Seth Haines's Blog, page 12

Freeing Up Willpower: A Dry January Invitation

As I wrote yesterday, we’ve entered into Dry January, a month used by many to reset drinking habits. Maybe you’re not prone to overdrinking. Maybe you’re using it like I am, to reset an attachment to some other vice (like shopping, eating sugar, porn use, or whatever). But whether you are are aren’t participating in Dry January, have you considered the power of abstinence—even for a season? Have you thought about the benefits abstinence brings?

If you buy one book this Dry January, buy my...

Dry January: Are You Ready to Wake Up?

It is the second day of a new decade, a day marking the transition from resolution to action. As E.E. Cummings might say, this is the day for “tasting, touching, seeing, breathing, any….” This Day of Doing begs a simple question: How will you craft the next ten years of your lives? Will you do it with intention?

Intentional crafting takes a sober touch, and as I’ve written ad nauseum, the sober way isn’t about abstaining from the bottle. It’s not about drinking or not drinking (or eating or...

The Examined Life, 2020: How to Goal and Why

2019 is in the books—Should old acquaintance be forgot and never thought upon?—and yesterday, I took a look back. I examined the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I hope you did too. But looking back is only part of the life-examined equation. The examined life sets benchmarks, goals for the new season.

Goals—what should they look like? I’m no productivity guru, but in my estimation, goals should be: 1) Concrete; 2) Measurable; and, 3) Actionable. For example, I’d like to read more, might be...

The Year in Review: An Examination of 2019

One day later than expected and several dollars shorter (the Christmas season always seems to work a budget over), I’m back!

Here we are, teetering on the cusp of a new year. It’s the last day of 2019, a day for reflection. Today, I’m sharing my own reflections, comprising the good, the bad, and the ugly. I’ve broken my reflections into four categories in hopes that, after reading my reflections, you might do the same. After all, sometimes the well-examined life needs a little structural...

On Ongoing Advent Reflection (and a Christmas Break)

We began this series on waking weeks ago, and by connecting the dots, we worked through the neuroscience of our coping mechanisms and sorted through some of our disordered attachments. We landed with a sort of literary flourish, discovered Jean Valjean waking to his own disordered attachments. As he woke, what did he see? The light of the Bishop, which is to say the light of Christ. By waking to that light, Valjean found new life.

We’re in the season of celebrating the coming of light and...

What Jean Valjean and the Bishop Teach About Disordered Attachments

On an Arkansas-bound flight from the Steel City, I cracked my copy of Les Miserables, Victor Hugo’s sprawling epic about both societal and personal revolution. Perhaps you know the story, but if not, allow me to provide some salient bullet points.

A generous and gracious Bishop welcomes a cruel and hardened criminal, Jean Valjean, into his home for the evening.

After dinner and a few hours of fitful sleep, Valjean wakes, and plagued with the unshakeable thought of stealing the house silver,...

What Advent Says About Attaching to the Right Things

Each attachment is a choice, a decision not to attach to something else. This begs the question: Will we hitch our horses to the things that matter less (work or money or booze or religion or whatever) or will we fix ourselves to the Divine Love?

It’s Advent, and last night, I made my way to a celebration service in Pittsburgh. (Yes, this is what I do for fun while on business.) There, the priest delivered the gospel reading for the day:

Jesus said to the crowds: “Come to me, all you who labor...

The Economics of Attaching to the Wrong Thing

The woman and her child. This is beautiful attachment.

“What is economics?”

The professor dangled the question in the opening minutes of Introduction to Macroeconomics. Arms folded, face flat, he waited.

“The study of money?” a girl on the front row suggested.

“Yes, but not exactly.”

Another took a stab. “The understanding of financial systems?”

“In a sense but incomplete.”

Each potential answer was a clay pigeon. The professor was a dead shot. The question-answer carnage continued for what seemed...

Do Your Attachments Drag You Off Purpose?

This photo of City Liquor in downtown Fayetteville remains one of my favorites. It was taken on a blustery night last December with the Fujifilm x100s, a stellar little camera.

Attachments—we all have them. And as I wrote yesterday, when we get our attachments out of whack—money before work, work before wife, wife before spiritual health, anything before spiritual health—our disordered attachments drag us off our ultimate purpose. What is our ultimate purpose? For the person of faith, it...

Trading the Eternal for the Temporal (An Exploration of Disordered Attachments)

It’s an ongoing series, a day-by-day stream of consciousness that’s moved from waking to pain to addiction to dopamine to social media addiction to breaking the habits by way of gratitude to living a life of examined investment. Today, I’m kicking off a series on disordered attachments.

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Last week, I made a confession, one I figure damn-near every modern American could make. The confession? Too often I fail to invest in the things that matter (the greater things) because I’m too busy...