Ms. News Goat

I was miserable in my college speech class. I was fairly confident I’d never need any of that stuff. After all, why would I take a job that required speaking in front of others?

Ten years later, I still haven’t had a job that required prepared presentations, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t needed those speech class lessons.

I have had plenty of situations where I’ve been in meetings and needed to give a quick answer to an unexpected question. Or where I needed to speak up during a conference call. Or when I’ve been in an important discussion with just a few other people. And in several of those situations I found myself hesitant to speak up—or if I did speak up, I was nervous and shaky. I often came out of those situations thinking I could have done a better job. That feeling—plus the concern that this weakness would limit me more and more going forward—made me decide I needed to do something. (more…)

The first Toastmasters meeting I went to wasn’t a real meeting at all. It was a demonstration meeting that various local clubs coordinated at a local library. I had no idea what to expect. I was nervous about going in the first place (I dragged my husband along to be my safety net)—but I was especially nervous that they’d call on me to say something. (more…)

We all know Thanksgiving is a great time to remember the things we’re thankful for. But why wait for a once-a-year holiday… especially when that day’s meaning can get overwhelmed by family gatherings, football, and pumpkin pie?

In the past 6 months or so, I’ve started listing things I’m thankful for every morning. I’ve made a couple of rules for myself:

• Each thing I list should be specific, preferably something new that occurred (or that I became aware of) in the last 24 hours.
• I list 1-2 things I’m thankful for in each of 7 categories:
  • Physical
  • Social/Community
  • Mental/Self-Improvement
  • Fun & Relaxation
  • Home Life
  • Home Business
  • Work
• If I really can’t think of something for a category, I can instead concentrate on a positive expectation I have for the current day. For example, I am thankful that tonight’s spa appointment will give me an opportunity to relax.

It’s a simple exercise, but it’s very powerful. If I’ve started the day in a bad mood, this is a great way to turn my mood around. Focusing on the positive instead of the negative helps me be happier in the short term.

But it also seems to shift my focus in the longer term. If I know I’m going to have to make a list tomorrow morning of things I’m thankful for, I am more likely to look for things throughout my day to add to that list. And it goes beyond just observing the positive things around me. I think I’m more likely to make those positive things happen.

I hope your Thanksgiving holiday is wonderful. But I also hope that this year, you’ll celebrate Thanks-giving on a daily basis.

Just go easy on that pumpkin pie…

Now that this year’s McDonald’s Monopoly contest has ended, I thought I’d share our results. We got interested in the contest after my husband read this post. Since the Best Buy bucks were guaranteed for the write-in entry method, it sounded like a can’t-lose contest. After some discussion and a fair amount of rule-reading, we decided to send in 150 entries.

Our total cost for entries came to $119.82—$2.82 for 300 envelopes, and $117.00 for 300 stamps. We don’t normally do mail-in sweepstakes entries, so we had some second thoughts as were spending all that money on stamps. Was this a bad idea? What if we did something wrong and didn’t get any of our entries back?

But it worked out pretty well for us. Here’s what we won: (more…)

The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More by Barry Schwartz

The first sentence of the “Acknowledgments” in Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice explains a lot:

“The ideas in this book began to develop when I was invited by Marty Seligman to contribute an article [...] to the journal American Psychologist.”

To me, that statement summarizes a lot of what’s wrong with this book.

There are a few good points here, and some new and eye-opening ways of looking at the choices we make. But to me, it seems like someone took a long essay and tried to expand it into a book. There seems to be a lot of repetition, an over-abundance of examples, and a lot of stretching in the middle. That said, I do recommend this book for its perspective. In a society that values more and more choices, it’s interesting to read why Schwartz thinks there can be too many choices. (more…)

The Other End of the Leash: Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs by Patricia B. McConnell, PH.D.

I’m always thrilled when I happen to catch Dr. Patricia McConnell’s Calling All Pets show on my local NPR station. She’s obviously a pet lover, and her advice always seems right on target. I’m impressed with the way she and co-host Larry Meiller manage to help their callers in such a compassionate, warm and funny way. So when I came across The Other End of the Leash in the bookstore—and I realized I’d never read anything by her—I decided that should change.

This book looks at dog training from the human side of the equation—how the things we do affect our dogs’ behavior. One of the main themes of the book is that humans, as primates, speak a different “language” than our canine friends. For one thing, humans are much more vocal than dogs. Since dogs in the wild communicate far fewer things vocally than humans do, dogs naturally pay less attention to our spoken language. On the other hand, canines put a lot more emphasis on body language. For example, watch two dogs meeting at a dog park. The body stance, the position of the tail, the position of one dog in comparison to another—these are all things that dogs notice. Dr. McConnell points out that there are a variety of body parts to watch to determine a dog’s state of mind. (more…)

My husband and I were a little nervous when we first talked about getting our portrait painted.

Our artist friend Nancy Park had asked us about creating a web site to help sell her artwork. As Billy and I discussed the price quote, I felt a little uneasy about the idea. For whatever reason (something from my upbringing, some sort of negative feeling about money…?), I’m always a little hesitant about doing business with family or friends. It seems like the exchanging of money introduces complexities into a relationship.

That’s when we decided to ask if she would consider a swap—we’d build her a web site in exchange for her painting our portrait. It seemed like a good answer to my money concerns—and getting our portrait painted sounded like a cool thing to do. But it also seemed scary. She accepted, and then we really started worrying. What would it be like to have an artist staring at us for hours? What if we didn’t like the end result? Would it be weird to have a painting of us hanging on our wall? (more…)