I’m on the verge of giving notice at my job, at a place I’ve worked for nearly nine years, the school I came to straight out of high school. I have been here for 12 years, my entire adult life.

This afternoon I am writing the documentation that is the last thing I have to do before I go, and then, “out of nowhere,” I remember what a peanut butter and honey sandwich on Home Pride bread tastes like, and I miss my mommy and want chocolate milk, with the Nestle Quik crystals not fully stirred up so when you get to the bottom of the glass, there’s powder that isn’t even wet you get to scrape up with your spoon.

I cannot actually eat any of those foods. Not a one! I’m lactose-intolerant and gluten-intolerant. I am a sugar addict and a peanut butter addict and a caffeine addict in recovery. I don’t want the actual experience of chocolate milk and a peanut butter and honey sandwich (nor, incidentally, do I want the experience of being with my mother); I want what those things did for me when I was a little girl, or what I thought they were doing for me. I want the comfort. I want the familiarity. I want the sweetness.

When my mom abandoned our family, I couldn’t run to her anymore. And it was much too painful for me to even think of running to her. I felt so sad and so scared, and I wanted her to come and comfort me, but I felt that way because of her, so the feelings built on themselves. I was triggered, and when I sought relief, I became even more triggered, in a seemingly endless cycle.

I loved my food, though. I loved it and it comforted me. I stood in front of the cupboard after school, looking at the bounty and furtively gathering my favorite foods. I took out slices of white bread and spread them with peanut butter, chocolate syrup, and coconut shreds. I smushed them into my mouth as fast as I could so no one would catch me. At the kitchen table, I ate bowl after bowl of cereal, adding more milk in between servings. I ate spoonfuls of sugar straight from the sugar bowl.

I did other things, too. I read books and I watched TV and I pretended outside as long as it was light out. I went to church. I petted cats. I listened to my records and cassettes over and over again.

The food, though, goes straight to the core for me. It is unmediated. It is direct and primal and central. You eat to live. You eat to survive. Nourishment. Sustenance. I needed to be nourished. I needed to be sustained, and I was.

There wasn’t a lot of love or tenderness in my life. I didn’t get a lot of the things a child– or any person, really– needs in order to survive. I couldn’t make anyone hug me or hold me. I couldn’t make anyone tuck me into bed or hold my hand. I couldn’t make anyone tell me it was going to be all right. But there was food in my house and I could get it myself. I could make a peanut butter and honey sandwich. I could mix chocolate into milk.

And now, I could easily do the same thing. I am powerless over peanut butter and honey and chocolate milk and white bread. If I didn’t give those things over to my Higher Power, it isn’t just that I could eat the sandwich and drink the milk, it is that I couldn’t not eat and drink them. What happens when I don’t comfort myself with food?

I get to feel the sadness and pain and discomfort of right now. What it is like to lose this place that has meant so much to me, these people with whom I’ve shared my life. What it like to miss them, to miss a place. How scary it is to go somewhere completely new. How scary to be independent, my own little self in the world. And I get to feel all the sad from back then that echoes now: what it was like when I was little to have everything I had known taken away, to be devastated and scared and comfortless and alone. What it was like to miss her. What it was like to wake up in an unfamiliar life, to wake up in the morning and for a few seconds be untethered, unsure of where I was, before I remembered with a whoosh, Oh, she’s gone.

(It’s not that the peanut butter takes that away, of course. The pain and the memories are right there, underneath, where I can’t get to them.)

There’s something else here, though, when I let myself feel: there is comfort. I can hear my Higher Power calling to me, holding me, sustaining me. When I don’t put something else in her place, there is room for the Goddess in my life, space for her to come in and comfort me, and an opening (and openness) for me to receive. It is bittersweet. I get to feel it all at once, the pain and the fear and the sad and the comfort and the sweetness.

I’m leaving this comfortable job, too, for what I don’t yet know. I get to feel what is under here, too. There will be sweetness in that too.

(with thanks to Jimmy Eat World for the title)

Kurt Cobain and Dave Grohl were both in Nirvana. Both musical legends. Wizards at writing lyrics, at performing, at playing instruments, at writing music. Gods venerated by young people for their scorching hotness (depending on your taste) and electrifying rebellion.

And one of them is still alive. And I think their lyrics say a lot about why….

KURT COBAIN

I read the most hilariously bad mini-bio of Kurt Cobain just now, on a guitar website. It summarized his childhood thus:

Cobain was a happy child, but was hyperactive. When he was 7, his parents divorced. He took it very hard and was extremely hard to live with, so his parents sent him to live with relatives.

I could use that story as a good example of how one effect of abuse is the severing of cause and effect. When people haven’t recognized the abuse they experienced and its effects on them, they tell stories like this one: He was happy. But he was hyper. Then his parents divorced. Then he was hard to live with. Then they sent him away. Then he became a rock star. Then he did drugs. Then he shot himself.

Just a string of more or less unconnected events. No need to question what effect any of those events had, or how they might have affected each other, or how they might have affected him. Connecting back to reality through recovery brings up a lot of questions, like: Why state that he was happy, and then list all these reasons he wasn’t? How much more abuse was perpetrated by the kind of parents who would decide an upset seven-year-old was too “hard to live with” and send him away? Was he really “hyperactive” at that early age, or was it yet another case of a young child seeming “hyper” because their anxiety from the dysfunction in their family is so intense? And finally, what kind of a dumbass says “Oh, he’s taken us splitting up so hard – now that he can’t get enough time with both of us, let’s divorce him too and send him away entirely”?

There were other intense and clear signs of past abuse in his life, like his bipolar disorder, fierce drug addiction, and the lyrics of many of his songs. His life and art resonated deeply with many young abuse survivors, who saw their feelings and experiences echoed in songs like Floyd the Barber:

Barney ties me to the chair. / I can’t see I’m really scared. / Floyd breathes hard I hear a zip. / Beat me, pressed against my lips. / I was shaved, / I’m ashamed, / I was shamed. / I sense others in the room. / Opie, Aunt Bea, I presume. / They take turns to cut me up. / I died smothered in Andy’s clutch….

Or Paper Cuts:

At my feeding time she pushes food through the door. / I crawl towards the cracks of light – sometimes I can’t find my way. / Newspapers spread around / Soaking all they can. / A cleaning is due again, a good hosing down. / The lady whom I feel maternal love for / Can not look me in the eyes, / But I see hers and they are blue / And they cock and twist and masturbate…. /
Black windows of paint I scratch with my nails. / I see others just like me, why do they not try to escape? / They bring out the older ones. They point at my way. / They come with a flash of light, and take my family away. / And very later I have learned to accept / Some friends of ridicule. / My whole existence is for your amusement, / And that is why I’m here with you….

The gravitational pull of the abuse was too much for Kurt. Hard drugs tend to accelerate the downward spiral of abuse’s effects, increasing shame and pain and dissociation, decreasing the connection with reality and the ability to experience hope and seek help. His songs were a beacon for others in the same stage of abuse: the stage of merely experiencing its pain and looking for someone else who can validate it, maybe without even being able to acknowledge that abuse has occurred (or is still occurring).

What seems remarkable, to me, is that one of his bandmates went on to create songs that could be seen as a joyous, rebellious response to abuse – a call to arms to fight for recovery.

DAVE GROHL

Based on his songs and his interviews, I’d say that Dave Grohl was both lucky to have a more supportive and saner family than Kurt Cobain did, and that he’s also worked on a lot of his own shit. I don’t know a lot about his life; I know that his parents divorced when he was young as well, that he had more joy in his childhood but that he also experienced some deprivation, et cetera… stories that probably any of us could identify with. Like Cobain, he demonstrates effects of abuse: a lifelong addiction to cigarettes, a fear of “feel[ing] too good,” the codependency of not wanting to “burden anybody.”

Where they parted ways was in their response to these things. Grohl stayed away from hard drugs (“I know that the day I get my face in a pile of cocaine is the day that it all goes straight fucking downhill”) and threw a lot of energy into therapy. And, I think, the kind of intensely joyous rebellious energy that he brings to his music is the kind that is unleashed by working on shit. By resolving some portion of the effects of trauma and abuse. By facing our demons, grabbing them and throttling them to the ground no matter what they claim the cost to us will be. Like in “Best of You”:

Everyone’s got their chains to break / Holdin’ you / Were you born to resist / Or be abused? Is someone getting the best, the best, the best, the best of you?”

Or “Monkey Wrench”, when he screams at the end, all in one breath:

One last thing before I quit / I never wanted any more than I could fit / into my head / I still remember every single word you said / and all the shit that somehow came along with it / Still there’s one thing that comforts me / Since I was always caged and now I’m FREE….

Or “I’ll Stick Around”:

How could it be / I’m the only one who sees / Your rehearsed insanity, yeah /
I still refused / All the methods you abused / It’s alright if you’re confused / Let me be / I’ve been around / All the pawns you’ve gagged and bound / They’ll come back and knock you down / and I’ll be free / I’ve taken all and I’ve endured / One day this all will fade I’m sure / I don’t owe you anything….

Or “Free Me”:

All of the words that we damn never speak / All of our ghosts and secrets do keep / Gather them all we’ll bury them deep / I could sing for sorrow / Free me right now

Or, one of my favorites because it’s aimed at a corrupt and abusive government, “The Pretender”. It’s wonderful because it works on the individual abuse level as well as being inspired by the national/international level, and it even has imagery (intentional or not) that’s associated with government ritual abuse (spinning/spin programming, for example)….

Keep you in the dark you know they all pretend / Keep you in the dark and so it all began / Send in your skeletons / Sing as their bones go marching in again / They need you buried deep / The secrets that you keep are ever ready / Are you ready? / I’m finished making sense / Done bleeding ignorance at your defense / Spinning and spinning deeper / The wheel is spinning me / It’s never-ending / Never-ending / Same old story! / What if I say I’m not like the others / What if I say I’m not just another one of your plays / You’re the pretender / What if I say I will never surrender?!… / I’m the voice inside your head / You refuse to hear / I’m the face that you have to face / Mirroring your stare / I’m what’s left / I’m what’s right / I’m the enemy / I’m the hand that took you down / Bring you to your knees….

It’s not just his lyrics that strike me; it’s the energy he brings to his concerts and his videos. Everything he does seems to surf in on this tidal wave of fierce energy, fierce refusal to be kept down anymore, fiercely blasting through all the barriers and hurdles in his way, carrying hundreds of thousands of fans with him, and grinning.

You could look at Cobain and Grohl as opposites, or as different points on the journey toward and through recovery. You could see them as past and future, or past and present, or each as someone’s present at any given time. Or perhaps they are just different responses to abuse, one with hope and one without. Cobain’s story reminds me of the experiences I see in other people with unmedicated bipolar disorders or unmedicated borderline personality disorder – the same occasional or continuous refusal of hope. They seek out, on some level, proof that life is shit and will always be shit, because at least then they can be right. At least then they can feel some validation of their painful experiences. Of course, this unfortunately forms a vicious cycle where seeking out this proof leads to more pain, which leads to the need for more validation, which leads to seeking out more proof, and then more pain, and then more need for validation, and… miserable lives, and suicidal ideation.

I identify more with Grohl’s story, which seems to me to be one of fiery hope, and determination, and turning rage outward against abuse instead of within against oneself. Maybe we need both stories. I think the two of them are the symbols of our time. They represent our options in facing abuse, as individuals and as a society. And they provide a voice for abuse survivors.

They represent, on one hand, the need to look at and share the fearful details of abuse, and on the other, the need to draw the line against abuse whenever we can. Together, they represent the stage we are in now, one where abuse is just beginning to be exposed and people are beginning to share what happened to them and what they did with it. It’s only been about thirty years that we’ve been talking about this stuff publicly, at least in the United States. Together, they symbolize speaking out about abuse in whatever way we can. And they show us how loudly and boldly we can do that, no matter where we are with our own experiences.

I’ve wanted for a while to start writing about a different abuse-related myth every Monday. Because they start with the same letter, of course! And there are so many different common, harmful ideas that come from abuse.

Like laziness.

Lazy is one of those words that can mean a lot of different things depending on its connotation. It’s a little like “sinful.” I always see ads for ice cream or chocolate or yogurt that babble mindlessly about how sinful it is (to eat something that tastes good, or has any fat content) and how we no longer need to feel guilty about it if we eat their brand. Often, people use “lazy” the same way: to mean “I feel kind of guilty about doing something that feels good.” “I feel kind of guilty about enjoying myself.” “I feel kind of guilty about doing something that’s just for me.” It’s that Puritan idea that pleasure is a sin.

It all comes back to shame. Specifically, to the message abuse carries that we’re not good enough, not worthy or deserving of basic pleasures like safety. (And see there, how pleasures are also needs?) Guilt is shame. It’s the feeling we get from subconsciously (or, sometimes, consciously) telling ourselves that what we are doing is wrong. That it’s Not Okay. When, really, it’s the abuse that was Not Okay all along. Abuse is really good at teaching upside-down messages like that.

Laziness. Elly in this For Better Or For Worse strip confuses relaxation and peace with being “lazy.” She thinks she has to “earn” those things by working herself to the bone. Just to take a bubble bath! I mean, that’s basic self-care. What does she do if she really gets stuff done – award herself an extra fifteen minutes to brush her teeth?

That’s the “positive” spin people put on “being lazy.” Horrifyingly, there’s still a negative spin. At least Elly thinks it’s good to be lazy. (For a little while. Eventually. As long as she’s done all the grocery shopping, put all the groceries away, baked a pie, done and folded the laundry, vacuumed the house, taken out the garbage, brushed the dog, and cleaned the counters first, of course.) If she hadn’t done that, and had taken the bubble bath, you can bet that she would have been complaining later on that she didn’t get anything done because she was lazy all day. Or, worst of all, that she’s just lazy – as if it’s a permanent, deep-seated and unshakable character trait.

People: there is no such thing as laziness.

You are not lazy if you relax after doing your work. You are not lazy if you never want to do your work. You are not lazy if you promise yourself all week that you are going to write that paper or do those dishes or clean up that cat vomit, every single time. Not if you sleep till three in the afternoon every single day even though you don’t do anything when you’re awake. Not if you lie around “doing nothing” for months at a time when you are “supposed” to be looking for a job. Nope. No dice.

Resistance surely exists. Avoidance exists. So do overworking and underworking, both of which are different ends of workaholism. Depression exists, too, and perfectionism.

All of those can lead to labeling our behavior “lazy”:
Resistance when we are putting off something that scares us, or when we do not have the resources we need to do it, or when we are giving ourselves unreasonable things to do. (Like putting too much on a To Do list. Or avoiding schoolwork because in the past we have avoided it until it is painfully late and so we associate pain with the schoolwork and so we avoid it until there is too little time to do it without pain….)

Avoidance is really a kind of resistance. Or we might call it procrastination. Even calling self-care and pleasure “lazy” is a kind of avoidance – this time of things that we don’t think we deserve.

Overworking can be a post or book all its own. It’s that urge to do “just one more thing” that never seems to end, or that insane desire to “justify” our pleasure or our existence.

Underworking usually happens because we’ve overworked, or because we’re avoiding something. People often think that they are lazy when really they are involved in (and avoiding) work or a workplace that is really unhealthy and triggering for them. When we don’t know what else to do about it, we underwork by avoiding things, making too little money, even lying about how much we’ve done to stay out of trouble, and living in fear and deprivation.

Depression is also an effect of abuse; the emotional chaos and pain of many different kinds of abuse has serious neurological and chemical effects which can put our brain’s chemistry out of whack for decades. One symptom that people with depression may experience is the need to sleep much more, for no apparent reason, and serious low energy which can make it very hard to get even the most basic things done.

Perfectionism leads us to that insane idea that we have to “earn” rest, that what we are doing is never good enough and that it has to be good enough – and if it’s not (as it never will be when we are that wrapped up in obsessively pressuring ourselves) then we get to shame ourselves about how lazy we are for not meeting those perfectionist standards. What fun!

Nobody is inherently lazy. It’s just not a thing. If someone seems to be lazy, either their basic needs aren’t getting met so they don’t have the resources they need to do what’s on their plate, or what’s on their plate is really not something they should be doing and they’re subconsciously repelled by it, or they’re fine and they’re being held (by themselves and/or others) to unreasonable standards. Or several/all of the above!

Now how about a nice hot bubble bath….

Thirteen Things I Hate About “Lifehacking”

Lifehacking is a “geek chic” term which gussies up the kind of “tips and tricks” articles that are more usually found in grocery store magazines. You know, the fluffy ones aimed at moms in line at the checkout counter. Ten Tricks To A Slimmer You! Thirty-Minute Vacations! 19 Tips For Calmer Kids! Improve Your Intelligence in Four Weeks!They cover a variety of topics, but they all have two things in common. First, they all have numbers, generally promising vast things in small amounts of time. And second, they all have superficial instructions. Whether they promise tips or a whole lifestyle, tips is what they offer: a few little tweaks that you may be able to add to the changes you are already making.

That’s what bugs me about this subgenre of self-help writing. It’s never about systemic change. Systemic change requires fundamental shifts in the way we approach our lives. It doesn’t fit neatly into a top ten list, and it’s not easy to describe clearly via a page of quick suggestions. It comes from finding out what someone else’s life was like (identification), what they changed (description, not prescription), and what it’s like now (hope). Lifehacking, women’s magazines, and a lot of self-help books, on the other hand, are prescriptive. They exult in at least pretending to tell people What To Do to Change Everything – not least because that kind of shiny snake-oil promise sells.

They’re selling a kind of hope, but often a false one. They claim to be able to tell people how to… achieve serenity, organize their homes, make more money, deal with abusive co-workers, et cetera… but while these ideas excite and even motivate a very wide audience, they are only helpful to a much smaller crowd.The process of change, as I understand it, tends to go something like this:

First, we become aware that change is possible. We struggle, often subconsciously, with the pros and cons, and eventually (hopefully) become willing to experience that change. We start to become aware of what we are doing that is blocking it, and that lets us participate actively, taking steps toward more change. We start to integrate those changes, and their effects, and we move into a new place in our lives, refining the steps we have taken, enjoying the changes we are experiencing, and looking toward the next change in our lives.

People can only really use lifehacking tricks in two of those stages: when we are participating actively in making a change (if it is the particular change that the author is talking about, and if the tools they suggest actually apply to our lives) and when we are refining it. Like, I always used to see lists of (for example) 25 Ways To Decrease Clutter, and I’d get all fired up and promise myself I was going to binge-clean that weekend or that I would at least buy some boxes or that I would certainly print out the list and save it to use over the next month, and then… the fire would die out, because I wasn’t ready for that shift. There was nothing deep down to fuel it. Sure, I wanted a cleaner home, but I wasn’t involved in any kind of shift toward that – or I was too early in that shift to be able to implement those tips. And, of course, at that point in my life – like anyone who is living in self-abusive clutter and chaos – I was all too eager to shame or berate myself for not being able to use those lists or figure out why I could never get around to using those lists!

Mainly, I object to lifehacking, by any name, because:

1. Lifehacking is all about control. Specifically, it’s often about trying to control the things we can’t. It targets the areas that people find unmanageable and says “Try this! No, now try THIS! No, no, THIS one will fix it!” Like, oh, are you disorganized? Have too much scheduled, took on too many commitments, and don’t know what to do with it all? Try THIS new gadget for “calendaring”! No, try this killer app for Getting Things Done! It just promotes the struggle with unmanageability, because people are very tempted by the idea that there is nothing they cannot change if they just try hard enough.

2. Lifehacking is so superficial. There’s nothing wrong with being superficial about superficial things. I don’t want a 300-page tome about how to get more mileage out of my car or clean out my email. But a ten-item list about serious psychological issues or deep-rooted emotionally-laden relationship stuff sells the reader short.

3. Lifehacking is so damn prescriptive. I’ll happily admit it: I don’t like people telling me what to do. Who does? I don’t mind advice I’ve asked for, or support from people I respect, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take, for example, a Tylenol ad telling me to eat breakfast to avoid headaches.

4. Lifehacking doesn’t know how to use I statements. I don’t want to hear what you think I should do. I want to hear what has worked for you. “Shoulding” on others is really controlling and invasive. Sure, I’ve done it; we’ve probably all done it. But, you know, it’s something to keep an eye on. When I start thinking about what other people should be doing, I know I’ve taken my eyes off my own paper and that I need to change my focus and get out of their business. Not time to go make a website or a book about how other people should be living their lives.

5. Lifehacking is amateur advice. This goes hand in hand with it not being personal experience. That cleaning article or that weight-loss advice might have been written by someone who is great at cleaning or who has lost a bunch of weight, but that doesn’t mean that they have a handle on the causes and influences or the different situations their readers might be bringing to the table. Which leads to a lot of wacky or horrifying gaffes or just plain misfires.

6. Lifehacking is bland. It’s generally either reviews of potentially useful products, which can be interesting (and which, uncoincidentally, usually do fall under personal experience rather that prescriptive advice), or basic common-sense (and often inaccurate) mainstream information about life. How many articles have you seen in women’s magazines about using bubble baths, personal time, and light reading to relax?

7. Lifehacking hijacks geek chic. Oh, maybe that’s too strong. It can’t kidnap the entire culture or its terminology. And it uses geek language because “lifehacking” started out as life tips, organizational tips, and “killer apps” being shared between coders and engineers. It was natural to them to think of it as “hacking” life. The places that use the term that way are kind of awesome; they tend more toward the “review” end of the scale, people sharing tools that have worked for them and telling others what has and hasn’t worked. It brings personal experience back into it. It’s the sites that do co-opt the term and apply it to something you’d be more likely to find in Woman’s Day magazine that bug me.

8. Lifehacking is just that: a messy hack, a patch to fix part of a problem, not a system update. If you overeat compulsively, lifehacking will not say, for example, “Here’s some information from other people who do this, and what they changed, and how it helped; here are some tools you can use to change your relationship to food and eating by addressing the underlying causes, and some ways to develop good basic ground rules for yourself.” It will say “Here is a list of fivetools that people sometimes try! One, exercise more. Two, keep a food diary. Three, stay away from fast food restaurants. Four, eat without doing anything else at the same time. Five, try a support group like weight watchers.”

9. Lifehacking pretends to be great recovery but it lacks even the boundaries to speak from its own experiences. Even articles that begin with “we” or “I” (“We all know that we should eat better,” “I have a terrible time with overscheduling,”) switch abruptly and irrevocably to “you” when they get to the list of “shoulds.” Telling someone you don’t even know what to do is terrible boundaries, and that’s often reflected in personal remarks from the writers – much of the time, these lists are written by people who admit they have not tried what they are suggesting, or for whom what they are suggesting has yet to work. They are often just sharing “common sense” or “common knowledge” suggestions – and unfortunately, what “everyone knows” is frequently wrong. Likewise, commenters rarely (sometimes, but very rarely) share that the whole list has worked for them; usually, the comments either say “Great list!”, “This misses the mark because….” or “I do item number 9 sometimes and I like it.”

10. Lifehacking promises what it cannot give. This is much like problem #8. It states a goal and implies that doing what it says will fulfill that goal, or at least help people achieve it. But with the majority of these goals, the reader has to have done a great deal of the groundwork beforehand in order to even implement the suggestions given. There’s a huge amount that goes unaddressed by lifehacking. The worst of it is that generally, if someone has the kind of life problems mentioned in lifehacking sites, and hasn’t done that groundwork, they are carrying around a lot of (misplaced and undeserved) shame and guilt about their lives – and the “you should” format of lifehacking sites only feeds into that shame. Readers often berate themselves for not following the suggestions or wonder why they can’t seem to do these simple things, which furthers the vicious cycle of shame and resistance that keeps them stuck in self-harming patterns.

11. Lifehacking brings bureaucracy into your personal life. There’s a whole area of lifehacking that straddles the line between “here’s a killer app for organizing your contacts” and “here is a killer way to be organized.” It focuses on bringing terms like “personal productivity” and “GTD” from the office into our everyday lives. What’s next, sternly worded memos? It’s the terminology of control again, but with a Dilbert-like spin.

12. Lifehacking sets the bar really low. Okay, the bar is already set really low: sometimes it seems like almost everyone could use some kind of life skills class. Like we’ve discussed before, abuse often strands people in adulthood without any idea how to have a healthy relationship with people, or food, or work, or substances, or money, or whatever it is that our parents couldn’t teach us because they lacked themselves. Lifehacking sites take that low skill level and run with it. Any given site, for example, will usually aim all of its food or exercise or money tips at people who have no skills in those areas – no matter how many years they spend giving out those tips. The same goes for magazines. Not only is there no suggestion that readers might be able to revamp their entire relationship with, for example, food, or that they might want to – there’s also no awareness of the personal issues underlying those relationships, or how they fit into the whole. It’s all “you need to stop having a sedentary life,” “you need to spend more time with your kids,” “you need to start eating breakfast,” all the time.

13. Lifehacking states the very obvious, and sometimes the freaking insane. Hitting three major lifehacking sites reveals a consistent combination of good-but-superficial-patches and hackneyed, overrepeated suggestions. My favorites: take the stairs instead of the elevator to get more exercise! Count your blessings! And on the deeply insane side: If you help people, they will get addicted to you! (Lifehacking readers might notice that lifehack.org isn’t linked there. I’m giving them a pass because they tend to have more effective how-to articles and to have good information about things like emotional health.)

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