So Much Happier Blog
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.
Weaving Progress
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
For most of us, the human experience is complicated; everyone I know has a love/hate relationship with life on this planet, in that we have things that we absolutely love to do, see, and enjoy…but we also have serious issues with some of the mechanics of how things and people here behave. It takes a lot of effort to just go about one’s daily routine and take care of the items necessary to stay alive, and it can be extremely challenging at times (if not all the time) to find the space and energy to work and play the way we’d like to. We’ve all had the experience of having things humming along in some semblance of balance, only to have several difficult things happen at once to break the rhythm and call us into a whole bunch of activity we weren’t expecting and didn’t want. Devices break down. People close to us have urgent needs, disappoint us, or even pass away. World events change the course of our lives in ways that are frustrating at best or catastrophic at worst. It’s a lot to balance, to say the least.
In order to carve out more of what makes all the effort seem worth it to you, there are things you can be doing along the way to make it easier to weather the next bout of challenge. While your attention is being taken up by handling a crisis, the best you’re probably going to be able to do is to practice what you’ve already begun to establish, so these are things to have an eye on when your life is not at its most demanding. They are worth working at as a long game, and let’s face it, if you’re alive, you’re never finished with these. All of the factors that make up your life continually change, and there will always be a new balance to create, but the more skill you can build in each area, the more grace you’ll be able to draw from when you’re called upon to dig deep. Here are the basic areas in which you might choose to focus in order to make progress when you have capacity:
Internal resources. This is the world of factors that are more within your control, and it encompasses the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual:
· The quality of the food you eat, the sleep you allow yourself, the exercise you get regularly
· How well you express and manage your emotions, including through the use of tools such as Tapping/EFT
· How well you manage the thoughts, relationships, and situations that give rise to those emotions
· Your mental habits and discipline, and practices like meditation or journaling in which you grow in your understanding of and ability to manage your mind
· Your general beliefs about yourself and the world
· Your spiritual beliefs and practices
External resources, and your ability to handle interacting with them while maintaining your own equilibrium. These are the factors that are not within your control:
· Basic physics, the intrinsic properties of the world around us
· The beliefs and actions of singular people
· The opportunities available to you at any given time, your positioning in relationship to others and the whole
· World events that are a product of mass movements—these by definition don’t start or end with one person
The areas in which you choose to grow will define your life in many ways. You might choose to focus on an area in which you feel least functional in order to limit the lows you will experience going forward in that area. You also might, as discussed in last week’s blog, focus on putting more energy into an area where you’re already skilled and passionate while finding ways to cooperate with others so that you don’t need to become expert in the areas that are hardest for you. When you read through the bullets above, which areas seem most appropriate for your next round of efforts? If you’ve read this far, you’re most likely someone who likes to keep improving yourself and your life, so giving this some thought will probably open up ideas about progress that would excite you and strengthen your ability to handle future challenge while maintaining better balance and more of a sense of ease.
Particularly if you’re someone who is sensitive to and aware of the people and events around you, I don’t think life as a human ever becomes easy. One of the things that can be counted on is that your life never turns out exactly the way you expected. And yet, this is part of what makes life thrilling—the element of surprise, the constant interweaving of an array of complex factors that promotes endless possibility. That will not change no matter how much we wish it to, so what can you do to appreciate the overall tapestry and the colors you’re weaving into the whole? What can you do to turn up your ability to savor your everyday experience of the process and the beauty it offers?
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.
Where the Rubber Meets the Road
“Endure and persist; this pain will turn to good by and by.”
There are many personal qualities that are important contributors to long-term success, but I’ve been writing about some of the most powerful ones over the last few weeks. Along with focus and creativity, persistence is absolutely necessary if you’re to keep yourself moving ever forward in life toward greater mastery of your chosen subject matter. Life has a way of surprising us with all manner of challenges no matter how well we plan. It’s easy to become discouraged by the constant disruptions and the necessary adjustments those challenges call upon us to make. In order to hang in there long enough to get where you want to go, you’ll need to be able to fire up your persistence day in and day out, almost no matter what may be happening around you. Yes, I know, that’s a tall order! I can hear some of you groaning already—this is starting to sound very un-fun.
And yet, what if you could find ways to maintain a calm sense of balance in the midst of chaos? What if you knew how to feed your confidence throughout challenge so that persistence didn’t seem like such a Herculean effort? These are just skills that can be learned, like any other. While some people will be more naturally gifted than others in any area, almost everyone can become at least functional in most skill sets. If you’re someone whose motivation gets knocked off course often, such that you’re often starting and stopping your efforts on things that really matter to you, here are some things to try on the road to becoming unstoppable.
· Remember the importance of focus? You’ll need to apply it to keep reminding yourself that persistence is a skill, not some magical quality that you weren’t born with, so why bother? Some people were taught the skills that feed persistence early, and some need to learn them later, but you have to acknowledge that it’s possible to learn them before you can effectively build them.
· You’ll also need to focus on what’s important to you consistently. Every day. Find ways to do this that appeal to you. It’s good to make this fun, so indulge yourself! If you like, write reminders to yourself on bright sticky notes and scatter them around where you’ll see them throughout the day, or make a recording of yourself repeating your top priorities and play it back in the car, or take a few minutes before you get out of bed and before you go to sleep at night to go over them in your mind and enjoy how they express the truth of you. There can be great joy in just repeating your most important values to yourself often. You might be surprised how enjoyable and inspiring this becomes.
· Practice reviewing your priorities before making decisions throughout your day. When you get into the habit of making sure that what’s most important to you is at least considered in your smallest decisions, you reinforce your ability to strategize with them always in mind. When the larger, more pivotal decisions come up, it will be easier to do the same, and you’ll become brilliant at making decisions that serve your values and goals.
· Keep a journal on decisions you made and how well they support your goals. This is an excellent way to give yourself credit for and celebrate good decisions, as well as notice decisions that you made in a hurry, forgetting to think through what would really be best for you and everyone else before charging ahead. If you don’t take time to frequently review what’s happening in your life, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns and find that you’re getting nowhere. If you keep an eye on things, you have opportunities to do better every day, and you’ll progress much more quickly.
· Sometimes, you will have a bad day. You will need the love and support of at least a few people who you can count on to care about you no matter what. Practice reaching out to them when things aren’t terrible just to talk through a choice or share a win or a concern. This will make it more natural and easy for you to ask for attention when you really need it. Everyone needs support sometimes, and being reminded that someone else cares about you and believes in you helps restore your courage and keep you in the game.
· Manage your mind and your emotions. This cannot be said enough. Your mind will have a tendency to judge you, and others, and spiral into negativity. If you want to build persistence, you must gain the ability to arrest this cycle and bring your mind back to a neutral state at least, and practice more resourceful thinking. You don’t have to pretend that everything is always rosy, but if you’re always indulging in negativity, there’s no way you’re going to reach your goals—and if you did by some stroke of luck, you wouldn’t be able to enjoy them. Your emotions, in the moment at least, proceed from your thinking. There are also probably a bunch stuck in your system from previous events and thinking. For clearing those, the best technique I’ve ever found is EFT/Tapping, and it’s easy and free to do, so if you haven’t taken the time yet, learn the basics and try it! It’s so much easier to make good decisions when you’re not being overwhelmed with outdated mental and emotional habits left over from the past.
· Be stubborn. Every two-year-old knows how to do this like a champ. If you’ve forgotten how, channel your inner two-year-old and stamp your feet and yell, “No! No, no NO! I want _______!” at the top of your lungs every once in a while. Jump up and down for added effect. In addition to being hilarious and getting your blood pumping, this can reconnect you with your most basic desires and your conviction that you deserve to get them. Small children don’t spend time worrying about whether it’s prudent to want a pet unicorn, they just go ahead and want it. When you really connect with your desires, a lot of energy becomes available to you that you can use to take action. Your zest for life resurfaces. You can’t achieve goals if you’re always exhausted and don’t remember what all the effort is for. You have to let yourself want things in order to feel fully alive. Even if they seem impossible, your desires have important messages for you, and help you to keep finding your direction in the face of adversity.
A few caveats:
· Sometimes persistence is not the right tool for the job. If you’re persisting but continually missing the mark, it may be time for a new strategy and some course correction. Mindless persistence can end up looking a lot like reckless stupidity. You want to stay open to learning new things, and benefiting from outside perspectives.
· There will always be moments in any life when it’s time to take a break, either just for vacation, to rest and recharge, or because you’re going through a major transition of some sort—but when you can decide when to take time rather than always struggling to recover enough to get back on the horse, that’s a better place to be.
· Each of us has things we’re just really, really not suited for, in addition to things we’re great at. If you’ve applied yourself enough to gain some ability, but still loathe and get bogged down by a certain activity, it’s wise to partner with someone who is good at it, or find other ways to work around doing it.
· If you’re someone who is motivated by joining with others in some way, then by all means find a buddy who can help you keep at it on a daily basis, or pay a coach to help you stay focused on your goals and the actions you need to take to keep growing. Most people enjoy effort more if they can share accomplishments with others who cheer them on and appreciate their progress. Relationships make life, and our successes, more meaningful and more fun. Look, we brought it back around to fun! And we should. Why be so serious when we can build fun into all of our days with just the intention to do so? Balance means playing as well as we work, because play helps us to relax, de-stress, and regain creativity.
Maintaining persistence is a lifelong pursuit, like maintaining good health. We’re never done. But if you don’t ever get around to investing time and effort into creating basic habits that will keep you going, you can’t expect to live the kind of life you want. Start small if persistence is hard for you, but start! You can do this.
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.
Squirrel!
“The direction of your focus is the direction your life will move. Let yourself move toward what is good, valuable, strong and true.”
In last week’s blog about time management, I mentioned that creating change requires focus, creativity, and persistence. This week I’d like to zero in on focus. The achievement of any long-term goal requires sustained application of focused effort and attention, so let’s consider what this means and how we can bring focus to bear for maximum results.
Focus is:
· Cultivating the ability to apply your consciousness to a goal in the present moment so that you can get high-quality work done
· Tuning out everyday distractions like ambient noise, junk mail, and anything else unimportant that might tempt you to swing your attention away from what is important to you
· Keeping any fears and doubts that crop up along the way in perspective so that they don’t stop you short
· Continually returning to the work that needs to be done in order to keep your project moving
Bringing all of your mental powers to the subject at hand requires that you live in such a way that you’re prepared to do so when it’s time. There’s no way around it—if you want to stay the course over time and reach your biggest goals, you have to take care of yourself, consuming adequate nutrition, getting the amount of sleep that is optimal for you most of the time, and managing your mind and emotions. It takes practice to build your attention span and to keep returning your busy mind to the task in front of you, as well as a strong, calm emotional center. Meditation is, in my experience, one of the best tools for creating these abilities and conditions, and I suggest that you look for a variety that suits you and practice it to help support your ability to focus. If you get into the habit of calming your mind, you supercharge your capacity to expand your attention span and the quality of attention you’re capable of offering to any given task or person.
In order to resist the senseless pull of distractions, you need to devote time to reminding yourself of what you’re working so hard for. You need to imagine vividly and savor the sweet rewards of achieving your goal before you do so, constantly remembering the compelling reasons why it’s worth the effort so you can stay inspired. And you need to attend to uncomfortable emotions that arise and make it difficult for you to stay on task. Tapping/EFT is a fantastic help in this, as it can make it much quicker and easier to process and release emotional buildup, and clarify any actions you authentically want to take from a calm, balanced place so you don’t make mistakes by acting impulsively.
It’s a great idea to make sure that your workspace is clean, uncluttered, and comfortable enough for you to spend time there. If you can make it attractive and fun to be in, even better. Making sure you can play music you like, look at artwork you love, and have supplies at hand that are colorful and appealing can all be important. This is worth your thought and effort, because everything you can do to make your work enjoyable helps to keep you engaged—if you like your environment, it will be easier to be productive.
Time management is also important to protecting your ability to focus, as if you’re always hurrying and overwhelmed, you’ll find it hard to be fully present where you are and get your best work done. It’s important to find time for everything that’s a priority in your life even if it means slowing the pace of your progress toward your goals. If time management is hard for you, go back and read last week’s blog again for ideas about how to regain some control over your schedule. There are some basic skills we all need to work on that make working effectively with time possible, but it’s not something we tend to get a lot of formal support for. It’s also very unglamorous to do the work to build these skills, so it may not seem like an attractive way to spend our time. Even so, these skills make so much more possible that it makes sense to do it anyway.
If you’ve done your best with all of these points and you’re still struggling, it might be a good time to consider whether you could use some help. Maybe you just need some support from a friend or through coaching, or maybe you’re dealing with a specific issue like a learning disability (there are lots of great resources and techniques for coping with these now) or ADD/ADHD. Before I knew adults with ADD who could explain it to me, I can safely say that I was not aware of just how different someone else’s inner world could be from mine, despite having had a variety of experiences as well as a history of relating to eclectic friends. There are chemical conditions like this one, depression, and others that can make everyday tasks a struggle beyond what most people encounter. If you suspect that you may be in this boat, get some more information and find a professional to help guide you as you explore your personal experience and your options. Any unnecessary struggle is a waste of your time and vital energy, plus it’s just super frustrating and demoralizing. There is help available if you just reach out for it.
Next week we’ll explore the importance of developing persistence, which also strongly supports focus. In the meantime, I hope this gives you a few things to think about as you look for ways to optimize your happiness and productivity.
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.
Method or Madness
“It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.”
It’s that time of year when people’s fancy turns to self-improvement. Everyone’s doing it! We’ve indulged, we’ve rested, and enthusiasm for a fresh start is rising! There’s nothing at all wrong with this—in fact it can make life fun to take part in seasonal and societal shifts as they happen—and joining with others can help to reinforce your own commitment to positive change. If you want to jump on this bandwagon, here are just a few thoughts to help you add checks and balances to your process (not just for politics, people!) so that your decisions really suit your needs and purposes:
· It seems that, in January, physical fitness goals dominate the day. While improving your physical health and fitness is always a worthy goal, and one that supports pretty much everything else you probably want to do and experience, adding an aggressive exercise regimen is not the best place to start for everyone. You may be tempted to think that you have to go whole hog or nothing, but this kind of thinking gets a lot of people injured before the month is out. That will throw a monkey wrench into your momentum for sure. Try to keep any schemes for physical exercise moderate for your current level of fitness so that you’re not adding unsustainable stress to your body, and so that you don’t get stopped short before you can begin to solidify healthy new habits. This is one of those areas in which you will never be finished. There’s no such thing as “done.“ So don’t freak out and overdo, but do plan activities that will qualify as your next phase of achievement.
· For that matter, try to keep any resolution for change to a moderate scheme. We’re often taught that in order to get anything worthwhile done, we need to decide what to accomplish and how, and then thoroughly ignore thoughts, feelings, and life circumstances that might make adhering to the plan difficult. This is the best thinking of two thousand years of male-energy-dominant thinking, and while it has its merits, it also exposes us to unnecessary likelihoods of stress, burnout, unhappiness that results from an unbalanced approach to life, and shame if we fail in a pursuit that was woefully unrealistic to begin with. I’m not saying that no one should take on big goals, but we need to make sure we’re thinking about fitting new items into the context of a whole life with multiple demands. We need to think about building in flexibility, and appropriate moments for reconsideration when circumstances change, so that we can stay in the game for the long haul as life throws distractions our way.
· Just because someone you know or read about is taking on something that sounds interesting or inspiring, that doesn’t mean you need to take on the same. Focus. Really think about what you feel called to learn and grow into this year. There is such a thing as right timing. Events and repetitive pain points in your life may be pointing to certain areas in which it would really behoove you to acquire new skills. Spend a few minutes noting whether there has been a recurring situation in your life lately that you could handle better if you just noticed and addressed your part in it. This might be a more appropriate focus for your energies than climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, or what have you.
· No one is in a better position than you to decide what’s the right next step for your goals and your life. Of course, it can be helpful to talk through decisions like this with someone supportive, but make sure you don’t turn to someone who has strong agendas of their own for you who might limit your sense of possibility. It’s fine to give important people in your life input on the choice and timing of your projects, but it helps to start with your own opinions about what would be ideal for you before beginning any negotiations of this kind. A great deal of your own power flows from following your heart about who you want to be and what you want to strive for in this life. Don’t abdicate your opportunity to get clear on your own desires and intuition about you.
I hope this helps you to make good decisions for the year ahead. Whatever you do or don’t decide to pursue in 2017, I wish you a happy, healthy year filled with blessings and challenges worthy of you.
Year in Review
“Everyone has a plan ‘till they get punched in the mouth.”
Despite the fact that this month is a whirlwind for many people, most of us are still managing to find odd moments to judge ourselves against the hopes and goals we had for ourselves in 2016. We may feel good about our achievements, but we’re also quite likely to be dealing with disappointment about where we may have missed out on things we wanted very much. No matter how good life is, some part of us is aware of the ways in which things could be better, and it prowls the corners of the mind resenting this gap and grumbling about the injustice of it.
Perhaps now is a good time to actually tune into that voice and see what it has to say. Periodically assessing where you are is an important part of continually moving forward, and the voice of discontent can be valuable. Taking a few quiet moments to write down how 2016 went for you personally can help orient you as you naturally begin to think about the approach of 2017. Much of this past year, you were likely doing the best you could. If you weren’t, the constructive thing is not to berate yourself, but to gain understanding about why. Ask yourself: Where do you feel you got stuck this year? What are you disappointed and frustrated about that maybe you’ve been avoiding admitting? Stuffing down these feelings won’t help you resolve anything emotionally, and it also won’t support your learning and growth going forward. What would you do over if you could and why? How would you like to be able to handle a situation like this in the future if it comes up again? And what skills will you need to work on in order to become the kind of person who can easily handle it that way?
Doing this before you get drawn into the annual storm of New Year’s resolutions peer pressure will reveal the desires that are most important to you. If you must resolve to change something, let it be supportive of your movement toward the goals that are authentic to you. If you are having trouble figuring out why something is so hard for you, it might be time to call in an expert or a trusted friend for a perspective check. You might need to get a little creative about working with your subconscious to clear out problems that have been dogging you (Tapping, NLP, and hypnosis are great ways to address this kind of issue, and there are plenty of others.) Even though recurring patterns can be extremely galling, know that you can make progress on these if you are willing to keep working on them and trying things until you find something that works for you. Everyone gets exhausted sometimes. When you do, it’s ok to step back, renew yourself, and then get back to it.
So, give yourself a break already. Nothing in life ever goes exactly according to plan. That’s the nature of the human experience. Enjoy any holidays you celebrate this month with zest, and celebrate what went right for you this year with every fiber of your being. In fact, that would be a helpful resolution for 2017—I will celebrate everything that goes right! I will acknowledge something that brought me joy at the end of every day, and celebrate the happiness of others as well! If you acknowledge where you are discontent, and then keeping moving back toward focus on what’s working, it will be easier to keep yourself feeling happy and enthusiastic throughout the new year. If you can do that, all your hopes and dreams become more possible.
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.
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.
Silence Is Golden
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”
Even if you’ve never meditated, you’ve probably heard that one of the benefits of many kinds of meditation practice is supposed to be a quieter mind. Since most cultures today place great value on the use of the mind, the benefits of a quiet mind can seem mysterious. Use it or lose it, right? Aren’t we supposed to be exercising our minds in order to stretch their capacities and keep them nimble? Well, just as our bodies need both weight-bearing exercise, cardio, stretching, AND rest in order to function at peak capacity, our minds need various kinds of use and rest in order to provide us with the capacities we want from them.
Modern life is so hectic, demanding, and distracting that we don’t generally get much time for silence and reflection. This leaves is with a mind that is mostly running at high speed all the time. With a mind so busily engaged, it’s harder to notice the patterns that are running on autopilot, keeping us stuck in ruts that we never seem to be able to break out of for reasons that elude us. When we put ourselves into a situation where nothing is required of us, and practice meditation with the aim of quieting the mind, we allow the mind to rest a bit; by the way, this in turn allows the body’s stress response to calm down, which is great for physical health—a bonus side effect! While it definitely takes practice to make progress in disengaging from normal patterns of thought, so that benefits may not be immediately felt, over time, it’s possible to build familiarity with new mind states. This familiarity makes it easier to take them with you, or recreate them when you’re experiencing something difficult, so that you can function more smoothly throughout your life. A hyper mind isn’t necessarily a resourceful mind, just as a chronically tense muscle isn’t always useful—it needs to be able to relax and stretch in order to do everything it’s meant to do.
When you’re meditating for the ability to quiet the mind, there are numerous benefits that I know I immediately experience, and you may as well, such as:
· As I head toward greater quiet, my mind will usually chime in a few times to reveal things I need to do or remember, which is legitimately helpful. I can make note of these and continue the process. Without giving myself a few minutes of quiet, I would not have remembered these, and opportunities would have been lost.
· As my mind slows down, I become more aware of my body, and anything about it that I need to address.
· I start to notice more about what is really going on with me, how I really feel about things that have been going on recently in my life. I begin to feel more like myself and less like someone just running around at the behest of every distracting thing I encounter every day.
· I begin to feel that there’s more time available to me than I would otherwise.
· I begin to feel calmer, more at peace, and more powerfully able to define what’s important and where I will choose to put my energy and focus.
· I feel more in touch with my intuition.
· My body feels more pleasantly calm and peaceful.
· I feel like my to do list falls away and I’m able to recognize the goodness of just being alive, which at this point is much more a feeling than a thought.
Once you’ve practiced an expanded state of mental quiet, there are many other meditation techniques to pursue depending on what you want, but being able to create that quiet space is a foundational skill without which only certain kinds of progress can be made. This state also becomes something you can remind yourself to revert to when you find yourself getting hyper for any reason. It can immediately help you to regain helpful perspective on the ways in which you may have been contributing to your own stress. Bringing a greater sense of calm to challenge allows you to stay more creative, less reactive, and more reasonable. You’re then more likely to be able to solve problems and work well with others, which makes you less likely to spend your time feeling stuck and confused.
In a seemingly unlikely way, spending time creating mental quiet leads to greater focus and energy, which can make it seem like you have more time rather than having lost it in the pursuit. Even if you don’t think you can spend more than a few minutes practicing, you can still benefit from the attempt to create a few minutes of internal quiet throughout your day here and there. I highly recommend making this a little game that you play with yourself. You may have other mental games you already play, like doing crossword puzzles. This is just another category of game that builds capacity your brain needs to function with excellence.
Girl Power!
“Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.”
I have a beef with a lot of the language I hear out there in the motivation and personal development arenas. There are many wonderful teachers giving their all and providing excellent information. However, too often I find the available advice to be heavily skewed toward that which boils down to exhortations to students to man up, stop whining, and just do it, whatever the "it" of the moment may be.
We all have access to both masculine and feminine energy and wisdom, but because the past two thousand years or so have been a time of dominance of masculine energy, experience, and thinking, most of us alive now have all been taught that action and tangible results are what matter in life. The measure of success during this time has been how much wealth one could amass (whether or not one had any plan for actually utilizing it) and how much power and influence one could gain over others. Not to say that the desire to gain rewards is bad or that masculine energy is no good! It can be a very helpful and motivating thing to enjoy achievement, rewards, and the process of earning a place of respect in the world. Masculine energy, and men, have a unique and important viewpoint to contribute that is 50% of the necessary picture. But we've been severely out of balance with the feminine energy side of things, which would vote that rewards not be gained at the expense of others' rights, health, and safety; that wealth be used to improve daily life for self and community rather than being endlessly hoarded as a symbol of self-importance; that those who are not the most competitive, aggressive high achievers still have inestimable value that may reveal itself through states of being rather than states of doing.
Through my experiences with clients and my own personal work, I have found that the reasons behind the difficulties most people have in creating the success they want generally lie in accumulated pain and in fear, rather than in laziness or weakness. They don't need to be shamed into action, particularly since shame is a poor motivator—it may spur someone to temporary action, but it's likely to leave him more demoralized than when he started once any challenge appears to block his wave of progress. We don't need to be whipped into a panicked frenzy about how little time we have to spend on this planet through rallying cries like, "You can sleep when you're dead!" Instead, we need to learn motivation techniques that are self-perpetuating, those that have a tendency to build momentum over time; such techniques are built around positive feelings like fun, appreciation, and the satisfaction of personal values. If we try to power our dreams and goals on shame or frenzy, we inevitable burn out, because prolonged exposure to these feelings steals energy rather than creating it. A few people may continue to pick themselves up and keep going through cycles of ultra-high activity and demoralizing crashes, but for most people, the extreme swings that mark the reality of this paradigm are not helpful or productive.
In pursuing what you truly want, here's what I suggest to help you bring the power of the feminine viewpoint into play:
· When envisioning a goal, start with the ideal, whether or not it seems attainable. Then, work forward from where you are now and backward from where you want to be to come up with a sequence of steps to get there. This is essential work, but also, know that the roadmap you're creating is just a draft that you're likely to revise many times unless the goal is very simple. Avoid becoming rigid about adhering to your plan, and attempt to remain open and curious. Curiosity is an aspect of feminine energy.
· Keep in mind that even a master in a given field doesn't know everything, and must constantly adjust plans in order to stay on course as life throws curveballs. Get used to the idea that flexibility is an absolutely necessary life skill, and challenge yourself to build this capacity little bits at a time. For example, you might want to rehearse a sequence of supportive thoughts that you can bring to bear when something unexpected happens. Then, when you’re interrupted or required to reconsider your course, you have that thought string to fall back on to help you remember that this is not a disaster. Compassion for the self and others is a gift of feminine energy.
· Make space for your intuition, by which I mean the mysterious gifts of your unconscious mind's workings, your connection with and experiences with others, and your connection with the divine if that's something you believe in. This is a huge area, but one worth investing in in whatever way you are inspired to do so. Many of the world's most creative and prolific artists and inventors have powered their plans with ideas that seem to flow to them effortlessly in odd moments. We can all learn to be more open to such processes. Intuition is one of the superpowers of the feminine, and we can all learn to make use of it.
· Make sure you think about how your values underlie the goals you pursue. If your goal is not truly an expression of your highest values, achieving it will be unsatisfying. Take time to really listen to what’s in your heart about what brings you joy. Creating harmony with the self, as well as with others, is a feminine-energy strength.
· As long as you take time to celebrate and feel good about your small victories, making progress can and should be fun. Most people almost never stop and appreciate what has gone well and the small achievements they’ve made within a larger process. In failing to do so, they leave a huge source of daily happiness and renewal on the table. If you’re not having fun, you need to focus more on why you want to achieve your goal, and how great it will feel when you do. It’s fine to acknowledge that you’re not sure how you’re going to find your way to success, but then it’s time to get off that topic and get back to feeling great about where you’ve decided to go. This greatly contributes to the creation of positive motivation and energy, and should be part of your daily routine. Fun and playfulness are some of feminine energy’s greatest strengths.
· If you feel stuck, it may be because you’re struggling with one of your emotions; try actually allowing yourself to be open to any messages that the emotion has for you. Even the most unpleasant emotions have wisdom to offer if we’re willing to listen for it. Talk out or write down what you’re feeling. You may uncover something that you’ve been afraid to admit, but is your truth at the moment. If you try to sweep all your emotions under the rug, you’re wasting a lot of energy, because it takes effort to keep them under there. If you let them come up and examine them, you get that energy back, and you can apply it to whatever you want. You get even more energy back if you’re willing to actually feel those feelings so they can be released and transformed. Again, ask for help from a professional if you’re stuck. Refusing to acknowledge emotions is not a sign of strength, it’s a sign of fear, and if indulged, it will lead to brittleness and eventual meltdowns. The willingness to confront your personal truths is one of the feminine aspects of courage.
Here are some of the ways in which it's ok to be uncomfortable as you work toward the fruition of your best ideas:
· Say you find that the next step of your roadmap requires that you learn something that's not fun or natural for you. Does this mean that you're on the wrong track? No! It means that you were not born knowing how to do everything that life requires. Welcome to life on planet Earth! It's usually best to get a basic grounding in the skills you need, even if you decide to find or hire help with that skill going forward. You don't have to master every skill, but you need to know enough to be able to supervise or partner with others effectively. Learning something brand new is uncomfortable, but this discomfort is just part of the process of growth. Flexibility is a feminine aspect of power.
· Working toward a big goal can be frightening. You may need to grow into a more expanded, more competent person in order to get to it, and you may wonder if you can, or even should, do this. After all, who will you be then? What will you have to give up? Will you like yourself? Will your loved ones still like you? How will you cope? If you're confronting issues of identity, but your goal is something you really want, don't be afraid to get help from a friend, a psychological professional, or a coach in finding a way through your dilemma. If you don't resolve your conflict, you're likely to encounter resistance from your unconscious mind. This can take the form of all kinds of obstacles, from illness or injury to confusion and lethargy to fears that stop you in your tracks. Your subconscious mind is the more feminine-energy part of your mind. It’s also a much bigger, more influential part of your mind, so you might as well learn to work with it rather than against it.
· You may worry about how your life will change if you do reach your goal. What if people criticize you? What if you get a lot of unwanted attention? Or you might just worry that you won't be able to make it happen at all. Either way, you need a constructive way to deal with worries and fears. There may be past experiences and traumas you need to heal. As usual, I will recommend EFT/Tapping here. It's a fantastic tool for helping you to calm yourself down and regain perspective so that you can go about your business resourcefully. When we act in states of fear, we have less brain power at our disposal, less access to our creativity, and often less physical coordination. When we act from a sense of confidence, we tend to have a much better experience. It’s worth some effort to change your emotional, mental, and physical state before making decisions or putting plans into action. Healing is one of feminine energy’s superpowers.
· You may encounter the negativity and naysaying of others. While this can be hurtful, no one but you has the right to decide what is appropriate, or possible, for you. Even if Negative Nellie has your best interests at heart, she is not the boss of you! Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something when you feel deep down that it's part of your life's purpose to try. Find more positive people to support you, and work on your own resistance to negativity. Rehearse saying something like, "Thank you for caring about me. I'll think about about what you've said." Then proceed to make whatever you believe is the best decision for yourself. People often think they’re protecting us by discouraging us from endeavors that seem dangerous to them, even if their fears are based in their own personal issues that have nothing at all to do with you. It’s up to you to decide what’s worth your time and effort. Feminine energy can be stubborn, and this can be a good thing!
· Making mistakes and failing at attempts feels bad. It won't generally kill you, though, and through these experiences, we often learn the most valuable lessons about how to get where we want to go in ways that we won't ever forget. Take the time to review what went wrong, talk it over with someone you respect, and put your new awareness to use going forward. The more comfortable you become with the idea that you will sometimes fail, the less likely you'll be to freak out and quit—and the more you'll learn over time. You'll also end up with terrific stories, which will make you a more entertaining human being. Everyone wins! Being able to laugh at oneself and the absurdities of life is another aspect of feminine power.
I hope you can now see that the more feminine-energy parts of you that may resist forward motion have valuable gifts to offer you if you pay attention, instead of trying to trample them under a stampede of frenzied, oblivious action. By all means, get inspired by the ideas of making great contributions and reaping spectacular rewards, but please don't allow anyone to convince you that you should ignore 50% of your own available wisdom. When you’re uncomfortable, allow yourself to pay attention to what’s going on, and write it out or verbalize it so you can decide whether there’s an important message in your resistance. Even if not, it’s best to find a way to care for the resistant parts of you rather than forcing yourself to soldier on despite your discomfort. Fear is a part of life, but there are things you can do to dial it down in a loving, compassionate way and get out of the fearful perspective without self-judgment. Once you do, you’ll be more likely to succeed and more able to enjoy the journey to everything you want. What’s stopping you from making the progress you want? Go ahead, write it down and see if there’s a helpful message in there for you!