So Much Happier Blog
A White-Knuckle Ride
“The future is no more uncertain than the present.”
If you want to live a life that feels exciting and fulfilling, it's extremely important to define your goals. I hope you've taken the time to do that so that you have a basic roadmap for the path you want to tread. Once you've done that, you have many decisions to make regarding your preferred pace and methods in working toward them. One of the most difficult things about working on long-term projects often turns out to be the discomfort of becoming someone new, someone who has and can confidently use the skills necessary to achieve your stated goals. It can be equally difficult to communicate the changes in progress to the important people in your life, and to unveil your plans and results to people who may display mixed reactions to them for any number of reasons.
Sometimes the best course of action will be to fly under the radar as you begin to make your initial steps toward your goals. Change can be messy, and you don't necessarily need others poking at you with their opinions about what you're doing in the early stages. Your choice here should have a lot to do with your personality—how much do you like to talk over your daily experience with others? How much support would you like from others as you work? Would you rather not have to deal with the endless advice of others who may have your best interests at heart, but tend to be fearful or don't know much about your subject area?
But eventually, you'll need to come out into the light of day with your projects and be willing to unveil your changes and be seen in order to fully succeed. This process can be scary when you don't yet have it all together, and don't relish the idea of being judged. Knowing that others are watching as you stumble through things you're not yet expert in can leave you feeling pretty vulnerable. And yet, no one ever achieves new things without navigating this situation. You don't have to love it, but the more comfortable you grow with being seen to be imperfect, the more free you'll be to keep moving through all the uncertain moments in your projects—and there will be many!
You can practice gaining comfort with vulnerability by working on your projects and learning new things. (Continually stretching beyond your current abilities and knowledge also keeps you from getting stuck in any ruts and becoming bored. It also keeps your brain working, which is great for its long-term health.) Every time you research your next steps, attempt to move forward through trial and error, or experience an inspiration leading to new possibilities, you acknowledge what you don't know, while at the same time reaffirming that it's ok not to know everything, and you can and will get where you want to go anyway.
Another one of the ways that you can practice being ok with uncertainty is by choosing to be more communicative with others, and this requires no special situation. All of our interactions with others offer fertile ground here, and most of us encounter numerous other people every day. It's rare that anyone can say that they never encounter discomfort in communicating with others; unfortunately, most of us were taught in some way or other that honest communication is dangerous. This may have been through experience, by noticing that our parents vastly preferred it when we were "good little children" who expressed no opinions or desires (they were busy, and raising kids is hard, so it's not hard to understand why our parents sent the message sometimes that silence is golden). Maybe you asked innocent questions of teachers and didn't understand their disapproving reactions. Maybe as a child you communicated without a filter, as kids do, and sometimes hurt friends' feelings without meaning to. Or maybe you learned to avoid communication because you got one too many bombshells dropped on you at some point, and decided that it was better for everyone to keep things to themselves and refrain from rocking the boat. Whatever may have happened to slow down your interest in owning your truth and communicating openly and confidently, when you're an adult, it's incredibly empowering to work on taking back your ability to share what needs to be said in timing that is appropriate for you.
There are many wonderful sources of information about helpful communication techniques that you can learn from, but in order to become competent in using them, you must practice. Because this practice will offer you plenty of awkward and uncomfortable moments no matter how smart you are (because every person and situation is different) it will serve to help you acclimate to that feeling of stumbling through the use of new skills, and finding that the world will not end because your performance wasn't flawless. As you find out what works well for you, you'll also be gaining confidence in your ability to learn and keep going through uncertainty and discomfort—important skills for any kind of success!
Honest communication can be more frightening than skydiving, and working at it can bring up similar amounts of fear and adrenaline depending on your skill level. If the thought of just calmly and openly stating how you feel and what you want makes you feel like you're about to keel over, then start small. You might ask clarifying questions next time you're buying something in a store or ordering food in a restaurant, explaining what you're trying to accomplish or what you prefer. You could try asking people for the time or directions just for the sake of interacting on topics with little importance. Or try asking someone you care about to do something minor that they normally do with you in a slightly different way, because it seems like fun. When you become willing to express opinions about small things, you start becoming more aware of what you want and what you have to say. You also get used to others responding reasonably to minor requests, as most people will, which will build your confidence in considering tackling larger issues.
Next week's blog will continue where we've left off here, and suggest the most helpful principles I've found for communicating well with others. This week, I hope you'll remind yourself that change is often uncomfortable, but it can become less so as you become familiar with the process. So much can be gained when you're willing to keep going even though you don't know everything about how to climb your mountain.
Graceful as a Feline
“Learn to... be what you are, and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.”
What does it take to move through life gracefully? And is that something that's even worth putting time and energy into? Ready examples of people who can both be productive and handle life's ups and downs with serenity seem to be in short supply. Many of us were taught by our relatives and others that life is hard, we have to work hard and never let up, and getting anything done means pushing and shoving all obstacles out of the way with brute force. The concept of grace exists in a whole other realm than this kind of thinking. Isn't it selfish, or frivolous, or self-indulgent, or even downright stupid to want something else when this is just how life is?
I submit that it is not any of those things to want to experience more ease and less drag in the course of your daily activities. The masculine-energy-dominant paradigm of the last couple thousand years has glorified battle and conflict as fighting the good fight, in other words, the best and most glorious way to get things done and to live. But taken to an extreme, this thinking causes us to want to fight everything that moves. It keeps our stress hormone levels high, reinforces the self-sabotaging idea that everything worth doing must nearly kill us, and blinds us to solutions that could be implemented calmly, cooperatively, and expediently so that we can move on to other exploits with a minimum of unnecessary drama and injury.
Note that I'm not saying that feminine energy encourages no extremes! If feminine energy and thinking dominated planet Earth for millennia and dismissed the wisdom inherent in masculine energy, we'd just be likely to have a whole host of different problems. But that is not the scenario we've been exploring. In order to concoct a better balance between masculine and feminine, one that acknowledges all the wisdom we have access to, regardless of our gender, it helps to make a habit of focusing on where bringing in qualities associated with the feminine can smooth out our experience.
The truth is that it is possible to accomplish many of our daily tasks with less tension than we're probably used to holding. It is possible to be more focused in the current moment, and to worry less about the future. We can, in fact, give up animating the voices of our detractors in our own minds and choose to celebrate our goodness and our accomplishments while avoiding arrogance and continuing to learn and grow. In making these choices, we open the way to greater expression of what we truly have to offer.
- Someone who is graceful exhibits fluid movement that can also be precise; grace implies a high degree of awareness and conscious intent. How can you bring more focused awareness to your activities?
- Grace requires control that is based on practice, but not over-muscled inflexibility. How can you let go of tension even as you continue to accomplish your tasks?
- Its maintenance requires the ability to adjust while in motion. How can you become more comfortable with shifting course based on feedback you receive from all of your senses?
- There are internal qualities without which these abilities are not enabled. How can you build these within yourself?
- enough coping ability to register emotions without being immediately disabled by them;
- enough optimism (and determination) to remain open to creative solutions before they are visible;
- the willingness to keep flowing in some direction even when the way forward is blocked.
Before swinging into action, try taking a moment to ask yourself:
- How can I complete this task without struggle? Maybe this could be easier if I allowed it to be
- Is now the best time for it, or have I decided to try to put my head down and try to ram it because I've let stress and habit cloud my vision? Is there anything I could take care of right now that would allow me to return to this with greater enthusiasm and a grounded sense of readiness?
- Could it be done more cooperatively, more calmly, more enjoyably somehow?
If you want insight, you have to make space by allowing a few moments to elapse in which ideas might emerge from your own wisdom. If you want help from anyone, including yourself, you usually need to ask. Cultivating the ability to hold still and wait for a better idea will serve you over time in ways that might surprise you. A meditation practice of some kind will help support your ability to do this as well.
The more you focus on adding grace to your movements on all levels, the more you will learn about how to surf through your days with less wear and tear and more grateful satisfaction. There will always be surprises and challenges, but this makes everything in life feel easier and more fun. You can learn from others, but only by trying things out for yourself will you find the methods that are most supportive to you. Maybe this is worth the time and effort after all!
Who Do You Need to Become?
“There are plenty of difficult obstacles in your path. Don’t allow yourself to become one of them.”
We all want opportunities. If you haven't defined goals for yourself, you might not be entirely clear on what the opportunities you'd most enjoy would look like, but I'm sure that there are certain kinds of offers that would delight you if they just showed up at your door. Once you have addressed clarification of the goals that most appeal to you, it makes sense to start cultivating a state of readiness for those perfect opportunities. After all, you can have all the opportunity in the world, but if you don't have the confidence and the skills to accept gracefully and follow through with competence, you're not likely to enjoy the kind of experience you crave.
Let's take a look at one of your goals. If someone offered you a chance at exactly what you want today, you would no doubt be excited. If you close your eyes and imagine this scenario with vividness, though, chances are you'll also come up with some misgivings as well. Those might be something like, "I'm not ready," or "People will find out I'm a fraud," or "What if everyone says I'm terrible at this?" This is a quick way of finding out what holds you back from taking appropriate action to prepare yourself for success, as well as of showing you reasons why you might be likely to sabotage yourself if and when the goal looks like it's getting too close.
Once you've spent a little quality time digging into this exercise, you can now make some choices about how to proceed. For instance, if you thought, "I'm not ready," now it's time to write out all the reasons why you're not. Really indulge here. We want to get all parts of you on board with moving forward toward that goal, so we really want to know all of the objections you're holding into. Who would you need to become physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually in order to rock those opportunities you want when they show up? Make this as clear a picture as you can, listing all the positive qualities you need to build in yourself in order to be ready—the opposite of what you currently worry that you are.
Once you have that list of positive qualities, it's time to work on one or two so that you're building your readiness for your ideal future. Sometimes you'll need to find yourself some appropriate education and a way to start building experience in a certain area. Sometimes you'll need help healing the effects of past experiences in some way. In any case, it usually helps to find some other people who can support you as you build your competence and confidence. Maybe you could really use a work partner, who will be working on their own goals and with whom you meet to share process and mutual encouragement. Maybe you just need a few people who can listen to your latest developments and cheer you on. Maybe you need professional consultation in some area. Whatever you decide, make sure that the people you choose to join your support system are positive and genuinely want you to succeed. Even a professional should help you to feel positive about yourself and the progress you're making; if they don't, perhaps they're not the right fit for you. There are also plenty of groups you can join if you're not sure you can find any of these in your current life.
As you work on growing into new, positive qualities, you'll also want to consider this: What are all the reasons why you haven't become that person you want to be, and why you may not be able to? The answer to this is also golden as far as its ability to help you address factors that can trip you up. If you don't address the things that surface in this category, your progress will be much more difficult than it needs to be. The best way I know of to handle these worries and objections is through the use of EFT, which is incredibly effective at addressing mental and emotional resistance to progress. I highly recommend that you learn the basics at least and get comfortable with them. If any of this stuff is really dogging you, consider making a larger investment of time and energy in this work. The payoff can be disproportionately huge.
It may also help you to take inventory of whether you tend to overprepare or underprepare. If you're not sure, ask your friends and coworkers, who will probably have some perspective to offer on this. Either way, you may need to circumvent your tendency when it comes to how to choose when to move on to a new aspect of work. Some people tend to admit their own progress very slowly and cautiously. Others habitually underestimate the preparation they'll need to perform with excellence when the chips are down. Either way, it's a good idea to check in periodically with someone who has expertise in your subject area to help you gauge realistically how you're doing in preparing for your specific goals. This will keep you moving forward at a reasonable rate without rushing past important milestones or getting stuck in endless contemplation of detail.
Because you will always be able to think of new goals as soon as you reach your current ones, this is a process that never ceases unless you want to become stale. Therefore, it's important to find ways to enjoy this constant learning process as well as the euphoria of reaching your goals. You can be both peaceful and content with the blessings you currently have, and fired up about the exciting future you're working toward. I encourage you to keep yourself tuned into the balance of these that you're creating for the most satisfying possible life. What can you appreciate, and what can you learn this week? If you keep doing both, you'll keep making progress, and fueling your enthusiasm and energy so you can keep going, always improving your life and your enjoyment of it.
A Case of the Blahs
“I love to listen to the music that first inspired me - I get that fresh feeling back.”
There are times in which, even when things are going well, and despite all our best efforts, we are going to feel just…uninspired. There are so many factors that go into creating our experience of each day that we can often be surprised by how things seem to display, at any given moment, a natural tendency to come together—or not. It’s impossible to predict the daily outcome of the interaction of all things that affect us; that is just how things are on planet Earth, and it certainly keeps life interesting! It can also be pretty frustrating, say when you’ve got a certain amount of time allotted for something and then the unexpected happens and gets in the way. If this happens several times in a row, it can really disrupt your momentum. Or if you’ve been down with a cold, sometimes it takes longer than you want it to for you to get back up to speed and feel your enthusiasm for life returning. For whatever reason, there are those days when you just don’t feel like doing anything at all.
What to do when you feel this way? Depending on what your day looks like, you may have more or less latitude to change up your plans on the fly. Here are some thoughts on what to try the next time you get blindsided by a case of the “I don’t wanna, you can’t make me’s.”
· Allow yourself a moment to take a couple of breaths and acknowledge what’s happening. Most of us have been taught to just push through any emotion or preference that arises unexpectedly, but over time, this habit gets us into trouble. The more we repress what’s really going on internally, the more we resent the responsibilities, and sometimes the people, in our lives. We also add a potent risk factor for actual physical illness and disease. If you just get into the habit of letting yourself be aware of how you feel, you can take it into account in some way that you decide is appropriate. Sometimes just acknowledging it and the validity of your right to feel normal human emotions is enough to improve your outlook. Sometimes taking action of some sort will also be well advised
· Think for a moment about what you absolutely need to get done today. There are commitments that are not optional—for instance, the kids and the dog need to be fed. But other items on the list might be nice to have, but not really necessary, if you’re being totally honest with yourself
· If you decide that some task(s) can move to a different day, what would you like to do instead? Sometimes what you need is a break, some breathing room to do not much of anything, some time to regroup. But maybe there’s something that needs doing that would be more fun for you than what you had originally planned. One excellent secret of greater productivity is being able to swap tasks around to harness your enthusiasm at any given time. Sure, there are some tasks you’re probably never going to want to do, and sometimes you’ll have to just do them anyway. But there are days when cleaning and organizing/filing, for instance, might seem kind of fun, and there are times when it’s going to seem like cruel and unusual punishment. How can you roll with that?
· Sometimes the best thing to “do” is something that will boost you overall state of inspiration. What are your very favorite things to do, things you would do nearly every day if you had all the time in the world? Watch movies? Go to concerts? Play silly games with family members? Have a three-hour lunch with a close friend you could talk to forever? Go play a sport that makes you forget everything else for a while? Read a book by your favorite author? Whatever it is, it can be amazing how rejuvenated you can feel after a little time spent in this pursuit. Allowing yourself this time can energize your entire week
· What signals are you getting from your body? Does it need care that you’ve been procrastinating on? If you haven’t been drinking water, moving your body, or getting decent nutrition lately, ending up in a funk of some sort is a pretty likely outcome. Sometimes we pretend we can ignore the body’s needs. Zoolander-esque news flash: We can’t.
· Change your perspective by thinking about what’s going well in your life and what you’re grateful for. This can be as simple as the sun rising each day, or the fact that you’re still alive! Celebrate what you have accomplished, whether recently or in your finest moments. Sometimes feeling better just requires that you allow yourself some time to consciously feel good about yourself. Self-acceptance and self-congratulation can really prime the pump of your enthusiasm for life. It’s not arrogant to admit that some things about you are pretty awesome, and most of us don’t do this enough
· Ask for help. Most of don’t do this enough either. It might surprise you how often others are willing to help if you explain your situation and ask whether they can pitch in. As long as you’re not ordering them around, a lot of people actually like to feel like they’re helpful and being supportive of others
· Hug someone you love and tell them that you love them. When you don’t know what else to do, you can’t go wrong with this one, and sometimes it can very quickly change your state of mind
· What has worked for you before in the past in similar situations? Is there something you’ve been wanting to do that you could allow yourself time for?
· Be creative. If you like to paint, or write, or sing, or play an instrument, spend a little time doing that just for fun, or make yourself laugh by thinking up captions for the frowny cat picture above
· Even if it seems like nothing is boosting your mood, know that tomorrow will be different. Sometimes a night of decent sleep can change everything. Sometimes you’ll come out of a funk just as mysteriously as you went in
Feeling resistant to life’s requirements sometimes is completely normal. If you allow yourself some flexibility in how you approach your task list and your daily experience, you may find that the quality of your life actually improves as a result of these times. Any experience can be an opportunity to know yourself better and to find better ways of expressing the best of yourself in life. I hope that the next time you find yourself feeling less than enthused, you’ll be able to change something up without feeling bad about having to confront this part of the human experience.
Ready...Set...
“Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.”
Have you ever had a good idea, rushed to implement it, and found that somehow it fell flat for reasons you didn’t understand? This can happen for many reasons, of course, including unforeseen issues arising at the last minute. However, this week we’ll focus on a factor I don’t often hear discussed that can be hugely important—timing. There are several different components to timing I want to touch on that I think are helpful considerations when planning toward a goal. If you at least think through these before taking action, in my experience, you have better chances of success in your final product, whether you’re planning the launch of a book or other product, taking a vacation, or planning a party.
· Time needed to complete your proposed task list. Every task should be given as realistic a time frame for completion as it’s possible to estimate. If you’ve never done something like this before, it’s crucial that you consult someone who has. Otherwise, your guess could be drastically off and endanger the completion of your project if there are dependencies involved—in other words, things that need to be done before, during, or after that task that depend on it. It’s always surprising to me how many people don’t bother to even attempt to think through how much work is involved in any project or step in one, and so much can go wrong when you don’t.
· Preparation. What needs to happen before you can begin? Do you need to find other team members or brush up on some skills of your own before you set the wheels in motion? Are there fears or other resistance you’re feeling that it would be better to deal with before you get started so they don’t wreak havoc on your project once it’s in motion?
· Context. This is a tough one because the factors you could consider may be practically infinite depending on your project, but you should do the very best you can with what you have. What is going on in your life and in the lives of others who will participate in or be the consumers of your project? Is someone on your team getting married this year? What holidays, religious and secular, will fall within important periods of your project? (There are some excellent calendars online that include a wide variety of religious holidays.) What time of year will the project end—in January, when many are trying to turn over a new leaf with New Year’s resolutions, or during the height of summer vacation season? What are people generally interested in or concerned about at that time? Is there a political cycle you need to consider or other projects you need to work around? What’s trendy and cool right now, and how does your project relate to that—for instance is there a popular festival in your vacation destination that you’d like to participate in or avoid? This is a broad area that deserves research and brainstorming with others so you can turn up as many factors for consideration as possible and wisely choose your end date.
· Contingencies. What would you do if you had some bad luck, causing delays, at any point in the project? If the end date got delayed, what would happen, and is there a time when you’d be better able to deal with this? Is there a step in the process that absolutely can’t move?
· Preference. When would you rather be working on the project and when would you prefer that it be finished? If it works to do that, go ahead so as to best preserve your enthusiasm and enjoyment of the experience.
· Cost. Is there a time when doing what’s necessary will cost you less, or when the end product can earn you greater benefits?
· Intuition. This is a wild card category, but considering it can bring important factors to your attention. Putting aside what’s logical, is there any timing that just feels particularly right or wrong to you? You can choose to think of this as your subconscious mind indicating knowledge you have that your conscious mind doesn’t remember. If you have an established relationship with your intuition, you may also know this as a place of intersection with the spiritual part of yourself. Consult your own and ask others to consult theirs and just see what you come up with.
· Summation. When you put all of these together, does any particular timing become the clear winner? If not, don’t be afraid to talk it out with someone you trust to be supportive and to have good ideas when they hear about your choices. Maybe several people. If nothing stands out, sometimes you have to just pick a choice and go. That’s fine, and you probably learned some helpful things in going through this process. Who knows when they’ll come in handy along the way.
If you take the time to look at all of these factors before taking on your next project, you’ll be able to feel more confident that you’ve avoided some pitfalls and chosen the best timing for your efforts. Nothing ever goes perfectly as planned, but when you do your best to strategize intelligently in your initial choices, you’ll have removed every roadblock you could, and that’s better than the alternative! You’ll learn through experience what you might have missed, but at least you won’t be kicking yourself for not trying.
Do This and Thrive
“Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.”
I rarely do this, but in this week’s blog I’m going to emphasize and reiterate what I said last week, because there is nothing that is potentially more powerful in your life than unleashing your own innate motivation through joy. If you have not yet made time to think through and write out your most cherished hopes in the form of goal statements that are positive, in present tense, and as specific as you can make them, now’s the time! If the thought of doing this still makes you want to break out in hives, then please reread my blog from two weeks ago for ways to relax about this and make it fun.
These are not static statements of what will happen to the letter, because life throws curve balls, and requires flexibility. You are not going to spiral down into shame if you need to modify anything you write, you’re just going to keep reminding yourself what you want and why, and work on enjoying every step that moves you closer to one of your goals, however small the step. Both the process and the result are important, but the better you get at process, the more results you can achieve.
To recap: People who have written out their goals and review them every day get more of what they want. This is not very difficult or time consuming to do. Take some deep breaths, grab a pen, and go for it. Do it now! We’re all rooting for you!
Fun with Goals
“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”
Last week we unpacked a bunch of reasons why the thought of defining clear and specific goals can make us cringe and run for cover. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look into what a saner process for creating and working with goals over time might look like. How can we make use of the motivational power of goals without the inappropriate application of shame or frequent flare-ups of overwhelm that sap our belief in ourselves and our ability to cross the finish line?
The Vision
· If you’ve never spent some concentrated time thinking about what you’d like your life to be like if you could wave a magic wand and instantly have everything you want, it’s time to do that. The best idea is always to start with the ideal, without editing yourself. Don’t stand for mental limitations in the conceptual phase, because you’ll just be building in a sense of disappointment from day one of your process! Really have fun with this vision, and make it as outrageous as you want. You can be the ruler of the entire world, a movie star, and a reclusive stay-at-home mom all at the same time—you later could plan to spend some part of your time each day/month/year on each. We’re just moving puzzle pieces around at this point to see what seems satisfying. Stay in brainstorming/impractical mode and see what you come up with; how would you want to spend your time? Who would be sharing your experiences with you? Where would you live? What would you want to give to others and the world? If you’re not sure, think about the kinds of things that have delighted you in the past, starting in childhood (including things you’ve heard of happening to other people or in movies, etc.) and build on those. Write down reminder phrases at least so you’ve captured what you imagined. You can also draw pictures if that seems fun. It can work well to do this in one column of your page and leave another blank for the next step
· Once you’ve come up with some really good stuff, think about what the basic core of each item is. If you decided you’d like to live in a particular town, what was it about that place that appealed to you? Was it weather, proximity to people you love, or some other special characteristic of that place? This helps you both to be specific, and to allow yourself to be surprised later by other possible solutions that might give you a similar result
· Now think about which seems most important to you—you might start by considering them one at a time and imagining that each, in turn, is the only one you can have right away when you wave that magic wand. Which one feels the best? That’s number one. Continue to assign a number to each in turn based on which of the remaining comes up next highest.
· Then consider which seems easiest to achieve. Assign each a letter starting at the beginning of the alphabet based on this factor.
· Now it’s time to think about what to work on first. Yes, we are beginning to hint at taking action! Don’t freak out. Would you rather work on the thing that you want most, or something that seems easier relative to the other things on your list? This is totally up to you. Sometimes it helps to build one’s confidence to work on something that doesn’t seem like a huge effort. Sometimes that’s just not inspiring. You know your life and your current capacities, and you get to make this decision.
· Once you have chosen something, stop and ask yourself: Did I choose this one out of fear of something I’d much rather work on? Fear, anxiety, and self-doubt often pop up when we’re thinking about challenging the status quo. This is normal, but if you let them define all your choices, you’ll never grow or change at all, and that’s boring! Remember, whatever you choose to work on, you can do it with baby steps, and you don’t have to know how to accomplish it right now, just that you’d like to.
· Do you have one?
Your Map
· Ok, now it’s finally time to start an outline/treasure map showing how you might get from where you are to where you want to go. Be sure to do it in a format that leaves you room for changes. A digital format can be good here because it’s so easy to change or add steps, but if you like paper, that’s fine too. This is just a rough draft based on what you know right now. Let’s say you want to become a chemical engineer. First you need to define where you are. What’s your current level of education, experience, and knowledge? Would you need training or even a college degree, do you think? Would you need to get some experience as an intern? Would you need to spend time in a different location? Then what? Take some wild guesses if you have to, but map it all out the best you can. Remember to define the end goal—how will you know you have it? What will you see/hear/feel/smell/taste? What will you be like? How will people treat you? How will you feel? Put this in positive terms, as in “Everyone will be nice to me” rather than “Everyone will stop being rude to me.”
· Now look at the areas where you’re sure you have gaps in knowledge as far as what might need to happen to get you to the goal. Time for research! Run some online searches, talk to people you know who might be able to inform you on the subject, read a book about someone who did what you want to do or something like it, listen to podcasts, etc. Then add some steps to your outline/map based on what you learned
· You’ll need to be detailed about your steps. You can flesh out sub-steps of each as you go, or attempt to do more of that now, but don’t get bogged down in endless minutiae, which is a clever way of avoiding ever actually doing anything. Think tasks you could do in an hour or two each
· Once you have your map, it’s time to think about how much time you will devote to your first goal each day and/or week. This is not a contract written in blood! It can and will change over time, but again, you want something to shoot for and schedule, because (for most of us) if you don’t do that, the tasks won’t get done. There should be enough time scheduled each week for you to get at least one task done every week, otherwise you’re likely to become dishearteneded by your lack of progress. However, it shouldn’t be so much that the thought of putting that much time aside makes you feel like you’re going to have a panic attack. Again, keep an eye out for fears that may be trying to stop you and ask yourself whether you’re lowballing the amount of time you can devote based on these, but also think about what will be sustainable so you don’t become exhausted and want to quit. You’re trying to create a balance here
Action!
· Take a deep breath and remember how awesome it will be to have that goal before you work on anything having to do with it, and whenever you can throughout each day. This will help to keep you happy, motivated, and creative
· As you start the first task, remember that you will sometimes become confused, feel stuck or doubtful, or want to give up. Just spend your scheduled time as best you can. Anytime you need to, you can ask for help, including from a professional—a psychologist, coach, nutritionist, etc. You can also ask yourself what you would tell someone else in your position. It’s sometimes surprising how many great ideas you can come up with this way!
· Just keep at it, but remember that, though parts of the process will no doubt be uncomfortable, there’s no need to be miserable. If you are, take a step back and shift your perspective. EFT, for instance, is fantastic for changing your emotional state and opening up new insights all along the way. Learn the basics and try it. It can be a lifeline when you get stuck
· Continue to modify your task list/map as needed
· Keep in mind that it’s probably not practical to be working toward more than two or three main goals at a time. You want to be able to see regular progress on each, not spread yourself so thin that you just become overwhelmed and scattered. However, it's a great idea to read over all of your goals/vision every day at least once or twice. That reaffirms for you what you want your life to be about, which is energizing when you allow yourself to really imagine and enjoy the idea of having those things
· If you’re someone who likes to work in groups, find one or several others who would be open to co-working or forming a support group to check in with at least once a week on tasks and achievements, and anywhere you’re getting hung up
· Celebrate every step you complete in some way. You want to keep making it fun for yourself to be on the path to your goal! When you savor each task you've completed, the whole effort is more enjoyable, and you'll feel better about yourself. Those good feelings will help keep you going
I hope this helps you to see the whole idea of goals in a more positive way than perhaps you’ve done before. They’re supposed to be a source of support, direction, and joyful anticipation, not self-recrimination and negativity. Remind yourself of this as needed, and keep chugging along! Moving toward things that make your heart sing is one of the things that makes life feel deeply worthwhile, so now actually go back and do the steps above!
Goals? Ugh.
“Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.”
Goals are a tricky thing. While many of us have heard about the importance of having clear goals defined to draw us forward, there are numerous pitfalls that divert us from enthusiasm in this area. The main message of most advice in this area can be summed up by the slogan, “Just do it.” We’re expected to man up, push past misgivings, write out goals, and then place timelines on them and drag ourselves by the hair, come hell or high water, toward the finish line. While I do think that this approach can inspire and work well for a small sample of the population, I think for most it’s either vastly unappealing such that goals are never written, or it’s not detailed or enjoyable enough to work any sort of magic for us over time—and most worthy goals take time to achieve. If the standard two-step idea motivates you, that’s great. Carry on! But if not, below are some things I can offer in order to help you gain access to the benefits of working with goals in supportive ways. We’re not actually going to look at a detailed process for doing that this week, we’re just considering the patterns that get in the way of our entering the process at all.
· Let’s start at the beginning. Goals are supposed to be inspiring, exciting, joyful visions of a future result you’d love to create. It’s easy to lose sight of this basic truth amidst all the “motivational” rhetoric. Thinking about goals this way sounds non-threatening and fun, right? Except…
· We think that if we decide on and/or write down a goal, that’s it. It can’t be modified, and if we don’t get to it inside of the amount of time that we’ve assigned to it, that means we’ve failed and all is lost. This “proves” that we’re never going to have the things we want. We’ve been here before and it feels terrible, especially because…
· We know how hard we are on ourselves in our own minds. Vicious, really. Usually more so than anyone else in our lives, though we doubtless learned some of this from others along the way—we just ran further with it so that no one can say anything to us we haven’t already said to ourselves
· Knowing this, the idea of having an optimistic goal brings up tension and the projected misery we know we’ll experience if anything goes wrong—which it will, because no process is ever perfect! Suddenly this seems like a cycle that’s to be avoided at all costs, because the result is not joyful attainment, but the disturbance of our peace and self-esteem
Sound familiar? And yet, people who do have written goals that they actively engage with daily are more likely to achieve the things they want; if we can just get past some of these unpalatable associations with goals, better progress might be in store. How about some improved conceptual guidelines:
· Let’s rethink. Realistic goals cannot be inflexible. That just doesn’t make any sense. In this chaotic, messy world, nothing ever goes as planned, so how is it logical to think that we can project an exact estimate of any road between where we are and where we want to be? Goals need to be living, breathing plans that we can continually adjust as the process unfolds. The act of changing them needs to be seen as a normal, even enjoyable, part of your interaction with the original idea and the realities of life on Earth. Sometimes, the unexpected will happen. Count on it. When it does, I’m not saying you need to abandon the vision—that’s what makes all the work and adjustment worthwhile—just adjust your concept of the path toward it
· Assigning time deadlines to the overall goal, and the steps you think will get you there, helps in your planning, and can help keep you on track by giving you something to shoot for—but these will always be arbitrary to some degree. What you want to do is choose an amount of time that seems somewhat challenging, but still allows you to feel excited about the project. You can and very well may change it later
· If people around you tend to be judgmental, you don’t have to tell them all the details of what you’re doing and planning. It’s generally best to share the nitty gritty only with those who you know can be trusted to be supportive and helpful
· It’s important to introduce humor into the process where you can. Working toward goals will tend to require some tasks that you don’t find enjoyable, but the whole thing will go much more smoothly if you can lighten the mood when you find yourself struggling. Also, remind yourself that growth and change usually involve growing pains, and that’s normal and ok. But you don’t need to be miserable, and in fact you’ll be a lot less productive and creative if you are. You can take breaks and ask for help, and you should do both as needed
· Many people who have become hugely successful went through a lot before that success arrived. What they did not do is give up on themselves or decide that they were failures when things went awry. Everyone spirals into negative self-talk sometimes, but only you get to decide how you will value yourself. Missing a deadline or goal NEVER has to mean anything permanent about you. While we’re alive, we can still change and learn, and doing these things is some of the most thrilling stuff in life. When necessary, you will take a break, get some perspective and some rest, and then regroup
· You will spend time every day thinking about and consciously enjoying the idea of having what it is that you intend to create. This habit is everything. It supercharges your ability to stay positive and in the game. As soon as you lose the ability to enjoy your vision, your motivation will crumble. This is actually the single most important part of the entire process, because the vast majority of people are most powerfully motivated by pleasure, NOT by pain or avoidance of misery
· You always retain the right to reshape your process or vision based on the experiences you’re having in the pursuit of your goal. You might decide that your original plan doesn’t seem to be the best way forward, or you might need to add steps and more time. You might even decide, once you’ve gotten a taste of progress, that you need to rethink the ultimate goal, because it no longer seems like a good expression of what you want. You remain in the driver’s seat. You’re the decision maker regarding what you want your life to be about. It’s ok to keep tinkering with the vision as you go even if no one else understands what the heck you’re doing. It’s your life! And we don’t always know what will be satisfying until we try it out in practice
I hope you’re starting to see that the point of goals is not to hold yourself to impossibly rigid standards or abuse yourself if all does not go according to plan. The point is to spur you toward a quest for greater achievements, and the experience of greater joy, than you’re likely to just stumble into without clarity and inspiring challenge. Making and working toward them can and should be fun! You can make it so! Let these ideas stew a bit, and next time we’ll consider the details of how to get started with a helpful vision and map out a process.
The Virtues of Lazing Out
“If a man insisted always on being serious, and never allowed himself a bit of fun and relaxation, he would go mad or become unstable without knowing it.”
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a busy, demanding life. Some have more obligations than others, and just meeting the demands of daily life can take up all one’s time and energy, but it seems like pretty much everyone has a lot to do these days. Maybe this is because even if we’re blessed with leisure time, it’s a small world now that we can see in real time what’s going on oceans away, so we feel called to participate more than ever. Maybe it’s partly peer pressure; if everyone else is running at a breakneck pace, it seems like we should be keeping up. Or maybe it’s just because we have so many options, and trying things, having adventures, is fun. Whatever it is that keeps you busy, you are not a machine. It’s important to find ways to relax and breathe even in the midst of a full daily routine. If you don’t, you’ll burn out, get sick more often, feel less energetic and enthusiastic, and have trouble focusing on being where you are in each moment; your performance and your attitude will spiral downward, and everything will feel more difficult than it needs to.
We’re all familiar with the concept of taking time out of a busy schedule for specifically relaxing activities (or non-activities) like reading for fun, indulging in a hobby, taking a bath, going to the beach, lying around in bed for no reason, getting a massage, finding a beautiful place outside for a picnic, etc. Enjoyable relaxation is good for you in so many ways. It gives your mind a rest, helps your body unwind tension, reassures you that you deserve to feel good, and helps you to reconnect to your best, happiest self. But how often do you actually make time for this kind of thing? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but wishing you were relaxing doesn’t have the same positive effects as actually doing it! Unfortunately, in many cultures, we’re told that wanting downtime, and particularly quiet time by ourselves, is lazy and self-indulgent—even bad, from a spiritual perspective, because when we’re not busy being helpful, we might somehow get ourselves into trouble. If we take these beliefs on, then if we choose to relax, our basic sense of identity, and of our own goodness, may suffer. We’re supposed to measure our success by the volume of what we’ve accomplished, but realistically, we can’t remain productive without renewing ourselves regularly.
It’s also possible, and, I would argue, important, to find ways to bring relaxation into even moments of the highest productivity. I had a teacher in theatre school who used to say that a muscle that is constantly tense is not useful; a muscle needs to be capable of both tensing and relaxing in order to maintain flexibility, which is required for health and proper function. The same principle holds true for our minds and emotions. If there’s always tension in these, we will be less aware, less resourceful, and less able to function at our best. We’ll be more likely to become brittle, which is not useful, rather than remaining creative and able to roll with whatever comes along, which is. In order to avoid becoming stuck in a mire of self-perpetuating stress, we can choose to keep reminding ourselves to bring an attitude of deep calm to everything we do. We can activate an intention to bring a sense of contentment and mental and emotional relaxation with us wherever we go. We can work to manage our thoughts and emotions so that they are not always spinning and grinding away at our inner peace.
I’m not going to pretend that this is easy. Most of us have not been taught how to do it efficiently, nor given the tools we need when we feel like we’ve gotten ourselves backed into a corner. Even when you’ve spent significant time on learning techniques for success in dropping unnecessary tension and remaining present, life will likely continue to challenge you such that this work remains a life-long pursuit. For some ideas on how to maximize your mental and emotional game, you might want to check out previous blogs of mine. That work is essential—and so is building sources of refreshment, relaxation and joy into your life. The human experience is already plenty difficult, and if art and written records throughout recorded history tell us anything, it’s that this is a constant. If you want to feel flexible and truly alive every day, you’ll need to break up that difficulty with steady doses of enjoyment and renewal. You know best what activities leave you with a burst of joy, energy, and enthusiasm about the future. Make sure you find a place for these in your routine to support your best possible life.
Leveraging Joy
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
We all have things we’re really great at and enjoy doing. We also have things we hate doing and struggle at—and yet sometimes doing these things is necessary. It certainly makes sense to work at being functional in numerous important areas of your life, such as finance, organization, planning and time management, social skills, negotiation, communication skills, etc., but some things will always be more fun for you than others. I suggest that you’ll likely be able to be far more productive if you can spend more time working on the fun (for you) tasks. You’ll feel more energized, hopeful, and creative in the course of doing that work and afterward. Conversely, when you spend time slogging through the tasks that are particularly difficult and dreary for you, you’ll feel more tired by the effort, more oppressed by the work, and your self-esteem is likely to take a hit.
The Gallup organization has done some fantastic work on this concept; they’ve conducted thousands of interviews with people in corporate jobs asking about what their greatest strengths are in the workplace. They published a series of books about what they learned, including the current research on the amazing leaps in success people are often able to make when they are allowed to focus on their strengths rather than trying to remediate weaknesses. I found their conclusions to be fascinating and quite common sense, actually, but unfortunately most cultures around the world, as well as businesses, function in just the opposite way from the recommended models. Gallup developed their own unique system of classifying the strengths they uncovered in all of these interviews, and if you’d like to take the talent assessment survey they developed and see the items where you rank highly, you can do that here. I found doing so very useful, and discussing the results with my partner most helpful as well—we each learned about the other’s strengths, priorities and viewpoints in surprising ways. Note that because the interviews were done in corporate office settings, there are plenty of strength areas that you won’t find represented here that might have been uncovered in other settings (such as those requiring more physical or creative work) but the ones enumerated here are still applicable to other kinds of work as well.
One of the greatest secrets to productivity, according to this work, lies in getting help on your most dreaded tasks from others with complementary skills while you intentionally focus on what you’re talented at doing. I find this concept to be very freeing: You mean I DON’T have to become an expert on every technological device in my house? (I loathe the endless minutiae of electronic things, but I hit the jackpot in that my partner is totally comfortable at figuring that stuff out. And it never takes him that long to do it, whereas it’s a demoralizing, time-consuming struggle for me. I can do it. I just hate it.)
Ok, time for an exercise. If you’ve never done this before, I suggest spending some time brainstorming about the tasks in life that you most enjoy doing, or at least find easy to accomplish. Are you at ease with people such that it’s easy-breezy for you to meet and talk to new people or make phone calls for various purposes? Are you a whiz with numbers? Maybe you’re great at estimating distances and other tasks that require skill in spatial relations. Are you handy? Unusually strong physically? Are you good at organizing social get-togethers? Do you enjoy writing? Reading? Are you musical? Like doing dishes? Try to think of every little kind of task that you look forward to in some way, even if only a little. It’s a good idea to think back over different times in your life to mine these abilities fully. Keep a list of items that you can keep adding to when you think of them and let it grow over time. This will become useful later.
Then, make a list of the things you don’t like doing. This should be pretty easy, since pain points are hard to miss. Most of us can rattle off our pet peeves at the drop of a hat. On the other hand, there may be some minor things you’ve never thought to add to the list because it seems self-indulgent to think about farming those out. Start allowing yourself to notice any little thing that is a downer in the course of your week. While you may not be able to completely solve all of these, you never know! Might as well make a wish list and see where it takes you.
Next, no matter what you do for a living, spend some time thinking about how you could do more of these tasks you like and cooperate with others to get some of the ones you hate doing done for you in return. This is such a simple thing, and yet most of us were encouraged to be “adult,” self-sufficient, and force ourselves to do everything alone—or sweep under the rug in shame the fact that we can’t or won’t do certain things. Turn out, that’s inefficient and unnecessary, not to mention demoralizing. I guarantee that someone you know would love to trade efforts with you on something you’d be happy to offer, and this is a fast and often free way to boost your satisfaction and results in life. You’ll feel good about helping someone else, and great about being able to skip the tasks you’d prefer never to do again! Humans evolved to live in groups and cooperate. If you’re not leveraging the power of cooperation, you’re leaving a lot of joy and progress languishing on the table.
I encourage you to actually do this exercise and actually talk to others about what you discovered. It doesn’t take a lot of effort to start thinking in this way and taking small actions to find solutions, and the potential rewards are endless…especially in this age of technology, where it’s easy to connect with others on a variety of platforms almost no matter what you’re looking for. You may decide that it works best to hire someone to do some of your least favorite tasks, or you might find trade- or gift-oriented solutions. However you choose to proceed, I hope you find that you start to feel a greater sense of energy and space in your life through these small, thoughtful actions.
Painting with All Colors
“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.”
Creativity is one of the most powerful qualities one can foster in the effort to build the life of one’s dreams. You’ve probably heard the sentiment that nothing in life ever goes according to plan, and I find that to be true the vast majority of the time. It makes sense that it would be when you think of the sheer variety of experiences that are possible on Earth, and the constant interplay of billions of individuals with a wide variety of backgounds and values. The ability to communicate in real time with nearly every corner of the globe has only sped up the pace of our lives and broadened the complexity of our interactions, concerns, and possibilities. Yet without the creativity to see opportunities in the new and surprising, it’s easy to become quickly overwhelmed. So how do we nurture healthy, resilient creativity that can keep us moving forward toward our goals?
This is a slippery subject, one on which many books have been written, because the answer will need to be highly personal to you. But just for fun, this week I will rashly sally forth and attempt to write some basic guidelines on how to make space for and encourage your creativity. Do keep in mind that, if you want to turn your creativity into the superpower that it can be, you will likely need to try various approaches over time to find what really works for you, refining and updating them to suit what you need at any given moment in your life. Ok, here goes!
· Cultivate a calm, open, curious, and playful state of mind. This is probably the biggest hurdle to opening up your creativity (and it can be quite a tall order if you’ve never exerted yourself in this way). Doing so requires that you gain the ability to calm your thoughts so that there’s room in your headspace for new ideas to arise. You’re probably familiar with the phenomenon of a useful idea popping into your mind while you’re in the shower or doing dishes or yard work; this can happen because you’re somewhat occupied, but have mental space for your mind to roam, and you’re not trying to make anything happen. Practicing a similar state so that you can bring it forward at will gives you far more opportunity for putting your creative talents to use. Meditation is excellent for helping you to practice slowing down your busy mind, and some kind of meditative practice can help you learn to stay out of the way of your creativity. You may need to look into and experiment with several styles until you find one you like, but doing so is incredibly worthwhile for all of the many benefits meditation confers.
· If you want your creativity to come out and play, you’ll need to make time for this to happen in which you don’t feel pressured. You might want to listen to music, or draw, go to a museum, or dance around the living room in order to prime the pump and mark the occasion with your intent. Some people like darkness and silence for thinking creatively. Some like to brainstorm or share a space with others who are also working on creative pursuits. If there’s something specific you’d like to produce, decide what that is and then set aside time to try different approaches and see what inspires and supports your purpose. It may help to think about things you enjoyed doing when you were a child. Even if nothing seems to be working at first, keep setting aside the time and putting yourself in enjoyable, relaxed situations, and eventually you are very likely to get somewhere. Everyone is creative. If you are awake and alive, your creativity is in there, so don’t give up on it.
· In a world in which the ideal is generally for everyone to be driven and achievement minded, it can take courage to insist on making space for creativity, and valuing this process appropriately. If you’re an artist who is driven to create, this may be easier, but if you don’t identify that way, remember that creativity is not just about painting a beautiful work of art, for example. It’s also about flexing the “muscles” necessary to live life artfully in each moment, building skills around coming up with useful solutions to everyday challenges with grace and enjoyment. Knowing that your creativity is going to be responsive when you need it helps to build your confidence, which then makes you more willing to try new things—and we all need to keep doing that in order to avoid becoming stale and old at any age.
· Choose to think of yourself as a creative person. If you have decided that you aren’t for any reason, your mind and experience will tend to uphold your belief. Decide that, even if you haven’t yet exhibited any remarkable creative talent, you still can. Just as you wouldn’t tell a child who has just used a crayon for the first time that they are clearly talent free and should never attempt to draw again, you should give yourself the benefit of the doubt and allow your talents to emerge over time. Just as with brainstorming, practice being non-judgmental about your attempts. Your creativity will emerge when you make it safe to do so. If you’re constantly criticizing yourself, it may stubbornly hide.
· Creativity proceeds from enjoyment. Look for beauty in the world and the people around you. Enjoy the fruits of others’ creative labors, as well as sound, light, color, flavors, and fragrances that surprise and delight you. There is so much wondrous art and natural gorgeousness out there for you to explore. Do you know anyone who hates pretty much everything about life who has created a glorious masterpiece of any sort? I sincerely doubt it. Be on the lookout for beautiful experiences, and you’ll find more to inspire, which will give you more to work with.
· If you have personal issues that get in the way of any of this, ask for help. There are many ways to deal with trauma and fears that might prevent you from allowing your creativity to blossom. The part of you where your creativity resides is a tender, childlike part that needs and deserves to feel safe and valued in order for it to function well. Doing what you need to do to support it can make everything in your life work better.
Time spent on creativity is sometimes seen as an impractical luxury, but I find that expanding access to one’s creativity leads to more opportunities in all areas of life. Even if you take small steps toward opening yours up, I think you’ll find that you enjoy life more and come up with better solutions to anything life throws at you. Even if you have no idea what you might like to produce, adding in even the exploration of good books, movies, visual art, music, or cuisine can enrich your experience of daily life and help energize the creative part of yourself, with excellent long-term effects.
Tempus Fugit
“Lost time is never found again.”
We’re two weeks into 2017, and right about now it starts to become difficult for many people to see how they’ll keep up new habits inspired by the turning of the new year. Some people never got around to taking action this time around at all. Others may be feeling the difficulties of making change and the sacrifices it often requires. Often times we decide to make time for these endeavors, only to find that life has a persistent way of “happening” during those very free times we expected to utilize. Our rhythm may get interrupted, our commitment may start to waver, and those shining visions we had of the future may seem to recede farther into the distance with every step so that they seem like they were only ever a fantasy. Then, the negative thoughts come out to play, suggesting that we’ll never get anywhere, and who are we to have thought we could in the first place?
If some version of this is happening to you, congratulations—you’re human! Really making change happen is difficult, messy, and often time consuming well beyond our expectations and hopes. The world around us feeds us stories of “overnight” successes without acknowledging that most of these successful people actually put in a great deal of effort of some kind before they ever achieved any accolades or grand opportunities. Learning and growing in meaningful ways, building new skills and habits, requires long-term application of focus, creativity, and persistence. All of these take practice to wield consistently, but one of the biggest challenges you will face in the modern world is the scarcity of available time; not that this has been absent at any time in history, because time is one the one commodity that it’s tough to make more of, but the pace of life now is arguably more hectic than in times past. We live longer, but we also work more hours, and for more years, than ever before, while the notion of success has continually expanded to cover more ground.
Time management is therefore a key skill, and unfortunately one that we are not formally taught during our formative years in most schools. It’s something we’re usually left to figure out for ourselves—or not. Unless you’re naturally talented in this area, you may find that you never have a clear sense of how much you can realistically accomplish on any given day, nor how best to organize your tasks to get where you’d like to go. You may find that you always seem to be running, but without actually getting anywhere. If you never take the time to step back and think through new strategies suited for your unique needs, you may find yourself living in frustration, self-recrimination, and despair that things can ever be better. It’s easy to decide that everyone else knows things we don’t, or was born with skills we lack, but the truth is that most people have to work to gain these skills. Below are some suggestions for increasing your time management competence. This is one of the leverage points that almost any satisfying life must incorporate in order to run smoothly. Doing this work may not seem fun, but so much more becomes possible when your time management skills improve that it’s well worth putting effort here consistently until you’re more proficient.
· If you’re someone who tends to lose track of time, and find that something you thought would take an hour often ends up taking you three, you may need to consciously become more of a clock watcher for a while, or maybe always. As you work on a task, try keeping a clock in view and check it often. Make it a game to try and guess how much time has passed since the last time you looked. Keep this casual and light. If you play this game consistently, you may find that you become more attuned to the passage of time.
· You can also try setting alarms for certain periods of time so that you have warnings when you’re a quarter of the way into the amount of time you’ve allotted to a task, then halfway, then three quarters, so that you can continually measure where you are. The point is not to stress yourself out with hard interruptions, but to have a chance to speed up, slow down, or make new decisions about how to work.
· For example, if you’re halfway through the time you have, and nowhere near completing your task, you may need to stop, admit that your goal was unrealistic at this time, and either accept a lesser goal for the day or allot more time to continue your efforts.
· Note that people tend to be more naturally productive at different times of day. If you know that you’re a morning person, plan your most difficult tasks to be done first thing. If you tend to come alive in the evening, plan your productive time to take place then. Start to take note of when your high-energy times of day seem to be. There may be times when you need to work outside of these, but acknowledge that you will be less efficient in that case.
· After you become more adept at knowing how much time it takes for you to complete certain kinds of tasks at various times of day, you can begin to do a better job of planning your life. (The previous steps are necessary before this becomes plausible.) When you can plan realistically, you can steer your life with greater effectiveness and satisfaction.
· Once you are in a position to plan well, it’s time to start thinking about how to consolidate your movements so that you waste less time and effort. What would you like to get done today and how much time will each task take? Is there a way that you could accomplish two or more at once, or nearly so, by doing them in tandem? Is there a way that you can walk across the room only once, doing something on the way and something on the way back, rather than making a separate trip for each task? Planning can make a huge difference in how much time you seem to have and what you can accomplish. Again, challenge yourself to be creative about this, but treat it like a game. If you make it fun, your creativity is more likely to come to your aid with less effort and more consistency.
· Always plan a little “uh-oh” time into a task for things that will come up and surprise you—at least an added 10% of the time you were already planning. For example, if you’re doing errands, you may at some point be slowed down by road construction. If you build in a buffer, normal curveballs like this won’t frustrate you out nearly as much, and you’ll be much more likely to stay on track with your overall schedule.
· When you decide to make an important change to your life, you must talk seriously with those close to you about it. Communicate what you’re doing and why, and ask for their support. Be clear that the time you set aside for this new effort is essential to your making the change happen. If they respect and support your goal, there will be times when you might have faltered, but their support can help you use your time and keep up the effort necessary to keep growing.
· In turn, respect the time that others need in order to pursue their important goals. Support your loved ones in carving out and protecting that time.
· Occasionally emergencies happen. When they do, take care of them, and then get back to your important goals. Moving forward toward our dreams and goals is part of what makes us feel that we’re truly alive, so don’t allow surprises to permanently knock you off course.
· If all of this is particularly hard for you, consider hiring a teacher or coach to help you increase your skills.
You deserve to be living the kind of life that can be yours through efficient planning and time management. Resist hasty conclusions that you’re not capable of having what you want, and notice the ways in which you just need to build your skills in order to waste less time and effort. In later blogs, we’ll look at other ways to keep moving forward, but don’t ignore these fundamental skills.
When the World Breaks Your Heart
“There’s always failure. And there’s always disappointment. And there’s always loss. But the secret is learning from the loss, and realizing that none of those holes are vacuums.”
Tomorrow is Election Day here in the U.S., and on the following day we will know the result of the races so many have been running and working on for well over a year. The time, energy, and money spent on these campaigns amount to a massive investment, and passions are running hot about who the winners will be. Anytime we commit to a goal and pursue it with abandon, we run the risk of being sorely disappointed, and one thing that’s clear from late-breaking polls is that there will be large numbers disappointed in the aftermath of most races. These feelings will only be intensified by the convictions many hold about the dire importance of their candidates’ victories; political policy is one of the things that gets at our most strongly held worldviews about what is right and good.
This blog, then, is for everyone who will be disappointed in some way on November 9th, but also for anyone who has worked for a deeply significant goal of any sort, only to miss the mark in a heartbreaking letdown. No one can escape moments of disappointment and loss in life—this is part of what it is to be human—so how do we cope and regroup on the other side of such loss?
Before I address this question, let’s take a moment for a side trip to review some relevant principles found in many traditions of thought:
· Nothing that happens to us has only a single possible interpretation. We get to decide what the events in our lives mean. This truth gives us the opportunity to learn, grow, and become empowered by everything we experience if we so choose
· Even if you don’t believe that things happen for a reason, your choices about how to react to life events can allow all experience to serve your own and others’ highest good
· In the face of difficult, even awful, events, we can uphold what is best about humanity just because that is the kind of person we choose to be. We only have the power to govern our own actions, so that is where we can most effectively focus our efforts
· On a planet that now sustains billions of people, and more every day, we cannot avoid other people, or the natural differences of opinion that result from the interaction of billions of unique viewpoints. Cultivating compassion for others means challenging ourselves to appreciate our common humanity even when our differences irritate us
· The vast majority of people are basically after all the same things: A safe, peaceful environment and the prosperity to take care of their families so that they can enjoy long, happy lives
· People who are violent, selfish, and fearful are not happy, healthy people. (People who feel loved, safe, and secure, and who are able to receive necessary health care in the case of serious imbalance, do not behave this way.) Such people deserve our compassion and help, at the same time that everyone else deserves to be protected from their violence
· Nothing is permanent. In order to live a happy life, it helps to work on the ability to let go of rigidity about what should happen at any given moment; instead, we can strive to maintain a sense of humor, being present in the here and now, and appreciating what is good already even when our eyes are on an attractive goal
Now, on to our question. When the battering ram of a major disappointment knocks us down, we’re likely to confront a wash of emotions, including confusion, anger, sadness, and possibly jealousy or resentment, among others. Because we’re not generally taught how to process emotions, sometimes the best we know how to do is to stew in those emotions until the intensity subsides a bit and we’re better able to sweep them under the rug. They’re then hidden, but still gnaw at our faith and sense of self for as long as they remain undealt with. We then jump to mental decisions about what our experience means, and these are likely to follow what we learned by observing family members’ thinking patterns. You may do this without even noticing, thinking that the interpretation is obvious, whether that’s “The world is going to hell in a handbasket,” or “Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid and corrupt and ruining everything,” or simply, “I can never get what I want.” It’s normal to experience disappointment sometimes and have difficulty reimagining life without the hoped-for results. However, if we don’t make an effort to be conscious and constructive with our thinking about what happened, we’re likely to spiral downward into the swamp of those hidden feelings every time the subject comes up again.
Feelings follow thought, so if you want to feel better about something, part of doing so is elevating your mental game. Challenging yourself to find the good that has, or might, come out of an upsetting loss can make space for awareness of new potential paths that will both honor and build on your experience. When you find yourself mentally harping on the negative aspects of the situation, mistakes you made, ways in which you feel you were victimized, work to redirect your thinking to how going through that made you stronger or deeper, and make note of the ways in which that remains difficult. You may need to talk through things with a friend, or find a book about someone who endured disappointment to become someone you admire, in order to find new ways to mentally frame your experience. Unlearning old mental habits takes time and effort, so don’t be surprised if it’s harder than it seems like it should be. There’s a lot of great work being done on positive thinking, but don’t misunderstand—this is not all we have to do to work out of disappointment. It’s not a replacement for feeling, expressing, and allowing the transformation of your emotions.
The emotional side of things is where I see a lot less work being done and made available to others, but it’s absolutely essential to our health and well being, as well as our ability to return to effectiveness in everything we do. If we don’t deal with the lingering emotional effects of disappointment, it’s all too easy to let them fester and shape our sense of identity. So here’s a process for clearing out old emotional stuff that isn’t serving you:
· As mentioned above, first you give yourself license to feel it. We’re so often taught through the words and actions of others that emotions are weak, useless impediments to be steamrolled so that we can live life on our own terms. I find this to be horribly inaccurate, and dangerous in the long term, as repressed emotions have very real effects on our health. Feeling uncomfortable emotions is not the point, but it is a necessary step in the process. Emotions have messages for you that will help you, but you have to buck common thinking and be willing to tune into them in order to receive and leverage those messages.
· Next, you need to express your emotions. I find that the most helpful way to do this is by speaking out what you feel while Tapping. Doing so helps your body to relax and let go of the stressful effects of difficult emotions until they’re far less bothersome. Expression while Tapping also helps to enable new insights and thinking that will be more helpful. It can greatly accelerate your ability to let go of those old negative thought loops that are otherwise extremely difficult to disrupt.
· Lastly, you need to reach for a willingness to allow change. Even if you’re not sure how it could come about, just the openness to finding comfort and positive transformation will allow your body and emotional system to continue to release old, stuck impediments and poor thinking patterns, particularly if you continue to use EFT throughout this part of the process.
All of this can sound pretty foreign in the beginning, but with a little practice it becomes such a relief to be able to actually admit and transform how you feel, and free up your thinking so you can make real progress. Disappointment and loss need not define how you think of yourself or what you can achieve in the future. There is actually a process you can follow that will lead you upward and onward toward better things. You can learn to work with and customize it until it works well for your unique needs. Periodic heartbreak at disappointment is something you may continue to experience throughout your life, since there will always be injustice, mistakes, accidents, and clashes. Learning to honor and eventually transform it can make you a better, more compassionate, more sane human being.
Since we started within the context of political elections, I’ll round back with a few parting thoughts for when your disappointment is a matter of a goal missed or postponed (though of course these apply beyond the political sphere as well). It’s fine to want what you want, but let’s recall that no one can know everything, or clearly see all the future effects of any event; it’s helpful to have the humility to acknowledge that your interpretation of what’s best for the world is just that—an interpretation. Of course you’re important! You’re also one of billions of people on this planet. Sometimes your ego is going to want to be able to dominate the whole world, but I’m pretty sure that’s never going to happen, so let’s maybe try to have a sense of humor about that! Even the most famous historical figures never commanded absolutely everything in creation, and there’s more competition now than ever before! On the upside, though, there’s also more cooperation than ever before, and exciting possibilities for future solutions in which you can take part. Give yourself some time to recover, address your thinking and your emotions, and you can find a new path forward to pursue whatever excites your interest next. A world of opportunity will be waiting for you when you’re ready to rejoin it.
A Small Light in Darkness
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
In a previous blog, I wrote about the importance of basic meditation as a foundational tool, and the balancing effect of having a regular, deep experience of quiet and focus. Now I want to move on to one of the practical uses of this tool: Leveraging your intuition.
Now, before you decide that this is a “woo woo,” impractical concept, give me a moment to illustrate one of the ways in which your intuition can make a positive difference in your life. Every day in my coaching, as I use EFT (meridian tapping), my clients and I are often struck, and sometimes astonished, by the useful information that surfaces from unseen depths of the self. This is particularly noticeable in cases where we’re working on physical pain that we suspect or know has an emotional component. If the client has any experience at all with meditation, it’s usually not hard for her to ask a leading question of herself and wait quietly and calmly for an answer. That question might be something like, “What is the upside to having this problem, in other words, why might I be afraid to let it go?” While the client’s conscious mind might be certain that she is ready, willing and eager to move beyond the problem, given a few moments of quiet and space, some other part of the self may answer that the problem is a part of her identity, and she’s not sure who she would be without it. Other objections that surface might be that once the problem is gone, there’s no excuse for not being successful, and that might feel like a lot of pressure, or that if the client lets go of the problem and is able to succeed, others might not like her anymore. Often, when such an answer reveals itself, she will say that she truly had no idea that this objection was in there. With the new information on our side, we can make progress for her. Without her ability to find quiet, that little voice would have been impossible to hear. Usually once we start working with the new information, the pain will move, change, and lessen, sometimes permanently. This process is just remarkable to be a part of. But if the mind is always whirring like a hamster on a wheel, it will be harder to bring these natural moments of insight to the surface where we can leverage them for real, noticeable change.
Some people seem to be born with more intuitive talent than others, and some people are sure that they don’t have this capacity at all. I think it’s possible for everyone to have a valuable relationship with their intuition, but cultivating that relationship takes some time and effort—just like any relationship, whether we’re talking about one with other people, your body, mind, or spirit. Some other areas in which a relationship with your intuition can bear fruit are your ability to zero in on what you need in any given moment, or what direction will be best for you to take in the pursuit of a goal. Getting more in touch with it can also help you get a clearer “gut feeling” about someone else’s character or intentions, or whether someone you’ve just met has potential as a good friend or business associate for you. What’s difficult about opening up this capacity is that in the beginning, you have no idea whether an impression is right or not, and you’re likely to feel like you’re just making it up. Your conscious mind will try to tell you that only it is valuable, and that your efforts in this regard are ridiculous and futile. It’s only by allowing yourself to relax and wait, acknowledging but then releasing mind chatter, that you have a hope of becoming more adept at sensing something genuinely helpful.
When I’m going for an intuitive answer, I have made it a habit to stop when I feel unsure if my logical mind is making things up, clear thought away, and try again. If the impression really came from my intuition and not my mind’s machinations, it will come back in a similar way a second and even a third time, and I gain confidence that this idea might be helpful enough to run with. It’s fine to apply your mind to the question of how to use that information, and it’s a great idea to keep your wits about you as you choose how much to invest in it, especially in the beginning. This is not an exact science, and it’s always good to have a backup plan! As you keep playing with this process, you may find yourself gaining confidence in your relationship with the less conscious parts of yourself. I can tell you from experience that they have a lot to offer.
If you want to get started on opening up that intuitive box, experimenting with Tapping really is a great way to start. For instance, if there’s something you’ve been resisting tackling, you might not be sure why you keep finding reasons to procrastinate. If you start tapping and state how you’re feeling, how you just don’t want to do that thing even if your own inaction is starting to frustrate you, and then ask yourself why you don’t want to do it, you might be surprised as the clarity that results. The tapping will probably increase your ability to focus and be patient, and wait for any answer that might come up. If nothing does, well, no loss! You’ve just spent some time doing something that calms the body’s stress response and increases the likelihood that you’ll get a good night’s sleep! If you do this for just a few minutes each day, I strongly suspect that you will have an experience before too long that will prove to you that this Tapping thing really does do something. As mentioned last week, if you stay focused on your intention to improve the flow of your intuition and just keep trying without pressuring yourself too much, you increase the likelihood of success, as well as your ability to notice it when it happens.
Once you start to build some confidence in your ability to intuit information that is personal to you, you can then move on to greater orders of magnitude (for most people, at least), such as sensing information about subjects less related to you. I do find that we all have different intuitive propensities, just as some people find that they’re better at math or learning languages rather than learning about history once they start delving into those subjects in school. Some find it naturally easy to understand what someone else is feeling, while others might find that they can sometimes get a sense for who is calling on the phone without consulting caller ID. This can be a fun area to experiment in. Again, just use your common sense and tread lightly in relying too heavily on this kind of information. It’s only one aspect of the sum total of all information available to you in any given moment.
I hope you are able to see how even just this one benefit of a meditation practice can contribute measurably to your progress, even if only in very specific pursuits like using EFT. Sometimes people don’t make an effort to learn to meditate because the benefits don’t seem immediately practical, but what if your practice could lead to letting go of even some of a physical discomfort you might have? What if it could help you become more confident in the life choices you make for yourself every day? Getting started with meditation may not be the easiest thing you’ve ever done, but you can start small with just a few minutes here and there and still make overall gains. I know I’m never sorry that I’ve spent time on this because of all the ways in which it contributes to my life positively. There are many different philosophies and techniques out there. Dig around and find one that makes some sense to you and give it a try. Even if you never become more than a casual meditator, there are benefits waiting for you.
The Enigmatic Turbo Boost
“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
Last week we considered a systematic, structured approach to planning out strategies for change in your life. Using a template like that one can be extremely helpful to keep you on track. Doing so also helps to remind you that it’s normal for change to be a process that requires a continuing loop of thought, work, and experience—most of us don’t have a functioning magic wand to make change instant and effortless, unfortunately! However, there’s also another side to this coin…a more feminine-energy aspect of the change process as I see it, and that’s intent.
Just deciding that you’re going to do something and holding the intent as you go about the business of the structured approach opens you to unpredictable leaps of insight that might not favor you otherwise. Inventors and artists often say that the idea just appears, or the story tells itself. In order to benefit from this kind of serendipity, it’s important to pose a request to the unconscious parts of yourself (in which you could also include your connection to a higher power if that makes sense to you) to send you answers your conscious mind might not find. I call that request intent. It really does have a power that’s hard to describe because the experiences it creates are not structured or linear, but more like the capricious comings and goings of a bird in the night.
Here’s the process I recommend:
· Once you’ve gained some clarity using the more structured approach, define the problem you wish to solve as specifically as you can. Use positive language, as in, “I intend to come up with an idea/find information that will help me to become well easily and in an enjoyable way” rather than “I don’t want to be in pain.”
· Even if you have absolutely no idea how this could happen or doubt that it could, be open to finding a solution. Invoking an open state allows help to arrive in ways that can be surprising.
· Be willing to be a little stupid while you wait. In other words, refuse to worry about how inspiration might strike, and ignore anyone who tries to tell you that a solution is impossible. I personally know some people who have done “the impossible,” and there are plenty of people you can read about who have too. Sometimes finding what you need just takes some time.
· Know that the subconscious deals in the language of symbol. Some people find it useful to keep a pad of paper by the bed at night in case they have a dream that seems meaningful, or some interesting idea that might be helpful. You might think you’ll remember it in the morning, but often you won’t if you don’t write it down.
· Be on the lookout, in a relaxed way, for anything you come into contact with in daily life that might apply to your problem. Keeping your intent in mind can do wonders to help you notice things you otherwise wouldn’t—an overheard conversation, an advertisement, a passage from a book that sparks an insight you can use to move forward.
· Holding your intent in mind also helps you to focus on what you want to move toward rather than the thing you don’t want. For most people, this feels a lot better and helps in maintaining openness to possibility. That’s more productive than dogged pessimism that can result when you harp mentally on the problem. That tends to drain people’s energy and creativity in a hurry.
· When you think about reaching a solution, enjoy the vision of how that will be, how it will feel, and what it will enable you to do. This helps to make the end result seem more real and keep you excited about the prospect as you wait.
· It’s also a good idea to share your intent with others you can rely on to be supportive. Those others can then keep an eye out with you, and may become the source of new information and ideas you wouldn’t have come across yourself.
· Avoid sharing your intent with anyone who might not be supportive.
· Take moments throughout the day to be grateful for what is good in your life already, and for solutions you’ve already found that were a big help in reaching a goal or a milestone.
While you don’t have to become a single-minded, obsessed weirdo about this, I do recommend that you bring your intent back to mind several times per day. Otherwise it’s easy to become busy and forget all about it for days or weeks at a time, and then you’re losing all the benefits you might have enjoyed with a bit more focus. And don’t worry if all of this seems a little awkward at first. It may take you some time to become comfortable with the idea of focusing on an intent that might seem unlikely; your mind may tell you that there’s no point, but the mind is not in control of all things. Working with your intent is not a substitute for structure and strategic action, but it can be a real boost to a process you’ve begun to move your life forward. Try it out and see what happens. You just might find that interesting experiences are set in motion in ways you couldn’t have predicted. Structure and intent together form a synergistic whole that you might find to be a new adventure in the pursuit of your ideal.