If according to tradition the first anniversary gift is paper, the 10th is tin, and the 20th is china, what should the 23rd  be?  Just recently,  my husband and I decided to go with technology. On sale at half price, we gifted ourselves a robot vacuum cleaner that would help with the dust and fur that collects on our great room floor.  While I joked about it being the most unromantic gift we could find, little did I know how that black and silver bot would grow on me, winning over my heart with its can-do attitude and its daily offering of perspective and inspiration.

Each morning at the programmed time, our little bot buddy heads out to work.  It ventures ahead doing its job until it bumps into something. Not in any way deterred, it turns slightly, proceeds, until it bumps again. Bump and slight turn, bump and slight turn, it continues on for hours, eventually traveling around our entire floor. Then, when it begins to run out of power, it takes itself “home” where it rests and recharges, preparing for the next day’s efforts.

My black bot buddy never gets upset, never blames itself or anyone else for its mistakes.  It follows its path, faces an obstacle, slightly adjusts and tries again. It never needs to hide its errors or recoil with embarrassment or shame.  It stays in the moment, adjusting to experience and feedback, not getting hung up on the past or worrying about the future. It rests and recharges, never a sleepless night.  Bump and turn, bump and turn.

What would it be like, I wonder, if I could be more like my roomba?  How would it be if I let myself try, bumping into life’s roadblocks, without the self critical voice or the generalization of one little bump meaning more than it has to.  In fact, the bumping is part of the process, a natural state of going forward without knowing in advance what the journey looks like. If I could view every bump I encounter as guiding feedback, a message for adjustment, how much calmer would I be?  How much less would I worry about my daughters and feel energized instead of stressed?

What a great metaphor for a successful life as well as a successful marriage:  Wake up each day with purpose; let experience be your guide; then go home for rejuvenation.

I was e-mailing a friend and colleague that I hadn’t talked to for a while, trading our “How have you beens.” Her response was not what I expected, however, and made me stop for a minute to re-read. “I am no longer the busiest person I know,”  Rossana shared, and described the deliberate changes she’d made to slow down, do less, and make space for quiet. As I thought about what surprised me, it occurred to me how rare it is, and actually refreshing, to hear somebody so pleased and proud to be less busy.

It’s much more common to hear the opposite, I think most of us would agree.  So frequently when you ask someone how they are, you’ll hear them go on about how busy their lives are, between work, travel, and social engagements. And especially people who are retired, I’ve noticed, will tell you how so very busy they are, even when they have no professional obligations and set their own schedules!   What is it that makes us overstuff our lives, making a plan for every moment? It almost seems that being busy is a badge of honor that proves we’re important or popular. While most everyone, myself included, say they long for more free time, we fill up our calendars the first chance we get.

I can’t help wonder whats driving our obsessive need to do so many things and then post about it on social media.  In fact, I often discover with people I work with in therapy, and for myself, that NOT being busy brings up fears of being unworthy or unloved. We may fear losing respect or connection if we miss out on an opportunity or worry we may let someone down if we don’t live up to an expectation. We, as a society, are addicted to feeling productive, it seems. Sitting still or doing nothing feels like wasted time, and makes people uncomfortable. And cell phones are the greatest tool to help us hide, both as constant entertainment that distracts us or as a way to instantly reassure ourselves of our importance.

I also notice that in a busy culture that values achievement over affiliation, we tend to feel that “time is money.” With this pressure, time feels more and more valuable, which, ironically, makes us try to squeeze more and more into every moment.  And the more we shove into our schedules, the more harried we feel, and paradoxically, the less we enjoy what we’re doing. Even Google has noticed how impatient we’ve become. Their research shows that most people now will abandon a video if it takes more than five seconds to load!

Perhaps it’s just human nature to mistake quantity of engagement for quality.  Writers and philosophers throughout history have worried about squandering the brief time we have on this Earth.  And they didn’t have to contend with binge watching Grey’s Anatomy. So for me, Rossana’s wise example (thanks for allowing me to share it) made me reflect on the difference between being with people versus truly feeling connected, and doing something versus actually being fulfilled. The former experiences can only become the latter if we offer both our time and full attention. Because the truth is, when it comes down to living a full life, we actually need to do less to experience more.

In my last blog post I wrote about the quality of “certainty” – the benefits of being “certain” to having confidence and the benefits of being “uncertain” in terms of a growth mindset.  In the days following this post, I kept reading about this quality and the  consistency in the findings about the differences between males and females.  Research shows a confidence gap, that women not only lack confidence compared to men, but that they will hold themselves back from taking action as a result.

An example of the findings regarding the gender gap in confidence is a series of  studies by Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Joyce Ehringer. After examining women and men’s performances and perceptions in a large number of different ways, they concluded, “Men overestimate their abilities and performance, and women underestimate both.  Their performance however did not differ in quality.” So even though men and women actually score the same, men assume that they did better than they did. Ernesto Rueben, a professor at Columbia, points out that men are not trying to fool anyone, they really believe it. He came up with a  term called, honest overconfidence, backed up by his study in 2011 in which men consistently rated their performance on a set of math problems to be about 30 percent better that it was.

When men  do have self doubt, it is not as repetitive and intense as women and they do not let it stop them as often as women do.  For example, in a study at Columbia Business School, women applied for a promotion only when they met 100 percent of the qualifications, while men applied when they met 50 percent.  Women, on the other hand, tend to paralyze themselves with perfectionism, supported by a large body of research in a number of arenas. We won’t turn in a report, answer a question, or take a risk until we are sure we are perfectly prepared.  Unfortunately, while we strive to be perfect, we miss out on the learning and confidence building we would gain if we tried. In her 2018 study, Kaitlyn Cooper, at Arizona State University, found that women students believed they were far less intelligent than others, even when their grades were equally as good.  She embarked on the study after noticing when advising both male and female students, that female students would frequently say they were “afraid that other students thought that they were stupid. I never heard this from my male students,” she said.

To be honest, I can’t help thinking  about this confidence gap in light of recent political events, and the education of our nation in terms of why women don’t report sexual assault or harassment.   It also struck me in the demeanor of both Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey Ford in their testimony and I wondered how our differences as men and women not only affect the way we present ourselves, but also in how we perceive one another. If men honestly believe in themselves more than is warranted and are willing to take action based on this, how will they interpret a woman’s hesitancy in speaking out? I think despite our political divide, the courage that it takes for a woman to share her experience, and the respect she deserves when she does, is an area we might all learn to agree on.