Have a better day - and a better life

Introduction to Psychology Takeaway

0:00I love that upside down thing, Ralph. Yes, it's almost as good as an apple turnover. Indeed. Okay. Well, welcome to Psychology Takeaway, the podcast where we take a look at current events in psychology and try to make sense of them for ourselves and for you.

Discussing Small Victories

0:40Yeah, and today we're going to talk about victories. Victories. Da-da-da-da! Victories, right? No, no, not big victories. We're going to talk about small victories. Small victories. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, I was looking, speaking of big victories, I was looking at CNN this morning. Apparently there are 600 ships stuck in the Straits of Hormuz. Yeah. That's not a big victory, is it?

1:11No, but here's the thing. The question really is, we went back to the negotiating table because the president wants a negotiated settlement. Sure. A big victory. A big victory. Okay. Now, the question is, can we trust the other guys? And can they trust us? Can they trust us? And the answer to me is, they can trust us because we really don't want to kill a whole bunch more people.

1:48But I'm not sure that we can trust them. And that is the ugly part of a negotiated settlement, is who can trust who. Okay. So, we digress. That's, you know, that's not a big victory, but it's a big conflict going on. And people are feeling like, when am I going to get victories? Yeah. I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling alienated. I'm worried about AI. I'm worried about my kids.

2:19I'm worried about the future in general, my job. Right? I mean, those are all of the real worries that we have working around out there right now. And the thing is, about those, they're all big victories. They're all big concerns. Big concerns. And if you say, okay, I just discovered that I'm going to get a promotion, that's a big victory. Right. But, on the other hand... How many big victories do you get? How many promotions do you get?

2:50Well, you know, if you're real lucky, you might get a couple, two, three in a lifetime, maybe. But, all of us kind of ignore, I think, a lot of time in our lives, the small victories. And we get a lot more of those, and they're a lot more worth celebrating, acknowledging, seeing.

Examples of Small Victories

3:19Yeah, well, we were in this morning, you know, picking up our usual coffee, and we asked the manager what her idea of a small victory would be. Something that she would do to make her day better. And what are you going to do to have a better day? You know, we can't all get a promotion every day, but she said, compliment someone. Mm-hmm. So, when she compliments someone, she feels good about it.

3:52Yeah. You know. And that's, I think, very true, that giving someone a compliment, sometimes they shrug it off. But it always makes you feel good. Mm-hmm. You know. So, when Karen, my wife, comes downstairs, and she's put on an outfit, and, you know, we're going out for lunch, or we're going out to go grocery shopping, but the outfit is attractive.

4:24I always try to say to her, oh, you look good. And sometimes she said, oh, it's just, you know, but sometimes, most of the time, maybe all of the time, I feel good, because I remember to say, you look good. Well, yeah. So, a small victory. Yeah. The ability to feel good, because you've said or done something for someone else, right?

4:54Right. Okay. Now, let me give you another example of both a compliment and a small victory. Okay. And it's going to be kind of a strange story. Yeah. You never tell strange stories, right? Never, no. So, here's the thing. The coffee vendor, the coffee company that Karen and I were buying their coffee and drinking it for two years.

5:28They changed their formulation. Okay. And made it what we thought was significantly less good. Oh, okay. So, we went out in quest of a better coffee. And we've gone through about seven different brands buying the smallest containers we could find. And, you know, making them, tasting them, saying, no, pretty close, but not quite, no good at all.

6:03So, and then our next door neighbor, who had gone away on the trip. That sounds like a fine experiment to do. Yeah. It sounds fun to me. It was kind of fun, but... Yeah. Were you drinking it black or... Yeah. Okay. Black. And so... Next door neighbor, sorry. Next door neighbor came back from her trip and gave us a pound of coffee, which she had found. Uh-huh. And we tried it, and it was the very closest thing to the original old brand.

6:37And we said, oh, this is great. This is just it. Uh-huh. Smooth, robust, nice, nice aftertaste. All the things you look for in a coffee, it's great. So, I haven't yet, but as soon as I get home and I see her, I'm going to say, your coffee is great. We thank you so much. Okay. And pay her the compliment of, you know, choosing the right blend.

7:12Oh, okay, great. Now, will you be able to get it here in little old Mount Pleasant? We will. All right. So, you know, a small victory. We found the coffee that we're going to drink for the next while, I know, and we also have a compliment to the person who found it. Okay. So, a win-win situation. Yeah. You know, a lot of us think of situations that we're in as kind of lose-lose situations. Last week, we talked about getting help.

7:44Right. We talked about how some people won't get help because they feel that it's a failure in some way. A failure of theirs to actually need some help. Yeah. But getting help for me. Remember the story last week? I was getting your grade book. Getting the grade book up and running correctly. You know, a couple hours of pulling my hair, what's left of it, and 20 seconds with an expert up here in the library, and we got it fixed.

8:18Yeah. And I'm sure that that expert feels pretty good about it, too. Yeah. And the interesting thing to me, Tim, is that often I think people hesitate to go to see experts because experts have the besetting sin of saying to the person that they're helping, you just, you just, that's the first thing they say, you only, you just, you just push this button here, right?

8:50Yeah. And the thing is, you know, our technicians come in and they help us set up, and sometimes we look at them like they're in the headlights, and they say, no, no, it's really easy, push that button, and then that button, and then that button. Yeah, right, that's really clever to remember when you're trying to think what you're saying next.

Creativity and Writing

9:17Right, indeed.

Creativity and Writing

9:17You know, another thing about small victories, Ralph, is that, you know, I'm doing this conference presentation next week on creativity. Mm-hmm. And, you know, a lot of people would say, well, I'll get creative when the mood strikes me. Yeah. And when I'm ready for creativity, then I'll exercise my creativity. You have your own take on this, right? Yeah, because you're never ready.

9:49Right. No, I mean, it's not that you're Ethel Rodney on Ready, who was one of the kings of England back a long time ago, about the age of Arthur. But the thing is, you know, if you say, I've got to wait until I'm ready. Until the perfect moment is there. The perfect moment is there. You're never going to find the perfect moment. You're never going to have the perfect moment. So what do you do? You just do. You just do. There's no perfect moment.

10:28There's no perfect moment. Just do. Just do. Yeah. So the thing is, you know, you have to say to yourself, okay, I want to write a, I don't know, poem, short story, the great American novel. How do I do that? Do you have one sentence down on the paper, right? Yeah. Now, one of the American crime novelists who has since passed on, but his recipe was, somebody said to him, how do you write two novels a year?

11:14Oh, okay. Sounds like John McDonald to me. Yeah. And his answer was, I sit down every morning after my coffee and I write five pages. Mm-hmm. And then, uh, about three in the afternoon, three to five, I take the five pages I wrote a couple of days before and I edit them. Mm-hmm. So he said, sometime, some days, it takes me an hour to write five pages.

11:51Some days it takes me until 12.30. Three o'clock in the afternoon. Yeah. Uh, some days it takes, you know, just a long, long time, but I don't quit until I have five pages. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I talked to Richard Adams once, the guy who wrote A Watership Down. Mm-hmm. And he said that, uh, he, his version of that was he would write, uh, two pages of foolscap. Now, that's a legal size. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a term that we, from Canada, have heard before, but maybe our American viewers

12:28and listeners have not. Anyhow, two, two legal size things. And he said, if at the end of, you know, two pages he was still hating it, he would stop. Uh, but he often found that at the end of two pages he wanted to continue writing on. And so he would write until he was done for that, that afternoon or that morning. Yeah. So, perseverance is one thing. Perseverance. Starting. Starting. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and Hemingway, uh, also said, um, all first drafts are shit.

13:06Okay. Well. What, what he meant was. They're not very good. They need to be worked on. They need to be worked on. And, and what he felt was usually the problem with first drafts is they were too long and too wordy. Mm-hmm. And his, uh, style, if you will. Take out every third word. Yeah. Was basically trim everything down to the absolute minimum. Mm-hmm. Now, one of the examples of that is Hemingway was, uh, I don't know if a lot of our listeners

13:42know this, but Hemingway was a ambulance driver in World War I. Was it, or was it the Spanish Civil War? Um. I think it was the Spanish Civil War. Civil War. Yes. Sorry. Uh, I stand corrected. Uh, but anyway. You're sitting corrected. Yeah. Anyway, he, uh, he got wounded. Badly wounded. Uh-huh. Uh, 200 shell fragments in his, mostly in his legs. Ouch. Spent six months in the hospital.

14:12And then he went up to northern Michigan, past Sini, to a river in northern Michigan. And he spent a week fishing. Okay. Now, he said two things that were interesting to me about that. Saying one, wading in the, uh, fairly forceful river cured the pains in his legs and knees. Okay. I don't know why. And I don't think he ever knew why.

14:44Uh, and the other thing was that he wrote, as a result of that, some years later, when he was in Paris, he wrote a series of short stories called the Nick Adams stories. Uh-huh. And, ostensibly, they're about fishing. Uh-huh. But they're not. They're about fishing, but they're also about the changes that happen in a person. And so, they're more important stories than you might think about some guy who's out there with a fly rod.

15:21Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And then he wrote his novels. But he got enough notoriety from the Nick Adams stories that publishers were willing to take a risk and say, we will fund you some money so you can live while you're writing a novel for us. Okay. So, so, but the thing is, small victories, small victories. He wrote a short story. Uh-huh. And they hooked on it for about a year.

15:54The Up North story, I think. Yeah. Uh-huh. And then he said, okay, this is worth submitting. And he did. And he got it published. And lo and behold, a career happened from there, the beginning of the career. But, you know, he still had to put in the work. Yeah. He had to put in the work. And he also had to make a start. Uh-huh. He didn't say, boy, I remember fishing that river and it was great. And, you know, it changed. It helped my legs.

16:24It helped my head because I was suffering from what we would call today PTSD. Uh-huh. And he recovered from that pretty noticeably. So, you say to yourself, well, okay, so I'm ready to start. No, I'm not ready to start. But I'm going to start anyway. Start anyway. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Do you automatically get a victory? No. No. But what you get...

16:55Is a start. Is a start. Yeah. And so you say, okay, well, I've got a start. Now, what do I do with it? Uh-huh. And sometimes... You've got the rest of your data. Do something with it, right? Yeah. Okay. Or you say to yourself, okay, I'm stuck right here. So what do I do? Well, I go away... And do something else. Do something else. So I'm going to go away and paint my back fence or I'm going to go away.

17:29Now, one of the things that people often think of in terms of creativity for writing is that it's an isolated art. Uh-huh. Often, people who are good writers don't do it in total isolation. They go to somebody, a friend, a small group, or even somebody they see as a mentor, and

18:01they say, I'm stuck. I'm stuck with my grade book. Uh-huh. I can help you with it, says Gabrielle, okay? Yeah. Or your friend might say, okay, well, we'll have an intervention here and we'll unstick you. Yeah. Or they say, well, I can understand that you're stuck there, but have you thought about what would help the so-called arc of the story? What would help the story move forward?

18:31Well, if my character got a million dollars, then we could really do what, you know? Yeah. So you say, would that work? Maybe. Maybe not. But suppose my character bought a dozen roses and brought them to his heart job. Uh-huh. Would that help the story? Yeah, it would. How could he get a dozen roses? Well, maybe if he did something good for the florist, she would say, take a dozen roses.

19:08You know, so there are ways to work through these problems. And often that way is not by sitting in isolation and thinking until blood comes out of your forehead, but sharing it with somebody and saying, what do I do? I'm stuck. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah, I think some people you and I have talked about before. The Inklings, a group of writers over in Oxford, they'd share their, not necessarily their miseries with other people and their stuckness, but they just share their story and get feedback

19:42and bounce the story off of, you know, other willing writers. And one of those, for example, is Tolkien, who actually, he didn't really, I don't think, read a lot of his stories of The Lord of the Rings, but he told them to other Inklings. And I think that's one of the reasons why The Lord of the Rings as a set of stories is so powerful,

20:15is they have the feeling that they're being told to you. Mm-hmm. Yep. And so you say, well, isn't that wonderful? Well, but the way you read them is if you're listening to the voice of a storyteller. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Good point there. Well, let's see. We have not mentioned the Admiral. Remember him? The Admiral, yes.

20:46We did a podcast a while ago. In fact, there might not even be a video podcast. It might be the one on Podbean and on Apple and, you know, the audio ones, on the Admiral who was a Navy SEAL. Mm-hmm. And do you remember his name? I don't know. No. Mick something. Mick something. It'll come to me probably after I'm on ready.

Starting the Day with Small Victories

21:12But his idea of starting the day was to make your bed. Make your bed. Okay. Why would that be a small victory? Well, if your entire day goes to hell in a handbasket and nothing goes right and nothing you try gets accomplished and finished and you go back to your barracks or to home

21:43and you walk into your room, what have you got? In this case, you have a maid bed. A maid bed. As opposed to having a rotten day and coming home and having a rotten-looking room, right? Yeah, and an unmaid bed. Mm-hmm. And so you say to yourself, okay, well, part of that is I make my bed. Part of it is I kind of quickly tidy up my room.

22:14So, you know, I put what I took off yesterday in the laundry basket. Not on the floor. Not on the floor and so on and so forth. And so you come home to a neat life, physically neat, and also that helps you to be mentally neat. It kind of helps with some of the cobwebs up there. I have one last one for you, Ralph, and I think you will like this. Jerry Fuller, who has been a co-author with me on a couple of books,

22:49and I go out for lunch once a week. Okay. And we, you know, usually have chili or soup or something like that, and, you know, a light lunch. And so we were at a place the other day, and there was a menu, probably not a menu, but, you know, specials on the table. And it said chocolate chip cookie with ice cream and yada, yada,

23:19you know, the whole thing. And for lunch that day, I had dessert. Okay. That was great. Okay.

23:30Well, you know, I have heard some people say the thing to do is to eat the dessert first because you're hungry. You want something sweet. You need a little sugar. Eat dessert that might fill you up. But if you're still hungry, you can have a little bit for lunch. Well, we have our little buttons up there for subscribe, like, and share.

24:06So we ask you to think about it, and please do. Now I'm going to push another button here. I'll see if it works. Okay, but wait a minute. Let me say to our viewers and listeners, we would dearly love to have you comment to us about your small victory today. Definitely so. Thank you, Ralph, for bringing that one up.

24:38Well, that was a small victory, pushing the correct button. That's good. It's always nice to push the button that doesn't erase everything. Until next time, keep your stick on the ice, because this is Jim. Keep your stick on the ice, because we're all in this together.