Stumbling on Happiness Review

November 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment
  Today we welcome back regular guestblogger, Dave Baldwin. Dave shares his review of Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. Enjoy and think about what brings you happiness. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert does a great job exemplifying what it looks like to distill psychology into a practical layperson’s science. I’ve found that re-discovering happiness and fulfillment is an art, a science, and at times, an uphill battle. Gilbert helps to shed some light on the question of why. Gilbert doesn’t present a solution to a problem; he presents perspectives that I’ve found useful in my own process of unraveling it. Gilbert is a great storyteller, and the book is a fun, fast read – which is my number one criteria for any book I recommend. He starts by raising ubiquitous questions that are not always asked out loud. For example, why do we often expect that certain things will bring us happiness, only to discover that they fail to meet expectations? That question forms the central inquiry of the book, and Gilbert attacks this question from various different angles, citing stories of happiness-based research projects and university studies. When I read this book the first time, I recalled a particular incident in the Phoenix airport. I was flying home after a three-week trip to Tucson, Arizona, and our flight had a one-hour layover. I went into the airport to get a cup of coffee and something to read during the four-hour flight to Philadelphia. As I started walking back to my gate, I had a moment of panic. I had left my bag in the airport! I spent the next ten minutes hurriedly retracing my steps in a vain attempt to locate the bag, afraid that if I didn’t find it, it would be confiscated and destroyed by airport security. Out of time, I gave up and got back on the plane, thinking about how many things I would have to replace. When I arrived at my seat, the bag was sitting right under it. Here’s the insidious part that had continued to haunt my mind for some time afterward. I remembered standing in the coffee shop. I could play back a mental video tape of the scene. I leaned over to set down my carry-on bag so that I could use both hands. The fact that I was able to remember doing this so clearly was the very reason why I could feel certain that I had, indeed, brought the bag off of the plane with me. This memory turned out to be completely false. After I read Stumbling on Happiness, it made perfect sense. According to Gilbert, the human brain does not store picture-perfect memories of what happened – it fabricates them on demand. What does this have to do with happiness and the pursuit thereof? Since our memories of the past are not nearly as accurate as we think they are, we are likely to inaccurately project what will make us happy in the future. We believe that certain things made us happier (or less happy) than they did in the past, and we leave out critical details from our memories – even when we have the same experiences repeatedly. Gilbert cites the all-too-familiar example of Thanksgiving dinner. We overeat, then feel the consequences of overeating, vow never to do this to ourselves again, then proceed to repeat the whole mess in December. Gilbert also talks about the process of making decisions, and how we select different options based on what we believe will make us the happiest in the future. The process, says Gilbert, is made complicated by a number of factors, including one that he calls “presentism.” Gilbert asserts that we all unconsciously assume that we have always felt (and will always feel) the same way about things that we feel now. He cites a study which found that people were far more likely to say they were happy with their lives on sunny days, and unhappy with their lives on rainy days. Since reading this book, I’ve learned to re-evaluate the ways I seek to bring fulfillment into my life. For example, when I find myself wishing that I had more of this, or less of that, I automatically challenge the assumption. I now find myself looking for happiness in new places, and I’m finding that the process of pursuing happiness brings me more happiness than it used to. For example, I found that disciplining myself to write consistently brought me happiness, a little bit more each day. I also have found it easier to resist the temptation to indulge cravings for things like candy and rich desserts. I am able to walk past the ice cream aisle in the grocery store, indulging my senses with the visualization of each flavor – and not buy any of them. I plan to re-read Stumbling on Happiness at least one more time in my life. I definitely recommend it. It may or may not give you the secret to happiness, but you’ll at least enjoy reading it. Your Turn: How do you define happiness? What makes you happy and fulfilled?   About Dave: Dave Baldwin is a writer who has lived and worked in Raleigh, NC since 2007. He has self-published two books: Pied Piper Entrepreneurship (2009) and Get That Book Out of Your Head! (2009).
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One or Two Feathers Book Review

October 25, 2011 by Leave a Comment
One or Two Feathers
Jo Barbara Taylor’s debut poetry collection, One or Two Feathers, contains imaginative, fresh writing that is full of color and soft sensuality. Nature is always at the center of these poems about personal love and loss, but not all of these poems are serious.  When Taylor’s wit is on display, she delivers the unexpected as she connects with her reader and opens up her world of tantalizing images and music to them. In “My First,” Taylor allows you to guess what she means. bright lights barge into my eyes and trespass the circuits of my brain a cacophony of steady rhythm besieges me, hip hop and disco I eat ice cream,                              nachos,                            popcorn, drink soda and beer my first NBA game is not about basketball. “October, 1970” describes Taylor and her former husband beginning their married lives together. Nature soon becomes a metaphor for their marriage. Armored with optimism, we saluted bars, birds, and leaves, then moved into a town geared to temporary duty. Three years measured that branch of our lives.  Later the future split like blasted limestone, our turrets spun to separate ventures. “Sipping Chardonnay” is the most personal of her collection as it reveals the death of a long-term relationship during a wine tasting vacation. Taylor’s controls her images and color so that they seethe with emotion, but never veer into sentimentality. It was on that day of tasting wine in Napa Valley, grapes growing green on a hillside of bisque soil. I held my stem, looked through the glass, gold with sun and Chardonnay, remembering the Mosel and the Rhine where we toasted vineyards on riverbanks, tender passion, knights in shining armor. A thundercloud panzered across the alice blue sky. It fired, I never loved you, never  I’m getting out. Moving on. It’s time. I was content to sit a moment                                                  or two sipping Chardonnay, to breathe earth pouring into vines. The cloud stained my wine red, I lost my grip and the glass toppled, spilling blood. Jo Barbara Taylor’s poems are personal, yet they are so universal because of the sharp images she brings to life through color, honest emotions, and the music in her lines. You may think you’re reading a “nice” poem, but then she flips on the tension and you end up in a different place from where you began. I look forward to reading Jo Barbara Taylor’s most recent chapbook, Cameo Roles (Big Table Publishing, 2011). About Jo Barbara Taylor Jo grew up in Indiana and now lives in Raleigh, NC. Her new book of poetry is Cameo Roles (Big Table Publishing, 2011). Her poems have appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Mount Olive Review, Bay Leaves, Ibbetson Street, Exit 109 and You Gotta Love ‘Em Anthologies, Bee Culture, on New Verse News and in the Broad River Review. She is active in the North Carolina Poetry Society.
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Marketing 101: What Were They Thinking?!

October 17, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Glad you’re here! We welcome our regular contributor, Dave Baldwin, who reviews Olalah Njenga’s 37 What Were They Thinking Moments in Marketing. Olalah is originally from Chicago and now makes her home in Raleigh where she is a sought after marketing guru who helps growing companies succeed. Thanks so much, Dave, for guestposting again for me this month. Enjoy! Earlier this year, I picked up a copy of 37 What Were They Thinking? Moments in Marketing by Olalah Njenga. I know Olalah personally and have attended her workshops, so this is a bit different than my typical book review in that my opinion might be a bit slanted. But I know a good storyteller when I see one, and Olalah is definitely that.   The book is a fun read, and as its title implies, it’s broken down into 37 easily digestible nuggets that you can absorb in 5-minute reading sessions. The stories are priceless, and as Olalah herself says in the introduction, you just couldn’t make this stuff up. The overarching theme: embarrassingly unskillful attempts by small business owners to market themselves. She deliberately chose examples of business owners who went to ridiculous extremes. I can personally vouch for the authenticity of the stories, because I’ve seen some of them played out in person. In fact, I even played the starring role in a couple of these stories at the beginning of my entrepreneurial endeavors.   I alternated between wincing, laughing, face-palming, and shaking my head in sympathetic embarrassment as I read through Olalah’s tales of marketing blunders gone wild. There were two common themes I could hear throughout the stories: penny-pinching and refusal to look at reality for what it is.   Several stories depict entrepreneurs who emphatically argued that they didn’t need a plan or a strategy for their businesses, believing that they had passion for what they did, and that nothing else mattered. Olalah perfectly captured the fallacy with this thinking; she titled one vignette “When Your Passion Meets the Repo Man.” I felt some chagrin here, since I myself drank the “passion Kool-Aid” at the outset of my writing business. I remember deluding myself into believing that if I threw myself headlong at what I loved, the stars would align to my dreams and I would live happily ever after. Reading stories of others who traveled the same precarious path was a bit stinging, but a useful reminder of what can happen when ambition runs amok.   The bigger problem with small business, as Olalah illustrates, is the erroneous notion that one can market a business on a “shoestring” budget. While there is wisdom in finding creative ways to make marketing dollars go as far as possible, small businesses have blown this out of proportion. For example, two particularly comical stories jump out at me. In one example, Olalah recalls meeting a woman who handed her a business card, only to snatch it back promptly and scratch out the contact information written on it, which had gone out of date. In another example, a business owner tried to staff an event completely with volunteers, resulting in weeks of continual breakdowns and an event that ended up making her company look unprofessional.   Every first-time entrepreneur needs to hear these stories and others like them. While there is humor in the stories, there’s another side to the picture. If you’ve been in small business for any length of time, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Getting excited about big ideas and charging out into the marketplace can lead not only to humiliation, but financial disaster. It is possible to become thoroughly and dangerously engrossed in big dreams, to the point where it distorts your view of reality and blinds you to pitfalls that are right in front of your face.   It can be a rude awakening when you’re finally forced to confront the fact that, passion or no passion, you don’t know where your next car payment is coming from. When your dreams of making millions in your business melt into visions of moving back in with your parents and taking a job at Mickey D’s, you will find yourself dropping back down to Earth like a lead weight. When this day of reckoning comes, passion turns into ice-cold terror. While the stories in Olalah’s book are amusing, I believe that her core message was designed to illustrate that the end result of this insanity is often not the least bit funny.   If you think that you can “do what you love and the money will come,” you need to wake up, smell the coffee, and accept the cold reality that successful businesses are built on a plan. Olalah’s book may just be the cold shower you need to snap out of it. Regardless of where you are in your business, you’ll find value in these stories. Grab a copy today. You won’t be able to put it down.  Your Turn: Do you feel you’re good at marketing your business? If so, what  marketing tips can you share that could help any small business succeed. Dave Baldwin is a writer who has lived and worked in Raleigh, NC since 2007. He has self-published two books: Pied Piper Entrepreneurship (2009) and Get That Book Out of Your Head! (2009).
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