The Reverse Bucket List

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Many self-help guides suggest making a bucket list on your birthday, so as to reinforce your worldly aspirations. Making a list of the things you want is temporarily satisfying, because it stimulates dopamine. But it creates attachments, which in turn create dissatisfaction as they grow.

I’ve instead begun to compile a “reverse bucket list,” to make the ideas in this essay workable in my life. Each year on my birthday, I list my wants and attachments—the stuff that fits under Thomas Aquinas’s categories of money, power, pleasure, and honor. I try to be completely honest. I don’t list stuff I would actually hate and never choose, like a sailboat or a vacation house. Rather, I go to my weaknesses, most of which—I’m embarrassed to admit—involve the admiration of others for my work.

Then I imagine myself in five years. I am happy and at peace, living a life of purpose and meaning. I make another list of the forces that would bring me this happiness: my faith, my family, my friendships, the work I am doing that is inherently satisfying and meaningful and that serves others.

Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength

Our strong intuitions about happiness are wrong

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Our minds lie to us. We have strong intuitions about the things that will make us happy, and we use those intuitions to go after that stuff, whether it’s more money or changing circumstances or buying the new iPhone. But a lot of those intuitions, the science shows are not exactly right — or are deeply misguided. That’s why we get it wrong. I know this stuff, but my instincts are totally wrong. After a busy day, I want to sit and watch crappy Netflix TV shows, even though I know the data suggests that if I worked out or called a friend I’d be happier. But to do that I have to fight my intuition. We need help with that, and you don’t get it naturally, especially in the modern day. 

We’re fighting cultural forces that are telling us, “You’re not happy enough; happiness could just be around the corner.” Part of it’s all the information out there about happiness, which can be hard to sift through, but a lot of it is a deeper thing in our culture that seems to be leading us astray.

Yale cognitive scientist Laurie Santos, quoted in the New York Times

Let their words fall to the ground

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If I start insulting you in another language you feel nothing. The words don't mean anything to you because it’s you who has to put the meaning into it. I know what it means but it doesn’t matter. Take their words, take away the value of their words and drop them to the floor. If you take that away they fall to the ground. They never get to touch you. They are nothing. 

Salma Hayek

The Ultimate Adventure

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Time spent in the neutral zone is an opportunity for inner reorientation. There’s no time limit on your stay and no certainty of what the “goal” is while you remain there. More than a readjustment to the “new you,” it’s where the real business of transitions takes place. Most people don’t recognize it for what it is but will look back later and see there was significant transformation taking place. It is a time of greater sense of self and lesser sense of what’s going on around us, what all the circumstances mean. We become more acutely aware of what’s going on the inside more than on the outside.

Even Jesus needed a retreat into the desert to gain a sense of who he was – and thus, what he was here to do. It is in these “moments of discovery” that we are mostly likely find God because we are "open" in a way we are not when caught up in every day life.

It starts with letting go of what no longer fits or is adequate to the life stage you are in. Some people never fully let go of those ill-fitting parts or else run back to these broken connections. May it never be said of us that we failed to meet this challenge. Here's to transitions that take us into uncharted waters without a map. This is the ultimate adventure.

Stephen Goforth (born April 24)

Experiencing Flow

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Instead of using our physical and mental resources to experience flow, most of us spend many hours each week watching celebrated athletes playing in enormous stadiums. Instead of making music, we listen to platinum records cut by millionaire musicians. Instead of making art, we go to admire paintings that brought in the highest bids at the latest auction. We do not run risks acting on our beliefs, but occupy hours each day watching actors who pretend to have adventures, engaged in mock-meaningful action.

This vicarious participation is able to mask, at least temporarily, the underlying emptiness of wasted time. But it is a very pale substitute for attention invested in real challenges. The flow experience that results from the use of skills leads to growth, passive entertainment leads nowhere.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

The value of soft skills

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A soft skill enables you to interact well with others. It’s nontechnical and typically falls into categories such as communication and negotiation, adaptability and learning, teaching and training, and interpersonal abilities, including empathy. For organizations, developing and rewarding soft skills is becoming all the more crucial in our ever-automated world. Machines are getting smarter, and as they take over more basic, repetitive, and even physical tasks, the need for workers with social, emotional, and technological skills will be higher than ever.

McKinsey & Company

Learning about Making Infographics

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Taking Pride in Doing Evil

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She was very much ashamed of being in jail—but of being a prostitute, not at all. On the contrary, she seemed rather pleased with herself and proud of her position. Yet, how could it be otherwise?

No man can play an active part in the world unless he believes that his activity is important and good. Therefore, whatever position a man may hold, he is certain to take that view of human life in general which will make his own activity seem important and good.

It is generally supposed that a thief, a murderer, a spy or a prostitute, knowing their occupation to be evil, must be ashamed of it. In point of fact, the case is precisely the reverse. Men who have been placed by fate and their own mistakes (or sins) in a certain position, however false, always adopt a view of life which makes their place in it good an appropriate.

To maintain this idea, men instinctively mix only with those who accept their view of life and of their place in it. This surprises us when thieves boast of their adroitness, prostitutes flaunt their shame, murderers gloat over their cruelty.

We are surprised, however, only because the circle, the sphere, of these men is limited, and principally because we are outside it; but does not the same state of things exist among the rich – who boast of their wealth, i.e., of robbery; the generals—who boast of their victories, i.e., of murder; the rulers—who boast of their power, i.e., of violence?

We do not recognize their ideas of life and of good and evil as perverted, only because the circle of men holding these perverted ideas is wider and because we belong to it ourselves.

Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection

The Upside of Impostor Syndrome

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In workplace settings, at least, those harboring impostor-type concerns tend to compensate for their perceived shortcomings by being good team players with strong social skills, and are often recognized as productive workers by their employers.  “People who have workplace impostor thoughts become more other-oriented as a result of having these thoughts,” says Basima Tewfik, an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and author of a new paper detailing her findings. “As they become more other-oriented, they’re going to be evaluated as being more interpersonally effective.”

She adds, “What I don’t want people to take away is the idea that because people with impostor thoughts are more interpersonally effective, it’s not a problem.”

Peter Dizikes, MIT News

Forgiveness is...

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Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.” It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.” Forgiveness is the remedy. It doesn’t mean you’re erasing the past, or forgetting what happened. It means you’re letting go of the resentment and pain, and instead choosing to learn from the incident and move on with your life.

Remember, the less time you spend hating the people who hurt you, the more time you’ll have to love the people who love you.

Marc and Angel Chernoff

Accepting Forgiveness

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Imagine a man standing in the terminal with a ticket in his hand, refusing to enter the plane because he feels unworthy to fly! Such an attitude would prove that he doesn't understand the basis for his admittance to the plane. He would probably end up a nervous wreck and never get off the ground. He doesn't understand that his worthiness or unworthiness is not the issue; the ticket is what counts.

Think of the implications. If God (whose standards are far higher than ours) has completely forgiven and accepted us, why can we not accept ourselves? Why can we not believe His verdict in the matter and accept ourselves as He accepts us? If we have received the ticket, which Christ paid for on the cross, we have no need to feel unacceptable.

Edward Lutzer,  Failure: The Back Door to Success