The Literary and Mustard Society: Coronavirus Edition

Okay, so I was going to read a new book called The Male Brain for this...but I'm only like halfway through, so I'm going to tell you about a book I have read fully and that has changed my life! The Book of Mormon. (Just kidding, although it has.)

Atomic Habits by James Clear

I stumbled upon James Clear's writings by Googling some problem I was trying to solve and finding his blog. I love anything practical that can be applied to life and its problems, so his writings hit home for me. A few months later, he released his book Atomic Habits.

Oh man. So many good ideas to share. Let's dive in.

1. Clear talks about the aggregation of marginal gains, which means lots of tiny, 1% improvements that add up. He shared a story about the British cycling team. They used to rank very low on the international level. So low, in fact, that "one of the top bike manufacturers in Europe refused to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the Brits using their gear." Ouch.

However, they got a new coach and he used, you guessed it, marginal gains:

"Brailsford and his coaches began by making small adjustments you might expect from a professional cycling team. But they didn’t stop there. Brailsford and his team continued to find 1 percent improvements in overlooked and unexpected areas. They tested different types of massage gels to see which one led to the fastest muscle recovery. They hired a surgeon to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the chances of catching a cold. They determined the type of pillow and mattress that led to the best night’s sleep for each rider. They even painted the inside of the team truck white, which helped them spot little bits of dust that would normally slip by unnoticed but could degrade the performance of the finely tuned bikes."

What was the result? A few years later, the team set nine Olympic records and seven world records. Of course, the coach noted that the team also made the big changes that matter. But man, those marginal gains.

2. Sometimes it's easy to get frustrated if you don't get the results you're looking for immediately. Clear points out that it's more helpful to focus on the direction you're headed rather than the distance. He says to think about what your life will look like in five years if you are consistent with your habits.

"Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits. Your net worth is a lagging measure of your financial habits. Your weight is a lagging measure of your eating habits. Your knowledge is a lagging measure of your learning habits. Your clutter is a lagging measure of your cleaning habits. You get what you repeat."

3. One idea that has stuck with me is that if you are struggling to stick to a habit, focus on changing your systems, not necessarily your willpower. I've tried doing this and it has helped me so much. For example, I've set boundaries for myself to not go on social media until I have done scripture study, read a book for a few minutes, and exercised. This routine is laid back enough that I can stick to it pretty easily, despite how my schedule looks for the day. Get ready for a lot of quotes. I couldn't choose just one.

"I began to realize that my results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed."

"Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results."

"If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still succeed?"

"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

"In the short-run, you can choose to overpower temptation. In the long-run, we become a product of the environment that we live in. To put it bluntly, I have never seen someone consistently stick to positive habits in a negative environment."

"Self-control is a short-term strategy, not a long-term one. You may be able to resist temptation once or twice, but it’s unlikely you can muster the willpower to override your desires every time."

4. He talks about how identity plays in to habits. If you can do something enough for it to become part of your identity, it becomes easier to stick to it because you see yourself as someone who does those things.

"The more pride you have in a particular aspect of your identity, the more motivated you will be to maintain the habits associated with it. If you’re proud of how your hair looks, you’ll develop all sorts of habits to care for and maintain it. If you’re proud of the size of your biceps, you’ll make sure you never skip an upper-body workout. If you’re proud of the scarves you knit, you’ll be more likely to spend hours knitting each week. Once your pride gets involved, you’ll fight tooth and nail to maintain your habits."

"The goal is not to read a book, the goal is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon, the goal is to become a runner. The goal is not to learn an instrument, the goal is to become a musician."

I'll stop there because I could go ON. In conclusion, if you like self-improvement books, give Atomic Habits a try, or even check out @jamesclear on Instagram or his weekly emails that have just three quick, powerful principles.

To thank you for reading along, have a piece of virtual cake and you have a great day!

New Year’s Resolutions: How to Keep Them (For Realsies)

Well folks, it’s January 4th. How are those new year’s resolutions coming along? Honestly, I gave up on setting new year’s resolutions a while ago because I could never keep it up! (Along with most of the world, according to statistics.) However, I can say confidently that I am still improving at a steady clip, even if I didn’t work out on January 1st. (Is that allowed?)

To prove that I have been working on goals for many moons, here are potato-covered post-it notes that I used to track a goal in high school. That goal is still a work in progress. Heh

This picture doesn’t have to do with goals, but I found it and that was a fun night doing long multiplication! I tell you what!

*viewer discretion advised* To prove that sometimes I put blood, sweat, and tears into my goals. And that I sometimes trip on cement. Ees for fun.

This girl, less than a week ago, finally riding the habit-setting train! (Along with other various trains)

I’ve learned a lot about goal-setting in my day. I have studied many a self-improvement book, fueled by a constant (sometimes overwhelming) desire to be better. I have tried (emphasis on tried) to achieve goals since I was a wee one. Finally, FINALLY, in the past few months, I’ve been blessed to figure out some principles that work! To prove my success, I cite that these principles have helped me exercise more, start meal planning, serve more, study my scriptures more, and pound through to-do lists consistently for the past five months and for the foreseeable future with very little effort. I’ve set things up so that my habits stay in tact even when interruptions like getting sick or holidays happen. These habits are my solid base in life now despite distractions, rather than being a herd of cats! (I would be okay to have a herd of cats too, though.)

First, four guiding principles:

1. One of the most important things I learned from my public health degree is that one big key to success is removing as many barriers as possible. It’s okay for your goal to be convenient! You don’t get extra points for making things hard.
2. If there is one vital, cannot-succeed-without-it principle of goal-setting, it is sustainability. Is your new sugar-free, gluten-free, flavor-free diet something you see yourself easily doing every day from when you started it last week to five years from now, even if a chocolate cake walks past? (The answer is no.) Your goals have to be so sustainable that you can see yourself keeping them for the rest of your life and being able to put them on autopilot so that you can focus on new goals. This might mean toning your goal down for now so that you can keep the effort up.
3. It’s not about setting goals. It’s about creating habits. Goals have an endpoint. I don’t want there to be an endpoint. So I set up habits instead. At first I fought against this principle because I thought that I needed something to work towards for motivation. I’ve come to accept it though! Gretchen Rubin mentions, for example, that someone might be training to run a race and be really active, but once the race is finished, the motivation is gone and they struggle to exercise. That has definitely happened to me in the past.
4. Truly, the best way to keep your habits rolling is for them to be so useful that you don’t want to go back to how you used to do things. It’s like progressing from fire to electricity!
5. Circumstances change but our habits don’t have to. For example, I just finished college and I’m about to start working full-time. I’m not going to be able to keep these habits in the same way, but I can keep them by tweaking how to make them work with my circumstances.

Okay, so what is my method? I choose a habit that I want to establish for the month. I write it down (in the Notes section my phone for easy reference and editing, but y’all could write yours on the wall with chocolate pudding if you want) and then I make a bullet point list of all the barriers that keep me from my habit. Then I figure out ways to annilihate each of those barriers! I spend the month figuring out how to break down the barriers and voila, my habit is now basically on autopilot. I give myself a month to create a habit, which is an easy amount of time to measure, gives me plenty of time to break down barriers, and gives me time to test things out and tweak as needed. Y’all could measure it however y’all want though, y’all.

To illustrate my method, here is how I set up my very first habit of meal planning. I used to say that if something took longer to make than it took to eat, it wasn’t worth it! There seemed to be so much effort required for one meal. This is how I finally converted to being an aspiring chef (lolz).

October: meal planning

• Barrier: not knowing what to make
• Solution: Create a meal rotation. Choose seven types of food you normally eat (Mexican food, chicken, slow cooker meals, etc.), assign them to a day of the week (Mexican food Mondays, slow cooker Sundays, for example), and then choose four recipes that fall under those categories. Now you have 28 meals and a month’s worth of recipes that you can repeat every month! Boom. Autopilot.
• Not having the ingredients I need
• On a specific day once a week, plan what you’ll eat for the entire week based on your categories, look at the ingredients, and write down a shopping list of all the things you’ll need that you don’t already have.
• Being in the store for a long time
• Some may call me nit-picky, but I go so far as to organize my shopping list on my phone so that every item is in order from when I walk into the store to the end and I erase it as I go. It helps me enjoy getting groceries more when I don’t have to backtrack five times in the store.
• Stressed while making it
• I put all my ingredients out on the counter before I start and prep all the food before I start cooking any of it. Some people can multitask...I, however, only succeed at burning something while trying to chop something else up.
• Being too tired to cook
• I eventually modified my habit to be more sustainable by deciding to only cook about four days a week instead of seven. I couldn’t eat all those leftovers anyways and it was cheaper this way! I chose the specific days of the week based on which ones didn’t already have things scheduled in the evening.
• Cost
• Start your meal planning by looking at what you already have. You can search for a recipe based on the ingredients you have. (50-pack of corn tortillas, I’m looking at you.)

Intense? Perhaps. Effective? Absolutely. I have made more real meals in the past few months than I have in the rest of my life. Which makes me wonder how I have survived this long. The point is, this method works!! If any of you want help brainstorming how to make a habit work, holla back atcho girl. I want to put my years of gathering information and cat memes to use!

'Tis the Season to be Single

Y'all. Remember my post from the other day? Things are a lil different now. I don't know who was praying for me, but it helped! There I was last night, watching the Stranger Things 2 finale (party of 1) when I had some revelation. I remembered a time last year when I was really dreading winter. Nothing about it sounded very appealing (except Christmas and New Year's Eve) -- the wet, cold feet for four months, freezing weather, and especially the lack of sun. My favorite season is summer, so winter is my nemesis. Until I heard my friend say that her favorite season is winter. How?!

Somehow, the thought came to me that maybe if I tried to do the same things that people who love winter do, I could love it too. I could replace all the parts of winter that I hated with things that I could love. Around the same time, I found out about the Danish concept of "hygge," which is all about coziness, candles, time with friends, blankets, etc. Even though the Danes are in freezing, dark weather more than most people in the world, they have been ranked as some of the happiest. I think it's the hygge.

So, I went all out: hot chocolate, staying cozy, hitting up the Target Dollar Spot way too often to find beautiful decorations, Pinteresting up a storm, watching Christmas Hallmark movies to my heart's content. And it worked! I did love last winter and I plan on loving winter always now. (In fact, so much so that there was a drizzly day this summer and it kind of made me miss winter. Bona fide success!)

So, what does this have to do with airplanes? (President Uchtdorf reference) Nothing, but it does have to do with dating. Y'all. It is the single season for this girl. And I was really sad about it until last night. I realized that marriage isn't all happiness (despite what Disney has raised us to believe) and singlehood isn't all sadness. They are seasons! And -- as I found out with my winter experiment -- if you focus on the best parts of the seasons, you can learn to love all of them.

Image: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6bNJaoYUTc

HI

In the words of mi compa, "vida vida." I think blogs are a good thing! I have abandoned mine entirely for the past several YEARS, but maybe it will help me "find myself" (is that even a real thing?) if I get back into it. I think blogs are a good way to see more of people's lives than the sassy lil snippets we get through Facebook posts. Now, for all who desire to see deeper into my life than the cat memes I post, here are the struggles. Indeed. I want to chronicle my spiritual journey, because it's an evolving one! I thought I had life so figured out spiritually a few years ago (chuckle). Introduce trials -- bam, bam -- and my true spirituality lies under the layers. The most true version, but I just wish it had a little more meat on it. Maybe it does and I just can't see it. All I know for sure is that I need to live the gospel out of joy, not fear. My anxious predisposition led me on the right path for a long time, but when I overcame my fears, my fearful motivation stopped too. Thus, I find myself at a turning point, and I choose to truly understand the gospel so that I can love it fiercely.

Starting with -- understanding Heavenly Father. Folks, if you wanted to hear my secrets, you came to the right place. I have always always struggled to understand Heavenly Father's love in my life. It has been baffling to see most everyone else talk about how much Heavenly Father loves them. At best, I have imagined Him giving me indifference or a blank stare for doing something that was already expected, or mainly, a longer spiritual to-do list. No bien. You can imagine that if someone acted this way in our tangible lives, we would be hard-pressed to feel joyful or loving around them. Okay, so logically I know that Heavenly Father isn't this way. But Satan has crafted in my mind since...my entire life?...that Heavenly Father is this way. Basically, the adversary has projected some of his attributes (coldness, etc.) into my image of Heavenly Father. I will tell you though, this is changing! I have been feeling closer to Heavenly Father ever since I got fed up with being overformal in my prayers (read: repetitive and surface level). I probably need to work on reverence in prayer, but first of all I’m going to work on PRAYER. A few weeks ago I told Heavenly Father that if I couldn’t joke around when talking to Him like I do with my earthly father and adopted mission father, then I am going to be hard-pressed to actually want to talk to Him. Maybe that’s irreverent...but seriously, one of my biggest pet peeves is feeling like I have to act reverent when I’m not feeling that way. And if heaven is that way — always reverent...I’m not very interested. Maybe I’m a heathen. Maybe I’m just a girl who likes her cat memes. Either way, I have been talking to Heavenly Father a lot more lately, and finally feeling like we are on the same team instead of Him critiquing me and my prayers. So basically, I’ve got a lot of work to do, but I like the direction things are going. My relationship with Him is growing, so how could that be a bad thing?

Feb'ry

February

Good

• I found a new blog to love! danicaholdaway.com. I have been reading on it for hours lately. When I find something I like, I tend to suck the marrow out of it...I just love how real and fun she is and that she lives in Orem, so it makes her lifestyle seem more attainable for me! One of the things I've liked the most is that happiness sometimes is just having something to look forward to. I'm trying to work on that, since discouragement kind of closed me off to getting excited about anything, because I don't want to get my hopes up over things that seem so out of my control. But! I'm starting again! This time with Saint Patrick's Day (since holidays make an easy way to look forward to something). She said she tries to plan an outfit, food, and an activity for every holiday. I will Susie d disbelief for now and try it out/try not to overstress about making it perfect.
• I'm starting to exercise against! Honestly, it has been basically a year and a half since I've exercised regularly. I'm definitely seeing the effects. I'm gaining weight, was getting stressed, being low-grade sick basically all the time, feeling unhappy, not sleeping very well. After the first day of exercise (a short walk), I slept so wel, my face was clear the next day, and things have not been stressing me out. I have been amazed to see that such a small act has turned my mood around 180 degrees so fast. I seriously felt overpowered by negative emotions, but now it seems so easy to handle! I'm happy! My teacher told us there are no silver bullets in the health world; but if there were, it would be exercise. I agree with him! T has more benefits than any other single thing I can think of.
• My most exciting discovery has been that decreasing barriers and increasing benefits increase self-efficacy. I have been applying this principle to every goal I have and I'm have been seeing the results that I have been searching for for 24 years. It is amazing and so simple!! I finally feel control in my life and I have seen a lot of success. Last night I had the thought it that at nred to apply this to preparing for marriage.

Bad

• I totally did not plan anything for Valentine's Day and the pressure to have it be perfect and failing got me really frustrated. Zach and I improvized and ending up at Panda Express, which he was happy about! The sad part was his fortune cookie..."A distance romance will begin to appear more promising." On Valentine's Day? For re-re?

On My Mind

• Group projects. My life is one group project this semester and it's crazy. Five classes, five groups. It actually is really nice because the workload goes down a ton and makes assignments a lot less stressful. So, I'm grateful for them, but also wish I was better at my soft skills.

We Need to Seek Purpose, Not Happiness

Mama has often mentioned to me about Man's Search for Meaning, a book by the concentration camp survivor and psychologist Viktor Frankl, and a few days ago I was reading an article and it mentioned it again. I decided it was finally time to read it! It has changed my life, as has the article that led me to read the book! Frankl's whole idea is that man cannot be happy simply by pursuing happiness. To truly be happy and satisfied with our lives, we have to fill a need that is larger than ourselves. The article mentioned that happiness is often focused on getting, while meaning is focused on giving. The article also mentioned that sometimes we can't have all the components of "happiness" when we focus on filling life with meaning (for example, raising children gives great meaning to life, but it can often mean stress and fewer luxuries). However, I know that meaning is deeper and more satisfying than "happiness" (AKA pleasure). Frankl noted that in the concentration camps, he experienced this truth face-to-face. Those who gave up the will to live in those hellish conditions were those who didn't feel that they had something to go back to. Others focused on what they still needed to give to life--to a child or a scientific work, for example--that they alone could fill. He also makes the point that instead of us demanding things from life, we need to see that life (or Heavenly Father, or something bigger than ourselves) demands something of us. We are responsible for what we contribute. This is the path to fulfillment and true, sturdy happiness. I am so excited to change my life!

“To the European, it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to ‘be happy.’ But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to ‘be happy.’ Once the reason is found, however, one becomes happy automatically. As we see, a human being is not one in pursuit of happiness but rather in search of a reason to become happy, last but not least, through actualizing the potential meaning inherent and dormant in a given situation." -Viktor Frankl

I Need Christ in My Life

I was reading Mosiah 17:10 this morning. This is Abinadi's last testimony before he is martyred. He has been bold in his testimony throughout the entire time, proactively calling these wicked men to repent. He says "I will not recall my words." This led me to a train of thought about my own testimony. How can I strengthen it so that I can be as bold as Abinadi, as Paul, as so many of the prophets in the scriptures? I want to work on my testimony of the Savior, and I have been re-realizing that spiritual growth (or any type of growth) normally doesn't come by default. It takes conscious, proactive effort to grow good things. For me, I think it also takes a clear vision of what the end result should look like, to motivate me and help me know when I've succeeded. Some of the specific things I'm going to do to strengthen my testimony are to write down the ways Christ has saved my life, read "The Infinite Atonement" by Tad R. Callister, pray for a stronger testimony of it, share it (on here and in person), ask others for their testimonies, and keep a record of the scriptures that testify of it! So this will be my record.

• One of the most practical and meaningful ways that I know that I need Christ in my life is that He has taken away panic attacks from my life. I know that there are a lot of people who have to deal with panic attacks, so I am always excited to share that He helped me through them, and can help them too! I will need to expound on this story later, especially if anyone is interested in knowing more.
• "Wherefore, all mankind were in a lost and in a fallen state, and ever would be save they should rely on this Redeemer." (1 Nephi 1016--Lehi prophesies of Christ)
• "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23)
• "Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?" (Proverbs 20:9--We cannot cleanse ourselves from sin without Christ. We also cannot change our hearts or desires without Him.)
• "Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed." (Mosiah 14:4-5/Isaiah 53:4-5)
• "Surely the most sublime, the lengthiest and most lyrical declaration of the life, death, and atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ is that found in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, quoted in its entirety in the Book of Mormon by Abinadi as he stood in chains before King Noah" (Elder Holland, Christ and the New Covenant, 89; Book of Mormon Institute Manual, 152)
• "What peace, what comfort this great gift is which comes through the loving grace of Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of all mankind. . . Even though His life was pure and free of sin, He paid the ultimate penalty for sin—yours, mine, and everyone’s who has ever lived. His mental, emotional, and spiritual anguish were so great they caused Him to bleed from every pore (see Luke 22:44; D&C 19:18). And yet Jesus suffered willingly so we might all have the opportunity to be washed clean—through having faith in Him. . . .Without the Atonement of the Lord, none of these blessings would be available to us, and we could not become worthy and prepared to return to dwell in the presence of God” (Elder Ballard, in Conference Report, Apr. 2004, 86–87; or Ensign, May 2004, 84–85; Book of Mormon Institute Manual, 152-153)