It turns out The Beatles were right… well mostly.  Try this right now:  grab your journal and a pen and draw a line down the middle of a blank page.  Over the left hand column write, “Happiness.” Over the right hand column write, “Not Happiness.” Make a list of all the activities, places, people, things, and experiences that bring happiness, joy, excitement or fulfillment to your life in the left column.  Do the same in the right column for everything that brings you stress, anger, frustration, drudgery and anything that is clearly not happiness.  Leave out anything that feels neutral or does not immediately come to mind.  Do this right now. No, really… do it.

In and of itself, this is an extremely eye opening exercise.  To take stock of what in your life is actually bringing you happiness or joy can add a great deal of perspective.  Simply examining what real happiness/enjoyment/excitement/fulfillment/satisfaction looks like for you at a deep level can be both surprising and liberating.

Hopefully you found your Happiness list was far longer than your Not-Happiness list. Next, circle everything in the Happiness column that is basically free to do right now.  If you could have that experience today without spending any money, circle it.

What did you circle?  Being with family and friends?  Being in nature?  Activities like walking, working out, sports?  Were you surprised at the number of things are basically free to do right now that bring you joy?

When I did this exercise I circled things like spending time with friends and family, walking, biking, working out.  Spending time outdoors, playing music, reading, writing, and spending time with pets.  All are basically free to do right now.

It is true, some of the activities that bring us happiness include start up costs like buying a bike or sports equipment, caring for a pet, buying food and drink to share with friends.  Travel, tools and expenses for hobbies, tickets to shows, these all have price tags attached to them.  This is an investment in your life and worth every penny.  It is also true that having a roof over our heads, food on our tables, medical care and clothing on our bodies all allow for the time and space to do the activities that bring us excitement and enjoyment.  It is necessary to provide for our needs and spend energy to sustain ourselves, but these basic seldom cost as much as our society would tell us.

Did your car show up on your happiness list?  What about your mortgage payment or cell phone?  Fancy clothes, jewelry, dining out?  Are you spending money on things that at the end of the day, do not truly contribute to the quality of your life?

I found working through this exercise that I am spending far more of my dollars on things that really do not make me happy than I spend on things that do.  From where I sit, The Beatles did have it right–the best things in life are free (or close to it).

 

If you own it, you drive it.  Accepting responsibility is not accepting blame.  It is not guilt, and it is not shame. It is not self-punishment or admitting defeat.  It is not a display a weakness, but a show of strength.  It is not humiliation, but a demonstration of leadership and personal integrity.

It is acknowledgement in and acceptance of the part you play in creating the events and circumstances of your life.  It is above all else the fork in the road between helplessness, resignation and defeat, and that of action, decision, and emancipation.

When things go sideways, it is all too easy to look externally for the cause.  To blame, to point the finger:  “It’s not my fault!  It’s them not me!”  This is the trap of the victim.  Always at the mercy of other people, events, and circumstances.

The fundamental problem with this thinking is that is transfers the plane of action to those same external people, events and circumstances.  By blaming something out in the world, the individual has removed their ability to do anything about it.  “I can’t do anything about it, I am a victim of ______.”  The have told themselves (and usually anyone else who will listen) that they have no control, no power over what’s going on.  Nothing can be done.  No course of action can be taken.  This is defeat.  This is a show of weakness in mind, body and spirit.

The necessary alternative is the acceptance of responsibility.  By acknowledging the part you play in even the slightest capacity, you suddenly give yourself permission and the capacity to act.  To do something constructive.  To change the situation.  By making that mental shift and reflecting on the part you play in the dance, you now have the ability to change how you move to the music.

You give yourself permission to actively do something different.

There is nothing in this world that cannot be improved by simply taking responsibility.

Disagreement with that impossible coworker?  What are you doing to cause that reaction in the other person?  What could you do differently?

Stuck in a dead end job?  Get a new one.  Start a business.  Change how you feel about your job.

Worried about green house gases?  We all should be.  Change your lifestyle.  Become involved.

Terminally ill?  Use the time you have to improve the lives of others.  Pass along your wisdom.  Become a source of inspiration.

Disgusted with the atrocities humans inflict on each other?  Ghandi would famously say, “be the change you wish to see in the world.”

When you shirk responsibility, you negate your ability to change your circumstance.  You’re placing the plane of action on that which you blame.  You’re telling yourself and the world that you are too small to make a difference.

When you take responsibility, however, you put yourself in the driver seat.  You instantly give yourself the ability, the power, the permission to respond differently. Even if external events are outside of our direct, physical control, if we acknowledge the part we play we can change how we feel about and respond to those events.  And often this is the most profound effect.

It has been said that depression is living too much on the past and anxiety is living in the future.  If this is the case, the sweet spot is right now.  Living in the present moment brings clarity, alertness, relaxation and ultimately happiness.

In the Meyers-Briggs/Jungian school of personality type classification, those of us who test as iNtuitive tend to be largely future oriented.  This brings with it certain advantages including the ability to see possibilities, anticipate problems, and knit together many abstract concepts.  The downside of course is the more time spent living in the future, the less time in the present.  How do we effectively reconcile this?

We all need to spend a certain amount of time planning for future events.  Whether scheduling, investing, planning and so on, we need to put ourselves in the future at least some of the time in order to live at minimum functional and ideally fulfilling lives.

The key is compartmentalization of any activity that takes you out of the present moment.  When you need to plan your week or schedule your time, allot a specific amount of time to do so and limit it to that.  Do not be plan your week as you eat dinner with your family or work on other projects.  Do your advance thinking and then come back to living here and now.  When a problem or decision is at hand, consciously devote time to thinking about it and then move back to the present.  If an answer is not found within the given time period, allow your subconscious mind to work it’s magic as you live in the here and now.

 

 

As men, we sometimes find it difficult to ask for help.  Our sense of personal pride and independence can get in the way.

The cliche is true, “no man is an island.” As Shay Carl has pointed out, within cliches we find timeless and tested wisdom.

Asking for help makes us vulnerable as we admit to ourselves and others that we cannot go it alone.  Perhaps this is the true lesson.

When we do ask for help a couple of things happen.  The burden we felt was so heavy becomes lighter; we instantly feel more connected; and we become more sympathetic to the burdens of others.  With that too, comes a greater desire to help others.  And this is the true value.

Ask for help and the cycle of helping grows and expands.  By nature, we pay it forward.

I am always amazed by the number of people that use the wheelchair accessible automatic door to the bathroom at my office building.  The bathroom.  These are perfectly capable, adult men and women with no physical disability and no real reason to press the button, but still it happens.  Taking the quick and easy way out.

As culture, it’s clear we in Western Society have become accustomed to a convenient and very comfortable way of life.  Largely this is a good thing. To our credit, life is better in this decade than at any other time in history.  What price are we paying, however, in terms of our own self confidence and self reliance?  What value might we gain by resisting the flow towards sedentary comfort and instead creating hardship for our own development of character?

By taking the stairs, walking instead of driving, holding the door, getting up to change the channel (or God forbid turning off the TV),  one may just find pride, dignity, and a greater sense of  self competence begin to show up.  Each time you challenge yourself, whether on a large or small scale, you emerge better for it.  You learn something about who you are as a person and walk just a little taller.

Go ahead.  Be one of the few that walk up the escalator.

I made the decision to run the Tough Mudder obstacle course in August this year.  After quickly realizing I had some preparation to do for the 20 obstacles and 18 km run, I began a training regimen.  I’ve found myself falling into the trap of looking for results only after a couple of weeks of training.  After a workout, I often head home to shower and inevitably find myself staring at the mirror looking for bulging biceps and tree-trunk quads.  What am I expecting so early in the process?

It’s so tempting to look for the payoff right away.  Is this our instant gratification culture?  Intellectually, I understand it’s hundreds of hours of training, days of recoup, eating well, sleeping well, doing the things we all know need to be done to bring the outward signs of progress.  But I can’t help stopping to check along the way.

Malcolm Gladwell is quoted as saying, “Success is a function of persistence and doggedness and the willingness to work hard for twenty-two minutes to make sense of something that most people would give up on after thirty seconds.”  What is it that drives us to keep trudging though the swamp until firmer ground is reached on the other side?  Does it help to enjoy the process?  Is it pure grit?  Do you need a why?

Perhaps I’ll have an answer in August.

The wipers left grey lines across the windshield as I tried to clear the murky salt water splashed by the car in front of me.  The fan roared at full, working against the fog creeping from the sides and top of glass.  It was the worst February in Ontario could offer.  Just above freezing and enough to turn would be fluffy snow into penetrating, cold rain that easily soaks through your coat.  The expression on my face must have mirrored the gloom in the sky.

I was running late for a job I had only started a week earlier.  I had left the house in a funk that I had awoken with and carried through out my morning routine.  My daily meditation was 20 minutes of sitting and stewing in my own worries.  We had run out of eggs and my oatmeal was lifeless and seemed more like dryer lint mixed with pablum than a nutritious breakfast.  I had argued with my girlfriend about something I have since forgotten and remember only the heaviness in my chest and the crease that nearly brought my eyebrows together.

I needed a hair cut, my neck was bleeding from where the razor had gone off course, my shirt hadn’t seen an iron and I was sure I looked more panhandler than professional.  My car was making a strange sound as I turned the corner–surely an expensive fix–and my finger had finally worn through the hole in my glove.

Every self doubt and anything resembling anxiety was forefront in my mind.  Am I going to be able to do this job?  Why had they given me such a challenging first assignment?  I don’t think I have the skill set to do this.  Why am I so tired?  Why doesn’t she understand my point of view?  What a shitty day…

I suddenly came to and braked hard as the car in front of me slowed to turn into Tim Horton’s.  Man, what am I doing?  There was only one way the day was going to turn out if I kept up this thinking and it wasn’t one I would wish on anyone.  I needed to snap out of it and turn it around.

I remembered an audio book by Brian Tracy I had been listening to  the day before and Brian’s advice that the antidote to negative emotion was a focus on gratitude.  That the mind could not hold both thoughts of despair and of thankfulness simultaneously.

I was 10 minutes from the office as traffic slowed behind a city bus picking up soggy passengers at the next stop.  I had time to do this.  I gave myself the challenge:  think of 25 things to be grateful for… just not this weather… not this job.  Stop!  Try again.  OK, despite the weird sound, I had a car to get me to work unlike the poor folks standing in February rain.  That’s something I can be thankful for.  I’ve got an amazing family and a wonderful partner who love me.  I have a shelter over my head and a cozy bed to sleep in.  And really, the weather’s not so bad with a hot tea in hand. And I have books to read and movies to watch.  I have access to technology and tools that put the world’s information in my lap.  I have a healthy body, there are spring days to follow, the sun’s pretty cool…

My list surpassed 30 in no time and I was still going strong as I watched the gate lift in front of my car as I drove in to the parking lot.  And with it, the gloomy funk I had carried all morning had lifted as well.  The clouds seemed less foreboding and I had a renewed sense of purpose to my day.  I knew what I needed to do at work and how I would do it.  The cool rain felt refreshing on my face as the air filled my lungs and my body came alive as I walked across the parking lot.  I was going to be just fine.

Today was a pretty good day.

When the world weighs heavy and conspires against us, rather than follow the spiral downward, sometimes we need to hit the brakes and shift gears.  A quick mental list of anything good in our lives and feeling appreciative of those things is sometimes all it takes to get us back on the right road.  When we do this, we steer our mental cars from the muddy shoulder back to the dry pavement.