Signs of Life

As an editor, many newly published books cross my desk. Here are a few worthy recent additions:

New Good Food: Shopper’s Pocket Guide to Organic, Sustainable and Seasonal Whole Foods by Margaret M. Wittenberg (Ten Speed, 2007) — When this book first crossed my desk, I thought, “Well, whole foods are whole foods, right? What else do I need to know? I can already tell the difference between a squash (whole) and a Twinkie (slightly less than whole). But this book has a treasure trove of valuable information. It gives all the nitty-gritty details on identifying, preparing, and storing whole foods staples.

Need to know if preparing French green lentils differs from preparing Spanish pardina lentils (or mung beans or split peas on yellow soybeans)? This book’s got the answers in an easy-to-refer-to chart. Can’t keep Soba and Udon noodles straight? Check the book. Want to try baking with ultra-nutritious Teff flour? Book’ll tell you how it’s done.

Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying by David Bach (Broadway, 2008) — Bach has authored a series of “finish rich” books, but this one focuses on how to build your wealth while also saving the earth. While the tips struck me as more useful for befriending the earth than bolstering the wallet, they’ll help out with both.

What I liked most about the book was the “Go Green Action Steps” Bach provides in each section. They direct readers to websites (primarily) for more information or getting involved. All the websites I visited from this section were actually really helpful (so many sites are not). And, call me old-fashioned, but I like gleaning new websites from books or print magazines and newspapers instead of someplace else online.

Also, the book has beautiful pictures and is well designed. I know I’m not supposed to judge a book by it’s cover, but it’s fun to peruse something pretty.

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (Penguin, 2008) — This book is great, great, great. Pollan chronicles the modern history of American food, which sounds much less interesting than it is. What’s happened to our food system in the last 40 years is the stuff of Shakespearean tragedy. Pollan exposes the many sins committed in the name of food and then gives guidelines for eating well in the modern age.

Even if you’re not a stitch interested in food, I recommend this book for it’s pure phraseological beauty. Pollan’s prose is bewitching, with sentences that are hearty, soul-enriching comfort food and whipped (grass-fed) butter all at once.

Decluttering is good feng shui.

In the spring, I clean. I start the process with visions of an immaculate, nearly empty Zen-like home (Interestingly, the soon-to-be-clean house in my imagination also has all-new, sleek and modern furniture; a new set of nonshedding, nondrooling pets; and, for the first time in my adult life, sophisticated curtains not purchased at Ikea), but I end the process overwhelmed, half done, and hiding in the garden to avoid having to lug any more crap to the Dumpster.

Then, last week, I read the old classic Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston (Broadway, 1999) in search for some last minute motivation — and boy did I find it. Kingston devotes a section of the book to calculating how much clutter can cost you financially (what’s a better motivator than the bottom line?).

Herewith, from Kingston:

What does it actually cost you to keep the stuff? Sometimes when all other reasoning has failed, it is the simple financial mathematics that brings people to their senses about their clutter.

Let’s do some sums. Go into each room of your home and estimate the percentage of space that is taken up by things you rarely or never use. Be very honest with yourself as you do this process. If you want the blatant truth, include everything you don’t absolutely love or haven’t used in the last year…In an average-sized home, you may end up with a list that looks something like this:

1. Entrance/foyer — 5 percent
2. Sitting room — 10 percent
3. Dining room — 10 percent
4. Kitchen — 30 percent
5. Bedroom 1 — 40 percent
6. Bedroom 2 — 25 percent
7. Junk room — 100 percent
8. Bathroom — 15 percent
9. Basement — 90 percent
10. Attic — 100 percent
11. Garden shed — 60 percent
12. Garage — 80 percent
Total Clutter 565 percent

Now divide the total by the number of areas.

565 percent divided by 12 areas = average 47 percent junk per room!

So, in this example, the cost of storing clutter works out to a staggering 47 percent of the cost of the rent or mortgage for your home.

Needless to say, I have been in the basement emptying old college papers and grade-school art projects nonstop for a week.

Someone’s nervous about what comes next….

I just finished reading The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease (which, for a personal development book, is a real page-turner — the suspense of wondering what certain body movements reveal will keep you reading way past your bedtime!). Here’s what I learned: our bodies always betray our real feelings.

Say you’re going to tell a kindhearted lie to a friend who asks if “these pants make my butt look big?” Your lips will say “No! Not at all!” But your body language will say, “Yeah, kinda” if that’s how you really feel. Authors Allan and Barbara Pease say people often ask them if they can learn to fake it — learn to mask their feelings of anxiety at a job interview, or to hide their jitters on a first date, or to cover up their interest or disinterest in someone they meet at a party. The answer is: Nope. Never fully.

Here’s why: we’re animals. Our highly-developed brains know that we should strive to appear calm when, say, work meetings turn tense. Yet our bodies still respond on a primal level, giving off microsignals that say we’re frightened or feeling superior or are desperate to flee. And that’s how we get caught: People perceive we aren’t being fully truthful when our words and our bodies’ microsignals don’t match up. Our brains can spot the incongruence — and it’s that mismatch that gives rise to the visceral feeling that something just isn’t right.

Even people who practice can’t stifle all the microsignals — they still appear, however small, giving us the opportunity to discern someone’s deeper feelings if we’re paying attention. Yet most movements don’t require that much concentration on our part because most people let their bodies chatter away uncensored. The Peases write:

“Like any other species, we are still dominated by biological rules that control our actions, reactions, body language, and gestures. The fascinating thing is that the human animal is rarely aware that its postures, movements, and gestures can tell one story while its voice may be telling another.”

The good news here is that if you take some time to study up on body language, your own and others, you’ll be better able to perceive what others are really saying — and better aware of the signals you’re sending. The book is full of fascinating facts, figures and data, and I recommend it for anyone interested in becoming fluent in body language. Meanwhile, here’s a short guide, culled from the book, of some common body signals and what they mean.

1. Crossed Arms — Crossed arms show that a person doesn’t agree or isn’t interested in what’s being said and/or has a nervous, defensive or negative attitude. Crossed arms are a pretty obvious posture to decipher; the more interesting bit of news here, I think, is how the posturing also works in reverse.

When you adopt a body position, such as crossing your arms, your mind tends to follow, which means that even if you weren’t feeling disinterested or defensive, if you cross your arms you’re likely to start feeling that way. Research conducted by the Peases found that students at a lecture who were instructed to listen to the lecturer with their arms crossed not only retained 38 percent less of the information being presented but also had more negative thoughts about the lecturer!

The takeaway? If you want to be more receptive, uncross those arms! And if you find someone crossing their arms as you talk (likely indicating that they are closed off to what you’re saying), try getting them to uncross them. The Peases suggest offering the person a cup of coffee or handing them a piece of paper to get them to reach out of the crossed-arm position. If you can break them out of their posture, their mind is more likely to follow — and you’ve just helped them help themselves like you better!

2. The Coffee Cup Barrier — Speaking of coffee, where someone places their coffee cup immediately after taking a drink will tell you a lot about what they’re thinking. If they reach across their bodies to set the cup down (bringing their cup-holding arm in front of and across their bodies, creating a “single arm barrier”), they’re likely hesitant or unsure about what they’re hearing. When they place the cup straight down in front or to the side and away their body, they’re more open to what’s being said.

(Cautionary note: always consider context when hunting for body language clues. Fort example, a person might be very accepting of what’s being said but their coaster is opposite their cup-holding hand. So when they put down their cup they won’t be saying “no way” so much as trying to avoid a water ring on their desk! Likewise, if it’s below freezing outside and someone is crossing their arms while you talk with them, they’re probably just cold.)

3. The Nose Touch — We touch our noses when we lie. Studies show the reason is physiological. The Peases refer a study by the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago that found when we lie, our blood pressure increases. “Increased blood pressure inflates the nose and causes the nerve endings in the nose to tingle” resulting in an itchy feeling. So, naturally, we scratch it. And while some people will briskly scratch their noses back and forth several times, others, note the Peases, will make one “almost imperceptible” touch/scratch. So the move can be subtle, but it’s almost always there when we fib.

A good high-profile example: Bill Clinton’s testimony during the Monica Lewinsky affair. Neurologist Alan Hirsch and psychiatrist Charles Wolf analyzed tapes of his testimony and found when he told the truth, he rarely touched his nose. When he lied, “he gave a split second frown before he answered and touched his nose once every four minutes for a grand total of twenty six nose touches.”

(Note: Sometimes a nose itch is just a nose itch. If this is the case, scratches tend to be more deliberate, repetitive and out of context with the conversation, note the Peases. So, again, its all about context.)

4. Picking Imaginary Lint — “When a person disapproves of the opinions or attitudes of others but doesn’t want to say anything, displacement gestures are likely to occur, that is, primarily innocent body-language gestures that reveal a withheld opinion,” write the Peases. “Picking imaginary lint from one’s own clothing is one such gesture. The lint-picker usually looks down and away from others while performing this seemingly minor, irrelevant action. This is a common signal of disapproval and is a good sign that he doesn’t like what’s being said, even when he sounds as if he’s agreeing with everything.”

Laine and her cat, Sylvia, just seem happy. Studies show they’re miserable sots.

Here’s what Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has discovered about humans:

Our memory (or our experience of the past) is malleable and often inaccurate. Our perception (or our experience of the present) is subjective and incomplete. And our imagination (or our experience of the future) is dangerously unreliable.

In short, we’re terrible at accurately assessing what happened in the past, what’s happening in the present moment, and what will happen in the future. Basically, we have no idea what’s going on.

Gilbert highlights these psychological findings in the context of the human search for happiness. He uses the evidence to support the thesis of his latest book: that humans are terrible at predicting what will make them happy.

At first, the news made me despondent (If I have no hope of ever knowing what will make me happy, how will I ever be happy?) and kinda relieved (At least I don’t have to put in any more hard work on the happiness front! That means more TV for me which, let’s face it, seems to make me happy enough).

But there’s an illogic to my initial reaction: just because we have trouble telling what will make us happy — even in the present moment — doesn’t mean we can’t and don’t ever experience happiness. We just have to work harder to recognize it when it’s happening.

That’s the advice of the self-described pessimist and French psychiatrist/happiness scholar, Christophe Andre. He says we are often too frenzied and distracted to notice when we are happy and, hence, miss out on the experience of our happiness.

The key, he says, is cultivating mindfulness, the ability to be truly present in the moment. It sounds so easy. But try putting it into practice and you discover it’s significant challenges. How often have you realized only after a party that you had a good time? What then? If your only experience of happiness is a memory of it, did you really experience happiness? And, per Gilbert’s research, if our memory is a sorry record keeper of our actual experiences, how can we trust it?

And what were you thinking about/paying attention to during the party when you were supposedly so happy? What to make for dinner tomorrow night? Where Sally got those adorable shoes? Was what you just said to Susanne impolite? Were you really happy if your mind wasn’t fully engaged in the happy experience as it happened?

Andre also says that happiness means accepting that we’re a gloomy lot to begin with — in terms of evolutionary biology, says Andre, our hunting and gathering ancestor’s survival depended on “a certain degree of concern. It was prudent to remain alert to dangers and problems, which is why we are geared to focus on the negative.” That’s a whole extra hurdle we have to jump to find more happiness.

There’s a classic Calvin and Hobbes comic strip where Calvin is slumped in a chair watching TV when Hobbes walks by and asks him what he’s up to. Calvin responds, “I’m killing time waiting for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.”

Calvin will be waiting a long time. Happiness, it turns out, is a lot of work.

When I discovered Timothy Ferriss’ new book The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (Crown, 2007), I was irrepressible. I suffer from a mild case of self-help-book skepticism, but the promise of this book was too good to be true: I want to be lazy! And rich! And live in Tuscany!

I plowed through the book. Ferriss is full of tricks for saving time and energy. To wit: hire an online virtual assistant to make your appointments and do rote personal and work-related tasks; only check email once a week; empower employees (if you have them) to make most decisions for you, freeing up your time, and train your boss (if you have one) to accept the increasingly flexible schedule you hope to keep; stop reading newspapers or taking in media all together and get your world news from friendly- and informed-seeming waiters when you go out for lunch… and on and on.

I took furious notes, imagining my forthcoming life of leisure in the Tuamotos.

But as I read I found myself reluctant to excise some of the time-wasting activities Ferriss suggests, like asking waiters for the day’s news. I actually enjoy reading the Sunday paper, giddy at the prospect of perusing the style section and taking on the challenge of trying to finish articles that don’t interest me — on baseball, say, or mutual funds. (Yeah, I know how to have a raucous good time.)

I also began to think about the satisfaction of hard work. As often as I gripe about the effort big projects can take (see my first blog entry on writing this blog), there’s a satisfaction that comes with devoting ourselves to a big or difficult job. Meaningful projects tap our deep human desire to be useful, to take pride in our efforts, to get lost in a project, to partake in something worthwhile.

Starting this blog, for example, felt challenging. Having blogged feels great. Sure, if I’d skipped writing my first entry or procrastinated and watched TV instead, I would have felt pleasure in momentary escape, but I would have short-changed myself in the long-term satisfaction and meaning department. The effort I put in (as tortured as it was in the moment) became it’s own just reward.

Of course, I would pass off doing the dishes, if I could. I’d also probably let the magic chore fairy file my taxes. Not all hard work is satisfying. Ferriss is right: some of it is just tedious.

What chores would you never do again if you could get away with it? Which ones do you secretly enjoy?

…In unrelated news, I’m currently reading Stumbling on Happiness by Harvard professor of psychology Daniel Gilbert. Look for a significantly happier me in my next entry!