Posted on 01/01/2005 7:13:11 PM PST by NYC GOP Chick
By WARREN ST. JOHN
T'S time for the New Year's resolution, that odd annual rite wherein after a month of giving thanks and celebrating all that is good in our lives we resolve to change the very lives we professed to be so thankful for. While many people are happy with tidy and task-oriented resolutions — stop smoking, drop a few pounds, lay off the Scotch — others are more ambitious. They strive for personal improvement, not a task but a project.
Fortunately for them, there is no shortage of people eager to help create a new improved you. A Library of Congress worth of advice books and legions of personal coaches and support groups stand at the ready to preach people down the road to contentment. In this happy world everything is possible, and affirmation is never in short supply. "You are far greater than you have ever dreamed of being," declares the coming book "Discover Your Destiny With the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari" by Robin S. Sharma (HarperSanFrancisco). "May you shine so brightly that, at the end of your days, all will pause and say, `Ah, there was one who lived life fully and completely.' "
Ah, yes. But anyone wandering innocently into the realm of personal improvement these days will be cold-cocked by an inconvenient reality: there's a lot of disagreement over how to get happy. Pick up a copy of "Stress Free for Good," a coming title by Dr. Fred Luskin and Dr. Kenneth Pelletier (HarperSanFrancisco), and you will read that you need to slow down.
Open "Focal Point" (American Management Association) by the motivational guru Brian Tracy, and you are ordered to "Do it now!"
In "The Success Principles" (HarperResource), the new book by Jack Canfield, the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, we learn that "positive thoughts affect your body in a positive way."
But wait. In "Optimal Thinking" (Wiley), Rosalene Glickman tells us "positive thinking is not enough."
Sometimes the self-help wizards even contradict themselves. Mr. Canfield also exhorts readers to "Do it now!" even as he encourages them to take their time by "watching the ocean, watching the clouds float by, staring at the stars."
The how-to-live movement has split into two camps: those who believe the key to contentment is to do more every day and those who say we should all be doing a lot less. The first group is into goal-setting, waking up early and making to-do lists, while the second is into yoga, lazy contemplation of the natural world and, if it strikes you, skipping. Each side has produced a torrent of literature: from the doers titles like "Turbocoach," "Getting Things Done" and "Stress for Success," and from the do-less crowd "Stress Free for Good," "In Praise of Slowness" and "The Lazy Way to Success."
The New Year's advice of the two groups could not be more different. Mr. Tracy, who writes four books a year and gives about 100 motivational speeches to corporations — can you say "doer"? — advocates writing down a list of goals, sticking to a schedule and shutting out distractions while at the office.
When distraction creeps in, "Say, `Back to work, Back to work, Back to work,' " Mr. Tracy advised.
Carl T. Honoré, a Canadian journalist and the author of "In Praise of Slowness" (HarperSanFrancisco), favors a different approach. For the New Year he suggested that we "be less scheduled," take off our watches, put away gadgets that beep, like pagers and cellphones, take up a "slow hobby" like gardening or knitting and perhaps institute a weekly "do nothing day" to keep stress at bay. "We're fundamentally striving to do too much," Mr. Honoré said.
The argument between the rose smellers and those who think we should keep our noses to the grindstone is relatively new, in this country anyway. For most of our history, the do-more contingent has been firmly in control. Benjamin Franklin, perhaps America's first motivational writer, urged readers "to lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions," a neat articulation of the Protestant work ethic, which combined with capitalism's dictum that time is money has informed the country's doer mentality and in the process spurred generations to get a heck of a lot done.
Occasionally champions of laziness emerged. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell declared in a 1932 essay, "In Praise of Idleness," "I think that there is far too much work done in the world." But idleness never gained much of a foothold in this country.
As Mr. Honoré tells it though in the last 20 years something improbable has happened: lazy people began to organize, if at a leisurely pace. It started in Europe, where a group called the Society for the Deceleration of Time formed to combat overwork and what its members call "time sickness." The slow food movement began in the Italian town of Bra, which eventually passed laws restricting noise and the use of automobiles. In the United States a group called Take Back Your Time organized against what it called "time famine" and "time poverty." (Through its Web site it sells posters that declare, "Medieval peasants worked less than you do.") And along the way activities like yoga, the slow person's lifeblood, migrated from the Far East and the American counterculture to the world of suburban mothers and Sting.
The two sides, however, seem to be able to take time from their list writing and deep breathing to attack each other. Mr. Honoré blasts the "false gods of speed" and blames them for things like heart attacks, the overfishing of the oceans and "carnage on the roads" in the form of countless car wrecks.
Similarly, Fred Gratzon, who made millions in ice cream and telecommunications before writing "The Lazy Way to Success: How to Do Nothing and Accomplish Everything" (Soma Press), said, "Hard work is a fraud."
"The only thing that's going to happen as a result of all that `do more, do more, do more' is you're going to get exhausted," he added. "You're going to get stressed, get sick probably, get divorced, and your kids will forget who you are." Mr. Gratzon said he was able to achieve his success by turning work into play. "I believe that if it isn't fun, you are wasting your chances for success," he writes.
The doers, for their part, suspect the slow people of spinelessness.
"You can't have `smell the roses' unless you have low self-esteem and no ambition," Mr. Tracy scoffed when asked about the do-less crowd. "They make a virtue of the fact that they're fearful of taking chances and going full out."
For such opposing world views the books of the doers and the lazy seem to have been created from the same software program. There are lots of bullet points, quotations from great thinkers — Pythagoras, Ovid, Goethe and plenty of "Chinese proverbs" — that often seem suspiciously out of context. There are instructive anecdotes involving people with no last names, like Norma, Bob and Maddy. ("Maddy came to the clinic because she was exhausted.")
Jargon is important, too: in "Stress Free for Good," readers learn 10 "LifeSkills" for success. Mr. Tracy is all for something called "zero-based thinking," which involves repeatedly asking, "Is there anything in your life that, knowing what you now know, you would not get into today, if you had it to do over?" Which may or may not cause a nervous breakdown.
Flow charts are also popular. In "Getting Things Done" (Penguin), David Allen promises "stress free productivity" if you organize your life according to a chart that looks like a wiring diagram for a supercomputer. And neither side advocates an incremental approach. Calling for a "lifestyle revolution," Mr. Honoré writes of the need to "rethink our approach to everything."
Mr. Canfield begins his latest: "This is not a book of good ideas. It's a book of timeless principles used by successful men and women throughout history." (Mr. Canfield, who writes that he grew up in West Virginia, the son of an alcoholic mother and a workaholic father who made $8,000 a year as an employee at a florist shop, also humbly credits his principles for "the phenomenal level of success that I now enjoy.")
It is fair to say that both sides of the how-much-should-we-do debate capitalize on — maybe exploit is a better word — a fundamental ambivalence in human nature. When people are under stress, most long to slow down. When things get slow, plenty of people get bored and long to be busy. Most are content and perhaps wise enough not to commit themselves to either camp. Take the case of Kristina, a yoga instructor. (All right, Kristina Marchitto, from Manhattan.) Ms. Marchitto is all for bliss, so much so that is she's building a business around producing yoga DVD's, which just happens to involve lots of real-world demands.
"I'm split," Ms. Marchitto said. "I was meditating for long periods of time, and it took me so far into myself that I became disconnected. I didn't want to talk to anybody. I didn't want to eat anything or do any of the things I enjoy doing." Ms. Marchitto said she had made her peace with the fact that she simply prefers the amped-up pace of life in Manhattan and life with a cellphone.
Not that nothing is to be gained from reading, as I did, a pile of contradictory self-help literature. The exercise can lead to all sorts of conclusions about how to live and perhaps even New Year's resolutions. Here are a few I came up with. Following Mr. Tracy's advice, I am writing them down, to imprint them on my subconcious mind.
1. I will not tell people I have all the answers. It's annoying, and people don't believe you anyway.
2. I will try neither to slow down time nor speed it up. For me in 2005 one second will equal one second.
3. If people tell me to "Do it now" in 2005, I will try my best to resist the urge to throttle them. (This resolution will be rescinded if they also command me to "watch the clouds float by.")
Happy New Year! :D
And I got pics for you guys. LOL! ;D
One of these days, I'm going to have to...
I dunno.
Lost my train of thought.
I am resolving to not to do S$!+ for the rest of the year.
I will resolve to misplace my memory in...
Where have I put that now?
*chuckle*
Yeah, I have to set an agenda for the year.
Jeez... maybe I'll wait until tomorrow.
Yeah, I have to set an agenda for the year.
Jeez... maybe I'll wait until tomorrow.
I don't do NYRs
Just what I needed!
Thanks!! :)
Unlike most around New Year's, I actually canceled my gym membership this week. I wasn't too thrilled with the 10 percent rate increase anyway.
Happy New Year back atcha :-)
"...the world of suburban mothers and Sting."
HUH?
Use less abbr.
Use less abbr.
LOL! AFMIRTULA! [This message sponsored by the AAA -- Abolish Acronyms Association.]
Brohamie, as far as the books offered to help us stick to our resolutions, I find this one supercedes all the ones mentioned in the article:
Can't say that I've heard of the book, though.
Hmm...
Like I said: "I'M LAY-ZEE!"
:o)
-good times, G.J.P.(Jr.)
I was going to resolve to stop procrastinating but I never got around to it.
U s/d tht ASAP!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.