We are our entourage

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Choosing your mental diet

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Grumbling, part 4: Appreciation, the anti-grumble

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Grumbling, part 3: Cleaning up grumbles with others

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Taking on BIG this month

Hello! This month, I have decided that it's time for me to go BIGGER. Reach higher, and shoot for goals that are exciting and a little scary. Wanna join me? What is a goal that, if you reached it in September, would absolutely knock your socks off?

One of my goals is to grow my blog even bigger. So here's what I'm taking on:

1. Build a new-and-improved blog site. I've already done this one, and here it is:

http://frameshiftcoaching.wordpress.com

Yes, I never thought I'd willingly leave a Google-owned product, but here I am. Wordpress rocks. So please update your links to my blog accordingly!

2. Double my blog readership! For this one, I'm going to need YOUR help. Is there anyone you know who would enjoy reading my blog? Anyone who could benefit from it? Send them the link! Do you have a website on which you could put a link to my blog? Please link it! I must confess that it is a little scary for me to ask for your help like this, but as the saying goes:

The great happiness lie on the other side of the great fears

Thank you, in advance, for your help with my quest to go BIG!

What is your big September goal? I'd like to invite you to share your goal in a comment to this blogpost. It's one thing to entertain a goal in your head, and quite another to share it, risk being vulnerable, and let other people support you in your quest. Please share your big goal with us, and use the new blog site to do it!

Grumbling, part 2: Until you walk a mile...

Two blogs ago, I talked about how grumbling and complaining can be poisonous. Today, I'm going to talk about how easy it is to complain, and how hard it is to do what you're complaining about.

The other day, my friend Jennifer was talking about her mother, and complained that "my mother is in her late 60s, and still trying to find herself. She's making these little sculptures in a desperate attempt to connect. It's pretty sad." It was easy for Jennifer to sit back and take pot shots at her mother's art, or her mother's attempts at self-expression. But when charged with the task of expressing herself through art, Jennifer freaked out. What if it looks stupid? What if people judge what I paint? What if it's not good enough? If the painting is supposed to be a self-expression, and it sucks, what does that say about me? Argh! She made that painting, and emerged with a newly-found appreciation for her mother's courage to express herself through art.

It's really easy to complain someone else who is putting themselves out there, but instead of criticizing, shouldn't we be admiring their courage? It's not as easy as it looks.

If you walk around with this mentality, it's a lot easier to fill you days with love and appreciation. That performer on the subway? Wow, what courage to play in front of a crowd of strangers. A less-than-eloquent Sarah Palin interview? Yes, maybe she should have reviewed her facts a bit more beforehand, but what guts it must take to go on national TV. How cool. How many of us have dared to be in her position?

Image courtesy of http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/

On work and quality

My bike Roland was stolen last year. I loved this bike: it was my mother's before me, older than I was, and four sizes too big, but I didn't care. He was a great bike.

In the past month, I decided that I wanted to get a new bike. And I started noticing that, seemingly everywhere I went, there were bikes parked on the street with "For Sale" signs on them. Some of them looked pretty good: nice bikes, reasonably priced. But I was reluctant to take the next step and contact the owners about the bikes. It was like pulling teeth, and made me feel all angsty. I tried wildly to find excuses for not pursuing the bikes: see that patch of rust on the wheel? The frame is probably a tad too small. The tires look flat. On and on.

So yesterday, after passing by yet another bike for sale, it hit me what was going on. I have a theory about the way the world works, that goes like this:

If you work hard, then you will reap nice rewards

That sounds like a pretty good theory to live by. The industrious ant storing up food for the winter, and such. But I have also developed a corollary to this theory:

If something comes to me with little work, it must be flawed.

Interesting. So I am essentially equating value with how much work I put in. This was why I didn't want to pursue the bikes for sale on the street, because what could be easier than just picking up a bike off the street on the way to the coffee shop? In order to find a quality bike, I felt I needed to search Craigslist, compare at least 10 bikes, visit them, negotiate, think about it... make the whole thing a huge ordeal. THEN I would find a quality bike. But picking one up off the street couldn't possibly result in my obtaining a quality bike.

Of course, this is a silly theory. There is no reason those bikes on the street couldn't be quality bikes. Who says I need to go through a huge ordeal in order to find something great?

So the lesson I learned here is that I need to dump the theory that:

I need to go through a huge ordeal in order to find quality

And replace it with a theory that works better for me. How about this one:

Quality isn't necessarily correlated with ordeal size.

So I tested out that last bike on the street, and guess what? Now I have a bike. No ordeal required :)

Image courtesy of http://3.bp.blogspot.com

Grumbling, part 1: How much do you grumble?

Grumbling. We all do it. The line at CVS is six-people-long, and to top it off, the customer at the front of the line wants a price check. Your friend doesn't ask about how your job search is going, even though she knows that you are anxious about it. Joan in accounting STILL hasn't processed your reimbursements from April. Your mom reminds you to get your flu shot-- does she still think you're 6? You don't have anything in your refrigerator for dinner; why did you spend that extra hour at work instead of going shopping? Your partner is in a bad mood, and you grumble about his moodiness.

Sometimes grumbling can be a red flag that indicates places where you might want to effect change in your life (e.g. leave work at a reasonable hour). But by and large we grumble without ever taking any action to fix the things we're grumbling about. These grumbles poison our mood, and slowly decay the relationships that we're grumbling about. Grumbles also consume mental energy that could be spent in happier, more productive and creative pursuits; we don't even have that many unique grumbles, but often play the same ones over and over again in our heads, on infinite repeat. Imagine what else we could be doing with that energy?

As a first step to appreciating the extent of grumbling in your life, keep a log of everything that you grumble about, complain about, or criticize over a 24-hour period. It may take a few days before you become aware enough of your thoughts to catch all of your grumbles, but keep it up.

Once you have a list of your grumbles, examine it. Are you surprised by how many grumbles you entertain? What are the themes of your grumbles--for example, many of my grumbles are about time, "poor" decisions about how to spend it, and the lack of it. What do you grumble about? How much mental space do you spend grumbling?

And most importantly, how much space do you want to spend grumbling? If it's less than you spend now, let's take down your inner grumbler.

Image courtesy of http://farm1.static.flickr.com/

A world of Liquid Luck

Sometimes movies have beautiful life-philosophy moments, and I'd like to share with you one that I experienced recently in the new Harry Potter movie.

In the movie, Harry uses an elixir of liquid luck to convince Professor Slughorn to share a memory with him. It works like this: Harry fixes his mind on what he wants to accomplish (get the memory), drinks the elixir, and then follows his gut impulses. Instead of taking the logical step of going to Slughorn's office, Harry goes to see his friend Hagrid, and a series of seemingly coincidental events ensue, resulting in a night of drunk revelry and Harry finding just the right moment to ask for--and get--the memory. Impossible to design in advance, brilliant in hindsight.

This is probably one of my favorite Harry Potter moments. Wouldn't it be great if we all had little bottles of liquid luck, to direct at whatever purpose we wanted?

The thing is, though, I think we might. Have you ever wanted something really really badly, and then gotten it through the most random ways? Oftentimes if something comes our way not through hard work, but through a series of unplanned events, we call it coincidence or chance. But what if that whole process is really like Harry drinking liquid luck: you set your mind's eye on your goal, put the request out there, believe it'll come, and then watch it all unfold?

I've had several examples of liquid luck in my life, and the more I think about it, the more I find. Here's one of my favorites: when I first entered MIT, I attended a talk by Nobel Laureate and President of Cal Tech, David Baltimore. I stole a quick moment with him afterwards, and asked him which of two labs I should join. I followed his recommendation, and am happy I did. A few years later, we were both speaking at the same conference on the Berkeley campus, and I set my intention on pulling him aside and thanking him for the advice. The problem was that he was pretty much going to arrive, give his talk, and leave--not much time to pin him down. Glug glug liquid luck. The day of the conference, I was a ball of nerves about my talk, and so I went off into a remote building far from the conference, and found a quiet deserted corridor in which to practice my speech. I paced around, talking to myself, gesturing, etc. And then I heard someone behind me say "excuse me." Turning around, I saw none other than David Baltimore standing there! Just me and him in a deserted hallway far from the conference. He had gotten lost on the way to the conference, and was looking for directions. I could barely speak I was so stunned. Impossible to design in advance, brilliant in hindsight. Could that have been liquid luck?

That is a spine-tingley example. But I think there are other more ordinary ones in day-to-day life as well. For example, I was recently looking for a new artistic hobby, but hadn't found any of interest. So I set my intention on finding one, but did not design any concrete steps. Glug glug liquid luck. Meanwhile, I invited my friend Casey to hang out, we chose a weekend, and then he realized that that weekend was Somerville Open Studios, where artists open their homes to showcase their work. We picked out a few artists, none of whose crafts particularly interested me, nor was I particularly looking for a craft for myself, but on our way back to the car, we walked by a house with a terrific stained glass peacock in the window. We stopped to admire it, and Casey discovered that this house was actually part of SOS. We entered the house, and guess what, the stained glass artist, Emily Bhargava, offered classes. Bingo! I am now taking stained glass classes, and it's exactly what I was looking for. Hard to design in advance, brilliant in hindsight. Could that have been liquid luck?

Will I ever be able to prove that my intention caused all of these paths to unfold before me? Nope. I certainly couldn't get another Ph.D. from MIT on the subject. But how much fun is it to live in a world where every twist and turn is part of a brilliant path to get you to what you desire? I'm looking at my life through the liquid luck lens.

When was the last time you drank liquid luck?

Image courtesy of http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com

A restorative force

A few weekends ago, my friend and coworker at the Handel Group, Jo Sawalha, introduced an interesting idea about how we subconsciously maintain the status quo in our lives.

I have noticed in my own life that often after a period of intense joy or accomplishment, anything worthy of Whitney Houston's "One moment in time" (pre-Bobby Brown) as a soundtrack, I usually have what can best be described as a slump day. A day when I get cranky, down-in-the-dumps, and overall blah.

For example, after leading my last two-day coaching workshop in New York, I spent the following Monday on the couch watching whatever Netflix Instant Viewing cared to throw at me. It would be one thing if this was my delicious reward for a weekend well spent: a day of blissful movie-going. But it wasn't. It was me feeling too blah to bother getting off the couch and doing something that would really make me happy. It was like I was treating the day as a sick day.

I thought that this pattern was just me being quirky. But then Jo mentioned that she experiences the same thing, and her comment was met with almost universal nods of agreement from my fellow coaches. Some of the coaches described how they would get sick, or moody, or pick fights with their spouses. Woah, I thought. It's not just me. How peculiar.

You could come up with many hypotheses for this trend. Maybe we over-exert ourselves, leaving us more prone to illness. Maybe we tap into some sort of energy reserve, and then need to recharge.

Jo had her own hypothesis. She cited work by David Hawkings (whose ideas she mostly disagrees with, by the way, because they state that people really can't grow and evolve to any great extent), that claims that each person lives at a certain "level" in their day-to-day life. That level can be thought of as an energy level, or a greatness level, or a happiness level. We go about our lives pretty much hanging out at a certain level and that level feels "normal" to us.

Then we do something great, and our level rises, maybe even by a lot. But this new level feels strange and unfamiliar to us, and so unconsciously we create an "equal and opposite force," to quote physics textbooks from time immemorial, to bring us back to our old level. A restorative force. Like laying on the couch watching Netflix. Ah, back to familiar ground.

This concept got me thinking, because it puts us in the driver's seat. What if that restorative force really is deliberate, and not some physical law of human-ness? What if my days of blah have really been me just wanting to return to familiar ground? This would mean that, after an amazing accomplishment or experience, I could stay at that new level if I so choose. Wild. What would it take to stay up there, to make that my new level? What would that shift be like?

It's funny how even as I write this, my first response is "that sounds exhausting." The voice of restoration is persistent, that's for sure. But what if I could bust past the belief that it has to be exhausting, and see what's on the other side? What if?

The signs are everywhere

I am convinced that there are no accidents or coincidences in this world. Everything has a purpose, a message, a meaning. Sometimes this message subtle, and sometimes it is glaringly obvious.

This weekend, the universe decided to skip subtle nuance, and go for blatant.

Something I have been working on is bringing my heart to the table. Loving people for exactly who they are, and when I sit beside them, really being with them. Not giving myself the right to recede in my head and start a running commentary on them. Just loving them, period.

It has taken focus and intent, but it's amazing what a difference it makes.

This weekend, I was on a morning run in North Salem, CT, and I ran across a bridge that I noticed had some graffiti on it. Now, for those of you who have never been to North Salem, this is the sort of town where purebred horses outnumber people, Whole Foods is considered pedestrian, and a full European Union of imported cars zoom past you on the streets. Graffiti in a town like this?

Attached is a picture of that graffiti. Ok, universe, I gotcha.

Talking back

Two posts ago, I introduced the concept of writing a purge. Rachel, a writer, was resisting finishing her novel because of fear of failure. So I had her purge the thoughts in her head about writing, to see how her fear manifests itself.

Today, I'm going to go into the purge in more detail. The idea behind the purge is this: as long as we keep something safely hidden inside our heads, away from the light of day, it can live as true for us. For example, I remember that I once thought my friend Lynn was upset at me. I would see her, and gather more evidence for the theory that she was cross: that she said "hi" and not "hi, how are you doing?", that she didn't tell me that her sister was in town, etc. I gathered a nice pile of evidence, and it lived as truth to me. Then I spoke to a mutual friend, Arthur, who seemed perplexed by my conclusions. When he asked me why I though Lynn was upset at me, and I spoke my list out loud, I realized that it didn't hold water. There were dozens of other explanations for each piece of evidence, and there was no jury on earth that was going to side with me on my conviction.

By getting the thoughts out of my head, I was able to see all of the holes in my reasoning.

This is why we do purges at the Handel Group, to see the bugaboos that live in our heads for what they really are. By writing down all of the thoughts in your head, as if you have a tiny microphone in there recording everything, you can hold your thoughts up to the light and see the holes. And then you can talk-back to the thoughts, just as Arthur talked back to my thoughts about Lynn.

To demonstrate, I would like to share with you an example from my client Leo. Leo is an established actor, and is looking to expand his craft to include screenwriting as well. He had a good idea for a script, had taken a screenwriting class, but he was resisting writing the script itself. Here is his purge:

"It’s a great idea but unfortunately that’s all it is: an idea. I lack the necessary writing skills to bring this project to reality. I can’t do dialogue at all. Writing a script would be way over my head. I should just stick to what I do best which is premises.

I just don’t have the kind of brain for plot twists and catchy dialogue. There are people out there for whom writing comes easy. The fact that it is hard for me is a sign that I should just leave it to the pros.

I don’t even know where to begin. The fact that I don’t know where to begin is a sign that I shouldn’t. Writers know where to begin. They have a technique to this stuff. I don’t have the base of knowledge necessary to undertake something this large. It would be a hot mess. It’s just better to devote that amount of time to something else.

Maybe I could do it, but I couldn’t do it well so I’d rather just not do it at all."

As long as these thoughts lived in his head, they were his truth. But once he put them on paper, the holes in his reasoning became apparent. Here is his talk-back:

"It’s a great idea but unfortunately that’s all it is: an idea. Of course it’s just an idea. All projects, large and small, start out as an idea in someone’s head. The difference is that they followed through on theirs.

I lack the necessary writing skills to bring this project to reality. How is it possible to know that when I haven’t even tried it yet?

I can’t do dialogue at all. Ridiculous. Being an actor gives me a well trained ear for not only scene structure but the rhythm of good dialogue.

Writing a script would be way over my head. I should just stick to what I do best which is premises. There’s no reason why this should be way over my head. People much less talented and qualified than me finish script all the time. It is entirely possible for me to do so.

I just don’t have the kind of brain for plot twists and catchy dialogue. There are people out there for whom writing comes easy. The fact that it is hard for me is a sign that I should just leave it to the pros. NOT TRUE. The vast majority of working writers speak of being lost for long periods of time on projects. My idea of an easy birthing process is a myth. It’s wishing to have the end result without the work, pure and simple.

I don’t even know where to begin. The fact that I don’t know where to begin is a sign that I shouldn’t. Writers know where to begin. They have a technique to this stuff. I know exactly where to begin. I could finish plotting my outline where I left off in class. My old class notes that I’ve kept would give me a huge leg up towards getting some work done, and the steps necessary to do that.

I don’t have the base of knowledge necessary to undertake something this large. It would be a hot mess. It’s just better to devote that amount of time to something else. Chicken! This is an excuse. I would love to work on a project like this and it’s a logical next step in my career. This is fear of failure. The truth is I have EXACTLY the base of knowledge necessary to complete a project like this. I’m an actor with an intrinsic instinct for structure, dialogue and building drama. All I have to do is channel this existing talent into this new project. It should be fairly simple actually.

Maybe I could do it, but I couldn’t do it well so I’d rather just not do it at all. Brat! “I won’t wanna!” I can do this. I know in my heart that I can not only do this well, but knock it out of the ballpark. The only thing that is stopping me is my fear. I don’t like playing games I’m not already the best at. But if I put my mind to it I could write a first draft of this script easily in my free time.

So you see, most of the thoughts in Leo's head were not entirely believable when he put them on paper. He was using those thoughts as an excuse to not take on the scary proposition of writing his script. With the excuses stripped away, he can move forward to work on his script, and gather some real data from the experience about what it's like to write a screenplay, how much he enjoys it, and what his ideal role in the movie production process is.

A formula for communication

I recently attended a great workshop, as part of my Salon 9 discussion group, on Nonviolent Communication (NVC). The workshop was led by Luigi Morelli, an NVC teacher and practitioner. The goal of NVC, as I understand it, is to teach people how to better understand their own needs and feelings, communicate those insights, and connect with the needs and feelings of the people around them.

Luigi outlined four aspects of compassionate human communication, which I would like to share with you right now. I have found them to be a valuable tool when communicating with people. As Luigi mentioned, none of these four is astonishingly new, but taken together they serve as a useful structure for organizing communication with others. In fact, one of the participants said that her biotech company gives new employees a small card with these four aspects printed on them, to be stored with their ID badge and consulted in times of need.

Part 1: Observation vs. Interpretation.
Let's say that your spouse made a joke about your dancing skills in front of her friends, and this hurt your feelings because, heck, it's taken you years to get up the courage to dance in public at all. In fixing this upset, the first thing to do is to explain your observations. "When you told your friends that I dance like the love child of a robot and a buffalo...". The key here is to avoid talking about your subjective interpretations: "When you were showing off in front of your friends at my expense...". You really have no idea what her intentions really were, so stick with the facts-- the more objective the better.


Part 2: Feelings vs. Judgments
Next, say how you felt during the event. "... I felt self-conscious, alone, and embarassed." You should not focus on judgments about the other person, such as "... you were being a cold, insensitive witch!" Beware of judgment statements that try to hide as feelings statements, like "... I felt that you were being a cold, insensitive witch!" Just because it has "I felt" in there does not mean that it's judgment-free.

Part 3: Needs vs. Strategies
Next, say what you need. It's a simple idea, but it's amazing how, in the heat of the moment, we sometimes focus entirely on the feeling of upset, and not on what we actually need to move forward. For example, "I need to feel supported when I express myself, no matter what that expression might look like." The antithesis of needs is strategy, or telling the other person what they should do: "you need to love me for who I am."

Part 4: Requests vs. Demands
This one is pretty self explanatory. A request gives the other person the choice to grant or refuse your request: "Would you be willing to refrain from making jokes about me in front of your friends?" A demand is an order, and strips the person of their right to an opinion. "You'd better stop joking about me in front of your friends."

So in summary, using the four elements of NVC, you move from:

"When you were showing off in front of your friends at my expense, you were being a cold, insensitive witch. You need to love me for who I am. You'd better stop joking about me in front of your friends."

to:

"When you told your friends that I dance like the love child of a robot and a buffalo, I felt self-conscious, alone, and embarassed. I need to feel supported when I express myself, no matter what that expression might look like. Would you be willing to refrain from making jokes about me in front of your friends?"

Formulaic, maybe, but ultimately a good communication tool. Try it out and see how it goes!

Image courtesy of http://www.webdesign.org

In pursuit of feeling: Part II

After reading a comments exchange between my friends, Faye and Ty, about my recent blog entry on the role of feelings in keeping us from our dreams, I think a good example is in order.

I have a client, Rachel, who agreed to let me publish some of the work we've been doing. Rachel is a writer in her 30s who works as a copy editor 9-5. She has been writing her whole life, and wants to be a novelist, but has started several books and not finished them.

The first thing we did was to figure out, no really, what are you going for in your life? What do you want to build with your remaining time on this planet? Here are excerpts of her knock-her-socks-off dream:

"... I have become a prolific writer. My imagination is robust and thriving, thanks to the fact that I listen closely to my inner voice. Storytelling comes easily to me, and, according to the reviews, I create novels with vivid, unforgettable characters, thought-provoking ideas, a fascinating, engaging storyline, and gorgeous writing. Writing is effortless for me. On the days when it goes more slowly, I keep at it, trusting completely that I’m still moving in the right direction, which I am. I take immense pleasure doing what I know I was put on this earth to do, that I’m letting my talent flourish. Doing this work gives me a great feeling of freedom and joy, and when I finish each book and send it off to my agent (who loves it)—and then see it a year later in bookstores—wheeee!—I feel tremendous satisfaction that I am in charge of my life and I’ve channeled my best self—the Rachel who is a go-getter, who has initiative, who lets her talent shine, who goes after what she wants in a BIG, BIG way!

Imagine my excitement when I receive the call that the film rights have been bought by XX and it’s being made into a movie starring XX! I feel on top of the world, and so proud of myself for beating down any obstacle that came my way!..."

Pretty exciting dream, yes? Over the course of this exercise, her energy shifted from blah to radiant. The writer was alive again! Now, it was time to go for it.

Rachel made a promise to herself that she would write on her novel 1 hour per day. But she would routinely not keep this promise several days per week, instead distracting herself with the internet or other diversions. Now, you would ask, is the internet really more fun than living that dream that she articulated? Of course not. But yet the internet was winning. And so I asked Rachel to do a purge of the thoughts in her head when she sat down to write, and here is what she found:

"I don’t feel like writing. I haven’t written in days and now going back to it feels incredibly daunting. I don’t know where I left off. I don’t know where I am with it. How will I ever finish this book? I’ve never finished a book before, what makes me think I can do it this time? I don’t know how to write a novel. I suck as a writer. I’m fooling myself thinking I can finish a book and have it be something people will want to read. What do I have to say that people would want to read? I’m a total fraud, for years telling people that I am working on a novel, all those years working on something but never finishing it. I am sick of not being able to trust myself. I am scared of finishing this book and having it be terrible. Because then what? All I’ve wanted to do since I was four years old was write novels, and now if it turns out I can’t do it, what a crushing disappointment. If I can do it, then why haven’t I succeeded in doing it yet? The fact that I haven’t made this dream happen is the biggest disappointment of my life so far. I feel like a huge failure."

I guarantee there is not a reader on this blog who has not felt this way about something at some point in time. What resonates with us is the fear. Fear that if she tries and fails, she will be worthless. Fear that other people will reject her. Fear that she might come to find that her whole life was built on a lie. Yikes, who wouldn't be scared of that?

The thing is that as long as Rachel is in this conversation with fear, she is stuck in a rut. Checking the internet sure is more fun than facing down fears like this. And so she runs to the internet whenever the going gets tough.

We have been working on Rachel's fear, and now Rachel is starting to look at her fear the way a child pokes a strange-looking insect. She is experiencing it and working with it and accepting that this insect is going to be hanging around her house. And that's ok, because her dream is on the other side of that fear... there really is no other choice if she's going for the dream.

Now, to address Ty's comments, once you accept the fear and no longer make decisions based on avoiding fear, you can finally enter into the realm of logistics. Maybe one of the reasons Rachel hasn't finished a book is because she is going after subjects that don't really speak to her heart. Or maybe she actually enjoys writing short stories more than writing novels. Maybe the topic of her novel appeals to too small of an audience to generate the popularity and movie rights that she wants. Who knows? Rachel will need to make many decisions about her writing as she travels along this journey, and will probably refine and edit the dream as she goes. That is fine, and part of the process.

But the point is that when she was making decisions solely based on avoiding fear, she wasn't even in the realm of making rational, thought-out decisions about questions like these. She was living in the world of "I want to be a novelist, but I just can't seem to finish my darned book. Yuck!" And she was stuck. Deciding that it's ok to feel fear means that she is now in the game of designing and creating what she will do with her talents.

Thanks, Rachel, for letting us all learn from you! Waiting for your novel with baited breath :)...
Image courtesy of http://api.ning.com

Back in my graduate school days, I had a young, ambitious advisor. He was a good advisor--he cared about my growth as a person, listened deeply to what I said, and taught me a variety of lessons about how to do science.

But one thing that drove me batty was how he would sometimes blow off commitments he had made to the people in his lab. If he told us he would read a draft of our paper by next week, we would be lucky if he had read it by next month, and that was WITH persistent pestering. One of my fellow graduate students, Duane, even posted a sign that said something to the effect of "Go away: I'm reading papers!" on his door in the hopes of scaring would-be distractions away.

I asked my advisor how he organized his time, and his response was that "a consequence of success" is that you have way more balls than you can possibly juggle, and so you need to let some hit the ground. I left that conversation feeling resentful that I was a dropped ball in his world.

Fast-forward a year. I am in a career that I am crazy passionate about, and with that excitement has come a bevy of ideas, opportunities, and fun project ideas. I want to do it all, but would need several lifetimes to do so.

I used to make decisions about what to do and not do by asking myself what was fun and what wasn't... but that system breaks down when most things are fun and exciting. Instead, I now make decisions based on what is most important to me, knowing that, after reeling in some beautiful fish on my fishing rod, I have to release some back into the lake. It's a lot harder to release a fish when it is a beautiful, fat, shimmering trout than when it is an anemic little minnow. But that's what happens when you live on a lake of abundance. Would you have it any other way? The skill to learn, then, is how to be razor-sharp about your priorities and goals, and have the discipline to catch and release.

The other day, I was talking with a fellow ex-labmate, who echoed these same observations about life post-lab. And we both realized that we now understood the world my advisor lived in. He wasn't slacking off, or thinking our papers and projects were inconsequential. His world was one of abundance, and we were two of in sea of shimmering trouts. Given that we were often thrown back into the lake, he must have been reeling in some amazing catches :).

Now, my advisor should have been honest with us about what was really going on: that he wasn't going to read our papers for another few months, for example. And, you could argue, graduate student trouts should be automatically kept, and never thrown back. But at the same time, I feel like I now better understand the world that my advisor lived in, and can appreciate the abundance he must have been experiencing.

Image courtesy of http://naturalpatriot.org/

In pursuit of feeling

When you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, any time we are not living the life we claim to want on paper, it is because we're avoiding feeling. A businessman wants to start his own business, but is afraid of feeling the sadness and hurt of defeat if the business fails. A journalist wants to write a book, but is afraid of feeling the sadness and hurt if people reject her work. A boyfriend wants to have an open and intimate relationship with his girlfriend, but is afraid of the sadness and hurt that would come if the girlfriend rejects him for who he is.

The thing is, as much as we try to hide from it, being a human means feeling. Feeling the ups, feeling the downs. It's part of the deal--we get the tremendous highs of feeling wonderful, but also must feel the lows, sadness, and hurt. But most of us don't want to feel the lows, and so we try to ward them off. How do we do this? Usually by either finding a replacement emotion (anger is a popular one) or just not putting ourselves in situations where we'd have to feel them. Don't start the business, don't write the book, don't give yourself completely to your partner.

Except then we feel numb, disconnected, and ultimately unhappy, because our hearts yearn for the business, the book, the openness.

The solution? Let yourself feel the lows. Let the feeling wash over you for a moment in time. It won't last forever, and it may be painful. Like childbirth, as I am told. It may be a painful couple of hours or days (let's hope not!), but just accept the pain for what it is, knowing that it is part of the journey. I'd like to share with you one of my all-time favorite quotes, written by Alan Ball for the play/movie American Beauty, that can be applied to both feeling high and low:

"It's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life... "

Thanks to Laurie Gerber of the Handel Group for the conversation that inspired this post.

Image courtesy of www.rocbike.com

Leveraging our short-term memory

Based on the recommendation of one of my clients, I recently finished reading David Allen's book "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity." It's a really great book for people who want to kick their organizational skills up a notch or two; I highly recommend it.

One very striking point that David makes is how inefficiently we use our short-term memory. Our short-term memory is ideally suited for focusing on a task at hand: brainstorming the right phrasing for an upcoming speech, creating and building a clay sculpture, reasoning through a logic puzzle. When focused on any aspect of our lives, our short-term memory is a formidable force to reckoned with.

But most of us use our short-term memory as a big To Do list: pay my estimated taxes by Monday, figure out who to invite to the barbeque this weekend, make sure to spell-check that memo before sending it out. Don't forget! As a result, we don't have any computational power left over for the creative tasks that really need it. And the kicker is, our short-term memory does a pretty poor job of keeping track of our To Dos. If it were smart, our memory would remind us to send in our rent checks when we are sitting by a computer, and not when we are laying in bed about to go to sleep. Or when we are in the stands at our daughters' softball game. But our short-term memory is not built to do such tasks, and as a result we have random To Dos spilling out all over the place. What a mess.

The solution, says David, is to free up our short-term memory by developing an external organizational system that captures every uncompleted task, or "open loop," so that our mind doesn't have to. And then practicing practicing practicing until we can rely on that system to capture everything that our minds normally would. In this capacity, the human mind is used as a processor that evaluates information, and stores it externally. Which is what our minds are good at, afterall.

I have been playing around with David's organizational systems for a few months, and I must say that he has a point. There is a certain sense of freedom and creativity that comes about when you have your mind at your disposal, ready to crank on whatever topic you choose.

Image courtesy of http://spacesuityoga.wordpress.com

Another great speech from Obama

From Obama's speech in Cairo yesterday:

"But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, 'Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.' That is what I will try to do — to speak the truth as best I can."

This guy makes my job so easy.

The full speech:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/

Image courtesy of www.pbs.org

Resisting the Marshmallow

In a lot of the work that I do as a coach, I help people develop systems to resist doing things that bring short-term rewards, but that have long-term negative consequences. A dieter who wants to eat a brownie instead of an apple. A spouse who wants to jump to judgment and blame instead of compassion and patience. A nervous public speaker who convinces a coworker to give her presentation instead of giving it herself.

Last month, the New Yorker featured an article with an interesting twist on the skill of resisting. In the 1960s, Dr. Walter Mischel performed a set of experiments with four-year-old children, in which he told them they could either have one marshmallow immediately, or wait for a few minutes while he stepped outside and then be given two marshmallows when he returned. The catch: while waiting, the marshmallow sits temptingly on a plate in front of the child. Some children gave in to temptation and ate the marshmallow, and others waited. Mischel followed these children throughout their lives, and found that the children who did not wait for the marshmallow tended to score lower on their S.A.T.s, have behavioral problems, and had difficulty maintaining friendships.

The ability of the children to resist the marshmallow, Dr. Mischel reasoned, boiled down to their ability to "strategically allocate attention." In other words, the children who successfully waited for the marshmallow were able to divert their attention away from thoughts of the marshmallow. Some covered their eyes, others played games by themselves (such as hide-and-go-seek), and some sang songs. The children who sat, fixated on the marshmallow, tended to eat the marshmallow.

There seems to be nothing innate about a child's ability to direct their attention; Dr. Mischel proposes that parents unconsciously teach their children how to distract themselves. Looking back on my own childhood, two events stick out in my mind as having taught me how to distract myself: 1) the agony of waiting for Christmas morning, starting around December 20, and 2) tolerating getting loose teeth pulled and splinters plucked from my hands and feet. Without focusing on my toys, the spot my dad missed while shaving that morning, or the latest episode of Sesame Street, these events would have been much more onerous.

So the key to resisting the temptations of our grown-up lives, according to Dr. Mischel, is to become better at metacognition, or thinking about thinking. Instead of thinking about the brownie, how much you hate your spouse's parents, or how scared you are of making that presentation, think about last night's episode of The Office, how cute your dog is, or what you are going to cook for dinner.

Populating the Ark

I heard a story from a friend the other day that illustrates the difference between indifference, compassion, and love. The punchline: love means seeing someone for who they really are, and loving the whole package.

A drunk beggar sits on a street corner, asking for spare change. One person walks by and ignores him. That is indifference. Another person walks by and asks the beggar if he has eaten, gives him money, and says "please buy something nutritious for yourself with this." That is compassion. A final person walks by, gives the beggar some money, and says "enjoy the drink." That is love.

This story hit home for me. Something that I am constantly working on is loving people for everything they are, even the things that might seem annoying or undesirable to me. A concept that I have found useful is that of "the ark," taught to me by Lauren Zander, founder of the Handel Group. The idea behind the ark is that, like Noah, we each have an ark that we are populating with a select group of people whom we love and care for. A person can't have one foot on the ark and one foot off (the equivalent of loving their "good" qualities, but despising their "bad" ones). They are either on or off.

Being "on" means a commitment to loving the person, sharing your whole self with them, and cultivating a beautiful, intimate relationship with them. It means not complaining behind their back about how annoying it is that they are always late or disrespect their spouse or need to lose some weight, or what have you. Instead, it means taking on discussing these issues with the person, and coming to peace with them. Accepting everything about them as part of the whole. They are on your ark, and aren't going anywhere.

Image courtesy of http://greenleafreport.com/

Looking for answers

We're all in a process of looking for answers: what career is right for me, how should I be raising my child, why aren't I making more money? The answers really are out there, all around us, showing up in little and big incidents here and there. There are signs that we can choose to see and understand, if only we take the time. Most of us are so busy planning, controlling, and doing that we don't allow time for observing.

For example, take my friend Ella. Ella worked for non-for-profits, both as an employee and consultant, for several years. The whole time, she thought that her dream was to work in sustainability. She traveled to sustainability conferences, taught herself about sustainability, and built herself a sustainability network. She was a sustainability machine. She finally took a leap and transitioned to a job in sustainability, and guess what? It felt kinda hollow. She realized that she wasn't as passionate about a job in sustainability as she had originally thought. As a hobbie, maybe, but not as a job.

She returned home discouraged and directionless. And for the first time in a long time, she wasn't doing, but motionless. And then it came. Business colleagues started consulting her on how to structure their businesses. She realized that this came easily to her, she was good at it, and she enjoyed it. In fact, when she looked back on her years working in the non-for-profit sector, her favorite aspect of every role she had held had been structuring teams and companies, and helping other people structure theirs. She had never really noticed this while chasing the sustainability dream. But when she took a moment to observe, it seemed glaringly obvious that company structuring was her thing. Now she is consulting full-time, and loving it.

Sometimes, the path to success is not in doing, but in not doing and just listening. We make it all seem so complicated, but what if it all were that obvious?

Getting off the hook

We all have dreams and goals; we make some, and don't make others. In the case of the ones we don't make, odds are that we have found an ironclad excuse about why we can't have it.

"I want to start a company, but the economy is bad"
"I want to tell my sister that she hurt my feelings over Christmas, but she takes this sort of thing very personally."
"I want to meet the woman of my dreams, but there are no good women in Boston."

As I discussed in my January 27 blog, these excuses are sneaky inventions of the mind. Although we pretend that these excuses are working against us, we actually are getting something from them.

What could we possibly be getting from believing that the economy is bad? Well, we are getting a "get out of scary situation free" card. Because starting a company, having a touchy conversation, or putting yourself on the dating scene are all very scary. We know we should do them, that deep down we want to do them and will find happiness when we do do them. But heck, that's in the future and it feels scary right now. So finding the perfect excuse gets us off the hook.

I'd like to share with you an example of how I used an excuse to get myself out of a scary dream. I'm first going to share with you the old story, in which I twisted the truth of the whole situation to make it all "not my fault." And then I'm going to tell you what really happened.

The old story
I wanted to apply for the Peace Corps after college. I loved languages, and helping people, had great transferable technical skills, and wanted to see a bit of the world. But then I went to an engineering panel discussion, and the panelists there told me that if I took 2 years off to join the Peace Corps, I would have a hard time finding a job when I returned because my skills would be obsolete. Oh, I see, I said. I can't do the Peace Corps because that would be career suicide. So I didn't apply for the Peace Corps. Years later, I realized that joining the Peace Corps was not career suicide for many people... in fact, it seemed to bolster their resume, not hurt it. If only I had never gone to that stupid engineering panel discussion! Those panelists should be ashamed of themselves.

So that's the old story. But the thing is, that story haunted me. I regretted not joining the Peace Corps, and would get myself all worked up about what a mistake it was, and how stupid those panelists were. Until one day I realized that the reason the story bothered me was because it was not a fair telling. Here is the truth:

The truth
I wanted to apply for the Peace Corps, but was afraid that I wouldn't get in. I was afraid that I didn't have enough volunteer experience, which meant that I would have to quickly join a local volunteer project, which I didn't want to do. I was afraid that my letters of recommendation wouldn't be good enough, because deep down I didn't think I was as great as my professors seemed to think I was. Surely the mighty Peace Corps admission committee would be able to see this. And then the game would be up, and my mediocrity would be revealed. Scary stuff. So while yes, I wanted to join the Peace Corps, I was scared of the admissions process. Enter my savior, the engineering panel discussion. The panelists gave me the perfect excuse to never have to face that fear of rejection: that the Peace Corps would be career suicide. The perfect "get out of fear free" card. Because who wants to commit career suicide? So I was perfectly justified in not applying for the Peace Corps, not having to face my fear, and not living my dream.

So you can see how the second story makes a lot more sense. I mean, really, at the age of 21, would I really have been so naive as to give up a beloved dream based on a random comment from a panelist? Doubtful. Especially considering how many times I had defied my parents, friends, and teachers over the years. I chose to believe the panelist for a reason. Once I realized this truth, the whole thing stopped tormenting me. I was just being a chicken. I can work with that.

So I'd like to challenge all of you to take a look at a story from the past the haunts you, or a dream that you haven't yet realized. Where is the excuse? And how is it working for you? What are you avoiding? What does your chicken look like?

Image courtesy of www.germes-online.com

Love as a Verb

Hello again! I decided to take a break from blogging for the past few weeks to focus on weddings, marathons, and coaching, but after a fantastic April, I'm back!

Today, I would like to talk about a concept that is exemplified by my best friend, Sandra, who got married this weekend to a great guy, Tim. Their relationship embodies a simple concept: that love is a verb, and not a noun. You don't find or lose love, as one would find or lose a quarter on the ground. You love or don't love, and the choice really is yours.

When you first start dating someone, and getting to know them, you love automatically. You are naturally curious about this person, exploring a brand new world that they represent. You focus on the greatness of this person and relay it to your friends. You put out your best self, both physically, emotionally, and mentally.

But then after being together for a while, many of us don't automatically love anymore. We stop being curious about the other person, and taking the time to understand what is really going on in their world. We think we know them and instead of having conversations with them in person, we have conversations with them in our head, and call it a wrap. "If I say I want to go to Florida on our vacation, she'll complain that it's too buggy and accuse me of never taking her feelings into account...". Many of us take for granted all of those good characteristics that so fascinated us at the beginning, and think about the ones that annoy us instead. "He laughs too loudly at his own jokes." And we don't put out our best self. We don't make time for as many romantic dates. We can be jealous, judgmental, critical, or angry, and let those traits run rampant.

So, then, there is no big mystery why many relationships "fade" over time. We have stopped loving the way we did in the beginning. The two people involved are no different, but what they are doing is. But we deny the power we have over love by treating it like a noun. "We fell out of love," or "our love turned sour," or "where is the love?" It becomes an entirely different ballgame when you instead frame it as "I chose to stop loving him." Because it really is a choice.

Sandra and Tim exemplify the use of love as a verb. Two years into their relationship, Sandra and Tim still carve out time each evening to share and understand what is happening in each other's worlds. Sandra does not lose sight of the fact that her relationship with Tim is the most important thing in her life, and treats him with respect, compassion, and patience. She is the same girl that she was on their third date, with the possible exception that she now shares more of herself with him. But she is just as curious and appreciative of his good qualities as she was years ago. She actively loves him.

Shaking up the Control Freak

And I'm back! Anthony and I had a wonderful, present vacation in Costa Rica, with just the right mixture of natural wonders, vigorous adventure sports, relaxing times of just being, and connecting with old and new friends across a variety of languages.

There is something about a vacation that helps you see things just a bit more clearly. Maybe part of it is that you see what aspects of your life you leave behind, and which you take with you. The stuff that you take with you seems even more glimmering against the backdrop of a new locale and new adventures.

On my trip to Costa Rica, one Samantha characteristic that glimmered and shone in the sun was that I am a control freak.

I like to be in control. Heck, I would even call it an addiction. You can see it in the way that I strive to control my time, trying to use every minute of it with optimal efficiency. You can see it in my friendships, where I control the flow of conversation to focus on what I want to focus on, and avoid what I want to avoid. You can see it in my relationship with Anthony, where I try to control where he puts his towel and how he pronounces the word "miracle."

This proved particularly maddening in Costa Rica, when I tried to control our schedule across two languages, poor phone access, and a populace that is, in general, a tad laid back.

Now, there are many good things that come with being a control junkie. Oftentimes, I get what I want, how I want it. But here is a drawback of being a control freak: there is no space for the world to surprise me. Oftentimes, the answers that we seek in our lives are waiting just around the corner, in the most unsuspecting of places... but if you are always in control, you never look in the unsuspected places. You look in the suspected ones. And so you look and look and start to short-circuit because you've found one thing you can't control, gaining insight, and meanwhile the signs around you are pointing the way.

So, I'd like to share with you an exercise from Beth and Lauren, cofounders of the Handel Group. The goal of this exercise is to shake up your nicely orchestrated routine to make space for new perspectives to enter. What you do is deliberately shift your daily routines to something unfamiliar. For example, if you always eat cereal for breakfast, try oatmeal. If you brush your hair with your left hand, try your right. If you always run down Willard Street during your daily jogs, try running down Orchard Street instead. Answer the phone with a different greeting. And so on.

This exercise in neat, because it makes you realize how familiar we are with a small set of daily experiences, and how thoroughly unfamiliar we are with an infinite number of others. Your day has a dash more adventure and intrigue in it, and you find yourself being more present in the NOW (nod to the last blog post) because you can't run on autopilot. You need to concentrate on what you are doing, otherwise you'll start brushing your shoulder, or get lost on that jog. Moreover, by loosening your iron-clad grip on your daily schedule, you allow the unsuspected to appear and touch you.

Maybe the Costa Ricans figured this out a long time ago. Maybe this trip was exactly the right thing for me, for all the unsuspected reasons.

Image courtesy of http://forums.trossenrobotics.com

The here and now

Continuing with the theme of scheduling stresses, I realized recently that I spend a lot of time being somewhere else. While playing fetch with the dog, I think about all of the other things I want to accomplish before 8:00am, and will I have the time? While eating breakfast, I check my email and plan out my communications for the day. While talking to my partner Anthony, I wonder what we will make for dinner. While eating dinner, I plan out the wedding shower card I'm going to make for my buddy Sandra. And on and on.

The consequence of my rambling mind is that I don't experience the joy of the current moment. The cute about-face my dog does while diving for that toy to avoid a collision with the wall, the yumminess of the food I'm eating, and the beautiful depth of Anthony. The irony of it all is that the goal of my scheduling is to accomplish and experience as much as I can, but then when my efforts reach fruition, I don't take the time to actually experience the moment. My mind is off on the next thing. Even though I live a jam-packed life, at the end of the day I feel unfulfilled. My first response to this feeling is to say "well then, I guess I need to schedule more activities into my day, then." But in reality I have plenty of quantity, but not much quality.

My solution to this has come from meditation. I meditate for 2 minutes before doing something that I want to enjoy. During those two minutes, I close my eyes and focus my attention on my breathing. In and out, in and out. The focus brings me to the current moment, and then when I open my eyes and move on to the event itself, I am more present to what is happening now. And when the elsewhere thoughts pop into my head, I am more able to say "Not now" instead of indulging them.

Today, Anthony and I head off to Costa Rica for a vacation and the wedding of two friends, Jason and Hillary. I might blog while on vacation, I might not. But one thing is for sure: there will be many two-minute meditations :).

What theories about life do you want to be proving?

You're sitting in a cafe, on a first date with your latest match from eHarmony. As he begins to tell you about his love of 1970s science fiction, and his passion for collecting sweater-vests, you think to yourself "I knew it. All of the good guys in Boston are taken. This is what I'm left with."

What you have just articulated to yourself is a theory. Like a scientist piecing together theories about gravity or evolution, we are all in the business of forming and proving theories about the way the world works. Here are some other theories you might have heard floating around:

"Childbirth is horrible"
"My girlfriends are always there for me."
"The economy is just going to keep falling farther and farther."
"I'm good at public speaking."
"My husband doesn't communicate his feelings very well."
"There is never enough time in the day."
"One good deed deserves another."
"Romance dies with marriage."

We form our theories based on our life experiences. But once we have a theory, we usually see the world through the lens of that theory. In other words, we selectively collect evidence that supports our theory. For example, if your theory is that "I am good at public speaking," then every time that you deliver a well-received talk, you smile and say "yup, that's me!" If you once give a talk that does not end in thunderous applause, you are likely to shrug and say "the audience must have been in a food coma" or "it's too bad that that audience isn't into my line of work." Because, heck, you're good at public speaking, so it couldn't have been you.

The thing about theories is that they are subjective-- you can pretty much gather evidence for any theory you want. For example, when I was recently hanging out with a couple of married friends, Jill and Mike, the topic of conversation turned to the relationship that Jill had with her friends. Mike was adamant that Jill's friends took advantage of Jill, and treated her poorly. Jill shook her head and said that her friends were great people, and that she supported them through their hard times just like they would support her if the roles were reversed. Jill and Mike brought up a few different examples, and on each one they had their list of evidence for why the friend was or was not taking advantage of Jill. And each was compelling.

The beautiful thing about this subjectivity, then, is that you can choose which theories you want to be in the business of proving. For example, in a blog post a few months ago, I described my attitude toward getting my wallet stolen in a coffee shop. Instead of the theory "it is a real bummer getting your wallet stolen," I opted for the theory of "it's no big deal getting a wallet stolen." And guess what? It really wasn't a big deal. Yes, I canceled my credit cards, and we changed our locks. But it was like brushing my teeth... nothing noteworthy.

Here are some other great examples of reauthored theories:

"I have no idea what I want to do with my life. I am lost," reauthored to "My heart knows what I want to do, and the clues are all around me."

"Cleaning my bathroom is so annoying," reauthored to "Cleaning my bathroom is rewarding."

"It's impossible to stay in touch with my friends and family because they have moved so far away," reauthored to "I can have meaningful relationships over the phone, and I have plenty of time and money to visit as often as I need to in order to build the relationships I want."

"I make a lot of bad choices," reauthored to "I make a lot of good choices."

Once you switch theories and believe the new one, it is amazing how easy it is to prove it. You start to notice the good phone conversations you have with your friends, the time you made the wise choice to take a cab instead of the subway, and the little things in your day that you enjoy doing (which, pieced together, can give you the big picture of what career you would be passionate about). Moreover, you create more of those experiences, because you want more evidence to prove yourself right.

We're all in the business of proving theories: which ones would you like to be proving?

Image courtesy of jana739.wordpress.com

Cultivating Positivity

I recently noticed that I was harboring (heck, nurturing) a storm of negative thoughts. One of my particular favorite flavors is about time, and how I am never going to get it all done. Here is a brain dump of last Tuesday:

• "How can it be 3pm already? I've gotten nothing done!"
• "Oh crap, I'm traveling to Costa-friggin-Rica in two weeks, and we don't have any hostels booked. Gotta add that to the list... but when? Ahhh!"
• "Stupid dog just peed on the floor... again. She's never going to get this litterbox training thing! Gotta find time to take her to obedience school. Why hasn't Anthony booked obedience school yet? I thought this was his job."
• "I should have sent those bachelorette party invites out last week."
• "Taxes are going to be so complicated this year. Uggggh."
• "I didn't go on that run today I had hoped for... I feel flabby."

And on and on and on. At some point, I snapped out of it, and realized that I had been treating these thoughts like the weather... big ol' pieces of hail falling down and hitting me on the head. Ouch!

But the truth is, negative thoughts are not like weather, but more like the clothes we wear or the food we put in our mouths... entirely under our control. When these thoughts popped up in my head, I chose to look at them, expand upon them, and give them a nice cozy home in my mind. Yeah, what about that obedience school? Let's dwell on that for a while.

Given that negative thoughts are a choice, so too are positive thoughts. Oooo, let's bring in some of the. Please. So I have prescribed a simple positivity exercise for myself, that I repeat a few times per day. I make a list of 10 good things that have happened so far in the day. And I take a few seconds just to celebrate each one.

• "I emptied my inbox. Yay me!"
• "I really connected with Megan on our call today."
• "I am proud of that article on parent traits I wrote today."
• "That quesadilla for lunch was fantastic."
• "Anthony gave me the cutest smile this morning."
• And yes, "My dog just hit the litterbox! Good girl!"

For an added twist, I sometimes swap lists with Anthony at the end of the day. Good news is best when it is shared, afterall. And there is the added benefit that learn more about what is important to Anthony.

It's amazing how much this simple exercise tickles and massages the soul. Feels so good... I'll take this warm rain over hail any day.

The goal: Happiness

My friend and fellow journeyer, Duane, recently pointed out to me that I have thus far forgotten to discuss an important premise on this blog: why do any of this personal development work in the first place? It seemed to Duane that a lot of this stuff is about people being hyper-critical about themselves, or people telling other people that they need to change.

So let me explain how I see the role of this blog, and the work I do.

The end goal is to be happy. How do people become happy? From my perspective, happiness comes from doing what you want, in the body you want, with the people you want. It means actively designing every aspect of your life, of which, at the Handel Group, we believe there are 18. It means setting a dream for each area, and living those dreams. In other words, great happiness comes from authoring the book of your life in whatever way you want to, and writing a darned good plot for yourself.

The thing is, oftentimes we do not design aspects of our lives. We don't have a clearly-defined dream for our body, relationship, or career. Or maybe we do, but we're not living it. And this is where my work begins. I help people decide what they want the book of their lives to say, and then help them put pen to paper and create. It's not an easy process, because we're all in the business of making up cockamamie as to why we can't have what we want, and why we really don't want it to begin with.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what you want the book of your life to say. You could choose:

• "Embracing the unpredictable: the life of a global wanderer" or "The virtues of routine: the beauty of the 9-to-5 schedule."
• "A house of children's laughter" or "A house of meows."
• "The high-powered adventures of the world's richest CEO" or "Getting from A to B: the hidden world of a mail sorter."

The important part is that you are writing a book that inspires you, and that keeps you eagerly turning the pages, day after day.

Two birds with one stone

I read a great quote from Robert Stavins, a Harvard professor of business and government, in the New Yorker a few weeks ago:

"Let's say I want to have a dinner party. It's important that I cook dinner, and I'd also like to take a shower before the guests arrive. You might think, 'Well, it would be really efficient for me to cook dinner in the shower.' But it turns out that if I try that, I'm not going to get very clean and it's not going to be a very good dinner."

I love this idea that the two birds you would get with that proverbial one stone might not be as fulfilling as one bird deliberately chosen.

Another great example of this tradeoff comes from my colleague Weston. When he entered college, his two passions were chemistry and painting, and so he initially planned on becoming, you guessed it, a paint engineer. The guy who figures out the chemistry of new paints. There must be someone out there who has that job, right? It seemed like a great idea, until he realized that this career would bypass both the creative expression of painting (which is what drew him to paint in the first place), and the most exciting cutting-edge areas of chemistry research, thereby leaving him unfulfilled on both counts. So he chose one of them, and is now a thriving biological chemist of world renown.

We choose these chimera activities for a variety of reasons. Maybe we are indecisive about a choice between two things that excite us, and so we try to do both. Maybe we are afraid of taking a leap and choosing something that is risky, and so we hold onto something that is more stable at the same time. Sometimes this strategy works well, but other times it holds us back from pursuing our passions whole-hog. Painting. Chemistry. Cooking that really great meal. Nothing feels quite so great as trying all-out for something that truly excites you.

In this day and age of multi-tasking, it’s worthwhile to take a step back and make sure that we are picking and pursuing our birds deliberately, and not just going for the riccoche shot.

Designing Your Life, Part II: The PR Agent

Most of the people in the MIT Design Your Life class are looking for better relationships. They want to find true love and companionship, or develop it in existing relationships. Heck, don't we all?

This connection with other people can be found by developing intimacy in our relationships. What is intimacy? It is being transparent: sharing the real you.

But most of us aren’t in the business of sharing the real us. Instead, we employ a PR agent in our head who spins how we think and feel so that it is palatable to others. The agent censors most thoughts through a filter of "if I say this, how will I look? Will other person still like me?"

Just take a look at your favorite celebrity mag as an example. Brangelina has a big fight and Angelina moves her herd of kids to her mother's house in Florida. "She's taking the kids on a vacation to get some sun" claims Angelina's PR agent. "Brad will be joining them shortly."

The problem with employing PR agents is that our relationships then become conversations between agents. Mine will talk to yours and they will invent a fabulous story. Sounds great to anyone overhearing us on the subway. But we sure don't know much about the actual people represented by those agents. Do we really want to have relationships with our friends and family similar to our relationship with Angelina Jolie?

Here are some examples of the PR agent from the class participants:

• My friend is really self-centered and it annoys me sometimes, but I would never tell her this because it would ruin our friendship.
• If I tell my advisor that I don't want to be an academic, it will destroy our relationship. Therefore, I am deliberately vague when he asks me about my future plans.
• Sometimes I wonder if I still love my husband, but I am afraid to disrupt our marriage because he gives me security and stability. So I pretend that everything is fine.
• Any time I try to discuss my career with my mother, she lectures me, and so I just avoid talking about my career with her.
• I sometimes pretend that other people's ideas are mine so I look smarter.
  

Each of these people felt disconnected from their friend/advisor/husband/mother, and was looking for a greater sense of connection. Given the PR spin they have been feeding these people, it's no wonder.

The solution? Tell the truth. Let the real you come out and play... you don't need a PR agent. The real story, while more quirky and messy and can-of-worm opening, leads to a deep connection and a sense of pride and confidence in yourself. If Angelina is having a fight with Brad, it really is OK.

Image courtesy of http://www.benghiat.com