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MARCH, 2010

•  I was a tuxedo model yesterday at a bridal fashion show.  Beauty pervades a bridal show.  The women, the dresses they model, the way their hair is done, the wedding cakes, the presentation of other delectables, the women (oh, I mentioned them already!) are all stunningly beautiful.  All beauty is the result of someone's creative genius.  The dress designers, the pastry chefs, the hairstylists all conceive a beautiful design and execute it to perfection, giving those of us who are paying attention a sensory feast.  Humans can create amazingly wonderful things and we should strive to do so and to appreciate the beauty others create.  Creativity is a reflection of the Divine in us.  After all, God is the ultimate creative genius.  God made the women.  
•  How to feel better in less than a minute: 1) Pick something you're grateful for.  Spouse, kids, the joy of a baby playing peek-a-boo, the taste of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  It can be anything.  2) Close your eyes and get a clear picture of it in your mind.  Imagine it.  Imagine yourself experiencing the pleasure associated with it. Imagine how it engages each of your senses. What are its sounds, smells, tastes, and feel?  Bask in the joy of it.--- That's it.  Less than a minute to a gratitude induced attitude improvement.  Give it a try.
• When I worked in a restaurant, I observed two types of coffeemaking catastrophes: 1) starting to brew but forgetting to put the pot in place to receive the brewed coffee; 2) putting the empty pot in place on the hot burner but forgetting to push the start button.  The first causes freshly brewed coffee to flow onto the burner, the counter and the floor-- wasting the coffee and making a mess.  The second causes the empty pot to overheat until it shatters-- leaving pieces of glass strewn all over.  This is a nice metaphor for relating to people.  If the pot's not ready to receive, don't start gushing "wisdom".  If the pot's ready, don't wait.  How do you know?  You have to pay attention to the pot.  The restaurant coffeemaking catastrophes occurred because the person making the coffee was thinking about their own problems-- what they had to do next, customers complaining about the food, something annoying about their co-workers-- and lost track of the pot.  For any relationship to flourish, you have to keep attuned to the other person's mental, emotional, and physical condition and act in accordance with what you see.  
•  Here's a multiple choice question to answer about your life: My life is: a) an action-adventure; b) a situation comedy; c) an intense drama; d) a tragedy; e) one of those "art" films where you can never figure out the point and nothing much ever happens and all of the characters are dull and lifeless.  What did you pick?  Do you like the answer?  The great thing about life is that you don't have to perform according to a set script.  Life is more like improv.  Every day comes along with a new opportunity to take the same situation and turn it into a completely different story.  In improv, you take what's presented to you and (generally) make something fun out of it.  That's not a bad plan for life either. 
•  You might say "Mark, it's great you find so much joy in other people but frankly I don't like people that much.  They're mostly a big disappointment to me.  I find them a source of pain not joy."  I can relate. It may surprise you but for a long time I never really liked people either.  I spent a lot of time being critical.  I thought life would be so much better if people would just change.  Eventually, I realized this approach was making me unhappy and that, like the weather, people are what they are.  No amount of whining was going to change them.  I just had to adapt.  So, I decided I wasn't going to let what was wrong with other people bother me.  I did two things to accomplish this: 1) realized I was responsible for my own happiness and didn't need anyone to act in any particular way to make me happy; 2) quit thinking about what was wrong with people and started looking for what was good about them instead.  It worked.  It took some effort to catch my old thought patterns and change them but in a short period of time I'd become a happy person. 
•  Ran into an acquaintance at a coffee shop.  She said she hadn't been there in a long time.  Her driver-side window was broken so she couldn't go to any drive-ups and it was too cold to get out and walk-in.  She said it worked out well though-- she saved money and lost a few pounds.  I told her she should market it as "The Broken Window Diet and Financial Recovery Plan."  Personally, I use the "Way Too Lazy Diet."  While I would eat a dozen chocolate chip cookies, if they were placed in front of me, I'm way too lazy to make chocolate chip cookies or even go on any kind of search to find them.  I use the vice of laziness to offset the vice of no self-control.  Maybe it's actually "The Make Your Vices Work For You Diet."  I should give this some thought.  There may be a book in it.
•  I spent yesterday afternoon with a young man from China who is here attending college.  At one point, he said "I have no idea what just happened" and I realized I had no way to explain it.  The lack of a common language is an obstacle.  This is true even if both people speak English.  Our different life experiences make the same words or actions mean different things to different people.  [If you don't believe this, that means you've never been married!!]  That's why it's important,when you have an "I have no idea what just happened [or why you just said that or why you just did that]" experience with somebody, not to jump to the conclusion their motivation was bad.  It's good to give people the benefit of the doubt until you know enough about them to make an accurate assessment of what they are up to. 
•  I'm in a fog this morning.  Not the usual metaphorical morning fog in my sleepy little head, but a real fog outside my window.  When it's foggy, you have to slow down because you can't see more than a few feet in front of you.  While this is unnerving, it does help you focus on your next step because you don't really have any choice.  It's a good reminder that no matter where we're going, we only get there by taking the next step.  We don't need to know what future steps will lead us to achiveing our goals, we just need to take the step that lies right in front of us.  Each step we take leads us to the next.  You can only see tomorrow's step after you've taken today's.
•  A big advantage of hands-free cell phone technology is that you can now walk down the street talking to yourself and people just think you're on the phone instead of thinking you're schizophrenic.  This opens up some great opportunities for self-entertainment while walking. [Like saying as someone approaches: "You mean somebody can catch this from me just by passing me on the street," then quickly looking at the passerby, gasping, and running to the other side of the street.]  We all talk to ourselves.  The problem is what we say is usually negative.  We have a choice.  We can talk ourselves into success or failure, joy or despair, action or inaction.  The most important conversations we have every day are the ones we have with ourselves.  We need to make those conversations productive and upbuilding.  What have you been talking to yourself about so far today?  Have you been encouraging or derogatory?  Maybe it's time to change the tone of the conversation. Give yourself a break.
•  "We are what we repeatedly do.  Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit." (Aristotle)  And, a habit of excellence starts with an act.  Unless you want to excel at procrastination, you have to actually do something to succeed.  The best way to begin a habit of excellence is to start doing things that are easy.  Take small steps that move you toward mastery.  If you want to be in excellent physical shape, start small.  Maybe walk around your car before you get in it to drive somewhere.  That's pretty easy and it has the added advantage of making people who see you wonder what you're doing.  If you really want to have fun, when you're walking in a public parking lot you can look intently at a random parked car, squat down while continuing to look at the car, stand up, shrug your shoulders, and walk on.  Anything to start a pattern of more physical activity and maybe give yourself a laugh at the same time.
•  Words are like a magnifying glass.  They can make things easier to see or cause a painful burn.  It all depends on how you use them.
•  I just realized that it's only 4 months, 2 weeks, and 2 days until my birthday! Time to celebrate!  Now, you might say "Mark, isn't that kind of immature. Only  5-year olds know the countdown till their birthdays and get excited thinking about them."  And, you'd be right.  But, you would have missed the point.  The immaturity lies in thinking you have to wait to celebrate-- that the cake and the presents and the party are confined to that one day-- the anniversary of your birth.  The fact is every day you are still drawing a breath is worth celebrating.  Every day is filled with gifts and parties waiting to happen.  Life, in all its wonders, big and small, is worth celebrating.  Always.  Every day.  Every moment.  If you don't think so, I just have one thing to say to you: Stop being so immature.
•  I once heard the author Flannery O'Connor quoted as saying: "If I could tell you what my story was about, I wouldn't have had to write it." A story isn't about something. A story is something. Every word chosen, every sentence crafted to present a complete work. A person is a complete work as well. It's important to pay attention and take in the whole rather than reducing your view of a person to just one notable characteristic ("he's lazy", "she's pretty" etc.). When you get past the obvious, you can have a richer experience of the people in your life.  Try to learn something new about someone today. 
•  "When you're attacked, the attacker thinks you're the victim.  You want to get him thinking he is the victim as soon as possible." (Mike Kanarek)  Mike Kanarek developed a highly effective self-defense system (it's acronym is F.I.G.H.T.)  I had a great time getting beat-up studying it with him a few years ago.  The process, in a nutshell, is to start hurting the attacker as quickly as you can, get him into a position where you have control of him, and then end the confrontation in an extremely unpleasant way for the attacker.  Successful self-defense flows from moving your perception of your own position from "victim" to "attacker" as quickly as possible.  This is true for any challenge you face in life.  The last thing you want to do is waste your time wishing you weren't in the situation you're in, or didn't have to do what you have to do, or feeling sorry for yourself.  Doing any of those things just gets you hurt.  Turn the tables on your problem and start attacking it.  It's your only road to success.    
•  If you could have a super power, what would it be?  I was thinking I could be Reflectoman.  Redirecting any beam of light off the top of my head and turning it into a laser-like weapon.  The bad guys would be constantly trying to figure out ways to expose me to Rogaine.  I'd be awesome!  I once read that a survey showed most women would like "knowing what men were thinking" as their super power.  [After reading the first few sentences above, it's kind of hard to imagine wanting to know any more about what I'm thinking, isn't it?] So, guys, instead of making them waste a super power on this,  let's just tell them what we're thinking.  Not everything.  But something.  It's particularly good to tell them what you're thinking about them . . . if it's positive.  Make a point to tell a woman in your life something good about her today.
•  Irish Coffee (in honor of the approach of St. Patrick's Day) is the perfect meal because it contains something from each of the four basic food groups: Sugar, Fat. Caffeine, and Alcohol.  Ok, I'm kidding.  But, at least those things are pleasurable.  Some people live on a steady diet of Fear, Doubt, Self-Centeredness, and Complaining.  Those things are extremely unhealthy and they're not even any fun.  Avoid the misery cocktail by focusing on others, encouraging them, taking reasonable risks, and believing you've been given all you need to build a successful life.   
•  Happy St. Patrick's Day!  An Irish immigrant would go to the pub every day and order 3 pints of Guinness simultaneously.  One for himself and one each to drink for his 2 brothers still in Ireland.  One day, he only ordered two.  The pub fell silent and eventually a fellow patron came over and said "I'm sorry for the loss of your brother."  The Irishman was puzzled for a moment and then said: "Oh, me brothers are fine.  I just quit drinking."  If this makes sense to you, then you must be Irish and, therefore, one of the few people celebrating St. Patrick's Day who knows that St. Patrick converted the Irish to Christianity.  They had enslaved him early in his life.  Eventually, he escaped but later returned to bring Christ to his former captors.  This is the reason for the big party St. Patrick's Day has become.  So, when you have your 3 pints today (or 2 if you've quit drinking), remember St. Patrick.  He didn't let a difficult start stop him from living a transformational life.  
•  I hope you had a great St. Patrick's Day.  Mine was fun.  I developed a St. Patrick's Day quiz with chocolate as the prize for a correct answer.  When I went out, I asked the servers if they wanted to take the quiz for chocolate.  No one said "no".  Everyone experienced the sweet taste of success (even if it took a few questions).  You might not always be able to give chocolate as a reward for success, but you can always keep your eye out for people who are doing a good job and tell them so.  Encouraging the good in people is a great way to inspire them to become even better.  It's always nice to be noticed in a positive way.  Almost as nice as eating chocolate.   
•  Muscle memory is a good thing.  It's what makes your three-point shot go in consistently or your curveball break consistently.  Your body learns from repetition  the proper movements to make to get the desired result.  A habit is like muscle memory.  You do it without thinking and it produces consistent results.  That's why it's important to keep an eye on your habits.  Are they producing baskets or airballs?  Chances are you've got some great habits that are producing success and some other habits that are causing you to underperform.  Give yourself an honest habit appraisal.  Which do you need to dump?  Which would you like to develop?
•  Happy spring!  I went shopping today.  It started out well. I bought a pair of blue jeans and some athletic socks and they only cost me 15 minutes.  Then, it got expensive.  The store didn't have any sweat pants in the right size.  I tried on some that were too big and some that were too small but unlike Goldilocks I didn't find any that were just right.  I had to go to another store.  This cost me a lot of time.  Like I said, it got expensive.  How much money did I spend?  I don't really know.  When I shop, I shop for time.  Fifteen minutes would have been a bargain.  An hour was very costly.  Time is scarce.  That's why it's important to spend it wisely.  You can always make more money.  Nobody can make more time.    
•  "Don't waste yourself in rejection, or bark against the bad, but chant the beauty of the good." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)  Amen! There are at least one hundred good things for every bad one in the world.  Spend your time seeking the good things and telling others about them and your life will be wonderfully rich.
•  "Creativity is intelligence having fun." (John C. Maxwell)  "Cynicism is intelligence being a jerk." (Me)  Cynicism is intelligence taking itself too seriously.  Cynicism is unproductive.  Creativity produces all positive change in the world.  Take your pick: have fun and change the world or be cynical and do nothing much at all.
•  "Creativity requires the willingness to look stupid." (John C. Maxwell)  Well, I've got that covered.  Its kind of my specialty-- looking stupid.  It's funny because I used to spend a lot of time (probably all of it, actually) trying not to look stupid.  This was unproductive and didn't work.  Eventually, I figured out that looking stupid in pursuit of a goal was a price worth paying.  It's looking stupid without being stupid-- which is a lot better than the other way around.  Think about it.
•  "Humble people don't think less of themselves.  They just think of themselves less."  I don't know the source of this quote but it's a beauty.  Humility isn't about beating yourself down.  It calls for being your best while acknowledging the best in others.  Humility involves a healthy appreciation of the importance others play in the success and enjoyment of our lives.
•  "I like to be able to explain my mistakes." (Warren Buffett)  It's important to know why you are going to do something before figuring out how you are going to do it.  That way, you're not left amidst the rubble of a collapsed "how" with the only explanation for why you're there being "it seemed like a good idea at the time."  Spending a bit of time on the "why" before you get started will 1) save you from spending time on something you didn't really want to do; 2) give you resolve to push through when the going gets tough; 3) help you laugh at the failed "hows" until you find one that works.  It's much easier to get out of the rubble and start over if your laughing than it is if you're crying.
•  I injured myself eating lunch yesterday.  I picked up my fork and got a shooting pain in the base of my thumb.  But, being the tough, determined, play-with-pain, Chinese-food-eating juggernaut that I am, I didn't let it slow me down.  I'm sure my dining companions can attest that I sucked down my meal with my customary speed and lack of attention to proper social decorum.  They never knew there was anything wrong with me (well, physically anyway).  A little pain on the way to something you love is no problem.  That's the gift of desire.  If you love it, no pain is great enough to make you stop.  If your desire is wishy-washy, the slightest adversity will stop you in your tracks.
•  Love is like building a cathedral.  You start out with a perfect vision of what you're going to build: a glorious and unmatched work of art on the grandest possible scale.  You can see it so well in your mind that it seems already completed.  But it's not.  You have to start hauling brick, mixing mortar, and putting them together brick by brick by brick.  You'll toil all day to the point of exhaustion and see nothing but a few bricks stuck on other bricks.  It'll seem a puny mockery of your vision.  Someday a high wind or earthquake will knock down some or all of what you've built and you'll have to start over.  You'll make mistakes that require tearing down and rebuilding.  Somedays it will seem pointless.  Somedays it will seem impossible.  Somedays you'll think you're an idiot for wanting to build a cathedral in the first place.  All these things are fine as long as you keep hauling and stacking the bricks.  Laying brick builds a cathedral.  How you feel about it doesn't matter.  Just don't quit.  
•  Scary music in the movies is designed to put you on edge.  When you hear it, you know something bad is going to happen.  We can create our own scary music when we are about to try something new.  We can convince ourselves something bad is going to happen.  Unlike the movies, we don't have an outside director determining our fate.  Just because we hear the scary music doesn't mean our fate is sealed.  We put the scary music in and we can take it out.  Next time you hear it playing in your head remind yourself that you get to pick what happens next.  The music is just a distraction.
•  "You idiot!," I said, addressing myself disdainfully after some absentminded blunder.  "That's not what you wanted to do."  Then, I caught myself and started laughing.  On my life-list of errant actions, this was hardly noteworthy.  I really ought to reserve namecalling for the things that I 1) knew were stupid and 2) did anyway.  Anything else is just an honest mistake or an accident.  Beating yourself up over every little blunder is unproductive.  It impairs your willingness to take risks and risk is necessary for progress.  We need to cut ourselves, and others (kids, spouse, co-workers), some slack.  If you demand perfection, from yourself or others, in everything you won't get anything but inaction. Now, that would be stupid.
•  I tossed a dog treat out onto the patio for our dog, Diego, and it bounced under the picnic table so he was unable to get to it.  When he was younger, he would have worked himself into a position to slide under the table to reach it (or maybe just pushed the picnic table out of the way), but, today, he quickly determined it wasn't going to be worth the effort and walked away.  Maybe he knew there'd be other more easily reachable dog treats somewhere else later on.  It's wise to know what to fight for and what to let pass.  You don't have to get every scrap.  You can miss a lot of easy opportunities because you're too busy contorting yourself into a position to try to get something that would be better left under the table.
•  "We think in amounts of money, but not in sanity or joy." (Summer Pierre)  People often think more money will give them greater joy but they don't really have a clear picture of what that greater joy actually looks like.  Better to pursue things that make you joyful and make money to pay for them if you need to than to make money in the hope of spending it till you find something that makes you happy.  I am defintely rich in terms of joy.  Sanity?  Not so much.  But, that's another story.  Money has its uses and it can buy you more time for the things that bring you joy.  It just can't buy you joy itself.