A distinct lack of laughs.

There's been a lack of humour recently in my posts and my life in general. I'm far too concerned with other stuff. Fair enough, we all get side tracked and whenever you leave the usual route you run the risk of getting lost. Just like I am right now.
As much as I want to address the lack of a laugh on these pages I'm doing it again and wandering off in another direction  but stick with me. We all wander to some degree I guess. From when we were babies "ooh bright shiny thing, I want that" to when we become old farts searching through a box in the loft and find the old fart equivalent of the bright shiny thing and don't reappear from that loft for several hours. Procrastinators take it to another level. They deliberately head off track to avoid reaching their destination. Which made me think about depression also being an off track experience but an unconscious one. You slowly get sucked in. Completely unaware and because you're unaware, unable to stop yourself disappearing into the darkness.
Well I've been there and very fortunately managed with a little help to get back to the roadside. However as alluded to above I still occasionally wander off on my own or join the procrastinators in one of their regularly organized rambles and disappear for days.
So I need a little something that brings me back to the track and reminds me to laugh and reminds me of other important stuff as well. Not so much a mantra but more powerful than a slogan. To turn me back, whenever I begin to wander and wonder. Something like  "laugh alot, love alot, live alot" I'll work on it
Ok I'm history, until next time.

Onwards and upwards in pursuit of fulfillment :-)))

On course or off it, things are improving.

   Another month has past and on the surface not much has changed. Underneath things continue to improve in ways that surprise me. Bad news doesn't send me dropping into a black strop. I can't put my finger on why and I've always been a person who needs to know "why?" Now I don't seem so hung up on why and just get on with it (why?).
   As I work alone the radio and podcastes are my daily workmates. I listened to a wonderful TED talk by a lady called Linda Cliatt-Wayman, "How to fix a broken school." the other day. You wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of her, she's a bit of a bully but to be fair to her, she wouldn't achieve what she has without meeting obstructions head on and ready to push through them. She's passionate too and worth a listen. When things go wrong she doesn't let it phase her. She says "So what. Now what." You can't dwell on things with that little mantra like that bouncing around inside your head can you.
       I'm sticking with the food combining thing and have lost another 8lbs. I've calculated, that if this continues I'll disappear by the summer of 2017. In the mean time I'm cooking quite a bit. Nothing too glamorous, just getting the hang of good simple cooking. I made two pumpkin pies the other day. One went to my mothers. She wasn't impressed with the idea of a desert pie made from an ugly vegetable but she liked it enough to have a second slice and put what was left away for later. the other went to a friend who has spent time in the States and felt mine was as good as the ones she's tasted there. I'm either a natural or she's after something. I'm making more tomorrow for the practice and to remember how to, without having to look at a recipe each time. If they turn out well they are destined for the dinning table of my friend Pres and his family.    
       A couple of things I've read recently. Have piqued my interest, so by default you get dragged into having to read about it. The Apollo space ships that headed for the Moon were only on course for two or three percent of the time. The technology back then wasn't as advanced as I'd presumed. The other ninety odd percent they were vaguely heading in the right direction. The writer of this piece used the, "we're heading for the moon now we're not, now we are,"  to show us we don't need to be "on course" for every moment of our lives to succeed. We just need to check with mission control occasionally.
   Then there's Mindfulness. It's a word banded about a lot in the UK at the moment. It's being put forward by some as the new cure for all ills. I'm not going to knock it but personally I think it's just another of the things we've been made to forget to do in life. So much of our daily routine is taken up with remembering what to do tomorrow, next week, month, year. So it's hardly surprising we don't live in the moment so much any more. It's one of the things modern life has knocked out of us. Along with, walking somewhere instead of jumping in the car. Knowing which fruits and vegetables are in season, filling a glass from the tap when we're thirsty, instead of reaching for something from the fridge. Etc etc.
     Then there's the appreciation of things, all kinds of things which has now been usurped by its ugly twin, complaining about everything.
   Over the last few days I've really tried hard to live in the moment and along with NASA, not get too stressed if things don't seem to be moving in the right direction and I make a mental note each morning to appreciate all the things that make my life interesting and better. I bet you preferred it when I was miserable!

Onwards and upwards in persuit of fulfillment :-)))

Update, updated.

   I haven't written anything here in almost a month. I've been busy with work and sleeping and work. Which is exactly why I should have written something. Things happen when you're/I'm busy, small things. Changes that need to be recorded. So you/I can look back and see that for better or for worse we're not the same as we were. Below is a brief note to self of what's happened in the last few weeks.

I've lost over a stone (14lbs or 6 kilos) by using the Hay system.
William Howard Hay (1866-1940) was an American Doctor. Who due to a serious illness that almost killed him, realised that it was the combination of food that he was eating that was doing all the damage. Very simply and more importantly, not to bore you. Different foods digest in different ways as they pass through you. Hay hit on the idea of separating the foods and giving his intestines a break. They happily responded to the lack of chaos and returned him to good health. So now I eat my proteins as one meal, my starches as one meal and my fruits as one meal. I have more energy and don't feel hungry between meals, so don't snack. I exercise more, in which I mean, I'm continually pulling up my trousers and tightening my belt and frequently walking to a mirror or a pair of scales to examine the results.
I never set out to lose weight, I just wanted to find more energy. Hays book was a charity shop find and I've added to that with a more up to date version found on eBay. I'm surprised by the weight loss and how interested I've become in what's good in food. As alluded to earlier, I'm becoming a Hay foodie bore around friends and family. They make the mistake of mentioning I look well or have lost weight instantly regreting they said anything, as I then give them a blow by blow account of what goes in and when and what comes out and maybe they should try it. Which kind of suggests they're fat and ill looking. Not the response that most wold expect after dishing out a compliment to someone.

Work and my attitude to it, is undergoing a bit of a change. While I'm proud and occasionally impressed with what I manage to do. I'm beginning to distance myself from it. I work for others to fix or change their surroundings. In exchange they pay me. Which allows me to invest some of that payment into fixing or changing things that directly affect me and my surroundings. that's how it should be but I have been blurring the lines a little these past few years and getting bothered by (in my opinion) customers dodgy choices of tiles and colours etc. why does it bother me? well firstly I assume my ideas are better than theirs, because it's what I do day in, day out and partly because I'm a fat head. Secondly because I did the job, I seem to be a little responsible for the less than satisfying result. A glance at the customers twisted smile when they examine the finished job followed by "It's not what I imagined, what can we do?" .... "We, you mean ME, what can I do to rescue YOU from your crap idea. After spending time explaining gently why that might not be such a great idea and giving you a chance to rethink before WE got to this point" I then beat them up.
Well actually I don't say or do that. Just think it. Often I do change it for no extra cost as for some weird reason I feel it's my fault. what's that all about?
Now I write down what they've asked for on the quote with my alternative suggestion along with "any changes will cost you extra" in tiny print hidden somewhere and get them to sign it. You'll be surprised how many people rewrite history and deny they said this or that. Well they can't now and I need to remember it's their bathroom or kitchen or whatever and not mine.

I think that covers it. The procrastination article I copied and pasted for my last post was interesting and lead to a bit of further reading. It's strange reading something by someone else and recognising yourself within.

Onwards and upwards in pursuit of fulfillment :-)))
        

Procrastinating and the Emotions involved.

   The following article popped up on Flipboard. A news gathering app on my phone. It's a bit of a cheat to just copy and paste something but it's a good piece.

   Timothy Pychyl's web site has even more interesting stuff 

http://http-server.carleton.ca/~tpychyl/

There's a small section in the middle that's a bit faint. Sorry about this but copying and pasting on to this blog isn't always straight forward for yours truly.

To Stop Procrastinating, Start by Understanding the Emotions Involved

Time management goes only so far; the emotional reasons for delay must also be addressed.

By 

SHIRLEY S. WANG

Updated Aug. 31, 2015 11:44 p.m. ET

Putting off a work or school assignment in order to play videogames or water the plants might seem like nothing more serious than poor time-management.

But researchers say chronic procrastination is an emotional strategy for dealing with stress, and it can lead to significant issues in relationships, jobs, finances and health.

In August, researchers from Stockholm University published one of the first randomized controlled trials on the treatment of procrastination. It found a therapy delivered online can significantly reduce procrastination.

Psychologists also are studying other ways people might be able to reduce procrastination, such as better emotion-regulation strategies and visions of the future self.

Scientists define procrastination as the voluntary delay of an action despite foreseeable negative future consequences. It is opting for short-term pleasure or mood at the cost of the long-term. Perhaps we didn’t finish preparing a presentation on the weekend because we had house guests. That is just intentional delay based on a rational decision, says Timothy Pychyl (pronounced pitch-el), a psychology professor at Carleton University, in Ottawa, who has published extensively on the topic.

The essence of procrastination is “we’re giving in to feel good,” Dr. Pychyl says. “Procrastination is, ‘I know I should be doing it, I want to, it gets under my skin [when I don’t].’ ”

Ben Lockwood, a 39-year-old office manager in Chippenham, about 100 miles west of London, knows the feeling all too well. Even though he isn’t a lazy person, he says, he struggles with procrastination at work and in his personal life. He says he feels paralyzed by wanting to do everything perfectly, which then makes him feel anxious about getting started.

Instead of looking for a new job, he might go to the gym—a move researchers call “moral compensation.” That is when procrastinators do something to make themselves feel good or productive in order to avoid the task that needs to get done.

Mr. Lockwood says this pattern of behavior fills him with self-loathing. “I think I’d rather tell someone I robbed a bank than tell them I procrastinate,” he says.

Chronic procrastinators often hold misconceptions about why they procrastinate and what it means, psychologists have discovered. Many chronic procrastinators believe they can’t get started on a task because they want to do it perfectly. Yet studies show chronic procrastination isn’t actually linked to perfectionism, but rather to impulsiveness, which is a tendency to act immediately on urges, according to Piers Steel, an organizational-behavior professor at the University of Calgary.

TO PROCRASTINATE LESS, START BY DOING THIS

Tips from research led by Timothy Pychyl, Piers Steel and Alexander Rozental.

·         Break a long-term project down into specific sub-goals. State the exact start time and how long (not just “tomorrow”) you plan to work on the task.

·         Just get started. It isn’t necessary to write a long list of tasks, or each intermediate step.

·         Remind yourself that finishing the task now helps you in the future. Putting off the task won’t make it more enjoyable.

·         Implement “microcosts,” or mini-delays, that require you to make a small effort to procrastinate, such as having to log on to a separate computer account for games.

·         Reward yourself not only for completing the entire project but also the sub-goals.

People may assume anxiety is what prevents them from getting started, yet data from many studies show that for people low in impulsiveness, anxiety is the cue to get going. Highly impulsive people, on the other hand, shut down when they feel anxiety. Impulsive people are believed to have a harder time dealing with strong emotion and want to do something else to get rid of the bad feeling, Dr. Steel says.

Some people claim they purposely leave things to the last minute because they work better under stress, but true procrastinators get stressed out by the delay. It’s arguable whether the quality of their work is actually better than if they had started earlier, according to Dr. Pychyl.

Experts say the consequences of chronic or extreme procrastination can be serious: Marriages break up, people lose jobs and often feel like impostors. Fuschia Sirois, a psychology professor at the University of Sheffield, in England, recently began studying the effects of procrastination on coping with chronic illness.

The mental-health effects of procrastination are well-documented: Habitual procrastinators have higher rates of depression and anxiety and poorer well-being.

Less is known about physical effects, and especially serious health problems. In a recent paper, Dr. Sirois and colleagues found procrastinators with hypertension and heart disease were less likely to engage in active strategies for coping with the illness, such as finding meaning or taking action, such as arranging to exercise with a friend. They were more likely to adopt maladaptive behaviors, like being avoidant or blaming themselves for the illness and trying to forget it.

In addition, procrastinators often seem unable to see as clearly into the future about their choices and behaviors as non-procrastinators—a phenomenon she calls “temporal myopia.” Their vision of their future selves is often more abstract and impersonal, and they’re less connected emotionally to their future selves. Temporal myopia may be largely due to their high levels of stress which can shift their focus to more immediate rather than distant concerns.

“A lot of us think, I’m doing it for me” and that in the future we’ll benefit because of what we’re doing now, says Dr. Sirois. But procrastinators aren’t as good at envisioning this. Dr. Sirois, Carleton’s Dr. Pychyl and others are testing interventions for helping procrastinators better envision and connect with their future selves.

Focusing on time management alone will help procrastinators, but only so much, the scientists say. The emotional regulation component must be addressed as well.

Dr. Sirois and Dr. Pychyl also have focused on short-term mood repair as an anti-procrastination strategy. They teach people to recognize that they might have strong emotions, such as anxiety, at the start of a project but to not judge themselves for it. The next step is just to get started, step by step, with a narrow focus.

At Stockholm University, researchers set out to test whether a self-help treatment could have an effect on more-severe forms of procrastination, as the research in this area was lacking. Though there are many self-help books and experimental lab studies, the group wanted to design an intervention that, if shown efficacious, could be rolled out widely, such as via the Internet, said Alexander Rozental, a clinical psychologist and doctoral student who was an author of the study, which was recently published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Some 150 participants were self-reported high procrastinators and were randomly assigned to complete the intervention, either by themselves, with the guidance of a therapist or to a wait-list control. The treatment program consisted of 10 weekly modules.

One component focused on goal setting, such as breaking down long-term goals into smaller and more-concrete sub-goals. Instead of saying one was going to work on a paper on Tuesday, participants were taught to be specific and divide it into manageable sub-goals: I am going to work on a paper for one hour at 11 a.m.

The intervention also employed a reward system. Participants would give themselves something positive, whether a cup of coffee or a break after accomplishing mini-goals, rather than wait until finishing the overall goal.

Another module involved exposing procrastinators to stressful feelings or thoughts in brief but gradually longer periods. The goal there is to help them feel that they are better able to manage their emotions and not to instinctively follow them.

The results showed that after intervention with both guided and unguided self-help, people improved their procrastination, though the guided therapy seemed to show greater benefit. The researchers, who have continued following up with the participants, will look at one-year outcomes later this year to see if the results were maintained.

They also are conducting a study of college students receiving either group therapy or Internet-based cognitive behavior therapy, where they will look not only at self-reported procrastination but also at real-life outcomes including academic grades and use of alcohol and drugs, Mr. Rozental says.

In Calgary, Dr. Steel’s lab is testing and helping to develop new software with a Hong Kong company, Saent, that helps by delaying the loading of websites such as Facebook for 15 seconds or so, using “micro-costs” such as requiring a password before surfing the Web. Sometimes these little bits of effort are all that are necessary to deter procrastinators from distraction, Dr. Steel says.

Mr. Lockwood, the procrastinator from the U.K., has developed his own strategies for helping him delay tasks. Since he’s had to pay late fees before for not paying bills on time, for no reason other than he didn’t put the check in the mail, he now makes sure he’s always stocked with stamps and envelopes at home and has online bill pay set up for as many places as possible.

But he wishes he could shake his procrastination in other areas of his life. He says his girlfriend is always planning their vacations because he has a hard time getting started and is reluctant to ask for time off. But he actually enjoys the act of planning trips. He says one day he would love to surprise her by coming up with the idea and doing the planning.

“If you’re an occasional procrastinator, quit thinking about your feelings and get to the next task,” says Dr. Pychyl. “But if you’re a chronic procrastinator, you might need therapy to better understand your emotions and how you’re coping with them through avoidance.”

Write to Shirley S. Wang at shirley.wang@wsj.com

Onwards and upwards in pursuit of fulfillment ;-)))

Optimism.

   I am an optimist by nature. How do I know? well if I look back as far as I can remember, I've always been buoyant, hopeful and positive about the future and all it holds, . Even when it would have been best for me not to. My optimism can lead me to take on too much. Sometimes it's best to give up or pass by some things and sometimes, some people. It may be possible in and with, time. To come back to those things and those people.
    After taking on too much or letting things bunch up the optimist inside me disappears for a couple of days till the heat dies down a little. Miserable me has to pick up the pieces of that lost direction and purpose and sometimes I just sit there and wonder what to do next. Not for long but enough to cause a problem or two and set things back a little.
   The optimist in me shouldn't feel bad and at fault. I just need to remember to get involved in less. Just what's in front of me.

Onwards and upwards in pursuit of fulfillment :-)))  

Really, really STUPID.

   After several (relatively) jolly posts. I have one that isn't. I got a parking ticket in a place where I and others have parked before. Which is a bummer at the best of times but then I didn't pay it within 14 days and now it's double the original £55. Getting the ticket was bad enough but it came on the day the wrong tiles for the job I'm on, arrived. I phoned the supplier and they said that's what I ordered. Check your email. What email? It was in my junk file. Now I've only ever had one code number for the tiles. It's on the sample the client gave me. So they made the mistake but I didn't look in my junk file, so didn't spot it and correct it in time. My mistake and an admin charge of £150 (10% of the order value) to pick up the wrong ones and deliver the right ones. Two avoidable errors on my part and my bank account down £260.
   There are far worse things that could of happened but avoidable things like those above really really eat into me and colour the proceeding few days (in the past) a morning (yesterday) and (right now) as I write this. Finding a way past things like this has been a real problem for me. Tiny errors become huge and up till now I haven't found a way of getting past it. I have read and been told that you have to forgive yourself and move on. The trouble with that is "me" the victim is forgiving "me" the perpetrator and I'm not sure or convinced that perpetrator me isn't going to go and do more dumb things. While I'm toiling this over in my mind, I hear the word "apologize" float out of the radio. Now maybe that will work. Perpetrator of dumb things me, apologizes to victim of dumb things me and promises to really try and not make the dumb mistake again. Victim me says "ok and I'll keep an eye out for stuff like that too." So now both me and me are friends again and can look back on how £260 made us a better, stronger person. Well until next time.

Onwards and upwards in search of fulfillment :-))) 

Scotland, sculpture and sleep.

   My new tiles, a few postcards, two secondhand books and a couple of tired picture frames found in a charity shop are now back home with me in Maison Margate by the sea.
   Scotland was brilliant. I revisited places. Found new ones and missed a couple I would of liked to have seen but that's now for another time.
   I also came across the "Kelpies." They are mythical shape shifting water spirits. Inhabiting the lochs and pools of Scotland. Usually appearing as a horse but not always. The Loch Ness monster is a Kelpie.  

The artist responsible for these two 30 metre high sculptures is Andy Scott ( yeah, I smiled at that too) Andy's vision, was for something representing the lost history of heavy industry in the Falkirk area of Scotland. 

   Falkirk is the meeting point of the Union canal from Edinburgh and the Forth and Clyde canal from Glasgow. So an important cross roads between Scotland's two principle cities during the Industrial Revolution. Barges laden with one thing or another would make the journey back and fourth and what dragged the barges up and down those canals? Horses. Not only are these two sculptures magnificent, representing the heavy industrial past of the area but they represent the future too. The cutting edge technology that helped create them and the pride and abilities of a new Scotland that helped inspire their creation. If further evidence of that were needed, just a short walk away is the Falkirk Wheel. The Falkirk Wheel is a boat lift. Replacing the 30 odd lock gates that used to get you from the Union to the Forth and Cylde. There are many boat lifts in the World but the Falkirk is the only rotating one. I've included a couple of you tube clips. One of the wheel in action and one of the construction of the "Kelpies."

https://vimeo.com/90747645

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX6kJKjg4y0

It's time to sleep.

Onwards and upwards. In the pursuit of fulfullment :-)))