I really wish I had paid better attention when this thought was introduced at the beginning of SuperBetter, but the general idea is that you think up three things that you really love; things that can be experienced in quick succession.  And then whenever you encounter your “bad guy” (oh… you have a goal when you set up SuperBetter.  I chose anxiety because… yeah… I’m a worrier), you do those three things in quick succession.

For instance, let’s say that I’m starting to worry, and my brain is traveling really far away from the problem into chest-tightening what if territory.  I stop for a moment and acknowledge this is happening.  Then I do my three things.  And the idea is that after getting the good feelings from doing those three things, I can return to whatever I was doing beforehand and hopefully feel calmer.

Choosing my three things was really hard.  I wanted them to be quick because I don’t have a lot of free time in the day, and if I ended up losing 15 minutes of work time, I was going to become even more anxious.  I also wanted them to be portable because I don’t just get anxious at home.  Oh, and I didn’t want it to involve food (because that would just be a new disorder waiting to happen), money (because I shouldn’t need to spend it to feel happy), or exercise (because I’m lazy.  And I already workout every morning.  And I’m not dedicating one more second of my day to exercise).

I decided my first thing would be to listen to five minutes of a Dungeons and Dragon game.  I’m following two games at the moment.  People record their campaigns and then put them online.  So I would listen to five minutes of one of the two Dungeons and Dragons games.

My second thing would be a chess task.  A chess task is like a chess puzzle.  The board is set, and you have to figure out how to put the king in check or how to get a piece out of trouble.  It’s like chess warm-ups that you can do to keep creative between games.  So I would do a chess task.

My third thing would be to play one board in Desert Golfing.  Desert Golfing is the best worst game in the world.  I find it very relaxing.  So I would quickly drop the ball in a hole and move on.

My three things were set.  It was now time to live life.

So far, I’ve only had to use them once.  I started feeling anxious, going deep into the what ifs, and I said to myself, “Melissa, stop.  This is not a good use of your time.  Do your three things and move back to work.”

So I queued up the Dungeons and Dragon game and listened for 5 minutes.  The people sounded like they were having a great time.  I then did a chess task.  It made me really happy to open the app in the middle of the day and visit the pieces.  (Oh — I have chess tasks I do on an actual board and others that I do via three different apps.  I went with one of the app ones for now.)  I solved my task and closed the app.

I realized as I opened Desert Golfing that I was feeling better and probably didn’t need to use up time on this third item, but I did it anyway in case it was like antibiotics and you needed to finish the whole course or end up getting sick again.  Desert Golfing also only takes a few seconds, so it was time well-spent.  I set down my phone and got back to work, no longer anxious.

Was it a placebo effect because I was told this would make a difference so it made a difference?  Perhaps.  But it really did change my mood to see chess pieces in the middle of the day.  And the Dungeons and Dragon minutes were just fun — like reading a magazine in the doctor’s office.  And Desert Golfing always makes me feel calm when I play, so it had its natural effect.

I’m going to keep at it.  If you’re doing this, too, what are your three things?

I was listening to my best friend Manoush Zomorodi’s podcast (by the way — she doesn’t know she’s my best friend and that I talk to her while the podcast is running, so please don’t tell her), and she had on Jane McGonigal, a game designer and the author of SuperBetter.

I decided to download the app on a whim.  Here’s the thing: I have a lot of issues with self-help apps or books .  If you have a specific problem you want to address, and you seek out help through a specific app or book, I think the self-help world is a godsend.  But the general thought that we can all be “bettering” ourselves is a dangerous message, no healthier than airbrushed models on the cover of magazines.

The general self-help world is constantly screaming at you change change change.  Actually, it’s more like CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE.  And maybe… well… that’s doing more damage to your self-esteem than if you never sought out self-help materials in the first place.  I don’t believe the vast majority of us need to change.  I think the vast majority of us are a mixture of positive and negative traits, and the key is to use your positive traits and to acknowledge your negative traits and move on.  The only time you need to address those negative traits are if you can no longer live with them.  Since… you know… you have to always live with yourself.

Anyway, I did not think I would like this app and thought it would languish on my phone for a few weeks until I deleted it.  But that’s not what happened.  The pretty rainbow icon sucked me in.  I started chugging water and giving myself hugs.  I WAS HUGGING MYSELF, PEOPLE.  I am not a hugger by nature, and it was damn awkward to wrap my arms around myself, but I’ve been giving myself hugs every single morning.

I guess I like it because it’s self-help that fits firmly within my belief system above.  I don’t feel like the app is telling me to change.  It’s just telling me to be myself and to use my positive traits rather than only focus on the negative ones.

If you like games and you’re okay with using up a ton of post-it notes (there was a day that I had to leave positive affirmations around the house for myself), download SuperBetter.  I’m going to write about a few of the things I’ve learned from the app… and about myself.  So join along if you’re inclined or just read my experience if you’re not or skip any post that mentions SuperBetter because you just hate the idea of me being my best self.  That’s okay.  You can feel that way because I’m awesome.

SUPERBETTER!

I am simultaneously reading her book, and will also refer to that from time to time.  So… I guess I’m saying… if you kind of want to make this a club and become allies for one another (SuperBetter’ers will get that ally lingo), grab the app or the book and join me in talking this out.

P.S. When I’m not mistakenly calling it SuperBad, I am thinking of myself like a Saturday Night Live character who wears unfashionable clothing and reads self-help books and pumps her first in the air as the punchline shrieking, “SuperBetter!”

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The ChickieNob and I have been waiting forever for the BBC to release The Crown, and it will finally be here at the beginning of November.  We are going to devour that series while speaking to each other in British accents and eating scones and wearing sweater sets.  So excited.

But…

What gave me pause was wondering how the Queen — who is still alive — processes art made about her life.  It’s one thing to have a show made about you after you’re gone, but it’s another to have your life dramatized for entertainment or educational purposes.  I know she lives in the public eye, but it gave me pause to think of her bothered by (or maybe she loves it?) the show.

What do you think of biographical movies made about people while they’re still alive?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

I was trying to remember a song this week.  Usually I have a song pop into my brain, and I have to figure out how I know it or the words that go with the tune.  This time, I remembered that an old friend had taught me a song, but I couldn’t remember any other detail other than (1) it was in Hebrew, (2) I used to sing it all the time and (3) I heard it again at a Purim party a few years back.

I searched popular song lists and my notebooks, but I couldn’t remember anything about this song: not the tune, not a word in the title.  I could just remember where I was when I learned it and this memory: when the boy sang it to me for the first time, I was thinking about a child I once saw in Tzvat struggling to carry an enormous dog down a set of stone steps.  I had asked the boy if I could take his photo because it was such a funny image, but the boy refused to have his picture taken.  That’s what I was thinking about while the boy sang — that child and his dog.

I decided that I wouldn’t bother wasting my whole morning trying to remember the song title; I would go straight to the source.  I would Google the boy who taught me the song and email him.  It had been his favourite song 20 years ago.  He would know exactly what I was trying to remember.

The first hit was his obituary.

He died about two years ago.  His picture was at the top of the obit.  He looked the same, though his curls were thinner.

This is what I thought about as I looked at the photo:

After my grandfather died, he organized the whole camp to sing John Denver’s “Country Roads” when I returned to work because he knew I needed it.  He would call me up in the middle of the night and invite me out to eat cake.  I think of him every time I use the word ‘incredulous’ because one time, while we were eating lunch under a tree, I used the word while speaking to a child and he said, “I am incredulous that you would use the word incredulous with her.”  And I looked at the child and said, “What does incredulous mean?”  And the child returned the definition.  He used to go with me every week to the Peace Pagoda.  He once kissed me in my living room while I was balancing on the bike I was rebuilding, my feet on the pedals and my hands on the back of a chair.

All those things happened, and now he was gone.

I don’t know why I felt so sad.  I hadn’t seen him in 20 years.  I hadn’t spoken to him in probably 15 years.  I felt like I didn’t have a right to feel sad; like it wasn’t my death to mourn because I chose to let us drift apart when I moved out of town.  But I was sad.  I was really sad because there was once this person on earth who would thoughtfully teach an entire camp of children to sing a person’s favourite song just because he knew she was having a hard time and now that person was gone.

I started crying, and then his song popped into my brain.

Back in high school, a teacher gave us this question:

It is time to elect a new world leader. Here are the facts about the three leading candidates:

• Candidate A: Associates with crooked politicians and makes decisions based on information from astrologers. He’s had two mistresses. He chain smokes and drinks 8 to 10 martinis each day.
• Candidate B: He was kicked out of office (twice), sleeps until noon, used opium in college and drinks a quart of whisky every evening.
• Candidate C: He is a decorated war hero. He’s a vegetarian, doesn’t smoke, drinks an occasional beer and hasn’t had any extramarital affairs.

Which of these candidates would get your vote?

The first candidate is Franklin D. Roosevelt, the second candidate is Winston Churchill, and the third is Adolph Hitler.

The point of the exercise is which facts a person chooses to highlight and which ones they sweep under the rug makes a difference.

In all of these cases, the criteria for choosing whether the person could lead a country is dubious at best.  Even as a non-smoking, non-drinking vegetarian, I can’t say that I give a crap about the dietary restrictions of my candidates.  But it’s a good reminder to look at the whole candidate.  To not just vote with your favoured party, but to look at the candidate as an individual and see where you align on major issues and whether there are any red flags.

I think you can guess which candidate I believe has major red flags.  He’s got a lot in common in Candidate C.

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For those who care about my challah situation, baking the challah early did not affect the quality of the bread.  I baked the challah, let it cool, and then wrapped it in plastic wrap and threw it in the freezer.  On Rosh HaShanah, I took it out in the morning and left it on my challah plate to thaw.  And then we ate as normal that night.  I couldn’t taste the difference.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Down the Worm Hole We Go” (Not Breeding in the Burbs)
• “Invisible Women” (Brain, Child)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Searching for Our Silver Lining has a sobering post about a life changed in an instant.  As she runs through her day, annoyed by traffic, she discovers the cause for her delay and it throws life into perspective.  She writes, “Just like that, getting into work didn’t matter … What mattered more was checking in with Grey and checking on the Beats. Because in a moment it can all be gone. Today, some family has to face that.”  A must-read and an important reminder.

Like many, I was agitated when Mike Pence brought together abortion and adoption during the debate, and I think The Stir has decent coverage of the moment.  She writes: “When Pence started to talk about the sad families who couldn’t have babies of their own, but desperately wanted them, he was talking about me. He wants to ‘make adoption easier,’ Pence said. He thinks that forcing women to have babies and then give them away is somehow a more moral way to honor ‘life’.”  Would I love to see adoption reform and more programs in place to help families remain intact?  Yes.  Do I want choices taken away and my condition used in order to justify dictating the situation of another human being?  Absolutely not.

Kmina’s Blog has a post on her blogoversary, reflecting upon changes in the blog and updating readers on life.  Maybe I liked this post because this is how I aspire to live: “The .5 is not a sore wound in my heart anymore, it is just a scar, always there, but not making my soul throb with longing and regret.”  It’s the sort of post that I need to read from time to time to remember that life moves on and it will not always feel as it does right now.

ANDmom has a moving post about her son’s size and trying to protect him from a world that will note his physical stature.  She explains: “My ‘small’ kid has a huge personality, an enormous sense of humor, and a gigantic imagination. I want him to live in a world where that matters so much more than the fact that he’s going to be wearing the same winter boots for the 3rd season in a row.  And I cry, because I can’t give him that world.”  It’s an emotional post about parenting.

Lastly, Lavender Luz has a post about the book You Don’t Look Adopted, and the passage she included about becoming a ghost is gorgeous.  Click over to read it if you haven’t read the book.

The roundup to the Roundup: Be careful how you vote.  I have a new challah option. Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 30th and October 7th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.