What motivates us?

According to Dr. Dean Ornish, it’s “the joy of living.” In a recent article in Newsweek magazine, Ornish compares the motivational value of fear versus joy — and joy wins. “Joy of living is a more powerful and much more sustainable motivator than fear of living,” Ornish writes. But the key word is “sustainable.” Fear can serve as a powerful short-term motivator, he concludes, but in the long term, it cannot endure.

I highly recommend this article.

– Cindy Hampel

“Where your treasure is…”

Our family had a wonderful day visiting with two high school friends and their families. The excuse for our get-together was the 14th Annual Woodward Dream Cruise. We enjoyed catching up with their families, but I particularly enjoyed hearing anecdotes about their recent vacations.

Anne, David and Alexandra shared some stories about their recent trip to New York City. At Bloomingdale’s, they tried to avoid the gauntlet of store employees trying to spray them with cologne. But at one point, an interaction did occur. The employee asked David where he was from. “Dearborn,” he said. Trying to convince David to buy the cologne, the employee told him, “They don’t make this in your country!”

In another NYC story, Alex mentioned that, during their visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her family would ask security guards for directions to certain museum treasures that they wanted to see. Regardless of which treasure they sought, all the guards gave them the same directions: “Behind the stairs, through Modern Art.”

Angie, Phil and Laura shared anecdotes about a camping trip in northern Michigan. Angie and Phil’s older daughter, Theresa, was driving with a friend north on I-75 for a camping trip in the Upper Peninsula. But before they got to camp, Theresa’s car hit an elk near the town of Wolverine. The young women were okay, but the unfortunate collision required a tow and rental car.

Angie and Phil drove up to meet Theresa’s car and help them with their predicament. Apparently, the collision occurred in Michigan’s elk country, with perhaps more elk than people. In that part of the northern Lower Peninsula, the small towns meant that the tow would come from one town west of I-75, while the rental car would come from another town east of I-75. But the incident taught them an important fact about northern Michigan.  No matter who was helping them with the accident report, the tow or the rental car, everyone they met asked them the same question: “Did you get the meat?”

They quickly learned that, in northern Michigan, the expectation is that killing an elk means you have first dibs on its highly valued carcass. At that moment, butchering their daughter’s road kill wasn’t on their minds — but it was on the minds of the people who dwell in elk country.  If they didn’t claim their elk meat, then someone else would.  Sure enough, Angie said that, while they were waiting for the tow, they watched as some stranger did, indeed, “get the meat.”

The second interesting story from the elk incident was about directions. Trying to get from the towing town to the rental car town, one man told Angie, “Go down a block to the Days Inn.” That “block” was 25 miles long. The next “block” in the directions was 50 miles long.

At first, these stories seemed unrelated to me. But then I thought about how we define “country.” Of course, there’s the legal definition. Of course, New York City and the Detroit Metropolitan area are in the same country. Of course, the Detroit Metropolitan area and northern Michigan are in the same country…even the same state.

But I think that, in another sense, all three areas are their own country. In New York City, cologne is valued and the direction for all treasures in the Met is: “Behind the stairs, through Modern Art.” In the Detroit Metropolitan area, cars are valued while residents give directions in terms of Woodward — those living east of Woodward are “East siders” and those on the west of Woodward are “West siders.” In northern Michigan, elks are valued for their meat and a block can be 50 miles long.

Maybe the things we treasure help us define our true country and how we measure it.

– Cindy Hampel

Writing: The key to weight loss

Okay, I like to write. That’s why I have my own blog. But it’s nice to know that writing has other benefits as well…like helping to keep weight off. Apparently, the act of writing down everything you eat (and I mean everything) changes how you eat. According to this Time magazine article, Dr. Sanjay Gupta is discovering this himself.

I could get philosophical here and talk about the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and how the act of observing actually changes what is observed…but I won’t.

– Cindy Hampel

Video hug

For those who…at this unique time of year…are sending kids off to college or watching them launch their first big job in another town, here’s a video tribute from Carly Simon.

– Cindy Hampel

Mindfulness

Our family is returning to our usual suburban lives after spending a week at Camp Chickagami in northern Michigan. For several years now, we’ve loaded up our minivan with duffel bags and sleeping bags and food bags and on-the-road bags and beach bags and towel bags and housekeeping-away-from-home bags…as well as bicycles…for the six-hour trip to Presque Isle County.

We always look forward to swimming in Lake Esau or hiking near the water or biking to the nearby lighthouses or maybe day-tripping to Mackinaw City or Mackinac Island. But when I camp, I also enjoy just lying down in our cabin and diving into a pile of reading.

That’s why I was so glad to find that a magazine I’d read in our cabin last year was still on one of the tables inside. It was the August 2007 issue of National Geographic Adventure magazine, with an article written by author Laurence Gonzales. The article was titled, “Why Smart People Make Dumb Mistakes.”

I wanted to reread the article. Gonzales, who’s an expert in survival skills, offers anecdotes of people with experience who have made potentially fatal mistakes — including himself. The problem, he says, is that we humans tend to construct mental models for efficiency’s sake. But these models aren’t always effective.

“These models can become remarkably stable even in the face of clear information that would seem to contradict them,” Gonzales writes. “That’s why we can continue on into deteriorating conditions or ignore obvious hazards.”

“We don’t really perceive the world most of the time,” Gonzales says, adding that our mental models allow us to “move smoothly through the world without having to stop all the time and reexamine something we’ve already examined.”

But that’s exactly what we should do. He advises us to stay mindful and question ourselves regularly. “Success in the wild or in everyday life lies in the willingness to stop and question what you’re doing,” he says.

According to Gonzales, mindfulness has its finer rewards…besides the obvious goal of survival. He quotes Emory University psychiatry professor Gregory Burns: “People who seek out information about the world get more goodies.”

I thought the article was fitting to read on an annual camping trip that shakes me out of my usual suburban routine. I think that, sometimes, it helps to change where we are so we can change how we are.

That makes all the packing and unpacking worth it.

– Cindy Hampel

Seeing the obvious

As a school girl, I loved reading Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Purloined Letter.” How clever, I thought, that someone would hide something so valuable in plain sight. I thought again about “The Purloined Letter” after discovering a trove of quotations by American journalism legend Edward R. Murrow that included this gem:

“The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer.”

Maybe we don’t always see the obvious because we think the truth can’t be so…obvious. Or maybe we’re trying to be fair, thinking there must be more to “x” than meets the eye. Of course, often there is more…but sometimes, what we see is exactly what we get. Maybe we’re persuaded by the first interpretation we hear about “x”. It’s like the optical illusion in which we can see either a chalice or two faces in profile. If someone tells us that it’s a picture of a chalice, that’s what we’ll notice first. Or maybe we’re afraid to see the obvious because it contradicts one of our cherished beliefs. I think it’s easiest to miss the obvious when we tell ourselves that, because we believe it can’t be true, it’s just not true.

And maybe that’s why Poe wrote his story — to remind us not to over think. Sometimes, the answer is obvious.

– Cindy Hampel

Brain fatigue

Making too many choices in a day can tire our brains, according to a new article in Scientific American magazine. And it’s not just major life decisions that wear us down — deciding whether or not to eat a cookie also adds to our brain fatigue. Apparently, what counts is the total number of decisions we make in a day.

The article recommends that we avoid making important decisions when our brains are tired.

Food for thought.

– Cindy Hampel

“You’re beautiful as you feel”

When I read this article, the first thing I thought of was this snippet of lyrics from the 1971 song “Beautiful” by singer/songwriter Carole King :

You got to get up ev’ry mornin’ with a smile on your face and show the world all the love in your heart. Then people gonna treat you better. You’re gonna find, yes, you will, That you’re beautiful as you feel.

The article talks about a new book by Dr. Debra Luftman and Dr. Eva Ritvo, a dermatologist and a psychotherapist, who have combined forces to help women feel better about themselves both outside and inside. Their book, The Beauty Prescription, takes a holistic approach. They realize that some beauty issues are, literally, skin-deep…but others are deeper, like healthy habits, positive thoughts and selfless deeds.

For me, one of the most interesting ideas from the doctors-turned-authors is that others see us as 20 per cent more attractive than we think we are. Why the difference? According to the doctors, it’s because other people factor in our personality and how we express ourselves — while we tend to see only our outer appearance.

On challenging days, we might feel better reminding ourselves what the doctors said!

– Cindy Hampel

Love as an expanded self-interest

I’d like to offer, as food for thought, this quotation from psychotherapist and author Nathaniel Branden:

“When we love, our concept of our self-interest expands to embrace the well-being of our partner. That is the great compliment of love: to declare to another being that his or her happiness is of selfish importance to ourselves.”

– Cindy Hampel

“Genuine Progress Indicator”

For years, I’ve thought that our economic thermometer is broken. I left a corporate job to take care of my young kids and write freelance assignments from home. My family was wonderfully appreciative of what I did. But it didn’t take long to realize that what I did for most of the day — child care — meant nothing to the economy.

Thanks to our current economic measure, the Gross Domestic Product, my time had no value because no money exchanged hands. But if I had done the same work for someone else, and gotten paid for it, then my work would have “registered” with the economy and suddenly become valuable.

Similarly, when I provided help and transportation to my aging parents, my time was worth nothing. But if I had provided those services to other elderly people — for a fee — then suddenly my time would have become valuable to the economy.

So when I saw this article on the Internet, I smiled and said to myself, “Somebody gets it!”

Today, when so many people feel that we’re undergoing a recession — while our current economic thermometer says we’re not there — maybe the people are correct and our thermometer is broken.

– Cindy Hampel