By an Inch It’s a Cinch, By a Mile It’s a Pile

By Dr. Ely Lazar & Dr. Adele Thomas

[Republished here by permission of the authors from the blog of their “Passionate Retirees” website]

Kaizen is a Japanese word meaning improvement. It is actually a philosophy that refers to small, steady, and continuous increases in productivity.

Seven Years Ago Today: Taking myself too seriously?

By Moristotle

[Originally published on January 6, 2011, with an additional reflection at the bottom.]

The episode of my new blog pic and its attendant quotations (from an old friend and from Henry James – another old friend of a sort) led to my realizing that I seem to have been taking myself a bit too seriously lately (and for who knows how long before that).

Business plan

The overbalanced-wheel
perpetual motion machine

Some friends and I were free-wheeling this morning what sort of retirement business we might go into. One of us suggested that we do consulting, in which our core service would be to put clients into a therapeutic trance, during which we would implant suggestions congruent with what we had previously learned of their desires for changing their lives or "succeeding." Our suggestions would generally be of the sort that the next day or the next week a revelation about "what to do" would pop into the client's mind accompanied by a sense of his or her resourcefulness to undertake the revealed action or first step.
    "Ram Dass already did something like that," somebody said.
    "What? He's patented it? Would we have to buy a license?"
    I said I didn't think so, our idea was different. Our marketing plan would feature the guarantee that our service was entirely free if nothing materialized—for whatever reason, even including the client's not having the courage to undertake a revealed action (and of course including the possibility that no action ever got revealed in the first place). We'd get paid only if an action were revealed, the client acted, and the results were beneficial. (We haven't worked out a fee schedule yet.)

It occurred to me later (as something almost always occurs to me when I'm trying to think of something for the day's web log) that the religion business is somewhat similar. People go to church and either are put into a trance or put themselves into a trance and expect good things to happen as a result.
    For most people, something good happens frequently enough that they continue to pay the fee of continuing to go to church and contributing to its upkeep.
    The main difference with the religion business is that the client doesn't have to do anything but pray. When the thing prayed for happens, prayer is confirmed; when it doesn't, it doesn't count—according to the casuistry that "God answers prayer according to his will, not to that of the person praying." Religion thus perpetuates itself.

The blogging business (or the business of dedicated writing in general) is much more like the trance-induction business plan than religion is. Signing on for the writing business, thinking of yourself as a blogger or a short story writer or a novelist, dedicating yourself to it, is an act of auto-suggestion, which, if you're lucky, results in regular "revelations" of things to write about or ways to approach a piece or even (when you're really lucky and tending to imitate Wolfgang Amadeus) what words to write.
    And the result, like the daily web log, is the practitioner's reward, his pay-off. On days when nothing materializes, no pay.
    If reward is paid often or regularly enough, a habit is established, revelations establish expectation, expectation provokes revelation. A perpetual motion machine has been set running.
    A doing-business-as name may have just popped into my mind.

Taking myself too seriously?

The episode of my new blog pic and its attendant quotations (from an old friend and from Henry James—another old friend of a sort) led to my realizing that I seem to have been taking myself a bit too seriously lately (and for who knows how long before that).
    Horace Fletcher (1849-1919) was known as "The Great Masticator," and according to something I read somewhere, Henry James followed his prescription to swallow thirty-times before swallowing. Seems to me that you should follow the same advice when reading my blog (or maybe any blog).

And, in the process, I may have hit on a third new year's resolution, if resolving to take oneself less seriously isn't a self-contradiction. (I'm not sure that it isn't.)

A new year's resolution (two of them!)

I didn't think I had any new year's resolutions, but this morning I realized that there's one I should make and try (yet again, for how many times?) to stick to:

Talk less, listen more.

And my wife suggested another one for me:

Write less, talk more!

I accept this in the spirit of self-improvement (especially when it comes to being a more companionable spouse).

I found the following links while searching for the graphic:

• Popular New Year's Resolutions (http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/New_Years_Resolutions.shtml)
• Top Ten New Year's Resolutions (http://pittsburgh.about.com/od/holidays/tp/resolutions.htm)
• How to Make a New Year's Resolution (http://www.ehow.com/how_12077_new-years-resolutions.html)