Have you watched this Gillette commercial recently? HAVE YOU?
Before any of you start: yes, I know it's a commercial. I know that they are ultimately trying to sell razors. I know that, and I don't care. I don't care if the CEO of Gillette is a cynical, misogynistic ass-butt. Because sending messages like this, directed to men and boys, is what is going to help make these ideas NORMAL and that is what is going to help make real change in the world.
I am a big believer in the power of making big ideas mundane. The more familiar something is, the more we like it, and the more easily we can remember something, the more we think it's true (the familiarity heuristic and availability bias respectively). So the more people see and hear that men need to hold each other accountable, stop with the bullying, and stop with the sexual harassment, the more they will think this is a good, normal, and true idea.
That's why I don't care two shakes whether Gillette actually believes in this message. (Okay, I care a little, but it doesn't make me skeptical about the ad itself.)
Dear Any and All Men Reading This:
Please watch this video and share it in the places you share things. Or put a "hells yes, this is great" comment if one of your friends beat you to it. Share the love! Spread the message! Help make it NORMAL!
I recently had one of those nights where, the second I lay down to go to sleep, my brain began swirling with a million thoughts.
It felt like my head was one of those videos from a mega sale where, as soon as the doors open, it's a wild stampede of greedy creatures, trampling around, grabbing things out of each others' hands, and generally wreaking havoc. It did not bode well for sleep.
Then, finally, I grabbed my phone off the bedside table, opened a new note, and jotted down in point form each of the thoughts running through my mind.
Guess what?
That giant mass of swirling madness? It was four thoughts. Four.
It felt like mayhem, but that's just because the same thoughts kept cycling through, trying to make sure they didn't get forgotten.
Guess what else?
After I wrote them down, I almost instantly felt the heaviness of sleep rise up inside of me. My brain knew that its concerns were recorded and it didn't need to keep rehearsing them. It could finally relax.
Two more times as I was drifting off, a new thought would pop into my head, bringing with it a small surge of stress that would start to wake me up. I grabbed my phone each time, added the new thought to the note, and then put it back down.
The experience was like turning some inner wakefulness dial up and down: thought enters, dial turns up; thought recorded, dial turns down. Up, down, up down.
Then I fell asleep.
This is a HUGE contrast from those nights where my brain just won't turn off. Usually, I wind up lying in bed for what feels like hours, trying in vain to will myself to relax and go to sleep. Instead, this time, I had the brief (and stark) interruption where the light from my phone smacked me in the face while I jotted down my thoughts, and then, poof! It was gone.
The funny thing is, I used to do this all the time. In university, I always had a notebook beside my bed. When I inevitably thought of something I needed to do the next day, I would turn on the bedside light and write it down. Sometimes, my little bedside light turned on and off four or five times before I went to sleep. It seems like a lot, but it was better to have a few big interruptions that immediately faded away than to lie there and hope that the to-do list running around in my brain would let me sleep.
Then, apparently, I forgot all about this practice. Until now! It's back! And with it, victory over nighttime thoughts!
Here's my theory: our brains don't trust us. When they think of a thing, they (often rightfully) can't trust that we will remember it in the future, and so they just remind us over and over and over again until it's dealt with.
When we write things down - especially in a place our brains know we will actually look in the future - they can breathe a sigh of relief. They don't have to keep reminding us, because we won't forget.
So this is my advice to myself and all of us: when you can't sleep because a thought - any thought - won't leave you alone, just write it down. Ignore the idea that sitting up and turning on a light will be more disruptive and that maybe you'll just fall asleep. That idea is a trap that will lead to you lying in bed, wide awake, for hours, with nothing but those original thoughts in your brain PLUS the new thoughts about how you're not getting enough sleep.
Write it in a notebook, write it on your phone, write it on the inside of the cover of the book you're reading. It doesn't matter. (I mean, ideally, none of us would have phones near our beds, but whatever. A few seconds of that evil blue light is still better than lying awake all night.) Get a little book light if you have a partner who will be disturbed by your lamp turning on and off all night. Just write it down! It's so worth it.
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The first time I remember hearing this song was (get ready to judge my upbringing) when Nikki McKibbon sang it on the first season of American Idol. According to Simon Cowell, she didn't do it justice and that was her last episode. (It was the top three by that point, so she actually did pretty well.) Anyways, after that, I listened to Stevie Nicks sing it and Mr. Cowell was probably right.
A new study shows that cyclists are emotionally attached to their bikes. I can 100% confirm this is true. I get personally hurt whenever anyone says anything negative about my steel pony. Even if they're pointing out a safety concern, like my brakes not being as tight as they could be, I am not a fan of their criticism.
Medium Maximization
What is medium maximization, you ask? It's our love for rewards points. Or, at least, my love for rewards points (although I doubt they would name a psychological phenomenon after just me, so I bet more people experience it, too). Basically, it's our tendency to see value in a token that has no actual value. You know, like points where you get one for every dollar you spend and need tens of thousands to do anything with them.
Did you know that birch trees can be used to speed up the healing of your wounds? It's been used for centuries by various Indigenous populations, and now (you know, thousands of years later) western science is seeing the value. A new study shows that a gel made from birch bark helps accelerate the healing of burn wounds.
I don't generally consider myself to be a worrier because I'm not always coming up with worst-case scenarios or getting paralyzed by random possibilities at every turn. HOWEVER, there are some specific topics that, once they creep into my mind, create a nice, mental loop of worry that's hard to release.
One might say that I worry about the things that worry me. (Shocker.)
Apparently, it's a research-supported idea that scheduling in your worry helps reduce overall anxiety. I also can see it being effective for increasing overall happiness, productivity, relationship quality, and maybe even sleep, depending on when and how worry manifests in your life.
The advice is simple: start with a 30-minute time slot dedicated to worry, ideally scheduled a little later in the day but not right before bed. Have something to write with during that time so you can list or write about your worry. Throughout the day, if a worry pops into your head, just jot it down so that you don't forget to worry about it at the appropriate time. Then, once time's up, stop!
I really like the idea of being able to tell myself, "not now, you've got time to worry about that later."
So I'm going to try it! Let's see what happens.
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Welcome to the series wherein I share my take-aways from church. The things that, I think, are beneficial to all of us to know or think about, whether or not we believe in any church-related things.
This week in church, we talked about Epiphany and epiphanies.
This past Sunday was the 12th day of Christmas, also known as Epiphany Sunday. In the church calendar, Epiphany marks the day the wise men came and presented little baby Jesus with gifts.
The basic message of Epiphany is simple: we all need one. We are all in need of something new, something fresh, something enlightening.
One interesting thought about all of this comes from Tina Osterhouse, who points out that those wise men had their "epiphany" that they needed to follow a star and find Jesus while they were in the midst of doing their normal work. They didn't go on a journey to find their epiphany, the epiphany led them to their journey.
This made me think of the whole phenomenon of going travelling "to find ourselves." Not that it's illegitimate as a concept, but we forget about the possibility of going about our work and discovering something right here where we are.
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As 2018 comes to an end, we share 13 of our favorite Lens stories of the year, including photo essays on the environment, cyberbullying and immigration as well as race, gender and class https://t.co/KN7zmzrqQEpic.twitter.com/VJLtSOE28s
I just read a Facebook post from a mommy blogger about how she's too tired to make new year's resolutions this year. Usually, she, along with all the other inspirational bloggers (mommy or other), has a big list of intentions, goals, and aspirations for the coming year: run a marathon, double her side hustle, cook mini-quiches for her kid's entire class, make her child's birthday party into a week-long festival, be happy always, be a sexy wife, release a single with Drake, and on and on and onnnnnnnnn. She's done with it. She's tired. She's not setting goals this year.
This reminded me of a post I did a while back about the dark side of all this self-improvement: a possible core belief that we are basically flawed and need to fix ourselves.
So here is my encouragement for the second week of January: don't worry about it all that much. If you haven't made a vision board and set a bunch of smart goals for the year to make yourself a better person, don't let it stress you out.
If you have, you can also not let it stress you out. This doesn't necessarily mean throwing your carefully-crafted goals out the window, nor does it mean settling in for a year of sloth because nothing matters. It just means that we can live our lives without constantly trying to maximize them.
Here's the thing with New Year's resolutions in the age of inspirational bloggers: there is a difference between having a pinch point in your life where something just has to change and some kind of never-ending attempt to "live your best life" 100% of the time (this is genuinely impossible). Maybe you are truly not making enough money to get by, your job is making you feel like trash, you have a project that is just bursting to get out of you, or a bad habit that you are just sick of. By all means, go! Do it! Make the change!
But if your life isn't broken, it may not need to be fixed. And if YOU are not broken (which you almost certainly aren't, you magical human creature, you!), then you don't need to be fixed either. Maybe just set an intention to actually listen to what your little heart and spirit are telling you more often and see what happens?
(Oh, except for the ONE thing that is definitely broken in all of our lives and society and the world and that is our relationship to the PLANET and the ENVIRONMENT and how we treat the EARTH. Let's all resolve right now to be better stewards of our home and hold ourselves to this resolution as if our species' existence depends on it! Kaythanksbyeeeeee.)
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The book asks one simple question: what would it be like to actually like yourself? It shares all the practices and habits that I used to help learn to get past the self-loathing that fueled my depression and learn to like myself for who I am. I hope it's useful
The cover was designed by the wonderful Manuela Camisasca! Check out her website or Instagram.
(Note that Amazon WILL have paperback copies available as well, but not until the official release date on Feb. 4th.)
If you are interested in helping spread the word in other ways, you can spread the word! Share this post to your social accounts! Or go visit the book's Instagram account or my author Facebook page!
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I'm not going to lie, the more I learn about this song, the more confusing I find it. Apparently, it was originally written by a dude in a band named the Zutons whose friend got caught drunk driving. So... I guess that explains it, except I don't really get the "stop making a fool out of me" part. That sounds more like an entitled dude who thought the girl was his and it turns out she wasn't and so he feels he has been made a fool of.
But you know what? It doesn't matter because this song is amazing.
VALERIE
by Amy Winehouse
Well sometimes I go out by myself
And I look across the water
And I think of all the things, what you're doing
And in my head I paint a picture
Since I've come on home
Well my body's been a mess
And I've missed your ginger hair
And the way you like to dress
Won't you come on over
Stop making a fool out of me
Why don't you come on over, Valerie?
Valerie
Valerie
Valerie
Did you have to go to jail
Put your house on up for sale, did you get a good lawyer?
I hope you didn't catch a ten
I hope you find the right man who'll fix it for you
And are you shopping anywhere
Changed the color of your hair, are you busy?
And did you have to pay that fine
That you were dodging all the time, are you still dizzy?
I remember when I was in high school, people would talk about how school should start later, and that research said we would be healthier and smarter if it did. Of course, nothing changed, and now research is once again saying the same things: teenagers get better grades when school starts later.
You know how male politicians always talk about how they aren't sexist because they have daughters? Well, looks like men who have school-aged daughters are less sexist than their counterparts. Something about seeing the girl's lives up close teaches them that their stereotypes may not be true. This is both kinda nice and incredibly frustrating.
