The Hassles of Law of Attraction

If you’ve heard anything about Law of Attraction, you’ve surely heard that what you focus on matters. You tend to get results you intend in the areas that you focus on. The areas you forget about, you tend to neglect, and your results are those of entropy rather than intention.

It is not just a matter of focus. Emotion matters also. When you feel strongly about something, it lends clarity and intensity to your thoughts, and this gives the thoughts more power. Thus, The Secret advises, “Feel good,” and Tony Robbins, “Live with passion.”

Gratitude for Desperados

In concerts this year, the Eagles are playing “Desperado” as their final song. It seems fitting. The song’s warning about the perils of seeking peace of mind in material things comes at a time when a lot of people are struggling, working harder than ideally they should, to control their material surroundings.

Patience in a World of Illusion

Progress doesn’t always come in neat, straight lines. It can be messy and look like a mistake when you come across it, but it doesn’t have to be criticized just because it hasn’t yet come together in a way that makes sense on the surface.

This is one of the threads that runs through the book Walking Through Illusion by Betsy Otter Thompson. This book imagines Jesus almost in the role of a self-improvement coach telling the life stories of the people around him. In every story, there is always something out of place or happening out of sequence. It seems easy to point to where the problem is — indeed, they are all familiar, everyday problems on the surface — but in each case, Walking Through Illusion suggests a gentler, less stressful way of looking at it.

Work and Resentment, or How to Manifest a Million Dollars

Most people feel some degree of resentment about the work they have to do. This is an emotional pattern that not only affects the way people approach work, but also their approach to money, to-do lists, and clutter.

Levi’s Studies the Costs of Owning Jeans

Most of the costs of owning things come after you purchase them. In Fear of Nothing and the Clutter Calculator I emphasize the cost of the space taken up by the possessions you keep because this is the simplest cost to look at. For many items, though, the greatest cost is the cost of cleaning. This is true, for example, of clothing that you wear regularly, such as socks, underwear, and especially, blue jeans.

The Exterminator Appointment

There were bugs hiding somewhere in the house. An appointment was made with an exterminator. And then they called me.

“You’ll want to be out of the house for about five hours after the exterminator is there,” I said. “And you can’t have any piles of anything on the floor. That would keep the insecticides from working — they wouldn’t reach the floor. It would give the bugs a place to hide.” A minute later, I was saying, “You’re going to need my help.”

The Changing Nature of Work, and Home

In his 2001 book The Future of Success, Robert Reich devotes most of a chapter to reasons why work is taking over our lives. If our financial fortunes have declined, we may have to choose between working longer hours and reducing our standard of living. Or, if we are prized, highly paid workers, the financial rewards for working more are higher than they ever been. In the meantime, for all workers, the sense of certainty about future income is less than it was a generation ago. If you have a job now, you might not have one at the end of the year. Or, if you have highly marketable skills, those skills might fade or become less important or less distinctive in just a few years. You have to make money while you can. Even if you are making plenty of money, you might have to maintain a fast pace of work just to keep your career on the fast track or keep up with your field.

At the same time, communication devices and channels make it easy for work to spill out of its usual place and time slot. Phone calls and e-mail go with you, if you choose, and you might very well choose to stay connected in order to not miss a chance to do some work, knowing how uncertain the future is.

The McMansion Is Dead

The McMansion is dead.

It doesn’t mean very much if I say that, but this is a CNBC writer saying it: “Death of the ‘McMansion’: Era of Huge Homes Is Over.” CNBC was right at the heart of the culture of financial excess that gave rise to so many oversized, poorly designed, often poorly constructed houses all over the United States and elsewhere, so when they say that trend is over, it means something.