasp that both dimensions are important. Teachers who can spot these mismatches can tell when a student is ready to understand the relationship between height, width, and volume.
When we speak, we put our thoughts into words, and when we gesture, we put our thoughts into our hands. But gestures don’t just show what we’re thinking—they actually help us think. Toddlers who are encouraged to gesture tend to start producing more words. Adults involved in various problem-solving tasks do better when they are encouraged to gesture. There is something about putting ideas into motions that brings us closer to grasping what we need to grasp. In a way, what really caught McNeill’s attention in that Paris auditorium was a sideways glimpse, filtered through another language and another mind, of his very own thoughts.
Arika Okrent is a linguist, and author of In the Land of Invented Languages. She is living in Chicago, doing her part to fight off the cot-caught merger and keep “gym shoes” alive.
Wynton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Practice: For Musicians, Athletes, or Anyone Who Wants to Learn Something New | Open Culture
Practicing for countless hours before we can be good at something seems burdensome and boring. Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to stories of instant achievement.
Practicing for countless hours before we can be good at something seems burdensome and boring. Maybe that’s why we’re drawn to stories of instant achievement. The monk realizes satori (and Neo learns kung fu); the superhero acquires great power out of the blue; Robert Johnson trades for genius at the crossroads. At the same time, we teach children they can’t master a skill without discipline and diligence. We repeat pop psych theories that specify the exact number hours required for excellence. The number may be arbitrary, but it comforts us to believe that practice might, eventually, make perfect. Because in truth we know there is no way around it. As Wynton Marsalis writes in “Wynton’s Twelve Ways to Practice: From Music to Schoolwork,” “practice is essential to learning music—and anything else, for that matter.”
For jazz musicians, the time spent learning theory and refining technique finds eloquent expression in the concept of woodshedding, a “humbling but necessary chore,” writes Paul Klemperer at Big Apple Jazz, “like chopping wood before you can start the fire.”
Yet retiring to the woodshed “means more than just practicing…. You have to dig deep into yourself, discipline yourself, become focused on the music and your instrument.” As beginners, we tend to look at practice only as a chore. The best jazz musicians know there’s also “something philosophical, almost religious” about it. John Coltrane, for example, practiced ceaselessly, consciously defining his music as a spiritual and contemplative discipline.
Marsalis also implies a religious aspect in his short article: “when you practice, it means you are willing to sacrifice to sound good… I like to say that the time spent practicing is the true sign of virtue in a musician.” Maybe this piety is intended to dispel the myth of quick and easy deals with infernal entities. But most of Marsalis’ “twelve ways to practice” are as pragmatic as they come, and “will work,” he promises “for almost every activity—from music to schoolwork to sports.” Find his abridged list below, and read his full commentary at “the trumpeter’s bible,” Arban’s Method.
- Seek out instruction: A good teacher will help you understand the purpose of practicing and can teach you ways to make practicing easier and more productive.
- Write out a schedule: A schedule helps you organize your time. Be sure to allow time to review the fundamentals because they are the foundation of all the complicated things that come later.
- Set goals: Like a schedule, goals help you organize your time and chart your progress…. If a certain task turns out to be really difficult, relax your goals: practice doesnʼt have to be painful to achieve results.
- Concentrate: You can do more in 10 minutes of focused practice than in an hour of sighing and moaning. This means no video games, no television, no radio, just sitting still and working…. Concentrated effort takes practice too, especially for young people.
- Relax and practice slowly: Take your time; donʼt rush through things. Whenever you set out to learn something new – practicing scales, multiplication tables, verb tenses in Spanish – you need to start slowly and build up speed.
- Practice hard things longer: Donʼt be afraid of confronting your inadequacies; spend more time practicing what you canʼt do…. Successful practice means coming face to face with your shortcomings. Donʼt be discouraged; youʼll get it eventually.
- Practice with expression: Every day you walk around making yourself into “you,” so do everything with the proper attitude…. Express your “style” through how you do what you do.
- Learn from your mistakes: None of us are perfect, but donʼt be too hard on yourself. If you drop a touchdown pass, or strike out to end the game, itʼs not the end of the world. Pick yourself up, analyze what went wrong and keep going….
- Donʼt show off: Itʼs hard to resist showing off when you can do something well…. But my father told me, “Son, those who play for applause, thatʼs all they get.” When you get caught up in doing the tricky stuff, youʼre just cheating yourself and your audience.
- Think for yourself: Your success or failure at anything ultimately depends on your ability to solve problems, so donʼt become a robot…. Thinking for yourself helps develop your powers of judgment.
- Be optimistic: Optimism helps you get over your mistakes and go on to do better. It also gives you endurance because having a positive attitude makes you feel that something great is always about to happen.
- Look for connections: If you develop the discipline it takes to become good at something, that discipline will help you in whatever else you do…. The more you discover the relationships between things that at first seem different, the larger your world becomes. In other words, the woodshed can open up a whole world of possibilities.
You’ll note in even a cursory scan of Marsalis’ prescriptions that they begin with the imminently practical—the “chores” we can find tedious—and move further into the intangibles: developing creativity, humility, optimism, and, eventually, maybe, a gradual kind of enlightenment. You’ll notice on a closer read that the consciousness-raising and the mundane daily tasks go hand-in-hand.
While this may be all well and good for jazz musicians, students, athletes, or chess players, we may have reason for skepticism about success through practice more generally. Researchers at Princeton have found, for example, that the effectiveness of practice is “domain dependent.” In games, music, and sports, practice accounts for a good deal of improvement. In certain other “less stable” fields driven by celebrity and networking, for example, success can seem more dependent on personality or privileged access.
But it’s probably safe to assume that if you’re reading this post, you’re interested in mastering a skill, not cultivating a brand. Whether you want to play Carnegie Hall or “learn a language, cook good meals or get along well with people,” practice is essential, Marsalis argues, and practicing well is just as important as practicing often. For a look at how practice changes our brains, creating what we colloquially call “muscle memory,” see the TED-Ed video just above.
Filed under 2019, writing tip, Writing Tip Wednesday
cARtOONdAY: “vARIATIONS ON A tHEME”
Filed under 2019, CarToonsday
