Not long ago, I was taking a trip with my wife and kids, when I saw an interesting sticker on the outside of the hotel where we were staying.

Logo of The Optimist Club, International

It was the logo of an organization called Optimist International, but nothing else.

I was intrigued.

When I looked up the organization, I found the following list of principles, which they call The Optimist Creed, which you can view in full below:

Promise Yourself:

1. To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
2. To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet.
3. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them.
4. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
5. To think only of the best, to work only for the best, and to expect only the best.
6. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
7. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
8. To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
9. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
10. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

The creed originated with the writing of Christian D. Larson — one of a group of early 20th century American personal growth/spirituality writers. It sets forth a way of looking at the world and tackling each day that pushes one toward positive things, rather than negative ones.

It’s not a doctrine of escapism from or ignorance to the bad things in life. Rather, it’s a reminder that after you feel the pain, sorrow, exhaustion, fear — or whatever the negative emotions of the day are — you choose to think and act in a constructive and positive way.

Feelings, Thoughts, and Behavior

One of the key things I’ve learned over the past year is that emotions are involuntary and always valid. I feel how I feel, and I’m allowed to feel that way — no justification necessary.

There’s nothing I can do to change the fact that I felt a certain feeling — as uncomfortable as it may be for me. But my thoughts and actions coming out of that unpleasant feeling are voluntary. I can choose how I think, what I think about, and how I behave. And I need to choose carefully — because my thoughts influence my behavior, and my behavior impacts other people.

In other words: my emotions don’t have to dictate my thoughts and behaviors. I can separate those 2 things from my emotional state.

That’s where the Optimist Creed comes in. If you can manage to internalize the principles, it can become habitual — like a new operating system for your mind. It’s your starting point; your baseline.

I may wake up this morning and feel terrible, overwhelmed, saddened, afraid, or any combination of those. But it’s possible for me to think and act in a positive way — rather than ways that feed into the negative emotions I’m feeling. The creed provides a nice, simple list to help you do just that.

But…Does This Really Work?

If you do follow the creed, and you focus on positive things, and act in positive ways, your life gets better.

Clarification: when I say “your life gets better”, I don’t mean you suddenly receive and achieve all the things you’ve longed for. That’s ridiculous. No mindset or practice can make things happen in the external world without you taking sustained action over time. Anyone that says otherwise is likely trying to sell you magical thinking.

So, no, this kind of mental operating system won’t bring you the things you desire immediately. It may not bring you the things you desire at all. A tool like the Optimist Creed isn’t about changing your circumstances, resources, skills, and relationships. It’s about changing how you view those things. It’s about getting you to bring something more positive and hopeful to the various circumstances of your life — so you can get something better out of those circumstances.

Whatever change you’re hoping for, it has to start from within. You can’t wait for the furniture of your life to be arranged in some certain way in order to make you adopt a positive mindset. That’s actually backwards. You need to have the positive mindset first, and then it becomes easier for the furniture of your life to be arranged more to your liking.

But there’s no magic here. It’s not like adopting a certain mindset will magically rearrange the furniture of your life to your liking. But what it can do is make it easier for you to redefine what it means for things to be “to your liking”.

Your old mindset may have been so rife with unrealistic, unwholesome, and unexamined desires about how things should be. And those may have been making your miserable — all those desires being consistently unmet. Changing that mindset can very quickly allow you to accept all sorts of things you used ruminate about, which frees you up to spend mental energy on taking some small actions to change what you can — and do so more effectively.

Not a New Idea

The funny thing is, there’s nothing new about this idea. You can find it in a Buddhist text called The Dhammapada — which originated over 2,000 years ago:

All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
It is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts.
If a person speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows them, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.

– The Dhammapada Ch.1 V.1

Don’t underestimate the power of your mind — in 2 key ways:

1. Don’t underestimate your ability to change the key drivers of your negative feelings: desires and expectations about how things should be.
2. Don’t underestimate how much damage your current mindset has done — acting as the root of most of your current emotions — and thus thoughts and behaviors.

Voluntary and Involuntary Things

The funny things about beliefs and emotions is that neither start off as voluntary, but they both can become voluntarily adopted and supported — depending on our mindset. But beliefs have a powerful influence over your future emotions, as well as what your focus on each day, and how you act in general.

But many of these powerful beliefs are ones we may not even be aware of. But if we really laid them out and asked whether we have good reason to believe them — the answer would probably be no.

We each hold so many beliefs that influence our further thoughts and behavior. And many of those beliefs have never truly been examined, so we continue to hold them. Furthermore, if we’ve built our current mindset on the foundation of those core beliefs, it’s very difficult to question them.

That’s why self-help, religious, and spiritual messages — along with mediation and other things that disrupt your normal thought patterns can be extremely helpful. Messages like that often come in a form unfamiliar to your limited mindset, As a result, they can can push into your mindset by poking at a certain emotional nerve deep within you — and disrupting your normal mental flow.

Homework

So, lest this piece of writing serve just as a bunch of words you just read and forget within a week — here’s some homework to do over the next week or so — to make it stick:

1. Write out or print out the Optimist Creed on a small piece of paper or card that you can carry with you throughout the day.
2. At the Beginning of Each Day:
   Look at the creed, and commit to following it to the best of your ability.
3. At the End of Each Day:
   Give some attention to a few things that are going well. Reflect on how they make you feel good — and let that feeling sink in.

The book 1984 is famous (infamous?) for many things, but chief among them is reinforcing a particular vision of freedom. You could call it optimistic, but it is rooted in an almost pessimistic way of viewing people in societies.

That vision of freedom? It’s the vision that—no matter how many restrictions are placed on a person from the outside, we are always free to think and feel anything. If you manage to give that up, you’re no longer free.

And it is, indeed, possible to give up that freedom. In fact, we do it partially all the time.

We used to define freedom in physical terms, because life was largely physical for most people. These days, life is largely mental (cognitive and emotional) for most people. For most of us, basic physical needs are no longer the focal point of each day. By and large, we have food, water, and shelter.

So the mental time and space that used to be taken up by pursuing basic sustenance and security is now free to be occupied by other needs—or at least things we think are needs.

And this is where the idea of modern freedom gets sketchy. It’s where the ways we think we’re more free than any of our modern ancestors might actually be ways that we’re less free. It might turn out that we’re just in more luxurious chains.

“Happiness is a Choice?!”

Just over 12 years ago, my wife and I went to Jamaica for our Honeymoon. While at the fancy resort hotel, we met a man in the lobby who was drawing portraits for money. We happily paid him for the chance to get a hand-crafted memento. We still have that picture; it’s pretty good.

The artist was young, but somewhat world-weary. He had a calm presence about him—as many folks we met did. This was despite the fact that he’d run into some pretty tough times over the past several years. I’m talking about genuine misfortunes—which at that time, he was still working through.

I asked how he managed to stay upbeat through it all. He said that when he was a kid, his grandfather told him something that’s helped him through any number of tough times “happiness is a choice.” He explained that you can’t change what’s already happened. Things are the way they are.

Given that, you’re left with a choice of what your focus will be. You can focus on the things that have already happened – which you can’t change. Or you can focus on the future — which you can. And the only sure way to change things for the better is to be positive about what’s possible in the future.

So why focus on the stuff you can’t change? Why bring bad feelings into the future?

Why indeed.

And yet, we make it all the time, don’t we?

Of course, it’s not as simple as that 4 word sentence above. You can’t really choose to either be happy or unhappy. That’s an oversimplification.

But you do make choices every day that set up how many barriers there are to being happy. You choose to either create dependencies for your happiness, or make your happiness more or less independent.

You either make your happiness dependent on how certain things outside of your control turn out, or you choose to let most of that go. You commit to focus on skillfully controlling what you’re able to, and letting the rest go.

The Switcheroo

We end up making the choice to be unhappy as a series of smaller mistakes we make—due to an almost unconscious switcheroo. It’s more of a conflation, really.

When we conflate a desire with a need, we give up a part of our freedom. You see, a need has more emotional weight than a mere want. A need has more power behind it—more urgency—and thus, it pushes and pulls quite strongly.

In the back of our minds, we know this. We know that if we believe we need something, we’re pushed much more strongly to pursue it. The feeling is stronger. It’s more exhilarating. It gives us purpose—even if it’s the short term purpose of fulfilling that desire—and even if it’s only temporarily.

But this merry-go-round of adopting desires and transforming them into what we think are needs—it’s not an entirely conscious process. It happens over time when we let that hunter/gatherer part of ourselves run wild. When we really were chasing life-or-death needs every day, the successes were extremely fulfilling, and the failures were extremely catastrophic. Those highs and lows drove us as humans for tens of thousands of years.

But things have changed in our environment. For 95% of us, there isn’t constant uncertainty about our food and water for the day—or about how we’ll avoid getting eaten by a predator.

With no more worry over the next meal or some hungry predator chasing us—the energy of this inner hunter/gatherer can now go toward other pursuits. And rather than become okay with not having that life-or-death pursuit, we allow that hunter/gatherer to latch onto to something not life-or-death. And we put all that energy and anxiety into the cascade of new “needs” available to pursue and stress about.

The Solution?

The more we repeat the word “need” to describe something we could live fairly well without—the more we unnecessarily shackle ourselves to any number of forces outside of our control. We make ourselves less free.

That’s our modern condition. We’ve ditched the many freedoms our progress has afforded us. We’ve traded them for a series of more luxurious chains. We have come to convince ourselves—and each other—that many mere wants are actually needs. As a result, we unnecessarily place ourselves at the mercy of the weight and force of needs.

So what is the solution? Do we just reject all these wants, sell our belongings, and live in a tent on public land? Of course not.

The solution has to happen much like the problem happened: internally. A change in mindset allowed us to fool ourselves into believing that so many desires were needs. So a change in mindset is the most effective way to correct that .

Gratitude (as cliché as it sounds) is a large part of this. Understanding that the things we think are needs are not actually necessary. Then we come to really appreciate what it’s like to have the things we do. That’s the mindset. As you view more things in this way, your inner hunter/gatherer will stop pursuing these things in the same way.

And as that happens, you’ll stop feeling that really low low when you don’t get that desire met. Without all those ups and downs pulling at your mood, your energy will become different—more consistent. And without all that noise from the past in your mindset, you might be surprised at how much you can end up influencing your future.

How we simultaneously underestimate and overestimate ourselves, and how to avoid both

Is there any more overused cliché than “less is more”?

I guess that’s kind of ironic, given the spirit of the saying. But I digress.

There’s an application for the aphorism that I don’t think gets enough attention. It has to do with achieving goals and managing tasks. When it comes to estimating the goals you can achieve in a given time, we tend to underestimate ourselves. But we shouldn’t.

However, when it comes to filling up our to-do lists for the day, we tend to overestimate what we can get done. But once again, we shouldn’t.

Both of these errors in estimation yield the same result: we get frustrated. Our motivation dwindles. We fall short of what we know is our potential.

And as I pointed out at the outset, the fix is simple: remember that less is more.

Goals: More is More

If you are serious about your goals, you need to dedicate a separate block of time for thinking about them. And during that time, resist the urge to think small. That is, think only about the what, and not about the how.

Rather than thinking about how you will achieve the goal, and letting that dictate what the goal is, think about what you really want. Then, put it into words that reflect your honest desire for what you want things to be like. Don’t be afraid to go big.

That’s the what. That’s the more portion.

Tasks: More is Less

Once goals are set, carve out a different block of time to think about the how. This is where you plan out the steps.

This is where you think about how long it might take. It’s when you get realistic, and descend from the heights of your ambitious future down to what you can actually do in the present. This is the less part.

Resist the temptation to think that tomorrow’s to-do list has to be as grandiose as your goals. Remember that goals aren’t achieved in a day. Achieving them is a marathon, not a sprint. So pace yourself. Failing to do so will just end up burning you out quickly. The result will be fewer goals achieved, or much less satisfying versions of goals achieved.

More ends up being less.

The Balance

The truth is, we don’t usually get as many things done in a day as we think we could (or should). And when we write down a bunch of items on today’s list, we unconsciously create an expectation of ourselves that those things will get done. And when they don’t, we feel let down.

That feeling saps our motivation for tomorrow. And as long as that process repeats each day, it acts like a hole in our fuel line. The vital fuel that we need to reach our goals leaks out and we run out of gas long before we accomplish what we set out to.

The way to avoid this is to think small when planning the tasks for each day. Build a smaller to do list. Put fewer,—but more important—things on the list. Allow for buffer time to handle the inevitable “other stuff” that comes up each day.

Repeat this each day. Over time, less becomes more. Put less on your plate each day, achieve more over time.

I don’t tend to get excited about Hollywood folklore. But there’s one particular story I really love because it contains an unexpected pearl of wisdom, wrapped in a paradoxical sentence. It sounds contradictory, and like it can’t possibly be true. And yet it reveals something about human nature that’s worth thinking about.

An LSD Trip into Wisdom

The story in question comes by way of the 1960s/70s countercultural madman Paul Krassner, part of which appeared in an article he wrote for High Times magazine called “My Acid Trip With Groucho”. The tale he tells (which you can read in full here) is every bit as crazy as the title sounds.

It was 1967, and Krassner is friends with a producer making a comedy movie called “Skidoo”. It features an aging Groucho Marx as a crime boss named God. The movie (which is very 1960s) does a lot to basically…advocate LSD use. Groucho was concerned about being part of the film having never done the drug. So he asks Krassner to be his sitter on his inaugural LSD trip.

Krassner documents a great collection of pull quotes from Groucho during his trip. At one point he’s talking about how he’s going to approach playing a character named God who’s also a criminal overlord. This prompts him to think out loud:

“Do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?”

Krassner asks him, “Always?”

To which Groucho replies: “If they’re not, then it’s a misuse of your power to make people laugh.”

I first read this passage about 10 years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. In part, it’s because I totally get it. But also, I totally don’t get it.

Reverence and Irreverence

Until I read this Groucho story, I hadn’t really thought about irreverence as a form of reverence. But it makes perfect sense when you think about it.

When you revere someone or something, you treat them with deep respect. You consider them sacred, and worthy of special consideration. You take pains to make gestures that show that you have the utmost respect for someone or something, and deeply appreciate them.

Reverence requires placing oneself below whatever they’re revering. I revere such and such spiritual leader. I place myself on a level below her–because of her wisdom, generosity, or whatever the reason. I bow, kneel, provide offerings. I show my reverence.

We use the word ‘irreverent’ to describe someone who doesn’t take pains to make grand gestures of respect to people and things where others do. They see others bowing and heaping praise upon a person or a thing–and they refuse. They then go a step further and make jokes that imply the revered person or thing isn’t worthy of such gestures. The take aim at the exact things that people revere about them, and shoot to kill.

Not Opposites

We tend to think these things are opposites. We tend to think that one can’t be both reverent and irreverent. But I think that’s misguided. I think that in order to be irreverent, you actually have to be extremely reverent. You just don’t revere what others do.

Groucho was a perfect example of this. So was Mark Twain. They both made jokes at the expense of people who others revered. Groucho made fun of the aristocrats–the ones that others were bowing to. Mark Twain mercilessly lampooned politicians, tycoons, and other cultural leaders. Both comedians did so while also making fun of their own inadequacies and undesirable traits.

In effect, the irreverent jabs of Twain and Marx were a way of revering the camaraderie of the human race as a group of equals. They were saying: look, we’re all trying to make sense of things and find happiness, but some people are consistently messing up–and begin to think they’re better than everyone else. It’s our job to remind everyone that no one person rises above the rest of the unwashed masses–especially not those who claim to have done just that.

Irreverence is about revering not individual people as somehow above the rest of us, but revering humanity above all else–and reminding those who think they’ve transcended that they’re still one of us. It’s also about reminding the worshippers who place themselves below others of just what they’re doing. We’re all human, we’re all constantly messing up in different ways. Don’t debase yourself by elevating others above the human mess. We’re all in this together–for better or for worse.

Humor Has Power, Wield it Responsibly

That’s the power Groucho was talking about. Humor has power. It makes you think without being overtly intellectual. It uses the emotional power of laughter to change thought patters, and thus behavior. Groucho’s point about irreverence is that irreverence will always bring us all back down to size. It will always remind us that nobody’s too good for the rest of us.

But any humor that claims to be irreverent while lifting some of us above others (especially the person telling the joke), you’re misusing that power of humor. You’re dividing where you should be maintaining unity. You’re debasing when you should be ennobling.

We can all make jokes, and we frequently do. Many of those jokes seem irreverent. They “take the piss out” of someone. But are we really being irreverent, or are we attempting to divide and debase? It can’t hurt to ask that question now and then. Because the power to evoke laughter is one each of us has. So we need to make sure we’re wielding that power responsibly.

Finding both the work I love and the person I love took me on a journey that taught me to rethink everything I thought I knew about how love works

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

From the time I was an adolescent, and I first became aware that I was responsible for making a life for myself, I knew that a good life involved love. I had to find work I love, a person I love, a place to live that I love — and so on. A good life meant finding love — in its various incarnations. And so when it came time for me to leave home and build a life of my own, I went looking for love.

Unfortunately, I ended up finding out that I — like so many of us — had gotten love all wrong. I misunderstood the mission — as it were — when it comes to love. I thought that what I was supposed to do was find love, in the way that you find a good deal at an antique shop.

But that’s not how it works. That’s not the mission. A good life isn’t about finding love. It’s about building it.

First Loves

When I left home for college, I did so believing that I loved art. I declared it my major, and told anyone who would listen that I was going to be an artist.

That same year, I told my first serious girlfriend that I loved her. I told my friends I loved her. I told my parents I loved her.

Within one year, my girlfriend and I parted ways — the year having created both physical and emotional distance between us. What I thought was love was simply infatuation with someone new, and with a deeper kind of relationship than I had experienced before.

Within two years, I became frustrated with art. The program I was in was competitive. I fell behind. I became unmotivated and disillusioned. The love I thought I had for art faded.

By the end of my sophomore year of college, I had discovered two new loves: a new girl, and a new major. Unfortunately, as time went on, neither would turn out to be what I had thought.

Making Love, Faking Love

As I entered my twenties, I had changed romantic partners and changed majors. I began dating a girl I would date for more than 5 years. And I found a subject of study that fell deeply in love with: philosophy. Not only did I love it, I did very well at it. I very quickly declared that because I loved it, I would do whatever it took to do it for a living — that is, be a philosophy professor. It became my mission.

As the years pressed on, my romantic relationship became toxic. We were both young. She had years of trauma from various sources she hadn’t worked through, and instead let it all out on me. I was emotionally stunted and terribly inattentive. The love we thought we found was a festering codependence. Whatever relationship we thought we made was detrimental.

That relationship had a detrimental effect on my pursuit of the other love I’d found. When I began graduate school, the relationship was so bad, I began skipping classes regularly. I fell into substances of various types to avoid the emotions I was going through — but didn’t dare actually address. My research and writing suffered. I ended up getting kicked out of the graduate program.

I ended up being very fortunate, and when I had to relocate, that toxic relationship ended. After some time, I tried to forge another relationship — which didn’t work out. I had no program to return to, and thus, no clear career path.

Mistaking Love

After being out of the love game for a while, I found someone, or rather she found me. We had both gone to the same college, and passed each other many times without formal introductions. I didn’t know it, but she had had her eye on me for a while.

She reached out when I became active on social media after my break-up and relocation. We emailed. We talked on the phone. Then we began to meet in person. I fell in love. She fell in love. We moved in together. I proposed. We bought a house. We got married. We made 2 wonderful children.

During all of that, I fought a battle with myself about the profession I loved — but hadn’t yet secured. I began my 30th year on earth with no Ph.D and no professorship on the horizon. I had accepted a job at a small company in the area where we lived — but I always had my eye on that horizon of academia — my true love. Or so I thought.

When I applied to Ph.D programs — 17 of them, to be exact — the response wasn’t great. My academic record was too spotty. My pedigree wasn’t impressive. I could no longer simply uproot and move to chase whatever low-paying academic position opened up. It was becoming clear that this love may end up eluding me.

And while I fought that internal battle to find my way to the profession I loved, I let my other love whither. That battle I was fighting made me distant from my wife — just as she was starting her journey as a mother and a burgeoning entrepreneur. I didn’t heed her requests that I rejoin her. I simply fell deeper into my inner life.

After a time, I ended up realizing that academia wasn’t in the cards for me. I wouldn’t end up as a philosophy professor. I couldn’t in good conscience put my wife and kids through the uncertainty and upheaval to tilt at windmills in a dying, yet cutthroat job market. I closed that chapter, and bid adieu to that particular love story. And all the while, I had all but shut out the other love story of my life.

A Discovery

There I was, with two real loves of my life that seemed out of reach. One had slipped away years ago. The other, I pushed away, while I pined for the one I should have known I couldn’t reach.

But then the woman I had all but pushed away from my heart helped me realize something. I was devastated by the fact that I would never be able to do my dream job — the job I loved. But she asked me an important question: what is it about that job that made me love it? And when I answered that researching, thinking, writing, and teaching others was what made me love that job — she again asked me an important question: could I find a way to do those things I love without having that exact job? The answer — surprisingly — was a resounding yes.

Thanks to my long-suffering wife, I came to realize that I didn’t need that job — that “love” that got away to do what I love. All I had to do was forge a path — my own path — where I could do the things that made me love that job, but within my current situation. Would it be easy? No. Would it be the same as if I had gone into academia under ideal circumstances? Of course not. But whatever it ended up being, I would have to make it happen. I would need to build it.

The Real Mission

It’s taken 20 years and several wrong turns, but I’ve finally realized that when it came to love, my main problem was that I had gotten my verbs all wrong. Life is not about finding love out in the world. It’s not about finding things that you already love and riding them into utopia. That way of living can only result in disappointment.

Love is not found, it is built. You don’t simply stumble across the things and people you love, and it’s happily ever after. You find people and things that pull at you for some reason. Then you get yourself near them. You give to them — give of yourself. You open yourself up — your heart and your mind. You cultivate love for them. You nurture a connection, a relationship, an appreciation.

Most importantly, and this cannot be overemphasized: When you find that thing you love, or that person you love — do not box them in. You do not make demands upon your connection with them. You do not smuggle in your preconceived notions, desires, expectations, and biases. You allow that love to grow by keeping all of those mental and emotional weeds out of your garden.

Whatever you love, whoever you love, nurture that connection, and let it grow. And remember that growing means changing. It means that what you love, and how you love will be different than when you first fell in love. But that’s okay. Love allows growth and change. Love enables growth and change. Love that doesn’t is, well, not love.

It’s Ongoing

I’ve made my peace with my “dream job”. I write and think about whatever tickles my fancy. I do it online, and I love it. I also work a regular job that I’ve managed to make much more interesting by finding ways to research, write, and teach as a part of it. I have cultivated a vocation that I love.

And now, after putting it off for so long, I have also begun to cultivate the love I neglected for so long. I have begun to open up, and let in the woman who offered herself and her love to me long ago. I let that garden run wild with weeds of inattention. And had I continued to let it grow, I’m sure things would be much the worse now.

What’s interesting is that I’m finding that love can be regrown. It can be revived. It can’t be made into exactly what it was before. But it can still be wonderful. But again, it takes attention, and cultivation. A love — be it for someone or something — cannot be leaned on. It must be supported and cared for.

I have gotten love wrong for most of my life. But I think I’ve finally gotten it right — mostly. I’m sure I’ll never get it completely right, but I don’t think that’s possible. If you believe in God, I think that’s the only place there’s perfect love. And what a can of worms that is.

The only way I could get love mostly right is by getting it completely wrong — for a long, long time. I don’t think my journey is unique in that way. Surely the details of how I misunderstood love, and what it cost me — those are unique. But the phenomenon of getting it wrong — tripping and falling, then getting back up with a lesson learned. That’s how we learn to love. That’s how we get love right — even if it takes us our whole lives.

On approaching 40, my pretend rocket ship, and my 7 year-old self-improvement coach

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Watching my kids grow up has been an experience truly unlike any other. And I’m not referring to how fast time flies, and how quickly they grow, and all those old clichés. That all happens, yes, but what’s really gotten me is how much of their growing up is bringing back my own memories of growing up.

And beyond that, I’m being reminded of all sorts of differences between child me and grown-up me. They’re sneaky differences — differences that seemed to have established themselves some time between when I was 8 and 38. I can’t pinpoint exactly when they happened, or how they happened. But somehow, I’m on the other side of some allegorical river. I’m a grown-up — somehow.

Nouns and Verbs

In many ways, I don’t feel different than I did when I was 8 years old. It’s as if the world just got bigger, but I didn’t change much.

But I know that’s not true. I know I’ve changed. I don’t like the toys and TV shows I used to like. I don’t get excited about playing Red Rover and Cops and Robbers with neighborhood kids. I don’t have trouble falling asleep on Christmas Eve — running through all the possible presents Santa might have left me. I don’t pretend I’m about to take off in a rocket going to space when I’m in my bed at night.

What seems to have happened as I’ve grown up is that all the nouns of my life have changed, but the verbs haven’t.

I still have the same feelings I did as a kid. I feel the same sense of wonder and excitement about launching a new website or newsletter now as I did about going into the forest in a tent at dusk when I was 8. I may not imagine that I’m in a rocket going into space when I go to bed at night. But that same faculty of imagination — producing ideas every bit as crazy as a rocket-ship bed — is still at work in a boardroom with a whiteboard.

Again, the nouns have changed, but the verbs haven’t. I’m still all about getting involved with things that energize me and revive and sustain a sense of wonder in me. I’m still all about engaging with my imagination, and asking what if? a lot — a whole lot. I’m about being 38, and a responsible husband, father, and team member, but I’m still all about opening up to things like I’m 3rd grade.

Never go FULL Grown-up

In my estimation, I’m lucky to be in that mindset. I interact regularly with many people who don’t seem to be. When it came time to “grow up”, they fully grew up. They took on all the responsibilities and social norms that adulthood seems to demand. And for some reason, doing that seems to come easier if we also shed all the great quirks and qualities we had as children.

But to riff on a somewhat controversial movie line, you never go full grown-up. When you do, you lose so much more than you gain. You lose the joy in small, simple things. You lose the ability to hang out in the moment, to stop asking what kind of results or progress you can squeeze out of everything, and just sit and wait for a little while. You lose the appetite for wandering and wondering. You lose the the ability to unabashedly pretend for a while, abandoning your sense of self — which I’ve found to be mostly illusory anyway.

I’m happy to have grown up. I’m not sad that I’m almost 40. But I deeply admire 8 year-old me. For all of his mistakes, for all his skinned knees and his lack of worldly intelligence, he had a lot going for him. He was wide open to the world and full of wonder.

Channeling the 8 Year-old Me

On my best days, I try as much as possible to channel 8 year-old me. I try to channel his imagination, his willingness to buy in to anything at least once, his lack of ego and bravado. I don’t always get it right, but when my 7 year-old daughter belly-laughs at me and I see that look in her eyes, it’s a sign that I’m on the right track. God, I love that sound.

The thing is, honing that ability to channel my 8-year old self is about more than just feeling better. I also helps others feel better. And whenever and where ever you can make other people feel better — you’ll be more successful at whatever it is you’re trying to get done.

As unlikely as it seemed to me, kids can teach us an awful lot about self-improvement. But I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, since it’s literally their primary job.

So here’s to channeling your inner 8 year-old, skinned knees and all. May you forever throw yourself into wondering and wandering. Grown-up life — whatever that actually is — can wait.

On identity crises, the mind, and human potential

Photo by Philipp Berndt on Unsplash

The topic of personal identity is a big deal. People can spend their whole lives just trying to find out who they are. And people’s conceptions of who they are can radically change after certain life events, or certain experiences they go through — be they traumatic or joyful. People even actively work to change their idea of themselves — as well as how others see them — through sustained action.

What we usually end up with after our respective journeys to find out who we are is a series of adjectives and nouns that indicate roles. We’re a parent, a doctor, a refugee, a soldier. We’re Black, APAIC, Latinx, white. We’re bisexual, homosexual, asexual. We’re transgender, cisgender, nonbinary. We’re Hindu, Christian, Jain, atheist. We’re quiet, outspoken, restless, obedient, servile, creative, loyal.

Whatever the noun or adjectives we use, we miss the fact that who we are, at our very root, is actually none of those things. Sure, get us in a room with a bunch of other people — or in a society with millions of them — and we seem to need those nouns and adjectives. We use them to define ourselves in opposition to some people, and in alliance with others. It’s what our animal brains seek to do. We sort ourselves into neat categories — even when those categories start off as a resistance to being categorized.

But those categories — however helpful they can be in the world — they aren’t who each of us is.

I once heard an odd dude — a mystic kind of dude I knew in college — say something I didn’t quite grasp until recently — until I had stumbled through my own type of identity crisis:

Whatever you think you are, you’re proving yourself wrong by thinking that’s you. You’re just the thinker; not what the thinker thinks it is.

As I came to meditate a bit more, I came to realize what he meant. Consider a more well-established quote, by Blaise Pascal:

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Why is it so hard to sit alone in a room, quietly? It’s not just because of all of the buzzing thoughts running through your head. What also makes it hard is what you encounter once you drop down below that level of stuff that’s on your mind. At that level, you’re just you — without the incidental things you happen to be out in the world. In the fleeting moments when you make contact with that simple, indescribable you — it can be unsettling at first.

In Vedic thought, a rough name for that simple sense of you is atman — or the self. It’s what Vedic practitioners aim for in their form of meditation. And they recognized millennia ago that if and when you’re able to reach that naked self — when you’re able to get past all the incidental stuff you’ve attached to your identity in this chaotic world — you can cultivate a sense of peace.

What’s peaceful about it is the realization that you don’t need to travel anywhere to find yourself. You don’t need to buy anything, take any classes, try on certain clothes, or get a new hairstyle to find out who you are. If you can sit silently, still your mind, and sink down below the swirling chaos of your thoughts and emotions brought on by the external world — you, the simple, peaceful you, is down there.

And where you go from there is up to you. But wherever that is, you get to go there with the sense of peace that comes from not having to rely on the categories of the world to tell you who you are. You are you. You know you. And in time, you’ll love you. And that love isn’t because of any category you fit into, or accomplishment of yours. It’s just a love for you — that naked you, deep down under all of the incidentals.

Rethinking the narrative about career and life goals

Photo by Caleb Jones on Unsplash

When I was a kid, it was clear to me that my father really disliked his job. Aside from the many nights he didn’t see me before I went to bed — and the early mornings when I woke up and he was already gone — he would also explicitly tell me that he hated his job.

His dislike for his job became a sort of rallying cry between the two of us. After all, his father (my grandfather) hated his job as well. I came from generations of men with jobs they hated. As I approached college age, my father would advise me not to repeat these mistakes. He urged me to find what I love to do, and never settle for another line of work.

And to an extent, that made sense. As the old adage goes: do what you love, and you never work a day in your life.

But as I got older, and a few of my dreams slipped away from me, I was forced to look at things from a slightly different angle than the one that my father had shown me.

The Aim of a Life

In Vedic philosophy, there is a concept called Puruṣārtha. It translates as “object of pursuit” — but may people use it to talk about the purpose of life in general. According to this idea, there are four elements that make up a complete life. Those four elements are:

• Dharma — moral values, principles of conduct
• Artha — economic prosperity and professional pursuits
• Kama — pleasure, leisure, personal relationships
• Moksha — spiritual activity and values, the pursuit of liberation from dependence on material things alone for joy

A full life involves integrating all 4 of those things. Notice that I didn’t say balancing those things. In fact, many Vedic thinkers discussed how some of the concepts were reliant upon each other.

Because of how I was raised, and because of my dad’s explicit distaste for his job, I didn’t realize how much I thought everything was reliant upon Artha. To me, it seemed like the right job made everything else easier, but the wrong job would bring everything else crashing down.

While it’s certainly possible that a truly terrible job can derail your life, I’ve found that those are few and far between. For the most part, there are a few really awesome jobs, a few really terrible ones, and in the middle, there are a whole lot of jobs that are just…whatever you make of them.

Flip the Script

When I didn’t get my “dream job”, I begrudgingly took some advice that my wife gave me — though I wasn’t quite ready to hear it yet. I stopped looking for some mythical pre-packaged job that would just make me happy from day one. Instead, I began to look for things about my current job that provided opportunities for me to grow. And not just to grow professionally or monetarily, but to grow in all of the aspects involved in Puruṣārtha.

And once I did that — once I began to look for ways that my current job could enrich my life — I found them pretty easily. I found projects to get involved in, which provided me with skill development. I found people to work with that have become friends. I found ways to express my passions for teaching and writing that I previously only thought I could express in academia (my previous dream job). And I also learned to develop strong personal values, and adopt a more spiritual outlook.

That’s the thing about any kind of situation you’re in — be it a job that wasn’t your dream, a detour from your life’s planned path, or simply a bump in today’s road. There are things to find that can help you grow. Situations don’t enrich us on their own.

Jobs don’t fulfill us on their own. Relationships don’t provide us with joy on their own. It all takes our active involvement. We have to look for the things to appreciate in our situation, and then actively appreciate them. From the pleasurable to the stressful, and everything in between; put in the work of appreciation.

The Thing About Life

So as I look back on the mandate of my forefathers — to find work that I love — I’ve made a slight adjustment that’s made all the difference in my life. Rather than finding the work I love, I learn to love the work I find. Not every kind of work — some work just doesn’t suit me. But nearly all the stuff I get involved with, I can find some way that it can teach me, and help me grow in all life’s important dimensions.

As far as you know, you’ve got one life here. It’s highly unlikely that this life will arrange itself in such a way as to please you. That’s not how things work. Rather, you have to put in the work to appreciate and find joy in the life you have. It’s the work of each one of us, so get as good at it as you can.

A study in reframing and appreciation

Photo by Gabriella Clare Marino on Unsplash

I worked with this guy, call him Josh (not his real name), for a few years. He was a bit younger than me, and after he had been t at the company for about 2 years, I became his manager. In an effort to get to know him better, as I like to do for my team, I took him to lunch.

Josh had served in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, and had been in combat situations on several occasions. He had seen an IUD blow up a truck. He had been part of a firefight with some insurgents who came out of nowhere. He’d been in situations that many of us can only imagine. So I asked him something I’m always curious about.

“Aside from whatever tactical things you had to do in the moment in battle, what else was going through your mind?” I asked him.

He smiled and laughed. “It sounds dumb, but in situations like that, I just wanted to be back at the barracks, complaining about the mattresses and the terrible food. Or back home, swearing at my lawnmower because it won’t start. I appreciated my small problems that had seemed so big at the time.”

Success Means…

I understood exactly what he meant. When we face really big, out-of-control problems — like the kind that bring us face to face with death — we suddenly appreciate the mundane stuff of everyday life.

It’s funny that we use that phrase “everyday life”. We use it like there is some other kind of life. But in fact, all there is is just “everyday life”. Not only that, but the bits and pieces of “everyday life” are actually really great. But sometimes it takes the threat of never again having one of those mundane moments of “everyday life” to make us appreciate just how much we appreciate the life they are a part of.

That conversation with Josh helped me realize something that I still try to remember regularly: You’re only as successful as your ability to appreciate the mundane “everyday” things. When something threatens to take them away from you forever, you suddenly realize how much you should’ve been appreciating them.

Two Notes on Appreciation

Two things to note here. First, by appreciate, I want to make it clear what I mean. I don’t mean you you should be excited that your car won’t start one morning, or that you have to clean up your kid’s unsanctioned “science experiment” from all over the kitchen floor.

Those can be frustrating, and you can’t stop yourself from feeling immediate frustration when those things happen. But those things are part of your life. They come with the rest of it. And if they’re part of a life you wouldn’t want to lose, then step back from the frustration for a second. Remember that though this thing right now is frustrating, it’s yours, and you would long for it if you were about to kiss it all goodbye.

The second thing I want to make clear is that this lesson is more than just Maraṇasati — or the Buddhist meditation on death. You can use it to reframe how you think about various chunks of your life, as well. You can think about whether the tough parts of some aspect of your life are just part of a greater whole this — all things considered — worthy of appreciation.

If a conversation at your job, or an infuriating email have you swearing and fuming — use the same thought process. Would you miss this if you were forced to leave it behind? And if the answer is no, then great! You’ve just realized that this job isn’t worth keeping. So begin looking for a new one. But otherwise, take a breath and allow yourself to appreciate it. Just appreciate the particular heap of craziness that you deal with every day. It’s yours. And if you can’t come to appreciate, begin working to change it.

It’s Just a Reframe, But It Accumulates Into More

I’m no guru. I have no idea what happens after we take our last breath, or what forces (if any) are at work behind the scenes. But I do know that we have a fantastic ability to step back from our feelings and the ongoing narratives in our heads. And when we do step back, we can — if we choose to — reframe how we evaluate it all. My simple suggestion is to reframe as much as you can from the standpoint of appreciation.

However underwhelming, disappointing, frustrating, annoying, or dumb something seems to you right now — remember that one day, the threat of it all going way may be real and present. If that were to happen, would you give anything to just be facing the everyday problem you’re having now?

99%, the answer will be yes. And that should make you feel a bit better. At the very least, it can help you get a lot more out of what would normally be a boring old cup of coffee while you wait for your plane to board.

Do that enough times, and get really good at it, and you might just find your baseline mood is lifted. You might just find that your everyday life seems a whole lot more fulfilling. You might find that you get more done, and feel less stressed, less down on yourself. You may find you’d like to do a bunch of things differently.

But whatever you find, if you find it because you’ve begun to actively appreciate your life — that sounds pretty good to me.

What an encounter with some scared crustaceans taught me about how we pursue the important things in our lives

Image by Clickphoto Switzerland from Pixabay

I had the pleasure this past week of visiting Tampa on a business trip. My home base in Illinois has remained relatively cold as of late, so it was nice to spend time in warmer weather. As a bonus, the hotel I was staying at was located within a mile of the beach. Being a Midwesterner, I don’t get the chance to see the ocean much. So of course, I had to take it.

On my first morning there, I set out for a short run. After only a few minutes, I made it to the beach. I made my to a clear spot surrounded on either side by some plant life. As I approached, I noticed a wave of little movements to my right. Upon closer examination, that movement was a whole group of tiny little crabs-scurrying away into some bushes. I moved to a different part of the beach, to get a different vantage point of the beautiful scenery. After a few minutes, I walked back to my initial spot, and was surprised to see that the crabs had reappeared-but were now scurrying away from me once again. Which was unfortunate, as I wanted to capture some video of them doing their cute, crabby things.

I don’t blame them. When you’re all of one inch or so tall, and you see the size 13 shoe of a 6’5″ human frame lumbering toward you, you’re going to scurry away. I just wish I’d have thought about that before stomping back over there. But alas, I had to finish my run, and get ready for the rest of my day.

As I was running back to the hotel, it occurred to me that my brief encounter with the tiny crabs gave me something to ponder. If I really wanted to get close to the crabs- and perhaps grab one or get a great photo op-it would have been much more effective for me to stand still, or even sit down. Given enough time, they likely would have made their way back, and I could have snapped a photo.

There’s a lesson here that’s more general that creating wildlife photo ops. It’s about chasing things-be they concrete living things, or abstract things like goals and fulfillment.

Think about how often we see something we want, like an opportunity to greet the crabs. And we get so excited and desirous. We want it, so we go running all out toward it. And yet for some reason, when it scurries away from us, we are either surprised, or frustrated.

We all have things we want to catch-so to speak. And it can be tempting to run headlong at them, in an attempt to chase them down. But much like the tiny crabs I encountered, many things can end up scurrying away from us the more aggressively we run toward them. We’re so tempted to spring into action and chase things. But there’s always the danger that all of our movement and energy just pushes everything further away from us.

I’ve found this to be the case with happiness. The more aggressively I pursue it-the more I structure my activities around it, the more preoccupied I am with it-the more it seems to scurry away. But it has been those times when I have stilled myself, when I’m not aggressively chasing happiness-that’s when I’ve gotten a taste of it. Doing work for its own sake, serving others, taking care of my health and wellness. That has brought me happiness-even when it involved sacrifice and seemed uncomfortable at first.

Perhaps we need to learn to resist the urge to chase. Perhaps we need to learn to strategically sit. Perhaps then we may be able to find the perfect place to sit and wait. And if we choose that spot wisely, and we remain still, the natural patterns at work around us should bring everything back to where it was-where we are.

Originally published at https://mikesturm.net.

Morihei Ueshiba and some overlooked truths about personal growth and happiness

Photo by Marc Rafanell López on Unsplash

In the first pages of The Art of Peace, Morihei Ueshiba lays down a lesson that has stuck with me for the decade or so since I first read it:

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.

The message is as simple as it is powerful. But it’s easy to miss, if you don’t give it much thought. It’s a message not just about happiness, but also about motivation, work, and building a life you can be proud of.

Right Where You’re Standing

Ueshiba is issuing a warning. A warning against the limiting thoughts we hold with us — the constraints we build into our lives that keep us from the growth we desire. When he talks about heaven, it’s of course not the literal heaven.

He’s talking about whatever it is we desire. He’s talking about that place we want to be, or the things we want to obtain, and the person we want to be. But because we’re not there yet, or we don’t have those things, we’re not happy.

And the crazy thing is, half the time, we’re not even quite sure what heaven would be for us. We just know that wherever we are, this isn’t it. Whatever we have, it’s not what we really want. Whoever we are now, it’s not who we want to be. And so we keep ourselves locked out of heaven.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t need more than we have, or a place other than where we are, to be at peace. That doesn’t mean we can’t aim for growth or have a destination in mind. It just means that we can’t let longing for the destination keep us from enjoying the path to it. Surely, you’ve enjoyed the walk to the restaurant even if you were really dying to eat there, right? Enjoy being on the way to the destination.

The Place to Train Is Here, The Time to Train is Now

The other side of Ueshiba’s quote is that not only is heaven right where you’re standing, but it’s also the place to train — rather than a place where you just sit and enjoy your achievement.

But what does he mean by training? Everything is training. It’s the work of daily life. It’s character-building. It’s testing yourself, and pushing a bit further. It’s making it through challenges and deprivation. It’s the work of making it through the furnace of living.

Two points of emphasis, then, regarding ‘training.’

Don’t Wait

First, we often put off doing the work we should be doing because we’re waiting on certain conditions. We wait until we get the new workout clothes to start working on getting fit. We wait until the new year to really work on improving ourselves. We put off planning that difficult project until the kids aren’t running around the house, or we’ve made our coffee and we’re in the right mood. We put off our work — our training, so to speak, until things are just so.

But we shouldn’t. If we wait to train until we’re comfortable, and our desires our met, that’s not really training. It’s recreation. Recreation is valuable, and necessary. But it has a different function than training. Recreation lets you rest, relax, and have fun while exerting yourself. Training challenges you and forces you to grow. It’s not comfortable.

Don’t wait for the perfect time and place to train. The place to train is here. The time to train is now. The less perfect things are, the more you’re actually training — because it’s hard.

When we insist waiting before we get to work, we’re asking for our training to be easy. Which means we’re asking for our training to both be easy and to help us grow. That is asking the impossible. The more we do this, the more we miss valuable opportunities to do real work on ourselves, and real work for others.

The Destination Is Never Guaranteed

Secondly, we often think that the work we need to do in order to grow won’t be fulfilling until we get to the goal we’re after. That assumption often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we don’t believe we can enjoy not having what we want yet, we turn the journey to get it into suffering. The more we want the pleasure of the destination, the more we refuse to see the pleasure available to us on the way there.

But that keeps us from enjoying the work of our lives. Which is a tragedy. You can find enjoyment in any work, as long as you see it as training.

• You’re scrubbing toilets. You’re training yourself to power through repulsive conditions.
• You’re serving angry people burgers and fries at a dive. You’re training yourself to act with grace under pressure, in rough conditions.
• You’re in a prison cell. You’re doing the toughest, most rewarding work of all: spending quality time alone with yourself, and making improvements.

Don’t forget that you may not get what you’re after. You may work your way up, and scratch and save, and kiss all the rings you thought you had to. And you may never get the big house, the salary, the recognition, or the romance. The work doesn’t guarantee those results.

The most you can guarantee yourself is that you did the work to aim and shoot. Hitting the target may not happen. If you can’t do that work and enjoy it, you’ve promised yourself a life of misery for nothing. So why not use the hard work as a way to make yourself a better person — and enjoy that as it happens on a daily basis? Rather than take pride in the awards and the money, take pride in the fortitude, skills, and resilience you’ve built within yourself?

Wherever You Are, That is the Place to Train

Don’t wait for conditions to be right.

Every job is the one to hone your skills at.

Every place you live is the one to fashion into a welcoming home.

Don’t wait. Do something, any little thing, here and now.

We have a terrible habit of keeping ourselves waiting. But we shouldn’t. After all, don’t we get angry when someone else keeps us waiting? But we go right on keeping ourselves waiting.

So stop it now. Refuse to keep yourself waiting any longer. Love yourself enough to realize that heaven is right here, and it’s the same place to begin training: right where you’re standing.

There are 2 ways to be self-centered, so be sure your picking the right one

Photo by kevin laminto on Unsplash

Normally, when someone is accused of being self-centered, we consider it a bad thing. It’s portrayed as a lack of concern for others, or a kind of greediness.

But do we have it right? Is self-centeredness a bad thing? Perhaps there’s a bit more to it than we think. Perhaps being self-centered is actually a good think. But like so many other good things, we’ve been getting it wrong for quite some time.

In fact, being self-centered is only bad if the self you’re centered around is the wrong kind of self.

A Tale of Two Selves

There are 2 kinds of selves. The first kind is the lower self. It’s the one concerned with immediate gratification, ignorant of costs and consequences, and lacking care about higher values and purpose. The second kind of self is the higher self. It’s the version of yourself that you aspire to be. It’s the self that embodies your values and lives with purpose.

If you serve your lower self, that’s the bad kind of self-centeredness. You grasp at what you think will give you quick pleasure. You think short-term and with little regard to others. Your values are questionable. That’s vicious self-centeredness.

If you serve your higher self, that’s the good kind of self-centeredness. Yes, you do serve yourself and spend time on yourself. But you do it to make yourself better, more purpose-driven and an embodiment of values. You reflect and refine yourself to be better. And being better means being there for others. You focus on yourself, but you are there for others.

Vicious Self-Centeredness

Vicious self-centeredness is the one we’re most familiar with. It’s the one with the bad reputation — and rightfully so. It’s where a person caters to their unrefined demands for pleasure and immediate gratification. We usually think of a self-centered person’s first question is what’s in it for me? But there’s a bit more nuance to it than that.

Yes, the self-centered person is primarily concerned with themself. But being concerned with yourself isn’t a bad thing. The issue is that a viciously self-centered person is concerned with feeding that egotistical and shallow part of the self. It’s not being self-serving on behalf of enrichment and improvement. It’s being self-serving on behalf of hoarding pleasure, possessions, and power. It’s self-centeredness, but being centered around a lower self.

Most of us are trying to improve, but we all have the part of us that just wants to sit around and be given whatever we want right now. That self is a shallow one. And when we center our activity around serving that shallow self — that’s when self-centeredness goes wrong.

Virtuous Self-Centeredness

There’s another kind of self-centeredness — the good kind. It’s the kind where rather than catering to your unrefined demands, you spend time focusing on making yourself better. You reflect and refine. You get to know yourself and your values. You gain and maintain self-worth. It’s truly the good kind.

And believe it or not, begin virtuously self-centered can make you the kind of person that others think of as selfless. In large part, that’s because you do the work to become comfortable enough with yourself that you don’t make things about you around other people. But again, that comes from continuous focus on yourself.

There is an old analogy that in the event of a plan crash, you need to put your oxygen mask on before you put on the masks of your loved ones. As much as you want to help them first, you’re useless to them if you can’t breathe first. You need to be centered on yourself first — to make sure there is a self there that can the do anything worthwhile and sustainably for others.

Know Yourself, Grow Yourself

Getting virtuously self-centered involves really getting to know yourself. And not just doing it once, but consistently. Getting in touch with your feelings, knowing your thought patters (good and bad) — all of it.

It’s also about discovering your values and priorities. You need to put all that together and live with purpose. If you haven’t done that, it’s very difficult to really help others. But it takes work — work on yourself. That’s virtuous self-centeredness.

Key in this process is regular self-reflection — which means asking yourself hard questions. These are questions like: What do I really care about? What makes me emotional? What am I willing to sacrifice immediate gratification for? What would make me proud of myself? What do I want people to say about me 100 years from now?

There are more questions to dive into, and so many other ways to dive into them. Journaling, talk therapy, a mastermind group, or mentors are all helpful. But the key is to remember that you’re looking to serve your higher self — not the lower self that just wants the quick and easy satisfaction.

If you serve that self, there’s no reason to feel guilty. You’ll be doing good for others in the process.

So the next time you hear a warning about being self-centered, be sure you understand what it means. Avoid serving the wrong self. Be centered around yourself, but be centered around your higher self — the one you’re working to grow into — and you’ll be okay.

A guide to letting things go, so you can move on and move up

Photo by Junior Karrick DJIKOUNOU from Pexels

There was a time where I lived in a fairly downtrodden boarding house in a downtrodden city in the Midwest. As it turns out, the time I spent there was cut short. That wasn’t because I found a better place, but because that place had bedbugs and a few other “quirks”. You know, that kind of place.

Needless to say, that was a “transitional” period in my life — to put it nicely.

During that time, I was the proud owner of a Pace bus pass. There didn’t seem to be anything cool about the bus pass at that time. After all, I had previously owned a car, so this was a step down. What was cool about having a bus pass is that it afforded me the opportunity to have a few memorable conversations with people I wouldn’t have otherwise talked to.

One such conversation was with an older gentleman. He was on the latest of several rebounds in his lifelong battle with addiction. It’s basically what he led our conversation with. I didn’t get as much of his background as I’d have liked. But part of his journey involved getting back to a good place with his family, and opening up about mistakes that led him astray clearly weighed on him those many years later.

What led me to talk to him was my own heavy emotional weight of the day: a heated argument with my long-time girlfriend. She had a certain way of saying the kinds of things that really hurt me — on a regular basis. The relationship had been toxic for a long time, and had come to head now that we were living apart from each other. I’m certain that this was somewhat visible on my face as I got on the bus that day.

As I sat next to the old-timer, we gave the usual “hello” nod. I must’ve sighed or something, because the old man inquired as to whether it had been “one of those days” — or something like that. I replied that it had. His reply was that more often than not, it seems to be “one of those days”. Or at least, we tend to remember more of them, because they take more of our energy to get through. We rarely remember the easy things.

If it Don’t Apply…

As I unloaded my troubles to this generous old man, he began to smile. That smile hit its peak when I voiced my frustration at an accusation that my girlfriend had made of me. She accused me of cheating on her. It was blatantly not true. I’d never cheated on her — nor had I come close. I’d never cheated on anyone.

I’m certain she knew this, but she made the accusation anyway. I fell for it, and got dragged into an argument where I was forced to defend my character as a whole, while she sat in the seat of judgment.

There’s a lot of the conversation with this old man that I’ve forgotten over time. But one thing I haven’t forgotten was his advice. He said “if it don’t apply, let it fly” — meaning if someone is wrong about you, don’t take it to heart. Don’t internalize it or grapple with it. Don’t let it whip you up into a furious and desperate attempt to disprove their accusations. They’re wrong about you. You know it. You know yourself. Be confident in that, and proceed accordingly.

…Let It Fly

So often, we get dragged into defending ourselves against accusations because we believe that deep down, on some level, there’s some truth to them. But if we are secure in our knowledge of ourselves, we’re less likely to let things get to us.

Let’s do a quick thought experiment: If someone were to yell emphatically at you that you had 4 arms, how much would you fret about that? Not much. You know that you only have 2 arms. It should be clear to anyone with eyes that you don’t have 4 arms. So that claim is so obviously false that you will spend zero time or mental effort being anxious about that person’s inaccurate claim.

Now imagine someone said that you were selfish. That might be enough to get under anyone’s skin. It calls into question your entire character. It seems like you’d need to voice a strong defense, right? But my old friend would advise you “if it don’t apply, let it fly.”

Ask yourself: am I selfish? In my own honest appraisal of my motives and my actions — am I selfish? If you honestly evaluate yourself, whatever conclusion you come to will be one you’re comfortable with — even if it means you have work to do on yourself.

Know Thyself

The result of becoming this self-aware means letting go of having to argue with others about who you are. If someone tells you that you’re selfish, and you know you’re more selfish than you’d like, you can stay calm. You can calmly acknowledge that you are struggling with being selfish, and you still have work to do. But if you’ve done the work, and know that you’re not selfish, you can also stay calm and simply tell the person: I know myself well, and I know that I’m not a selfish person. I guess it just doesn’t seem that way to you.

And that’s it. That’s the trick. It goes back to Socrates, over 2,000 years ago. The temple at Delphi had the inscription “know thyself” above its entrance. That’s the most impactful single piece of advice that anyone can use. It’s also a task that will take an entire lifetime to complete — and many people don’t ever complete it.

If “know thyself” is the most impactful piece of advice, the old bus-rider’s advice comes in a close second. You can put them together into a single, elegant piece of advice. Know yourself, and don’t allow others’ judgments of you to override that knowledge.

If you can do that, almost nothing will get to you. Your path will be about becoming the best person you can be, based on your honest evaluation of yourself.

My 37 years on this planet have provided me with some hard-won principles that continue to help me grow

Photo by Casey Schackow on Unsplash

I’ve learned a lot of things in my life. Some things I learned from reading or hearing them. Other things I learned the hard way — by experiencing their lessons. Some of those lessons came from loss; others came from risks that paid off.

It can be hard to tell which things you learn in life are the most valuable. Which lessons are the most important probably depends a lot on your particular circumstances and personality. So much of life is the process of sifting through the dirt of your experience to find the gems worth keeping.

But there are some gems of hard-earned wisdom that are worth sharing no matter who might read them. I consider these 10 to be among the most valuable I’ve learned.

1. Above all else, be kind and patient with yourself. You deserve it. You are the only sure thing you have in this life, so don’t beat yourself up. Value yourself, regardless of your accomplishments, traits, or anything else. Be honest with yourself about your feelings and motives. Correct yourself gently when those motives aren’t in line with your values.
2. Remember: no matter how thoughtless or terrible a thing someone has done, they’re simply doing it to make themselves happy. Con-artists, thieves, murders, rapists, and dictators are all on a journey to find happiness. It’s just very easy for some to lose their way on that journey. But we’re all looking for the same destination.
3. Nobody is really self-made. Everyone had help to get where they are. People — whether mentors, investors, customers, constituents, friends, or whoever — helped along the way. If someone goes out of their way to tell you they’re self-made, be skeptical. They’re giving too much credit to themselves, and overshadowing others. Stay grateful and humble for all the help you’ve received.
4. When you’re feeling stuck or not sure what to do, reach out to someone and ask what they think. You don’t need to ask them to do anything but give their opinion. You’ll be surprised how helpful that can be. And people are usually happy to give their thoughts on something. Take advantage of that generosity and diversity of thought.
5. Just sit down and set aside 15 minutes to start on that big, hairy, daunting project. You will get a lot more done in that 15 minutes than you realize. It’s weird: Things tend to take more time than you think they might, but much less time than you fear they will. We underestimate how effective 15 or 30 minutes can be.
6. Your mind may not remember everything you think about or experience, but somehow it feels it all. Your emotions are constantly running in the background — behind all your thinking — and they’re using up mental energy. Make sure you’re able to process and close the loops on the things that impact you emotionally, or you’ll be mentally exhausted all the time.
7. Practice strategic detachment. Understand that even if you do all the right things, the results are not guaranteed. Have a well thought-out process you’re confident in, and work it enthusiastically and optimistically. But don’t get too attached to outcomes. Getting too invested in outcomes will wreck you emotionally, and might force you to betray great processes.
8. Prioritization is the most important skill you can learn and refine. When you fully understand which things are the most important, you gain the ability to focus and do deep work. There are few feelings better than being confident in your priorities and doing focused and diligent work on them.
9. Have a spiritual practice of some kind. This doesn’t mean religion or anything formal. It’s just a consistent habit of quietly turning inward. Whether prayer, meditation, yoga, tai chi, forest bathing, or anything like that — just set aside some quiet time to be without necessarily doing. The benefits are lifelong and may surprise you.
10. Be flexible, and you’ll grow. As much as you can, don’t tie yourself to one way of thinking and acting. Be willing to move things around to help out others. Be open to looking at opportunities you didn’t plan on. Be willing to revise your goals and projects for things that pop up. Some of the best things I’ve done came up because I was flexible. I’ve grown due in large part to my flexibility.

I hope these were helpful. For more stuff like this, subscribe to my newsletter, Woolgathering.

From humble acts to tiny bits of time, some of the biggest impact comes from things we’d never otherwise thing about

Photo by Akshar Dave on Unsplash

I was watching the surprisingly good Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso tonight, when I was hit with a realization. Upon arrival to coach a failing soccer club in England, coach Ted Lasso-who has only previously coached American Football in the midwest-tries to gain the alliance of the skeptical players.

One tactic he attempts in the beginning is to put out a suggestion box. He asks the players to put in whatever kind of suggestion they’d like, from the texture of the towels to the quality of the vending machine snacks. As he sifts through it with his assistant coach, they find an array of insults, and not much of use-except for one thing. A player notes that the “shower water pressure is rubbish.”

Lasso could have been forgiven for tossing the whole thing aside and focusing on getting real feedback from the team about substantive issues that could fix the team’s dynamic. Instead, he makes it a pirority to quietly have the showers fixed. He doesn’t announce it; he doesn’t go in search of who commented on it. He just takes care of it.

There’s a beautiful scene near the end of the episode where an already vociferous critic of Lasso’s goes to take a post-game shower. He’s visibly moved by the fact that the water pressure is now excellent.

Perhaps this was meant as just a vehicle for showing the tides turning for Lasso. But for me, it’s an illustration of a greater principle that warrants mention again and again: The little things matter.

People say that the devil is in the details. And while he may certainly hang out there from time to time, I don’t think that’s where he lives. For my money, distinction is in the details-as in, attention to detail is what distinguishes the great from the merely acceptable.

But let’s be clear here what I mean by “attention to detail.” I’m not saying that each and every aspect of everything has to be perfect. I’m not even saying that most of it has to be. Many small and insignificant details can be left unaddressed in the course of excellent service. What distinguishes excellent service from just okay service is the care to see which details matter, and which don’t.

And the thing about details is that context changes which of them matter. The shower pressure wouldn’t matter if the team was winning and on track to do great things. But things were falling apart. There had been major upheaval. Everyone was uncomfortable. In that case, getting good water pressure-at long last-made a huge difference.

And if you’re looking to make a change-whether you’re a leader, creator, entrepreneur, or parent-you need to be able to identify what small things will make the difference.

For every failing football team, there’s a minor plumbing problem you can fix, which just might turn the tide. Be willing to spend a little time looking for it. You’ll be thankful you did.

A guide to making the impossible possible

Photo by Gantas Vaičiulėnas from Pexels

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

-From Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass

There may be no better feeling than doing what someone else has said is impossible. There’s also no better fuel for future progress than achieving supposedly impossible things.

Doing so is all about mindset. Namely, you need to learn how to develop a possibility mindset — meaning you see what’s possible where others only see what’s not. This kind of mindset is at the root of innovation and perseverance.

When you develop a possibility mindset, you can not only amaze others who tend to doubt you, but also (and most importantly) yourself. A possibility mindset can help you shed self-doubt and achieve more. Here’s how to do it.

What Makes Something Impossible?

Just because someone says something is impossible doesn’t make it so. In fact, the things that people often claim are impossible are usually quite possible. The reason we prematurely label things as impossible is because we’re not clear on just what impossibility actually means.

In order to get clear, the first thing you need to do is ask the very simple question: what is impossible about this supposedly impossible thing? As we’ll see, it can be one of two situations: it’s either the road or the destination.

Each situation calls for a slightly different approach, but neither approach involves simply giving up. They just involve slightly different ways of thinking. Picking a different way of thinking is how you develop a possibility mindset.

The Two Flavors of Impossibility

When someone says “that’s impossible!” it helps to stop and ask what “that” is. I’m not trying to be coy here, but rather, I’m trying to expose something that lies at the heart of many defeatist assumptions — so that you can defeat the defeatists in your life.

There’s a metaphor that I find useful when thinking about supposedly impossible things: think about it in terms of traveling. You’re trying to get somewhere, and someone tells you it’s impossible to get there. There are two things they could mean by that: either the road you’re taking won’t get you to the destination, or the destination itself is inaccessible.

The Wrong Road

Impossibility often presents itself as a roadblock on a road we’re determined to travel. But usually, there’s no need for us to travel that particular road. In most cases, the road itself matters little to us, it’s the destination we’re trying to get to that matters. The road may be blocked, but the destination is not inaccessible. It’s still there, we just need to take a different road to get there — or in some cases, make our own road.

This metaphor serves to illustrate how we often look at impossibility the wrong way. We travel on a given road, and then find that the road is blocked, and we can’t keep traveling on it. So we say that getting to the destination is impossible. But that’s not true. What’s really impossible is just to continue on that road. But we can still reach the destination; we just can’t use that road anymore.

The Wrong Destination

Sometimes we don’t so much misjudge the road, as we misjudge the destination. We think that we need to get to a certain destination, but we actually don’t.

Let’s say you’ve got a goal (destination) of getting a raise at your job. So you talk to your boss, and you present all the reasons why you deserve to get a pay bump. She entertains your reasoning, but ultimately turns down your request. Your destination of getting a pay raise seems an impossible one to reach.

In that instance, you need to ask yourself if your destination really is to get more money at your current job, or simply getting more money in general. My guess is that it’s the latter, because it probably doesn’t matter where the money comes from.

When you look at your goal that way — of just getting more money in general — there are other ways to get there. You could pick up a side gig or start selling old things you don’t need and bring in extra cash that way. It wouldn’t be at your current job, but it actually may be easier and more fulfilling.

There’s also another way to look at it: You could pick a slightly different destination.

Is your goal to make more money, or simply to net more money? When you think about your money in general, there is the cash you bring in (income), and the cash you spend (expenses). The former minus the latter is your net income — it’s what you get to keep. What really matters is the net. And if you can cut your spending enough, you might be able to net as much money as if you had increased your income with that raise you were chasing after.

See, it wasn’t impossible — you were just thinking too narrowly. You just had to adjust your destination.

In this way, I take the phrase “making the impossible possible” literally. You are taking X — which really did prove to be impossible — and replacing it with Y — which is where you were really trying to get anyway. And Y is quite possible. So now, you go after Y. Broaden your thinking, and do what you initially thought couldn’t be done.

That’s the possibility mindset. It involves asking which thing is supposedly impossible, and being willing to make adjustments and substitutes along the way.

Possibility and Persistence

If you take nothing else form the above rant, here’s a neat little package.

Develop a possibility mindset by examining each supposedly impossible thing you face. Ask the question: what is it about this thing that’s supposedly impossible — the road or the destination?

If it’s the road that’s impossible to travel, look for other roads to the same destination. Find another plan, different tools, or a different way to get to your goal. You may have to adjust your timeline or who is involved.

If the destination really is inaccessible, ask yourself whether or not that destination is your ultimate destination — or just a stop on the way to another ultimate destination. Ask yourself why you desire the goal that seems impossible. That reason why will often reveal other goals that are actually more important to you, and that are not impossible to achieve given your current circumstances.

If nothing else, remember this: for everything that seems impossible, there is at least one other thing that is possible. Focus on what’s possible, and persevere.

A spiritual path is necessary for personal growth, but it doesn’t look like what most people think it does

Photo by Leah Kelley from Pexels

What do you think of when you hear the word spiritual?

Do you see visions of immaculately arranged Instagram posts of people practicing yoga or calmly sitting with their eyes closed in an upscale loft? Do you hear the ramblings of someone ‘finding their bliss’ or seeking ‘inner peace’? Do those things seem totally unrelated to the battles you’re fighting every day in your life? Do you get turned off by just hearing the word ‘spiritual’?

You’re not alone. I too used to routinely dismiss anything labeled ‘spiritual’. The spiritual talk I heard for most of my life seemed to be just another kind of B.S. wrapped up neatly for gullible folks to consume — like any other sketchy product.

But I’ve come to realize that I was wrong. I was throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And it stifled my growth for a long time.

What I’ve come to find out is that spirituality isn’t something beyond and separate from day to day life. It’s right there in front of us.

But it is up to us to embrace it in our own way. And until we do, we end up limiting our personal growth to mostly superficial areas of progress.

Everything Is Spiritual

There is no separation between the spiritual and everything else. Replying to emails is spiritual. Washing the dishes is spiritual. Changing a dirty diaper is spiritual. Your failure to treat them that way is the only determining factor.

You can do any of the things I mentioned above mindlessly; and we often do. You can also do these things mindfully — in the sense of being aware that you’re doing them. But you can also go a bit deeper than that. And that’s what I’m talking about.

You can change diapers, reply to emails, and clean the dishes — but do them while acknowledging that they’re an expression of you, of your commitments and values. You can do them as a way of connecting more deeply with yourself, and with reality.

The email you’re replying to is an act of connecting to someone that you felt it’s important enough to connect with. If it’s someone you dislike, you’re probably walking a fine line your reply to be civil. If it’s someone you’re trying to help, you’re probably digging deep to provide them with that help in the email, and lift them up a bit.

The dirty diaper is your child’s, who you love in a way you don’t love anyone else. Changing it is an act of loving service — despite how badly it smells.

In the cases of the email and the diaper, you’re tapping into a deeper part of yourself. It’s the part that connects with what matters to you, what moves you, and what colors your life. We all have that part — but we so often neglect it.

It’s a deeper part of us — one that picks up on the fact that though we may swim in the shallow end of the pool for most of the hours of our day, there is a deeper end of the pool.

Spirituality is simply the awareness that there is a deep end of the pool, and a willingness to swim in it. Spirituality is the recognition of that part of ourselves that runs deeper than the superficial things in our lives. Actually, it’s the recognition that even the seemingly superficial things in our lives can be — if we allow them to be — deeply meaningful.

Just like anything else, spirituality is something we can hone in ourselves — and doing so can enrich our daily lives dramatically. But we have to let go of all the preconceived notions we have about what spirituality is and should be. Spirituality is uniquely individual, and the most effective way to do it is to build your own path.

Make Spirituality Practical

For years, I had done all of the surface-level work of writing down goals, projects, and tasks. I did mindfulness meditation because scientific studies said it would help my brain. And it all helped in its own way. But there was always a lack of depth.

Something was missing for me.

So I started digging deeper. Rather than meditating because science told me it would help, I began sitting quietly in order to tap into something a bit deeper. I allowed myself to entertain the possibility that by striking a reverential pose, like bowing, I could experience something more than just rest or awareness of my body.

I started constructing my own spiritual practice.

I practiced different types of meditation, and began experimenting with them. I incorporated chanting. I explored prayer — imported from the Christian and Muslim traditions. I tried Magick, esoteric mysticism, and New Thought. I went forest bathing, and practiced grounding. It’s all on the table. And I’m taking something helpful from each thing I try.

I’m still discovering and trying new things. Whatever spiritual system I build, it will never be complete; it will always be a work in progress.

When the goal is to tap into the deepest, most profound part of yourself and this life, leave no stone unturned.

That is all there is to it: build yourself a practice that deepens your experience of daily life, and energizes you. Build a refuge and a source of strength and peace. Whatever that looks like for you, that is your spiritual practice.

Your practice could include a walk around your yard, listening to birds. It could be running, and appreciating the rush you feel as you push yourself. It could be watching your child play with blocks. As long as your involvement int it goes deeper than just observing — into appreciating and experiencing — that’s spiritual practice.

You Are the Only Real Guru

The most important thing I learned about a spiritual path is that it only really works if you build it yourself. You can start with an existing belief system and set of rituals, but it is your job to establish their meaning. It is your job to place them in your life as important pieces of your worldview and approach to daily life. That cannot come from anyone else.

Your spiritual system and practice should have nothing to do with following anyone else. Those who claim to be your master or guru, and those who claim to have a unique access to some truth that you do not, or an ability to save you, should be avoided. Advisors, mentors, and people to walk with you on your spiritual path are highly recommended. But the moment they claim that you should follow them, and put your faith in their words alone — run far and fast.

Your spiritual practice should not allow for any intermediary between you and an experience of the deeper truths of your existence. This is your existence to experience and make sense of; don’t allow someone else to do that for you — they will get it wrong.

If there is one thing I want to scream at the top of my lungs about building yourself a spiritual path, it’s this: don’t walk the path someone else laid out for you. Your spiritual experience of life is too important to take a path other than the one that you have forged yourself.

We are all walking through the same dense and scary forest, and in the end, our journeys will all end in it. All we have are the unique paths we forged as we made our way through it. So make your path as much your own as you can.

On what it will take to finally become the vibrant, unified nation that we’ve always know we can be

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

Dear Brothers and Sisters of the United States of America,

For so long, we pretended that things were fine when they were not.

Some of us believed that amends had been made, and that we existed as part of a steady march of progress — a rising tide that lifted all boats. Some of us knew that the tide — while certainly lifting some boats— continued to destroy so many ships that never had a chance against the turbulent sea. Some of us thought that however much things fell short of what we knew in our hearts to be just, perhaps this was the best we could do for now. We kept on with our lives, perhaps some distant glimmer of hope in our hearts.

But we’ve been shaken awake from our slumbering state — shaken awake by tragedy — again. The tragedy, unlike other tragedies, is neither rare nor unexpected. In fact what makes it tragic is that it is neither. But our mental state at the moment is such that this particular iteration of a recurring tragedy has awoken some of us that were previously content to settle back into slumber.

Tragedies happen all the time. And a people can either wallow in them or use them to become better. That is what separates a resilient people from a dying one.

But in order to be a resilient people, we have to first be a people — as in a singular, united people. And while perhaps some in this country have walked along believing that we are indeed one people, enough of us have not acted in that way — which means that we are not, as of yet, one people. There are distinctions and differences in us which — if praised and glorified — could be the foundation of a diverse, vibrant, and unified people. Instead, they have served as the basis of fear and division.

But now is our chance. It’s our chance to become one people — or at least take the biggest step in five decades toward becoming one people, and to proving that as a people, we are resilient.

As anyone in management will tell you, it’s those with the authority and power who bear the responsibility for bringing people together. Grievances dismissed are grievances left to fester. They are cracks in the foundation — waiting to let in water to tear apart any hope of a unified team. The same is true within a nation. Those with authority, those with power, those who have been at the helm for centuries — the onus is on them.

Anyone in management can also tell you that it sometimes hurts to hear when you have allowed things to fall apart. But the more it hurts, the more intently you must listen — the more you must ask questions with the intent to understand. And when you finally do understand, let that understanding turn into action — action aimed at both making things right, and cultivating unity. And if you cannot do that, then find someone else who can, and step aside to let them do it.

I am not sure why, but I have faith. Though we are not yet one people, I can sense that we have a deep desire to be. Yes, some have denied this desire, and resisted it — trying to force shortsighted divisions and distractions upon the rest of us. But the desire has never gone away. I think we’ve had this desire for a long time, and I think that now is the time to make it into reality. This is the time to become the unified, resilient people we know we can be.

It hasn’t been easy to love you, America, but I do. I love you because I have seen you. And though I have at many moments seen the worst of you, I have also seen glimmers of the best of you, of what I know you can be — often in the most unexpected places. I’ve seen you on the street corners, in the mosques, community centers, at the borders, in the neglected neighborhoods, and sitting on the front porch on hot summer days. I’ve seen you do great things — small, seemingly mundane things that nearly blinded me with their grace and good will. I’ve seen your heart and soul. And that has helped me keep on loving you. It’s helped me keep my faith.

So, to the nation I love so dearly, but in such a fraught and complicated way: I’m here for you. I love you. It’s love, but it’s a tough love. No more leniency. No more enabling. We’ll get through this, but not without you finally dropping the B.S., and living up to your potential.

No more excuses. The work will be hard, and you may want to give up at times, but don’t. It will be worth it. And when this is all over, we’ll be the resilient people that I know we can be.

What we miss when we get caught up in the realm of big ideas, big battles, and big personalities

Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash

There are some images that stick with you through the years — not because they’re the kind of thing that would make headlines or attract a large crowd — but because they’re simultaneously both simple and powerful.

This is the story of one such image.

When Is A Sandwich More Than A Sandwich?

A few years ago I was at a sandwich shop for lunch. I wasn’t going to eat there; I was just picking up lunch for myself and a co-worker to eat back at the office. The line for waiting to get your sandwich made happens to be right by where the tables are situated, such that you’re close to those who have already gotten their sandwiches, and are eating them.

I happened to already know what I wanted to get, and so rather than my attention being fixed upon the menu board, I was doing a bit of people watching. I noticed a man sitting alone at a table, with a freshly made sandwich.

He proceeded to unwrap the sandwich, and there was something about the way he was looking at it that made it impossible for me to look away. His manner was so delicate, so reverent. It was as if the sandwich was a 500 year-old painting wrapped in antique parchment paper.

When the man finished unwrapping his sandwich, he stopped and looked at it. It couldn’t have been more than 3 seconds, but the way he looked at it in that 3 seconds — it’s not the kind of look I had seen many times. It was a look simultaneously of gratitude, fulfillment, joyful anticipation, and wonder. He then picked up the sandwich with both hands, grinned ever-so slightly , closed his eyes, and took a bite.

This man was enjoying his sandwich in a way that I had seen very few people enjoy anything. It was truly something to behold.

When It’s a Microcosm of Everything

There was nothing in the mechanics of the situation that was special. There was a man, there was a sandwich. There was a bustling lunchtime rush crowd around us in the sandwich shop. There was the clamor of the thoughts all of the things everyone had to deal with the rest of the day.

But then — for this man — there was a break in all that action. He was notably…elsewhere. It’s hard to explain, but it was noticeable.

This incident persists in my mind because it taught me a lesson that I continue to carry with me. It’s something that I have been unknowingly experiencing from time to time throughout my life — and I suspect that you might have as well. The little things are the big things.

People may regard a sandwich as something little, inconsequential, not worth mentioning or really paying attention to. But a sandwich is only a sandwich if you allow it to be.

A sandwich — or more accurately, your relationship with a given sandwich — is a microcosm of all the relationships in the world. A sandwich represents the coordination of so much work between so many people, spanning so many miles. It represents something so sacred that we tend to overlook: cooperation and value creation.

When someone makes a sandwich for us, and we hunger for it, that whole transaction is sacred. It seems little, but it is actually immense. And it is when we forget this that we lose our connection to what binds us together.

This is About More Than Sandwiches

We are bombarded these days by so many seemingly big things, that it can be hard to bring ourselves back to the little things — like a sandwich. But we must do it; it’s our only hope of cultivating that sense of reverence for our own lives.

This piece of writing is about more than sandwiches, it’s about the fact that the things we think are little and inconsequential are actually huge. That man who looked at his sandwich for those 3 seconds, and caught my eye — in that moment, he understood this simple truth. For those 3 seconds, he was connecting with something over and above a mere meal. He was feeding more than his physical body. He was feeding his spirit — whatever you take that word to mean.

We are bombarded these days by so many seemingly big things, that it can be hard to bring ourselves back to the little things — like a sandwich. But we must do it; it’s our only hope of cultivating that sense of reverence for our own lives.

Continuing to focus on the big battles, big ideas, and big personalities on social media and in the news — that pulls us away from the sandwiches and cups of coffee that make up our lives. When we’re pulled away from those things, we’re pulled away from the building blocks of the simple and enjoyable parts of a life well-lived.

Choose To Stay Small

Every day, we’re given an implicit ultimatum: we can either connect deeply with what is in front of us or we can connect in a shallow and fleeting way with what is swirling out there. The choice should be clear, but we continually make the wrong one, and when we do, we suffer for it.

It’s not easy to connect deeply with the small things of our daily lives, like that man in my story did with his sandwich. But like everything, it comes with practice.

Luckily, the practice can be really, really rewarding. The next time you’re about to eat a sandwich, or enjoy a cup of coffee or tea, make it the focus. Turn off the computer, the television, or the audio. Take a loving look at the thing in front of you. Smell it, feel it, and imagine what it’s going to taste like. Then enjoy it.

By the way, this same practice can be done with people. When you’re about to have a conversation with someone, you can treat them like that sandwich or cup of coffee. You can stop, and drink in what they’re saying. You can listen to their voice — its tone, and its cadence.

More than anything, we need to remember that the biggest things are ultimately small. Those things that we can so easily overlook contain the profound and the important.

An exploration of the costs and benefits of believing in a little more…

Photo by Manyu Varma on Unsplash

I grew up Catholic. I went to Catholic school 5 days a week, church on Sunday. I was an altar boy.

By and large, I was Catholic because in Chicago in the 1980s and 90s, if you could scrape together the money for tuition, Catholic school was the better option. The faith was kind of a secondary concern. Perhaps tertiary — as the local Catholic school was also close enough for me to walk to with our older neighbor kids.

But for whatever reason, the mystical part of the faith appealed to me. The idea that I could be, or was, tied into something above or infinite — something beyond the normal explanation of the world and its workings — was appealing. When I prayed as a young boy, I did so in a way that felt like closing your eyes as you hit the apex of a jump on a trampoline — not like I was begging a deity for something. I felt something — something ineffable — but something beyond the everyday material stuff.

When my parents moved us out to the suburbs, I started going to public school. After that, I began to depart from religion in general, thinking that my increasingly scientific worldview left no room for it.

I began to consider anything that wasn’t spoken in the dry vocabulary of accepted popular science to be “mystical”. And surely a practical person like me had no time for mystical things.

Here’s the thing. The more I learn (especially about science), and the more I experience of life, the less I am inclined to dismiss the various forms of mysticism that pop up in the course of a life.

I think there is room for the mystical and magical in an intelligent worldview. If not only because our individual experiences make it reasonable for us to believe in something a bit more, but also because such beliefs can be beneficial to us. It’s not that we’re justified in believing an entire religious system or anything like that. It’s just that we’re justified in being both scientific and mystical at the same time — and it’s a good thing.

Why Do We Believe What We Do?

After being raised with a little bit of mysticism in my life, I left it behind in favor of a materialistic view of the world. But these days, I wonder about what that decision has cost me, and what it costs others. I gave up a belief in something magical and mysterious, so that…what?

So that I can claim to adhere more closely with the data from the most widely accepted scientific experiments?

So that I can believe myself to be doing a more rigorous intellectual examination of things than people who allow magic and mystery into their worlds?

What does that ultimately get me? What does it get anyone?

Let me be clear here: I’m a fan of the scientific method. I think it’s a great way (probably the best way) to try to explain reality. However, there are many things that we humans experience in our lives for which there is no full and complete scientific explanation forthcoming.

A scientific worldview requires that we be open to new data, and allow for that data to change our theories about how things work. Then, we need to test those theories, and adjust them as the evidence supports them or fails to. What it doesn’t require us to do is reject or try to explain away the validity of anything that doesn’t fit into the going theories.

This is especially true of our subjective experiences.

Two Paths of Explanation

Let’s say you’re alone in your home one night . You’re feeling down, kind of sad. All of the sudden, you feel comforted for some reason. You get a feeling that is the opposite of loneliness. It’s not that you think some other person is with you — just that you don’t feel alone anymore, and quite all of the sudden.

Furthermore, the feeling is familiar to you. It feels just like a feeling you used to have in the presence of your beloved, but deceased grandmother.

There are 2 ways to try to explain this experience:

• accept your feeling as you felt it OR
• try to use the current vocabulary of neuroscience, psychology, and biology to explain what exactly happened and reject any data that doesn’t seem to fit

What I am arguing is that there is no scientific reason to take the second approach. Science requires rigor. Rigor requires allowing all of the data available to be considered, and allowing that data to possibly influence the theory. Our subjective experiences — even subjective, mystical ones — are data points. To reject them because they don’t fit with the going theory isn’t scientific. So there’s no shame in having these experiences.

I’m not saying go tell everyone that you were visited by the ghost of a relative. That might be going too far. You do have enough evidence to say that you felt the presence of someone close to you who has died. But you don’t have enough evidence to make a sweeping claim about what happens to people after death. Those are two largely different beliefs.

All you have evidence for is that you felt a presence. It is small, but it isn’t nothing. It impacted you; you felt it. So explore it. You might find — as many people do — that exploring it can actually provide you with some benefits.

There’s no need to go further and classify what happened. Simply use it. The experience made you feel better, it made you feel connected and loved. Use that to enrich your day, and perhaps begin to enrich your life. Remain open to other experiences like it. Accept it like you’d accept another tool in your toolbox — until it doesn’t work anymore.

But Why?

I’m thinking about these things now because I’m not so sure of the value of intellectual rigor alone. There are zealots, fanatics, and dogmatists all over — both in religion and science. They are both dangerous to the prospect of a rich and varied individual life.

We can be intellectually rigorous while accepting elements of mystical experience into our lives. We can, and should, listen to the theories of religion and spiritual traditions as we listen to what’s published in the latest scientific journals.

We as individual humans are doing nothing more than trying to build a life based on what we see working for us. It does us no good to reject the things we experience because someone we don’t know has a theory that doesn’t have room for it.

It’s a thin line to walk, for sure. We don’t want to believe in delusions and oversimplified explanations of things. We also don’t want to eliminate any mysticism from our lives because we want to believe what the scientific cool kids believe. It’s not easy.

That’s open-mindedness for you, though. It’s a tightrope walk — dangerous, but exhilarating and rewarding. And you can’t have the exhilaration without the danger. They come as a packaged deal.