Category: Self-Improvement

Rethinking Gift-Giving

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Oil painting of a cluster of tomatoes at different stages of ripeness and a small ceramic pitcher on a rumpled blue tablecloth
Still Life with Tomatoes, 2009. For details or to purchase, please contact Alexis (contact form in menu bar).

I recently came across this post on gift-giving from Mr. Money Mustache and thought it was worth sharing.  The post is several years old and references Mother’s Day, but it applies to all the occasions on which our culture tells us we are supposed to give gifts.

Ideally, gift-giving should be a way of expressing our appreciation for the people we love, making their day a little brighter, and perhaps easing their burden.  At its worst, gift-giving can become another obligation, and the gifts we give can sometimes add to the burdens of the receiver as well as the giver.  I’ve gone to holiday gatherings without gifts to give and have been embarrassed when others brought gifts for everyone, including me.  The gifts were not personally selected for each individual, but were, I suspect, bought en masse out of either a sense of requirement or a desire for the gift-giver to feel good about herself.  These gifts were not meaningful, but they provoked feelings of guilt and obligation in me.  That is not what gift-giving should do.

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What I’m Doing to Increase my Focus and Decrease Distractions

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A vibrantly colored abstract painting
Joy, 2014. For details or to purchase, please contact Alexis.

Lately, I’ve been trying to grow my attention span.  I get distracted easily, and having the internet at an arm’s length most of the day does not help.  But to be as productive as possible in my job, and to enter flow states and do good creative work, I need to be able to focus on one task for an extended period of time.

Like many people today, I’m a chronic multitasker.  In my free time, you’ll rarely find me doing just one thing.  I’m talking on the phone while driving, listening to an audiobook while gardening, watching a TV show while cooking, texting a friend while listening to a podcast while putting away laundry.  Though always doing two (or more) things at once may make me feel more productive, I know that it reduces the amount of attention I’m devoting to each activity.  I think multitasking too much can lead me to feel less calm, too.  My brain sometimes needs silence, and the chance to devote itself to just one thing.  So I’m making a conscious effort to do more unitasking (also known as monotasking).

It isn’t an easy change to make, and I frequently slip back into bad habits. I wrote down some rules for myself, and I review them regularly to help me stay on track. Here are a few things I’m doing to try to minimize distractions and increase my focus.

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The Power of “Can I Just…?”: Building New Habits, Motivating Ourselves, and Progressing Toward Our Goals

- Alexis 2 Comments
Close-up of a pair on sneakers on a trail through the woods
Photo by Will Shell

We all have things about ourselves and our lives that we’d like to change or improve.  A study published last year showed that less than three percent of Americans meet all four markers of a healthy lifestyle (regular exercise, healthy diet, low body fat percentage, and not smoking).  I would guess that most of us know we need to eat better, exercise more, and quit smoking, but change is hard.  Though setting ambitious goals might cause us feel energized at first, lofty goals can make change even harder.  We have an idea of where we want to end up, but we don’t know how to get there, or we get overwhelmed along the way and give up. Read more

A Letter to My Teenage Self on High School Graduation

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Snapshot of a group of girls smiling for the camera in their graduation gowns
Carlisle High School graduation, 2002. Thanks for the photo, Vi!

Congratulations on making it through high school!  I know there was never any real doubt that you would graduate, but you should celebrate anyway.  No, you aren’t as emotional as many of the other girls, who are crying about leaving their best friends, singing Vitamin C’s graduation song, and talking about how life will never be the same again.  You’re ready to move on to bigger and better things.  But someday, even though you’d never want to relive it, you’ll be a little nostalgic about your high school experience.  So you should go to the graduation parties, have fun at senior beach week, and try to appreciate this moment — because it’s true, your life never will be the same again.

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Don’t Let Your Personal Brand Hold You Back

- Alexis 2 Comments
Drawing of a woman in sunglasses and a head scarf
Self-portrait, 2004. For details or to purchase, please contact Alexis.

By the time we reach our mid- to late- twenties, most of us have adopted labels for ourselves.  We’ve come up with short ways to describe ourselves to someone we’ve just met.  We’ve developed our personal brands.  We’ve crafted elevator pitches and written social media introductions and online dating profiles.  We tend to use nouns for this purpose: I’m a writer, a dog-lover, a runner, an ENTP, an introvert, an empath.  These descriptions help us to order our lives and to feel a sense of solid identity.

The problem with such labels is that they can make it very difficult to change.  Our interests and personalities are not static.  To some extent, our identities are fluid — or they should be, if we have any hope of adapting to life’s unexpected events.

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