FUN FIRST!

Daily Encouragement for Better Living

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FEBRUARY, 2009

I never understood Groundhogs Day. For years I couldn't figure out the point. Winter doesn't end till March no matter what the groundhog sees or doesn't see. What if different groundhogs see different things? I just didn't get it. I was stupid. The point of Groundhogs Day is simple: Groundhogs Day is FUN! It's a totally contrived excuse for a party. If you don't believe me, just type "Groundhogs Day" into a search engine and you'll see that lots of people have left you in the dust when it comes to having fun on a cold day in February. So, here's my challenge. Let's all create our own personal excuse for a party. Be creative. It could be "Sub-Zero Day", whenever the temperature goes below zero you eat popsicles, drink pina coladas and turn the thermostat up to 85 (or whatever little celebration you like). If you use Celsius, you could celebrate most everyday all winter! If you live someplace warm you could celebrate "I'm Warm and My Friends and Family are Ice Cubes Day." The point here is unashamed mindless frivolity. If you're uncomfortable with this, just think of all those people in Punxsuatawney, PA having a blast today because of a groundhog. Are you having as much fun as they are today?
On my return from Florida, my skin broke out with a poison ivy like rash. I assumed I'd developed an allergy to cold weather and would be forced to relocate to the tropics for health reasons. The doctor had a different theory- that it was a plant or sand critter in Florida that was to blame. Maybe burying myself in the sand to hide from my return to winter wasn't such a good idea after all. Guess I caught "ostrich fever." Hiding from unpleasantness doesn't make it go away and usually leads to more and greater unpleasantness. Better to face it head-on. I'd elaborate on this but I need to go find a backscratcher.
What's more important to know your strengths or your weaknesses? If you are like the majority of people on the planet you said "weaknesses." According to a study quoted by Marcus Buckingham in Now Discover Your Strengths, 59% of Americans say "weaknesses" and the percentage is higher in every other country surveyed. Buckingham says this is the wrong answer. He is a genius [because he agrees with me]. In fact, discovering your strengths and developing them is the path to successful living. Improving a weakness might do some damage control, according to Buckingham, but in order to flourish, it's your strengths you need to follow. What are you naturally good at and feel energized by doing? This is the place to start to transform your life.
I saw a cartoon in the Wall Street Journal some years back. There was a fish alone in a fishbowl. The fish said: "I'm so bored. I wish I hadn't eaten the others." Poor fish. I'm sure eating the others seemed like a good idea at the time. When you're alone you don't have to share, accommodate, or make room for anybody else. This has a lot of appeal. When you're surrounded by people, they can be pretty annoying. Solitude can be very refreshing . . . for awhile. But, we are communal creatures. It's a rare person who's called to be a hermit. We need to find the right mix for ourselves between solitude and interaction. I find a day of solitude every couple months is good for me. It helps me re-energize and re-focus on what's important to me and helps me appreciate all the people who aren't there when I'm alone. What's the right mix for you? Test it out and see.
How you feel emotionally flows from your thoughts. Positive thoughts breed positive feelings and negative thoughts breed negative feelings. If you want to feel better the first step is to change your thinking. This is why starting the day thinking about what you are grateful for is important. These positive thoughts set the emotional tone for the day.
"You never tire of looking at a masterpiece. You can go back to it countless times and each time see something new. This is the excitement of loving art." (Ray Neuberger, The Passionate Collector) It's also true that you can go back to it and see the same thing and be moved by it again and again. It's the same with loving people. Each encounter is a mix of seeing new things and enjoying the familiar. How about you? Are you excited about seeing new things and appreciative of the familiar in the "masterpieces" in your life? Are you taking the time to actually look at them with a loving eye? It's particularly important with the ones you've got the most invested in. If you don't, what's the pleasure in that?
I have always loved baseball. The day my first son was born I bought him a lefthanders' baseball glove. (Being lefthanded is a big advantage for a baseball player). I joked I was going to tie his right arm down so he'd be lefthanded. He grew up to be a great baseball player. But, he is not lefthanded. My second son came along. I didn't have to tie his arm down. He's a natural lefty. However, he had very little interest in playing baseball. Since he was very young he has loved basketball. Thankfully, I realized that God gave him his own life, passions and talents and that he hadn't been created to fulfill any of my dreams. He was made to fulfill his own. After watching him play this week in a tournament against some of the best homeschool basketball teams in the country, averaging 17 points a game, playing great defense, and giving his all (along with the other members of his team), I am so grateful I managed to get this right. He is a remarkable basketball player and a remarkable human being. The joy I experience in watching him, and my other children, pursue their passions and build on their strengths and become the individuals God created them to be is beyond my ability to describe. I can't think of any greater source of joy than seeing others excel at the things they love.
Kids know how to have fun. Adults, by and large, do not. Kids are smarter than adults. Life is lived in the present moment and kids are able to grasp this concept and thrive on it. Adults are always distracted by regrets about the past and fears about the future. Adults try to disguise this as "responsibility" but it's not really. True responsibility is making the most of the current moment. Using it enthusiastically and gratefully. Fear and regret are lifekillers. Don't let them into your current moment. Ever.
In the Old West outlaw movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, after Butch, in attempting to blast open the door to a railroad car, instead blasts the car to pieces scattering the money he was after in the wind, Sundance looks at him and asks: "Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?" A humorous twist on one of life's classic mistakes: overkill. In an attempt to be sure we have enough, we go overboard and obliterate what we are actually after. It's particularly easy to do this in parenting, where in our zeal to raise our kids to make good choices, we badger them to the point they don't get to make any choices at all. This defeats the objective completely. Once Butch blew the car to pieces, he was never going to get all the money that was inside. He was just going to be able to catch some of it. If we want our kids to reach their full potential, we need to ease up on the dynamite and let them make some mistakes and not blast them mercilessly when they do. Remember, it's taken you your whole life to reach your current level of perfection. Just for fun, let me know any classic movie lines, you've found useful in everyday life. They can certainly provide insight and comic relief particularly when things are not going so well.
"Is it live or is it Memorex?" This was a line from an old TV commercial touting the quality of Memorex recording tape. I thought of this when reading a WSJ story reporting that the National Anthem at the Super Bowl was lip-synched and a classical music quartet at the Presidential Inaugural was pre-recorded with the musicians on stage only pretending to make music. The justification given for these non-performances was that the events were too important to risk a subpar live performance. This is disturbing. The wonder of a live performance is that it has the potential to be better than anything that's come before. Of course, it comes with the risk of being something less. Foregoing the chance to reach new heights in order to eliminate the risk of a flop is paying too high a price. Opportunity and risk drive progress. Replaying yesterday's performance, no matter how good it was, is cheating yourself and the world of a chance at your best.
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" (the less than pretty Abraham Lincoln) We can take a lesson from Abe on dealing with insults and personal attacks. Laugh at them. Taking offense is counterproductive. It only weakens you. A heated defense or counterattack takes you off course. But laughing frees you from the sting and lets you move forward. It's particularly effective when, like Lincoln, you poke a little fun at yourself in the process. Anything you can do to keep from taking yourself seriously will bear great fruit in the happiness department.
"A person without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-- jolted by every pebble in the road." (Henry Ward Beecher) Being able to laugh, particularly at yourself, is key to health and happiness. Finding amusement in the bumps in the road, like Beecher suggests, keeps you from veering off the road into a ditch when you hit one. Humor lets you maintain control. It helps you sort out the important from the unimportant. When your best laid plans have gone awry, it's good to laugh and say "I love being me. It's always an adventure." If the road were always straight and smooth things would get pretty boring.
Today I resume my modeling career. ["What, 'before' pictures for Hair Club for Men Ads?"] In my last modeling gig, I had to act goofy and draw some laughs which, of course, was no problem. This time I have to look serious. This is a problem. Me looking serious is actually way funnier than me being goofy. It's just so out of place. Like Shaquille O'Neal at 300 pounds being a jockey. The whole concept is so ridiculous you have to laugh. Let's hope the audience today doesn't look at my face ["Always a good choice, Mark"] and concentrates on the tux I'm wearing. Otherwise, the serious show will be seriously unserioused in a big hurry.
A shot not taken is a shot not made 100% of the time. To succeed you need to act. When you act, you risk failing. When you don't act, you guarantee failing. When you look at it that way, it's pretty stupid not to try, isn't it? Don't be paralyzed by the fear of failure. Act on your dreams.
"Oh! I always do that!" exclaimed the young woman standing in the coffee shop parking lot this morning. She'd just gotten out of her truck and was looking at something on the ground. I guess she dropped something she'd dropped before. [I didn't hear any screams or groans so I don't think she ran over anybody.] Of course, she was wrong. She doesn't always do that. She occasionally does it. We tend to exaggerate the frequency of negative occurences in our lives. We need a new approach. We should be saying "Yes! I always do that!" for the stuff that goes right. It's not 100% accurate either but it's truer than the negative and builds positive momentum.
One winter, when I was 9 or 10, I would ride my bike to a nearby grocery store. Behind the store was a nice patch of ice that extended under a parked semi-trailer. I would ride as fast as I could, jam on the brakes when I hit the ice, lay down the bike before my head slammed into the trailer, and slide under the trailer to the other side. Now, that was fun! I was never cold and hitting the ground over and over never hurt. Enjoyment overcame any pain or discomfort. Enjoyment does that. That's why it's important to find your own patch of ice. Something that so delights you that all pain disappears. I have a lot of "patches of ice" now. Primarily, the people I encounter every day. What delights you?
If you don't like yourself, you're probably not very fond of anyone else either. If you find yourself full of complaints about your fellows, chances are it"s the person in the mirror you have your real beef with. While I'm sure there are some people who truly belive like the bumper sticker says: "I'm OK but you're a jerk,"they're going to be pretty rare. Being disgruntled usually comes from within. It's not imposed from an outside source.
Freedom is our birthright. We have it unless we surrender it. Frederick Douglass wrote about growing up as a slave. The transforming moment in his life was when he realized that while his body was owned by his master, his mind was free. Recognizing this freedom and developing it eventually led to his physical freedom as well. We need to recognize and develop the freedom of our minds as well. How have you imprisoned yourself? What thoughts about yourself are limiting your ability to live as the free and creative person you were made to be?
I'm 52 years old and I sometimes stop and ask: "How did I get here? How did 52 years pass?" The answer is simple: one day, one moment at a time. Once you grasp that life is lived in the present moment and that you get to choose how you live that moment you are on the road to a happy and effective life. If you think life is what's already happened, or what you hope will happen in the future, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. You can't change the past and the future is largely determined by what you do with each present moment. Life is right now. Make the most of this moment. Living this way will change your life for the good.
Jim Rohn offers four qualities to cultivate to be more childlike (and thus have more fun and be more successful). 1) Curiosity. Kids always ask questions and want to investigate. 2) Excitement. Kids know life is full of great stuff to do. That's why they never want to go to bed. 3) Faith. Kids are willing to believe they can do anything. 4) Trust. Kids don't worry. They expect things to turn out. If any or all of these concepts seem foreign to you, pull out some pictures of yourself or your kids at age 5 or 6 and think about what you or they were doing at the time. Then see if you can do it today.
"As you wish." When I asked a while back for movie lines that you used in everyday life, I got this one. It's from The Princess Bride. [If you haven't seen the movie, I highly recommend it. It is extremely funny.] The everyday application is in a husband's approach to his wife's requests. In the movie, the servant responds to his master's daughter's every request, with "as you wish". The servant and the daughter eventually fall in love. If you aren't confident in yourself, taking an "as you wish" approach, may make you feel like you are being walked on. But, from an attitude of confidence, "as you wish" is generosity not weakness. If the idea of taking an "as you wish" approach to others makes you uneasy, you're probably feeling like life's cheated you in some way and you're not going let anybody take anything else from you. This is not a happy way to live. Deciding to give without first calculating what's in it for you will lighten the burden of your life considerably.
Close your eyes and take a slow, deep breath. Keep deep breathing and think about the life giving air entering your lungs. Be grateful for each breath you draw. As long as you can draw a breath, you can change the world. It's exciting. You have the power to act. Life does not happen to you. You are free to act and change and make life what you desire. Take another deep breath. Now, get moving!
To my email yesterday that began "Close your eyes . . ." I received the following response: "This doesn't work. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath but I couldn't read the rest of the email so I don't know what to do next!" I laughed till I hurt myself when I read this. I pictured hundreds of people sitting with their eyes shut in front of their computers saying :"Now what, Mr. Self-Help Genius?" It made my day. And who would ridicule my efforts is such a way? One of my beloved sons, of course. You can't have kids and an inflated ego. They have an endless supply of pins.
"The ultimate reason for setting goals is to entice you to become the person it takes to achieve them." (Jim Rohn) When you reach a goal, you have changed and you retain that change. When you climb the mountain, or earn the black belt, or write the novel, you're different than you were before. You've persevered, endured difficulties, overcome obstacles. Your ability to do these things is confirmed in you and can be drawn on to meet anything else that comes along. You become more effective at everything whenever you achieve something.