Mindfulness Exercises: True Compliments

This week’s exercise was to give someone close to you a true compliment once a day.  OK, so I know it sounds weird, but I actually had a lot of trouble with this.  I thought of plenty of really nice things to say about people I know, but when it came time to actually say them, I felt like it would sound awkward.  Lame, right?  Of course, my fears weren’t justified.  When I did go ahead and say nice things to people, no one looked at me funny.  On the other hand, I did once or twice get the shrug or the “oh no, it’s nothing” response: the way we’ve all been trained to respond to compliments by diminishing their importance.

And that’s part of what this exercise is about.    When you focus on giving compliments, you see how little we give them and how unable we are to effectively receive them.  Why should that be?  And why is it that it’s easier to give a compliment to someone we don’t know very well, but we almost never compliment our closest friends or partners?  Shouldn’t it, if anything, be the other way around?  We take our loved ones for granted because they’re always around.  But they’re the ones who will be here for the long haul, and we need to keep those relationships strong.  Compliments are a great way to do that.

Another aspect of the exercise was to be aware of when you receive compliments and how they make you feel.  A few compliments from this week really stick out.  One friend in particular said almost exactly what I needed to hear when I was starting to doubt myself.  It turned my whole day around.  And I certainly didn’t think she was being awkward.  So now I know: give those compliments, even when you’re not sure how it will sound.  It might just make someone’s day.

This week’s exercise is “Mindfulness of Posture: throughout the day, become aware of your posture and how your body feels, also correct your posture if necessary.”

“One of Ours”, Willa Cather (1923)

Title: One of Ours
Author: Willa Cather
Published: 1922
Recommendation: Maybe read it
If you like: The Classics, War stories


Claude Wheeler is a Nebraska farm boy, but he’s always wanted more.  He does everything that’s expected of him: he works on the farm and he marries a girl from town.  But at each new stage of life he continues to be unsatisfied.  He has a constant, underlying feeling that there should be more to life.  When America finally enters WWI, he signs up right away.  As he travels farther and farther from home, he feels more and more alive.

One of Ours is a slow novel, in the sense that there is a lot of character development and, although there is action, much of it isn’t in the form of a “plot” per se.  The majority of the action and plot begins when Claude leaves for WWI, and that doesn’t happen until the last third of the book.  But the buildup and character development are essential to understanding the action and to feeling satisfied with how the book ultimately ends.

As with most of the early Pulitzers, this is a book about a very specific time in American life.  Much of it is irrelevant to the modern reader.  But many of the themes are enduring.  Claude struggles with creating a life for himself that reflects his values and what he wants.  He tries to be a good son and he tries to do what his parents want him to do.  But he learns as he grows that that is not always enough. He marries a woman he thinks he loves and she turns out to be a person he doesn’t know.  He battles with his demons every day.

The final act of the book takes place during WWI.  This is where Claude finally becomes the man he wants to be.  He sees suffering and terrible things, but he can’t help feeling happy to be there.  Cather certainly doesn’t portray the war as a good thing, but she does show how some of the men who went may have made something good from it.  She gives us scenes of death and battle, but everything is very quiet and understated.  What is important here is Claude’s growth, not the war itself.  It’s an intimate portrait of one man’s experience of war.  And, more importantly, of one man’s experience of life.

I Love That Line!

You know when you're reading a book and you come across a phrase or a sentence and it just clicks and you think, "Ah, I love that line!"?  Well anyway, it happens to me all the time.  I often want to share said line here, but then it doesn't end up really fitting into the review.  So this is my attempt to remedy that situation.  If I come across an awesome line while I'm reading I'll share it here under the heading "I Love That Line!"

Enjoy!!

"It seems to me that only little children can be just happily happy.  I think when we get older our happiest moments are like the one I had just then: it's as if we heard strains of minor music running through them - oh, so sweet, but oh, so sad!"

Alice Adams

Mindfulness Exercises: Just Eat

This week’s exercise was to be mindful when eating: to just eat and do nothing else.  This one was pretty easy to remember to do (I find it’s easier when there is a set time/situation to do the exercise) but still challenging to follow through on.  Usually I read The Economist while I eat breakfast, so giving that up for the week was disappointing.  But I managed to do that and to avoid doing things while eating other meals or snacks.  And yet I often found my mind wandering as I ate, rather than paying mindful attention to what I was eating.

This exercise is meant to show us how little importance we place on eating.  We almost always do something else while we’re eating.  We even feel foolish if we’re not doing something else.  I spent a lot of time traveling alone in Europe during college and I always brought a book with me whenever I went out to eat.  Granted, that was largely because I’m obsessed with reading.  But there was certainly also an element of needing to feel like I was “doing something” because just eating wasn’t enough.

One night last week, while doing this exercise, I was sitting on the couch just eating some dried cranberries when I literally had a moment where I was afraid David was going to look over at me and wonder what the hell I was doing.  Because apparently it’s that much of a bizarre waste of time for a person to just eat without also reading, watching tv or playing on the internet.  Oops.

The other element of this exercise was to be mindful of what you’re eating: pay attention to how it tastes, the texture, the smell, etc.  This was eye-opening for me.  It made me realize how many things I eat just to satisfy some craving or hunger without really thinking about what it is that I’m eating.  When I actually paid attention to some of the things that I was eating I really didn’t want to be eating them anymore.  One night we had pizza (we try not to eat pizza too much, but David and I were both sick, Adeline wasn’t sleeping well, it was a pizza kind of night).  In the past I would have just gobbled it down, enjoying the greasy, cheesy, yumminess that is pizza.  But this time I felt disgusted with myself and almost couldn’t eat it.  This exercise made me want to eat healthy foods in a whole different way than I had wanted to before – not just for the health benefits or the weight benefits, but because the food itself feels better to eat.

This week’s exercise is “True Compliments: once a day give someone close to you a genuine compliment.”

Mindfulness Exercises: Appreciate Your Hands

This week’s exercise was to notice your hands when they are busy doing something and watch them as though they belonged to a stranger.  I think the point of this exercise was to get some distance from your hands so that you could appreciate all that they do that you normally take for granted.  Even as I sit here typing, my hands are doing something very quickly that I am putting almost no conscious thought into.  It’s really amazing when you stop and watch and think about what they are doing.

Our hands are capable of doing many, many things without much direction from us.  We trust our hands to dry a china plate without dropping it, and they almost never do.  When we stumble, our hands automatically reach out in front of us to break our fall.  Our hands protect us and care for us.

As I watch little Adeline learn to use her hands it gives me even more appreciation for what my hands can do.  At first she really couldn’t do anything at all with her hands.  Then she discovered the fact of their existence and managed to get them into her mouth.  Progress!  Now she pulls toys out of her toy box and puts them back in; she picks up food with her thumb and forefinger and, most of the time, gets it into her mouth; she lifts her hands up towards me when she wants to be picked up.  She can use her hands to entertain herself, feed herself and communicate some of her needs.  Yet she’s still such a very long way from being the adept hand-user that an adult is.  She’ll get there eventually though.

This weeks exercise is “When eating, just eat: enjoy what you are eating and use all of your senses to appreciate it.”

"Alice Adams", Booth Tarkington (1922)

Alice Adams is by Booth Tarkington, who also wrote The Magnificent Ambersons (1919), which I really didn’t like.  So, needless to say, I was a little miffed that he won twice in three years and I wasn’t looking forward to reading this.  But I tried to keep an open mind.  I still didn’t love it, but I think I liked it better than The Magnificent Ambersons.  Yes, “I think” I did.  I realize as a book reviewer I should be less ambiguous, but I really had mixed feelings about the book.  I think the edition of the book I was reading put me off a bit – the early Pulitzers have been really hard to find, so this one was a “digital reprint”.  You know, one of those crappy versions that look like someone printed it on their home inkjet printer. And the formatting is all wonky. Not fun to read.  As a bibliophile in the true sense of the word, this ugly book pained me.  But on to the substance of the book.

Alice Adams is, above all, a girl who knows how to put on a show.  As the book begins, you get the impression she comes from a family of means.  But that’s just Tarkington putting on the same kind of show that Alice does.  The Adams are not wealthy.  Early in his career Mr. Adams had a brief chance at making something of himself, and the family made contact with the edge of “Society”.  Since that time, Mrs. Adams and now Alice have been trying to pretend that they fit into Society.  Alice is a charming girl and her charm helped foster that illusion for a time.  But now things are falling apart.  The family doesn’t even have enough money for a taxi to take Alice to the opening party.  And things only get worse.

Alice is charming, but she’s not particularly likeable.  I found her somewhat annoying.  But Tarkington does a good job of showing us her vulnerabilities, and that redeems her.  At the opening party she goes through endless feints and charades to hide the fact that no one is talking to her or asking her to dance.  It’s painful to watch and it makes you feel for her.  From that point on, you may think she’s annoying but you can’t help but be on her side.  Unfortunately, Alice’s lies and her mother’s greed bring nothing but trouble, so being on her side is a sad place to be. 

The characters are developed and yet I had a constant feeling that we were only skimming the surface.  The story never seemed to be personal enough and the characters never seemed quite multifaceted enough to be realistic.  The book was readable but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Creative Writing Prompts: "Her laugh broke the silence"

Prompt: Begin your story with the line “Her laugh broke the silence”

Her laugh broke the silence.  A soft, breathy laugh – more sigh than giggle.  “Nevermind, just ignore me.”  She shook her head a little, maybe to show him she was joking, but more as if she was shaking the crazy thought out of her head, like shaking water out of your ear after a swim.  The thoughts had been crowding her lately, they felt like tangible objects stuck in her head and crowding out everything else.  She couldn’t think straight.

He looked at her with that patronizing, worried look he gave her.  “I think you should go to bed early tonight,” he said.  “You’ve been up late too much and you’re starting to get a little frantic again.” 

Ah yes, she thought.  More sleep.  That was his prescription for everything.  He was sure that if she just slept a solid eight hours each night she’d be perfectly normal.  Whatever that meant.  It was easier to humor him, so she knew she would go to bed when he did that night.  She would pretend to sleep until he was deep asleep, and then she would lay there awake for hours.  It was no use, she just couldn’t sleep.

But as she lay awake that night, the thoughts became overpowering.  The more she thought about life, the world, and existence, the more convinced she became that nothing was real.  Even her body ceased to have any meaning to her.  It felt like a cage holding her in and if she could only just get out, she could be free.  It all made so much sense to her, but whenever she had tried to explain things to him she knew she sounded crazy.  And then he gave her the look.

Mindfulness Exercises: Eliminate Filler Words

This week’s exercise was to become aware of your use of filler words, such as um, er, ah, etc, and eliminate them from your speech.

I pretty much failed at this one.  A constant challenge with doing mindfulness exercises is the simple act of remembering to do them in the first place.  This was one that it was almost impossible for me to remember to do.  I thought of it often enough when I was doing the laundry, or driving somewhere, or taking the dogs out – basically in any situation when I was not going to be talking any time soon.  And then I would forget about it the next time I was speaking.  Jan suggests recruiting your kids or a friend to help you and point out whenever you use a filler word.  I could have asked David, but never got around to it.  So this week was a bit of a bust.

I did remember to do it one time when I had to call the doctor’s office.  And wow, it was hard!  Afterwards I felt like the lady must have thought there was something wrong with me – I managed not to use filler words most of the time (I think) but instead I just had these odd pauses in my speech where I normally would have used them.  It sounded stilted and uncomfortable.  Of course, maybe she didn’t notice anything at all and I just noticed because I was so conscious of it.

That consciousness of our speech is one of the lessons Jan draws.  Most of the time when we speak it is so habitual and second nature that we don’t even notice the filler words.  Hence my “I think” above – even when I was trying to be aware of them, I may have used some and not even noticed.  Jan says that at her monastery they will tape each other and play it back and even when the speaker was trying to be aware, they end up using filler words that they don’t even realized they used.  In order to change habits that are as ingrained as this one, we must bring constant attention to our efforts.  Simply hoping for a change won’t be enough.

This week’s exercise is:

“Appreciate your hands: When your hands are busy, watch them as though they belong to a stranger.  Also look at them when they are still.”