The Positive Persuasion

Jay Shafer decided one day to remove the clutter from his world and start over.  He designed and built an 89 square foot home, and began living there. Leaving the ‘everything big’ lifestyle behind him, his life transformed. I love this story. It reminds me how frivolous some of our attachment to material goods can be. Does anyone really need a 20,000 square foot mansion? Maybe they do. I don’t know anyone with one, so I can’t just come out and ask. I’ll update this post if I ever find that answer.

This begs the question of what do we really need in our lives to be happy. It’s not so much about becoming a minimalist and throwing out everything but toilet paper and three outfits – that’s a little too frightening for most of us. Instead, it’s about removing the “noise” and “stuff” with which we all seem to fill our lives. It’s about pulling away from owning things just to own things.

Personally, I remember being younger and spending money on a whole bunch of things I found cool. Now I can’t remember a single thing I got that was important. And I certainly don’t have any of this cool “stuff” to show nowadays. Why did it all disappear? Was it not too expensive and therefore disposable? Was it simply misplaced? Stolen? What happened to all my cool stuff?!?!

It wasn’t truly important to me, so it didn’t stick around. Because it truly wasn’t that important, I didn’t miss it, and I didn’t replace it. Imagine all the things in your life you could sell off, throw out, or donate – stuff you really don’t need, won’t miss, and won’t replace if gone one day. The minimalist credo is similar to “waste not, want not” and is a great place to start.

This becomes MUCH easier after a values exercise. You get a solid sense of your values, what motivates you, and what you need to move forward. You can then ask what this “thing” brings you that you cannot be without. If it doesn’t fill that space inside you, it really doesn’t have to fill that space in your house.

Try your own version of living little. See how it goes, and let us know!

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you all!

Blake

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Brian Mattocks over at Rent-A-Smart-Guy has a great post on setting real, achievable goals. There are several variations of the S-M-A-R-T acronym, but this is the original. Read on!

“Many people use goals to drive to a more ideal future. Some goals can’t easily be achieved because they don’t seem to convert well into the SMART (Specific, Measureable, Achieveable, Realistic, Time-Bound) goals criteria. Desires like new skills, future beliefs, or perspectives are often very difficult to get to a level of specificity or measurability. Don’t fret. There is a simple question based process to get you to some very specific objective goals.

“Objective Goals typically fall into the category of SMART goals. Most objective goals can be specific, measurable, achieveable, reasonable, and time bound. Such goals often relate to objective properties in the real world that you can appreciate with your senses. In many ways, setting these goals are easy – because they make sense. It is also easy to get help with objective goals.

“Subjective desires on the other hand are much more difficult to work with. Subjective desires often relate to feelings or perspectives on a situation or problem. Desires like “I want to get better at handling stress” become much more difficult to work with in SMART terms. Others such as  ”I want to have more self confidence” are just as challenging.

“Fortunately, there is a simple series of questions we can use to turn Subjective desire statements into Objective goal statements and make them easier to work with. Here they are:

1. What would different if you achieved your goal? This is a good question because it helps you get to specific behaviors and circumstances you can work on or create. Each of these statements of difference help to describe a potential objective goal or action step.
2. What am I doing now that I should start/stop/continue doing to help achieve my desire?
   In the same way, this question can help you get to specific actions or behaviors that you can change to achieve your desire. Each of these start/stop/continue items may be made an objective goal very easily. For example if you want to stop thinking judgmental thoughts, simply start counting them. Such a goal might be worded “I want to think 15 less negative thoughts a week by the end of the quarter.”
3. What is the emotion/need behind the visible desire?
   Often times, what we think we want is a “desire symptom” of a deeper emotional need, or desire. For example, many people want to lose weight in order to feel more attractive and be more confident with themselves. Others want to lose weight for the more “objective” reasons of health.

“Asking these three questions should get you from a squishy desire into a much harder objective goal. If not, keep asking them. Eventually such questions will drive into an objective statement that you can work with.  This is the key to taking a desire out of the realm of inaction and fantasy and bringing it into a place where you can work to make it happen.”

Rent-A-Smart-Guy is a great resource for getting all your questions answered. They cover topics on business, motivation, sales, networking, IT, engineering, and more. Check Brian and the team out! www.RentaSmartGuy.com

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Psychology Today has a brilliant article on America’s culture of envy, and wanting be, do, and have more. Moreover, it’s about our own judgements that we haven’t accomplished enough – regardless of what incredible feats we have completed. It rings so true with me because I can hear the parts of my mind screaming at me about what I haven’t done, and how I fail to measure up to people around me; but I also hear the voice that’s amazed with the things I have done when I measure them against my ability as a human being to do them. It’s about measuring your life against your internal dream – not against the celebutantes on TV.

“The Contender Syndrome is subtly different from envy. It’s more a sense of not living up to the best you, rather than not living up to the best Albert Einstein. Some scientists say the feeling of not reaching your potential comes from a discrepancy between the ‘actual self’ (who you are), the ‘ideal self’ (who you’d like to be), and the ‘ought self’ (who you think others want you to be). Troubles arise when your actual self doesn’t align with your other visions.”

Anything from parents or teachers telling you things like, “You can do it. You’re better/stronger/smarter than this.” can start the process of either pushing you to achieve, or create the gap between where you are and where you’d like to be. This gap is the big pickle. Some people never learned how to build a bridge from here (actual) to there (ideal). Often this gap can seem too big to bridge, or simply impossible because the talent needed to live that dream aren’t available. Hazel Markus, a Psychologist at Stanford University, disagrees with this.

“A lot of people think you need the talent. People who end up suffering, feeling like they could have been a contender, are those with the idea that talents are pretty much fixed, so they don’t figure out how to get from where they are to where they want to be,” says Markus. “They don’t even really think it’s possible, so they don’t put the work into it.”

How will you know you’ve achieved it? How do you know you haven’t yet? How do you know you’re not in denial about your achievement? A lot of people see the ideal self and hear the ought self, but can’t get a clear view of the actual self. They may actually be very close to their ideal state, but they can’t see the steps they’ve taken, and the successes they’ve had along the way. Their gap is still too big. One great way to bring your progress into light is to name the greatest pleasures in what you have or do, or the person you are. You’ll see that your values are in some of your greatest pleasures. There’s more to life than ‘keeping up with the Jones family’ and it involves celebrating your successes just as much as you celebrate other peoples’.

Take time to reflect on where you are now, and what you’ve done to get here. You may find that your actual self isn’t far from your ideal self at all. Celebrate that! Follow what makes you happy, and do the work to get there and beyond. Often real, focused work is what separates the contenders from the victors. Success is subjective, my friends. One man’s failure is another man’s success. It’s all about what makes you happy.

“If you’re doing something positive in the world, if you’re productive, if you’re a player; then you’re a success.”

Peace, Love, and a million successes to you all,

Blake

Reference: “I Coulda Been a Contender” by Abby Ellin. Psychology Today. August, 2010

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