Getting Past Negativity Bias - the Beachy Way

by @JeffeKennedy

This week's topic in the Bordello is Measuring Success (and Failures): How, When, and Then What?

Since I'm lucky enough to be at the beach this weekend, I think I'd measure that as a success.

Shortest blog post ever!

Okay, okay - but only because it's too foggy yet to go boogie boarding...

Getting a grip on measuring success and failure - and learning how to handle both - is key to personal happiness, in my opinion. Note that I'm not counting "Being Happy" as a goal that be attained, which many people do. Instead, for me, happiness is a way of living life. I make a lot of deliberate choices to preserve my personal happiness, which is a top priority for me. I'm blessed to have fortunate chemistry that predisposes me to be happy, but I also avoid things that impede my happiness - something other people don't always approve of. I don't watch the news, or much TV at all besides carefully chosen shows. I don't worry about how clean my house is or whether the dishes are done. I don't do things for other people unless I want to.

The difference in thinking here is that many people - myself included, if I lose sight of this perspective - see success as something that leads to happiness and failure as something that leads away.

This isn't true at all. And, in fact, is a sure recipe for misery.

Why?

Two things are working against us here. First of all, lots of good research has shown that our brains have a Negativity Bias. We are far more likely to remember negative emotional events, in far greater detail and clarity, than positive ones. Extremely useful for learning to avoid saber-tooth tigers. Not so great for convincing ourselves that the one snarky review means nothing. The other is that success is transitory and comes with no guarantees. It's like counting on a particular bird flying by to instill happiness. We can put out birdseed, sure - but a lot is up to chance.

Besides, there's nothing negative about failure.

Really.

Failure isn't the opposite of a happy outcome, it's just an other outcome. We've just conditioned ourselves - particularly in American culture - to see anything other than success as a negative.

So, here's my beach analogy for you.

For the last couple of days, I've been getting to spend time doing boogie boarding. For those who don't know, a boogie board is kind of like those paddle boards we used in swimming. You lay your upper body over it and ride the waves into shore. It's like surfing, without the athletic skill required, which puts it right up my alley. My surf-beach equivalent to snorkeling. Both are low-key activities that require little equipment and no classes, certification or training (not like scuba-diving might). All of these things up my happiness quotient by keeping the pressure off.

Like surfing, boogie boarding means waiting for the right wave. You swim out there and watch the swells, picking out the one that looks to be breaking exactly right for the best ride. Sometimes you miss a good one. Sometimes you get swamped by one you didn't see coming. Sometimes a promising wave peters out and you go a short distance before having to swim back out again. Sometimes a wave turns vicious and takes you over, pounding you against the sand and filling your sinuses with salt. Every once in a while, you catch one exactly right and ride it like a rocket all the way to the shore.

And it's awesome.

But that's not one success out of many failures, as we'd be tempted to paint it. Why?

BECAUSE IT'S ALL AWESOME.

What is not wonderful about swimming in the ocean on a brilliantly sunny day, playing around with a boogie board? Likewise, what is not TOTALLY AMAZING about spending our days telling stories, creating worlds and people from thin air? Writers like to focus on the emo aspects of the life - one of my loops is talking about the BCoD (black cloud of doom) right now - but how incredible is it that we get to do this and people actually pay us? Don't tell me you don't get paid enough. That's like saying the last wave only carried you twenty feet. You're playing in the fucking ocean of stories! It just doesn't get better than that.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some waves to ride.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Sand In My Shoes

by Allison Pang

I suppose it's no great surprise I'm all about the beach. Or the shore, really. (That's a New Jersey/Philly thing, I think. Everyone else says they're going to the beach. We all say we're going down the shore.) And I've actually blogged about it several times here and on my various other blogs, so I'm not sure it's worth rehashing most of the same stories at this point.

But really there's just so much family history at the shore house that of any vacation destination we might choose to go, that's the one I would probably choose above all the others.

And it's not that other beaches aren't nice, but this one is home.

It's not perfect either - but a bad day at the beach is still better than a good day at work, as they say.

Still, I think one of the hardest things to reconcile for my family and the whole vacation thing is how we spend our time. When I go down the shore, all I want to do is chill, at least for the first few days. It always takes my body that long to realize that it actually *can* relax, and it when does, the main thing it wants to do is sleep. Or nap. Or nap on the beach. Or sleep in a chair at the beach. Or in the hammock.

Sounds boring, but I've been doing this enough by now to know that's just how I work biologically. Best thing to do is let me get it out of my system and catch up on that rest and then I'm good to go do other things. Otherwise I end up being crankypants for the entirety  of the week, simply because I'm dragging.

Which is where the differences come in. When the DH goes on vacation? He wants to go, go, go. It took us a while to sort that out, because for him vacation is wasted if we're just sitting around doing nothing...and for me, vacation IS doing nothing. (Or it's doing quiet things, like catching up on reading or sewing or any number of activities that I just don't have the time for when I'm working.) I guess in some ways that going to the shore is more about retreat than vacation - no phones, no internet, no nothing except the sea and the sand and the sun.

But that's the way I like it.

Down the Shore

by Allison Pang

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

- John Masefield

There's a lovely saying out there that goes "A bad day at the beach is better than a good day at work."

I firmly believe this.

I don't know if I've ever found a place I like living as much as the shore. Growing up was mostly in the wilds of the Pine Barrens of South Jersey (complete with Jersey Devil legends and all that fun stuff.)

Part of that whole package included weekly trips to the shore during the summer where my grandmother had a little cottage by the sea, where my dad grew up during *his* summers. (About 7 houses down from the ocean.) That eventually led into my parents buying a slightly larger house of their own just down the road and after many years of renting it, it became our summer home.

It's really quite the privilege, honestly. Even though it's rather modest by today's standards - just a small Cape Cod design - no microwave, no dishwasher, no AC -  there is something so fabulous about falling asleep to the sound of the waves hitting the sand. (This is the Atlantic Ocean, mind - definitely a bit different than what you'd find down in Carribbean.)

I was the wild child - catching crabs, turtles and the occasional sea-horse or pipe fish. (Once a blowfish. A couple of eels. Even a lobster - which is a bit rare for the bay.) Crabbing late at night would lead to the snaring of bio-luminescent jelly fish that would light up our little spot of the bay in bright greens. (Oddly enough, although I have no problem catching or killing or cooking seafood for others, I will not eat it.)

We had a 60 year old willow tree in the backyard, although it did eventually die about 10 years ago. I replaced it a few years after that with a sapling after my mother passed away. Suppose it was more symbolic than anything else, although it was my favorite tree. I spent hours climbing it.

We'd see dolphins just off shore as well as pelicans, piping plovers and the occasional seal.  And yes, LBI had several Great White encounters in the early 1900s that were the inspiration for Jaws, but except for a couple of sand sharks and a small Mako we ran into when I was learning to scuba dive, sharks were never an issue.

I was married there, as was my brother (and several cousins). We poured a bag of sand from the beach onto my mother's coffin during her funeral. My son got his first introduction to the sea at the age of 3 months.

Clearly this place is deeply rooted within my family. Believe me - we were offered a million dollars for the plot our little house was on and refused to sell it.

So for me, even though I'm currently living elsewhere for reasons of necessity, it's not really a question of *if* I'll move back there.

There is always sand in my shoes.