Two fabulous writing exercises

I heard of two amazing-sounding writing exercises yesterday.

• Gretchen Rubin suggests writing your own list of eight auspicious symbols, as in Buddhism, and many readers took her up on it in the comment section. While I am kind of a grouchypants about the encouragement of superstition, there is something appealing both about the do-it-yourself Buddhism and thinking of 8 things that make me smile or feel lucky.



• This month's Psychology Today suggests writing a "failure resume" where you list all your failures -- academic, personal, professional. I like this as a reminder that normal, successful lives include a lot of trial and error, and I also like it because it could be formatted just like a real resume and would probably be hilarious.
  

As for those symbols, hmm. Cats, turtles, thunder and lightning, cherries. Spirals and/or circles? I would once have said "subway tokens".