What work I have done I have done because it was play. If it had been work, I shouldn't have done it. Who was it who said "Blessed is the man who has found his work"? Whoever it was, he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says "his work" -- not "somebody else's work".The work that is really a man's own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who found some other man's work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we are really talking about the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual, or physical can never be great
- Mark Twain
When you ask yourself "who am I", is your answer an occupation? A role? A conglomeration of prior life experiences? If so, then you may very well be doing something in your life that you don't really feel like you "chose". If you describe who you are in terms of what you have "become", I would ask that you start rethinking the answer to the question "who are you?". One of the most painful mid-life experiences my clients face is the realization that they aren't doing or being what they were really born to be or do. When we see someone doing what they were born to do we usually see greatness. Its inescapable. When we watch Lebron James dunk a basketball, or Celine Dion sing on stage we don't just see greatness. We see the intersection of passion and talent. Celine Dion painting houses, or Lebron James driving a truck would be a travesty. And I'd venture to guess that such a life wouldn't be nearly as fulfilling to each of them.
Not because they are rich and famous either. But because they wouldn't be doing what they were destined to be doing. They wouldn't be there authentic selves.
Well, your life is no different than theirs. Your talents and passions may be very different. But where your talent and your passions intersect is where you have to be for you to live a fulfilling second half of life. Unfortunately, far too many people are living in lives where they have no passion for what they do and often aren't very talented in the field they are in. I am shocked at the number of people who are doing their current occupation almost completely by accident. They got good or not so good grades in school. They had a certain type of parents who encouraged a certain course of employment. They met a friend who liked their job and "got them in" to the field. They "just needed to make some money" so they responded to the ad. And what happened next? ...They either got comfortable or they got trapped as their income rose. Now they feel like they can't leave and "start over" because of "obligations". This is the exact fate that Mark Twain describes as "slavery" in the quote at the opening of this post. Its a form of soul death to be doing "work" everyday that is inconsistent with who you really are. Its ineffficient for our society. Its poisonous to you. But the opposite is also true! Doing what you truly enjoy and getting paid for it is an enormous component to a fulfilling second half of life.
If you are not doing what you were destined to do, then you are just acting. If you are acting your life has certain characteristics. You are likely staring at a clock every day at your job. You are always looking for the weekend or the next vacation. You start getting a feeling of dread on Sunday afternoon when you think about your workweek starting tomorrow. Monday's are horrible. You do just as much as you can "get away" with at work. You literally, have a life outside of your job and the time within it is just time being burnt away. What a horrible fate and one that I would encourage every single one of my clients to avoid or change. Its one of my favorite things to work on with clients because I believe it is one of the greatest ways to increase fulfillment in life. When you love what you do for a living, you never work a day in your life.
Remember this, it is actually easier to be who you really are than to act everyday like someone else. So if you are really a poet but your job title says your an accountant, all the accounting in the world isn't going to actually make you an accountant. A real accountant loves accounting. A poet acting like an accountant is likely just going to be a bad accountant. It is much more natural to be who you already are. The big paradox here is most people fail to be who they really are for "fear of failure" when in reality you are much more likely to "fail" pretending to be something your not. In fact, when you really think about it, you can't fail to be who you really are!
So how do we get on the path of becoming who we really are? The starting point is asking a simple question. "What would I do if I knew there was no way to fail?" Another great question is "What would I do if money wasn't an object?" These two questions will likely immediately bring forth some great emotions of excitement and passion. Feel them. Take them in. Your entire life can feel like that if you simply align what you "do" with who you "are".
Its incredibly to think about how we as human beings are so far behind the rest of the natural world in this regard. We don't see squirrels frustratingly trying to "be fish". We don't see oak trees struggling to sprout pretty blossoms so they can "be flowers". Lions aren't pounding their paws on the ground in frustration at not being able to fly so they can "be birds". Nature is perfect at peace with what it "is" and as a result all these beings are "perfect" at doing and being what they truly are. We humans, with all of our potential to experience ourselves make the horrible mistake of allowing our childhoods, or parents, or socio-economic status or education to determine for us who we "are" when all along it is right inside us just waiting to come forth!
Next post, I am going to give you an example of the tragic fate of disregardng who you really are. I am going to tell you the story of "Virgil". Until then spend time today thinking about who you "really are".
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
-Joseph Campbell
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
WHERE ARE YOU PUTTING YOUR TIME?
"There's no such thing as a lack of time. Only a lack of priorities." -
Tim Ferris
Author of "The 4 Hour Workweek"
The most powerful concepts are often the simplest. One of the first things I do with a client after working on getting them to focus on gratitude daily is take an inventory of how they spend their time. Its a crucial diagnostic test. Like checking the fluid levels in your car, or your blood pressure in a doctor's office, taking a "time inventory" will lead you to some incredible insights about the overall health of your life.
To re-design a life we have to unpack the current situation and see how we got where we are. Time inventory tells us exactly how we got here. Henry David Thoreau put it this way:
Its not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is what are we busy about?"
If you take an inventory of where you are spending your time and compare it to the quality of your life in specific areas you will undoubtedly see a correlation. Inventory your last two weeks and your next two weeks for a great example of why your life is exactly the way it is:
Health and Fitness - How much time are you spending on regular exercise, sleep, proper and nutrition planning?
Finances - How much time are you spending on adhering to your budget? Investing? Financial education?
Relationships - How much intentional time are you spending on increasing the quality of your relationships. This doesn't count time you are just in a room together but the time you spend thinking of ways to improve the relationship, being purposefully romantic with a spouse, intentionally teaching your children, or reaching out to old friends?
Career- How much time are you spending honing the skills that make you effective in your vocation? Or in researching alternative careers that are more aligned with your passions?
Dreams/passions/hobbies - How much time are you spending on things you love to do?
If like many midlifers you wake up after not getting enough sleep because an alarm clock tells you to, you can't "find time" to exercise, eat "fast" food because you don't "have time" to prepare meals that nourish and vitalize your body, "run" off to work, "run" to bring the kids to their activities and then collapse into escapism like television, beer, or internet surfing, your life has certain charactertistics to it. Your relationships are probably suffering. Your waist line is probably bigger than you want it to be, you're tired, and you feel unfulfilled.
If, on the other hand, you are intentionally placing your time in the areas that bring you to life, focusing on your health, your relationships, your finances and your dreams, you have a very different looking life. Its all a matter of where you intentionally place your focus.
EXERCISE:
Do a time inventory this week. Really identify exactly where your time is being spent. Then match up the largest percentages of the time you spend with the current outcomes that are manifesting in your life. Likewise, make a list of "problem areas" or areas you want to make changes in and then "reverse inventory" your time in those specific areas. So if you feel overweight, go back over the last month and see how much time you have spent on taking care of your body. If you feel your marriage is stagnant go back and take an honest appraisal of how much time you are spending on making that relationship magnificent. This exercise is usually quite illuminating as well as often dissappointing. Don't be too hard on yourself. This is a major step for you. By just becoming aware of this phenomenon you are living at a higher level. In upcoming posts we will discuss how to "carve" out time to reallocate it to our heart's desires as we work further on life design. After taking this honest time inventory we will start identifying "why" we are allocating time the way we are currently (you may be surprised when you find out the answer) and how we can start re-allocating time to construct a passionate and fulfilling life. Until then, focus on where you are spending your time and remember:
"He who chases two rabbits catches neither" - Goethe
Tim Ferris
Author of "The 4 Hour Workweek"
The most powerful concepts are often the simplest. One of the first things I do with a client after working on getting them to focus on gratitude daily is take an inventory of how they spend their time. Its a crucial diagnostic test. Like checking the fluid levels in your car, or your blood pressure in a doctor's office, taking a "time inventory" will lead you to some incredible insights about the overall health of your life.
To re-design a life we have to unpack the current situation and see how we got where we are. Time inventory tells us exactly how we got here. Henry David Thoreau put it this way:
Its not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is what are we busy about?"
If you take an inventory of where you are spending your time and compare it to the quality of your life in specific areas you will undoubtedly see a correlation. Inventory your last two weeks and your next two weeks for a great example of why your life is exactly the way it is:
Health and Fitness - How much time are you spending on regular exercise, sleep, proper and nutrition planning?
Finances - How much time are you spending on adhering to your budget? Investing? Financial education?
Relationships - How much intentional time are you spending on increasing the quality of your relationships. This doesn't count time you are just in a room together but the time you spend thinking of ways to improve the relationship, being purposefully romantic with a spouse, intentionally teaching your children, or reaching out to old friends?
Career- How much time are you spending honing the skills that make you effective in your vocation? Or in researching alternative careers that are more aligned with your passions?
Dreams/passions/hobbies - How much time are you spending on things you love to do?
If like many midlifers you wake up after not getting enough sleep because an alarm clock tells you to, you can't "find time" to exercise, eat "fast" food because you don't "have time" to prepare meals that nourish and vitalize your body, "run" off to work, "run" to bring the kids to their activities and then collapse into escapism like television, beer, or internet surfing, your life has certain charactertistics to it. Your relationships are probably suffering. Your waist line is probably bigger than you want it to be, you're tired, and you feel unfulfilled.
If, on the other hand, you are intentionally placing your time in the areas that bring you to life, focusing on your health, your relationships, your finances and your dreams, you have a very different looking life. Its all a matter of where you intentionally place your focus.
EXERCISE:
Do a time inventory this week. Really identify exactly where your time is being spent. Then match up the largest percentages of the time you spend with the current outcomes that are manifesting in your life. Likewise, make a list of "problem areas" or areas you want to make changes in and then "reverse inventory" your time in those specific areas. So if you feel overweight, go back over the last month and see how much time you have spent on taking care of your body. If you feel your marriage is stagnant go back and take an honest appraisal of how much time you are spending on making that relationship magnificent. This exercise is usually quite illuminating as well as often dissappointing. Don't be too hard on yourself. This is a major step for you. By just becoming aware of this phenomenon you are living at a higher level. In upcoming posts we will discuss how to "carve" out time to reallocate it to our heart's desires as we work further on life design. After taking this honest time inventory we will start identifying "why" we are allocating time the way we are currently (you may be surprised when you find out the answer) and how we can start re-allocating time to construct a passionate and fulfilling life. Until then, focus on where you are spending your time and remember:
"He who chases two rabbits catches neither" - Goethe
Thursday, June 10, 2010
LIVE IN THE PRESENT MOMENT
"You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this."
- Henry David Thoreau
We've all heard of the importance of "living in the present moment" but I believe most of us fail to really grasp how to apply that principle. It is an absolutely beautiful principle and one that can completely set you free from fear, anxiety and worry. After all, ask yourself what percentage of the problems you might worry about right now are actually happening RIGHT NOW? Unless your reading this book while being chased by a pitbull, the overwhelming likelihood is that whatever you could be worrying about right now, won't actually hurt you right now, but some time in the future. . . . MAYBE.
For every disaster you worry about occurring in the future, there is a corresponding potential miracle that can make it moot. Things have come and gone through your life so unexpectedly that you couldn't have possibly envisioned the vast majority of it.
One of the funniest things I have ever done was thumbing through my 1991 high school year book. In mine, there was a section where you fill out where you expected to be at 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and so on. I obviously found it quite amusing that at 18 years old I really believed it would only take 5 short years to marry the woman of my dreams (who of course I hadn't even met yet), become a millionaire navy fighter pilot (top gun was very popular and I had no idea what the Navy paid), and have two kids!! But what was much more interesting to me was when I began to contemplate it, I realized that there has NEVER been a time in my life where I could have accurately predicted where I would have been 5 years later. Not just the job I'd be doing, but where I'd be living, the divorce I would go through, the family members I'd lose suddenly, the coaching practice I would start. Try it. Go back five years and ask yourself whether you could have possibly seen exactly where you are today back then.
I remember the greatest birthday present I had ever given my father and how it became the greatest gift I ever gave myself. . .
I had a long history of buying my father birthday presents that he would want to return. Every year when Dad would open up my present he would start by asking "how much did you spend on this?" Then. . ."Where did you get this?". . . and finally "do you still have the receipt?" It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the effort, he just hated the idea of his kids spending money on something he may not actually use.
But in 2007 I was determined that this birthday would be different. I would finally buy dad a present that I thought he would want; not a present that I thought he should want! I bought him and I tickets to the King Tut exhibit in Philadelphia! He was a history buff and this was real history, right in our backyard! It would be perfect. During the week before his birthday weekend I went to buy the tickets online. I was going to actually go the following weekend for no reason other than I didn't really feel like going to 'a museum' this weekend and next weekend seemed like a few years away at the time. As fate would have it, I accidentally clicked the Sunday of dad's birthday weekend just 3 days away. I would have had to call someone to change it and that would have defeated the ease and simplicity of buying Dad's tickets online. So I just left it and figured I'd "get it out of the way". Nonetheless, I knew dad would love it, so I printed the tickets and put them in his card.
The following day I was bursting with excitement to see his face when I gave him these tickets. He started tearing at the envelope, flipped open the card, pulled out the tickets and said. . . .
"how much did you spend on these?"
Damn! Not only was I not really looking forward to going, but Dad didn't even want to go!
"When is this?", Dad asked hesitantly.
"Tomorrow! And we are going!", I snapped.
The next day my father and I had the best day I have ever spent with him. We spent the entire day together. We saw and experienced priceless pieces of ancient history. We learned all about this amazing civilization together. Our minds were expanded in multiple dimensions. We had dinner at our favorite diner and just enjoyed each other's company all day long. It was really a beautiful day for a father and son to experience together. . .
36 hours later, I was standing in the waiting room of Kennedy Memorial Hospital in the middle of the night listening to a doctor tell me that my father had died at 59 years old from a massive heart attack.
You have no idea what two minutes from now looks like. You also have no idea which relatively meaningless moments may become the most memorable and rich moments of your entire life. To this day, I thank God for my "accident" of clicking the "wrong" date on that website. Had I chosen the date that I wanted, the tickets would have been for the date that I buried my father. Your present moments are precious. They are beautifully precious. More than money. More than new cars, big houses and perfect careers. The present moment, the right now, the only time that really ever exists is right in your hand, but only for a moment.
"In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time." - Leonardo Da Vinci
- Henry David Thoreau
We've all heard of the importance of "living in the present moment" but I believe most of us fail to really grasp how to apply that principle. It is an absolutely beautiful principle and one that can completely set you free from fear, anxiety and worry. After all, ask yourself what percentage of the problems you might worry about right now are actually happening RIGHT NOW? Unless your reading this book while being chased by a pitbull, the overwhelming likelihood is that whatever you could be worrying about right now, won't actually hurt you right now, but some time in the future. . . . MAYBE.
For every disaster you worry about occurring in the future, there is a corresponding potential miracle that can make it moot. Things have come and gone through your life so unexpectedly that you couldn't have possibly envisioned the vast majority of it.
One of the funniest things I have ever done was thumbing through my 1991 high school year book. In mine, there was a section where you fill out where you expected to be at 5 years, 10 years, 15 years and so on. I obviously found it quite amusing that at 18 years old I really believed it would only take 5 short years to marry the woman of my dreams (who of course I hadn't even met yet), become a millionaire navy fighter pilot (top gun was very popular and I had no idea what the Navy paid), and have two kids!! But what was much more interesting to me was when I began to contemplate it, I realized that there has NEVER been a time in my life where I could have accurately predicted where I would have been 5 years later. Not just the job I'd be doing, but where I'd be living, the divorce I would go through, the family members I'd lose suddenly, the coaching practice I would start. Try it. Go back five years and ask yourself whether you could have possibly seen exactly where you are today back then.
I remember the greatest birthday present I had ever given my father and how it became the greatest gift I ever gave myself. . .
I had a long history of buying my father birthday presents that he would want to return. Every year when Dad would open up my present he would start by asking "how much did you spend on this?" Then. . ."Where did you get this?". . . and finally "do you still have the receipt?" It wasn't that he didn't appreciate the effort, he just hated the idea of his kids spending money on something he may not actually use.
But in 2007 I was determined that this birthday would be different. I would finally buy dad a present that I thought he would want; not a present that I thought he should want! I bought him and I tickets to the King Tut exhibit in Philadelphia! He was a history buff and this was real history, right in our backyard! It would be perfect. During the week before his birthday weekend I went to buy the tickets online. I was going to actually go the following weekend for no reason other than I didn't really feel like going to 'a museum' this weekend and next weekend seemed like a few years away at the time. As fate would have it, I accidentally clicked the Sunday of dad's birthday weekend just 3 days away. I would have had to call someone to change it and that would have defeated the ease and simplicity of buying Dad's tickets online. So I just left it and figured I'd "get it out of the way". Nonetheless, I knew dad would love it, so I printed the tickets and put them in his card.
The following day I was bursting with excitement to see his face when I gave him these tickets. He started tearing at the envelope, flipped open the card, pulled out the tickets and said. . . .
"how much did you spend on these?"
Damn! Not only was I not really looking forward to going, but Dad didn't even want to go!
"When is this?", Dad asked hesitantly.
"Tomorrow! And we are going!", I snapped.
The next day my father and I had the best day I have ever spent with him. We spent the entire day together. We saw and experienced priceless pieces of ancient history. We learned all about this amazing civilization together. Our minds were expanded in multiple dimensions. We had dinner at our favorite diner and just enjoyed each other's company all day long. It was really a beautiful day for a father and son to experience together. . .
36 hours later, I was standing in the waiting room of Kennedy Memorial Hospital in the middle of the night listening to a doctor tell me that my father had died at 59 years old from a massive heart attack.
You have no idea what two minutes from now looks like. You also have no idea which relatively meaningless moments may become the most memorable and rich moments of your entire life. To this day, I thank God for my "accident" of clicking the "wrong" date on that website. Had I chosen the date that I wanted, the tickets would have been for the date that I buried my father. Your present moments are precious. They are beautifully precious. More than money. More than new cars, big houses and perfect careers. The present moment, the right now, the only time that really ever exists is right in your hand, but only for a moment.
"In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time." - Leonardo Da Vinci
Monday, June 7, 2010
AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE
A lump is found, a rumor about layoffs is overheard, a note suggesting infidelity is discovered, a loved one is rushed to the emergency department. The world begins to shake. Everything that one moment ago was taken for granted in your life is now all you wish to have back. You percieve loss. You have a longing, a desire to simply return to that which existed just an instant before this scary event.
"Oh, how the entire world was perfect before x, y or z happened", you think! You start fearing the diagnosis, or the test result, or the board's action or whatever it is you are now dreading in your mind that is going to undo your perfect world - but wait a second! Your world wasn't perfect BEFORE this scary event happened was it?
After all, you were just complaining about the commute to work and how it was "killing you". You were just saying your husband never takes out the trash or helps with the dishes and now one minute after he is diagnosed with cancer, you don't care a bit about the dishes and would wash them yourself as he laid on the couch for the rest of your life without one single complaint .Just two days ago you yelled at your 6 year old for getting peanut butter on the new couch and now one day after being abducted you would let him smear peanut butter anywhere he wanted if he would just be returned to you. You were just one year ago complaining about how your parents were meddling and judgmental. Now that they have died you wish you could have them judge anything about you just one more time! Just last week you were complaining about your horrible boss and job. Today, one hour after the layoff rumors reached your ears, you're petrified about losing your "livelihood"!
Suddenly, we find our gratefulness when the test comes back benign, the child comes back home, we aren't on the list of layoffs, or our loved one just had a health "scare". Unfortunately our gratitude often dissappears just as swiftly as it came once the threat is removed. We live in a world where we have convinced ourselves that gratitude is outside of us. We wrongly believe it is something that happens to us, not something that flows from us. Just reading the sentence "your child has metastatic cancer" makes you want to go kiss all over them and tell them how much you love them and go put your entire world on the back burner to go play with them. Do you feel it? Can you sit right where you are and simply imagine losing that spouse your complaining about all the time? Not feeling his or her warm body next to you in bed each night? Do you feel it? Do you feel your gratitude rising?
Well nothing I just discussed really happened. All I did was stimulate your mind. Epictetus said, "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." Again, I do not believe you should go around imagining horrible things happening to your loved ones every day. I think that is an awful and disempowering practice that is completely contrary to all that I teach. I suggest these mental constructs only to show you the truth, which is your gratitude is available to you at all times. You and the rest of the "normal" world are taking everything in our lives for granted each and every day. You are waiting for the catastrophe to occur before recognizing how blissful you can be right now just in the smile of a healthy child, or the ability to eat dinner or sleep in a bed under a roof!!
You don't have to become homeless to appreciate having your home. You don't have to have a sick child to feel the absolute bliss of your own child's vibrant health. You don't have to get fired to appreciate having your income producing job. You don't have to get a fatal diagnosis to celebrate your own vitality!! This is available to you at all times. Due to the nature of decades of conditioning however, it is likely that in the beginning you will have to intentionally set aside time for gratefulness. It is possible that you will have to invoke the thought of loss temporarily in the beginning until you learn to bring that beautiful overwhelming feeling of gratitude to your awareness whenever you want. But once you have trained yourself to find gratefulness in the absence of threatened loss you have risen to a level beyond "normal". You have transformed your mind and accordingly your entire life. Imagine what a life marked by a state of constant gratitude looks like for a moment.
Melodie Beattie puts it this way:
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
With a new found committment to cultivating gratitude in your life, that which was so "bothersome" dissolves automatically. You cannot feel fear and gratitude simultaneously. You cannot feel scarcity or lack and gratitude simultaneously. An attitude of gratitude energizes you. It invokes deep feelings of love and appreciation in you. It makes you kinder to those around you. Being intentionally grateful every single day will make you a happier person. Period.
Eventually my clients all learn that intentional gratitude every single day is a cornerstone of my approach to a happier and healthier life. But like all of the principles I teach, overcoming longstanding thought patterns is easier said than done. At first we must awkwardly carve out time and space to apply our principles. Over time, like all habits, gratitude will become something you do automatically. It will shift from something you do, to something you are. First you will practice gratitude and eventually you will become a grateful person. So until you have conditioned your thoughts intentionally, create a list of things you are grateful for and use the "nightmare scenarios" I discussed in this post to jog your conditioned thoughts into a state of gratitude. Don't dwell on the nightmare scenario. Just invoke, it and become grateful for what is not happening. Be grateful for what you do have. Be grateful for what you aren't facing right now. Be grateful for what is absolutely perfect right now. Every day, look at your list. Eventually, you will summon deep seeded gratitude on command. When you do you will be on your way to a much richer and fulfilling life.
"Oh, how the entire world was perfect before x, y or z happened", you think! You start fearing the diagnosis, or the test result, or the board's action or whatever it is you are now dreading in your mind that is going to undo your perfect world - but wait a second! Your world wasn't perfect BEFORE this scary event happened was it?
After all, you were just complaining about the commute to work and how it was "killing you". You were just saying your husband never takes out the trash or helps with the dishes and now one minute after he is diagnosed with cancer, you don't care a bit about the dishes and would wash them yourself as he laid on the couch for the rest of your life without one single complaint .Just two days ago you yelled at your 6 year old for getting peanut butter on the new couch and now one day after being abducted you would let him smear peanut butter anywhere he wanted if he would just be returned to you. You were just one year ago complaining about how your parents were meddling and judgmental. Now that they have died you wish you could have them judge anything about you just one more time! Just last week you were complaining about your horrible boss and job. Today, one hour after the layoff rumors reached your ears, you're petrified about losing your "livelihood"!
Suddenly, we find our gratefulness when the test comes back benign, the child comes back home, we aren't on the list of layoffs, or our loved one just had a health "scare". Unfortunately our gratitude often dissappears just as swiftly as it came once the threat is removed. We live in a world where we have convinced ourselves that gratitude is outside of us. We wrongly believe it is something that happens to us, not something that flows from us. Just reading the sentence "your child has metastatic cancer" makes you want to go kiss all over them and tell them how much you love them and go put your entire world on the back burner to go play with them. Do you feel it? Can you sit right where you are and simply imagine losing that spouse your complaining about all the time? Not feeling his or her warm body next to you in bed each night? Do you feel it? Do you feel your gratitude rising?
Well nothing I just discussed really happened. All I did was stimulate your mind. Epictetus said, "He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has." Again, I do not believe you should go around imagining horrible things happening to your loved ones every day. I think that is an awful and disempowering practice that is completely contrary to all that I teach. I suggest these mental constructs only to show you the truth, which is your gratitude is available to you at all times. You and the rest of the "normal" world are taking everything in our lives for granted each and every day. You are waiting for the catastrophe to occur before recognizing how blissful you can be right now just in the smile of a healthy child, or the ability to eat dinner or sleep in a bed under a roof!!
You don't have to become homeless to appreciate having your home. You don't have to have a sick child to feel the absolute bliss of your own child's vibrant health. You don't have to get fired to appreciate having your income producing job. You don't have to get a fatal diagnosis to celebrate your own vitality!! This is available to you at all times. Due to the nature of decades of conditioning however, it is likely that in the beginning you will have to intentionally set aside time for gratefulness. It is possible that you will have to invoke the thought of loss temporarily in the beginning until you learn to bring that beautiful overwhelming feeling of gratitude to your awareness whenever you want. But once you have trained yourself to find gratefulness in the absence of threatened loss you have risen to a level beyond "normal". You have transformed your mind and accordingly your entire life. Imagine what a life marked by a state of constant gratitude looks like for a moment.
Melodie Beattie puts it this way:
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity.... It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
With a new found committment to cultivating gratitude in your life, that which was so "bothersome" dissolves automatically. You cannot feel fear and gratitude simultaneously. You cannot feel scarcity or lack and gratitude simultaneously. An attitude of gratitude energizes you. It invokes deep feelings of love and appreciation in you. It makes you kinder to those around you. Being intentionally grateful every single day will make you a happier person. Period.
Eventually my clients all learn that intentional gratitude every single day is a cornerstone of my approach to a happier and healthier life. But like all of the principles I teach, overcoming longstanding thought patterns is easier said than done. At first we must awkwardly carve out time and space to apply our principles. Over time, like all habits, gratitude will become something you do automatically. It will shift from something you do, to something you are. First you will practice gratitude and eventually you will become a grateful person. So until you have conditioned your thoughts intentionally, create a list of things you are grateful for and use the "nightmare scenarios" I discussed in this post to jog your conditioned thoughts into a state of gratitude. Don't dwell on the nightmare scenario. Just invoke, it and become grateful for what is not happening. Be grateful for what you do have. Be grateful for what you aren't facing right now. Be grateful for what is absolutely perfect right now. Every day, look at your list. Eventually, you will summon deep seeded gratitude on command. When you do you will be on your way to a much richer and fulfilling life.
TAKING RESPONSIBILITY
I have to admit this lesson continues to be hard for me to apply in my own life from time to time. But this week as I was thinking about what I thought would be a good foundational principle to discuss in this blog and with my clients, I came across a teaching example too good to pass up.
I was flipping between ESPN and CNN as I often do. On ESPN there was the story of Jim Joyce and Armando Galarraga. Galarraga had pitched a perfect game (no walks, no hits, no runs) 2/3rds of the way through the final inning of the game. For those of you unfamiliar with baseball history, to put this in perspective, every baseball team in the majors plays over one hundred games a year. There are over 30 teams. And the league has been around for 135 years. I won't even try to do all that math but suffice it to say that is alot of baseball games. Ya know how many times a perfect game has occurred in those 135 years? 20 times. 20 times in the entire history of the league. . . and Armando Galarraga needed just one out to join that list.
A sharp well hit ball was fielded by the second baseman and thrown to first for the historic out. It was a close call, but instant replay showed the batter was out by a good half a step. But Veteran Umpire Jim Joyce called him safe . . . and history was re-written. . . and Galarraga's monumental moment evaporated, in all likelihood forever.
Bad calls happen all the time. But there is a pretty strong concensus that this was one of the worst calls in the history of the league. So bad, with consequences so profound (particularly for Galarraga), that the commissioner of baseball considered overturning the umpire to give Galarraga the perfect game. (he didn't however).
What was more interesting to me than the enormity of this foul-up was the response by the individual who made the history changing mistake. Within hours of this nightmare of a blown call and within minutes of seeing it on replay, Umpire Jim Joyce went to Galarraga in tears and apologized for his mistake. As soon as the media asked its first scathing question (complete with bitter sarcasm and an accusatory tone of course), Joyce completely diffused the attack by saying simply " I cost that kid a perfect game". No senate investigations, no truth-finding mission, no committee to evaluate the evidence. He admitted his mistake and there was nothing else to say. Jim Joyce did something that shouldn't have caught my attention so easily. After all, all he did was take responsibility.
This story got national attention and not just in the sports world either. It got national attention because we as a society aren't used to seeing this anymore. In fact, its when I flipped back to CNN that I saw what we are used to seeing. I saw Tony Hayward, CEO of BP Oil responding to questions about his oil rig causing the biggest environmental disaster in US history. Here are some of the things the CEO of the company whose oil is filling the ocean at several thousand barrels a day for almost two months straight with no end in sight said:
"It wasn't our accident".
"We'll clean it up but the rig was run by Transocean"
"We have a terrific safety record"
"This device isn't failure proof"
At midlife we have a way of looking at the state of our life and assigning blame to what we don't like. Its usually around this time in life when people have the "breakthrough" moment and realize they are the way they are because of their childhood, their parents, their children, their genes, their teachers, their role models, their spouse, their ethnicity, or their gender. Its this time of life when people suddenly "realize" they need to have an affair because their spouse isn't who they thought they were or its time to quit the job without a plan and "live" for the first time. These "crises" events occur in no small part because of a failure to take responsibility for the state of our lives at mid-life. Unfortunately, far too often this failure to take responsibility leads directly to repeat patterns of disillusionment and ultimately dissappointment as we realize that we take ourselves with us when we leave! Suddenly, the new exciting relationship that replaced our spouse leaves us with similar problems. The new career is still "work". The harley davidson you bought on credit may have helped you feel younger, but you aren't and now you're just further from being able to retire.
Taking responsibility, on the other hand, is a foundational step toward changing things. Once you realize that YOU created this life it is much easier to understand that YOU are completely capable of changing it. When you are the victim of circumstances it is psychologically incongruent to also believe you can change those circumstances. Without that belief you will always have someone to blame and as a result you will also remain powerless to change your life. Taking responsibility for your life is an absolute MUST if you are going to realize real transformation in your life.
As Lou Holtz said perfectly "the man who complains about the way the ball bounces is probably the man who dropped it."
What have you been accepting as a "fact of life"? What have you been blaming on others rather than taking personal responsibility? What have you been looking outside of yourself for rather than looking inward to how you respond to situations? Maybe its time to identify those things that you have not taken responsibility for. Maybe its time to look at that marriage and ask yourself "what am I doing to create this reality?" Maybe its time to look at your waist and ask yourself "did I do this?" When you start laying claim to your life and your incredible power over it, you won't fall deep into guilt and resentment like you fear. To the contrary, there is nothing to worry about once you lay claim to what's within your power. As Wayner Dyer puts it" there's only two things in this world to worry about: things you can control and things you can't control. There's no point in worrying about things you can control because. . . well, you control them. There's also no point in worrying about what you can't control because . . .well, you can't control them." That leaves nothing to worry about. Your focus moves to exactly where it should. Those things you can actually change.
Make a list of those things you need to take responsibility for and start invoking your power by identifying what in each circumstance you can control. A good list to start is:
1) Relationships
2) Finances
3) Career
4) Living your principles
5) Engaging in activities you are passionate about
6) Health and fitness
List the things as they exist. Be brutally honest. Identify what you have done or failed to do that contributed to the current state of things in each category and then list the things you can control about each situation and exactly how you are going to make positive changes moving forward. If you do this for a few weeks, your entire life will begin to change. You will find yourself shifting your psychology. You won't speak about the faults of your wife that make your relationship intolerable but instead you will speak of what you are doing every day to fill that relationship with romance and passion.
Instead of looking in the mirror and feeling the shame of a badly out of shape body that you blame on genes, your busy life, or fast food chains, you will assess your current state of ill-health and identify what you have done to create this state and exactly what you are going to start doing to change the situation.
Congratulations, if this is a new awareness for you, you have just taken a quantum leap toward transforming your reality. Now make sure you apply this truth every single day. Create a 'responsibility log'. Practice saying " I am sorry" and "I made a mistake". Proclaim your power each morning by affirmatively stating "this day is what I will make of it" or read the following quote before you go out the door each day for a month:
"It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
— J. W. Goethe
GO LIVE ON PURPOSE!!
I was flipping between ESPN and CNN as I often do. On ESPN there was the story of Jim Joyce and Armando Galarraga. Galarraga had pitched a perfect game (no walks, no hits, no runs) 2/3rds of the way through the final inning of the game. For those of you unfamiliar with baseball history, to put this in perspective, every baseball team in the majors plays over one hundred games a year. There are over 30 teams. And the league has been around for 135 years. I won't even try to do all that math but suffice it to say that is alot of baseball games. Ya know how many times a perfect game has occurred in those 135 years? 20 times. 20 times in the entire history of the league. . . and Armando Galarraga needed just one out to join that list.
A sharp well hit ball was fielded by the second baseman and thrown to first for the historic out. It was a close call, but instant replay showed the batter was out by a good half a step. But Veteran Umpire Jim Joyce called him safe . . . and history was re-written. . . and Galarraga's monumental moment evaporated, in all likelihood forever.
Bad calls happen all the time. But there is a pretty strong concensus that this was one of the worst calls in the history of the league. So bad, with consequences so profound (particularly for Galarraga), that the commissioner of baseball considered overturning the umpire to give Galarraga the perfect game. (he didn't however).
What was more interesting to me than the enormity of this foul-up was the response by the individual who made the history changing mistake. Within hours of this nightmare of a blown call and within minutes of seeing it on replay, Umpire Jim Joyce went to Galarraga in tears and apologized for his mistake. As soon as the media asked its first scathing question (complete with bitter sarcasm and an accusatory tone of course), Joyce completely diffused the attack by saying simply " I cost that kid a perfect game". No senate investigations, no truth-finding mission, no committee to evaluate the evidence. He admitted his mistake and there was nothing else to say. Jim Joyce did something that shouldn't have caught my attention so easily. After all, all he did was take responsibility.
This story got national attention and not just in the sports world either. It got national attention because we as a society aren't used to seeing this anymore. In fact, its when I flipped back to CNN that I saw what we are used to seeing. I saw Tony Hayward, CEO of BP Oil responding to questions about his oil rig causing the biggest environmental disaster in US history. Here are some of the things the CEO of the company whose oil is filling the ocean at several thousand barrels a day for almost two months straight with no end in sight said:
"It wasn't our accident".
"We'll clean it up but the rig was run by Transocean"
"We have a terrific safety record"
"This device isn't failure proof"
At midlife we have a way of looking at the state of our life and assigning blame to what we don't like. Its usually around this time in life when people have the "breakthrough" moment and realize they are the way they are because of their childhood, their parents, their children, their genes, their teachers, their role models, their spouse, their ethnicity, or their gender. Its this time of life when people suddenly "realize" they need to have an affair because their spouse isn't who they thought they were or its time to quit the job without a plan and "live" for the first time. These "crises" events occur in no small part because of a failure to take responsibility for the state of our lives at mid-life. Unfortunately, far too often this failure to take responsibility leads directly to repeat patterns of disillusionment and ultimately dissappointment as we realize that we take ourselves with us when we leave! Suddenly, the new exciting relationship that replaced our spouse leaves us with similar problems. The new career is still "work". The harley davidson you bought on credit may have helped you feel younger, but you aren't and now you're just further from being able to retire.
Taking responsibility, on the other hand, is a foundational step toward changing things. Once you realize that YOU created this life it is much easier to understand that YOU are completely capable of changing it. When you are the victim of circumstances it is psychologically incongruent to also believe you can change those circumstances. Without that belief you will always have someone to blame and as a result you will also remain powerless to change your life. Taking responsibility for your life is an absolute MUST if you are going to realize real transformation in your life.
As Lou Holtz said perfectly "the man who complains about the way the ball bounces is probably the man who dropped it."
What have you been accepting as a "fact of life"? What have you been blaming on others rather than taking personal responsibility? What have you been looking outside of yourself for rather than looking inward to how you respond to situations? Maybe its time to identify those things that you have not taken responsibility for. Maybe its time to look at that marriage and ask yourself "what am I doing to create this reality?" Maybe its time to look at your waist and ask yourself "did I do this?" When you start laying claim to your life and your incredible power over it, you won't fall deep into guilt and resentment like you fear. To the contrary, there is nothing to worry about once you lay claim to what's within your power. As Wayner Dyer puts it" there's only two things in this world to worry about: things you can control and things you can't control. There's no point in worrying about things you can control because. . . well, you control them. There's also no point in worrying about what you can't control because . . .well, you can't control them." That leaves nothing to worry about. Your focus moves to exactly where it should. Those things you can actually change.
Make a list of those things you need to take responsibility for and start invoking your power by identifying what in each circumstance you can control. A good list to start is:
1) Relationships
2) Finances
3) Career
4) Living your principles
5) Engaging in activities you are passionate about
6) Health and fitness
List the things as they exist. Be brutally honest. Identify what you have done or failed to do that contributed to the current state of things in each category and then list the things you can control about each situation and exactly how you are going to make positive changes moving forward. If you do this for a few weeks, your entire life will begin to change. You will find yourself shifting your psychology. You won't speak about the faults of your wife that make your relationship intolerable but instead you will speak of what you are doing every day to fill that relationship with romance and passion.
Instead of looking in the mirror and feeling the shame of a badly out of shape body that you blame on genes, your busy life, or fast food chains, you will assess your current state of ill-health and identify what you have done to create this state and exactly what you are going to start doing to change the situation.
Congratulations, if this is a new awareness for you, you have just taken a quantum leap toward transforming your reality. Now make sure you apply this truth every single day. Create a 'responsibility log'. Practice saying " I am sorry" and "I made a mistake". Proclaim your power each morning by affirmatively stating "this day is what I will make of it" or read the following quote before you go out the door each day for a month:
"It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”
— J. W. Goethe
GO LIVE ON PURPOSE!!
Saturday, June 5, 2010
JOHN WOODEN'S TOP TEN INSTRUCTIONS FOR MID-LIFER'S
Ask any client of mine and you will know that I love sports. And more than just about anything I love the coaches. I always dreamed of being a great football coach. The truly great coaches in sports generally have one over-riding principle that makes them successful in winning their respective championships. . . they coach their players to become better people more than they coach them to be better players.
Many of the things I tell my clients when coaching them toward a more compelling future, or trying to get them to change their perspective on mid-life in some way, has previously come from the mouth of a great athletic coach. Well, today, one of the greatest athletic coaches to ever live and one of my greatest idols has died.
John Wooden was 99 years old when he died. He created arguably the greatest sports dynasty in history at UCLA when he won 10 NCAA National Championship in Basketball (including 7 in a row!). He was beloved by his players, assistant coaches and just about anyone who he came in contact with. His family adored him. He reached the summit of his profession (10 times!). He has written several best selling books. He was married to a woman he adored for 53 years until she died in 1985. He would write her a love letter every single month, a practice he continued for 25 years after she died.
With much honor and humility I give you the ten things I learned from John Wooden that I want every one of my mid-life clients to know and apply in their lives starting today:
1) Be more concerned with your character than your reputation because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
2) Don't give up on your dreams or your dreams will give up on you.
3) Learn as if you were to live forever, and live as if you were to die tomorrow.
4) Wooden's definition of poise: "Not being thrown off stride in how you behave or what you believe because of outside events."
5) Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
6) Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
7) Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
8) If you're not making mistakes then your not doing anything. I am convinced doer's make mistakes.
9) Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.
10) The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move.
Many of the things I tell my clients when coaching them toward a more compelling future, or trying to get them to change their perspective on mid-life in some way, has previously come from the mouth of a great athletic coach. Well, today, one of the greatest athletic coaches to ever live and one of my greatest idols has died.
John Wooden was 99 years old when he died. He created arguably the greatest sports dynasty in history at UCLA when he won 10 NCAA National Championship in Basketball (including 7 in a row!). He was beloved by his players, assistant coaches and just about anyone who he came in contact with. His family adored him. He reached the summit of his profession (10 times!). He has written several best selling books. He was married to a woman he adored for 53 years until she died in 1985. He would write her a love letter every single month, a practice he continued for 25 years after she died.
With much honor and humility I give you the ten things I learned from John Wooden that I want every one of my mid-life clients to know and apply in their lives starting today:
1) Be more concerned with your character than your reputation because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
2) Don't give up on your dreams or your dreams will give up on you.
3) Learn as if you were to live forever, and live as if you were to die tomorrow.
4) Wooden's definition of poise: "Not being thrown off stride in how you behave or what you believe because of outside events."
5) Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
6) Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
7) Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
8) If you're not making mistakes then your not doing anything. I am convinced doer's make mistakes.
9) Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out.
10) The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
A RISING TIDE RAISES ALL SHIPS
I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Its a small rural peninsula buttressed by the Atlantic Ocean and the Chesapeake Bay. As a teenager I used to enjoy going down to one of the many inlets and just listening to the water lap against the dock. Sometimes, the water was so shallow that I could easily see the ground beneath the water and the water stains on the posts of the dock were several feet above the water level. Other times, the water would come up to my knees when I'd hang my legs over the edge.
I never once saw a high tide that only raised a few of the boats tied to the dock. That's not the way tides work. When high tide comes in everything that floats is effected. Our life is pretty similar. Have you ever had the feeling that you have so many things to "fix" that the overwhelm literally paralyzes you into doing nothing? I get it. It happens to all of us. The next time you have so much on your plate that seems "wrong", I want you to remember this simple little phrase, "a rising tide raises all ships".
What this beautiful little truth means in the context of our lives is that when you fix any one problem in your life, you raise your "tide" and the rest of your "ships" rise as well. I'll give you an example:
Mary is a housewife. She graduated from college 24 years ago and has three children, 12, 15 and 17. She has been married for 21 years but lately her and her husband Bill limit their conversation to morning grunts, an occassional argument over money or the kids, and if things are going really well, they may say "goodnight" to each other after exchanging pleasantries about the obligations each of them have the next day.
Mary doesn't have any time for herself. She wakes up, gets in the shower, makes breakfast for the kids, straightens out the house, gets a cup of coffee, fights traffic to get to work on time, deals with impatient clients all day for a boss who sees her as nothing more than a necessary evil that drains his bottom line. She fights traffic home, makes dinner, cleans up, picks the kids up from their various activities, begrudgingly pays the bills online and collapses on the couch to watch a reality show and then repeats the sequence the next day. Its been this way for about 10 years now. Mary is among the walking dead. No passion. No joy. . . other than the occassional stop at the local fast food place or the ice cream that she eats right out of the container while she watches her show.
Mary's self esteem is incredibly low. She has no passion in her marriage. She feels fat and old. She has no energy. She feels unappreciated and unloved. Her life is passing her by and she feels trapped in a life that is nothing like she envisioned. She talks about making some changes but when she thinks about it, she doesn't even know where to begin and even if she did, she immediately gets overwhelmed by the thought of squeezing the acts of change into her already crammed day.
So what should Mary do? The answer is . . . anything. Because if Mary changes anything in this scenario, the principle of "a rising tide raises all ships" will begin to take effect. Here are some examples from Mary's life:
- Mary decided and committed to changing her diet and adding exercise into her life. She came up with a plan, picked a start date and recognized that she would have to carve out time to implement her plan so she wouldn't have any excuses. Mary felt that if she could lose some weight maybe she could feel better about herself. She was right. She removed the ice-cream reality show hour and replaced it with a walk that turned into a jog. She removed the fast food runs in favor of packing evenly spaced out healthy meals. She started taking a multi-vitamin every day and replaced soda with water. Here's what happened from mary choosing to address her health and fitness ONLY:
Mary lost 56 pounds in 12 months. She also saved approximately $1,200 a year "eating out" which she used to buy new "skinny clothes". Her energy level went through the roof and she automatically began sleeping better and waking earlier. Her self-esteem shot through the roof and she felt sexier. Her new self-esteem was interpreted as sexier by her husband. She was less tired and had less "headaches". Mary's sex life was rejevunated. As a result her husband started sending her flowers out of the blue and began going on the walks with her. She began to love how she felt so much that she began cooking healthier for the whole family and soon Bill was down 22 pounds himself. He also started feeling more attractive which only helped their passion. Soon they were riding bikes with their kids on weekends. Mary loved her new fitness lifestyle so much that she began blogging about it and even started a local morning "mom run" in her neighborhood. Two years later, Mary became a certified personal trainer and now owns her own business where she coaches other moms to get in great shape. She makes three times the money she did as a receptionist working from home and she loves every minute of it. Mary's entire life is different.
The moral of this story isn't that getting in shape is the cure-all for your "second half". The moral is that Mary didn't set out to change her finances, her marriage, her physical fitness, her self-esteem, her family, and her career all at one time. She simply made some simple changes in one area. The rest of the ships just rose with the tide.
I never once saw a high tide that only raised a few of the boats tied to the dock. That's not the way tides work. When high tide comes in everything that floats is effected. Our life is pretty similar. Have you ever had the feeling that you have so many things to "fix" that the overwhelm literally paralyzes you into doing nothing? I get it. It happens to all of us. The next time you have so much on your plate that seems "wrong", I want you to remember this simple little phrase, "a rising tide raises all ships".
What this beautiful little truth means in the context of our lives is that when you fix any one problem in your life, you raise your "tide" and the rest of your "ships" rise as well. I'll give you an example:
Mary is a housewife. She graduated from college 24 years ago and has three children, 12, 15 and 17. She has been married for 21 years but lately her and her husband Bill limit their conversation to morning grunts, an occassional argument over money or the kids, and if things are going really well, they may say "goodnight" to each other after exchanging pleasantries about the obligations each of them have the next day.
Mary doesn't have any time for herself. She wakes up, gets in the shower, makes breakfast for the kids, straightens out the house, gets a cup of coffee, fights traffic to get to work on time, deals with impatient clients all day for a boss who sees her as nothing more than a necessary evil that drains his bottom line. She fights traffic home, makes dinner, cleans up, picks the kids up from their various activities, begrudgingly pays the bills online and collapses on the couch to watch a reality show and then repeats the sequence the next day. Its been this way for about 10 years now. Mary is among the walking dead. No passion. No joy. . . other than the occassional stop at the local fast food place or the ice cream that she eats right out of the container while she watches her show.
Mary's self esteem is incredibly low. She has no passion in her marriage. She feels fat and old. She has no energy. She feels unappreciated and unloved. Her life is passing her by and she feels trapped in a life that is nothing like she envisioned. She talks about making some changes but when she thinks about it, she doesn't even know where to begin and even if she did, she immediately gets overwhelmed by the thought of squeezing the acts of change into her already crammed day.
So what should Mary do? The answer is . . . anything. Because if Mary changes anything in this scenario, the principle of "a rising tide raises all ships" will begin to take effect. Here are some examples from Mary's life:
- Mary decided and committed to changing her diet and adding exercise into her life. She came up with a plan, picked a start date and recognized that she would have to carve out time to implement her plan so she wouldn't have any excuses. Mary felt that if she could lose some weight maybe she could feel better about herself. She was right. She removed the ice-cream reality show hour and replaced it with a walk that turned into a jog. She removed the fast food runs in favor of packing evenly spaced out healthy meals. She started taking a multi-vitamin every day and replaced soda with water. Here's what happened from mary choosing to address her health and fitness ONLY:
Mary lost 56 pounds in 12 months. She also saved approximately $1,200 a year "eating out" which she used to buy new "skinny clothes". Her energy level went through the roof and she automatically began sleeping better and waking earlier. Her self-esteem shot through the roof and she felt sexier. Her new self-esteem was interpreted as sexier by her husband. She was less tired and had less "headaches". Mary's sex life was rejevunated. As a result her husband started sending her flowers out of the blue and began going on the walks with her. She began to love how she felt so much that she began cooking healthier for the whole family and soon Bill was down 22 pounds himself. He also started feeling more attractive which only helped their passion. Soon they were riding bikes with their kids on weekends. Mary loved her new fitness lifestyle so much that she began blogging about it and even started a local morning "mom run" in her neighborhood. Two years later, Mary became a certified personal trainer and now owns her own business where she coaches other moms to get in great shape. She makes three times the money she did as a receptionist working from home and she loves every minute of it. Mary's entire life is different.
The moral of this story isn't that getting in shape is the cure-all for your "second half". The moral is that Mary didn't set out to change her finances, her marriage, her physical fitness, her self-esteem, her family, and her career all at one time. She simply made some simple changes in one area. The rest of the ships just rose with the tide.
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