Making Our Lives Golden

I've also pointed out that the more time you spend working, the more successful you're likely to be - but acknowledged that even the most ambitious and hardest workers need to take at least a few hours out of the day to do something that gives them pleasure.

Just about any activity we choose to do can fit into one of three categories. It can:

1. Damage us in some way
2. Improve us somehow
3. Leave us more or less the same

Golden Choices

My best experiences tend to be with activities that are intellectually challenging and emotionally engaging. Because they demand a lot from me, I shy away from them when I am low in energy. But when I do get into them, they build my energy and thus make it easier to continue. When I am through with such an activity, I feel good about myself and content with how I have spent my time.

Vaporous Choices

These activities are easy to slip into and easier, too, to stay involved with. They are the choices we make when we don't feel like making choices. The time we spend when we don't much care how we spend our time. Welcome to the Vapor zone, the neutral, happy world of poker and sitcoms and gossip.

The big problem with Vaporous activities - and this is a very big problem for me - is that they leave me feeling enervated instead of energized. And empty. Vaporous activities do for me what Vaporous foods (i.e., comfort foods) do: They fill me up but tire me out.

Acidic Choices

Everybody has vices. At one time or another, I've had just about all of them. I have never smoked crack, but I've done plenty of other things to destroy, reduce, or disable myself.

People who should listen to this show are therapists, career coaches, psychologists,ECT