When All Else Fails, Baby Steps . . .

My first husband was a clinical psychologist.  Still is, actually.  (A clinical psychologist, not my husband.)  One of the movies I remember particularly enjoying with him was What About Bob? with Bill Murray and Richard Dreyfuss.  In the movie, Drefuss's character, Dr. Leo Marvin, is promoting his new book, Baby Steps.  Murray's Bob is in desperate need of its guidance.

While Bob's multiphobic state is beyond anything I have experienced to date in my history of anxieties and mild mood swings, I find the advice--to break the overwhelming down into small, doable steps, and to take those steps one at a time--useful.  In fact, I believe it can be helpful to all of us, from time to time.

And now is one of those times for me. 

I predictably approach life challenges from the library side of things.  When in doubt, I read about the thing that's troubling me.  Thus, this blog and the study that has fueled it. 

My family members frequently chide me to "quit reading about it, and just do it."  Just get on the plane, cry out my grief, clean up the kitchen . . . . And in this case, STOP PROCRASTINATING and DO STUFF.

When I reach the state, as now, where I am floundering, no wind fills my sails, and the task of life looms large, I try to remember baby steps--an antidote to over-delving. 

Today, this translates into:

1) making a to-do list.  I have a love/hate relationship with to-do lists.  I make them too big.  I spend too much time crafting them.  I lose them.  They send me into labor.  But they help anchor me.  And when I have been to-do-less for too long, it helps to go back to the practice of making the list, and referring to it. 

2) employing something I think of as down and up.  This practice consists of making room for frittering and malaise, but interspersing such moments with practical activity.  So I sit down on my backyard swing, reading, dreaming, playing solitaire, for a specified period--a chapter, or 15 minutes, or 5 digital "hands"--and then I get up and load the dishwasher, or fold laundry, or pay the bills, weed the garden, walk the dog, run an errand. . . .  And then repeat as necessary, until the small achievements snag my will and pull me forward.

The challenge with this method is that much of my "productive" stuff happens sitting down, like writing, work-related reading, web design, communicating with clients, working on campaigns, etc.  But when I reach the mental and physical state that harbingers hibernation, physical activity--actual movement, however brief--is required to prevent rusting. 

These are the days for restoring "outer order"--the thing that Gretchen Rubin's maxim promises "contributes to inner calm."

"Baby step, make a to-do list."

"Baby step, sit down and play."

"Baby step, get up and do something."

"Baby step, keep going. . . "

When Work Attacks

I just returned from a meeting--one of many already, with more planned--in response to our state's budget crisis.  I use this term to describe the state of turmoil caused by our new governor's budget "repair" bill and proposed biennial budget, not to any real state of financial emergency, despite claims to the contrary. 

In any case, much of our meeting was taken up with discussion of a very real joblessness emergency in large portions of our community. 

So I am somewhat chagrined by this post I began earlier today, on the subject of bad jobs and the people who are tortured by them.  In our current climate, many feel that anyone who is employed, more or less gainfully, should be happy just to have a job.  And I agree.

But that doesn't change the fact that I spent the morning and early afternoon today hearing tales of extreme job distress from two people I am close to.

It is probably passe to speak of the "alienation" of a worker from his or her work, at least in classical Marxist terms.  But, as Steven Greenhouse made plain in The Big Squeeze:  Tough Times for the American Worker, workers across the board in this country are losing ground.  The great armies of the unemployed and underemployed are ever present reminders of the dispensability of those who still have jobs.   Against that backdrop, unions are busted, workers become permanent "temporary" workers, work conditions can feature illegal lock-ins--and far too many of us just plain hate the jobs we have. 

I have written before about Jonathan Haidt's (The Happiness Hypothesis) elephant and rider metaphor, around which Chip Heath and Dan Heath organized their fascinating book Switch:  How to Change Things When Change is Hard.   Not being an employer, I considered the Heath brothers' ideas more in the context of personal change.  But listening to my friends today, I thought of the damage that is done to the elephantine heart and will of workers who are roughly treated by oblivious rider bosses and institutions.

Disrespect, arbitrary displays of power, undermining, underhandedness, and even deprivation of meaningful responsibility and initiative can all have devastating effects, though they might be preferred to the absence of employment and secure income altogether.  The worker who is subject to such conditions can lose the will to work.  In Haidt's schema, the mistreated elephant might sink to the ground, transformed into an immovable behemoth.  Or anger and frustration may turn to rage, in most cases stopping far short of the "going postal" variety, but nevertheless wreaking havoc on the individual's health and job security.

In such situations, procrastination may be a coping mechanism, born of torpor or of fury.  But it is unlikely to solve the problem.  For that, joining forces with others is probably necessary.

And the bumper sticker for this movement?

One for the History Books

 













On this dark day in Wisconsin's history, I am in mourning.   

In the last twenty-four hours, Republican legislators rammed through an alternative bill, after weeks of an impasse over the Governor's exceedingly unpopular proposed budget "repair" bill.  Because of the blitzkrieg nature of the passage of this bill, which stripped public workers of rights proudly held for over fifty years, no one seems to be entirely certain of what else is in the bill.  It seems likely that many of the things I care most deeply about and have worked hard for will be taking a serious hit.  Like health care for the poor and uninsured.  Like public transit, which would give low income workers in my community access to jobs.  Like health care for seniors, and the disabled.


When I woke up in the middle of the night last night, too angry and said and frustrated to sleep, I found a fellowship of the sleepless on Facebook, where we raged and commiserated and plotted.  Today I set a personal record for the number of separate demonstrations attended in one day--three. 


The next few days will bring more rallies, more work, and my first involvement with a recall effort.  In the course of this struggle, my state senator has hewed firmly to the Republican party line, going along with every quasi-legal maneuver, and mouthing the standard arguments.  On a recent radio program, I heard her say that she had never been more certain that she and her party were on the right course.  This, despite a process now ringed by police in riot gear, and a citizen in a wheelchair being forcibly removed from the building where she sought to be heard by her elected officials on a matter so important to her that she had been there for several hours.  This senator and I need a divorce.  Our differences are beyond irreconcilable.

It is hard not to be drawn into the pitched battle going on around me.  Yet I am uncomfortable with how we seem to be thinking and feeling about each other in Wisconsin, and beyond.  I am not really the Braveheart type.  I am clearly a partisan, but a quietly critical one, as I observe the contradictions within our patchy coalition.


For tonight, I need to retreat, to rest, to quiet the chants reverberating in my dreams.  Tired, but not defeated yet, is what democracy looks like tonight.

Done for the Week: Life in the Midst of Change

This is the beginning of Week 4 of the movement in Wisconsin to resist implementation of the new conservative agenda; to turn back the effort to crush organized labor and dismantle the social safety net for our most vulnerable citizens.  Again, not much time for everyday matters.

Here's what I got accomplished, somehow.

Done for the Week:  Feb. 28-Mar. 6

1. Continued off-season race training, continuing to be distracted by earth continuing to shift beneath my feet in Wisconsin; biked once, ran once (supplemented by lots of walking in demonstrations)
2. Finished The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder, by Rebecca Wells
3. Gave significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit; major I.T. contribution
4. Worked my two part-time jobs
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Meditated 4 times
7. Got my husband and one son to the gym with me, once each
8. Attended meeting of committee to hire new organizer, and convened subcommittee to finalize interview questions
9. Met with UU Coming of Age mentee
10. Had a lunch date with my husband
11. Watched our 2 teams play 2 basketball games, with my son and my husband
12. Attended 2 demonstrations, 1 locally, and 1 in Madison; two large local rallies; and one breakfast with Jesse Jackson
13. Attended two yoga classes
14. Spent way too much time online, following political uprising in my state, "working" Facebook, Twitter, and political sites, and updating my organization's website to reflect on-the-ground scheduling 
15. Took one daytime nap, and got to bed "early" twice

Because we are going to be engaged in this project of democracy for the foreseeable future, I believe that the most important thing I did last week was to recognize my fatigue level, and to begin to address it with more rest. 


I did not do as well with my focus goal for the week, which was "to meditate daily, no matter what."  I continue to struggle with making time for meditation.  Applying last week's wisdom, I want to acknowledge my progress, however.  This week's number is one better than last week's.

Next week's focus goal--again--will be to meditate daily, no matter what. 

Done for the Week: The Revolution Ate My Agenda

We are living in amazing times, in Wisconsin, and in so many other places in this country and in the world.  Not much time for business as usual.   

This past week, I managed to squeeze the following in:

Done for the Week:  Feb. 21-27

1. Continued off-season race training, still distracted by earth still shifting beneath my feet in Wisconsin; biked once, ran once (supplemented by lots of walking in demonstrations)
2. Finished How to Calm Down:  Three Deep Breaths to Peace of Mind, by Fred L. Miller
3. Gave significant volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit
4. Worked my two part-time jobs
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Wrote 2 Gratitude Journal entries
7. Meditated 3 times
8. Attended Issues Assembly
9. Attended Social Justice Committee meeting at my church
10. Celebrated quasi-anniversary with the man I married on Leap Day
11. Had a lunch date with my husband
12. Watched our 2 teams play 2 basketball games, with my son and my husband
13. Attended 4 demonstrations, 1 locally, and 3 in Madison
14. Attended one yoga class
15. Spent way too much time online, following political uprising in my state, "working" Facebook, Twitter, and political sites, and updating my organization's website to reflect on-the-ground scheduling 
16. Continued emailing with my brother

It seems to me that the most important thing that I "got done" this last week was to participate in democracy, in defense of social justice.  Sounds quite lofty, when in fact I was only one of tens of thousands in my state alone mobilized to resist some devastating proposals and powerful corporate interests.  But my actions represented a huge investment of my time and energy, and claimed a priority reflective of the magnitude of things at issue.  


As this struggle goes on, as it appears that it will for some time, the challenge will be to develop some kind of maintenance strategy, spelling ourselves and keeping our strength up for the long-term, tending to our lives and our common dreams.  That is a lesson I am ready to learn, one that I've needed for a long time. 

Last week's focus goal was "to meditate daily, no matter what."  For some reason, some Blogger glitch-of-the-day won't let me highlight item 7 above, but even without green highlighting, it is easy to see that I fell short of that goal.  Again, I learn that I have the most difficulty making time to meditate when it is the most important, and most needed.  


Someone close to me, who shall remain nameless, is currently in the midst of quitting smoking.  Living in the penumbra of this epic battle provides me the object lesson I need.  One day at a time, and give ourselves credit for progress, no matter how small.  So I'm concentrating on the fact that I meditated three times last week, not zero times--rather than three times, not seven, as planned.  My meditation cushion is (nearly) half occupied, not half empty.

Next week's focus goal will be to meditate daily, no matter what. 

Stopping for Stupidity

The business of citizenship is taking more and more of my time these days.  

It seems there's a fresh battle forming on every front.   I live in the formerly great state of Wisconsin.  Here, we are at ground zero in the struggle to resist a radical right wing agenda that threatens to reshape our polity.  My state's Democratic senators are in hiding as I write this, attempting to delay a vote that seems almost certain to adopt the draconian measures proposed by our newly inaugurated Governor  in his effort to balance the budget.  Schools across the state are closed, as teachers join the throngs in protest.

Scott Walker's bill would strip public workers of nearly all collective bargaining rights, require their unions to be recertified every year, and allow workers to opt out of paying their union dues.  As a sop to a corporate campaign contributor, a section of wetlands would be made available for development.  Graduate assistants in our state's public universities would no longer  be eligible for in-state tuition, which would vitiate important research projects and cripple our world-class institutions of higher education.  On the heels of maneuvering to send back $800 million in federal funding for high-speed rail, and the thousands of jobs it would have created in our job-hungry state, it is rumored that the Governor is threatening to refuse Title I funding for low-income students in our public schools, on top of budget cuts of $500 per student in his proposed budget "repair" bill.  Every time I log onto my computer, I find the reactionary wildfire breaking out in a new sector. 

This morning, I spent time updating links on my organization's website to direct people regarding protest participation, and contacting their legislators; I contacted my own legislators; I attempted to call the Governor's office to register my opposition, but after spending a half hour listening to busy signals, and finally getting a ceaseless ringing that magically morphed into yet another busy signal (!), I gave up and sent an email.  Then, attending to a separate disaster, I called my U.S. Representative to register my concern about the public media funding threat, up for a vote today in Washington.

I will probably end up in our state capitol, along with tens of thousands of my fellow citizens, before the week is out.  And no, I don't have time for this.  But what else is more important right now?

Again, my business as usual must be set aside.  As my Governor attempts to let the world know that "Wisconsin is Open for Business," I am pulled away from mine.  And I am depressed about the future he and his confreres seem determined to force upon us.

Done for the Week: Finally, First Things First

Once again, I am struggling to get this post up by my personal deadline.  Monday morning in the blogging world.  And too many others mornings of the week for me lately, as life continues to speed out of control.  And I continue to hang on for dear life.


While clinging to the handrails, here's what I got done last week.

Done for the Week:  Jan. 17-23

1. Continued off-season race training, while fighting a bad cold; biked twice; ran once
2. Succeeded in getting husband to gym with me once
3. Finished Find More Time: How to Get Things Done at Home, Organize Your Life, and Feel Great About It, by Laura Stack; Bleeding Kansas, by Sara Paretsky; Healing Depression the Mind-Body Way:  Creating Happiness with Meditation, Yoga, and Ayurveda, by Nancy Liebler and Sandra Moss
4. Continued providing minimal volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit
5. Worked my two part-time jobs, with continuing schedule changes
6. Published 5 blog posts
7. Wrote 7 Gratitude Journal entries
8. Wrote 3 Morning Pages
9. Meditated 6 times
10. Watched our two favorite basketball teams play 4 games, with son and husband
11. Foraged for food at the grocery store several times
12. Attended two yoga classes
13. Attended Transitional Jobs Collaborative meeting
14. Provided more TLC for sick son and grandson; eventually succumbed myself; took a sick day
15. Attended birthday brunch for friend
16. Babysat my grandson, holding Polar Express party reprise
17. Got back to work on novel, in midst of continuing schedule challenges
18. Finally took down Christmas tree
19. Communicated with fellow bloggers
20. Communicated with long-distance friends
21. Started to work on scheduling Ireland trip with my family 
22. Cooked more nutritious dinners than in recent past
23. Watched episode of Treme with my husband

My focus goal for last week was "meditating at least 15 minutes, on at least six days." I made it, as you can see in the green-highlighted item above--but only by cheating.  Although maybe I shouldn't call sitting twice in one day "cheating."  In fact, that almost certainly runs against the whole compassion-for-self-and-others grain, don't you think?  The urge to "cheat" reveals the strength of my desire to meet the goal, which is a good thing.  And the other good thing is that the "action trigger" I implemented midweek seems to be working.  I am beginning to associate the end of breakfast with reporting to the cushion, which means that the whole issue of meditation is becoming less of a stressor.  I am not spending whole days trying to figure out where to fit it in, and then either meditating grudgingly and groggily at the end of the evening, or crawling off to bed guilty for having skipped it altogether.  It also means that I experience the benefits of having meditated over the course of the day.  All good.

In my view, the most important thing I did last week--though far from perfectly--was to get back to writing my novel, in red text above.  Life isn't really cooperating with this enterprise.  I have had an endless stream of schedule disruptions which have broken the routine that supports my writing.  I realize now that I had effectively set up an action trigger for writing, which generally works well.  The problem is that this trigger--the time between dropping my grandson off at preschool and picking him up--is too frangible.  With every school holiday, conference week schedule change, change in my daughter's idiosyncratic work schedule, and childhood illness, my action trigger recedes.  But now that I have recognized its function, I can do some creative thinking about a backup.  This week should be a "normal" one, at least as far as I can ever tell ahead.  But it's a good time to come up with a plan for handling the departures.


My focus goal for this week, half of which will be spent traveling to and attending a leadership training event, is to practice serenity in the face of change and unfamiliarity.  That will mean getting laundry and packing done ahead, and finalizing travel arrangements, and managing the unexpected with equanimity--while remembering to breathe.  Oh, and remembering to enjoy what there is to enjoy.

Decisions on Queue

Last week, I finished reading the book Switch:  How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  I found it engaging, and laced with nuggets of change strategy rooted in research findings and narratives of changes big and small.  I imagine I will be mining this resource for some time to come.


One particularly intriguing approach the Heaths explore is the use of "action triggers."  Peter Gollwitzer, New York University psychologist, has been investigating the use of action triggers, or more academically, "implementation intentions," to improve "self-regulation."  Self-regulation is what procrastinators, diet abandoners, and those falling off various other wagons have difficulty with.


The idea is this, as Dr. Gollwitzer lays it out on his website:

People can delegate the initiation of goal-directed behavior to environmental stimuli by forming so-called implementation intentions (if-then plans of the format: If situation x is encountered, then I will perform behavior y!). We observed that forming implementation intentions facilitates detecting, attending to, and recalling the critical situation. Moreover, in the presence of the critical situation the initiation of the specified goal-directed behavior is immediate, efficient, and does not need a conscious intent.

Dr. Gollwitzer and his team are also looking at

. . .whether action control via implementation intentions saves a person’s self-regulatory resources. . . . [and] whether implementation intentions protect a person’s thoughts and actions from unwanted influences of disruptive self-states (such as a good or bad mood, self-definitional incompleteness, feelings of anger or sadness).

What this amounts to, as Chip and Dan Heath tell us, is preloading decisions by deciding to perform the desired action in the presence of a predetermined prompt.  Quoting Gollwitzer, they observe that this kind of predeciding allows people to"pass the control of their behavior on to the environment."  In one study, the use of action triggers roughly tripled the chance of success in achieving difficult goals--from 22% to 62%.


DietDetective.com gives an example of how this might work in practice:

Creating an “implementation intention” provides a framework for how and when you will use the new behavior. For instance, “Whenever I go to my favorite restaurant and order the chicken, I will ask to have it grilled, without butter.” The idea is as follows: Whenever “X” happens, I will do “Y.” If you're conscious of what you want and why you want it, you'll have a better chance of moving in that direction. Another example: “When I get up at 6:30 a.m., I will get ready for work, and at 7 a.m. I will put on my shoes, [putting your shoes on and/or 7 a.m. on the clock could be the trigger – the behavior you already do] and head to the kitchen to make breakfast. I will have cereal or egg whites. I will not skip meals this week.”

Applying what I have learned, I decide to use the daily opportunity of eating breakfast to prompt meditating, which I am having difficulty fitting in to my schedule.  But here's where the theory breaks down, because it seems that there is really no predictable daily routine in my life these days.  I too frequently rush out the door to a meeting, an appointment, or scheduled work, immediately after--and sometimes even before--eating breakfast.  And since driving while meditating strikes me as at least unwise if not prosecutable (DWM?), I am going to need a contingency trigger, for when the first trigger isn't practicable.  So, on the days when I can't meditate after breakfast, I will use lunch to trigger meditating.  And the backup to my backup?  Dinner, naturally.  And if all else fails, bedtime.


Hmmm. . . . No wonder I am having a hard time getting around to meditation.  And no wonder I feel the need.  

Done for the Week: Keeping the Faith

Another week gone.  Another year behind us.  When this post is published, I will be on my way to our state capitol to protest our new governor's pre-inauguration moves, which have taken our state several giant steps back in the struggle to create badly needed jobs.  As I contemplate this macro level rejection of progress, my little list doesn't seem so earth-shattering.  But I suppose the trick is to think and act locally and globally, while still living our own important-to-us lives.

I cling to the notion that what I do matters.  Here's what I did last week.

Done for the Week:  Dec. 27-Jan. 2

1. Continued off-season race training; biked three times 
2. Succeeded in getting husband to gym with me once
3. Finished No Graves as Yet, by Anne Perry; Unattended Sorrow, by Stephen Levine
4. Resumed providing minimal volunteer support to transitioning nonprofit
5. Worked my two part-time jobs, with sporadic hours due to holiday week schedule
6. Published 5 blog posts
7. Wrote 7 Gratitude Journal entries
8. Wrote 6 Morning Pages
9. Meditated 2 times
10. Watched our two favorite basketball teams play 4 games, with son and husband
11. Foraged for food at the grocery store several times
12. Attended two yoga classes
13. Took my grandson to the museum, along with other family members
14. Negotiated safe and responsible New Year's Eve celebration with teenager, and stayed up for his return
15. Celebrated New Year's Eve at home with husband and other son
16. Spent New Year's Day in my pajamas, mostly reading
17. Walked my dog three times, including New Year's Day family trip to the dog park 
18. Attended press conference for transitional jobs program
19. Attended social justice meeting/social gathering
20. Did significant work on website I designed and maintain as volunteer
21. Attended "cafe" service at church

My focus goal last week was "to post five blogs, exercise four times, meditate six times, and make the time to resume writing the novel--before I forget what it's supposed to be about."  The extent to which I succeeded in, and fell short of meeting this goal can be seen in the items highlighted in green on the list above.  Five blog posts, check.  Exercise was edged out by eating and reveling more than it should have been.  Meditation continues to be pushed to the bottom of my agenda on too many days.  And once again, novel-writing did not happen.  

I am keeping the same "first things first" focus goal for next week, but with a couple of tweaks.  First of all, I am going to copy my focus goal onto a small piece of paper and clip it to my daily calendar/to do list.  Second, I am going to wear the Serenity bracelet I made a couple of years ago as a daily reminder of the importance of meditating.  Apparently, I'm an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of girl, so maybe the visuals will help.  I am assuming that the resumption this week of my normal, non holiday schedule and routines will be enough to prompt the resurrection of the novel-in-progress that I have been neglecting for a month.

Because so much of the week was spent running hither and yon--like so much of many of my weeks this last year--I regard spending New Year's Day in my pajamas, reading, (in red above) as the most important thing I did last week.  It taught me just how much I am in need of cooling my jets.  I am thinking of trying to spend one day a week not leaving my house in the service of others.  It remains to be seen whether I could actually pull that off.


And now, to bed, so that I can snatch enough zzzzs to arise early enough to--paraphrasing Eliza Doolittle's father--"get me to the [bus] on time."

On Keeping On

I don’t wanna blog today.  And I don't wanna exercise.  Ditto, meditation.  In fact, I don’t wanna do much of anything.  But Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project) has the answer to this funk in her blog post this morning.  Or at least one I can adapt.

Rubin advises, in her weekly video, that we should "sing in the morning."  The advice is her proposed resolution for the week, which is part of her month long focus on attitude.  More applicably, she shares her “thought for the week,” which is this quotation from William James:  

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together.  By regulating the action, which is more under the direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.

This relates to the third of Rubin's 12 Personal Commandments, which is "Act the way I want to feel."  Another way of saying this is the old "fake it 'til you make it" aphorism.

So I'm going to act like a blogger (thankfully, not a singing one, at least not today), until I feel like a blogger again.  And I'm going to act like an off-season triathlete, and not like a slug.  And like a person committed to sitting in meditation regularly.  I've already acted like a reasonable parent, an amicable spouse, an enthusiastic child care worker who is also a good Nana, a responsible library patron, and a fledgling novelist.  I still don't feel like singing.  But I begin to see Rubin's point.  And at least I haven't left behind more detritus of my black mood to depress me tomorrow.

Maybe we shouldn't call it "just" going through the motions.