Annal of a Pandemic: Success is about What We Can Control

The other day, I saw an article by memoirist and writing teacher Marion Roach Smith about writing list memoirs, if writing a full one seems overwhelming. And times, they do seem a bit overwhelming, so I am taking MRS’s advice, which is to lower the bar and offer a few snippets of things happening in my life.

1/ In attempting to teach online, I have learned to lower the bar. Lower the bar, by the way, is a good catchphrase for the era of the virus. Especially if you’re a teacher, as I am, thrust into online teaching, as I have been. There’s much talk of trying to manage to connect with students as best we all can. Scaling back. Simplifying. As my mentor teacher says, take it a week at a time. Also my friend Diane offered that suggestion. And really, readers, I don’t need to be told twice. Lowering the bar is a specialty. So, my goal for my first online class is to take attendance and see if everyone makes it online, if they can hear me and we can hear each other, and ask them how things are going. That’s about it for today.

2/ I made the decision to skip most of the news and it’s going well. So here’s another tip, Readers: ignore things you don’t want to read. There is a lot out there that’s not strictly necessary, especially on social media, and guess what? I don’t have to read it. Neither do you. What a relief! When I ignore the scary graphs and the misinformation and the contradictory advice about masks, I am left with being at home, with a blank page, with my daughters, with a house full of books and old movies, and the ability to breathe, move my body through space, and eat baked goods. As Jon Kabat-Zinn writes in Full Catastrophe Living, if you're breathing, more is right with you than wrong.

3/The college senior found an unopened box of matzoh in the cupboard. Just in time for this year’s Passover, she is finishing last Passover’s matzoh by turning it into chocolate caramel matzoh.

4/The other day, in the spirit of lowering the bar, I skipped my morning workout and spent a lot of time in my bathrobe. Then I decided this won’t do, as I feel that lowering the bar below getting dressed is too low. One must keep up appearances.

5/Reading a five volume family saga set in Great Britain before, during, and right after World War Two turns out to be just the thing for enduring privation. I mean, they didn’t have things like gourmet cheese, or disinfecting wipes. They had those dreadful rations for years after the war, and everyone went about in old suits and darned socks. They barely had heat, for heaven’s sake. Coal rations. So, they practiced ingenuity in confronting scarcity. Also, just reading about learning to eat tinned beans on toast and saving clothing coupons to be able to buy a new outfit, makes me feel plucky. We’ll get through, as the Brits did. And maybe we’ll end up with a better, more equitable healthcare and social safety net, too. What’s the book? The Cazalet Chronicles, by Elizabeth Jane Howard.

6/ In re: number 4/ above—I don’t know about your house, but mine is full of bakers. They’re baking desserts at a terrific pace. It’s nice and all, but I have a terrible sweet tooth, so I’m lobbing suggestions for minty desserts, because I don’t like minty desserts. As I write this, I am trying to help bring butter quickly from freezer temperature to room temperature by holding it in my armpits.

Too much information?

Desperate times and all that jazz…

7/I in no way intend to  make light of the current pandemic, by the way. It’s just that it feels important right now to focus on what I can control. This is Stephen Covey’s first habit of highly effective people. Remember that old chestnut? Seems like the perfect time to revisit the concept of the circle of influence versus the circle of concern.


To refresh your memory, here’s what the diagram represents. The yellow circle is your Circle of Influence. This is the stuff over which you have some control. The blue outer circle is your Circle of Concern. This is the stuff that you’re thinking about, worrying about, fretting over, perseverating about, but really can’t control. So, to bring it down to the current situation, I can control whether I eat one of the Rosie’s Bakery Noah Bedoahs currently getting whipped up in the kitchen, but I cannot control whether they get baked. Apparently. I mean, sure, theoretically, I am the parent, and I could put my foot down. However, both bakers are of age, 18 and 21, and the broader question of how much control I can exert over them comes down on the side of having to hide the flour if I really don’t want them to bake. If you see what I mean. 

So, what can I do? I can eat or not eat a cookie. I can wash my hands before I do that. I can limit my trips to the grocery store. I can stay home. I can enjoy my children being with me. There is so much out of my control, all I can do is try to accept my limits and work within them.

The good news, according to Stephen Covey, is that as you focus on your Circle of Influence, it actually begins to expand towards the edges of the Circle of Concern. In short, if you focus on what you can control, the area that you can affect expands.

Success in the time of Rump

Readers, since everything old is new again, always and forever, perhaps it’s time for a review of one key strategy for success. I am talking about Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I have my college students read this book. I have them do an exercise from it. The exercise is to visualize your funeral. I know that I immediately think of the made for TV movie, “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” whenever the idea of attending my own funeral comes up. How often is that, you might ask? Well, at least once a year, when I tell my students to do Covey’s visualization. It’s in the chapter about Habit 2, “Starting With the End in Mind.” This habit focuses on living according to deep values, rather than shallow ones like power, money, and prestige. This exercise is about getting your priorities straight by imagining how you would want to be remembered. You’re supposed to visualize four speakers’ eulogies, a family member, a friend, a co-worker, and a person who knows you from the service work you do. The idea, obviously, is to look at all realms of your life, not just professional, where we tend to focus our evaluations of whether we are successful. The other idea, obviously, is to get you to distill your life to what’s really important. Ideally, you will discover that what matters is not how much money you made, or what rank you achieved, but how well-rounded you were, that you were of service to others, that you worked hard, and that you had a web of friends and family love supporting you. And that you should incorporate service into your life. Service for others. A worthy ideal.

Do you think our leaders in the  U.S. Senate should do this exercise? I do. I mean, there are several whose funerals I would happily visualize, but my eulogies for them would probably not jibe with what they’d like to be remembered as being. It’s probably too late for course-correction, but perhaps not. Hope springs eternal, as Alexander Pope wrote approximately three hundred years ago. The rest of that couplet is not often quoted, as it’s less optimistic than those words suggest. “Hope springs eternal in the human breast; man never is, but always to be blessed.” I believe Adam Schiff will be happy with his eulogies. Sadly, I imagine Mitch McConnell would also be satisfied with what he would imagine his eulogies to be. Ain’t it just the truth that people don’t think they’re the bad guy, even when everyone else knows they are?

Moving on. This is not a political blog.

Now the thing I forgot when I gave this assignment to my students this year, was that Stephen Covey tells readers to visualize their funerals three years from now. Try reading eighteen essays by eighteen-year-olds about their funerals three years from now. It’s jarring. They would be seniors in college. Nobody wants to think about seniors in college dying. It’s bad enough thinking about senior citizens dying. Once you get past that, though, what they write is really touching. They come across as nice people. Like, they want to do good, whether for strangers or by being supportive of friends and family. How can the future be bleak when so many young people want to be good?

A couple of weeks ago, I read an opinion piece in the New York Times. In case you didn’t know it, this year is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Apparently in schools, Holocaust education has been lumped together with anti-bullying education, and students are told that they should stand up to bullies. “Don’t be a bystander,” they are told. “Be an Upstander.” The high school senior confirmed that she has received this message. So did many of my college students. This article, though, titled, “The Road to Auschwitz Wasn’t Paved With Indifference,”** takes a contrarian stance. The gist: most people are not capable of acting heroically and that’s okay. The Holocaust wouldn’t have happened if more people were simply not doing bad stuff. You don’t have to be an “upstander” to badness to save the badness from taking over. You just have to not engage in the badness. In fact, says this author, promoting the idea that everyone has to be an upstander—standing up to the badness at risk to life and limb or livelihood or mere convenience—is counterproductive. It creates a sense of helplessness, since most of us know we’re not heroic. She writes, “It’s hard to be a hero, to risk your safety and personal commitments in order to help a stranger. That’s a big ask. And by asking people too much, we make being moral too hard — which, paradoxically, can make immorality too easy. “Clearly, being moral is too hard, I’m no hero! Forget it!” we can imagine people thinking.

The author continues, “The truth about how massive moral crimes occur is both unsettling and comforting. It’s unsettling to accept how many people participated in appalling moral crimes but comforting to realize that we don’t have to be heroes to avoid genocides. We just have to make sure not to help them along.” In other words, don’t join in. If everyone doesn’t join in with the bad seeds, then the bad seeds won’t take over. Now, if only the Senate Republicans were listening to their inner voices clamoring for them to do the long-term right thing, the thing that would make them proud at their funerals.

Oops, veering into the political again. It is honestly hard to avoid, although avoid politics I do try.

In my attempt to avoid politics, I came across this font of wisdom, “8 More Habits of People Who Always Have a Clean Home.” I figured—no, more correct to say I hoped— to learn something to help me have a neater home. My home, you see, is rather untidy. I defy you to tell me it’s dirty. But I cop to mess. Particularly to mess created by books and magazines and newspapers. On every single horizontal surface. Dirty, though? Not so much, thanks to the wonderful woman who cleans the house. Still, every so often I hope to become more magazine-spread friendly. Thus, I read the article. But what did I learn? I’ll tell you, to save you the trouble of clicking on this article that got published even though so many of mine have not. Guess what those habits are? Of people who have a clean home? Guess what they do to have a clean home? They put away their dishes. They wipe their counters. They have places to put things. They vacuum. They tidy. Plus three more ways people who have clean homes manage to have clean homes.

Oh my Gawd. They clean.

I'd be lying if I said this was atypical. 

Look, if you want real advice, do that funeral visualization. Think of what you want people to say about you at your funeral. Do you want them to say, “She always had clean counters and an amazing centerpiece?” I know I do. So, I shall have to act accordingly. That is my lesson to you. It is clear, I have my priorities in order, just like those Senators. Now all I have to do is clean up my act.

*https://www.chasingfoxes.com/8-more-habits-of-people-who-always-have-a-clean-home/
** https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/opinion/auschwitz-bystander-theory.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Quarterly Check-In, Part One

As tax day approaches, I am reminded of that old saw, The only things certain in life are death and taxes.  But nobody wants to talk about either of those things, so I thought, as this quarter draws to a close, it's time to check back in with you, Readers, about your New Year's resolutions and goals.

How are they going?

I don't really want to talk about that, either. I am here to brag. Why, you ask?

First of all, I won. Twice. I won a raffle. The prize is a massage, which I can redeem at the farmer's market when it opens.  I also won a gift certificate to a plant nursery by guessing the weight of a boulder. I was at a home show with my friend LL. I was very excited about this contest. I had a feeling when I dropped my estimate in the bowl that I was going to win. Don’t ask me why. I don’t even believe in that stuff. Still, I had a feeling. And I won. I won I won I won. My guess was pretty close—1,967 lbs to an actual weight of 1,948 lbs. In the interest of veracity, I must admit the lady who called burst my bubble a bit, if you can burst a bubble only a bit. Newsflash--you can’t. A bubble is either intact, or burst. So. More like a tire with a slow leak is the metaphor I seek. Leak and seek.

Anyway, she told me someone else had guessed a little closer, but every time they tried to contact this person, the person hung up on them before they could speak. This is the tenor of the times, isn’t it? So they moved on to the next closest guess, mine. Of course, I had screened the call, because most calls are not worth answering, then called them back. I am not above hanging up on intrusive calls.

Also in the interest of veracity, I must admit that I had to check with my friend LL about the weight of a ton before I could make my guess. But I was right.

I am thrilled. Now I can drive 75 minutes to spend $50 on a plant. Or a pot. Or something.

I also won by tackling admin. Admin is what gets me every time. Admin is the crap you just don't want to do, but you know you need to do. And life, I am sorry to say, is full of admin.

So, after delaying for several years, literally, I finally took the advice of the plumber and called Delta about our kitchen faucet. This required girding myself for hours on hold with customer service trying not to listen to their hold music and for frustrating questions about make and model when I couldn’t find the manual for the thing. And then I called. And miracle of modern miracle, all I needed to do was text a photo of the faucet to the man on the phone, and next thing I knew, he was promising me a replacement part, for free.

Still waiting on that, by the way.

But—done. Checked off the list. Weight lifted.

The ease of that admin left me a bit foolish feeling. I know I am writing backwards. My point is, this kind of detail, this annoying stuff of which life is full, is the kind of stuff I normally walk backwards around the earth in the opposite direction to avoid. The husband and I call this stuff “admin.” This is because I caught a segment of an interview with someone who has written a book about this stuff, which she calls “admin.” And she claims to have strategies to help all of us poor avoidant sods tackle our admin. Unfortunately, I don’t know her name or the name of her book, and while I could look them up by looking on the website of our local NPR radio station, or probably even by googling “book about admin”, I haven’t. So while this information might indeed be very useful for me, and for you, Readers, I do not have it for you. Because finding it is yet another piece of admin. And I used up all my willpower contacting Delta.

But, to be successful in life, one must figure out how to conquer admin. As well as how to increase willpower. Apparently, according to this author, some of us are better at admin than others. I am definitely others.

So, how to conquer admin?

There’s a great piece of advice bouncing around the self-help coaches: Eat the frog. I believe this phrase is attributed to Mark Twain. Again, I would have to look that up, and so I will just lamely assume it is a reference to something Mark Twain wrote. Or said. After all, it seems plausible. He wrote that short story about the celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County. It’s called, “The Celebrated Jumping frog of Calaveras County.” so it seems plausible he said something about eating frogs. Or it’s plausible that our minds just connect that saying with Mark Twain because he wrote a story about jumping frogs. Frogs and frogs being linked. At least in my mind.

I digress. Now, the saying, “Eat the frog,” means to get the unpleasant stuff out of the way first. Off your to-do list. This makes sense. Eating the frog means getting it out of the way and off your chest and out of your mind and off your shoulders. It means you get to cross something off the to-do list. Something unpleasant.

However, there is also the advice to conserve your most productive time of the day for your most important tasks, such as your creative endeavors or other projects that require clarity of thought and a reserve of energy. And our most productive time of the day is usually first thing. And they recommend saving the admin stuff for later, when you’re not as primed for creative work. That way you don’t burn energy and therefore willpower on less important tasks.

So, which advice is better?

Dunno.

Of late, the husband and I have taken to calling everything we don’t much feel like doing, “admin.” Turns out that’s a lot of stuff. Shoveling snow. Changing light bulbs. Planning meals. Admin. Life is full of admin.

But I think a secret to happiness is embracing admin. I mean, there is no way around it. So. You know. If you can embrace, as in accept that fact, then you have a better chance at happiness. Admin is the frog.

The best scenario is that you partner with someone whose definition of frogs and admin is different than yours. Complements yours, ideally.

This is not the case in my home. We have overlapping definitions of admin. Vast, overlapping definitions. In fact, it’s a miracle anything gets done. I can’t tell you how many times the husband claims he’s going to put a letter in the mailbox on the way to work—our mailbox is across the street in a little mailbox house with other mailboxes belonging to the neighbors—and I find the envelope left behind.

You’d be surprised how hard it is to cross the street to mail a letter.
Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised. What do I know. I’m just letting you in on the depth of our laziness chez nous.

This is probably a good time to remind myself of Stephen Covey’s Habit No. 3 of Highly Effective People, Put First Things First. Good old Stephen Covey. Such a fount of wisdom. I myself have always wanted to be a fount of wisdom—or it font, font of wisdom? Perhaps a step along the path to wisdom is being able to repeat the wisdom of others. Anyway, put first things first is Covey's chapter on time management, which boils down to the four quadrants of effectiveness. Or, how to deal with admin in a mature manner, rather than in a hair’s-on-fire manner. I’ve discussed this before on this blog, but it’s been a long time. (http://www.unmappedcountry.com/search/label/Habit%20%23%203) This about the four quadrants of decision- making)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/7_habits_decision-making_matrix.png

So there are the four quadrants. Ideally, you spend most of your time in quadrant II, taking care of things important but not urgent. Here’s where you do your long-term planning, your self-evaluation, your strategizing how best to whatever. This is in the ideal world. In the real world, sometimes it’s all quadrant IV, mucking about with the unimportant and non-urgent stuff. That’s usually followed by a quick (and involuntary) switcheroo into quadrant I, the important and urgent stuff, the crises. After which you have definitely earned a trip back to Quadrant 4 (unimportant and not urgent; online shopping, playing trivia games, whatever.) Although, according to this handy chart cribbed from Stephen Covey, Quadrant IV should be ELIMINATED from your life.

I think not. We need Quadrant IV. Probably just a lot less time in it.

Honestly, I am not sure which quadrant is the frog-eating quadrant, and Stephen Covey is no longer around to clarify. What I know is that priority-setting, scheduling, and making a plan are three things that make me want to pull the covers over my head and forget.

So we can see why I am not a highly effective person.

Quadrant III is the quadrant we are supposed to delegate. That’s correct, we are to delegate the un-urgent but important things in Quadrant III to someone else who can take care of them. Hopefully this person will have an affinity for admin.

Sadly, since I don’t live in an office, I have no one to delegate things to. I suppose this must be the Eat the Frog quadrant. You have to eat it to get it over with. Unless you can delegate this task to someone else.


I’m thinking, which is the Eat the Frog Quadrant? And I’m thinking maybe I need to rename these quadrants.

	URGENT	NOT URGENT
IMPORTANT	QI  Hair on Fire Taxes due today	Q2  The place for the Big Boys and Big Girls with Brave Hearts and Minds. Or- Research whom to bribe to get kid into Ivy. Also, which Ivy?
NOT IMPORTANT	Eat the Frog? Q3 Mixing advice is so dang hard.	Q4 Binge watch “Russian Doll”

After proving to you just how much I avoid admin, I am going to confound you by saying that I actually did google the NPR interview with the admin-coining expert. Here's why: Another handy tip for getting things done is to use your tendency to put off admin to your benefit. Put off something highly unpleasant by doing something less unpleasant that is also easy. Such as googling the author who coined the term “admin.”

Her name is Elizabeth Emens, and her book is Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More. Here’s a blog post about her general idea*. Summary: 4 approaches to admin: The Super Doer, the reluctant doer, the admin denier, and the admin avoider (moi).

So what was more unpleasant that I had to do? I'll never tell. Instead, I will report that I mailed three important letters this week, which balances out the rebate I failed to earn because I waited so long to send in the form that the offer had expired.

*//www.girlboss.com/life/elizabeth-emens-life-admin-excerpt.

Sharpening the Saw, Covey's Habit Number 7

One of the current joys in my life is the dance group to which I belong. It grew from the NIA class at the Y. One of my fellow NIA classmates, who is in her eighties, suggested forming a dance group to our teacher and from there, things took shape. We performed last fall to major, major, MAJOR acclaim, which I think I’ve mentioned. No? Well, we did perform, and the audience was larger than expected, and the response was terrific. Possibly everyone who came to see our group of women ranging in age from early fifties to early eighties, was just so delighted we didn’t make complete asses of ourselves that their applause was a little louder than necessary. I don’t know. From my vantage point, on stage, with house lights off and stage lights on, I couldn’t see a thing except my co-dancers, and we looked terrific for a group of novices. At least we were having fun, being scared, rising to a challenge, bonding with each other, performing. Doing something different than usual and stretching ourselves creatively. We were sharpening the saw, as Stephen Covey would say. 

Sharpening the Saw is Covey’s Habit Number 7 of Highly Effective People. It’s about the spiral of renewal. Sharpening the saw hones and polishes what he considers the four dimensions—physical, mental, social or emotional, and spiritual. This habit encircles all of the other six habits and makes them possible. 

Now I wasn’t trying to sharpen my saw. I just followed my interest in NIA, my friendship with my NIA teacher, and the enthusiasm of the tall, elegant eighty-plus year old classmate who wanted to dance. But in doing so, I can see that I am indeed working all these elements. New friends, new movement, a different kind of creative activity, the challenge of assimilating and translating a piece of choreography all work these elements. 

So our little dance troupe meets weekly and since we haven’t been rehearsing we have been exploring different kinds of movement. This troupe is supposed to be a collective, but since only two of us are actual dancers and choreographers, the rest of us are happy to be clay or pawns or whatever. I should speak for myself and not for the others, I guess. I’m happy to be clay or a pawn. I just enjoy the movement and the cameraderie. I’ll do whatever. And so lately I’ve been doing Feldenkrais. 

Feldenkrais, brought to us by one of our leaders, is a type of bodywork. “Bodywork” is a word, by the way, that can only be used seriously by dancers; otherwise, it sounds ridiculous. Feldenkrais was a Russian dude with bad knees who figured out a way to move through relaxing and ease and eliminate pain and constriction. If that sounds odd and contradictory, it is. I used to see advertisements for Feldenkrais—“moving through pain”—and made fun of it, because, you know, moving through pain doesn’t really sound enticing. But I was being perverse. Getting to the other side of pain? That sounds enticing. And I guess if you have to move through pain to get to the other side, well, then maybe it’s worth it. 

I dunno if you’re like me and find that everything seems like a political analogy these days, but if so, I am sorry. I’m almost finished with Strangers in Their Own Land, by Arlie Russell Hochschild. I have to read it in bits, because it’s, well, it’s depressing. Hochschild is a liberal Berkeley professor of sociology who spent several years getting to know the residents of the most conservative county in the most conservative state she could find, trying to suss out why they vote the way they do when it seems counter to their interests. Of course what she finds is a bunch of really nice people who are racist at their very cores, but not overtly. It’s the kind of book that makes me wonder if perhaps  the South would just be better off seceding. Anyway, it’s a close investigation of a region, and it’s illuminating, if painful. 

Anyway. Feldenkrais. Moving through pain. This involves lying on a yoga mat in the airy upstairs of the barn where we rehearse and listening to the voice of Annie Thoe, Feldenkrais teacher, available on YouTube and Spotify, telling us to breath into our left shoulders, then into the volcanos of our left breasts, and me thinking, Okay, what the heck. I’m okay with visualizing the inside of my lung and my breast as a volcano or whatever. I’m up for whatever if it's relaxing and takes me to the other side of pain.

There’s a lot of breathing and close focus and attention involved. These are all good things to cultivate, and indeed, a quick search online reveals that Feldenkrais believed his method of healing the body would generalize to improvement in other aspects of life. Remains to be seen, just as it remains to be seen whether the close investigation of the reddest county in the reddest state yields any improvement in the functioning of the body politic. 

After lying on our backs and moving with ease and relaxation, we put away Annie Thoe. We stand up and move as if we’re seaweed or as if we’re being tugged towards one corner of the room by a magnet and we’re resisting. 

We recently decided to work towards another performance, so these exercises might eventually translate into something on stage. I don’t know. I don’t really care. I’m easily led, apparently. 

But the thing is, it feels damn good. 

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Using the Scaffolding to Deal with Distraction

Current events are inconveniencing me, Readers. They are preventing me from splashing happily in my bath. They are keeping me from focusing with laser-like concentration on the frivolous, like the new makeup I bought Monday, after attending my high school reunion. 

Why after and not before, you might ask? Well, you might, except I’m not writing about it, due to my obsession with current events. 

Yeah, current events are jamming me up. I have to keep refreshing my Twitter feed because the conspiracy types are really getting me wound up. And the ones who are convinced we’ve become an autocracy on the way to full dictatorship are amping me up, too. Then I have to check in with Fox News to see what they’re saying, and then over to the failing New York Times and the Washington Post. It’s exhausting. All this energy expended in the mistaken, neurotic obsession, in the magical thinking that somehow, if I stay on top of new developments I will prevent something even more terrible from happening, or perhaps even solve our problems. 

All of which leads me to this grand point. Handling distraction - or not - is key to success. The latest news is today’s distraction. Tomorrow it might be something else. Please let it be something else, like buying makeup after my high school reunion, which was Monday’s distraction. That’s a much more relaxing distraction than worrying about the firing of the head of the FBI. 

Luckily, my scaffolding of success helped me out here. That is the point of the scaffolding. It helps you build success by providing you a structure to support yourself while doing so. 

Specifically, my like-minded others helped me out. We had our monthly conference call today. At the outset, my friend C (as in, we met in college) said to E and me that we could not discuss the elephant in the room, otherwise it would take up our whole time. But E and I both admitted that the elephant in the room had been gobbling up our attention. While we agreed not to talk about specifics, I suggested that discussing how to handle distraction seemed like a good topic. 

C responded that she had, in fact, not been distracted by this latest development. And indeed, when we three summarized our activities viz-a-vis our goals set at the end of our last conversation, of the three of us, only C had fully accomplished hers. Her secret to success? Simple. She had decided to stay focused with pockets of productivity. And the secret to those pockets of productivity was that she committed to using her better energy - during the day - for her work, and saving her checking in on the news for the evening. 

Talking to my like-minded others got me focused on my work today, and helped me resolve to use my better energy for my work, too. Talking to my like-minded others, a.k.a. my loving mirrors, helped me activate another plank in my scaffolding of success: getting centered. Talking about using energy wisely reminded me that focusing on what I can actually do, as opposed to things about which I can do nothing, is the best approach to life. Worrying about what I cannot control is unhelpful. As Stephen Covey states in his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, your circle of influence is smaller than your circle of concern, but is contained within it. I have provided a handy graphic for you in the photo below. Yes, I realize the text is flipped. That's a technical by-product of using my laptop camera. The point is the concentric circles. By focusing on what I can do, I can, over time, expand my circle of influence within my circle of concern. This does not mean withdrawing from current events, however. It just means allocating time appropriately. Making calls to my government representatives can happen in my low-energy periods. Meanwhile, I can focus my better energy on my work. Starting tomorrow, of course. Now, I have to check the news. 

I'm your loving mirror, Readers. That's why the writing is wackbirds.

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Hamburgers and Stephen Covey's Habit #3

Now that I’ve wasted about 45 minutes on activities neither urgent nor important, to wit on fashion blogs and looking once again at Marie Hell dresses and wondering if I dare to spend $275 on a jersey dress and whether I need to always showcase my curves or if I can wear something without a waist and not look like a tent and thinking about belts and cysts and bloating and being short and other body stuff, maybe I can figure out what I want to blog about. 

Let’s see. Well, my friend, let’s call her A, as in alpha, as in the source of all things, asked me yesterday if I’d read Rivka Galchen’s latest short story in the New Yorker. She said, “You have to read it. When I read it, I thought of you.”

Well, I hadn’t, so I did. Just like that. I located the magazine in my house, I sat down, and I read it through. I know. I’m impressed with myself, too. No procrastination. Just reading. Reading instead of doing other things I ought to be doing, if you must know. So procrastination after all. But I digress. I read the story. And it was funny. It’s called “How Can I Help?” and it’s told in the first person by someone who works at a call center and who thinks of herself as a big success, and who slowly reveals herself to be, well, nuts. Screwed up. F**d up. In a funny way. 

And I thought, is this why my dear friend A thought of me when she read the story? Do I remind her of this character who decompensates entirely by the end? 

But it is a really funny story. In one part of the story the narrator refers to a book she read called Happiness, which teaches her the theory of the four hamburgers of life - “there’s the hamburger that tastes good now but makes you feel bad later, the one that tastes bad now but makes you feel good later, the one that is good both now and later, and the one that is bad both now and later.” Farther down in the same paragraph, the narrator mentions, “Another book I read says there are only the drowned and the saved. That also sounds true.”  Indeed it is true, but it is also ridiculous. 

And I thought, is this penchant for reading stupid self-help books the reason my dear friend A thought of me when she read the story? Or, maybe, just maybe, it’s the sheer hilarity of the hamburger of life metaphor for success. I think it’s workable, this metaphor. I could probably map it onto Stephen Covey’s Habit #3: Put First Things First, his habit about personal management. It does bear a passing similarity to Galchen’s hamburger theory. Covey, however, calls his theory the Time Management Matrix, and it’s about how to prioritize your time and your tasks. His matrix also has four quadrants. There’s what’s important and urgent, what’s important but not urgent, what’s urgent but not important, and what’s not important and not urgent. See, it’s kind of like the hamburger metaphor. Because there’s nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes, I believe, said this, a couple thousand years ago, so by now it’s been millenia since there was anything truly new under the sun). Also because I’m creative. 

To summarize, you should locate for yourself those activities that put you in the quadrant of important but not urgent and eat your hamburger there. You should avoid activities that are neither urgent nor important. Perhaps like reading this blog, although I hope not. 

Anyway, as I've said, the story is quite funny, and the narrator unreliable, and the world view bleak, and all of it well written with clever links back to the hamburgers and the drowned/saved thing, but still I asked myself why exactly did A think I should read this? Does she think I’m deluded, too? Does she think it’s funny how stupid advice books are? Does she think I’m like the narrator who says she tries not to be judgy but is?  Is it to warn me of the dangers of those who might actually seek advice from my writings on success? No one would be that silly, now would you, Readers?

Here's the story: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/19/how-can-i-help

In other news: Next week, I will be speaking to an actual editor at an actual publishing house about my book proposal. Send good vibes, Readers! 

Sharpening the Saw, Filling the Well - Stephen Covey Habit 7

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged about Stephen Covey and his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - “effective” being a euphemism for "successful". Why a euphemism? Is there something inherently shameful about seeking success? 

Don’t answer that. 

We don't seek success, Readers, we pursue lives of principle and passion and success is the byproduct. 

The point is that in writing my book draft, I’ve been revisiting some of the books I’ve read on success, and this week, I’m reminded of Covey’s Habit # 7, called “Sharpening the Saw.” According to Covey,

Habit 7 is the habit of renewal - a regular, balanced renewal of the four basic dimensions of life. It circles and embodies all the other habits. It is the habit of continuous improvement that creates the upward spiral of growth that lifts you to new levels of understanding and living each of the habits as you come around to them on a progressively higher plane. (p.52)

The four dimensions are not an early 70s soul group. They are not geometric representations of space and time. They are not the four elements - earth, air, fire, and water. No, they are physical, social/emotional, spiritual, and mental. 

In other words, you need me-time. 

Well, for my me-time, I’m starting a drawing class with the 8th grader. She made the mistake of - or good decision to - sit out the spring semester of the theater class she has been going to for a few years, because she would have had to miss several sessions, due to various scheduling conflicts. This left her in a dangerously underscheduled situation, which I quickly attempted to rectify, because all children must be scheduled up, like loaded human stress-guns. 

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No, really, it wasn’t like that. It was that at the same time she decided to skip the drama class, she said she might like to take an art class, because the vagaries of our public school schedule have left her with only one quarter’s worth of art for the entire 8th grade year. 

I had trouble finding a class with people her age, but I found one with adults. The drawback is that the class is for adults. Also, the final two classes will be drawing from a nude. After consulting the 8th grader and several artist friends, we concluded that drawing from a nude is less of a problem than taking a class with adults. So I decided I would make my teenaged daughter’s life much better by taking the class with her. Because what could be better than taking a class with adults? Taking a class with adults, one of whom is your mother. Who purports to be an adult. 

No, really, it wasn’t like that. It was that the class is kind of far away, and we parents would have to schlep back and forth on Wednesday evenings to drop her off and pick her up. And then I started thinking about drawing and drawing from the nude and how I loved to do that once upon a time, and I thought, why not? Why not just take the class, too? That way I’ll do a service to the environment by eliminating a round trip to Troy. Not only that, I’ll do a service to myself. I’ll be Sharpening the Saw, according to Stephen Covey. I’ll be Filling the Well, according to Julia Cameron of The Artist’s Way, who says that creative work should involve some cross-training to keep the creativity flowing. All in all, no matter how you look at it, it’s a win. 

Except maybe for the 8th grader. But I’m grateful she has agreed. I’ve promised not to look at her or talk to her. And since my last name is different from hers, she can pretend she doesn’t even know me. 

Why Do I Do This?

I'm in limbo at the moment. I sent draft #14 of my proposal, including two sample chapters, off to my agent, and now I’m waiting to hear from her. Which leaves me in limbo. O, there are things I ought to do – get camp medical forms to the pediatrician, buy a new lock for the 7^th grader’s locker, and set a regular schedule for blogging outlets, for example – but I am not doing them. I did manage to send off the baby gift to my friend's granddaughter.

So, here are highlights of my thoughts and activities this week. 

Overall, I have spent way too much time 'pon Pinterest, looking at casual fashion.

I spent my birthday, which wasWednesday, in good company. I’m talking ‘bout Sir Elton John, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Gloria Steinem. Speaking for all of us, I can say that we are all glad to be here, and we didn’t need any extra medication to get through it. The family and I went out to dinner and I had a mini-bottle of champagne to myself to celebrate. There was a small contretemps regarding the celebratory cake – as in, someone didn’t order one - but in the end, there was something for me to blow out. A Price Chopper cake with a star candle I saved from the husband’s birthday the other week.

In re: fashion. I have now belted my sweaters twice. That doesn’t mean I put on two belts. I mean that on two different occasions I added a belt OVER my sweater. I accessorized. This is something I never thought I would do in this way. The belted sweater has always seemed too-too. But never say never. Except to culottes, also known as gauchos. Say never to those.  And to jumpsuits. Say never to  any garment you have to remove entirely in order to use the facilities.  

In re: fashion. Due to Pinterest, I have gleaned the following: flared jeans, also known as bell-bottoms are big. Very big. As corroboration, I offer this information. The 13 year old’s school had a career day this week, and she reported on the various careers represented by parent volunteers. Air Force pilot, scrap metal dealer, emergency room doctor, among others. Then, on the way home from my birthday dinner,  she told me that there was a lady at career day wearing flared pants who looked really fashionable. So fashionable, in fact, that she at first thought it might be (from behind) her social studies teacher. But this lady turned out to be a “real estate something” (I quote my child here), and that doesn’t even matter, because the point was that the 13 year old said the flared pants were very flattering and made her legs look really long.

To which the 16 year old said that no one young would "ever ever ever wear flares". To which I said, “never say never” and she said that maybe flares would be popular among the mom crowd, but never in her generation, because HER generation grew up knowing the truth about flared jeans: they are atrocious.

This is a truth I also grew up knowing. Flares, aka bell-bottoms, were feh. As were sweaters with belts. So I remain mum on the flares, aka bell-bottoms question. But not about the gauchos/culottes, or the jumpsuits.

I wish I could tell you that we discussed Kant, or something even more deep. But I cahnt.

In re: success. I had my monthly conference call with my mutual support group, my mini-master minds group a la Napolean Hill, my tiny Junta (Juntita?) a la Benjamin Franklin. An idea and support-sharing group to encourage ourselves to move forward in our lives. Many, many clichés come to mind here. But my point, Readers, was that one of my group members, who is very Type A, told me that after reading my blog about the Pomodoro Method, as well as another article about the same approach, she used it to get through a work deadline. Instead of a tomato-shaped kitchen timer, she used her iPhone’s timer. She set it for fifteen minutes, and every time it sounded, she just hit reset again, until she was done.

Now, I would like to point out that part of the Pomodoro Method is taking short breaks inbetween segments of intense work. Even if you don’t feel like stopping when the timer dings, you are supposed to stop. STOP and recharge. Look at Pinterest, even. I cling to that little break to get me going in the first place. But that is what makes us all so different and interesting, isn’t it? Instead of taking a break, my Type A friend just reboots herself. Pressing the timer seems to be all the break she needs. Gotta love that. I am so not that way.

Other topics: one piece of information I have come up against repeatedly in my success research is this idea that to be really successful, one must engage in meaningful work that benefits others. If you recall, all the way back to Stephen Covey and his 7 Habits of Highly Effective (euphemism) People, he talked about building upon strong values and specified that a goal of making money, say, was really not the right approach. One must approach money sideways- like it’s a skittish horse, perhaps. (That's not what S. Covey says, it's just my interpretation.) Because going after money is going to prove ultimately a false value. Money, after a certain amount, doesn’t increase your happiness. But things that make you happy include blah blah and blah and helping people.

So I have asked myself, Readers, how is my research on success going to help anyone? How does my blog help? Will my book help? Well, in conversation with my support group, as one of us talked about a workshop she had attended about newfangled brand building and self-empowerment and stuff, I suddenly saw how I might help others. Because, it has become apparent, I’m not coming up with a definitive definition of success .

I wrote in my journal, my intention is to “go there” in myself – to be open and honest and (one hopes, funny and entertaining) about things that other people might feel a bit uncomfortable exploring. Because my working hypothesis about me and my thoughts and feelings is that if I think it or feel it, then most people do. I'm not so special. So why not get it out there under the light and take a look at it? Reminds me of one night, when I was a kid, and I checked under my bed for monsters, and I saw a grey spot, and I was terrified that it was a big spider. Eventually, I worked up courage to get my father to come in and take it away. And the spot turned out to be a dust bunny. Kinda like that.

Also reminds me of years ago, when the younger daughter was in preschool. I made a less than Pollyanna-like comment about motherhood, possibly something about wanting to flick my children in the backs of their heads from time to time because they were so irritating; the teacher said it was really refreshing to hear someone talk about the frustrations of parenting. And I thought, really, this is unusual? Doesn’t everyone feel this way?

I think that it’s all that therapy I’ve had. I’ve become quite comfortable with layers of ambivalence underlying the most intimate relationships.

Just yesterday, I caught a snippet of a radio interview with some singer-songwriter, talking about how writing about the regular, daily personal stuff is boring; but writing about the deeply personal stuff is not. The deeply personal taps into the universal, and that’s what makes it resonate. Which is what my painter friend Karen Kaapcke said to me once. We were at the Armory Exhibition at the NYState Historical Society. Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2 was truly spellbinding. That I should just go deep, because that’s where people would meet me.

Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2, M. Duchamp. 1913?

So that’s what I do here. I hope. ON a good day. Which I don’t think today is. But.

And with that in mind, I will tell you that I spent part of my birthday in the office of a physical therapist for my pelvic floor. But I will not bother you with details about that. I simply write it for you so you know that such a type of physical therapy exists, and that if something is funky with your pelvic floor, there is someone out there who can help you. Me.

One of These Days I'll Be Proactive

Neighbors

A family finally moved into the house across the street. The previous owner was a single guy who bought the house two years ago, planning to marry someone with kids. Those plans fell through. The result was a poorly kept yard with a statue of St. Francis that bothered me more than I like to admit, and a mostly empty house that took a long time to sell. Now, there are kids, one in 5^th grade like my 5^th grader, and one younger, and the parents are about my age. Knowing how miserable I felt when I moved here, I baked some blondies with the kids and brought them over to them when they moved in. Then, the first day of school, when the mom, let’s call her Lulu, cried when her children boarded the bus, I  invited her over for tea. I felt all “I did a mitzvah” for inviting her, while also thinking that I didn't want to be too friendly. Because. Uh. Because maybe being friends with the neighbor across the street is just too "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and could get awkward.

The Non-Epiphany/Habit # 1 Redux

I’ve been feeling like a visitor in my house and in my life. It’s a weird passivity. The other day, I came back home from something, I forget what. The husband had been working flat out. It was Monday. I had been away, where was I? I can’t remember. I was tired from traveling. I looked in the fridge and in the cabinets for something to eat and saw there wasn’t anything easy. Just staples, staples requiring some sort of preparation and chopping and there weren’t any onions or garlic. I just felt like lying around reading and I found myself thinking, I wish someone would get us some groceries. Partially, this wish expressed annoyance that the husband hadn’t done it, because usually he goes to the grocery store on the weekend and I go to the food coop during the week. However, like I said, he’d been working that weekend as well as driving the children to their various activities. I was aware of this, so not really annoyed at him. What it really was, was me feeling like Somebody was going to come along and do this annoying stuff for me, so I could get to the real stuff, like lying around reading and resting.

I need a lot of rest, apparently.

I was standing in my kitchen, and I had one of those moments of clarity. I won’t call it an epiphany because I’m not James Joyce, and also, it wasn’t an epiphany. It was just one of those moments when you see something clearly, as if your mind is wearing smudged glasses and you realize they’re smudged so you clean them and put them back on and everything is clearer.

I thought, Ohhhh, Somebody is me. I’m the one who has to do it. So I went to the grocery store.

Core Values

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Have you noticed that these days it’s all about having a strong core? Core strength is the catchall, must-have, source of all good things for the Two Thousand Tweens. Like stress-induced illness was considered to be in the 1990s, lack of core strength is at the root of all of our problems, according to every article on health and fitness I read. Sure, Pilates devotees have known about this for years. And Martha Graham might’ve had a thing or two to say about core strength. But now, in the popular culture, it’s core, core, core everyday.

Just the other week, upon the recommendation of my running friend Jane, I breezed through Chi Running, by Danny Dreyer, to get some pointers on running form. They  boil down to these three: assume correct posture, tighten your abdominals, and lean forward when you run. Three different ways of saying, engage your core. Because when you stand correctly, you engage your abs; when you tighten them, you are by definition doing the same; and when you try to lean forward when you run, you are forced to engage your core. Try it. Just try standing up straight with good posture and then leaning forward with your feet flat on the floor, bending only at your ankles. Your core must engage.

All this core focus lends itself nicely to sports-life analogies about how to be truly successful in sports or life, you need a strong one. Stephen Covey would agree. As would Montaigne. As would I. And as would, you guessed it, my faithful readers, Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D, who weighs in on the subject of core values in chapter 5 of Succeed: Goals Can Make You Happy.  She talks about different kinds of goals, and says, “Not all goals will bring you lasting happiness and well-being, even if you are successful in reaching them. The ones that will are those that satisfy your basic human needs for relatedness, competence, and autonomy. “ (p. 121)

Basic human needs. Principle-centered life. Strong abs. Core values.

Let me tell you, you need a strong core to stomach the other book I read recently on my vacation, Odd Girl Out, by Rachel Simmons. This is a book about how girls bully other girls. Simmons's thesis is that, despite being a "post feminist" society, we still expect girls to be nice. What this means is that when girls feel anger, they have no direct ways to express it. Unlike boys, whose aggression is tolerated, girls don't feel free to express theirs. So they go underground to express it, all under the guise of niceness. Adults in their lives often, therefore, miss it. Also, because their aggression is subtle and under the radar, they can deny it exists. Their weapons are rumor-mongering, ignoring, excluding, turning others against the girl they've identified as a problem, and generally isolating her.

The book is full of stories of girl hating girl. Since I was hated on when I was a girl, and since I have two daughters, the book called out to me. Actually, it was a mom friend on Facebook who called out to me a few weeks ago, after I posted that the 10 year-old's best friend had said to her, after discovering they'd both been invited to another girl's birthday party, "I'm surprised you were invited to K's party. I didn't know you were friends." My 10-year-old explained that she and K had been on the same soccer team, that K had been to her party, and that they'd been in the same class in 3rd grade. Her friend then said, "Well, that doesn't seem like enough." After that post, this mom friend messaged me that she and some other moms were reading Odd Girl Out together, so I checked it out of the library. You know, for  light beach reading. 

After my second sleepless night, the husband forbade me to read it before bed. 

"But I have to finish it," I said. "There has to be a section about how to handle the bad stuff. They can't just write these awful stories." 

"Yes, you have to finish it," he said. "You have to find out what to do to stop it. Just not before bed."

So what does this have to do with my ten year old asking her friend how she ranks on her list of favorite friends? I know, you’re cringing. I cringed, too, when she told me she did this. What does a strong core have to do with the 10-year-old’s best friend ranking her at #2? This friend who calls all the time. This friend who never wants the playdates to end. This friend ranked my 10-year-old at #2. And what does the 10-year-old say to this? Was she upset by this?

No.

No? She shrugged and said, #2 is not bad.

People, I ask you.  

Some time ago I posted the following list on the refrigerator.

I got it from NPR. Some expert, whose name I missed because I tuned into the program late, was talking about essentials of good character. I don't attend any religious services of any kind, except the Jewish High Holidays, so I tend to worry whether my children are acquiring solid morals. I figured taping this to the fridge was just as good as regular Shabbat services. And much less expensive than Hebrew school. Last time I checked, NPR was still free. I am happy to report that the younger daughter (the 10-year-old), who was probably 8 at the time, ran through the list and found herself in possession of each and every item on it.

Job done. Good morals. Good core. Will withstand any girl on girl bullying, will not participate in any, nor be a guilty bystander.

I have done a good job. Success. 

People, I ask you.  

Highly Effective To The End

Ferriss and Covey. They are both bald.

Stephen Covey died July 16th.  I read it first on Facebook. A friend posted the news on my wall. I felt a pang of sadness and Googled the news. A brief article on CNN reported that he'd died, at 79, due to complications following a dreadful bike accident a few months ago. Must have been a difficult few months for him and his family. He died, the report said, surrounded by his wife, children, and grandchildren, as he'd always wanted.

Of course he did, I thought. Of course he managed to die the way he wanted to. He was Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. His Habit #2 is Start With the End in Mind. Literally, as I explained in this post. His last moments had to be successful. And they were.

This made me feel good.

I wondered what I could say about him besides, "Thank you for increasing my blog's page hits every time I mention you.  I've enjoyed poking fun at you, but I've also admired your willingness to put principles and values at the center of what you do."

But what else could I say? Then a friend of mine sent me Frank Bruni's article from yesterday's NYTimes. Frank Bruni, I recall, used to be a food critic. Now he's an op-ed pundit, which means that now, instead of food, he critiques whatever he wants. Fine. Bruni responds to an article in the Sunday Travel section about Tim Ferriss and the fancy clothes he takes when he travels, and the way he gets around rules to make life sweeter for him. Tim Ferriss, for those who live under a rock, is a lifestyle guru. His books, the 4-Hour Body and the 4-Hour Work Week, the latter with a subtitle about getting rich, have sold millions.

I am proud to say I've read none of them. However, I have read whatever the New Yorker has written about him, and I did see that Travel spread. As did Frank Bruni. And it pissed him off. Bruni pinpointed for outrage two travel tactics Ferriss adopts. The first: putting a starter pistol in his luggage, if he's going to have to check it, because any kind of gun in a suitcase will attract attention to it--and the airline will never lose it. (Don't do this on international travel or they'll try to lock you up with your suitcase--book possibility: the 4-Hour Interrogation). The second: instead of paying for airport parking, just let your car rack up parking tickets on the street. You'll pay less for the tickets than for the garage.

Okay, I'll admit it. I liked the jacket Ferriss was wearing, and until I realized who the article was about, I thought maybe I could afford one like it. I'll also admit that I thought the starter pistol in the suitcase was an audacious, but kind of funny, idea. Frank Bruni, however, set me straight, fulminating that sure, go ahead and cause concern and mayhem behind the scenes at the airport, as long as it benefits you. He says, "Don’t pay for airport parking, he [Ferriss] advised in The Times, if the accrued tickets from leaving your car on the street won’t be as expensive. Sure, you’re unlawfully hogging a space someone else might make legal use of; maybe you’re thwarting street sweepers, too. Not your problem. A conscience is for chumps." 


Readers, I was chastened. I was sorry I'd been amused. And I agree with Frank Bruni that Ferriss, guru of the year, has made millions off of the principle of getting the most for yourself, damn the consequences to others.

Can you imagine what Stephen Covey would say about him? Upon what are Ferriss's principles centered? Luckily for us, there's an appendix at the back of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to help us. Covey lists about a dozen possible centers for your life--Friends, Spouse, Money, Family, Work--and the way these various centers can skew your values and therefore your behavior and your life.... A quick scan leads me to Self. If your self is your center, then your principles are centered on the need to justify anything that serves your best interest, and are "adapted to need." In other words, they are amorphous, flexible, and are therefore not really principles at all.

Covey's appendix continues with Church and Principles as other possible life centers. All of these possible principle-centers, according to Covey, lead us astray, except one. Principles. So even though he's a member of a church, Church is not the Covey-approved center for life. It's principles. Which is why, really, we can admire Covey, or hate him, but we can't say he's trying to shove his particular church, the Mormon one, into the center of our lives. He's aiming for something universal. This is the polar opposite of what Bruni describes as Ferriss's "epic narcissism."

As for Ferriss, I've already admitted I haven't read his books. I am responding to Frank Bruni's response to an article about him. Maybe Bruni is wrong about Tim. I doubt it, though. I am curious to see if, eventually, Tim Ferriss re-evaluates his life, and finds a principled Principle-center for it. In the meantime, I guess we've got Frank Bruni to help us. And he's not even bald yet. I wonder if he's read Stephen Covey? At least we've still got his book.

The Habits of Highly Effective Mormons (With a Little Mysticism Added)

"Did you see the article on Romney that mentions Stephen Covey?" The husband asked me Sunday.

I had not. Not only was it on the front page--and who reads the front page of the Sunday Times?-- but also it was about Mitt Romney. Since I am as likely to vote for Mitt Romney as I am for my mittens, I tend to avoid articles about him. Perhaps this is foolish. Perhaps it is willful head-in-the-sand behavior. So be it. I also avoid op-ed columnists who write about him. So much more efficient than reading them. I'm either going to agree with them, after all, or want to shoot them, so why not take a longer look at the photo-spread of the contact sheets of the photo shoot for the album cover of "Heroes" by David Bowie? And then throw in another load of laundry. (The husband told me about that article, too, by the way. He seems way too relaxed on Sundays.)  I do, however, always check with the husband that Gail Collins mentions the story about Mitt's family dog on the car roof in every piece she writes on him. He says, yes, she did, and then I am free to enjoy a knowing chuckle at cocktail parties when people mention Gail Collins. Or Mitt Romney. Although I don't spend a lot of time around people who mention Mitt Romney. Or at cocktail parties. Indeed, I don't think I've been to a cocktail party since 1995. Safe in my little bubble, I am.

Anyhoo, the article, by Jodi Kantor, was about Romney's faith. Her thesis is that while he hardly mentions his Mormonism in public, it is the bedrock of his existence. While in public, he's practically secular, in private, he's "demonstrative about his faith." Or if not only in private, at least away from the "spotlight."  She gives several examples, including him bursting into song about Jesus and meddling--well, that's a loaded word isn't it?--but, yes, meddling in the affairs of a married couple who felt they both needed jobs to live in the Boston area.  Mitt's commitment to doing good extended to helping the couple redraw their budget, so that the poor woman, pregnant with her first child, wouldn't have to work outside the home. One wonders how far out of Boston they had to move to achieve this little dream?

But this article isn't about Mitt Romney. It's about someone a little more important. See, in this article, Kantor mentions that "Mormons have a long tradition of achieving success by sharing secular versions of their tenets." This is according to a book by one Matthew Bowman. This Bowman says Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is "Latter-day Saint theology repackaged as career advice." 

Wh-whaaa?

Not that this information about his religion is hidden. About a minute on the interwebs verified it. Did you know he used to preach on the Boston Common? Did you know he opposes same sex marriage? Did you know he has one wife, 9 kids, and 52 grandkids? Now you do.

So the really weird thing about this information is that I was just the other day wondering where Stephen Covey came up with his whole theory. I mean, before he was the success guru, he was just Stephen Covey. Stephen Covey, Mormon, apparently. You might even say I asked the universe a question, and the universe answered.

Come to think of it, there was another question I asked the universe just last week, too. I went to the dentist, and I was sitting there getting scraped and polished, and I thought, I wonder what my teeth would look like if I never went to the dentist. And then I went to interview my next subject for the newsletter I write for every month, and I got my answer. The universe provided AGAIN. (FYI, picture this: you take a piece of soft cheese, like Laughing Cow, and you hold it under your tongue and then squish the cheese so it extrudes around your teeth. Then you let that stuff harden. That's what you look like if you don't go to the dentist. Nice guy, though. A priest. Probably has no dental insurance. Ask the universe. The universe provides. Sometimes.)

I digress. You know, Stephen Covey started an international business called Franklin Covey. He has an online community, which you are free to visit, and perhaps to join. Aside from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which you've heard of even if you've never read it--like The Book of Mormon--he has several other best selling books. And he is Mormon. Then there's Mitt Romney. If any of you is tempted to rail about The Illuminati, can we just take the spotlight off the Jews, and turn it towards the Mormons? Do you have to be a Mormon or play a Mormon on TV to achieve worldly success?

Does it matter that Stephen Covey is Mormon? No, it does not. As long as he remains secular in public. He's not foisting his Mormonism upon his readers. Nor is his religion the only religion that stresses leading a life of principle. Nor is following a religion at all necessary for living a life of principal, I might add. 

Perhaps he was hoping to knead his readers into nicely rounded dough balls through all his 7 habits, and then to pop them into the Latter Day Saints' oven and pull them out as nicely browned Mormons, one by one, once they'd finished the book. The book's been out for a long time, however, and I haven't seen any reports about a vast increase in the number of Mormons.* So I think we're safe to assume that the secular life is still possible, even if you're reading Stephen Covey.

image via Wikipedia

Possibly, people just don't want anything to do with that special Mormon underwear. I know I sure don't. I tried it. It itches.

*Holy Molloly: Alerted by an alert reader, I must report the following, from today's NYTimes: "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has experienced explosive worldwide growth through its missionary work, particularly in countries with large black populations. In the United States, it is the second-fastest growing religion, according to a recently released decennial census of religions."