As part of setting up my 2011 Life Project, I’ve come up with what I’m calling operating principles. These are personal guidelines that I need to keep in mind while carrying out the tasks that feed into my resolutions. They include:
It takes work. Every resolution, every task—it’s all effort. Exercise four times a week? Work. Job interview? Work. Meditate? Yep, you got it. I can’t expect any of this to drop into my lap, certainly not at the outset. Maybe after a few weeks, when I’ve developed some of these behaviors into habits, it won’t seem like such a burden; but when I’m in the stage where I have to think about something, think about why I’m doing it & think about what the benefit is, it’s work. I can’t let myself get discouraged by that.
Pay attention. This is a major component of my resolution to be mindful, but I’ve found that so much of my life has been kind of inattentive; & that I most always get into trouble when I’m not paying attention (to both internal & external conditions). On a molecular level, I have to resist the urge to check my smartphone for emails while at some of the stoplights (around here, you can be at a red for more than two minutes). On the higher end of the scale, I want to be a lot more aware of & responsive to the world around me. “Pay attention” is germane to everything I do—be in that moment, focus on the action, the feelings, the environment, the people.
Make mistakes & move on. This is very, very hard for me—I hate making mistakes, & when I do I spend waaay too much time on feeling like hell about it. In theory I understand that there are very few mistakes you can make that will actually kill you. However, it’s been my experience that there are plenty that can make you wish you were dead. I need to pay more attention to the former & downplay the latter. If I can get this one, it’ll be major progress.
What does that look like? This reminds me to not only pay attention, but to define what it is I’m paying attention to. Airy-fairy goals are impossible to realize. I need to be really clear about what it is I want, why I want it. How is it going to change things? What will it look like when I achieve it? Is it a picture I really like? If not, what do I have to do to get one I like?
¿Ist daß positive oder negative? (One of my favorite WWII movies is Battleground, about the Battle of the Bulge. Not so much because of its intrinsic dramatic integrity, but because it’s a good indicator of how Americans viewed WWII in the early 50s. Anyhow—there’s a line from one of the Germans tasked with taking the surrender of the 101st Airborne Division at Bastogne. When instead given General McAuliffe’s reply, “Nuts!”, one of the Germans asks “¿Ist daß positive oder negative?”) I have a tendency to put a negative slant on a lot of things; if I want to change my life for the better, I need to change that attitude. This applies to everything from getting stuck at a red light to dealing with difficult personalities at work.
Keep it clean. I grew up in an incredibly cluttered house. We used to alternate eating dinner at the kitchen & dining tables, depending on which one had more stuff piled on it. I realized some time ago that I hate clutter, it depresses me & makes me feel disorganized & uncomfortable. However, it’s also extremely hard for me to keep things ship-shape & Bristol-fashion, because it sneaks up on me & takes work to beat back into submission. Then clean-up becomes a huge project, & that really takes work. So I need to develop the habit of keeping it tidy in increments. This may seem patently obvious to all you who automatically maintain a neat environment; but it’s work to me & I need to pay attention to it.
See how these things are all fitting together?
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