Welcome to The Simplifier, brought to you by…

Contents:

1. A Note From Shawn

A lifetime of thanks-giving 

2. Our Featured Quote

by W.J. Cameron

3. Article: You are a sun—so radiate already!

by PS Head Simplifier Shawn Tuttle

4. Your Simplification Tip

Leaving effective phone messages

5. In the News

Coping with the rat race; more Ed Begley, Jr.; Money, happiness not synonyms

6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com

Gratitude Given and Received 

7. Keep Smiling

Giving Thanks

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1. A Note From Shawn

A week dedicated to Thanks Giving. How cool is that? Considering how much we have to be grateful for, I’m all in favor of celebrating a Day of Gratitude by gathering nearby friends and family once a month—mini Thanksgivings if you will. Though maybe we could be flexible on the menu… you know, to give the turkeys a break. Even better, let’s continue the Year of Gratitude, hinted at in last year’s Thanksgiving newsletter, for another year. Imagine the change in the world if everyone were thankful for what they have and no one fought for what others have! Don’t be surprised when I propose a decade of Gratitude in next year’s Thanksgiving newsletter. :-)

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant,
to enact gratitude is generous and noble,
but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.
–Johannes A. Gaertner

Enjoy the thanks-giving wave as long as you can. Feel the joy it brings, and spread the joy you feel. You don’t need a holiday to be grateful!

Shawn

Shawn Tuttle
Head Simplifier, Project Simplify
Co-editor, The Simplifier

 

 

 

2. Our Featured Quote

“Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.”

-W.J. Cameron

 

3. Article: You are a sun - so radiate already!

By Shawn Tuttle

Whatever your personal worldly goals are, you most likely have a desire to help others. It’s true—we give and receive help all the time. Sharing skills and resources is a fundamental drive.

This is one of the reasons that so many people have chosen to simplify. More free time and energy means more opportunities to help and connect with others. Is it just the act of service that makes us feel good? No. Rather, it’s the emotional feelings experienced—we feel it in our hearts. That’s what makes us feel good. 

More richness for everyone
Now, it’s quite possible that if your life has become complicated to the point of “losing yourself”, the focus of simplifying will be (and should be) on you for a while. Setting goals to help others may go on the back-burner for a while. In fact, it may take some time to get in touch with service-oriented goals. If you feel depleted and frazzled, your goal may simply be: take care of self.

This is entirely appropriate! Taking care of yourself provides the precious water to refill your depleted reservoir. When your reservoir is full, not only do you function best, you are in a position to share generously. To continue to share requires a sustainable flow of giving and receiving. 

Connecting through kindness
Whatever the level of your reservoir, engaging in sincere and kind communication helps fill it up. Maybe it means a conversation in which you listen more than talk. Maybe it means extra patience in a rushed situation. Maybe it means inviting someone to go ahead of you at the store if they have tired and grumpy kids on their hands.

These gentle and considerate ways of connecting touch your heart—and that’s what fills you up. They don’t require planning or forethought, merely a willingness to allow them to happen. (And in your journey for a simplified life, you’ve been building more time into your schedule between activities, right? This allows more time for random acts of kindness!)

Expressing appreciation
While our kind actions make us feel good, we feel even better when we are acknowledged for our efforts. To have a glimpse of ourselves through the eyes of another—to be seen and heard. Isn’t that what the desire for appreciation is truly about? We want others to know that we put in sincere effort for them. We want to be acknowledged for our contributions.

Spiritual texts encourage us to act without expectation of receiving in return, and this is indeed a good place to act from. But how often have you seen someone’s self-esteem boosted when acknowledged for positive action? The child who cleaned their room without being asked. The employee who went the extra mile and finished the task on time. The client who unexpectedly sent you kind words and permission to use them as a testimonial. Even though the child, employee, or client may not expect kudos for their unexpected actions, the response they receive can easily provide the motivation for more positive action.

Painful silence
In a work environment, it can be easy to forget how far a few words of appreciation go. Human resource studies have shown that appreciation and recognition often top the list of employee motivation. Face it, we want to know that what we invest our time and energy into is making a difference. 

A friend recently moved from the area for a new job. The reason she left her former position? Her boss was a bit of “jerk”. What did that mean? She had worked her tail off for weeks on a big project and received zero acknowledgment from him. This had been the case for all of their projects since she began working for him. With neither feedback during the process nor a simple “Thank you” upon completion, it was like submitting her work to a black hole. 

The importance of appreciative words goes far beyond the workplace. One of the public service announcements on TV in the ’80s showed a young boy returning home with a bag of groceries. With a note of pride in his voice he shouted up the stairs, “I’m home from the store!” The mother’s voice responded impatiently, “Did you remember the milk?” The little boy’s frame just sank. You could tell that all he needed was a sincere “Thank you!” to feel good about his successful mission.

You’ve probably seen and heard examples like these around you. You may have even felt ignored or neglected because something you did seemed to go unnoticed. Unfortunately, it happens all too frequently in this fast-paced world. The effects of appreciation reach far beyond each situation. While it’s impractical to demand that others appreciate you, you can do your part and spread joy by appreciating others! 

Spread joy, feel joy
Everyone has a bum day every once in a while. Some people have bum weeks, months, or even years. Help a friend, stranger, colleague, employee, or family member feel a little better about themselves. It’s easy. Show them that you saw the effort they made. Let them know that what they did made a difference for you. Express appreciation to them. Generously, frequently, sincerely. You’ve no idea what kind of impact you can make on them.

It’s easy to take language for granted. Connecting with others meaningfully via the language of appreciation is a key simplifying tool that’s too often overlooked. It cuts past the day to day and goes straight to your heart’s desires. The things that are most important are those that are close to your heart. That’s what a meaningful life is all about. Connecting with others in the spirit of appreciation is good for everyone!

—

Shawn Tuttle is founder of Project Simplify.

4. Your Simplification Tip

Leaving effective phone messages

While not everyone has a Blackberry or a “smart” phone, and not everyone feels comfortable using spreadsheets and databases, just about everyone is comfortable with telephone messaging systems like voice mail and message machines. They’ve become a given in today’s world.

Have you ever had a message like this waiting for you: “Hi, it’s me. I’m not at the office. Call me on my cell. Don’t know if you have it. Five tjkhejkhsk kjshddkjh skdhkshdkjh four.” And the gobble-de-gook is not from poor cell phone service.

While leaving and retrieving messages is done daily, all too often not enough thought is put into leaving the message. Getting in the habit of covering the basics can save time and prevent frustration for you, or the person you are calling.

Whether trying to make a good professional impression or just reaching out to someone via el teléfono, you can make the world a simpler place by following a few guidelines:

1. Speak slowly. Most people’s regular speaking style is too fast for easy comprehension on the average recording device.
2. Enunciate your words. Ditto the above.
3. Say your name. Don’t expect the other person to recognize your voice. Besides, what if someone else is taking down messages for them?
4. Leave your number. This makes it easy for the person to call you back (i.e., they don’t have to look up your number in their address book.)
5. Take extra care to speak your number slowly and enunciate. See numbers 1 and 2 above.
6. If the person isn’t likely to have your number in their records and you want a return call, repeat your number. And see 1 and 5 above.
7. Say why you are calling. This one requires some forethought! In general, you want your message to be short and descriptive. However, if you can avoid a return call by explaining yourself, do it.

This last one, in my experience, takes ongoing awareness and effort to keep descriptive messages short. Expecting someone to listen to a two-minute message just isn’t cool, besides, many machines cut off after a minute.  

These habits are quick and easy to pick up. Doing so transforms voice mail from an awkward conversation substitute to an effective communication tool…and makes the lives of your friends and associates easier. Win-win!

 

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5. In the News

Compiled by The Simplifier co-editor Lance Brown.

Coping with the rat race (Canada Free Press)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/2voald     
“There’s no shortage of rest areas on this hi-tech highway,” says the wise sage who wrote this article. His ideas about chilling out are so apropos that I’m willing to stifle my moral objection to fishing, which he includes on his list. I won’t say a thing about it. But fishing aside, he’s got plenty of other suggestions for timeless ways to find shelter from the storm of modern life.

Begley: Simple lifestyle changes can preserve environment  (The Madison Courier - Madison, WI)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/yoae7y    
This is Ed Begley Jr.’s second appearance in these hallowed kilobytes. I like Ed because he has transformed his life to fit his values, and he works to spread his message and transform the world and the lives of others through persuasion and example (and the market), not by forcing himself or his agenda on others. (Also, he was good on St. Elsewhere, and as Stan Sitwell on my pet show Arrested Development.)

Lust for Loot: Money, Happiness Aren’t Synonyms  (The Free Lance-Star - Fredericksburg, VA)
URL: http://tinyurl.com/2856jt           
Shawn has said it before, and journalists agree: once you have enough money to basically take care of yourself, more money beyond that is not necessarily going to make you happier. It also can’t buy you love. But that’s OK, because love grows on trees. Now if you could only pay the rent with love and happiness…you wouldn’t need money at all!

If you know of something in the news that should be featured here, let us know!

 

6. Featured at ProjectSimplify.com

By The Simplifier co-editor Lance Brown.

Gratitude Given and Received

As you have hopefully figured out by now, our fearless leader Shawn is big on showing appreciation. And, having worked with her for nearly 2 years, I am extremely grateful for this. Thank you, Shawn, for being so appreciative! Your thanks have warmed many a moment for me, and I imagine there are plenty of other people who could say the same thing.

Shawn believes in gratitude so much that there is a blog category on the Project Simplify site devoted to giving thanks to people in her life:

http://projectsimplify.com/sections/gratitude/ 

…and a page devoted to displaying the gratitude others have shown toward her:

http://projectsimplify.com/testimonials 

Gratitude goes both ways on our website, as it does in life. Or at least as it should. :-)

 

 

 

7. Keep Smiling

Giving Thanks

Thanksgiving (the American holiday) is only a bit older than the country where it was founded. It’s coming up on its 400th birthday in a decade or so. But the tradition of giving thanks goes back about as far as any tradition can, one would assume. Imagine the folks who discovered fire! How much you want to bet they looked up at the sky (or at least down at the fire) and uttered some form of thanks to the unknown for bringing them that treasure? Native Americans made a pretty big deal out of thanking the animals they killed, for providing them with sustenance. And then there’s the harvest festival, where our Thanksgiving really gets its roots.

The folks at Riverdeep provide the skinny on the roots of Thanksgiving, and the roots-related holidays that preceded it—harvest festivals from cultures such as the Chinese, Africans, and more.

And if reading about all that worldwide giving of thanks isn’t enough to make you smile, they end with several opportunities for you to give someone else a reason to be thankful for a bountiful harvest from the unknown—i.e., ways to help groups that try and feed the hungry and less fortunate. And if donating to help feed the hungry and less fortunate doesn’t put a smile on your face, you might want to take your face in for a check-up! :-)

Here’s the URL: http://tinyurl.com/2sgyg6  

 

 

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Thanks for reading!

Publication Information
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The Simplifier is published by:
Project Simplify
P.O. Box 597
Nevada City, CA 95959
phone: 530.205.5775
web: www.projectsimplify.com
e-mail: (newsletter@projectsimplify.com) newsletter (at) projectsimplify (dot) com