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You’re Gonna Die, Part 1

Death of a surrealist soldier — Image by funadium via Flickr

If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today? How would you spend your last hours? Would you go skydiving before the chance evaporated forever, or would you spend the day talking with your loved ones?

If you knew you would die in a month, what would you do? Would you plan a trip to the one place in the world you’ve always wanted to see? Would you look up all the friends you’ve been too busy to see?

What would you regret? Is there something you have always wished you’d done, but have put off for some reason or another? Do you want to write a novel, or backpack Europe, or watch a shuttle launch? Far more people regret opportunities missed than those they’ve taken. If there is something that you could do that would let you die happy, take steps today to make that a reality. Remember that you are probably not going to die in a day or a month, but don’t let your entire life slip away without doing the things that matter most to you.

Our lives are short. Far too short to waste time on the things that add no value. Everything you do should advance your happiness, either short-term or long. That doesn’t mean you should waste your life pursuing hedonism. Lives need meaning. Chase that meaning.

Find out what gives your life meaning. What do you do that lets you go to bed with a smile on your face? Those are the activities that you should maximize. What is wasting your time? You can probably shut off the news and never miss it. It’s just too much information that doesn’t add anything to your life. Does obsessing over Charlie Sheen’s latest antics ad any value to your life? Take that time and write a screenplay, take a walk, smell a flower, hug your kids, anything that provides actual value for you. Don’t waste your life on meaningless activities that do nothing more than kill time. Time is the one thing we have that we will not get back.

Many people go to their deathbeds thinking, “I wish I had X.” What is your X? What would you wish you had done?

Selling Your Car

Finance

: English: Jalopy car in Joshua Tree National Park in Hidden Valley Campground (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it’s time to replace your car, most people focus on the new car, instead of the old, but that is ignoring real money. Your old car–unless it has disintegrated–still has value. Sometimes, it’s just time to ask yourself, “When should I sell my car?”

When you’re looking to sell your car (like with We Will Buy Your Car), you generally have several options:

Tow & crush. If your car has been wrecked, doesn’t run, or is just old and beat up, you may be stuck with calling a junkyard and accepting $50 for them to pick up your car and crush it for scrap.
Trade it in. This is probably the least hassle, but–other than #1–doesn’t pay well. Dealerships are willing to pay something under what they will get at a wholesale auction, which is quite a bit less than the blue book value.
Sell it yourself. Now you’re thinking, “He’s going to buy my car! Oh, bother.” It can be a pain, but it’s also the best way to get a decent price for your wheels.

When you sell your car, there are a few things to keep in mind, much like when you sell something on Craigslist.

Don’t be alone. There are bad people in the world, but they don’t like witnesses. Bad things are much less likely to happen if you have company.
Know your price. Specifically, know three price: your dream price, the price that would make you happy, and the absolute lowest price you are willing to accept. Make sure you figure these numbers out ahead of time. Know what you are comfortable with before it comes time to close the deal.
Check IDs. The buyer is going to want to test-drive your car. That’s fine, but you want to make sure you know who is driving off in your car. “Officer, Sumdood took my car. He was wearing jeans.” That won’t get your car back.
Clean it up. Get the car detailed before you show it to a potential buyer. A sparkling-clean car will almost always bring in a few hundred extra dollars. It’s well worth the expense.

Following this plan should make the sale go as smoothly as possible and bring you the most possible money.

Readers, what have you done to dispose of an old car?

This is a sponsored post written to provide some insight into the world of used car retail.

The Happy Butt

Life

Do you find the cloud in every silver lining? Is the glass not only half empty, but evaporating? Do you start every day thinking

Smiley head happy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

about how the effects of entropy on the universe make everything you do ultimately pointless?

You may be a pessimist.

Pessimism gets a bad rap. Without pessimists, we wouldn’t have insurance plans, missile defense systems, or Eeyore, and what would the world be without those things?

The thing you have to ask yourself is “Does the negativity make you happy?”

The next thing you have to ask yourself is whether or not you were lying with your previous answer.

If you have a negative outlook on everything, I have good news for you: it’s possible to defeat it. No matter how long you’ve been looking at the world through coffin-colored glasses, no matter how ingrained your negative slant is, it’s possible to change it.

You have to want to change it, because, as the saying goes, old habits die hard. Yippee kai yay.

You need a happy butt.

Little known fact: language shapes the way you think. If your language has no words for a concept, you will have a difficult time thinking about that concept, or even understanding it. Statistically, Asians are better at math than their western-world counterparts. Why? It’s not genetic. When a family moves to the US, the edge is lost within 2 generations. It’s not the amount of school they get. Even in backwaters with limited school access demonstrate the same abilities.

It’s the language. Euro-based languages are horrible. They are a clumsy mish-mash of crap from around the world, and the numbering system makes no sense. 11, 12, 13, huh? Spoken, that’s not a progression, it’s something we have to learn by rote. Why is 13 pronounce “thirteen”, with the ones place first, but 23 is pronounced with the tens place first, the way it is written? Where did the word “twenty” even come from? It’s obviously a horrible bastardization of “two” and “ten”, but is it self-evident? Does the progression through the decades follow some kind of rule? Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. Nope.

The Asian languages (most of them) differ. The numeric progression is spoken in a rules-based progression that makes sense. 23 is literally “two tens three”, making learning math less about rote memorization and more about masters some simple rules.

In the western world, we are handicapped by our language, at least when it comes to math.

The rest of our thoughts are formed by language, too. Learn a language with different roots than the one your were born with and see how your perceptions change.

One of the signs of negative thinking is qualifying everything you say negatively. For example, one person might say “It’s a beautiful day, today” while Mr. Negativebritches would say “It’s a beautiful day, but it’s probably going to rain.” That’s a sad butt, err, but. Every time you qualify a sentence with a sad butt, you are reinforcing your negative view of the world.

The solution? Drop your drawers and paint on a smiley face. You need a happy but(t). You can rephrase the sentence into a happy thought without changing the sentiment or meaning in any way. Try this: “It’s probably going to rain, but it’s a beautiful day, now.” That’s a happy butt, and it reinforces the positive in your mind.

It sounds stupid, but it works. Your language shapes your life. Put a positive spin on what you say, and you will eventually start to think about life in a positive way.

Give it a shot. For the next week, every time you say something negative, qualify it with a happy butt. At the end of the week, come back here and tell me how it’s working and if you can sense a change in your mindset.

Cutting Costs While Cutting Hair

Finance

About once per quarter, my wife and I have a…I won’t call it a fight. It’s more like she-comes-home-looking-stunning-while-I-make-disapproving-grunting-sounds-while-giving-the-checkbook-dirty-looks.

I hate salons.

$80 for highlights, $30 for a haircut and $15 for eyebrow “shaping”. It’s an afternoon of chemicals and hot-wax torture, for the low, low price of $125 + tip. Frugal it’s not, but that’s an argument I lost long ago.

This weekend, she tried something new.

Beauty school.

For roughly the cost of materials, she got her eyebrows “shaped” and her hair highlighted and cut by a senior student at the beauty school, under the supervision of a licensed beautician/instructor.

It looks good, and she said she had more fun during her appointment than any other salon trip she’s had. I guess there’s something to be said for interacting with someone who isn’t burned out on interacting with the general public.

What does it cost? What normally runs $125 cost just $35. That’s for a $5 cut, $25 highlighting, and $5 wax. That’s a $90 savings or 72% off. Yay!

Other services they offer include:

Full color, cut and shampoo for $20.
A Perm for $25.
Mani/pedi for $24.
Full set of acrylic nails for $15.
Wax for $5. Have I ever mentioned that I am happy to be a guy?
Seaweed treatment for $10. I don’t even know what this is. A buffet, maybe?

They also have a “Princess” package that we’re going to use for brat #2’s birthday party next month. It’s an up-do, nail polish, make-up, and tiara for $10 per kid. We’ll take the girls out to get made up all pretty-like, then off to the dollar theater, for a $35 party.

The school my wife visited has more than 90 locations in 21 states, but I’d be willing to be every city big enough to support a Wal-Mart also has a beauty school nearby. They don’t tend to advertise their customer services, so you’ll have to call, but for a 70% discount, it worth spending a bit of time on the phone, isn’t it?

I have two questions for you, dear readers:

Would you consider going to a beautician trainee?
What the heck is a seaweed treatment?

The Happy Challenge

Life

Watch this video.

Done?

Great.

For the cheaters, the part I am most interested in is the bit about reprogramming your brain for happiness. Studies are showing that you can rewire yourself to be happier by doing happy things.

The science is sound. Good things trigger a dopamine reaction. Your body likes dopamine, so you start craving the things that make it happen, which all happen to be good things. As you suffer dopamine withdrawal, you become driven to do what it takes to get your fix.

The process is similar to heroin withdrawal, with no downside.

Hugging your kids(assuming you like them) triggers the reaction. So does sex, successes at work, and beating a video game.

The specific plan mentioned in the video is to write down three things that you are grateful for, once per day, for 21 days in a row. That will begin the self-reinforcing training that can get you hooked on being happy.

That’s a win. 75% of job success is predicted by your attitude. You are 31% more productive when you are happy. You’re also more fun to be around.

That’s a win.

Here’s my challenge:

For the next 21 days, do it. Write down 3 thing you are grateful for. What makes you happy? It’s okay if it’s hard. If it’s hard for you, you need it more than most.

Now, the truly hard part:

Fill out this form every day. Your answers can be as long or as short as you’d like, but there has to be 3 new things every day for 21 days. We’re going to train your brain to look for the positive, so you can’t give me 63 things on day 21. 3 things, 21 days.

On day 22, tell me how the previous 3 weeks have been.

When it’s over, I’ll hold a drawing for everyone who completed the challenge. Not everyone will see this immediately, so I’m going to run the challenge until May 15. That means you have until April 24th to get started.

3 answers per day means three prizes. I’ll give away a total of $250 to three lucky participants. That’s a $125 prize, a $75 prize, and a $50 prize, but you have to obey the rules. 3 things, 21 days in a row.

Be happy. I dare you.

Happy Challenge Winners

Misc

On April 4th, I issued a challenge and threw out a bribe to make it happen.

For the next 21 days, do it. Write down 3 thing you are grateful for. What makes you happy? It’s okay if it’s hard. If it’s hard for you, you need it more than most.

Now, the truly hard part:

Your answers can be as long or as short as you’d like, but there has to be 3 new things every day for 21 days. We’re going to train your brain to look for the positive, so you can’t give me 63 things on day 21. 3 things, 21 days.

On day 22, tell me how the previous 3 weeks have been.

The contest ran until May 15th and generated 435 happy things across 145 cumulative days. I’m going to spend some time crunching the data because it is inspiring to read the things that make all of you happy every day. Mostly, it’s little things, like quiet Sunday mornings, fresh air, or family meals. Those are the things life is made of. The big things pass as milestones, but they can never create a happy life by themselves.

On to the winners!

These were chosen randomly. I cannot and will not try to judge who has the best reasons to be happy.

In first place, K.C. wins $125. K.C.’s Day 22 response was “It was really hard some days, but it showed me some important things about how I think. I think it would be good to do this with a small notebook and pencil. I found myself thinking of the same things several times, which made me think about treating those things more specially. Overall, it was a good exercise.”

Second place ($75) goes to Petra with, “I can’t believe I’m at day 22 already. I’m not sure if this exercise made me a happier person, but it has gotten me to reflect and appreciate what (and who) I have and my surroundings. Looking at my entries (yes, I kept track of them), I do notice patterns of the things I value most and that give me joy and gratitude. These are: family, nature, a job that I enjoy, relationships, and anything that makes my life a little easier or enjoyable. Thank you for providing this challenge to your readers.”

Third place ($50) goes to Lynda, who said, “I enjoyed this challenge. It wasn’t very hard. I noticed that when I was entering the giveaways each day, it helped me reflect on my day. But I didn’t really notice a change in my attitude.”

I’d like to thank everyone who participated, even if it was for just one day. You’ve made my month brighter.

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