I used to work with a man, let’s call him Jerry. Every year, when he went to his doctor for a physical and was asked what his height was he would add an inch to the previous year’s number. The reason he said was BMI, body mass index, the ratio of a person’s height to their weight that many physicians use as a gauge of whether you are overweight.

Jerry said he wanted his height to increase to compensate for his expanding waist and increasing height. That way his BMI would remain pretty much the same from year to year and his doctor wouldn’t ask him to go on a diet.

“I’m not overweight, I’m just under height” was his explanation.

A well-rounded figure

Apparently Jerry is not the only one doing this. A new study out says that when people are asked to provide their own weight in research surveys they underestimate their weight and overestimate their height. Women are worse than men at doing this. And white women are the worst of all for fudging the numbers.

Now, the researchers, in the journal Ethnicity and Disease say this is not a big deal and people don’t over or underestimate by a lot, just enough to throw the BMI measurement off by a point or two. Which is good news for the researchers because it means their findings are still close enough to the truth to be valid.

But it’s not such good news for ordinary people. I know none of us like to admit we might be a little overweight and so it doesn’t hurt to lie to someone asking us about our weight. Particularly if we’re only off by a small amount.  But who are we really fooling?

The researchers are not going to judge you about your height or weight. All they care about is their data and the odds of them ever seeing you again are slim. So it’s not as if they’re likely to come up to you in the supermarket one day and say “hey, didn’t you say you were 5′ 7″? You only look 5′ 6″ to me.”

But if we are lying to complete strangers about the fact that we are overweight, then we’re probably also lying to ourselves.

It’s like watching those men at the gym who stand in front of the mirror sucking their gut in as hard as they can. They glance at themselves and think “yeah, I look pretty good for my age”. But as soon as they walk away from the mirror they relax their muscles, their belly drops and they look like a naked version of porky pig. It’s not pretty believe me.

Ultimately it all boils down to this: you can’t fix a problem if you don’t acknowledge that you have a problem. Pretending you are taller than you are, or smaller than you are, or thinner than you are, or lighter than you are just means you are hiding from yourself.

Jerry got away with his little game for a few years until one of the office staff, who was taking down the information, asked if he really was 6′ 7′? Jerry looked surprised, then said “oh, I must have shrunk a little”. The tech looked at his belly and it was clear that at least one part of Jerry wasn’t shrinking.

That was the moment Jerry decided he probably should do something about his weight. Because lord knows he couldn’t do anything about his height.

I was reading an article about the brain, it was all about how the brain  is not equipped to multi-task.  Then, I remembered a conversation I had with my daughter  about her New Year’s resolution:

“Focus more and to block out distractions”.

She felt that she spent too much time reading various websites, taking in information from blogs, news headlines, and a variety of news  sources,  to the point it became a virtual news-knowledge-information fire hydrant slamming her in the mind.  She said while all this information was interesting, it seemed to keep her from actually “doing” anything”.  So  instead of finishing the “Brain:” article I was reading I immediately e-mailed the website to her.  What the!

No, that ain’t right!

I realized,  I was  doing precisely what she was trying to stop.  I was attempting to give her yet, another distraction and a the same time I was distracting myself by not focused on the article at hand.  My mind took off on it’s own trying to be in 10 places at once.  Even now,  at this minute, I just heard the dryer in my apartment stop and my mind is saying, “get up and get the clothes out of the dryer before they wrinkle!”    And yet, I know that my mind is simply creating thoughts that I really do not need to pay attention to.

Who’s the Boss!

My conscious mind is always creating havoc!  There is always drama going on in there!  Thoughts filled with negative messages that may or may not help me get through the day.  Negative thinking.  Thoughts that do not benefit me, making me the “victim”.  A Ha!  the “Brain”  article says, one of the symptoms of multi-tasking too much is “negative” thinking.  See!  Here is proof!

Then the phone rang.

The voice was a woman’s and it was filled with emotion and cracking with the urgency of someone in distress.  She had been referred to me by a friend and she was pacing in a parking lot, smoking and in need of some kind of comfort.  She was filled with adrenaline and she wanted relief!   Man, was her mind racing as she was trying to describe the problems she faced.  Her tongue could not keep up with all the negative thinking that was bombarding her.  She was definitly a victim of her wild mind’s thoughts, and she wanted help….right now!

Hysteria is just a frame of mind!

I told her,
“The first step you can take  is to calm down.”  Hard to do but it is possible if you  understand the emotional process.

Something bad happened.

Someone or something made this happen.

It will continue to happen unless you calm down.

The only way to change about these circumstances is to take control of your own mind.

Because you cannot change anyone else, the only thing you can change is YOU.

So you need to witness, recognize and observe your thoughts.

Before you can focus your attention, you need to take charge of your negative emotional wild thoughts (worry, anger, sadness, irritation).

This is your wild mind, and it  impairs and overwhelms your pre-frontal cortex, the brain’s driver.  When your driver is impaired you can’t make sense of your thoughts.   You can not come to solutions and you have impaired decision making.

Too many negative thoughts and stress damages your ability to focus and it harms your health.  You can change that outcome by taking control of your mind.  Recognize the negative thinking, re-frame thoughts to control the outcome.  For instance, if your thoughts are telling you, “My family is against me, I am the victim of their accusations!  You can re-frame to say, “These accusations are false,  I will present myself and my mind in a rational way to prove them to be wrong”.

How do you get there?  How do you take control of your “wild” thoughts?   You can employ the same things that improve your health.

Breathe!  Sleep well, exercise, do a mindfulness practice, take some time to notice what you are doing in this very moment. When you control your thoughts you will control your brain.

First step?  Stop being distracted, focus on one task at a time.  Finish that task and then take on another.  In other words stop the distractions, and focus.  Because when you organize your life and focus on what needs to be done right now.  You will benefit because your mind will be clear, less stressed and ready for the next task.  Your mind will become more orderly as well.

The payoff is that you will be in control, of your life and your mind.  Why not be the “captain” of your own life the master of your thoughts!

I have never made any secret of the fact that I hate yoga. Mostly because I have spent a lifetime doing sports that compact all my muscles and here comes this ancient exercise or meditation or whatever you want to call it that pulls everything out and forces me to stretch parts of me that don’t want to stretch and twist things that shouldn’t twist and have me assume positions that are just not natural. So when I recently saw an article in the New York Times saying that yoga might be bad for people my initial thought was “yeah, I was right all along.” The article said all that twisting and bending can be bad for you, it can strain muscles, rip tendons, pull your back out of shape.

But then I thought

Why am I doing this?

Wait a minute, any exercise can do that to you. If you haven’t played soccer in years then you can hurt yourself doing that. If you used to love ping pong as a kid and took it up again as an adult you can hurt yourself. And maybe yoga is a slightly exaggerated form of any exercise because it really works every single part of your body, but the basic premise is the same. If you do it properly and carefully and with good guidance it can be safe and really beneficial.

That’s not to mean I like it any more, but it does mean that it isn’t dangerous just because you do it wrong or have a crappy teacher who teaches you bad form or you try to get into a full lotus when you have spent the previous ten hours sitting in front of a computer screen and wonder why your tendons just don’t want to go there.

The point is, exercise in any form can be bad for you if you haven’t done it before – or for a long time – and you do it badly. You need to know what you are doing or work with someone who knows what they are doing and knows how to show you how to do it.

Good form is essential

The other day, the other month actually, I pulled the heck out of my calf muscle playing squash. I wasn’t doing anything I hadn’t done a thousand times before. I wasn’t moving in a way I hadn’t done a thousand times before. And yet this time, for whatever reason, my calf went kablooey. Maybe I was just pushing it too hard, or my form was bad. All I know is that as soon as I hit a great cross court shot and was moving back into position in case my opponent – damn you Austin – got it back, my calf went bang and that was that. I’ve been slowly getting back in shape since then. But it takes time. And patience.

And that’s why when I read that article about yoga being bad for you, much as I wanted to jump on the blog and say “see, the NY Times agrees with me” my own experience taught me otherwise. Yes, of course yoga can be bad for you. Playing tiddlywinks can be bad for you if one of them jumps up and hits you in the eye. Anything, done badly, can be bad for you. But that’s no reason to dismiss the enormous potential health benefits of yoga.

Downward facing “you dawg you”

Don't try this at home folks

I once met an 83 year old man who had become a devotee of Bikram yoga. That’s the kind where they heat the room to 110 degrees so you sweat like crazy. It’s meant to warm up the muscles and tendons in your body so that they are more flexible. It’s also meant to replicate the conditions in India where yoga first was practiced. This gentleman had only taken up yoga when he was 80 and swore by Bikram, saying it gave him more energy, made him feel healthier and happier.

Frankly I think he just liked watching lots of young, cute women bend into positions that in his youth would have been unthinkable.

I still don’t like yoga. But I would never tell other people not to do it. For my 83 year old friend it’s the highlight of his day. And that’s reason enough to do any exercise isn’t it.

When was the last time you sat down at the computer and just focused on one project, one issue, for one hour, without being distracted or checking your email, or finding out the latest celebrity gossip, or seeing how your sports team did, or finding a really funny video showing a cat water-skiing.

Yeah, I thought so. Me neither. But don’t worry. You are not alone. OK, we are not alone.

Short attention span

According to a new study, in the past decade the average attention span has dropped dramatically from 12 minutes to five minutes. Five minutes. That’s barely enough time to boil a hard-boiled egg. Hardly enough time to make a decent cup of tea. You wouldn’t even be halfway through the Derek and the Dominos classic  “Layla” (OK, that dates me) before your time is up.

The study says that today the average office worker checks their email 30 to 40 times an hour. An hour. It’s like a Pavlovian response. The little image appears in the corner of your screen or a sound goes off telling you there’s a new email in your inbox and you rush there to check it out. Odds are it’s going to be worthless or something that could have waited a few minutes, or quite  honestly a few hours, or days or weeks or you could even ignore it completely and life would go on. Yet still you feel the need to go and check it out right, right, now.

To delay might mean. Well, what!

Exactly. We are rushing around from one thing to another and not necessarily doing anything better or more skillfully or thoughtfully. All we are doing is doing it faster. The downside of that is that anything that forces us to slow down, or – god forbid – stop – then just drives us crazy. We’re addicted to speed. Addicted to multiple stimuli at the same time.

Addicted is the right word to use in this context. This new study found that social media may even be changing the way our brains work, re-wiring our circuitry, making us impatient and forgetful and distracted.

OK, what was I saying?

Slow down, let it sink in

Think about it. When was the last time you watched a video – other than a movie – that lasted more than a few minutes. How often do you just dismiss out of hand anything that looks as though it might take a few minutes to watch or read. How often do you just move on from an article that actually requires some real thinking, maybe even reading it a couple of times to understand it.

We are trying to save time. Instead we are losing our minds.

We enjoy reading “News” sources in order to be more informed of what happened and analysis on what it all means, however,  since Tina Brown took over as editor of “Newsweek”, it seems to have become “Newsweek Light”, all about Celebrities with a little “relevant news” thrown in.  I probably will not renew my subscription but there is one section that I do like.  So I’m still on the fence.  It’s the last page of the magazine.  “My Favorite Mistake”  which is usually a short interview of an actor like Ben Kingsley being called suburban, or Dr. Phil making a decision on his own that would affect his and his wife’s life which he regretted, or the famous musician, Lars Ulrich, who talks  about the time that Quentin Tarentino sent him a script written with each scene choreographed supported by music of Metallica (Lars’s Group).  It was an honor, Lars knew it in his gut but he simply did not understand the concept !  Lars didn’t get it!  It was for the movie “Kill Bill”! He didn’t do it. Big Mistake!

Sometimes, none of us get it!  We try to be aware of opportunities, make the right decision, or simply understand; but we just don’t get it.

Listen and You Will Hear

The other day, I was in the coffee shop and a young woman walked in, she was  in a hurry.  There was a short line but it seems she was a regular, so she asked the clerk if she could just grab a cup and begin getting her coffee.  She would pay later.  A woman who was in line in front of her said to the Barrista, “She’s in a hurry, let me pay for her coffee.”  Nice huh?

When the harried gal came back, full cup in hand to pay, the barrista said “Your coffee has been paid by that woman”.   This gal was so involved with being in a hurry, she missed the point entirely.  She said, ” Well, I still need change for the bus!”

Really!  There was no “Thank You”, NO Acknowledgement of a random act of kindness.  No nothin’!

She simply could not get out of her experience of  being harried, that she literally could not see a kindness in her path.  It might have changed the way she saw her entire day.  It could have changed her whole attitude about her life… (well, maybe not).

It did make me think, “What do we miss everyday.”  What wonderful things happen each day that we over look.

What did you overlook today?

Magic? Goodness? Perhaps a miracle?

Oh, and here’s what I like about “My favorite Mistake”; it is that reflection that each mistake is a lesson.  We did not understand the lesson at the time, but when it evolves we can see it very clearly in the rear view mirror.  Perhaps if we slowed down just a little we would have a better view of the experience as it happens.

There’s a wonderful old song by Jimmy Durante about the pleasures of reading. It goes like this:

I’ll never forget the day I read a book.
It was contagious, seventy pages.
There were pictures here and there,
So it wasn’t hard to bear,
The day I read a book.
It’s a shame I don’t recall the name of the book.
It wasn’t a history. I know because it had no plot.
It wasn’t a mystery, because nobody there got shot.
The day I read a book ? I can’t remember when,
But one o’ these days, I’m gonna do it again.

I was reminded of that over the holidays when I did just that; I read a book.

Now, there shouldn’t be anything wonderful or marvelous or unusual about reading a book, people do it every day. But I hardly ever seem to have the time to sit down and read a book cover to cover. Every day I read a couple of newspapers, scan several news websites and read a few political blogs. Each week I read several news or current affairs magazines. But read a book? Who has the time.

That’s why it was so delicious to have the time to put all those newspapers and magazines aside for a few days and open a good book (an anthology of Graham Green’s work including “The Heart of the Matter” – if you must know). It was a real treat to get lost in the world that the author created, to get inside the characters and try to understand their motivations and actions. I even enjoyed the little moments when I felt frustrated because I was going to have to stop reading so I could go and do something else fun!

Whenever I read a good book I’m always reminded at just how powerful words are, and how beautiful they can be. Too often in my work the words I write have to take on a very specific role and that’s merely to explain something complex or communicate something important. What little opportunity there is for flare or flourish or – god forbid – humor is quickly snuffed out by the legions of others who then have to approve and edit the work. The end product is frequently very different from the original one – sucked dry of any imagination or creativity and turned instead into a dry – albeit accurate – statement.

But good writing does more than that. It also reminds me that often we fall into a rut when writing, relying on the same words or phrases to explain or describe something instead of searching for some new way of telling the same story. That routine way of working makes for an efficient way of writing but not always for an elegant or the most effective way. It’s a shortcut but one that can produce a less-than-memorable end result.

Maybe it’s unrealistic to think about workplace communications and literature in the same way. One is all about efficiency and directness, and is often governed by legal requirements about what you can and, perhaps even more importantly, what you cannot say. The other is about creating new worlds, or helping you see your world in a different way. One is all about imagination. The other all too often shaped by a lack of it.

But I don’t accept that business writing has to be soulless. On the contrary, I think making it dull and turgid and leaden only makes it all the more likely that no one will read it or, if they do, that no one will understand or care what it’s about. To reach people, to get them to pay attention, you have to engage them, you have to entertain them before you can ever hope to really inform them.  That doesn’t mean that a memo from the boss to all the staff has to be done as a limerick (though that is not a bad idea come to think of it!) or that the annual report can be done in iambic pentameter as a dramatic play. But it does mean that they can be lively and engaging and still informative.

No one ever says their goal in life is to write ‘the great American memo’ but as most of us are more likely to write a memo than a novel, and certainly much more likely to read one then maybe it’s time to change the way we think about how we write at work and make it something someone actually wants to read rather than simply hitting the ‘delete’ button as soon as they see who its from.

When Shirley was growing up her mum once told her “Christmas is just around the corner.” Being a kid Shirley immediately ran out of the house and around the corner to see Christmas. Naturally she was really disappointed to see it wasn’t there and figured she must have run around the wrong corner. She was getting ready to run around another corner when her mum caught up with her to say that wasn’t what she meant to say.

I think of that story whenever I’m around the fabulous Emma Danger. It reminds me to be careful about what I say. Not just to avoid cursing or using rude words – though that’s definitely important – but to make sure that she understands what it is that I think I am saying. Kids that young are like sponges, but without any kind of sophisticated filter.

What you say is what they hear, whether that’s what you intended or not.

And the same applies to so-called adults. So often at work you think you are saying one thing only to have a big misunderstanding because someone thought you meant something completely different.  Or you thought it was clear you were joking only to find out no one else thought it was funny – that’s when you end up with headlines that scream out “Sinead O’Connor: ‘I was only joking about wanting to murder the Pope.’

What you write can be wrong

That’s even more true for email. With in-person conversations you have body language to help guide your understanding; with phone calls you have tone of voice to give you a clue as to meaning. But with email there is nothing to go on except for the words in front of you, and your perception of the person writing them.

Or just your mood at the time you read them.

Words are tools. Use them well and the results can be amazing. Use them poorly and you can be surprised at how quickly they can blow up in your face.

Open mouth, insert foot

That’s a lesson I have learned painfully as a media relations spokesperson. You think you are saying the right thing only to see your words thrown back at you later and used to make you look silly, stupid or duplicitous. Or all three.

It’s not fun. But it’s taught me that it is so much easier to take the time to pick the right words, and use them in the right order with the right tone, than to spend a lot of time later trying to correct a false impression.

And if all else fails I fall back on the old Will Rogers maxim, “never miss an opportunity to shut up.”

We’ve been on a whirlwind vacation that happily was combined with a job in Washington D.C.  I don’t know where the time went as we cruised the museums and experienced the fall colors and east coast personalities.  It seems that everyone in Washington D.C. is a lawyer – even our waiter!

Being from the “west coast” really is different than living on the eastern shores.  For one thing Washington D.C. is such an icon of democracy!  I mean California certainly has the views and a free wheeling attitude that is open and wonderful, but being in the presence of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence can certainly be heady stuff for a born and bred Californian.  If you ever get to D.C., checkout the Capitol!  Most of the museums are “FREE”,  yes…Free!

Innovation and Creativity is Alive and Well

Consider the Air and Space Museum, it’s just amazing to be there,  admiring     the Wright Brother’s perseverance, creativity and stamina as they tried to get      a  winged crate off the ground.  Then, finally, Orville Wright took the flyer for     a 12-second, sustained flight on December 17, 1903. This was the first                   successful, powered, piloted flight in history. Incredible!

Then, we walked over to the Apollo 11 exhibit, Apollo 11 was the spaceflight which landed the first humans, Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr, on the Moon on July 20, 1969. That’s only 63 years after the Wright brothers first took to the air!

Can you imagine?

So when you consider the imagination that went into creating the Declaration of Independence, and all the visionary ideas that it still holds.  The courage that it must have taken to stand up against the King and all his men and the will of the colonies to create a land where freedom is the goal, even though the fight for all to enjoy this “right” is still a battle.  When you consider the innovation and creativity ordinary citizens take into their own minds to create ideas that lead to Apple computers, and smart phones and new ways to do all the things we do everyday.  How can we take anything for granted?

There are many famous germaphobes in history, people who are literally terrified at the thought of coming into contact with germs.

Nice shoes Howard

Take Howard Hughes for example. The billionaire aviator, movie producer and business tycoon was deathly afraid of germs. He spent the last few years of his life in darkened hotel rooms that he believed he had turned into germ-free zones. Even then he had tissue paper spread over the floor, and wore tissue boxes on his feet when he walked around so he wouldn’t come into contact with the carpet.

Businessman, TV “star” and erstwhile Presidential candidate Donald Trump is almost as wacky. He refuses to touch the ‘ground floor’ button in an elevator because he is convinced it’s the dirtiest button in the building, and tries to never shake hands with anyone, particularly teachers.

But while those two represent the extremes of germaphobia there are many other folks who just like to protect themselves, as much as they can, from the routine, everyday germs. And who can blame them.  The problem is how do you know what are the places most likely to contain the most germs?

Well, a new study has a list of the skankiest places around, the locations and objects that are absolutely teeming with things you’d rather not think about let alone touch.

Researchers at the University of Arizona enrolled hygienists to swab the surfaces of 350 of what they considered the most frequently touched surfaces in city’s like Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Dallas and Philadelphia. They then measured the level of contamination of those surfaces to see which ones had the highest levels of illness-causing bacteria.

Here’s where they found the highest concentrations:

• 71% of gas pump handles
• 68% of mailbox handles
• 43% of escalator rails
• 41% of ATM buttons
• 40% of parking meters
• 35% of crosswalk buttons
• 35% of vending machine buttons

Nasty eh! And they’re all everyday objects that are hard to avoid, unless you want to live in a vacuum or a darkened hotel room wearing boxes on your feet. So, what’s the solution?

Soap. Water. Hand sanitizer. Never touch your hand to your face until you’ve washed it. Never touch your hand to someone else’s face until they’ve washed it. Never touch anyone. Never let anyone touch you. Or stand near you. Or breathe near you.

Or you could just face up to the fact that you already have billions of bacteria on every part of your body and in every part of your body so you are already pretty much infected and the things you’ll come across on those surfaces are probably no worse than what you already have.

You could try to live inside a bubble, or avoid contact with other members of your species. But then you’d end up looking like Donald Trump. And you really don’t want that to happen now do you!

Hair-raising thought