Start Being Your Best » Passion

What Can I Do?

Jason — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 16:28:11 +0000

I’ve had this post on my mind for about a month now, and I just wasn’t sure where to go with it. ?It kind of all came together at once, though. ?Let me explain…

We, as human beings, are social creatures. ?I’ve said it before on this blog, and I’ll say it again. ?We’re designed to live together. ?Whether you believe that God created us this way, or we simply evolved these traits, you cannot deny that very few of us can survive for long on our own.

It seems to me that if we didn’t gain more than we lose from this arrangement of living in a society, it wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has. ?There’s got to be some kind of advantage that outweighs all the potential for disagreements, clashing ideologies, and the loss of freedom.

That advantage is summed up in this video I’ve posted below. ?If you’re like me, it’ll stick with you.

The advantage of community comes from having the opportunity to reach out to those around us when they’re hurting, and to shoulder the load of their life for a little while as they get back on their feet.

There are plenty of people out there, unsung and uninterested in being so, who live every day of their lives in such a way as to be a help to those they come in contact with. ?One such guy is Nate St. Pierre of ItStartsWith.Us. ?Check out one of the things he’s working on: ?Drop A Love Bomb. ?An idea so simple, and yet extremely profound.

What if each and every one of us racked our brains to determine how to make the world a better place, and implemented it? ?Every time you see a problem on the news, or in your daily life, ask “What can I do?”. ?Find a way to impact those around you. ?Do it now.

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You Are Not A Brand

Jason — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 12:45:16 +0000

This, my friends, is an explanation as to why I’ve not been writing. I’ll confess that I’ve been burnt out. Not so much by the writing; definitely not by the people who read the blog. I was trying to find out what I really wanted out of Start Being Your Best. So far, all I’ve really found out is what I don’t want from it. I don’t want to be defined by it. I don’t want to be a brand.

Now, I’ve often said here that this blog is for me. It’s where I talk about things and issues related to personal development and leadership that I have challenges with or questions about. All that is true.

But, part of me also wanted this blog to be big. Really big.

I didn’t want it to be big so that I could reach more people and hopefully help more of them struggling with the same issues I confront. On the other hand, I don’t think I even wanted to become internet famous or make a lot of money or get a book deal. Honestly, I don’t know why I wanted the blog to be big, which is probably the biggest reason why it didn’t become huge.

If you want a creative endeavor to grow, you need to have a reason for it to do so. I didn’t (and still don’t).

Moreover, every time I would sit down to write out a post, I would feel fake. I knew that, even though I was using the printed word on the page to work out issues that were challenging me, people who read the blog would feel as though I was providing answers.

In reality, it was all a stab in the dark and I began to feel crappy about myself when I didn’t always live up to the standards that I wrote about. Even though I know everyone makes mistakes and no one is perfect, it was tough for me to write out what I knew I should be doing, and then not always doing it. The downward shame spiral was just picking up speed all the time.

I got tired of feeling like I needed to be pimping myself around on other self-help blogs (most, but not all, of which I have little to no respect for) simply to “build a brand”. It feels really phony to me, and I just didn’t want to do it any more. Marketing my posts on Twitter was even worse. Man, I really hated marketing my product, because I felt like it was a reflection of me.

I didn’t like that reflection.

The long and short of it is, I’m not interested in doing the work that’s required to make this blog a “success” in terms of a huge readership or revenue. I don’t want to sell myself like I’m a commodity. What I’ve written here is important to me. If some of it is important to you, that’s awesome. But, and I say this with all due respect to you, the folks who actually take the time to read what I throw out: I don’t care if you read or not.

This blog is about me and my life. I don’t want to try to fit it into a neat category and drive traffic to it by using social media or whatever else that you’re supposed to do to have a “successful” blog. I’m not going to maintain a rigid posting schedule, because I think I turn out some pretty crappy stuff just to have something go up on time. This blog is a record of me, and I can’t force that to conform to anything else out there, because there’s no one else like me. I’m an individual, I’m not a brand.

If there’s anything I hope you readers take from this post, it’s that you don’t need to conform, either. Your art (and you do create art, regardless of who you are or whether you call it “art” or not) is for you. You make the choice as to whether you want to tweak what it is that you do enough to make it palatable to the consuming public, or not. If you decide that you’re not going to conform to the pattern laid out for you, then you have to know there will be consequences. But, thankfully, you at least have the choice. Don’t delegate the choice as to which face you show to the world. You get to choose.

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The Key to Ultimate Fulfillment

Jason — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:00:34 +0000

Photo courtesy alejandrophotography/iStockphoto

What does it mean to tell a good story with your life? Why would you want to? At what point do you realize that you’re not telling a good story, or really any story at all? These are all questions that Donald Miller addresses in his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.

I used to identify with Don (and still do, to an extent). There’s a point, very early on in the book, when Don says, “You get the feeling that life means something, but you’re not sure what,” (p. 5). I mean, I believe my life has a purpose, but it’s really easy to lose sight of that fact in the day-to-day grind of what it is that I fill my days with. I’ve often asked myself that same question.

You see, Don had written a New York Times Best-Seller, his memoir Blue Like Jazz. By the time (a couple years later) when he was approached by a movie producer to turn the book into a screenplay, Don had lost his confidence. He’d written some other things that hadn’t sold nearly as well, and he was feeling pretty insecure about his abilities as a writer. He didn’t know what to do with himself, now that he could no longer identify with that label he’d had thrust on him of “Best-selling Author”. Kind of a tough title to live down, right?

The process of transforming Blue Like Jazz into a screenplay required Don to take a clinical look at his life and edit it down to the most important parts. Life, as you know, doesn’t really have a plot if you’re just living it. It takes an intentional decision to script a plot; the author has to engineer certain events to occur in a certain order so that the story is told properly. ”I felt defensive,” Don says, “as though the scenes in my life weren’t going anywhere. I mean, I knew they weren’t going anywhere, but it didn’t seem okay for anyone else to say it” (p.25).

In the process of writing this screenplay, Don begins to look at Story (with a capital “S”) and how it’s created. He begins to wonder “whether a person could plan a story for his life and live it intentionally” (p.39). Seems like a worthy experiment, right? After all, if the alternative is drifting through days at the office and nights watching TV, what does a person have to lose?

Don decides that, “A Story is a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it” (p.48). Let’s look at that definition of Story, shall we? What are the component pieces?

1. A character. That’s you. The story is the character. It doesn’t exist without them. Oh sure, someone else could come along and take the place of a given character, but then the story would change. It wouldn’t be the same as it would have been. And that’s the point. You have something unique and special within you that needs to come out, and if you don’t, there’s no way in the world to replace or replicate it. There’s a void that wouldn’t have been there if you (or me, or anyone else) would have stepped up to tell the story we were born to tell.

2. A character who wants something. You have to want something. And it has to be something interesting. If your goal is to make enough money during the day shuffling papers so you can pay for cable to watch at night, that’s a want. However, it’s not an interesting want. You have to want something cool in order for your story to be interesting.

Why should you want it to be interesting, anyway? That seems to be a valid question, especially if you think that this life is all there is, right? Leaving aside my personal reason (I believe God put me here to do more than shuffle papers and pay for cable), wouldn’t you just rather live an interesting life? If this really is all there is, then why waste time doing something that’s boring? Shouldn’t you spend the 70 or 80 years that you have doing something enjoyable, that’s relevant and really means something to you?

3. A character who wants something and overcomes conflict. Overcoming conflict is what makes getting to your goals interesting in and of itself. The journey’s the thing. For any of you nerds out there who’ve read The Lord of the Rings (I’m a total nerd; don’t think I’m mocking), you know that the book hardly gets going before Frodo finds himself flung headlong into conflict and starts out on a journey. The journey comprises the vast majority of the book, and the end result (in this case) is almost secondary. I mean, throwing the One Ring into Mt. Doom was sort of the point of all the suffering and conflict, but to me it always seemed almost anti-climactic. All the cool stuff happened on the way there.

Struggling through conflict in order to get something you want is what causes growth and change. That’s really what it’s all about. It’s not so much the achieving of a goal or obtaining what you set out to do; it’s more about how you get there and what you become. How do I know that? Because, as soon as you achieve what you’ve sought after for so long, you have to set a new goal. And you have to go through conflict again to achieve it. If you don’t, you’ll end up just as stagnant as you were before you started with the first goal.

4. A character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it. Now, as much as I just talked about the journey being the important thing, you have to achieve the goals. We humans are motivated by rewards, just like dogs. Sure, our rewards are a little more complex than the ones you would offer a dog, but it’s the same principle. In order to go through the crap that builds character, you have to have a reason to do so. Suffering for suffering’s sake isn’t worthwhile, and no one I know who isn’t mentally ill will put up with pointless suffering for very long. In order to become better, you need to have something driving you to become better. That is what you get, after you’ve gotten the lesson you were supposed to get from the journey.

I am excited about this book. I know I always preach about being intentional on this site, but to hear Don’s journey told from the perspective of trying to tell a good story was a new way to look at it. It reached me differently than the concept has before. You can’t drift through life and hope that contentment happens to you. It has to be intentional, it has to be consistent, and it has to be something you focus your attention on all the time. Keep telling the story that only you can tell. It’s why you’re here.

What kind of story are you telling? Have you ever considered your life in those terms? Does it make you think about what you do differently? Let us know in the comments…

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Meditation For Non-Hippies

Jason — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:00:55 +0000

I’m hoping I haven’t offended anyone (too much) by that headline. Does anyone self-identify as a “hippie” anymore, anyway? We’ve all got a picture in our head, though, right?

What I’m thinking of are people that are a little bit out there: they might play a little too much hacky sack or burn a little bit too much patchouli incense, maybe they’ve participated in a drum-circle once or twice. And they’re always going on and on about how it’s so great to take time out to meditate and “expand [their] consciousness, man”. Does that ring a bell? Maybe I hung out with too many stoners in high school or something…

The way I understand meditation to work is that a person essentially concentrates all their effort on not concentrating on anything at all (except for their own breathing, or a mantra or something). The mind is to be emptied so as to allow some great revelation of wisdom to occur.

This never made a lot of sense to me. I’m not much in agreement with the concept that’s implied here: if you wait long enough without doing anything, something great is going to happen to you through no effort of your own. That’s complete and utter nonsense, in my opinion and experience.

Change is what is required for personal, emotional, or spiritual development. Without change, there is no improvement. It requires work on your part.

That being said, I’ve recently begun doing some meditation of my own. It’s quite a bit different from what I’ve already described, though.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to “Meditation for Non-Hippies”:

1. Find a quiet place. This isn’t any different from what you would do in “normal” meditation. You don’t have to turn off the lights unless you want to, you don’t have to light any candles or incense unless you want to, you don’t need any Enya playing in the background unless you want to. The one thing you do need, however, is to remove distractions. That’s why I said it needs to be quiet.

Now, my 18 year-old self would have said “I’m fine with music playing in my headphones while I do my homework; it’s not distracting”. My 33 year-old self knows better, though. If you need it quiet and dark, then make it quiet and dark. Don’t sabotage yourself on this step.

2. Lie down. I know some folks like to sit up, and are concerned that if they lie down they’re going to fall asleep. If that’s you, go ahead and sit up. Personally, I like to lie down on the floor in my office. My floor supports my weight evenly without being comfortable enough to cause me to drift off to sleep. When I sit up, I find that I have a little part of my mind that pays attention to the way my body is positioned. It’s distracting.

If you really want to get into the lotus position, I guess that’s your prerogative. Just don’t ask me to join you; I’ve never been able to bend like that.

3. Think about something that’s truly important to you. Here’s where we turn meditation on its head. Rather than focusing on “Om Shanti Om” or on the rhythm of your breathing, you need to focus on your most pressing challenge. Notice I didn’t say “WORRY about your most pressing challenge”. You need to approach the situation head-on, with the confidence that you can come up with a solution. Allow your thoughts to go where they will, as long as they remain focused on the issue at hand. If you start thinking about the laundry you need to do, gently push your thoughts back to where they belong.

What you’re doing here is allowing your subconscious mind to work on the challenge, as well. This is when truly creative problem solving occurs. I know that so many times when I’ve tried to “distract myself” into creativity by doing something else, I’ve never gotten back to the issue I was concerned with in the first place.

What if you don’t have anything really pressing at the current time? Well, then this is the time for you to get ahead of the game by filling your thoughts with positivity. For some (like myself), meditation is a time to focus on finding out what God would have that person do with his or her life (Joshua 1.8). For others, you may want to focus on your daily affirmations, what you want your future to look like, or just on whatever is most important to you.

Look, I’m not trying to pick on people who sincerely believe in the type of meditation I’m opposed to. I think you’re wrong, and I’ll be willing to discuss it (civilly) and attempt to convince you of your error if you’d like, but I don’t hate on you. I know you think I’m wrong too, but I’m hoping that we can all agree to disagree and still focus on what we do have in common.

However, I do get a little tired of the “I’m not religious, I’m spiritual” crap that I hear a lot of today, and I think other folks do, as well. It comes off as insincere and trite, as well as demonstrating that the person who said it doesn’t have a basic grasp of the English language. If you believe in and revere a set of beliefs about some reality that can’t be quantified or demonstrated, you have a religion (or a “faith”, if you will).

For those of you in that boat with me, I hope that you’ll consider that meditation as I’ve described it above is a great tool for use in your personal development, as well as in your problem solving.

You know what to do. Some may rip me to shreds, and others might back me up with the first group. Just keep it respectful, folks, and steer clear of Godwin’s Law, shall we? Let the comments begin…

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Taking a Sagmeister

Jason — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:00:46 +0000

Here’s another TED video I’d like you to take a look at. In it, we get to hear the consequences of allowing your life to become monotonous, and one very unique way to deal with that issue.

Stefan Sagmeister owns a design studio in New York that’s garnered a lot of commercial and critical praise and success, and he has a rather unorthodox approach to work/life balance that he credits with keeping his work fresh and unique.

First, Stefan discusses the fact that our employment falls into one of three categories:

1. Job: Trading time for money. It’s a 9-5 (or, more likely, 7:30-6:30) commitment, but without much (if any) positive emotional investment on our part. A person in this scenario needs a hobby on the weekend to balance things out, because what they’re doing isn’t really what they’d like to be doing.

The challenge comes when you’re so exhausted from your job that you have no emotional energy to do anything when you get home. You collapse on the couch and channel surf until you go to bed so you can wake up and do it tomorrow.

2. Career: It’s still a job, but you’re doing it for advancement and promotion. You see where you’re at currently as a stepping-stone to something better. It’s a means to an end, whether that end is a better position within the same field, or gaining experience to be able to go out on your own.

This is a little bit better, but only if you can constantly remind yourself of your long-range goals and how your current position is going to help you do what you want to do. Speaking from personal experience, this is pretty tough to do all the time, so you may end up a little frustrated in this area, as well.

3. Calling: This is the proverbial “I love it so much, I’d do it for free” position. Those folks who have these types of positions are constantly envied by the rest of us because they seem so lucky. They arrive home excited about what they were able to accomplish during the day, and they can’t wait to get back out the door tomorrow to do the same thing.

The interesting comment that Stefan makes is that, with enough time, even the most powerful “calling” will turn into merely a “job”. He would get bored and repetitive in what he was doing, even though he loved being a designer.

His solution was to begin to take sabbaticals every 7 years. He would close his design studio in New York for an entire year and go do something different. No clients, no sneaking in a project here and there. He quit doing what he was doing and focused entirely on something else.

Did it work? According to Stefan, the answers is a resounding “Yes!”

1. His job became a calling again. The old saying “absence makes the heart grow fonder” certainly seems to be the truth in this case. Because he spent the entire year away from doing the kind of design the was accustomed to, he began to miss it. His creativity was sparked again.

2. He had fun. Who wouldn’t have fun taking an entire year off to spend in Bali? I think this one speaks for itself. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying yourself.

3. Over the long term, the idea was a financial success. Because of being refreshed, he found that his ideas and design concepts were being received even more positively than before. He was able to raise his rates as a result.

4. Everything his studio designed during the following 7 years had roots in something that occurred or was experienced during that sabbatical year. This demonstrates what, in my mind, is the key take-away. This “creative pause” in his life produced such a well-spring of refreshing thoughts and unique experiences that he was able to sustain it for 7 years after (coincidentally enough, right up to the time he was supposed to take his next break).

Sure, it’s fine for the self-employed to do something like this, but what about those of us who work in big, soulless corporations? Well, companies like 3M and Google have long embraced the idea that employees work better when they have the option to work on projects they enjoy. Employees at 3M invented Scotch Tape and Post-It notes on the 15% of their time that’s to be allocated to personal projects. Gmail came out of some Google employees’ 1 personal day a week.

Plenty of other companies allow their employees to take sabbaticals (I’ve got a friend at Intel that just took three months off to travel around Europe). Whether those are paid or not are another story, of course. My point is, it’s not unheard of to find a position with a company that understands that it’s in their best interest to allow their talent to do something that they enjoy.

What kinds of benefits could you see accruing to you if you took some time away from your work? How would you spend that time? Have you ever had the opportunity to do something like this? How did it go? Let us know in the comments…

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Expect the Unexpected

Jason — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:00:03 +0000

I have a bank account with the largest bank in the US. You’d expect everything to be standardized across their branches. However, there’s one state that’s different than all the others. For some unknown reason, Idaho (where I live) is on a different computer system than all of the other states in the country. I opened my account in Arizona, so I’m not in the Idaho system. This means that every time I want to make a withdrawal or a deposit inside a branch, I need to jump through a whole bunch of hoops to get it done. Out-of-state withdrawal slips and all kinds of other special issues.

Every time I make a transaction like this (which is surprisingly often for a guy with an ATM card), the teller always asks me if I’ve considered switching my account to an Idaho account. ”It’d be so much easier for you,” she says. I wouldn’t have to jump through all these hoops, and could just get in and out of the branch with much less hassle. When I tell her that I’d rather not, the teller will more often than not respond with, “Why? Are you planning on moving soon?”. I just smile and nod, say “You never know”, and leave it at that. She shakes her head, and continues to process my transaction.

This little portion of my life would be easier if I’d just switch over. However, if I do ever decide to move, it would cause me just as many headaches in my new location as I now have in this one. It just doesn’t make sense to me to do something like that, since it removes options.

My point is, people plan for continuity. Most folks would make the switch to a local account, no problem. Most folks would consider that to be a smart move. Just like most people, even when faced with statistics like the average worker today switches careers 7 times, expect that those stats only apply to someone else. Whether this comes from fear of the unknown, or a desire to avoid change at all costs, I don’t know.

I’m just as susceptible as the next guy (or gal) to falling into this kind of continuity thinking, though. A little over a year ago, I bought a house. Prices had been falling in the area where I live, and I thought I was getting a good deal. I figured my family had no plans to go anywhere else, so why not? Buying a house is a good investment anyway, right?

Trouble with that is I didn’t foresee the housing market cratering. There’s no way I can sell my house today for what I owe on it, even though I got it at a pretty good price at the time. So, now I have a mortgage that, while within my means to pay, severely limits my ability to pack up and leave if the desire were to move me (and believe me, it does).

Most folks don’t have desires like that. I accept that I’m a bit of an odd bird when it comes to the wanderlust I have. However, I think everyone can use a little more flexibility, and planning for the unexpected seems to be the way to go. Here are 3 ways you can inject a little breathing room into your own life:

1. Don’t buy a house. Home ownership is the American Dream, right? And, it’s not really a bad deal, financially speaking. Real estate investments over the long haul show steady returns. However, there’s a big caveat: You can’t decide when to get in or out. If you’re in a bad market (like right now), and you need funds, you’re probably not going to get them from your real estate holdings. Property is about as illiquid an investment as you can find. So, if you own a house and you decide you want (or need) to move, you still have a responsibility to keep paying on that property. From the standpoint of flexibility, it’s a bad decision

2. Don’t buy depreciating assets on credit. That means no cars, no stereos, no vacations, not much of anything, really. Experts agree you can buy a home on credit (although the past year or so has shown that even those depreciate), and most folks say financing education is okay, too. It’s supposed to be an investment in your future.

I have both types of “good debt”, and I can tell you they still lock you in to the situation you’re in. If I didn’t have school loan payments and mortgage payments, I could get by quite nicely on half of what I currently make, and that’s assuming a pretty nice rent payment for the area of the country in which I live. I financed a good portion of an MBA degree, which so far has provided me nothing except for a few good friends. I think most degrees are like that.

So, if even those two types of purchases are poor uses of credit, really think about what you lay down the plastic for. That car that’s going to depreciate 25% or more the second the tires touch the street in front of the dealership? Bad choice. A new LCD television? Don’t do it. Kitchen remodel? Is the new butcher-block island really going to make your life better to the point where you’d sacrifice your freedom to choose?

3. Become a Jack (or Jill) of All Trades. Learn all you can about everything you can. If you’re an accountant, and that’s all you can do, what happens if you can’t find anyone willing to pay you to count beans? Bummer. However, if you’re an accountant who troubleshoots and fixes computers on nights and weekends, you can pretty easily begin generating a secondary stream of income. And, if you’re a computer-troubleshooting-accountant who also can do a little web design and back-end coding, you can open up a tertiary stream. The more streams you have, the less you’re affected by any one drying up. That’s the key to flexibility.

So take the time to get really good at something outside of your profession. Maybe it’s writing or coding or graphic design or teaching a subject you know really well. Can you speak two or more languages? If you know where to look, you can make a killing doing transcription and translation work. For instance, I’ve seen ads on Craigslist for Chinese to English translation and transcription jobs that offer between 15 to 20 cents per word (!). Do you realize how much that is? Assuming this article was in Mandarin, you could make around $180 translating it to English at 15 cents a word. I’m willing to bet that it would take you less than 45 minutes to transcribe it if you had near-native abilities in both languages. $240 an hour is a pretty good rate, wouldn’t you say?

What life really boils down to is choices. If you want one thing, you have to be willing to sacrifice another. If you want to put down deep roots in a place, and provide your family with a home that they own, then you’re necessarily sacrificing some flexibility to follow your whims. Not that this is a bad thing; it’s really up to you. You just need to understand that choices have consequences and you have to be willing to deal with the ones that come with your preferred lifestyle.

As for me, I don’t want to be locked in. I’m making efforts to reduce my commitments, so I can pursue some things that aren’t possible with a lot of unnecessary financial entanglements. Just take the time to figure out what you want to do, and then do it. Follow Thoreau’s advice; “Go forth boldly in the direction of your dreams; live the life you’ve imagined.”

So, do you plan for continuity, or do you expect the unexpected? If you do your best to keep things on an even keel, what benefits do you see in that way of thinking? Am I off-base? And, if you like a little (or a lot of) variety in your life, what have you done to make sure the unexpected finds you? Let us know in the comments...

Photo courtesy: Orin Zebest

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Your Situation Isn’t Your Problem

Jason — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 12:00:17 +0000

For years, I lived in the future. Always looking ahead to what was in store for me just around the corner. That shiny new do-dad or relationship would finally push me into contentment.

“If I can just get a promotion, maybe I can start paying down my debt…”

“Man, if [girl's name] says ‘yes’ to a date, I’ll be set…”

“My life would be so much better if I moved out of this dumpy apartment and got a nicer one…”

The thing is, I never felt better.

The situation wasn’t the problem. I was the problem.

A lesson that I learned (and am still learning) is that nothing can MAKE me content. No amount of money, no job, no other person (even someone as close to me as my wife). I finally realized it came down to taking the time to understand who I am on the inside, versus looking for some external validation.

HAPPINESS vs. CONTENTMENT

Happiness is the fleeting enjoyment that comes from a new Xbox, or a new house. Money, prestige and notoriety can bring you happiness, all the naysayers aside. What all these things provide is choices, and having choices makes us happy.

As humans, we pursue novelty in life, and all the “stuff” we accumulate provides it. Get tired of doing one thing, start doing another. Having options allows us to switch at will.

Contentment, on the other hand, does not come from having choices. Contentment comes from WHAT YOU DO with those choices.

If you choose to accumulate more and more options because you’re bored with what you have, you’ll continue to live a life of tedium punctuated with brief moments of lightheartedness.

If, however, you spend the time and effort to discern who you are, then you’ll be able to make the choices in your life that align with that. That’s why I’ve said in the past that every decision you make in life needs to come from your values. Your values are who you are, and if you try to act contrary to them, you won’t find contentment.

NEXT STEPS

So, how do we know which choices are going to bring us contentment, and which will bring us only fleeting happiness?

You first need to know what your values are. Only you can determine that. If you need some help on that, check out my Life Design series. Your values come from deep inside of you, and a lot of us may not have ever taken the time to understand what they are.

Once you know your values, determine never, never, NEVER to violate those values for anything. If you’re faced with a choice, always choose the path that advances your values. Honestly, this might cost you some money, friends, or opportunities. But, you’ll never be far from contentment when the face you show the world is who you truly are.

Are you content, or are you chasing happiness? If you’ve struggled with this issue before, what was your key to overcoming it? How did you find contentment? Let us know in the comments…

Photo courtesy: me’nthedogs

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What Really Matters

Jason — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:00:02 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be financially secure lately, and what kind of responsibilities that brings. Probably because of the Get Rich Slowly audition, I guess. Although, being a financial analyst means money is never really far from my mind.

I find that I often take the things I have for granted. I know that I’ve often found myself concerned with buying a home, or paying for my education, or “needing” new clothes for my job, and I don’t take into account the fact that something like 40% of the people on the planet live on less than $2 US a day.

That’s mind-blowing to me. And, we’re not talking about places where $2 could even buy a decent meal; this is abject poverty.

I know I need to be thankful more often than just the fourth Thursday in November. One of the ways that I try to keep this in mind is by giving.

Philanthropy is at the heart of any successful life.

It’s just that I’ve gotten to the point where I find it easy to give money to causes and institutions I support. It’s become a mindless thing for me. Every time I get paid, I write a check. It’s a habit. I don’t say this to toot my own horn. I’m sure that many of you are in the same situation.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the proverb, “Give a man a fish, and he eats for today. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.” I’m a big proponent of teaching people how to fish. The thing is, that kind of philanthropy involves giving much more than money. It requires our most precious of resources.

It requires our time.

We have to get involved in other people’s lives to teach them how to fish. It’s a lot more personal that simply writing a check. You need to develop relationships and share insights with the folks you’re helping.

You put yourself out there, and more often than not, you don’t get anything tangible back.

But there’s a change that goes on inside of you. A change that makes you a more attentive individual. You become more attuned to seeing needs in other people, and you begin to focus less on your own.

I feel like maybe I need to do something more. I’m getting to a place where I want to “give till it hurts”, or at least until it’s inconvenient.

Being satisfied in any situation is a sign that it’s time to push yourself further. When it stops being challenging, you stop growing. I’ve found I’m not doing enough to focus on other people besides myself.

I firmly believe that focusing on others makes you a better person. It brings growth that no amount of personal development can possibly bring. Not that the stuff I’ve written about before on this blog isn’t important; it is. It’s just that reaching out to someone in need doesn’t just help you. It helps another person.

It can provide dignity and honor to someone for whom those traits have been in short supply.

So, tomorrow I’ve scheduled a meeting with some folks in my local area who are doing some great things in trying to combat corruption in political leadership around the world. It’s an area that interests me, and I’m going to make an effort to start doing more than just giving money to causes I care about.

Maybe this issue isn’t something that you’re concerned about. That’s okay. There are plenty of organizations out there that need your help, with all kinds of different agendas and areas of concern. The common denominator is they’re all trying to make the world a better place.

Join me, won’t you? Take this opportunity to really think about some causes that are important to you. If you don’t currently financially support some of those causes, start. It doesn’t have to be much; most causes need all the financial help they can get.

And, if you can’t afford to give money (and even if you can), consider giving time. It’s the most important thing you can do to really start being your best.

Let us know of some practical ways you can begin volunteering your time and money in the comments.

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When Your Dream Becomes A Nightmare

Jason — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:00:32 +0000

Had an interesting email from a reader this past week. It got me thinking about a lot of the things I write about here.

This reader has been experiencing a lot of resistance from Life lately as she’s tried to achieve some of the dreams she’d been working so hard for. She’d been wanting to buy a home for so long, and finally was able to do so. However, in order to make this happen, she had to relocate to a different state. Because she owned her own business, she was able to make this move, and felt like it all was going to work out well for her.

Unfortunately, due to the stresses of the move and other issues, her health began to fail. Her business began to suffer as well, and she found the maintenance on her home to be much more than she was prepared for. In short, her dream home has become something of a nightmare for her. Both directly and indirectly, buying this home has caused all sorts of issues she never could have foreseen ahead of time.

This reader did everything right. She had a goal, and was willing to make sacrifices to achieve it. She took a risk by moving to another state. Even though her business could move with her, she had to leave a support system that was already in place. It took a lot of guts to do what she did, and it looked for a little bit like it was going to pay off for her.

So what do you do when the dream that you’ve worked so hard to achieve comes crashing down around you? It’s an interesting process, and one that I’ve thought about a lot since I got this note.

1. Figure out why it went wrong. Personally, I’ve got some issues with home ownership, as well. I own a home, but kind of wish I didn’t. I wanted a nice place to live, and I bought into the fallacy that it’s always better to own than to rent. Don’t get me wrong; it is a nice house for my family. I just didn’t take the whole picture into account. I focused on having this house, and didn’t really consider how it would impact other areas of my life.

More than anything else, I love having options. I wish I had the ability to move overseas and teach English. Not saying that I would certainly do it, but I don’t even have the option anymore. I’m tied to this house (unless I want to just mail the keys back to the bank and ruin my credit). That gnaws at me a lot, and the thought of my nice house never fully overcomes it.

2. What lessons can you learn? A lot of people, when faced with a crummy situation, will say “Oh, well. Live and learn, right?”. I know I’ve said that myself. The problem is that those folks rarely learn anything from it. I sure haven’t a lot of the times I’ve said it.

You need to be intentional in everything you do in life. I say that a lot here because I need so much work on it myself. I’ve talked a ton about goals and having a plan to get them. That’s one part of living intentionally.

But another part is not letting the circumstances of your life wash over you like a wave, pushing you around. You need to examine what happens in your life, and make a conscious effort to take the good and the bad lessons from what occurs. You should always be applying those lessons in the future. Truly learn from your mistakes (and successes!) so that you can make better decisions the next time around.

3. Don’t get stuck. This one is probably the most difficult for me. I have a tendency to beat myself up a lot over bad decisions that I make. I expect a lot from myself, and I hate dropping the ball.

There’s a concept in finance called “sunk costs“. Essentially, it’s money that you’ve already spent that shouldn’t be considered in any decisions that need to be made going forward. As an example, let’s say that you just had a new transmission put in your car that has 150,000 miles on it, and it cost you, oh, $1,200. This just happened a month ago.

Today, your car won’t start, and the mechanic tells you (after you’ve had it towed to the shop) that it’s going to cost you another $3,000 to fix this. Bummer, huh?

Logically, most of us know that the only thing that should be taken into account when deciding whether to spend the $3,000 is whether or not you think it will keep your car running for longer than a different car that you can buy for $3,000 right now.

However, a lot of us think, “But, I just spent $1,200! I can’t let that go to waste!” Right?

The decisions we make that turn out poorly are sunk costs in our lives. You can’t allow them to determine what you’re going to do in the future. So you made a bad decision on what job to take, or any other decision that’s gotten you off-track from where you think you should be. You can’t change it, so there’s really no use worrying about it anymore. Simply move on from where you are toward where you want to be.

Once again, it comes down to two key decision points. If you’re facing a decision in front of you, be sure you consider the big picture. Is this really what’s going to be best for me in the long run, taking ALL areas of my life into account? If you’re on the other side of a decision that didn’t turn out the way you wanted it to, move ahead and make sure to learn and apply your new lessons.

Have you ever had a dream turn out to not be what you imagined it would be? How did you deal with it? Were you able to make the best of the situation, or did you chalk it up to experience and move on? Let us know in the comments…

Photo courtesy: Powerhouse Museum Collection

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The Working Mom’s Dilemma

Jason — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 12:00:42 +0000

Ed. Note – this is a guest post from Karianne Wilkins, the owner of Earlybird Education, LLC. She and I are swapping blogs today, since we thought it would be cool to provide our respective audiences the other gender’s point of view. You can head over to her site to see my article on being a dad.

I had a sneaking suspicion that having children would alter my life. Of course I had no way to wrap my mind around what those changes would be like until it happened. Simply put, being a mother is a level of exhaustion mixed with a level of joy I never imagined possible. However, what I didn’t expect is that the emotional desire to stay-at-home with my children mixed with the inner desire to have a successful career would result in varying degrees of guilt.

I knew from the time I was a young child that I wanted to grow up and be a mom. Since having my first daughter, I have been fortunate to be a stay-at-home mom. There was a six month time period when I worked full time to get us through a financial rough patch, but otherwise I have been able to be home to see all the first milestones. I am able to guide my daughters and lay an educational foundation for their future. It is a challenging job, but rewarding and extremely important to me. I know this is where I am supposed to be and what I am meant to do. But then there is this little whisper in the back of my mind that says, what about MY personal aspirations?

Back in college I quickly found the career path I wanted to follow. I am now fortunate enough to absolutely love what I do for a living, knowing that not many people are able to say the same thing. After my first daughter was born I started using sign language with her and was amazed with all of the language and communication benefits it provides to a hearing child. This experience sparked inside me the desire to create a new business focused on teaching baby sign language classes to other parents so they can experience the joy and benefits of signing with their children. I decided then that I would start my own company and felt I would be letting myself down if I didn’t at least make an attempt at achieving this goal.

During that time period when I went back to work full time for six months, I was emotionally distraught most of the time because I felt like I should be home with my daughter. And truthfully, that’s where I wanted to be. I am so fortunate to be a stay-at-home mom, but then I think about the company I want to start up and how I might regret it in the future if I don’t follow through. I go back and forth between feeling guilty for not following my career aspirations and for not spending enough time with my children if I do start a business.

I don’t think I am alone in this feeling of guilt and know some women don’t even have the same level of choice as me. Some women have no choice but to work to support their family and as much as they want to, are not able to be home with their children. Then there are other women at home with their children feeling guilty for wanting to go back to a career they love, but are not able to because it does not make financial sense to pay more in daycare expenses than the second income would provide. The million dollar question is, what are we supposed to do?

The only answer I can come up with for reducing the guilt is to try to find balance between the two parts of our selves. What this may look like is:

Being okay with less than 100%. I know it sounds counterintuitive but what I mean is that if you are juggling several areas in your life, then don’t expect to be able to give 100% to everything. You may have a great career, but in order to spend quality time with your children you may have to sacrifice climbing to the top of the ladder. Or you may be a stay-at-home mom wanting to start a new business, but in order to do this it means sacrificing some time with your children. It is a matter of deciding what being successful looks like to you. Maybe being happy and successful is having a little bit of everything, rather than 100% of one thing.

Setting personal limits. In order to create a balance between work and our children, it means being able to say where these areas start and stop. For example, with work it may mean not working on a project over the weekend in order to spend quality time with your kids. Or it may mean that as a stay-at-home mom, you negotiate a schedule with your husband where he will watch the kids so you are able to put time into an activity or work that is important to you.

Asking for help. Speaking for myself, as much as I like to believe and even try to do it all, it simply is not possible. There is no way that I am able to work, play with my children, keep the house clean, cook dinners, run errands, and drive to children’s activities in the course of a week and maintain my sanity. The only way it is possible is to ask for help from my husband, family, and friends.

I have to believe that the whispers in my mind mean something, and my business is something I need to pursue. I also feel strongly in my heart that I need to be the center of my children’s lives so I can get them started off on the right path in life. So while still being a stay-at-home mom, I took the plunge and started working hard to get my business up and running. There have been tears (my own!) along the way because I feel like my children aren’t getting the level of attention I would like to give them at all times. Fortunately my husband is around to remind me that the girls are anything but neglected, and that much of my time has to be invested up front in getting the business started. In the end I have to believe that my daughters will be better off having a role model of a woman who is happy she has pursued her dreams, rather than a woman living with regret for one reason or another.

The balance between personal aspirations and children is different for each woman, but we each have inner whispers and desires that will fulfill us as a mother and as an individual. I still struggle daily to find the balance between my girls and my new business, and continue to work on all three areas I mentioned above. I find my new mantra is “Something’s gotta give.” Usually it’s the housework, and I can live with that.

So, ladies, do you feel the same way? How have you handled the tension between doing something professionally fulfilling, and the emotional gratification you get from raising your kids? What trade-offs have you been willing to make, and where do you draw the line? Let us know in the comments…

Karianne Wilkins is a speech-language pathologist, homeschooling, signing mother of two who writes for her blog at EarlytoLearn.com. She writes 2-3 posts per week about sign language, early learning, homeschooling, speech therapy, and anything else she finds value in. Please stop by and subscribe to her blog updates…or visit the new EarlytoLearn discussion forum and introduce yourself!

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