Best Laid Plans

When Life Gives You Lemons...

I have a print displayed in my kitchen by the witty artist David Shrigley that says When Life Gives You a Lemon…You Must Eat The Lemon, All of It Including the Skin.

This is a good summation of where I’m at this week.

Photo by Angélica Echeverry on Unsplash

I was meant to be in North Carolina with my husband and son, visiting with the East Coast Buccis. Instead, I’m nursing our 11-year-old terrier — the beloved Lincoln — back to health.

On Friday, the little bugger ate a dirt clod. Yes, you read that correctly, a dirt clod. On Saturday he was noticeably under the weather (unrelated to our bringing out the suitcases) so we made a last minute detour to the emergency vet to get him checked before we departed the next morning. A few x-rays and thousands of $$$ later, he was in the doggie operating room to have the stuck clod removed.

My mother-in-law has been in ill health and it’s been two years since our son has seen his grandparents, so I was tagged to stay behind and help Lincoln through his convalescence.

I’m happy to report he is on the mend. He’s on a boatload of drugs and forbidden from jumping or otherwise getting excited, so I’ve had to carry him up and down the stairs, and keep a very close eye on him. Have you ever tried to ice a dog’s stomach? Zero stars, do not recommend.

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Tennis to the rescue…

What I do recommend though, if you happen to have an ailing pet to comfort, is to do it during the first week of Wimbledon. What timing! Having cleared my work schedule in anticipation of our trip, I can watch without any guilt. I’m caught up on life!

And what a week it’s been. If you’re not a tennis fan, you might not know that things are a bit wild in London this year. A harbinger may have been incredibly hot weather as the tournament kicked off. Players and spectators both were wilting in the heat and a cascade of upsets saw 23 seeds exit the tournament in the first round of play. This is almost unheard of. On the upside, it’s opening up the draw for some underdogs, like the rising Brazilian player Joao Fonseca, and I love an underdog!

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Do vision boards really work?

Speaking of best laid plans, I recently listened to a thought-provoking chat on The Bittersweet Life Podcast about how vision boards or envisioning the completion of a goal may not help you actually achieve it.

Of course this runs counter to conventional wisdom (and some existing science) when it comes to pursuing our dreams, so I was intrigued to hear more. Hosts Tiffany Parks and Katie Sewell were discussing the new book Sharp: 14 Simple Ways to Improve Your Life with Brain Science by Dr. Therese Huston.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

According to Huston, recent neuroscience studies show that visualization works best when you are thinking about the process, not completion of the goal. That when you focus on the completed project (i.e. visualizing your published book or your dream vacation) it lights up the reward center of your brain, which doesn’t differentiate between something real or something imagined — both are equally pleasurable. In other words, your brain thinks you’ve already done the thing and can become uninterested in doing the actual work of getting to the finish line.

Huston says the most effective way to work toward your goals is not by visualizing the finished project, but by leaning into what your brain really responds to — planning. She says breaking down the goal into incremental steps that are difficult but achievable is more likely to get you to your desired end point, which keeps us focused on the doing not achieving.

I’ve never really been someone who uses vision boards but a few weeks ago I did something similar. I’m getting close to finishing the first draft of my novel, which has languished at 60,000 words for longer than I’d like to admit. One afternoon, instead of writing (!) I decided to layout a “cover” in the hopes that it would kick my butt into gear inspire me to keep going. My brain’s reward center really lit up as I played around with images and titles. And it felt great to see a cover image of my “finished book.” I decided to use the image on my phone’s lock screen, reminding me of my goal every time I saw it.

But guess what? It didn’t work! Instead, I began to feel like a failure every time I picked up my phone.

After listening to the podcast I’ve decided to take a different approach, breaking down the remaining parts of the draft into even smaller bite-sized pieces, and I’m going to give Sharp a read.

What do you think? What’s the most effective method you’ve found to reach your goals?

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What’s on my reading list

I wrote a bit last week about the book group I’m part of, hosted by the writer and teacher Natalie Serber. We meet about every six weeks over Zoom to talk about a book selected by Natalie and this month we are reading Bug Hollow by Michelle Huneven.

I’m really enjoying this book. It’s a fast read that spans the early 1970s through almost present day — a timeframe that mirrors my life, making it very relatable. It’s about family tragedy and resilience, chosen family, the bonds that connect us, how we define those bonds, and how those bonds define us. It’s set mostly in Southern California, with tromps through Saudi Arabia (this section is a fascinating detour into the Dhahran Residential Camp, an ex-pat oil company compound for Saudi Aramco employees) and Mexico.

Despite the various dramas that unfold (and there are dramas!), the book feels very gentle. It’s told from multiple character perspectives, exploring fraught mother-daughter and father-son relationships, intergenerational friendships, and mentor relationships. It assumes that we are all flawed and makes no apologies for those flaws, which is mildly refreshing. There’s something real about that, even though the ending does feel a bit tied up in a bow.

I’m sad to be missing out on a week with family and rare chunk of time with our college aged son, but if I had to choose how to spend it otherwise, a week with two good books on deck and Wimbledon on the TV is not a bad set-up.

Until next time - CIAO CIAO!

Rachel