As I continue my personal experiential study of being softer with myself, one of the things that’s helping a lot has been to jettison the word “should” from my vocabulary. I find that even without holding a big stick over my head, things are getting done, and life is flowing along, better than ever in fact. Ideas are coming to me, I’m following the energy of whatever feels like the right thing to focus on in the moment, in the day, in the week.

Martha Beck talks about making decisions based on whether the activity in question makes you feel “shackles on” or “shackles off”. In other words, is it something you’re feeling forced to do, shoving yourself into chains or a dark box, or something that feels like you are free and flying? Is it something that makes you groan and want to pull the covers back over your head?

Or something that makes you want to shout “whoo hoo” because energy is coursing through you?

When I originally conceived of this site, I was excited by the ideas I wanted to share and explore, and I thought the way I “should” do this was through a blog. But as I faced the prospect of feeling obligated to write a new post several times a week, I felt the shackles creeping toward me.

The clear answer was to write less often, or change the structure of the site. But it took me a while to get to that solution, because my “taskmaster” voice kicked in and tried to tell me that I “should” write every day because I told people to come to the site and they would be expecting a constant flow of new content. The word “constant” alone feels like a shackle, so I knew this wasn’t right for me.

Now I know there are people out there who will say “But what about your responsibilities and obligations?” Can you just feel the shackles? That’s because the word “obligation” comes from the Latin for “bind.” Whenever possible, I say, eliminate anything that is an “obligation” – something you are doing only because you agreed to do something you didn’t really want to do. Get rid of obligations, shoulds, got-to’s! Say no thank you!

I’m advocating a different kind of responsibility – the responsibility to enjoy your life, to want to do whatever you’re spending energy on. If you hate your job, find one that you like more. If you hate your life, change it until you don’t hate it any more. I’m freelancing right now, and oddly, I’ve had to remind myself not to take on projects that repel me!

Basically I’m advising you to do as close to exactly what you want to be doing as much of the time as possible! Who’s in?

The last few days have been a case study in living softer. A week ago I decided I wanted to try out a new format for Be Softer, so I installed some new software. Unfortunately, this had the unforeseen effect of taking down the current blog! Sorry if you were checking in for up-to-the-minute news in being softer!

As I was about to head out of town for a few days when it happened, there was literally nothing for me to do except accept that the site would be down for that time. And it’s taken me another couple of days to fix the issue.

But I resisted the urge to freak out. In fact, my first reaction was laughter at the enforced softness after my trying to squeeze in “just one more thing” right before travelling. One of my realizations over the week has been that Be Softer isn’t a site that requires urgency on anyone’s part. Me stressing out about posting daily clearly is not part of the Be Softer way.

And I know all too well what it is to have an RSS feeder that is constantly letting me know that I have over 1000 messages to read from blogs about decluttering and minimizing and simplifying! I don’t need to add to someone else’s “must” list!

So I will indeed be reorganizing the site over the coming weeks to create a space for resources and ideas, that can be accessed on an as-desired basis, rather than required daily reading (and posting). In the meantime, I will continue to post ideas and links here in the blog, and still welcome your feedback. And I’ll create a forum to make the site a place where everyone can share their knowledge, experience and soft places and people they’ve come across.

Thanks for sharing in this experiment with me!

The time is right to bring back the handkerchief! When I was a kid, we had hankies in our pockets, and businesspeople stuck them in their suit pockets. Let’s make them fashionable again! Bruce Springsteen of course never thought they went out of style:

If you are, like me, “enjoying” seasonal allergies right now, you know how many tissues you can go through! And as a biology friend described it once, back to school is a time when everyone can get together and share the bacteria they encountered over the summer, so covering one’s mouth when sneezing is only polite.

But most tissues in North America are from clear-cut forests. (Greenpeace offers a guide to percent of recycled material in various brands.) Hankies to the rescue! Use ‘em, clean ‘em and use ‘em again.

I found these organic flannel hankies that should be a lot softer on your nose than those chlorine-filled dead trees!

Or you could go with the bandana look of course. These guys even sell some with your fave baseball team logo.

Hankies have other uses too. You could keep an extra in your pocket to:

• Use as a towel in restrooms. More trees saved!
• Sneeze into on the subway. Your fellow passengers will appreciate it.
• Offer to a stranger in need. I would swoon, swoon I tell you, if someone gallantly offered me their (clean) handkerchief.
• Wave down a taxi or a friend.
• Dab a little lavender oil onto and keep in your pocket for moments when the air around you has that “not so fresh” feeling.
• Use instead of paper napkins (Another tree saved! You’re a hero!)
• Pick up a date in certain clubs (you too know they never went out of style!)
• Keep hair and sweat out of your eyes while you’re rocking out. Clearly.

What else could you use a hankie for? Let us know.

Then get out your hankies! Sport them with pride!

Hooray for the long weekend! I was already getting out of office replies yesterday afternoon and to those people I say “Bravo!”

If you’re working today, I hereby authorize you to leave at noon.

And furthermore, I authorize you to go outside and leave your email behind for the weekend. Or at least several hours of it. Soak up the last of the summer and leave your “smart” phone behind. Curl up with a book rather than hovering over your computer, waiting for that new email “ding.”

Is your email notification set for every 10 minutes? (or less?!) Do you check it last thing at night and first thing in the morning? If you’re away from your computer or phone, do you get nervous that you’re missing something?

Patricia Wallace, in her book The Psychology of the Internet talks about email (and other web activities) as an example of a “variable ratio schedule” of rewards. So instead of the rat who gets pellets every time he hits the button, she likens our compulsive checking of email to a gambler at a slot machine. Maybe this time there will be a hilarious message for me to read, someone writing me to invite me to something fun, or tell me how great I am. Because you know, sometimes there is! And it feels awesome! But we can make a conscious decision about how often in a day we need to do that check, and how many times a day we’re going to take the time to scan and delete all those other not-so-awesome emails.

The other side of the coin is checking because you’re afraid your work is going to burn down or you will be fired if you don’t respond in 5 minutes. I’m going to go out on a limb and tell you, that’s not gonna happen. I promise.

Here are various strategies to try. Some will be harder than others – maybe try one this weekend and work your way up to another one that sounds impossible to you now!

• Don’t check work email from home. Or if you’re self-employed, set filters so you don’t see work emails. (More on this another time).
• Change your “check for new email” setting to once an hour.
• Change your setting to every five hours.
• Turn off automatic checking and choose specified times of day to check your email. If you operate strictly on webmail, close the browser window and choose times when you will check the site.
• Turn off the iPhone, Blackberry, Palm, new mail notifications on your phone. Whatever it is, just push that little power button to Off. Not just “silent”. Off! How long can you go?
• Set a time at night when you will stop emailing.
• Set a time in the morning that will be your first check-in.
• Try an email-free morning!
• Check email once in the morning and then not again until the following morning!
• Check email in the evening and then not again for 36 hours!
• Go nuts and go email-free for the whole weekend!

Do any of these sound radical or extremist to you? That’s because there is a nearly universal acceptance now that we must be in constant contact by email, even if that means constant interruptions to our day and attention. It has become socially acceptable to respond to email and text messages from people who are not with you, taking away from the time and attention that you are spending on the people who are right in front of you!

But I urge you to try something different, even if it’s just temporary. Put that email urge to sleep for a bit. See what it feels like.

Which of these can you can bring yourself to adopt? How did it go? Share your results here. This isn’t a contest of who’s more virtuous or pure for going the longest without checking, but an experiment for YOU to see how addicted you are to that rush, that need to be needed, that need to respond. Make sure that you are in control of your email checking habit, rather than the other way around!

Good luck and have a soft weekend!

I’m so glad you made it to this new site!

Some things we’ll be talking about here:

• Tips for being Gentle with yourself
• Ideas for being Kinder to people you know, and even those you don’t
• Ways to Live Lightly on the Earth
• Very cool people who are helping make the world a softer place.
• New ways of approaching work, play, health, life…
• How creativity and living softer are inter-linked.
• Challenges to living softer in today’s world
• Fun things to try
• Tips for stress management and stress relief
• Tips for simplifying your life and decisions
• Your thoughts, ideas, inspiration!

Please join me in the experiment, and join in the conversation!