This is the link to the Harvard Review article about Ellen Langer’s study:

http://harvardmagazine.com/2010/09/the-mindfulness-chronicles?page=all

And here is one of my favorite photos of tenacious plants growing out of rocks:

What are your favorite ways to engage your senses?

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Bonus: I made the lemon cheesecake recipe, and it turned out superbly well.  Credit Sheryl, the Lady Behind the Curtain.  I am putting a link to the recipe here, but do note that I changed the crust.  For the crust, I used 1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1/4 cup melted butter.  Otherwise, proceed as directed to get the same results I did:  rave reviews.  (Note to Sheryl: Yum!)

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Today is my wedding anniversary. I have been married to my best friend, Bill, since May 10, 2008. It was the second anniversary of our first date. We are sentimental like that.

On our first date, Bill and I had lunch and then walked to a nearby park.  It began to sprinkle rain, so we ducked into a shelter house filled with picnic tables.  We sat and talked about everything imaginable for a couple of hours.  We watched a mother robin feeding her babies in a nest under the eaves.  All too soon, it was time for me to pick up my daughter from school, and the magical first date came to an end.   As time passed, we often reminisced about the rain, the robins, and the hope that was born that day.

When we got married, Bill had two adult daughters. My daughters were aged twenty-three and thirteen. We said, only half-joking, that our marriage was the triumph of hope over experience.  We had both had long-term marriages before, and we had both mourned the failure of those marriages.  As we anticipated our wedding day, we were determined to look forward, not back.

We still owned our wedding bands from our first marriages.  They lay tucked away in boxes, awkward reminders of the past.  It didn’t feel exactly right to sell them.  It was as though we thought bad karma might be clinging to them.  We briefly entertained the thought of giving them to one or the other of the children, but which ones?  And we didn’t want to risk that bad karma thing.

We decided to create our own personal sacrament, one that was deeply meaningful to me.

A few days before our wedding, we returned to the site of our first date.  I carried a small drawstring bag with our old rings nestled inside.  Bill carried a trowel.  We knelt under a tree near the shelter house.  Bill sliced an opening in the earth, and I dropped the bag containing the rings into it.  Bill gently replaced the sod, and we embraced.  We symbolically buried our past at the place where our future began.

Happy fifth anniversary, Sweet William.  Our marriage has been a triumph of hope.  I love you very much.

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One by one, my children and I left that church. Yet, even my older daughter, the first to go, still enjoyed the rituals when she visited. I have come to believe that humans have a deep need for rituals, because they allow us to express our meaning with actions. The spiritual is made visible.

I know many of my peers have become disillusioned with religion and/or churches.  At the same time, it seems to me that the celebration of secular holidays has blossomed. Halloween was not that big a deal when I was a kid. Now it rivals Christmas in the decorations in my neighborhood. Observing holiday rituals marks the passing of time, the turning of the seasons, and the handing down of tradition to the next generation.

But there is not a prescribed ceremony for every passing, turning, or change in our lives.  Weddings conclude with “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” The passage from single to married is publicly acknowledged; the moment is marked.  Divorces have no such moment; papers may arrive in the mail announcing your transition back to singleness has been processed.  Birthdays are celebrated, but dates of death go unnoticed except maybe for Elvis or another famous person.

This brings us to the idea of personal sacraments, rituals observed by one person, or two, or maybe within a small, intimate group.  A friend’s family gathers at the cemetery every new year to “have a beer with mom and dad.”  Another friend lights a candle to burn all day on the day her mother died.  In another family, eating from a special red plate signifies reaching a personal milestone or attaining a goal.

I think we might benefit from deliberately creating rituals of our own. Intensely personal ceremonies can be actions that have meaning, even if only to us.

I remember two deliberately created rituals that held special meaning for me.  The first occurred just over six years ago, as my daughter and I prepared to move into our newly-constructed, post-broken-home house.  The builders would pour the cement back porch the next day.  We came to the building site, each of us bearing a token chosen for its personal meaning to us.

We knelt in the sand where the porch would go and buried our tokens, a piece of coral from the beach for her, a green plastic frog for me.  As we put part of our hearts into its solid base, we blessed our new home. It has been a place of much happiness for us.

The second personal sacrament is a story I shall save for tomorrow, a special day in my world.

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Words have power, but if we become more aware of the words we use, as well as the words used by others, we can see the impact they have on us.

Someone called me “Cruella” a few years ago, so I decided to openly mock the insult by embracing my inner bad girl on Halloween.  It was very satisfying.

I get to choose my response to the words of others, and I also get to set boundaries to regulate how close others can get to me.  (You probably don’t want to ask me to babysit your dog.)

If you purchase books recommended in this episode by using my links, I receive a small commission.

The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey

Tough Love by Phyllis and David York and Ted Wachtel

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Resources for this podcast

Speaker Keith Hawkins: “Show me your friends, and I will show you your future.”  Keith Hawkins website

Stever Robbins, Get-It-Done-Guy podcast: Stever Robbins website

I mangled the name of Stever Robbins’ book.  By way of apology, I am putting it here in giant red text:

He has some other books too. If you buy them here, I get a small cut: Stever Robbins Books

Dan Miller, 48 Days to Work You Love podcast: Dan Miller’s 48 Days website and Dan Miller books (buy here and I get a small cut) Dan Miller Books

Michael Hyatt blog and This Is Your Life podcast: Michael Hyatt website

Tom Hobbs, the man in the hat, master of causing smiles: On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/TomGHobbsTheManInTheHat and on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tomghobbsthemaninthehat

Toastmasters International, Where Leaders Are Made: Toastmasters International website

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I have recently found myself focusing on problems rather than solutions in one area of my life. Those problems began to dominate my thinking and to take up a disproportionate amount of my time. I have frankly grown tired of this particular set of problems, and I am choosing to eliminate them.

What? Just get rid of problems? How is that possible?

Step One: It helps to start with the right kind of problems. This set of issues is one I can reframe if I choose. I choose.

Step Two: Then, I can decide what I can do to deal with the problem and what I cannot. There are dozens of options available to me, some of them legal, as well as non-fattening. Some I reject out of hand, some I mull over and then reject, some I end up embracing. Most, I simply choose to ignore.

Step Three: Next, I decide what I am willing to do and what I am not. I also decide which potential consequences I am prepared to accept. When I see which options remain, I choose to act.

Step Four: This step is the second most crucial. I decide to let go of the outcome. I have brainstormed, mulled, sorted, rejected, chosen. When I release the outcome to the powers that be in the Universe, I move into acceptance.

Step Five and most crucial: Knowing that I can live with whatever the outcome is, I act.

Now, I am rid of the problem. Granted, I may suddenly find I have a new or bigger problem than before, but now I know I can cope with it.

Let’s apply these steps in a real-life situation. Let’s say my boss is unhappy with my performance and has threatened to fire me.

Step One: Reframe. Do I choose to freak out? Do I tell myself that I can’t possibly make it without this job and that I have to do everything in my power to make my boss happy? Maybe I start thinking that I will lose this job, never be able to find another one, and starve to death, not only destitute, but alone, because I didn’t take care of my family. Or do I reframe? Maybe I don’t like the job anyway and have been thinking about leaving. Maybe being fired would be the best thing that could happen to me, because it would free me up to find something more suited to me. The point is that I get to choose the perspective.

Step Two: What can I possibly do? Keeping to the legal and non-fattening options, I can work overtime every day for a month to catch up; I can get additional training; I can bribe the boss with gifts of homemade cheesecake; I can remind the boss that I have those open-to-interpretation photos from the convention. I said legal, not ethical. I can storm out today, or I can quietly look for another job while continuing to do this one. There are at least a dozen other options.

Step Three: What am I willing to do? Those photos may be legal, but maybe I’m not the kind of person to bring them out. Maybe I’m already away from my family too much, and I don’t want to put in more time at work. Maybe I make terrible cheesecake. I choose to quietly look for another job while still doing my best at this one.

Step Four: I let go of the outcome. Maybe I will find another job before I get fired. Maybe I won’t. Maybe the office will burn down after a terrible lightning strike, and we will all be unemployed. I can’t control the outcome, I can only contribute to it. I can’t choose the exact destination; I can just get on the road headed in a general direction.

Step Five: I act, knowing that if I don’t like the outcome I get, at least the problems I have now are different. I can always return to step one.

In my real life, I disappoint my boss pretty frequently. Self-employment can be like that.

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You can live happily ever after, even if you have neither a purpose nor a passion. The choice is yours!

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Decided Difference podcast #5. Leave feedback at louannclark.com/blog or e-mail questions to louannclark@gmail.com.

I’d love it if you would send me a photo of yourself for my gallery of listeners. I hate being alone in the studio!

Remember to find me and other listeners on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ADecidedDifference.

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New today: the podcast is now available on Stitcher Radio on Demand! You can hear the latest podcast by clicking the little “listen” link above.

To me, the best thing about Stitcher is that it works on your smart phone with no downloading, no syncing, and no wasted memory. Don’t ask me how. I use it, and I think it’s magic. It’s easy to share the podcast with anyone who has a smart phone. Just get the app and search for A Decided Difference.

I plan to blog more regularly, soon, for those who prefer reading to listening. Some other projects are also in the works.

Please let me know if there is a topic you would like addressed, a question you would like answered, or anything that you think you would enjoy or that would help you. A book? More audios? YouTube videos? A newsletter? I want this to be a conversation, not a lecture. Post a comment here, e-mail me at differencepodcast@gmail.com, or find A Decided Difference on Facebook.

There is more coming soon, but that’s all I have for tonight. Talk to me. I’m listening.

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