Gratefulness Takes Action
OK here is the $64,000 dollar question. What should you and I choose to do? Be mindful of what we have and be grateful most of the time, reaping the benefits from that attitude along the way or whine and complain and be ungrateful and end up unhappy and miserable?
Ok, I know that’s not to tough a question but isn’t it funny that regardless of the answer, we so often fall into an ungrateful mode in our daily life? So what do we do about that?
Well, maybe we just need to practice it more often, be mindful of our attitude and stop the complaining when we realize what we are doing. Let’s just go out and do it, maybe 3 or 4 times a day, and see the difference it makes in our lives and the people around us. But we just can’t think about it. We need to take action, make it important in our lives. Start now. Write or call someone or post to your favorite social network site–just put something out there, saying that you are grateful and want never to forget it. And start reaping the benefits.
Waiting is a Blessing
Thinking more on the issue of gratitude and looking at my own experience I couldn’t help but think about two incidences that I observed while traveling recently. One of these times we were waiting for our bags at baggage claim for maybe 10 minutes, when a guy standing next to me started complaining aloud about having to wait. He went on for a while before he finally blurted out “Delta always does this to me!” I thought to myself, does this guy actually thinks Delta is picking on him? Only a minute later the bags came down the chute but instead of being grateful he grabbed his bags in a huff and stomped out of the terminal. I was certain his blood pressure was pushed to some upper limit by then. And all over a couple minutes of waiting.
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The other time was in the very well-appointed Delta Crown room in the Los Angeles airport. A young woman was loudly complaining to someone on her cell phone about her flight being canceled the night before. It seems the airline put her up in a Marriott Hotel, complete free with meals, at their expense. But instead of being grateful that the airline did everything they could to make her comfortable during an unavoidable delay she acted as if the event was destroying her life! And all I could think of was how she’d do at an airport in Libya which was dealing with a severe uprising that week.
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Both these people had lost complete perspective on the situation they were in. It used to take days or weeks to travel from one major city to another in the US. In other parts of the world, it still does. And you don’t always get your bags back or have a flight available at all. We should be immensely grateful when things work expediently and ideally. We should be grateful we can travel rapidly and in great comfort. We should also be grateful, when we do have to wait, that we are given that opportunity to stop and appreciate all we see around us, and all that we have. Even the moments we have to stand still are something to be grateful for, if only we would stop and realize it.
Commitment to Gratitude
As I look out at the world, especially in the incredible times we live in right now with all the turmoil, uprising, pointless deaths, instability and chaos in so many places in the world, and then look outside my door, it’s hard not to be a little shocked by how different my life is here in an affluent, developed country. Even some of the arguably most powerful men in the world do not live as well as many of us do here. Look at Bin Laden, found living in relative squalor until his demise.
When I see these things I am struck big time with the thought that, wow, we really do have it good, those of us living in the USA, Canada, Europe, etc. But how often, and seriously, do we consider how blessed we are?
I don’t know about you, but I am so very, very grateful for my life in a free country. My gratitude, however, goes way beyond the free country thing. I have to tell you, when i take time to be grateful (and i really need to do it more often), that very process and feeling of gratitude boosts my satisfaction, contentment, and happiness levels! It’s almost like magic.
So I’m thinking, this month, let’s start a habit of gratitude, hitting that button 2 or 3 times a day. Appreciating what we have will be good for our spirits, our attitude, our family, our outlook on life, and, by extension the world out there that is working through the chaos and pressure of broad and often, unstoppable, change. It’s the least we can do for them, and ourselves.
The Measure of a Person–Action
Emotions ran high all over the country after the news of Bin Laden’s death. Words and sentiments were streaming across the net, reflecting the mixed emotions of joy, sadness, relief, and, most profoundly, the struggle we face, coming to terms with the violence of the act so many of us wanted to cheer and be thankful for. So many decisions we make come with consequences we find difficult to accept as our doing but we do need to take action so as to not miss out on opportunities or, in this case, help protect ourselves.
Our leaders faced an enormously difficult decision–securing our country but also actively seeking to end a life and potentially lose other lives in the process. You can see just how torturous this decision was for our president, a man who visited another victim of violence, Representative Gifford, before making the decision to order another form of violence. The decision was not made lightly or rashly. But it was made.
A great number of quotes are being repeated across the net as people look for ways to express their feelings about this event. Unfortunately, a number of them are incorrect, a quote attributable to Martin Luther King, Jr. being one of the most persistent. But here is one I haven’t seen that is attributable to that great and courageous man, and is one idea that I think we all would benefit from contemplating for a moment today:
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy–Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963
35 Years Is Enough
When you ‘retire’ it is not time to sit down and watch the world go by. It is time to go re-read your favorite 10, 20 or 100 books, to re-learn all those things that may have slipped slowly away over the years. It’s time to re-connect with old friends and make new friends. It’s time to start a new business or donate your time to a great cause. It’s time to visit a few 3rd world countries and see how many people you can help. It’s time to improve learn, and re-learn.
If you are thinking, “Hey, I don’t have enough energy to do some let alone all of the aboveâ€, well, then maybe you need to re-fire yourself by setting a goal to generate more energy. I am talking about rebuilding your body and mind through a regiment of physical exercise and a super-charged diet. Eat more and more fruits and veggies. Set a goal to stop sitting around just watching TV. Get up and move about. You’ll see that the movement itself, whether it’s walking, running, hiking, tennis, bowling even just playing pool, will energize and re-fires you all by itself.
Then once you have some of that renewed energy running through you, get back to living, not retiring. You have so many more years yet and so much to do.
Never retire–Re-fire!
Recently I got a phone call from a friend I knew when we were 20. As it turns out my friend, Keith Karren, has written a great book, “Boomer”, about the issues facing baby boomers as they head into retirement. Throughout the book Keith keeps saying, “Never retire–just re-fire”, a sentiment not very different from what I say in my book “How to Ignite Your Passion for Living”. However, Keith goes a little deeper when it comes to applying this to retirement.
We got to talking about this huge problem that most retired people face. They find themselves thinking “Who am I if I am no longer a business person, teacher, doctor, pilot or clerk?” Sure, at first it seems just wonderful not to have to go to work every day but after a while you miss the structure, camaraderie, goals, etc. You say “Oh, I’m retired now” when people ask what you do and you don’t even know what that means. If you think about it, retired is a terrible word. It comes across as a label that says your life is over, that it is worthless and has little or no meaning.
Well my old friend Keith writes all about this problem in his book. When I first read “Never retire–just re-fire” I was myself, fired up by this phrase. The idea of re-firing is to get you excited or re-excited about living. It means setting new goals and totally re-energizing yourself for this next phase of your life. And that’s a heck of a lot better than sitting around waiting to die. When you retire, you still have another 25-35 years of living yet to do. Just think of all you did in your last 35 years! That’s a lot of time to do a ton of exciting and productive things. Just trade in your retirement for a bit of re-fire-ment!
Repetition is the Best Teacher
My good friend Paul J. Meyer (who sadly passed away a while ago) used to always say “Don’t read 1,000 books but choose 100 of the very best books and read them over and over again.” Spaced repetition is how we remember and makes it easier for us to practice what we learn in our daily lives because the ideas become ingrained and natural.
This idea hit me hard recently when I realized that the basic concept also applied to other things such as my tennis game. I had mastered the best way to hit a forehand many years ago but over the years I stopped practicing that technique, just stopped doing what I knew I should do, and, sure enough, my forehand went to hell. When I got into competing, I had to relearn my forehand all over again. Relearning was hard but it did make a huge difference in my game (Watch out Roger Federer!) On the other hand (no pun was intended!) I could have skipped that whole trying process by simply revisiting the technique and practicing the points on a regular basis. Learning it once is never enough.
This idea is the same whether it’s repeatedly reading books that teach you how to better your life, keeping up on a skill, or revisiting places or people that inspire and energize your spirit. These are all opportunities for learning that if we come back to over and over, we will not forget and will make practicing what we’ve learned a natural and habitual action.
Change Your Scenery
It’s good to be back in the shadow of the Rockies. After being in Hawaii these last few months I can really appreciate the beautiful Utah landscape, arid and harsh as it appears sometimes. Hawaii is lush and breathtaking but Utah, has amazing color and spectacular formations. I’m always happy to get to either home after time in the previous.
In the same way, you don’t have to be stuck with just one goal, one hobby, or one set of tasks all the time. Being able to move between two items will give you a continued appreciation of both. So if you find yourself getting burned out on a particularly trying set of tasks, move to something else, something completely different if possible.
For instance, if you are starting a business and have been working on marketing plans for weeks, switch gears and work on development for a while. The change in “scenery” can give you’re a boost of inspiration and recharge your enthusiasm for the marketing that will get your newly developed products out there.
And if you’ve been holed up all winter, welcome the spring by getting out somewhere and waking up your senses. A literal change of scenery will do you good all the way around. Our minds crave novelty and novelty brings us mega satisfaction, as I am sure you have experienced many times. We just sometimes need a reminder to step out of the habitual.
Inspiration for Change from Across the Sea
Since December of last year, the Middle East has been in turmoil, unrest growing from grumbling to full scale rebellion all across the region. Protesters of these countries commonly cite the inspiring events that occurred in the small Mediterranean country of Tunisia whose citizens were the first to drive actual and dramatic governmental change in the region through demonstrations and protests.
I have to say it’s been impressive, as well as painful, to watch. But this is what change is. It causes pain as well as elation. It topples the familiar and even comfortable status quo while presenting all the wonderful possibilities it brings. It wrecks some, if not all of what was built previously to clear ground to build up for new lives, practices, and dreams.
I know the trials these people are going through in the Middle East make many of our struggles seem insignificant. But they are OUR struggles and if the people in Egypt, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Libya, and the many other countries all over the world fighting against oppression and corruption can bravely move forward with their momentous tasks, we really should be able to pull together enough courage to move forward with the goals we’ve set for ourselves. Tunisia’s circumstance may not relate to our own exactly, but their passion and determination can be an inspiration to enact the change we know we need in our own lives.
Battling Depression: It is not WHO you are
When asked who we are, we often reply with listing our common activities such as our job, hobbies, or position in the family, or we may list our physical characteristics such as hair color, stature, or ethnicity. However, this is not who we are just parts of what we are.
In the same and more detrimental manner, we tend to identify ourselves to ourselves by things we see as deficiencies such as being overweight, not smart enough, being a procrastinator or being pessimistic. The issue with this type of thinking is that it perpetuates the problem that lead us to identify ourselves as our struggles rather than seeing our issues as being separate from who we are.
Eckhart Tolle explains how these lead to perpetual cycles of disorder especially when it comes to psychological pain. He notes in his book, “The Power of Now”, that identifying the pain as you, your actual being, allows the pain to not only live as you but feed on this thought of it being your identity. If you think of yourself as a depressed person, you are giving the depression the authority to take over so that no matter what you try to do you do it as a depressed person, not the true self that exists separate from the mood disorder. In other words, you can’t get rid of your depression if you insist on carrying it with you everywhere you go.
The only way to start to heal is to detach your issues from who you are. You do this inside, in the mind. Closely and carefully observe your thoughts and the attachment that you have to “my depression” or “my pain”. Observe the compulsion to talk or think about it and consciously halt those thoughts. Remind yourself that this pain is but an item on your to-do list–probably on the top of the list in big, red letters–but it is something to be worked on, not be.
When you start to dis-identify with your pain and when you become a good “watcher of your thinking”, the depression, anger, etc. can and will eventually cease. It cannot exist without you tending to it and allowing it to take over who you are. A good or great life really is an “inside job” and you are the inside person for it!
