What really matters!

"Use your mind! But
Don’t let the mind use you.
Whenever You Want,
Find the off Button and
Be free of your Mind.
Your mind is the thinker
By observing the thinker
You will realize that all things
That truly matters, Love, beauty, 
Joy, Inner peace, Creativity,

Arise from beyond the mind.”

Let it be you

Each and every day, there are people all around the country and world who are living their dreams. Millionaires are made every day. Families are experiencing tremendous relationships. People are becoming more and more healthy. Lifelong learners are growing intellectually and improving their chances for success.

The fact is that living the life of your dreams is possible. People prove that every day. Someone somewhere is going to get rich, get healthy and improve their life. My recommendation is this: Let it be you!

Have you ever wanted to make more money? Have you ever looked at someone who has money and wished that it could be you? People think about getting wealthy all of the time, when only a small percentage actually does. But any of the masses could. Someone is going to start a business. Someone is going to make a great investment. Someone is going to begin the journey to great wealth. So why not let it be you?

Someone is going to decide to improve their relationships. Someone is going to enjoy love with their family. Someone is going to schedule some meaningful time with their friends. So why not let it be you?

Someone is going to go back to school to improve their life. Someone is going to become a lifelong learner. Someone is going to set a goal to read a book or listen to a CD each week for the next year. So why not let it be you?

Someone is going to look in the mirror and see that they need to lose a little weight and they will make the decision to become healthy. Someone will run their first marathon. Someone will join an aerobics class and improve their health. Why not let it be you?

I think that by now you get the point: Every day people are improving their lives. Whether you do or not doesn´t matter to those who do. They are going to do it, regardless. It is simply a matter of a decision being made. Let that person be you!

You may be asking, “Okay, but how?” Well, let´s cover the very simple actions.

The first and most important is to make a commitment to work on yourself. Are you going to improve or stay the same? No matter what you have achieved, you are at a certain point right now. What you have achieved in the past is fine, but it doesn´t make a difference for the future. The decision about what you will become is made each day and every day. Each day someone is making the decision to better him or herself. Let that person be you!

The second is to make a plan. Once you have decided to become better you will have to have a plan. It doesn´t have to be a long, intricate plan. It can be simple. Save a dollar a day. Walk a mile a day. Read an article a day. That is a simple plan with achievable goals. Someone is going to develop a plan that will take them into the future of their dreams. Let it be you!

The third is to begin to act. All of the great ideas, without action, become stale and useless. The key to turning dreams into reality is action. People who have great ideas are a dime a dozen. People who act on their dreams and ideas are the select few, but they are the ones who gain the wealth and wisdom that is available. Someone will act today. Let it be you.

My encouragement to you is to stop looking at others who live the good life, wishing that you were as well, and instead begin to commit to your improvement, develop a plan and act on it. Someone is going to. Let it be you!

Struggle, explained

First of all I want to make it clear I don’t blame anyone for what happened to me. Nobody tried to harm me.

As a kid I guess I demonstrated exceptional intelligence and talent, and I was always being commended for it. The problem is that innate talent and intelligence are not things anyone earns. It’s a roll of the dice.

 The kid who gets used to being praised for things he has not earned begins to understand that his success is a condition of “the way things are.” He will be successful because he is who he is, not because he does what he does.

Turns out the kids begin to associate success and failure with innate, unchangeable personality traits, rather than behaviors that work and don’t work. They become extremely risk averse because they don’t want to fail at something and be rebranded from “smart” to “dumb.”

They become terrified of failure and rejection because they believe that incidences of failure or rejection are direct evidence that they are failures or rejects. They avoid challenges, because challenges always present an opportunity to “become” a failure.

They can’t handle criticism, because they perceive it as a challenge to who they are, not to the way they’re currently doing something.

They feel threatened by the success of others. They can’t handle losing and so they avoid competition.

After years of these kinds of feelings surrounding accomplishment and goals, they begin to feel the world is deterministic and that extra effort is no substitute for one’s intrinsic capability.

This explained everything. It explained why I never applied for scholarships, why I quit sports, why I never attempted a career I thought I would love, why I avoided dating, why I wore drab clothing, why used to be frightened even to order pizza in case I screwed it up and embarrassed myself.

They “may plateau early and reach less than their full potential.”

I can’t blame the adults in my life for the encouragement they gave me. None of us could have known the bizarre side-effects. The point is I have an insight now that can unravel something that has been weighing on me for my whole life, and that makes me really excited for the rest of it.

check this Special Deals!

Insight is not enough

An insight by itself doesn’t change how your life goes though. It has to manifest itself as a change in behavior for life to change, and that doesn’t happen automatically. For me this amounts to reducing an insight to a mantra or aphorism that triggers you to act differently in those certain moments when you were about to make your usual mistake.

The revelation was this:

It’s not who you are, but what you do.

That’s what has been coming into my head whenever I notice I’m taking something personally. Success and failure speak only to the validity of actions, not personalities. This will make some people yawn — they’ve been reading something like it on inspirational posters and in fortune cookies forever. So have I, but I didn’t get what it meant.

Whenever I failed, I couldn’t help but interpret it as a consequence of who I was. Somehow, I believed all my successes were direct consequences of my innate qualities and not my day-to-day behavior, so my failures had to be, too. If I screwed something up, it couldn’t just be that I decided to do something that didn’t work very well, it had to be a personal fault.

I was never responsible for any of them, successes or failures, only the world at large could deliver either to me. The world at large decided to kick my ass.

If I didn’t get a job, it’s because I was inadequate, not because they just didn’t hear what they wanted to hear from me.

If I got rejected by a girl, it was because there was something wrong with me, and not because that time I chose an approach that didn’t intrigue her for whatever reason.

If I always lived in drab, boring apartments, it’s because I’m an uninteresting person, and not because I never made a point of making a home I wanted in a neighborhood I wanted to be in.

The difference between people who suffer from that kind of “personality determinism” is understanding that you can switch out your approach the next time, and that’s all the adjustment that’s ever necessary.

“Who you are” is always fine. You know you’ll get it right next time or the time after that because you can try something else. I always assumed that if I failed at something, I needed to be someone else in order to succeed.

What an unbelievably huge miscalculation! It’s what you do, not who you are! And I’d been doing wrong it my whole life. Maybe you haven’t, but if this does sound familiar to you, things could be about to change in a big way.

I had life backwards. I figured who I am determined what I was going to do, what I could do. Because of who I was, I couldn’t do X, so I always had to do Y. That’s who I was. Turns out that what I do can change at any time, and that has a direct effect in changing who I am. I never danced because I was never a “person who danced.” Now it’s obvious to me that as soon as I dance in spite of the person I think I am, I quickly become someone who dances. That’s how people who dance become people who dance. They dance.

In other words, it’s behavior that makes the personality, not the personality that makes the behavior, and that revelation is priceless to me.

This means the personality is extraordinarily malleable as long as you don’t forget than not only can you do what’s out of character, doing what’s out-of-character is the only way to grow.

Still, all of us gravitate towards that which is comfortable, which is tantamount to gravitating towards that which does not help you grow.

Anyway, things are blown wide open for me now. Long-neglected goals look fresh again. They’re going to happen. My personality can’t limit me any more, because I’m going to ignore it. I will do what’s out of character, I will surprise those who know me best. I will surprise myself.

Again, I know there are some people who never had this problem. They take on goals with confidence, knowing that who they are won’t limit them, and failure only means what they did wasn’t the thing that’s going to work.

Still, I know something has clicked here for some of you. I suspect that many, even most of us think our personalities really are pretty rigid blueprints and don’t allow for a lot of things we want. So I hope you do something out of character today and see what I mean.

Die on Purpose

I think it’s really helpful to forget you exist, and often.

It sounds impossible, but it can be done.

Here’s an exercise I do sometimes to achieve that perspective:

Wherever I am, whatever location I am in, I picture the situation exactly as it would be if I wasn’t there. I just watch it like it’s a movie, and the people still in the scene are the actors. Or maybe there’s nobody around at all, it’s just an empty corner of the world sharing a moment with itself. Whatever the scene, it feels like I’m watching it remotely from some far-off theater. It’s all still happening, but I’m not there.

I absorb myself in the details of how it looks and sounds. The characters’ tones of voice, their gestures, the room around them, the background noise. I can let it be whatever it is without any apprehension, because I’m not there, so I have no means — or reason — to stop it or control it, or to wish it was different.

And something amazing happens: all of my concerns and interests just disappear. I watch the moment unfold however it pleases. No part of me is invested in the moment, it just becomes whatever it wills to be, and it doesn’t matter what happens. The effect is exhilarating and liberating. It seems to be quite a miracle that there is even something happening at all. And it’s always, always beautiful.

Think of it as dying on purpose.

Imagine you just died, right now. All of your responsibilities, relationships, plans and worries would vanish like they were never even real, and the world would go on perfectly fine without your input, just like it did before you existed. It’s nothing personal, just the plain truth.

Your hopes and worries never mattered anyway. They only appeared to be so critical because while you were alive you had the insidious (but normal) human habit of seeing things only insofar as they relate to you and your interests.

Really, try this. Imagine you’ve died but you can still watch what happens. You can even wander around the house or the neighborhood like that. Suddenly, the spectacle of what happens is all that’s important, and how it might affect you has nothing to do with it whatsoever, because there is no you.

If you can achieve that mindset of being utterly absent — and it’s not difficult — you will experience no self-consciousness, no worries, no angst, no fear. Just stuff happening. Interesting stuff. Poetic and absurd and compelling all at the same time.

The sensation of “not being there” is one of utter clarity. It will feel as if you’ve dropped a weight you never knew you were carrying.

Once you get a feel for that state, you will realize how much of your everyday thoughts are not about what actually happens, but about what’s in it for you or not in it for you. Those thoughts are the source of all self-consciousness, fear, longing and existential pain.

There is no sufferer, so there is no suffering. Curiously, beauty survives.

You will find that what happens around you is always beautiful and painless if you can watch it without evaluating it against your personal interests. And that’s easy to do when you’re not there.

So die, often.

What Passion Will Buy You

There is an interesting discussion brewing in the blogosphere at the moment. My friend and fellow blogger Lisis Blackston of Quest for Balance wrote a controversial article last week about the feasibility of dropping your day job to pursue your passion.

We’ve all witnessed a growing culture of people who are quitting their lukewarm office careers to do what they’ve always wanted to do. There are countless success stories floating about (particularly in the online world) and it almost seems like following your passion — given an unwavering will — all but guarantees financial success. Lisis challenges this notion in her post.

Her article is here, and it is absolutely worth a read.

Several bloggers have responded with their take (a full list is at the end of Lisis’ article) and the topic is dear to me, so I’ll weigh in too.

It does seem passion generates income for some, but not for others. Therefore, ditching a steady job — under the assumption that your passion cannot fail you in the income department — is not exactly a bulletproof idea. But how do you know if your passion is the kind that would make you rich if you ran with it?

When it comes to making money, it seems to me that the starving artists and the turkey-feather craft peddlers are missing a crucial law of profiteering:

Passion has never paid bills, not for anyone.

Not for Michael Jordan, not for Bill Gates, not for the Beatles. What made all of them wealthy was that they created something large numbers of people were willing to pay for.

It just so happens that the Beatles’ passion (along with its much more rare and useful cousin, talent) resulted in the production of recorded music that has actually improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Forty years later, I can come home after a rough day, put on Abbey Road, and suddenly feel a lot better. That’s real, concrete value that their work has brought to my life — “value” as in something so useful I would pay money for it. I even bought Beatles coasters. Sixteen dollars, and worth every penny.

When I was a kid, I watched Michael Jordan’s unbelievable moves on TV and I loved it so much I wanted to be him. I had all the Chicago Bulls paraphernalia: basketballs, shoes, posters, clothes and more. At ten years old, whenever I could round up exactly $1.13, I would rush off to the card shop and buy a pack of NBA cards. So often I had not a penny more, and that’s what I did with my money. Because it was so worth it to me.

The point is this: people part with money when they find something that is directly valuable to them, that is to say they pay for what they believe improves their lives. Jordan’s passion for the game really didn’t really enter into the equation from my perspective. I just bought what I really liked.

You could argue that without passion, Michael Jordan would have had difficulty putting in the thousands of hours of practice required to be so spectacularly profitable. I wouldn’t disagree. However, he needed to be part of an intelligent business model (the NBA) for his basketball passion to be worth a cent. Playing for big bucks in the NBA just a natural career path for a basketball prodigy, but if he’d been a backgammon player — even an equally masterful one — he would never have become rich.

Money doesn’t come in exchange for passion, it comes in exchange for what other people value. That’s the key: the other people. Who says I value what you are passionate about? Elite backgammon matches just don’t produce enough value for enough people for it to make anyone rich.

I spend maybe $150 a year on Gillette Mach 3 razors. I buy them because they are far and away better than any other disposable razor I’ve used. I have no idea if the people at Gillette are fanatically passionate about making the best razors. It is more likely they are fanatically passionate about making money. I don’t care either way, I pay for what is useful to me, just like everyone else. Particularly in the realm of big business, the creative motives behind a product are usually quite distant and irrelevant to the person who is shelling out the cash.

Passion is a rather private and internal thing; it’s more of an interaction between your emotions and your actions. Your customers can only guess at why your product is so awesome (or so awful) and they probably aren’t particularly concerned with how it makes you feel inside.

So who ever said passion creates cash? I suspect, rather than outright snake-oil salesmen, it was people who decided to follow their passion and found that suddenly they enjoyed working, and were able to approach work with much less resistance and much more creativity. Imagine the difference between living a life where you cringe when you wake up, to one where you rush to work with enthusiasm.

But if your passion does not help you produce something that people will pay for, it cannot be expected to make you money. If your passion is to build and sell houses, you’ll come to your work with an excited and innovative attitude, which can only improve your chances to please clients and master your trade. It’s not hard to imagine that outlook leading quite organically to increased profits.

If your passion is to balance chairs on your chin, no matter how good you are at it you may have difficulty paying your bills, simply because people generally don’t tend to spend a lot of money to see people balance furniture on their chin. This, in turn, is because watching a chair-balancer doesn’t improve people’s lives in a significant or lasting way.

The correlation between passion and income, then, is only circumstantial, not absolute.

The economics of it can’t be ignored, and I don’t think any reasonable person would say that business sense is irrelevant just because passion is in limitless supply.

Fine art is one area where the passion-for-money fallacy is most apparent. I’ve seen more incredible works of art than I can count — intricate, painstaking, eye-popping work that must have taken hundreds of hours for the artist to compete.

But who will pay for those hundreds of hours of passionate work? I can see a hundred such works of art in the same gallery, deriving a measure of joy from each, for twelve dollars. For all the untold heaps of passion that go into it, where does the equivalent in money come from?

Nowhere, because there is no equivalency between passion and money. The market for fine art is very small. Most people never buy art, and when they do they don’t spend much. How much do you spend on paintings and sculptures in a year, compared to say, gasoline? There are art collectors out there who spend fortunes, but not many.

There is a tremendous disparity between the passion and effort that goes into a work of art and the amount a person is likely to pay for it. Some areas pay better than others, and your passion may very well not create much in the way of salable value for anyone else.

In a Mexican gallery I once saw a wonderful iron sculpture that I would have loved to own. The price tag was eight thousand dollars. Even though I loved it, if I had a spare eight thousand dollars (or a spare fifty) I wouldn’t buy it. There are too many other things I would rather spend that kind of money on: travel, furniture, living expenses. Eight thousand dollars worth of any of those things add much more value to my life than eight thousand dollars worth of sculpture.

Even if I had a spare half million, I don’t think I’d drop eight grand on it. I can always get more value out of eight thousand bucks than what a sculpture or a painting could possibly bring to my life.

So you can see how unbridled passion can easily eat up time and resources that nobody will ever see fit to compensate you for. Passion is no safety net at all. It could very well be dead weight, at least as far as supporting yourself goes.

To make money, you have to understand what makes money: delivering something of value to people willing to pay for it — and you have to be able to create that something of value efficiently. It’s extremely simple, but for some reason it it doesn’t seem to be widely known.

So to follow a passion with no regard for its value to others is just plain foolish, if you’re expecting it to pay your rent.

Of Course the Universe is Conscious

A smart person once told me while I was looking up at some stars, to “please be aware that you are seeing.”
I’ve heard that and said it a few times since, and the initial reaction to that remark is typically something like, “Well, no shit.” It was mine, for a moment.
But it is really something profound, if you stick with that thought longer than a moment.
We are aware, to some degree, almost all the time. Awareness isn’t just a big part of life, it comprises life as we know it. So it rarely occurs to us that it needn’t necessarily be this way.
Yet we are aware. If we know nothing else, we know that is true. I mean, if there’s anything we take for granted, it’s this astonishing fact that we are aware of stuff. And it’s the coolest, most empowering fact of all.
If you can look down and see your legs, then I guess you could say you’re aware of yourself. Again, duh. But which part of you is aware of your legs? You’d probably say your brain, and while I’m not convinced that’s entirely correct, let’s say it is. Already we have something interesting happening. One part of something is aware of its other aspects. Or at least some of its other aspects. I doubt anybody would be aware they had a liver if nobody told them, or if they did not deduce it somehow by becoming aware of other livers in other people. So your self-awareness is not complete, meaning you’re not aware of every single thing going on in your body. But we don’t need to have every possible bit of information about ourselves in order to be aware of ourselves or to know ourselves.
You are a part of the universe, I’m going to presume. So when you’re out late on a long weekend, leaning back on the hood of a ’76 Vista Cruiser looking up at the stars from some campsite here on earth, one part of the universe is suddenly acutely aware of another part of it.
It’s fair to say then, that at least in that moment, the universe is conscious of itself.
Well wait a minute… not quite, right? Something in the universe is aware of something else in it.
But is that really different from the way in which you’re aware of yourself? A chunk of matter in your head is aware of (among other things) some other lengths of matter sprouting from your torso. Is this not a body being aware of itself?
So if a part of something is aware (to some degree, anyway) of the rest of that thing, then you can say that thing is self-aware. Is that not true for the universe?
And these “parts”… how do you really define something as truly distinct from something else? The boundary between my body and the environment surrounding it is not so definite, if you look closely. I exchange matter with the “outside world” as a matter of course, in my breathing, eating, sweating and bathroom activities. Bits of my skin dry up and float away, maybe landing in your drink. Then are they me or you? Seriously.
A less silly example. We think of the sun as being “over there” and we see it from here. But when you’re seeing the sun, what’s really happening? Photons, little bits of the sun, are shooting 93 million miles through space into the backs of your eyeballs, setting off an electrical reaction with which your brain creates a genuinely brilliant experience.
It’s not a You over here and a Sun over there, with one of those separate things aware of the other separate thing. It’s a seamless interaction between the universe and itself. But it cannot be denied that an experience is occurring — that awareness is present. You can argue all day about “whose” experience it is.
Those distinctions that we so casually make — between the soil and the grass, or the breeze and the palm trees — are really only conceptual boundaries we impose on our experience to aid communication and understanding. Where does one end and the other begin? They are only definite as a matter of thinking — which is a function of consciousness. So these boundaries couldn’t exist without awareness. “We are all one” is not just a flaky hippie notion.
Help me out here. Am I missing something? Because no matter how I dice it, it seems to me that if I’m self-aware, then the universe clearly is too.
Now, I don’t know quite when this began. I don’t remember the moment when my awareness “switched on”. But since I do remember being bitten by a duck at Wisconsin Dells when I was three years old, I suppose I can be confident it was somewhere between age three and age negative nine months.
But the point is it did turn on somewhere during the proceedings.
It’s worth pointing out that there really is no question about that. I can deny all sorts of things. I can deny that the sky is blue, I can deny that the world is round, I can deny that Elvis is dead, I just can’t deny that I am aware. I think, therefore I am, someone once said. (Elvis?)
It’s even tougher to reckon exactly when the universe’s self-awareness turned on during its proceedings, but clearly it did, if you’re looking at this screen.
To the best of our understanding, thirteen-some billion years ago, something (nothing?) exploded, flinging unfathomable amounts of matter and energy outward.
By way of gravitation, nuclear forces and other apparent rules of the game all that stuff began to combine and interact, and settle out to form chemicals, dust, asteroids, planets and galaxies.
But all that combining and interacting didn’t stop at boring lumps of rock and fire. If you were to zoom in on one of those lumps, you’d see even more interesting things forming. Earthquakes, volcanoes, atmospheres, storms, clouds, lightning. Rivers. Tides. Sand.
Somewhere along the way, in certain corners of the universe, a phenomenon arose that we regard as very special. Certain arrangements of matter developed the ability reproduce themselves, maintain themselves and eventually propel themselves around. They grew more complex, developing the ability to sense the surrounding environment and respond to it.
I won’t speculate on why, but these forms eventually gained the ability to experience. Again, this is undeniable, unless you want to try to deny that you’re reading this, but I bet you are.
And what do these interesting little corners of the universe experience? The universe. The dirt, the grass, the stars. Maybe a slurpee.
The universe, through its own nature, has become aware of itself. It is experiencing itself. And its awareness is expanding. I think the chances are pretty remote that the universe is only aware of itself through what’s happening here on earth.
It’s too bad that the notion of a conscious universe is typically rejected as New Agey feel-good drivel. That’s a pretty limiting way of thinking. It’s a shame, because at the moment, we have at our disposal evolution’s coolest trick so far: matter getting its own sense of just what the hell it is.
Of course the universe is conscious. What else could be?

Passion as a Career Path

So where do I stand on the passion vs. practicality debate?

As we’ve seen, it’s practicality that turns effort to dollars, not love. Love may have uses in business, but only in so far as it is practical. Loving your customers is perfectly practical to business goals.

I think most people find themselves in careers that do nothing for them aside from paying the bills. In that case, passion is only useful after-hours, and that’s a disturbing thought. The typical arrangement is to sell half your waking hours, at a flat rate, five out of the seven days in a week — to somebody else who is making a lot more money with your effort than you are. With the modest amount you receive — and the remaining half of your time — you are to build a life.

Most of us live this reality, and I now see it as a bloody curse. Of course we can do better. We settle, because it seems impractical to walk away from a steady income. Business owners who get rich from our modestly-paid efforts want to make sure we don’t get too entrepreneurial ourselves, so they get us dependent on health benefits that are so difficult to walk away from. Beware. This is the reason public healthcare is so violently opposed in the conservative contingent of the US, but that’s another post altogether.

In his book Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn encourages the reader to ask “What is my job in this planet, with a capital J?”

Good question. Is it selling insurance? Programming data entry systems? Processing credit card records? Stocking grocery shelves? Helping the suburbs of Winnipeg get bigger?

With one precious lifetime to spend, and all the advantages of a developed world and a free market, maybe it’s nothing short of idiotic to resign yourself to a post in life that has nothing to do with who you are or what you love.

Like so many others, I have the dream of becoming rather well-off doing work I love. Unless I die in my thirties, I will do it. You can bet the farm on it.

I’m certain of it not because Tim Ferriss or Steve Pavlina or Tony Robbins says I can, but because I’ve decided I will. It’s not a gamble, it’s not a leap of faith. It’s how I plan to spend the rest of my life. It will take considerable amounts of practical effort — planning and testing — but it is certainly a lost cause without passion.

Passion is definitely not a requirement for a steady income though, not by any stretch. In fact, it’s probably easier to find a steady income if you forget about your passion completely. Don’t let it bug you, don’t allow yourself time for it, and you’ll have your rent paid with ease. Maybe you can let it poke its head out on weekends. Just make sure it’s out of sight by Monday.

To be blunt, working for the weekend is a shit existence, and even though it seems to be the default strategy in my culture, I will not settle for it. In a bearable but uninspiring job, the days slip by so freely that suddenly you wake up to find a decade has gotten behind you and you’re nowhere closer to anything you love. With the exception of what simple pleasures you can cram in on weekends and evenings, it isn’t life, it’s a slow death. There is too much up for grabs for the intelligent (and passionate) individual to let himself pass the years that way.

Certainly a middle ground holds the most promise. I tried the career game without passion for a while, it led me somewhere unbearably mediocre. I’m starting over, with passion as my compass and practical thinking as my throttle.

Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater and think that passion should take a back seat to practicality. One without much of the other is a recipe for disaster, yet I think practicality without passion is much more dangerous, because it can steal your life from you without your realizing it. Maybe it already has.
Passion isn’t worth any money. It’s priceless.

ENTHUSIASM

Heroes, champions, and achievers are enthusiastic. They are passionate and excited by life and what they believe in. Set yourself on fire and get excited by what you do because enthusiasm is what makes ordinary people extraordinary. Enthusiasm makes it possible to do the most difficult of tasks because it provides the energy to act by lightening your burdens as well as the burdens of everyone you meet.

Enthusiasm is like a magnet that draws others to you. It is the secret of charisma. People want to be around those who are excited about life. Don't you think that people who never get carried away should be? But don't wait to become excited. There's nothing exciting about waiting; it is in the doing that we become excited. Ernest Newman (1868~1959) explains:

"The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand with as much regularity as an accountant settles down each day to his figures. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration. "

Summing up, doesn't it make sense to do more of what works and less of what doesn't? Someone once wrote:

"Why were the saints, saints? Because they were cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, patient when it was difficult to be patient; and because they pushed on when they wanted to stand still, and kept silent when they wanted to talk, and were agreeable when they wanted to be disagreeable. That was all. It was quite simple and always will be."

PERSISTENCE

Persistence and determination guarantee success because they represent the will to continue until the goal is reached. Persistence, which moves us forward, mustn't be confused with stubbornness or rigidness, which holds us back. For persistence is about what we WILL do and stubbornness about what we WON'T do.

The difference between success and failure has less to do with know-how than it does with know-when-to-quit, which is never. For as Confucius taught, "It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop." Although those who fail attribute the success of others to 'good luck,' they don't realize that 'good fortune' is nothing more than determination to overcome misfortune.

Part of life deals with overcoming obstacles, and we do so with the tools of persistence and determination. Imagine what the world would have lost had Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, and Thomas Edison given up when faced with their 'insurmountable' problems. Imagine what you will lose if you choose to give up when faced with life's challenges.

Here's what American billionaire and co-founder of Amway, Richard M. DeVos, has to say about the value of persistence, "If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, 'Here comes number seventy-one!'"

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY

To take responsibility is to take power over your life; it is to act as your own advocate, and it's to take the helm of your destiny. When we shirk our responsibility by blaming events or others, we inadvertently give up our power to change.

We are not responsible for our emotions, which flare up spontaneously, but we are responsible for what we do about them. For example, if we find ourselves frequently getting angry, rather than giving in to it, we can choose to study anger management, thereby vastly improving our life.

Similarly, we are not responsible for the negative programming we picked up as a child, but once we reach adulthood, we are responsible for repairing the damage. Also, being responsible means being big enough to admit one's mistakes; simply put, if you mess up, 'fess up.

GETTING ALONG WITH OTHERS

What can be more important than getting along with others? For the quality of our life depends on the quality of our relationships. The keys to successful relationships include respect, admiration, support, laughter, gentleness, kindness, understanding, and forgiveness. One of the most valuable gifts we can give to others is acceptance. For when we accept them, we give them the freedom to be themselves.

In any relationship friction is bound to arise. Friction is not to be abhorred, but welcomed, for how else can we develop our humanity by practicing tolerance, patience, and understanding? Rather than criticizing, we can be forgiving; rather than giving a piece of our mind, we can give leeway, and rather than being disparaging, we can be encouraging.

BALANCE

We all play many roles: parent, sibling, child, friend, spouse, employee or employer, citizen. To spend too much time in one role means we neglect another, so we need to always be mindful of balance. As we play our various roles, we simultaneously pursue a variety of goals: family, relationships, career, finances, spirituality, health, recreation, personal development. Here too balance and prioritization are called for to avoid neglecting important areas of our life.

Our lives are filled with the need for balance, and the first step in achieving it is to become aware of this fact. Here are examples of other areas in which we can fine tune our lives with greater balance:

a) getting what we want versus getting what we need,

b) work versus play,

c) open-mindedness versus gullibility (don't be so open-minded that your brains fall out),

d) time spent with others and time spent alone (time alone with your thoughts is needed to review what's working and what's not),

e) give and take in relationships (be sure to balance what people need from you with what you need for yourself),

f) the fun of spending time with people you have lots in common with versus the learning opportunities that come from spending time with those who are completely unlike you,

g) being humorous versus being serious, and

h) acting logically and rationally versus being spontaneous and willing to follow your intuition.

So you see, there are many areas of our life that need balance, and Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

FLEXIBILITY

Life is synonymous with change. Although we make plans and set target dates, things change. The unexpected happens. To survive in a changing world we need to be flexible and learn how to adapt. No matter how hard we try, we cannot stand in the same spot in a stream, for a different stream rushes by each moment. So it is with life, for the streams of time and changes are rushing by. Those who are rigid and stubborn will be swept away by the tide of change, but those who are flexible and willing to adapt will be carried to success. Everett Dirksen (1896-1969) cleverly said, "I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times."

DO YOUR BEST

Your strongest ally on the path to success is a good attitude. To make sure you have one, make Debbi Field's motto your own. Her motto is "Good enough never is." Refuse to accept 'good enough' when excellence is possible. Make your creed or purpose in life to always do your best.

Do you want to win recognition, admiration, and respect? The shortest path to winning respect is to respect yourself. That's exactly what you will do if you always try your best and make excellence your goal. Excellence means asking more of yourself than others ask of you. Here is what Og Mandino (1923-1996) has to say on the subject:

"One of the great undiscovered joys of life comes from doing everything one attempt to the best of one's ability. There is a special sense of satisfaction, a pride in surveying such a work, a work which is rounded, full, exact, complete in its parts, which the superficial person who leaves his or her work in a slovenly, slipshod, half-finished condition, can never know. It is this conscientious completeness which turns any work into art.

The smallest task, well done, becomes a miracle of achievement."

Can you see how those who do only what they are paid for cheat themselves? After all, to get the most out of life, you've got to get the best out of yourself. It is very easy to elevate ourselves. All we have to do is make a decision and commitment to do our best. To guide us on this path, Confucius (BCE 551-479) adds this advice, "When you see good qualities in a person, think of how to rise to that level. When you see bad qualities in a person, reflect inwards and examine your weak points."

MONITOR YOURSELF

How do you know you are making progress if you don't monitor your activities? Part of planning is taking the time to stop and evaluate how we are spending our time. Are we proceeding according to schedule? Have we prioritized our tasks and do we work on what's important first? Are we learning from our mistakes and the mistakes of others? Swimming champion and Olympic gold medal winner (1984), Geoffrey Gaberino passes on this tip, "The real contest is always between what you've done and what you're capable of doing. You measure yourself against yourself and nobody else."

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

Paradoxically, we often neglect our two greatest possessions, which are TIME and HEALTH. All the riches in the world mean little if you are feeble and sick. Good health is the source of vitality and makes it possible to lead a fulfilling life. How can people in poor health cushion themselves from the storms of life? Without good health we become like rag dolls cast about in a hurricane.

Eat balanced meals and in moderation. Exercise regularly. And sleep 6-10 hours daily. As long as you awaken refreshed, you are getting enough sleep. Don't neglect your sleep as your body needs it for rejuvenation. As Jim Rohn says, "Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." Because of the mind-body connection, our mental health is equally vital. To care for it, feed your mind positive thoughts and bathe it in cheerfulness while maintaining a pleasant disposition. Remember, too, as the Irish proverb says, "No time for your health today, will result in no health for your time tomorrow."

ACTION

Life is about movement. We either march forward, backward, or in place. The secret of getting ahead is getting started. Yet, the most difficult part of any task is getting started. You may not feel like doing what needs to be done, but if you go ahead and do it anyway, resistance will fade and later be replaced by enthusiasm.

Occasionally you may feel stuck and unable to move. If so, don't accept inertia or allow it to overcome you. Rather, stimulate yourself to take action by asking a series of questions. Here are some examples: What do I want, to be powerful or powerless? Will doing what needs to be done make me powerful? Will avoiding what needs to be done make me weak? What do I CHOOSE to be, powerful or weak?

Also, you can ask yourself, "If I could eliminate my lethargy, what project would I start and what would be the first steps I would take?" After getting your answer, ignore your feelings of sluggishness and carry out the steps. Doing what needs to be done creates the energy to do it! First act, then energy, motivation and enthusiasm will follow.

Do More of What Works and Less of What Doesn’t

"Doctor, doctor, you've got to help me. Every time I bang my head against the wall, it hurts."

"Well, stop banging your head against the wall!"

Why do some people make life unnecessarily complex? It doesn't require a PhD to get the most enjoyment from life; all that's needed is a little common sense. If it hurts when you bang your head against the wall, stop banging it! If what you're doing causes physical or mental pain, stop doing it.

We come equipped with a built-in sensor called pain. Whenever we're experiencing it, it's telling us we're doing something wrong. Yet, rather than heed the warning, we often continue doing what's wrong and then complain about the pain. Does that make any sense? Of course not. What does make sense, however, is to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. Simple, isn't it? It's just a matter of doing what makes us feel proud and avoiding what makes us feel ashamed.

If it's so simple, why do so many of us end up regretting what we do and neglect to do? Here's a quick review of a handful of reasons why we keep banging our heads against the wall, despite the pain.

1. HABITS. Habits are automatic responses. We repeat them without thinking. Good habits are powerful friends. Bad habits can lead to ruination. So, resolve today to start replacing bad habits with good ones.
2. EMOTIONS (feelings). Emotions are like habits; they can act as an ally or an enemy. Emotions are what motivate us to act. And our actions will either lead to pleasant results or nasty consequences. So, it's important to become AWARE of our feelings and where they will lead us. In other words, we need to stop and think before we act.
3. BELIEFS. We are governed by our beliefs. If you believe you cannot do something, you cannot. If you believe you can, you can. Beliefs are in our subconscious. Most of them were implanted during our childhood and youth. You may consciously want to succeed, for example, but if you believe you are undeserving of success, your subconscious will see to it that you get what you deserve (failure).
4. FEAR. Many allow themselves to become trapped by fear. It may be fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of giving up pleasure for hard work, or other fears. The antidote to fear is to do the very thing we fear by living courageously. We need to constantly step out of our comfort zone. Fear is a wonderful emotion, for it is the price we pay to experience exhilaration and joy, which are the rewards for doing what we fear.
5. VICTIMHOOD. This is a pernicious state in which some people delude themselves into believing they are powerless to change. To comfort themselves, they blame life or others for their problems. The way out is to accept personal responsibility. The pain they're in is a signal that THEY are doing something wrong; they need to stop looking for excuses and start looking for solutions.

Forgiveness

Learn forgiveness. If you are the person who has been wronged, always remember that you have the power to forgive. No one else can give this power to you. Amazingly, by releasing resentment or negative feelings, you are the one who benefits most of all.