NOTE: To further celebrate our upcoming Anniversary this week (May 1), I’m sharing some of our honeymoon adventures.

Despite the fact that Kauai is absolutely chock-full of remarkably beautiful sights, we still managed to find a few that left us somewhat, er, underwhelmed at best. (Question: I know it’s possible to be overwhelmed, but can one simply be “whelmed”? But I digress.)

Old Russian Fort

For instance; remember that main road I mentioned earlier? Our trusty guidebook (yes, the same one that led us to the infamous Barking Sands) mentioned that somewhere on the southwest part of Kauai was an old Russian fort; the only one in Hawaii. Well, this seemed worth visiting, so we headed on over.

Off the main road, we discovered a sign confirming our arrival. There was nothing else in sight except a small parking area, in which ours was the only car. Hmmm… obviously not exactly a tourist hotspot, but what the hey.

Although there were no directions, a rough path lead us toward a clump of low trees and overgrown vegetation. After walking for about 5 minutes or so, we found ourselves surrounded by low, heavily weed-covered mounds. Within another few minutes, we came across a sign detailing the history of the fort, and it was then we realized we had been walking right through the middle of it!

I mean, c’mon! Granted, it’s a genuine chapter in Hawaii’s history, but in the condition it’s in, it’s not exactly exciting, you know? In fact, the only reason we remember it at all is the actuality was so much less than promised!

Spaulding Monument

One of the things we discovered on Kauai, and was later confirmed during our stay on Aruba, is that when you’re on a small island, there are only so many things worth looking at. Although Kauai is seven times larger than Aruba (552 square miles vs. 75), only a small part of it is easily accessible by car (the island is basically one big, and luckily extinct, volcano). So we ended up with little more than the same area to explore. (Besides, since we were on our honeymoon, I had no desire to try more physical means of exploration, such as hiking, etc.; I mean, you understand, don’t you?)

Anyhoo, it got to the point where we were almost desperately searching for something new to see. Therefore, every time we found a road we hadn’t explored yet, we just pointed the car and went.

Well, this one time, the road we picked at random (the ocean was the other direction, so at least we knew there wouldn’t be a big wet surprise at the end of it!) seemed to just go on and on. For several miles at least, we drove down this dirt road seeing nothing but cane fields on either side. And, just to make things more interesting, the cane was so tall and dense (at least 8-9 feet) there were no landmarks, either. It was like an endless, roofless green tunnel.

Every so often, we looked at each other and asked ourselves, “Keep going, or turn around?” However, the spirit of adventure still being present, we kept going. Finally, we came upon a small sign that read: “Spalding Monument” with an arrow that pointed ahead. This struck us both as kinda funny, since there was clearly nowhere to go but straight ahead.

After a few more minutes (which seemed to take forever), we finally came upon a split in the road. There was a small cleared space in the “Y” that had a low, stone and concrete “thing” on it. “Aha!” we thought; “at last, the famous Spalding Monument!”

Well, once again, the promise, such as it was, was somewhat, er, less than expected. It turned out this particular monument had been erected by a former cane plantation owner to himself! Ah well, at least there was a great view, the cane having receded enough at this point.

Oh, well. All I can say is, if you ever visit Kauai, don’t bother with either of these two spots. I’m just sayin’.

Promises, Promises

So what can one learn from this, anyway? Well (and you no doubt knew this was coming), allow me to point out something.

Here’s the thing. When you make a promise, you need to make sure the promise is what it seems to be. By that, I mean make sure the recipient gets what he or she thinks they’re going to get. Notice, now; this is a little different from the statement, make sure the recipient gets what you promised.

Why the distinction? Well, you have to remember; perception is critical, especially when it comes to promises. That first statement is from the recipient’s point of view, while the second one is from yours. Here’s the question: Which one is more important?

I’ll leave you to make whatever application you want here, but suffice it to say, it’s important to make sure what they hear is what you meant to say.

See, when we saw something mentioned in the guidebook, we naturally assumed it would be actually something worth seeing. I mean, who wouldn’t? Thus, an implied promise was made. But, when we arrived, the result was disappointing at best. Although neither the book nor the signs made explicit promises (come see the stupendous Old Russian Fort! Thrill to the sight of the Spalding Monument!), in our minds there was at least a promise of value, so to speak.

The result is, of course, disappointment. Interesting, don’t you think, that those disappointments are still well-remembered, even 26 years later?

_____________________

For our other Hawaiian Honeymoon adventures, see:

Hawaiian Honeymoon, Part 1: Dignity; Always Dignity

Hawaiian Honeymoon, Part 2: When Skies Are Grey

[NOTE: To further commemorate our upcoming Anniversary (May 1), this week I'm sharing some of our honeymoon adventures.]

You Are My Sunshine
My only sunshine.
You make me happy
When skies are grey.
You’ll never know, dear,
How much I love you.
Please don’t take my sunshine away.

- First verse (of a surprisingly large number of verses) of You Are My Sunshine, the official song of the State of Louisiana.

If you’re anything like me (and if you are then you have my sincere condolences), you’ve probably experienced plenty of life’s ups and downs. Come to think of it, even if you’re nothing like me (and let me be the first to say, congratulations!), you’ve no doubt experienced what some pundit once called the “yo-yo of life”. (Hmm… could it have been… Yo Yo Ma? Sound of rimshot. Er, sorry.)

The fact is, everybody has what you might call sunny days, and some… well, no so much. The $64,205,178 question of the day, then, is, how do you handle it when things just don’t seem to be working out the way you expected?

Welcome to “Sunny” Hawaii

26 years ago, Mrs. MZM and I spent 10 days on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands. Now, for those of you who didn’t know; besides being called the “the Garden Isle”, it is also known as, among other things, the “honeymoon island” because so many couples either get married or spend their honeymoons there. (We happened to be in that latter category.)

Without a doubt, Kauai is an amazingly beautiful island. And don’t get me wrong; I’m not complaining – we had an absolutely wonderful time. But there was this one little, minor, niggling detail…

See, two years prior to our arrival, Mt. St. Helens (in Washington State) had spectacularly blown itself to smithereens, scattering billions of tons of ash into the atmosphere in a gradually dispersing cloud that eventually circled the planet. One of the long-term consequences of this event (yes, even two years later) was that it had caused (and was still causing) an unusual amount of rainfall in many places around the world, including the Hawaiian Islands.

Consequently, by the time we arrived, Kauai (which, ironically enough, is already home to the wettest spot on Earth) had already had a year’s worth of rainfall, and here it was only May! So, what would normally have been mostly-sunny skies with occasional rain tended to be, well, pretty gray with continual rain or drizzle most of the time. It was still incredibly beautiful, mind you; just… somewhat “solar-radiantly” challenged.

On the other hand… once or twice a day, the sun did manage to peek out from behind the clouds. Alas, the problem was it never seemed to coincide with our planned beach times, you know? Not to be deterred (hey, we’re in Hawaii, fer cryin’ out loud – we’re gettin’ some sun if it kills us!), we worked out a plan. (No, wait; let me put sneer marks around it: … we worked out a ‘plan’.)

See, we made sure we always had our swimsuits on, under our clothes, and never went anywhere without a fully-stocked cooler, a beach blanket, and towels. That way, whenever the sun popped out – well, we immediately made tracks for the nearest beach and flopped down to catch what few rays were available.

In this manner, we managed to get at least a couple of hours of tanning time in over our two-week stay.

What To Do When Skies Are Grey

And therein my friends, if you’ll pardon the expression, er, lie the keys to enjoying yourself (sorry), even when the skies aren’t sunny, and things don’t seem to be going as you’d like. Though trite and worn-out, the expression is nevertheless still so true: When life throws lemons at you, you can indeed make lemonade. Here’s how:

Plans – First off, nothing’s going to happen if you don’t make plans. I know it sounds elementary, but that’s how a lot of folks operate; they expect good things to happen to them, sortof “just because”. When we chose to go to Kauai for our honeymoon, there were lots of details to work out; things like where to stay, arranging for a car, what sights to see, etc. I mean, we didn’t just “show up”, you know. See, most good things take at least a little groundwork and planning. Besides (and trust me on this), you’ll enjoy and appreciate the good times more if you’ve worked for them, rather than just had them handed to you on a platter.

Flexibility – If there’s one thing those of us who’ve traveled extensively have proven, it’s that you have to allow some flexibility in your plans. It’s pretty much a guarantee that everything won’t go the way you think it will. And the amount of enjoyment you get out of life may very well be a measure of the amount of flexibility you’ve allowed in it, you know? One of the things we discovered upon our arrival in Kauai was that May is (or was, anyway) actually the off-season. Thus, some of the things we thought about doing simply weren’t available. Did it bother us? Well, not for more than a few moments; we simply chose to do something else – and had a great time.

Opportunity – It quickly became evident we’d have to be creative in order to get in some tanning time. So we prepared ourselves and simply waited for the opportunity to present itself. We made our plans (we always kept a map handy for the most direct route to the nearest beach); we kept ourselves flexible (we were willing to change our itinerary at the first glimmer of a sunbeam); and, when the opportunity presented itself, well, we hit the beach like the Allies at Normandy! Using this method eventually gained us enough beach time to get that famous Hawaiian tan.

OK; as we noted at the beginning, life certainly has its share of ups and down. Alas, there’s no shortage of disappointment when things don’t go our way. That is, as they say down on the funny farm (and here at the Zone, for that matter), life.

The challenge, however, is to take what life throws at you and see what you can make of it. One thing I can tell you for sure, though. If you practice these three principles, even incorporating them into your daily living, well, I think you’ll find that life can actually be a lot more interesting, and (dare I say it) even more fun!

So, the question of the day is, how do you handle it when things aren’t going the way you thought they should?

________________________

For our other Hawaiian Honeymoon adventures, see:

Hawaiian Honeymoon, Part 1: Dignity; Always Dignity

[NOTE: To help celebrate our upcoming Anniversary (May 1), this week I'm sharing some of our honeymoon adventures on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.]

Now, before I go on, let me just say to those of you who actually, you know, live in Hawaii, that I’d really appreciate it if you’d help me out here. After all, if anyone should know…]

Ever since I was a kid (um, that’s human, not goat), I’ve always wanted to visit exotic places. Like, er, Mars. Alas, despite the amazing advances in space exploration over the ensuing years, that opportunity has yet to present itself. The bottom line is, when it came time for our honeymoon, Mrs. MZM and I had to settle for something, well, a bit less exotic. So we went to Hawaii.

One thing I’ll say about Hawaii: that’s one place where, I’m telling ya, everything is exotic! The plants, the birds, the scenery – I mean, everything is such a far cry from the sort of things we usually see down in here in Texas (and pretty much the rest of the U.S.).

The Barking Sands

Y’know; when you’re on a relatively small island, at least you can never get lost. (‘Course, you can only go so far before you have to do your fish imitation, but I think you get my meanin’.) After all, on Kauai there’s really only one main road; it starts near Princeville (about the middle of the northern side) and goes clockwise about three-quarters of the way around the island to its westernmost point at Barking Sands. (The rest of the coastline is too rugged for wheeled vehicles.)

There were (and still are, of course!) plenty of great things to see on Kauai. Amazing waterfalls, lush tropical forests, beautiful beaches; we wanted to see it all. Naturally we had our own handy guidebook to show us what to see and do. Therefore, when the guidebook said we should visit Barking Sands, we did.

Now bear in mind, this was 26 years ago. I understand the public may not now be able to actually get to Barking Sands anymore since it’s a military base. (Was it a base back then? I don’t know.) But I do remember standing on the beach at Barking Sands and looking across the water at the island of Ni’ihau. It was late afternoon and very windy, and quite sobering to think the next landfall due west was Taiwan, about 5,000 miles away.

Anyway, I honestly don’t have that clear a recollection of the beach itself, other than it was, you know, picturesque. I mean, after you’ve seen so many beautiful beaches with incredibly white sand, they all sortof run together, if you know what I mean. But there was one thing the guidebook told us that, to this day is still a mystery. I sure wish we still had that book, because it’s something I’d really like to know. 26 years later, it still makes us wonder.

I don’t mind telling you, I’m fascinated by unusual place names. And by now you’re probably wondering, as we were, just how the heck did Barking Sands get its name? Was it in honor of an ancient chief’s dog? Perhaps it was the local equivalent to a dog park? Wait, I know – it was the annual migration point for barking seals, right?

Well, according to the guidebook, it was none of these oh-so-logical-sounding things. Nope; not even close. Now bear with me (like I said, it’s been 26 years), but to the best of our recollection, according to the book the name Barking Sands derived from “the distinctive sound the sand makes when thrown into the air”.

Yep; that’s what it said.

Now undoubtedly your brain is racing along, as ours did that day, quickly reviewing your high-school physics classes and attempting to find some measure of logic behind such a bizarre-sounding explanation. I mean, c’mon; we didn’t just fall of the turnip truck, you know. How could such a ridiculous thing possibly be true? Sound of a dog barking, indeed.

Mrs. MZM and I stood there for a few minutes, pondering the imponderable and contemplating the inevitable. Presently, she looked at me with all seriousness and said, “Well don’t look at me; I’m not doin’ it!”

So What Would YOU Do?

Yes, that indeed begs the question, doesn’t it?

On the one hand, we could have simply laughed and gone our way, never knowing if the act of tossing said sand upon the gentle breezes of the Hawaiian Main somehow magically caused a distinctive sound to whisper upon our amazed ears.

On the other hand, we could also be unwitting guests on the island version of Candid Camera, with a sneaky hidden camera nearby, ready to capture the spectacle of two idiotic tourists who believed anything they read in a book.

What to do, what to do?

Well, not being one to shy from a challenge (although I must admit to checking the area first to see if anyone was watching), I gathered as much dignity as I could muster, bent over and scooped up a double handful of sand, and flung it into the air. We both mightily cocked our ears in order to capture the slightest possible resulting and distinctive sound.

The result was pretty much as you would expect: nothin’.

We looked at each other for a moment with an I-told-you-so look, and I tried it again. Still nothin’. Ah, well. We moved on, back to see the rest of the wonders Kauai had to offer. To this day, I still have no idea if it was a prank or what, inserted into the guidebook just to see if anybody would fall for it. But I can tell you this; it certainly made for a memorable moment.

Still… maybe there’s a lesson here after all.

Dignity; Always Dignity

You know, most of us hate to look ridiculous, especially in front of other people (I mean, it’s bad enough when you’re alone!) But when you get right down to it, what’s the real harm? So what if someone else discovers the truth – that you’re just not all that? (One of the great humbling things about marriage is you can no longer hide it from your spouse.)

Take the upcoming SOBCon for instance. Last year, I remember it as a wonderful, exciting time; meeting new people and hearing some great speakers. In fact, it’s one of the things that helped clarify my purpose as a writer, and not “just” a blogger.

But in some ways, last year’s SOBCon was, well, a lot like a first date. I mean, there I was meeting these folks for the very first time, and naturally I wanted to present my best foot forward, so to speak. I made sure my shoes were shined (there was a handy machine for that in the men’s room), periodically checked my teeth for wayward bits of breakfast or lunch, and generally did my best to keep that watchword, dignity, in mind. Like I said; a first date.

As far as I know, nothing untoward happened (well, no unwitting faux pas that I can think of, anyway). Thus, mission accomplished. (‘Course, the downside is, being that stiff can make one come across with all the warmth of a piece of wood. Just ask Al Gore.)

But you know what I’ve discovered since then? It’s this: playing the fool isn’t so bad! After all, it’s one reason I can relax and have so much fun with my writing now. If you were to compare my earlier writing style with today’s, you’ll see that I certainly have a lot more fun – and consequently have made lots more friends over the last year – simply because I don’t mind acting silly.

Yep; there’s a lot to be said for being upright and dignified. And yes, as hard to believe as it may sound, I can manage it, if necessary. But, if you want to see the real me, well, just give me minute!

So how about it, folks? Are you sometimes afraid of letting go? Are you afraid of making a fool of yourself? Does clinging to your dignity occasionally cause you to miss out on having a good time?

Don’t you wish, for once, you could hear the sand go arf, arf, arf?

________________________

OK; I know it’s a bit late, but if you’d like to come to SOBCon08, there’s still time to register (it’s May 2-4 in Chicago); just click the link for more details. If you do make it this year, come tap me on the shoulder and introduce yourself. Just look for the hat.

Yes, I know; I rarely post anything on Saturdays. But there’s some great stuff coming up next week I just couldn’t wait to tell you about.

See, next week (May 1) is our 26^th Anniversary. And, just to commemorate the event, Mrs. MZM and I wanted to share some of the most memorable stories from our honeymoon in Hawaii. So check out Monday thru Thursday’s posts: Hawaiian Honeymoon, Parts 1-4.

Then, on Friday I leave for Chicago to attend this year’s SOBCon08. It promises to be quite the shindig, I’ll tell ya. If you plan on being there, be sure to look me up. Just look for the hat.

And finally, don’t forget that Monday, May 5^th is the first Monday of the month, and you know what that means, right? (Sound of crowd cheering.) Yep; it’s WILF Day! Don’t forget; I promised another little twist this month, so I’m just tellin’ ya now; you won’t want to miss it. And if you’re wondering what the topic is going to be, well… that would be telling!

See ya!

Howdy, y’all! Hey, since next week is going to be something special (come back tomorrow and you can read all about it), I’m posting this month’s Great Quotes a bit earlier than usual.

So, if you find yourself searching for some encouragement, inspiration or perhaps even just a chuckle or two, you’ve come to the right place. I think you’ll agree they may even impart a bit of wisdom – along with a bit of fun!

Check these out:

• It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge. – Enrico Fermi
• Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create. – Albert Einstein.
• Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted. – Fred Allen
• We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. – Oscar Wilde
• I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. – Thomas Jefferson
• It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important. – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
• You can’t keep blaming yourself; just blame yourself once and move on. – Homer Simpson
• We learn something every day, and lots of times it’s that what we learned the day before was wrong. – Bill Vaughan
• Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside a dog it’s too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
• That we are smarter than algae is a given. Whether we are wiser remains an open question. – Robert Frenay
• To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost. – Gustave Flaubert
• If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk? – Laurence J. Peter
• The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. – Dorothy Parker
• There are no wrong decisions, only different paths. – Amy Palko

And finally, for a point to ponder on personal hygiene, I give you:

• People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily. – Zig Ziglar

[NOTE: After the last two day's exhaustive post (I don't know about you, but I'm bushed!), I thought we might just have a quickie today.]

Have you ever gone to the trouble to thoroughly research something, expending tremendous effort to resolve an issue? Then, when you’ve gone as far as you can go, you just can’t help the feeling there’s something missing? Something, well, obvious staring you right in the face?

Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Take the case of the Bedouins. In 1969, four scientists (all non-Bedouins) wondered why a group of Bedouins they knew all wore black robes and herded black sheep through the deserts of the Negev, one of the hottest places on Earth.

To the uninitiated, this would seem to be counterproductive, since even junior-high science students know that dark-colored objects absorb more sunlight that light-colored ones, causing them to get hotter. On the other hand, you’d think Bedouins would know the best ways to manage heat, right? After all, they lived there.

So, since they were, you know, scientists, they conducted an experiment, measuring the amount of heat that passed inwards towards the body of a nameless, but heroic, volunteer. While standing in the hot sun of the Negev, his body temperature was measured while he wore 1) a black robe, 2) a similar, but white, robe, 3) an army uniform, and 4) shorts.

As expected, the black robe absorbed more heat than the white one, reaching a much higher temperature (see the diagram). What was surprising, though, is the body underneath did not get any hotter! Our intrepid researchers discovered a black robe dissipated heat more quickly than a white robe, thus equalizing the heat to the wearer.

But if they’re equal, you ask, then why black and not white? Well that, as it turned out, is an animal of a different color.

We now turn to one of my favorite websites, Improbable Research (tagline: Research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK). There’s a note from investigator Mike Adams, who writes about that report, and he says, “Many years ago I heard Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, famous for his work on adaptations to desert conditions, talk about this. He said that he finally asked the Bedouins why they used black wool.

Their answer? ‘All of our goats are black’.”

Moral of the story: If your research subject can talk, well, it probably wouldn’t hurt to just ask ‘em!

[Note from the Proprietor: This, as you have no doubt surmised (can't put anything past you folks!), is part 2 of an unusually lengthy (for me, anyway) two-part post. In case you just escaped being abducted by aliens, fell off the planet and just climbed back on, or otherwise missed it, Part 1 can be found here. In order to capture the nub of the gist, you'll need to read it first.]

Use It or Lose It

Well, I hear ya, my friends, and I’m here to tell ya – been there. So it’s OK; go ahead and leave your head in the sand a bit longer. Hey, you deserve a break, my friend; we all do every now and then.

Not to split hairs, but to my mind (which admittedly is a very strange place) it’s not really the decision itself that’s the problem. No, I think what really makes us sweat are the imagined consequences of that decision. Remember, it’s perception, not necessarily reality, we’re dealing with here.

I mean, when decision-time comes along, what you really spend most of your time doing is pondering those pesky consequences of your life-cha- what do you say, for convenience (and to avoid that pesky screaming), let’s just call it an LCD, why don’t we? – your LCD, right? You might end up mentally juggling two, three (or ten, for that matter) possible outcomes. (That’s why they’re LCD’s, don’cha know.) (Juggling metaphor, by backpackphotography)

But here’s the thing. See, learning to handle LCDs is not only something to be expected – hey that’s just life – but I say “big” decision-making should be something to look forward to, and maybe even profit from (sound of needle scratching across a vinyl record).

Alright, about now I can hear you saying to yourself, “Man, this whack job has finally lost it! Now he thinks I should be happy to agonize over LCD’s!”

Well, before we go on, lemme just clarify a couple of things: a) I haven’t finally ‘lost it’; I actually lost it awhile back. To tell you the truth, I don’t really miss it; b) wasn’t an agonizer booth a Klingon punishment device in that weird alternate universe where Mr. Spock wore a beard? And c) you should really do something about that ‘talking to yourself’ thing; people are beginning to, you know, stare.

So what the heck do you mean, you ask? Hey, am I glad you asked! See, decision-making is like anything else; to get really good at it (and to realize the benefits from it), well, it’s a skill you have to practice.

One can liken it to the way a body-builder prepares for the Mr. (or Ms.) Universe competition. They don’t start over at the big weights, you know. No, they start small and work their way up, giving their bodies – specifically their muscles – time to develop. Even more importantly, once they start, they never stop.

What, you think Lou Ferrigno was born that way? (Uh-oh; excuse me while I try to shake off that image.) No, silly; he diligently worked at for years.

See, if you spend all your time avoiding decisions (c’mon, admit it; you’ve done it now and then, haven’t you?), well, your decision-making ability begins to atrophy (which is a technical term that means roughly Hey, nice trophy; so you accomplished something once. But what have you done lately?) Yep; it’s very much like a muscle in that respect; you only have two choices: you either use it or lose it.

Alright, maybe it’s about time I got around to making my point.

What to Do – and What You Get

The problem, as I mentioned before, is actually one of attitude. After all, if you can’t change the fact that LCDs are as inevitable as the onset of chest-of-drawers syndrome (you know, where everything at chest level eventually ends up in the drawers), then maybe we need to concentrate on what we can change: our attitude.

So, how does one go about changing one’s attitude about something they’d rather avoid at all costs? Well, I’m here to tell you: it’s simple… but not easy.

Face it – OK, first things first. Until you face up to the fact that LCDs are both necessary and inevitable, well, you might as well stop reading right here. (On the other hand, since you’ve come this far, you might as well finish this post. You may be glad you did.) It’s like any other problem challenge you face; until you acknowledge it’s there, you can’t possibly do anything about it – or learn something from it. (Mirror 1, by leifE)

Step back a bit – Think about it (sound of gears grinding); when you find yourself facing an LCD, doesn’t your world sorta narrow down to that one issue, and that one issue alone? It’s almost like you put blinders on and you find it almost impossible to think of anything else. Like being on a racetrack, going ‘round and ‘round and… OK, enough metaphors. It’s sorta the nature of the beast. But probably the best thing you could do is take a large economy-sized step backwards and take a look at the bigger picture. How does this LCD fit in with the rest of your life? How does it affect your world, your friends, or your family? Asking yourself these questions might even be the key to an innovative solution you may have been missing.

Talk it out – Alright; speaking as a human being of the male persuasion, I can honestly agree that most of us don’t like to ask for help. I’m sure you ladies experience the same thing to some degree (at least, I’d like to think so!), but it does tend to be particularly difficult for us guys. Sometimes, though, the best thing we can do is open up to someone we respect and trust and just lay it out there. For one thing, talking about it somehow makes it easier to face. For another, by simply saying it out loud, you might find it’s not as bad as it sounded in your head. Finally (should you be willing to ask), getting another’s point of view might be surprisingly useful in providing a solution you didn’t think of before. I know; it’s happened to me countless times. (Conversation, by jurek D.)

Involve the affected – The fact is, most LCDs affect more than just you. If you’re married, if you have children, if – well, you get the idea. But if you don’t involve them in the decision process, you’re going to be in for some stormy weather ahead, lemme tell ya! Once again, multiple viewpoints make for multiple solutions. Even better, they encourage consensus as well. What’s the big deal about that, you ask? Well, consensus builds support. Need I say more?

Practice making decisions - What’s the best way to get good at making big decisions? Make lots of small ones! There’s a great scene from the movie You’ve Got Mail, in which Joe Fox points out that Starbucks has done people a favor: they force coffee drinkers to make six decisions at the start of each day (regular or grande? caff or decaff? etc.), just so they could practice their decision-making ability. Go ahead and laugh, but it’s a valid point. (The Choices, by Orin Optiglot)

Now, assuming you’ve started putting the above principles into practice, once your decision-making muscles start to build you’ll begin to notice some interesting benefits.

Confidence -One thing you’ll notice is that you’ll start to be more confident in your decision-making ability. And there’s no more powerful feeling than (well-placed) confidence in your own ability to assess those LCDs when they rear their ugly heads! Now, instead of dreading them like you used to, you’ll find yourself ready to evaluate, consider and respond. Instead of agonizing over days, weeks, or even months, you’ll enjoy the ability to make the decision and move on to other things, with very little, if any, grief, agony, or gnashing of teeth.

Power – Closely related to confidence is the feeling of power. You’ll look in the mirror and see a much more powerful person standing there. No longer reduced to a sniveling mass of icky goo (yuck!) every time an LCD pops up on the radar, you’ll be ready to face whatever life has to offer, no matter what – and what’s more, you’ll enjoy it!

Now do you see how you can change your attitude about LCDs? Like I said; it’s actually pretty simple – but certainly not easy. However, with effort and practice, and yes, a little help from your friends, you too can become a brand new person when it comes to those big, honkin’ decisions. Maybe still not quite able to leap tall buildings at a single bound, but still…

So what about it? What would you add to the list above? How do you manage those pesky LCDs?