Friday Book Report: Even the Stiffest People Can Do the Splits

If a book can have a clickbait title, this one does:  Even the Stiffest People Can Do the Splits by Eiko.  I bought it anyway, and I will give the program a try, with the following caveat:  the book recommends doing the various stretching with bouncing, and the Mayo Clinic, for example says that is not a good idea here.  Instead, I will be holding the stretches from 30 seconds to a minute, moving deeper if it seems like a good idea.

The program itself is minimal.  There are two basic stretches you do daily for four weeks, plus an additional stretch unique to each week.  The book, however, also includes, strangely, a short story about two workers in a Tokyo firm who use the program under the guidance of their director and Eiko herself, achieving not only the splits but professional success.

Bottom line:  don’t buy it.  Borrow it from the library or me.  And please, don’t bounce.

Goals, if you want them!

We are getting to the point where we can wish 2017 goodbye (and possibly good riddance!).  We get to flip the calendar page and start again.

I’ve said before that I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s Resolutions.  Any day will do for a fresh start.  However, some people like to have the company of friends as they embark on a new project.  I am here to help with goals.

You bring the vision, I’ll bring the strategy.

Maybe toasted...

Let’s talk about marshmallows, again.  The classic psychological experiment on delayed gratification (now updated to include data on whether the test subjects trusted the experimenters!) used marshmallows as an incentive.  A child was offered one marshmallow now, or two if he or she could wait five minutes.  The long term outcomes for the kids who could make it through to two marshmallows were much better on many measures.  Guess what we are supposed to do.

But let’s talk about the actual marshmallows.  We are told, or tell ourselves, that lots of things are treats, like marshmallows.  (I have nothing against marshmallows, per se, although I’ve just typed the word enough times that it is sounding weird to me.)  What if we are doing all this work of delayed gratification for something that isn’t worth waiting for?

Let’s set goals that really do give us gratification.  Those goals probably won’t be about marshmallows.  They probably won’t even be about bikinis.  What we probably really want is to feel good, healthy, happy.  That kind of goal is worth the wait to achieve.