Pretty Human

You've had this experience, haven't you? You wanted to do something -- take dance lessons, let's say -- but you were afraid to for some reason. Perhaps you didn't even consciously admit your were afraid -- you might have just rationalized it away. "I would take dance lessons, but I'm just too busy at work." Adults don't like to apply the word "fear" to themselves.

When you stick with the rationalization and don't take the action you want to, how do you feel? Small, right? But how do you feel when you do manage to overcome that little fear? Not only do you immediately feel good, but taking the action often opens you up to a whole new set of experiences. Your personal world got bigger.

The French author Anais Nin summed this up beautifully when she wrote, "Life expands or contracts in direct proportion to one's courage." That's a nice mantra to repeat to yourself when you're feeling hesitant to take action. It reminds you that, if you don't take action, things aren't going to remain the same -- you're going to become a smaller person. Hesitate enough and you'll eventually wilt.

So, what's one thing you've been putting off out of fear, consciously or not? Armed with Nin's advice, are you willing to take a little risk to become a bigger person?

Posted by michael at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (686) | TrackBacks (58)

Tomorrow is the Superbowl, which is famous as much for its commercials as for the football. Although Superbowl ads are usually a cut above typical advertisements, it's still useful to recognize them for what they are and to think critically about them.

So today's activity comes from Australian author Max Barry, who apporpriately writes:

Here’s something to try: spend the next day actually noticing every ad that features a photo of someone looking at you. Magazine ads, bus station posters, billboards: all these. Now think about what kind of situation you’d have to be in for this person to be looking at you like that in real life.

If where you live is anything like where I live, you’ll find that for a very high number of these, the situation would have to be one of:

1. They want to have sex with you
2. You just told them the funniest joke in the world ever
3. You just told them the funniest joke in the world ever and now they want to have sex with you

This is an entertaining exercise not just because it’s amusing to think about Kate Moss wanting your body, but also because it reminds you how far the arms race between advertising agencies and your brain’s perceptual filters has advanced. The more ads there are, and the more they try to get our attention, the better we get at not noticing them, so marketers have to continually up the ante. Apparently we’re now in a state where most ads are full of people looking at us in a way that would heat us up down to our toes if it happened in real life, and we don’t think anything of it.

So as you watch the multi-million dollar Superbowl ads tomorrow, ask yourself: what did I do to deserve that look?

Posted by michael at 04:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (468) | TrackBacks (46)

Take a listen to Zencast, a weekly meditation podcast. The qualities of the different speakers varies, so listen to a few to find which ones you like.

Discovered from Peter Flaschner's Almost Cool blog. Check out his burgeoning 'living consciously' category -- there's great, honest stuff in there.

Posted by michael at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1859) | TrackBacks (29)