Soap and Prevention Goals Follow-Up

Readers, who knew that soap could produce so much lather?

My last post generated a few interesting responses that I thought you would enjoy.


Here’s one:

I just read your recent blog post. I especially enjoyed the bit about the soap because, as you could probably guess, we also like to use soap down to the last drop around here. But, who doesn't like a new bar? A co-worker told us a while back how to meld a soap end to a new bar of soap and we've been living in the best of worlds ever since. :)
Foam on!

Best of both worlds, indeed. Prevention and promotion goals. This soap meld solution is actually brilliant, if challenging. I’m not quite sure how to do it. The writer kept that secret. How much soap does it waste to get the one to meld to the other? Perhaps it’s only a matter of a simple wet-and-stick strategy. If I remember, I will try to meld. But the husband may foil me by tossing the soap sliver before getting the new bar.

And, as previously mentioned, I will be relieved.

Here’s a second:

I have an add-a-thought . . . those slivers escape fingers easily and create a slip-in the-tub hazard, providing the veteran, soap-saving pessimist good reason to toss the sliver and suds up with the optimist's big bar.

Safety first! This writer is prevention oriented, at least in this situation. But there is, again, the promotion-mindset: being aware of what you might gain.  With safety and optimism as priorities, I guarantee a happier life, and one that is probably more successful than just focusing on risk and prevention will create. This is another best of both worlds way of looking at the situation. Preventing slipping and promoting safety by ditching the soap splinter and opening the big bar.


Then there was this response, which really takes anxiety and guilt to a new level, and shows the dark side of being prevention-minded:

I think fear is compounded as you age. My sense of adventure has been stamped out by my sense of responsibility and general fear of every darn thing now…

Like, if you throw out that sliver of soap, you’ll start living a wasteful life and you’ll end up in old age with no financial security. What about THAT you ‘soap wasting optimists’?

I would like to tell you that I did not totally relate to this superstitious fear one thousand percent. But I did. And maybe some of you do, too. Waste not want not. Isn’t that one of our biblical proverbs? Of course it is. Disobey and invite the wrath of God. In fact, there are probably other rich veins of guilt running through my life that make me expect a punishment from above for some sort of minor transgression below. Or, as in this case, not a transgression at all, really.

So let’s not waste time on soap splinters and slivers. Unless, like my soap-melding friends above, you really want to. After all, if financial ruin can follow from throwing out a soap splinter, what disasters might develop from not eating all your dinner?

Oh. My. God. Is that why we have global warming?

Have I negated my point? Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. (Thank you, Walt Whitman, for another of my favorite quotations I like to use out of context.)

I am not here to give answers, Readers, merely to raise questions and suggest multiple ways of looking at things.

And so, let me continue on with this goals stuff.

These comments reveal their writers’ goal orientations: prevention primarily, but with some promotion thrown in. They also reveal how clever and amusing my readers are, I must say.

Another comment from the wrath of God writer was that fear had come to dominate decision making so that going on a vacation abroad, a thing she wanted to do, had become impossible. Too many things could go wrong: have a terrible time, bad travel experience, loss of money, injury, death.

This is prevention orientation to the extreme. Extreme risk aversion becomes paralysis. And it shows the danger of having too much of one kind of focus. Because after all, life is for living, not for hiding.

So prevention-focused individuals must learn where that focus is beneficial, and where it is harmful.  And remembering that we all need goals. And that not all goals are about risk prevention. Some goals are about gain.

It means making an effort, sometimes, to think about what you might gain from pursuing a goal. If you know you will unconsciously tend to consider the risks more weighty than the rewards of a decision, then you can counter this consciously. By making an effort to consider the gains. By finding someone who will put a new bar of soap in the soap dish for you.


*********


And now it’s June.

Delights of June. And sun. 

Ouch, my pinkie hurts. I jammed it during YFit class today. On a medicine ball of all things. Throwing it against the wall. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect it would hurt to type.

So I am forcing myself to finish the blog post. It may be more disjointed than usual, but that's because my pinky is, too.

In other news, I find I have enrolled in a class—a graduate class for the MSW degree. I’m not enrolled in the program. Yet. But I am leaning that way. Prototyping my way through life, as recommended in Designing Your Life by Bill Burnet and Dave Evans. They are Stanford professors in the design department. Using principles of design to design a fulfilling life. In this case, trying out a possibility, and seeing how it goes. Developing a first attempt and then tweaking. That is prototyping. Prototyping is key to design, and therefore to life. It makes sense as a strategy. Keeps a person moving, which seems to be a built-in need: to feel like we are progressing. And then correcting as need be. So. I have prototyped my way into a group presentation due Monday on Domestic Violence, also know as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), and a 2-3 page paper based on an interview with a member of an older generation on a problem in social welfare. Dad, expect my call any moment. Topic: discrimination.

Now, I don’t like to wax spiritual-mystical woo-woo, but I am going to say this. A few weeks ago, feeling discouraged about writing overall, I wished consciously to myself for an opportunity to write something more for Publisher's Weekly, something beyond my short, unsigned reviews.

And then, yesterday, came an offer. I’m waiting for confirmation, but I have been asked to interview an author—for a byline!

So. Just leaving that out there. Is it a tip for success? Is it a plug for the Law of Attraction?

You decide.

Think of me working on my group presentation with two 22-year-olds and a sore pinkie while you enjoy your weekends, Readers.

Quarterly Check-In, Part Two. Goals, Again. And the Sphincter of Life.

The other day, when I wanted to write, I tried a computer program called Freedom that blocks access to the Internet. You set the amount of time you want to be free from it, and then a green screen pops up and says, “You Are Free.” I have to say that the moment that green screen popped up, I felt a little space open up in my chest. A little what? A space that relaxed? Like a hole? This reminds me of a sphincter. Sphincter is a word I like. It’s a great word. It’s such an evocative word, almost onomatopoetic.

Anyway, the sphincter in my chest relaxed. Yes, I am equating my heart with an asshole, because that is the sphincter that springs to mind when I see the word. There are other sphincters, but let’s be honest, they are not top of the list. Partly because butts are funny. Funny and gross. And because my sense of humor, another top quality, apparently, is on par with your average kindergartener’s. Also, because I don’t really know anatomy, so I don’t really know where those other sphincters are.

I just like writing that word. Sphincter.

Anyway, freedom from screendom with Freedom. When I sit down to write, or really any old time, I do spend too much time checking and scrolling and not writing. The phone affects me like a reflex. I just check and scroll, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, email. email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. You get it. You probably do it yourself. It’s a horror show. There is no space. No release. I was talking to another grown up person the other day—okay, it was my esthetician, Ruth, who is amazing, and everyone should have an esthetician and get facials. Just the facial massage is worth the time and money—anyway, we were talking about the way social media just squeezes your life. When we were growing up, we had freedom from peers that our children do not have, because they are always on social media. Back then, it was a relief to get away from the intensity and scrutiny of them by them. Sure, we had telephones. We were attached to these cords that were stuck to these things on the wall. and sometimes we didn’t even have those phones in our rooms. Maybe we could stretch the cord to the basement steps, or maybe there was an extension in the attic or whatever. But you could get away. There was a little space. A little relaxation. The sphincter of life released. Nowadays, it’s constant.

So then, later, I took a shower, and there was a fresh bar of soap in the soap dish. This gave me a new sense of release. And then guilt. And insight into my marriage and goal setting. Afterwords, I said to the husband, I hope you don’t get annoyed that you’re always the one who gets the new bar of soap for the shower. But the thing is, if I see a sliver of soap left, I am going to use it. Because I feel obligated to use every last bit of it.

Maybe my epigenetics were affected by my father growing up in the Depression, but whatever the reason, I am going to use up that last sliver of soap. So if the husband wants a fresh bar before the last sud is gone, he is going to have to get it.

And, secretly, I am relieved when he does, because it’s much nicer to soap up with a big bar of soap than a pebble sized one.

This is the way we complement one another. Or irritate the hell out of one another. Depends on the day.

I think I have to credit Gretchen Rubin with being my source for the research that shows that in couples, each partner usually overestimates the amount of work they contribute and underestimates the amount their partner contributes to the working of things.

So with that in mind, I let my guilt sphincter relax when there’s a new bar of soap in the shower, because I imagine the husband both resents me and also feels superior every time he gets a new bar. And then my guilt sphincter tightens right back up again, because that is the nature of a sphincter (and of me and guilt), because I suspect that while he might overestimate what he gives to the relationship, I know I must also do so, and therefore. Well. The point is that sometimes you have to work out stuff like this. By accepting that I am just not capable of giving myself (and thereby also) the husband a new bar of soap until the very last bit of the old one is gone. And there is a reason.

Here’s the thing about soap. It relates to goal-setting. According to Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D, (HGH, Ph.D) author of Succeed: How We can Reach Our Goals, and whose work I have discussed several times, people approach goals with one of two orientations, prevention or promotion. The prevention oriented person is focused on stopping bad things from happening: being taken advantage of; wastefulness; loss of money. The promotion oriented person is focused on potential benefits: improved efficiency; what you have to gain.

Now, the husband, when he steps into the shower, is about taking a nice, hot, sudsy shower. So for him, a fresh bar of soap fulfills his goal. Whereas I am always—always—going to use that bar of soap down to the last sud. There is no way Dove is going to get me to throw away perfectly good soap splinters. Left to my own devices, I am going to, in fact, collect soap splinters in a soap dish, mash them all together into a sort of soap mound and thereby eke out every last sud. And take that, Unilever. Suck it.

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage table.”

This is my favorite quotation from Hamlet. It’s about how quickly Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, shacked up with her husband’s brother after her husband’s demise. It’s a wonderful example of irony. I love to quote it, almost as much as I love to quote from “Auntie Mame.” And I use these words to point out that, thank goodness, I have the husband to get me a new bar of soap. Because let me assure you, it’s no fun to shower with a splinter. It’s a wonderful relief whenever I get in the shower and find a fresh bar of soap. That was not my decision, but I can benefit from it. Thank you, Husband. In this way, the sphincter of life releases a little.

But my point about goals is this. The tendency we have towards goals is one or the other of these.You guessed it, Clever Readers, these orientations are basically pessimistic and optimistic. This is good news and bad news, depending on the goal you have. Some goals lend themselves more to a prevention strategy, and some more to a promotion strategy. When you have a creative goal, for example, says HGH, Ph.D, you want to approach it with a promotion a goal—don’t worry about mistakes. However, when you need something to be perfect, say, a bridge you’re constructing, then you need to be prevention-focused. More good news is that we are not always either promotion or prevention focused, and we can adjust our thinking depending on the goal.

So, some goals are prevention goals. Some are promotion goals. Some can be looked at both ways. Like using soap. Or buying a car. Buying a car involves both promotion and prevention. The promotion part is getting a newer, more updated, more fun, prettier vehicle. The prevention part is getting a safer, more reliable, updated vehicle. And yes, the husband and I recently bought a new car. I was able to get over the loss of money in the bank, and the husband was able to achieve a new vehicle without having to test drive twelve different brands, as I intended, to make sure we had considered everything and weren’t being totally taken advantage of. Which I am sure we were, once we decided on a car we both liked. But now, we have it, and I can just enjoy it. Relief. Sphincter release.

Sadly, I am not the thoroughgoing optimist I would like to be. Because, honest and true, optimists have more fun, tend to see what they might gain from a situation, a goal, or a decision, rather than fester and fear what they might lose or miss, and get to enjoy a fresh bar of soap on the regular. On the other hand, they might overspend on a car and waste precious soap. They might possibly be cleaner than pessimists, thanks to all those suds, but I’ll take you to the mat on that one.