FUN FIRST!

Torching the Gasoline for Explosive Success

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2009

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MAY, 2007

There is a tradition on May 1st to leave a basket of goodies for someone on their step and run away without being identified as the secret giftgiver. A simple fun way to brighten someone's day and brighten your own in the process. Leave some May baskets today. Maybe you can't leave the physical kind but you can do something kind for someone. Pay them a compliment, leave them a piece of chocolate on their desk, take them to lunch, anything that let's them know you appreciate them. Then, instead of waiting till next year, make it a habit. See what little things you can do for people everyday. You'll have tremendous fun doing it.
Fault-finding is only good in earthquake science. If you find a lot of faults, and you're not a seismologist, stop!
You've heard "there's no time like the present." It's also true that there's no present like time. What a gift each moment of life is. It's like a slot machine steadily pumping out gold coins we get to spend however we want. We can spend it on enriching our relationships, we can spend it on expanding our minds, we can spend it on appreciating beauty. If you're not feeling fulfillment in your life, you can probably trace the problem to the spending choices you make with the time you are given. The good news is that the machine keeps cranking out the gold coins. Here comes one now! Grab it and spend it on deciding how to spend the rest of the coins you'll get today.
Life is like baseball. If you just look at the wall, you won't catch the ball. If you just watch the ball, you might hit the wall. Focus on the ball (your goal). When you've got it judged (you know where you need to be to reach it), quickly locate the wall (any obstacles), then immediately refocus on the ball and run hard to get to the right spot. If you don't focus on the ball, you'll never catch it no matter how hard you run. And you know the coolest thing? Sometimes you actually have to hit the wall pretty hard in order to catch the ball. The obstacle is right there in the way of reaching your goal. Why is that cool? Because that's when you make the highlight film . . . as long as you hang onto the ball.
Today is the 133rd running of the Kentucky Derby. The hopes and dreams of the owners, trainers, and jockeys have become reality. This afternoon, two minutes of exhilaration will lead to victory for one owner, trainer and jockey. The rest will be disappointed. The horses, on the other hand, are just going to have a great time doing what they love to do: run really, really fast. Trying to out run the others because that's what they love to do. When it's over, they won't give it a second thought. They'll just be happy when they get their next chance to run again. Hence the term "Horse Sense."
All debts forgiven. All land returned. Under the law given to Moses, every 50th year was a Jubilee Year. In the Jubilee, all debts were forgiven and all land was returned to the family that originally possessed it when the people had entered the Promised Land. This limited the consequences of bad judgment to the time remaining till the next Jubilee. You weren't stuck forever with your bad choices and, more importantly, you weren't stuck forever with YOUR PARENTS' BAD CHOICES. Wiped clean. Start over. Christ brings us a perpetual Jubilee. We've been freed from the debt of our sins (and our parents' sins) and restored to our inheritance as possessors of the Kingdom of God. Claim your freedom and inheritance today. You are not a slave to anything that happened yesterday. You are free. Every day is your Jubilee.
No action. No success. It's as simple as that. Thinking, dreaming, wishing, hoping are all good but you've got to act on those thoughts, dreams, wishes and hopes. If all you do is write recipes, you're going to starve to death before long. Go to the store, get the ingredients, fire up the stove, turn that recipe into a tasty feast and devour it!
Fun First! means being delight directed. Doing the things you love. The things you are passionate about and also the little things that bring you joy. Start your day by planning what specific actions you are going to take that feed your passion and what simple pleasures you are going to enjoy. Commit to doing these things. Set a time you are going to do them and don't cheat yourself. My plan for today includes writing this message, writing letters to some friends, calling a friend to set up a day together, stopping for some chocolate, and reviewing my life goals list and monthly plan to meet them. Make your Fun First! plan for today.
"Only a happily married man can appreciate a beautiful woman properly." I love this quote from Bill Bonner, who writes The Daily Reckoning e-letter. It captures an essential truth of human relationships: you can only appreciate someone fully if you don't want anything from them. The happily married man is not worried about being rejected because he's not looking for a date. He can just be grateful he was graced to see such beauty and enjoy the experience.
Fred Astaire's birthday today. Fred's one of my heroes. He took great talent ,worked hard to apply it and became the greatest dancer the movies have ever seen. In "Royal Wedding" he even dances with a coat rack and makes the coat rack look like it knows how to dance! Let's do the same and use our talents to transform those around us into much more than they ever dreamed possible. And, don't forget to thank the people who transformed you. They could have left you in the corner holding coats but they taught you how to dance.
Life is like baseball. If you think you can't hit, you can't. Confidence in yourself is key to success. Confidence is something you build. In hitting, you start by practicing with the ball sitting on a batting tee, then you take batting practice with a pitcher throwing easy to hit pitches, then you progress to a real game. Between games you continue to practice with the tee and batting practice pitcher to stay sharp and confident. Whatever your goal is, follow the same strategy. Practice. Start on something easy (a small hill not a mountain) and slowly increase the difficulty at a pace that insures success.
Love is like sand in a beach house. You can't ever get rid of it all. You can work all day and all night to empty yourself of it but there's always some left somewhere. Some days you might have to look a little to find it, but it's there, waiting to be cast out on the world.
The most important thing I learned from my mother is that people are always worth the time you spend on them. She spent her whole life listening to people and encouraging them (well, except for the time she spent telling me to dust the stairs, do the dishes and take out the garbage. But, I guess that was a form of encouragement!!) She always took the time to seek people out, let them know she was thinking about them, and to give them a kind word. The day I finally realized this, and decided I was going to try to live like my mom, was the day my life started being fun. Thanks Mom!
My mother found a rock by a creek somewhere that looked like a baked potato. She kept it around and periodically would stick it on someone's dinner plate when we were having baked potatoes. It was hilarious when the unsupecting victim would try to stick a fork in it. (Yes, I was one of the victims!) What kind of mind sees a rock on the ground, thinks "that looks like a baked potato. I'll take it home and serve it to some poor sap just for laughs?" I didn't invent Fun First! I inherited it.
Why do we think it's great there are so many different kinds of birds but wish people were all the same? You know, totally focused on making us happy. We get frustrated by their lack of attentivness to what we want. I mean, what are they thinking? Why would they take that last parking space and make us late? Alas, this is one of life's cruel truths: nobody is as interested in you as you are. Expecting them to be will leave you perpetually disappointed. Your happiness is up to you.
I once heard about an experiment where an animal was placed in a cage along with its food with a piece of glass separating it from the food. At first the animal tried to get to the food but was stopped by the glass. Eventually, the animal gave up. Even after the glass was removed the animal wouldn't try to get to it since its experience told it the food was out of reach. Maybe you feel the same way. Maybe you think your goals are out of reach because you've never reached them before. But things change. You change. You might discover the obstacle has been removed. And, of course, you're not a lab animal. You can act to remove the obstacle yourself.
What was your favorite thing to do when you were 6? Or 8 or 10? Some point in your life when you were young and carefree. Find a way to do it today. Maybe it was going to the corner drug store soda fountain and having a vanilla coke. Go get a vanilla coke and savor it like you did when you were little and it was a rare treat. Maybe it was playing with your best friends. Call 'em up. At the very least, you can take the time to re-live the experiences in your mind. I can see myself right now robbing my best friend of a home run as I catch the ball diving over the hedge in his back yard that served as our outfield fence.
When scaling a cliff, you want to focus on your hand and footholds. Where is the next spot you are going to grab? Where are you going to plant your foot? You don't want to focus on the long, agonizing, life-splatting drop you'll take if you fall. While it's good to appreciate the possible consequences of wrong decisions, you can only avoid those consequences by making good decisions. You make good decisions by focusing on where you want to go and how you want to get there. Not on what will happen if you slip.
If you really want to appreciate anyone or anything, the first thing you need to do is stop. Stop your self-focus. You can't appreciate anyone or anything if all you're thinking about is you. You'll miss a beautiful sunset, even though you're looking right at it, if you're thinking about what so and so said about you at work Tuesday. You'll miss learning anything about the person you're talking with if you're thinking about what brilliant thing you're going to say next. Stop. Then, pay attention.
Do you find yourself awe-inspiring? You should, really. You are an amazing creation. Your body can pick up the tiniest speck with its fingers or lift hundreds of pounds (at least with the help of some other bodies!). Your mind can design and your body construct a device that allows you to see something much smaller than that speck and an instrument fine and precise enough to pick it up or a machine that'll lift tons at the push of a button. Every day is a new chance for you to create something magnificent: a picture, a poem, a conversation that heals or empowers. You have incredible power. Use it and be in awe.
How often have you laughed today? How hard? I just pulled the lid off my coffee cup to pour some into another cup. The lid flipped out of my hand and landed with a tremendous splash in the coffee which did a fair impression of "Old Faithful" geyser launching hot liquid into the air. "Wow!," I said profoundly. " That's a new one. You wouldn't think after all these years I could find a new clumsy thing to do!" Guess I shouldn't underestimate myself! How about you? What's got you laughing today? Better be something. Life's way too important to take seriously.
Fun First! means looking for fun before looking for work. Chances are work will track you down all on its own but fun may not be that persistent. Fun rewards the seeker. Challenge yourself to find some fun first thing this morning. Savor the sunshine. Kiss your spouse like you mean it. See how many people you can make smile or laugh (you can go small by smiling at everybody you meet or go big by walking into a light post, or putting a "kick me" sticker on your own back). Be creative. There's a lot more fun out there than you think.
As I pulled into the parking lot this morning, I saw a large redtail hawk sitting on a picnic table in front of the building. Quite a majestic sight. You seldom see a hawk at eye level. What a gift delivered right to me. A quandry: watch the bird or walk past it and go to work? Savor a glimpse of beauty seldom seen or be on time for work? The hawk made the decision for me. It flew away. But its fun to ponder the choice. I'm pretty sure what I would have done. How about you?
Paul Burchardt, a friend, died yesterday. Suddenly, without warning, leaving stunned and grieving family and friends. But he left much more than that. He left a legacy of love. St. Paul (the first one) wrote a famous passage on love. It's often read at weddings and forgotten in practice. Paul Burchardt did not forget. Patient. Kind. Not putting on airs. Never rude. Not self-seeking. Rejoicing in the truth. Never failing. That's St. Paul's description of love. That's a description of Paul Burchardt. St. Paul must be quite proud of his namesake. St. Paul ended his passage on love saying there are three things that last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love. They last because a life like Paul's makes them impossible to ignore or forget. He lived them all and the greatest was definitely his love. Those of us who knew him would do well not to keep our portion of that legacy to ourselves but to spread it generously. Paul left enough for us to enrich the rest of the world.
Life is like baseball. Never give up. No matter how far behind, no matter how late in the game, no matter how fierce the opposition, if you've got one out left, you can win. You just have to believe it's possible and execute.
Sometimes in the midst of the "play" that is your life you can lose track of whether it's a comedy or a tragedy you are performing. A tragedy ends with the main character worse off than at the beginning. A comedy ends with the main character better off. A tragic event does not a tragedy make. It's not a tragedy unless you make bad decisions all the way to the end. The great thing about life is you have control over what your character does. You get to choose a course that leads toward you being better off by the time you take your bows.
Today is Pentecost: a day of hope for all gutless cowards. It's the day we celebrate the transformation Jesus's disciples underwent: from hiding in a room wondering what was going to happen to making spectacular things happen. From this point, they started changing the world through their actions. The difference? On this day, they received the Holy Spirit. They now had the power of God released within them. They went outside. They let people see that God was alive in them. People wanted what they had. Three thousand on the first day. Are you scared to act? Are you hiding from an abundant life? Hide no longer. No matter how gutless you might think you are the Holy Spirit is waiting to transform you and the world around you. Just ask Jesus to release the Holy Spirit fully in you. Then go outside and give away what you got.
"Just" or "unjust", wars create a lot of dead people. Today we remember them. Maybe. As I write this the TV is on in the background and children are saying what "Memorial Day" means to them. No mention of remembering anyone killed in war. While unfortunate in one sense, in another sense it is a good thing. Many places in the world people long for the day their children will have no concept of the death war makes commonplace in their lives. We should be grateful that day is here for us. But, we are not children. Let's take a moment today to remember those war took too soon.
Golf is hard. The driving range is easy. At the driving range, you don't have to play your bad shots. Life is not the driving range. You have to walk into the woods, find your ball, and figure out how you're going to thread the shot between the trees to get back to the fairway. This can be a mental challenge because the reason you're in there in the first place is because you just hit a lousy shot. Now you have to hit a good shot and recent history is against you. You can't be thinking about what got you there. Relax. Break the process down into little steps. Keep your eye on the ball and give it a whack.
How many people have you seen so far today? How many have you spoken to? How many of them are better off for having seen you? Be prepared. There are plenty more people ahead of you today. Don't miss the chance to enrich them.
"Risk Aversion": choosing the certainty of failure over the chance of it.