Overcoming Inertia

Take a gander at Newton's first law (Law of Inertia):

A body at rest will remain at rest. A body in motion will continue in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.

Holy apple-boy! Was Isaac Newton a physicist or a philosopher?

See, it's like this...I'm a body at rest. And I tend to remain at rest. Sometimes it seems my entire life has been ruled by the Law of Inertia. Resistance to change.

Maybe you can empathize. If you're like me, you've probably missed some opportunities because of inertia.

On the other hand, you may have also missed some catastrophes because of inertia.

Resistance is futile, puny earthling.

Originally published March 13, 2013

More stress. Drama at work.

Did you think drama would end when you graduated from middle school? From high school?

Did you think it would end when you tore the pages out of that sad old diary you called a journal and trashed them because the embarrassment of reading your own histrionic words made your cheeks flush and your stomach hurt a little bit?

Unresolved resolutions

While I haven't consciously formulated a list of resolutions for 2013, I think a part of my brain has been preoccupied with plans and lists. This has been going on for the better part of the month, but I think the current trend toward mental lists is probably related to the winter cold snap as much as anything else. It's the same mechanism that makes me want to pore over seed catalogs and make garden plans that are far more ambitious than anything I will actually do.

Yippee-yi-yay cow patty!



Interweb gremlin - actual size

This post was originally scheduled to run yesterday, and then interweb gremlins interceded.



Okay, okay - it was user error on my part. I admit it. I'm posting it now and, with any luck, there will be another post later on this evening to fulfill the spirit (if not the letter) of the law of posting every day for the rest of November. Today's a two-fer - you're welcome!

Tiptoe through the cow pies

When I was a kid, I'd sometimes go target shooting with my older brother. We'd walk deep down into the pasture and take aim with his .22 pistol at any number of targets - maybe empty cans, maybe makeshift paper targets - carefully avoiding the cows, of course. The most satisfying target was a cow patty. If you've not had the pastoral shooting experience, you probably do not realize how satisfying it is to shoot a fresh cow patty. Cow patties, cow pies, manure piles... call them what you will, but they explode in a spray of impressive splendor when they're hit spot-on with a .22. Ya know what it is? It's manure majesty! The Imagineers at Disney World should try adding something like that to their synchronised fountain displays.

How can you cement a healthy habit?

Yesterday I talked about breaking an overwhelming plan into smaller "bite-sized" chunks and then making those smaller chunks into habits to increase chances of success. That sounds pretty simple. I mean, if biting my nails comes so effortlessly then I should easily be able to form a healthy habit, right?

You may have even heard a general rule of thumb that it takes 21 days to form a habit. Only 21 days - that's three short weeks - piece of cake! Why don't more people latch onto this brilliantly simple way to enforce positive behavior?

Eat your sandwich one bite at a time

The whole "create a strategic life plan so life will sing more than stink" idea isn't really a new one. In fact, tips and tools to guide you in creating a lifeplan are available all around you. With so much available information free for the taking, you'd think people would be actively charting a course for intentional happiness left and right.

But no matter how much you think about planning (it's been lurking in the back of my mind even when I'm not giving it full frontal attention) or read about planning, the whole process seems harder than it's supposed to be. Maybe even harder than it's worth?

The plan (updated format)

After sharing a fairly detailed look at my planning process and then totally wimping out on follow-up, I've guilted myself into sharing a peek at the plan itself.

Is guilt a bad thing? Maybe yes, maybe no. Looking back and beating yourself up again and again over things you cannot change is a negative exercise. But I think the little voice inside your head and heart that says "You know you can do better, don't you?" usually pushes you in the right direction. That voice can nudge you toward positive action.

So I've decided to show you what I've got so far. I even considered sharing an image of my handwritten notes, but when I looked at them again I realized the notes contain more personal information than I want to share.

I'll be honest. I haven't done a good job of committing to plan or make any changes and improvements to my life. Why you may ask?

Drafting a strategic life plan - my head hurts!

I've been dragging my feet on drafting the plan I alluded to in my previous post. I think I've fallen into a common trap -- getting so tangled up in the "how" and the "why" that the "when" slips farther and farther away.

If you're struggling with something like this, do what I (sometimes) do. Find someone else with a good approach and adapt it to your own purpose and your own life.

I appreciate J.D. Roth's approach to planning. Back when he was still struggling with personal debt, J.D. wrote at Get Rich Slowly about developing a spending plan rather than a specific budget. When I first read J.D.'s baseline article on the spending plan, two concepts really resonated with me.

First steps

I've been thinking a lot about next steps - next steps for this blog and for my life. Since I started the blog to "write out loud" about my life, it makes sense that they should parallel each other.

I wouldn't go so far as to say I want to follow my bliss because happiness in life and in work is more complicated than that. But I do think some introspective planning is an important step in refining and articulating what I do want to do.

You may have heard that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Sometimes that first step is just lacing up your walking shoes.

Confabulate as well as commiserate

Welcome (belatedly, three posts in) to Confabulosity!

So why Confabulosity you may ask?

Since this is a first blog, maybe a practice blog, a training wheels blog, I didn't want to expend a lot of energy on the name. I mostly wanted something that was fun enough to say and memorable enough to bookmark.

My first thought for a name was CONFABULATE, a word I use just because I like the sound of it. If I suggest we confabulate, I mean an informal chat. So far so good for a blog. But when I looked it up to double-check the meaning, I found another most excellent use of the word I'd never known: to fill in gaps in memory by fabrication.

Bingo!