Maximizing Your Life vs. Survival

What is it to have truly lived a full life, or put a better way by William Wallace, "Every man dies. Not every man really lives."  So many of us get stuck just existing, piddling away our days or more likely getting distracted by the day in day out events our either our lives or the the lives of the people around us.  My life the past 2 years has reflected this arc where due to a death in my family, my wife sunk deep into depression and has basically had to piece her life back together.  Meanwhile my kids are at a great age where their lives are simply exploding with all sorts of activities and adventures.  For many years I have anticipated this phase of my life where I get to coach teams and truly soak in life through the eyes of children. There is no doubt that the world is a magical, mysterious and amazing place to a 4 year old.  Every day is met with a combination of excitement, innocence and adventure.  But life also does not go the way any of us want sometimes.  For a 4 year old this means dropping your drink on the ground if you don't like how it tastes and then breaking down crying.  For an adult we encounter and cope with all types of things we don't like.  Unfortunately our version of dropping the cup looks a lot different.  The pain and suffering usually happens on the inside and only in time does it manifest itself on the outside.  We buffer the disappointments, the pain and the suffering. Some are better at coping than others and life's obstacles make us stronger or at least more philosophical over time. 

We spend so much of our lives just trying to survive and this has been true for most generations of humans.  Simply staying alive for most people is an accomplishment.  However, I have always taken a different tact on life; I wanted to see what my life would look like if I truly tried to maximize my life.  Call it living life to its fullest, being a Rennaisance Man, or attempting to be the greatest version of myself that I can be - striving to do life the right way.  What does that mean to me:

• Greet each day with a positive attitude
• Be good to other people; be charitable; take care of those less fortunate than me
• Apply all of my skills and talents
• Seek out life's adventures through travel and exploration
• Consume the world's creativity through books, music, movies, and art
• Never stop playing
• Challenge myself physically; be fit; eat right; exercise

There is no doubt that I have done some of these things the past few years, but I have also felt like I have fallen short because I was simply in survival mode.  There was not enough time or energy to take life to the next level.  Why is it so easy to get off track and so hard to stay on track?  We simply take our eye of the prize and before we know it weeks, months and years fly by without even noticing that we have transformed into a mere shadow of our highest selves.  Our lowest selves are that part of us that simply wants to sit on the couch and not work out, or just say yes to that little piece of cake at a child's birthday party, or even forgetting what makes us happiest in life.  For me, writing has always been the one thing that has made me happy and centered.  I am most connected to my higher self when I put pen to paper and connect with my soul.  We all carry around so much wisdom inside of ourselves that we don't know how to tap into. If we just think about it we know the next right thing to do or how to react to situations. Where does this wisdom come from?  What is our higher self?  Is this a connection to our soul or to God?  In the book Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss, he touches on this subject of tapping into the wisdom of all the previous lives we have lived.  This also touches on the concept of new souls vs. old souls.  People that take life in stride are move evolved in some way or maybe they have just done this more times so they have more experiences to draw upon.

There is no doubt we all aspire to live a great and grand life.  We do want to suck the marrow out of life and experience all that life has to offer, but we also don't want to lose sight of what is more important - truly appreciating what we have and the time we have with loved ones.  How we go about figuring that out is truly a personal choice.  For me, that means finding time to get perspective and then re-entering life and giving everything I have to make the most of this precious life. 

Facing Adversity

This is a large topic and one that in the stage of life I am in right now seems like a topic I revisit on almost a daily basis. I am not sure it is the age I am at, but guessing it has something to do with it.  My parents and my friend's parents are getting older, some have even died at what seems like a young age for our society, I have a young family, my career is hitting its stride, my marriage is 10 years old, and I am starting to see a future filled with challenges around financing my life, education for my kids, and my retirement. 

In my 20's and 30's, the adversity I faced was so different, but no less stressful.  Career and family were where I focused a great deal of my time and energy.  Life outside of those was consumed by friends and fun.  I wanted to see more of the world and I slowly but surely chipped away at that.  There was always the hope that I could turn a big idea into a quick million, but I chased peace of mind more than a large wallet.  I had not established a career and that was something I tirelessly pursued into my late 20's.  While I waited for the right woman to show up in my life, I did a ton of soul searching and inner work.  I read, I wrote, I thought, I stared and sometimes I just questioned.  But through it all I persevered and built myself up.  I had answers to most questions and where I did not have answers I had philosophies and points of view.  I had dug deep inside myself and challenged the world around me.  I built character and developed my world view.  I grappled with my faith and searched for my own higher power and did not limit my search to my upbringing.  I looked at different religions from all over the world for perspectives I had not considered.  I assembled various threads of truth and purity to weave together my fabric. Through it all I got a true sense of who I was and who I wanted to be in the world.  I sketched bold lines in my life and tried like heck to not cross them at all costs.

Then came my 40's and life took on all types of new challenges that have tested what I have constructed.  I am not sure how I would have survived the adversity of the past few years without my foundation and my faith. Everyone faces adversity, but is part of the human condition to struggle?  Do we truly grow in the face of adversity?  Is it possible to build character without facing life's challenges like death, working at relationships, creating financial stability, and stoking career ambitions? 

I guess another way to look at this is what makes us look deep inside ourselves?  Because only by turning and looking into our deepest beliefs and motivations do we find faith.  I truly believe that we all carry around God within us, but few of us set out on the quest to discover and unlock that relationship.  Only when we are at our weakest do most of us turn to our faith for guidance.

Is the truest test of all what we do in the face of adversity?  In my case, I have chosen to stand as tall as I can and stare adversity in the face.  I have decided to put all that I know and all that I have learned to the test.  I have decided to fight my way through it and not give up on those people closest to me.  I truly do not know why I have done this as I know many in similar situations who took the easy way out or in some cases had it far worse and the only answer was to run...as quick as you can in the other direction.   In many ways, if I run away from the adversity I am facing, I am running away from all of my core beliefs.  Namely:

1. God would not give me more than I can handle
2. Always take the high road - the view is much better in the short and long run
3. Be loyal to other people
4. Remember where you came from
5. What you do in the face of adversity shows what type of person you are
   

When all is said and done, I contend that most of the lessons we have learned are found in the face of adversity. The challenges we face and overcome fuel our souls and propel our lives forward. How we handle failure is far more important than how we handle success for in those moments when we are filled with doubt, regret, pity and possibly a loss of will is when we best understand who we are as people. We know who are friends really are. We understand if our core beliefs are validated. We understand and want to explore the greater truths of the world.

My Compass

We all have a natural built in compass but so few of us know how to read our compass. Many people simply never take the time to look at it because we are too busy with our lives. Finding your compass requires us to reflect on life, understand where we have been, chart where we want to go and then figure out how to navigate our ways to our destination.

Some of us are not even bold enough to plot a direction. Why is that? I think it is all based on fear as committing to a direction means we are not also committing not to take our life in other directions. The fear of choosing 1% over the 99%. What is everyone so scared of? Realistically none of us will get to our destinations 100% of the time, but even if you get 80 or 90% of the direction correct, aren't you better off than not even starting the journey? Life has a way of shifting and humans have a unique ability to adapt as we proceed through the journey of life. We need to have faith that as things shift along the journey, we will shift as well and still make our way along the path to our intended destination.

This shifting is the challenging and oftentimes enjoyable part of the journey. Life throws all types of barriers in our way and how we adapt and continue to move down the path is in many ways the reward when we look back. Oftentimes, I am amazed at how I had the ability to overcome what life has thrown in my way and my ability to handle adversity and persevere.

Why do we persevere?

I think the key to perseverance is having an incredibly meaningful reason why you want to accomplish a goal or reach a destination. The stronger that desire the more willingness we all have to overcome adversity along the way. It all comes to a why - why are we chasing what we are chasing? If that why is incredibly powerful and meaningful to you, then the full commitment of your will power is stronger than anything life can throw in your way. There is a no stopping a fully committed person.

So how does someone get fully committed?

The key here is so yes to one thing and no to countless other possibilities. You need to separate the wheat from the chafe and have singular focus on a goal. From there you are dangerous so to speak as you can fully align your day to day decisions in alignment with achieving that goal. The hard part is simply saying yes to one thing.

If we all took just one thing and got fully committed to that singular goal, I have no doubt lives would change for the better. In my own life, when I used this in my personal and professional life, I saw dramatic changes. When I start out on a job search for example, I define in explicit detail exactly the job I am looking for which focuses and centers what I consider. What happens next is absolutely fascinating as all types of opportunities arise, but most of them are simply distractions. Saying yes also requires us to say no quite a few times. Life can be incredibly distracting and if you don't have a clear connection with a goal and your internal compass, then you will invariably sway off course. Given time and some focus, eventually the right types of opportunities that are in line with our goal do present themselves. Then you can actually start to make progress towards your eventual goal.

I am not saying it is easy. It takes a great deal of faith to pull this off as there are many dark days where you question if the right opportunity will ever present itself. But if you have the lens through which you look at the world - your lens - then life will be much clearer. You can filter out things that will create a lack of focus and in other cases opportunities are very close and you can mold those to be more in line with your goal. However, you can only do this when you know what you are looking for.

One last thought here, I mentioned faith. I have always felt we bring the energy, people and opportunities into our life that we ask for. There is no doubt this touches on your sense of spirituality and I have felt that if I know what I want and do the work to define the why, then this creates some type of energy in the universe. Invariably when I put this energy out, it comes back to me within a matter of days. I guess some call this faith, serendipity, or simply luck. But for me it is reinforces my underlying assumption that there is a bigger force in the universe that governs everything we do in and after our lives.

What is your boulder?

I recently saw the movie 127 hours, which is based on the story or Aaron Ralston who was a hiker and adventure-seeker, who got trapped at the bottom of a crevice on a trail in Utah. The how he was trapped and what he did to escape is the compelling part of the story. His hand and lower part of his arm got wedged between the wall of the crevice and a boulder when some sheetrock broke free. He literally could not move the boulder for all of his trying and he was stuck in the middle of nowhere; a place nobody would ever come looking for him.

This makes for a great read and if you ever have time you should check out the book. It does not make for a great movie in my opinion as you basically suffer with him for the 127 hours he was stuck at the bottom of this crevice wedged by a boulder. He eventually breaks his lower arm and then proceeds to cut it off in order to escape and survive. It speaks to the human spirit as he truly had to choose survival without part of his right arm or death.

Of course this got me thinking? Would I be courageous enough to do that and at what point do you consider this option? But that led me to a deeper line of thinking: we are all trapped by some type of boulder in our lives, how is this holding us back and what would or should we do to escape and get on with our lives?

Now I am not suggesting that we are all trapped, but we do sidestep personal issues that hold us back from truly living life to its fullest extent. My greatest boulder is my need for personal time to re-charge, but at this stage of my life that time is hard to find. As a result I end up having two huge shortfalls. The first is I neglect my body - I don't take time to work out and keep my body strong and fit. The second is I lose touch with my soul. This disconnect with my higher self usually ends up with losing perspective on what is really important in life. I let small things throw me off course.

Another classic movie that relates to this is It's A Wonderful Life. A scene I think all parents can relate to is when George Bailey comes home after his uncle loses the $8,000. He is stressed out and feels like his world is coming to an end. He does not consider the endless reach his life truly had and had stopped appreciating the joy and laughter that his kids were having. Let's face it, adulthood can get very intense and full of gravity at times and we lose touch with the joy of just living. We lose our ability to just appreciate and enjoy living.

In many ways lately this has become a large boulder in my life as I have lived through the most intense year of my life. Personally, the death of my mother-in-law has sent my personal life reeling in endless directions that I had no way to prepare for. No one is prepared to see the ones you love to go through depression. No one is prepared for decades of family traditions to get thrown out the window. Nobody wants to see the ones they love simply crumble as a result of a broken heart. I have added the stress of a 60+ hour a week job that has me trading my personal life at nights for a personal computer and email.

To say this is not what I signed up for is the understatement of a lifetime. But I am sure this story is tame compared to what so many others this year have gone through. With over 10% unemployment, record foreclosures, and futures washed away due to the recent financial collapse, stress in the world has to be at an all time high.

So how do people cope and overcome their personal boulders? Do we all have to cut off our arms to move forward? Is there another way to move on without such a huge sacrifice? Can't we just decide to confront what afflicts us and move forward with life? Or is it more of a process where it takes time and reflection?

All I know is I don't want another year like the one that I just lived through. I have reached the point where I am ready to make changes to my life. I want to welcome back joy and laughter to my life. I want more time with friends. I want to enjoy more time with my kids.

What comes next?

This is the question we all face and yet so few of us ever truly want to spend even a moment pondering what comes next. Because to ponder this question is to face the ultimate fear head on with no real answers. However, in line with my last post about managing your space, it would naturally make sense that if we are all safely diverted with our fast paced, technology-driven lives, who really has the time, perspective or courage to grapple with the ultimate question.

I just found out that a friend I knew in business school is possibly in the final days of her existence due to a brain tumor. She can only be mid to late 40's max and has three kids. We all walk around in complete denial that our time too will come to an end. Even fewer of us even realize that our days in this life are but a precious few. We lose sight of what is really important in life as too often we get caught up in the ugly side of life. We take the days for granted and live for an endless promise of tomorrow until tomorrow is today and it is our last.

There are so many days, weeks, months and now even years that fade into each other like some passing blur. I hear more and more people question "where did that week go?". Or worse yet, they are so unhappy with their lives that they yearn for the weekdays to pass by so they can get to the weekend.

On a normal day I might share this desire to have free time, but is it really worth trading 5 for 2 week after week? Is it really trading 50 work weeks for 2 vacation weeks? Are we all so caught up in life as we know it not to stop for one minute and ask, "what if tomorrow does not come? What does this life really mean? What comes next?".

I have spent time pondering these questions, but I often lose touch with them when I am fully locked into day to day grind of life. These questions become almost inconsequential when you are trying to meet a tight deadline, race home only to be stuck in traffic, or just handling the daily chores of life. Worse yet, we all too often get stuck complaining about life as we know it instead of appreciating the blessing of life. We complain about our jobs, our commute, the driver that cut me off, the struggles we have with relationships, how to get from paycheck to paycheck, and so on and so on. You know the drill?

But in those moments of self-reflection, when I find the space and time to take a step back, I have always been filled with a strong spirituality and faith that this life is not an end. How can it be?

You might ask, how can I be so sure? Well here is my proof: the soul. We all have a soul, some are nice, some are not, some are old and some are new. But we all have a soul that we can get in touch with and explore. Where does that come from and how can it just vanish when we die if it is not really material or tangible? How can we just ponder our existence and find answers to our questions like we have bottled up wisdom stored deep inside of us?

I often ponder that I have two sides of me, the physical and the spiritual. The body and the soul. I know that I spend far too little time in the realm of my soul seeking wisdom and answers that will help unlock the hidden pathways to a brighter tomorrow and more meaningful today. Why do so few of us stay in touch with our souls? Are we too busy or are we too distracted? Is life moving too fast that our souls cannot keep up?

Personally, I feel there are too many distractions and my soul just does not operate at the speed of the modern world. My soul likes a slower pace where I can take it all in and as cliche as it is "suck the marrow out of life". Sadly my soul does not pay the bills so I am forced to live in my body more than my soul. But there are moments in my week where my soul goes to work; especially when I manage other people. These are unique opportunities to make the lives of the people around me better. Sure, some love to manage by fear, but I have always felt that a clear goal and a kind heart go much further than a loud voice and a big stick.

But when I live in the realm of the soul, I feel a deep connection to the bigger world out there. I know there is more to life than what our five senses tell us. There is a continuum beyond both this planet we call home and this life we know. Personally, I look at this life as Earth School, which I read in a book years ago. We are all here to work on different facets of our life. Some of us make bigger leaps forward than others while some take steps backwards. But in the end we are all here for a reason even though that is not quite evident at the time.

There has to be more than that though. So how do we all live for a better today and be focused on the soul? I believe there are so many events in our daily lives that have the potential to keep us in touch with our soul, but we need to have the awareness to make this conscious connection. While this is not an exhaustive list, it is a start and I encourage others to think of what keeps them connected to their soul: loving, hugging, praying, cooking, reading to our kids, teaching others, playing, laughing, helping others, gardening, enjoying nature, the sunset, the stars, the moon, music.

So I don't have any real solution, but I think we all need to spend a little more time appreciating the days we have with our family, friends, and loved ones. As one of my favorite artists Dave Matthews Band sang in one of my favorite songs Pig, "Don't burn the day away". I will link to the video Pig by Dave Matthews Band here:

And the lyrics are worth the read below. I hope this gets you a little more connected with your soul and you spend even a few minutes tomorrow not only being thankful for today, but also do one thing to connect with your soul (and ponder that connection as you are doing it).

Pig by Dave Matthews Band
Oh, isn't it strange
How we move our lives for another day?
Like skipping a beat
What if a great wave should wash us all away?
Just thinking out loud
Don't mean to dwell on this dying thing
But look at my blood
It's alive right now,
And deep and sweet within
Pouring through our veins
Intoxicate moving wine to tears
And drinking it deep
Then an evening spent dancing
It's you and me...

This love will open our world
From the dark side we can see a glow of something bright
Oh, there's much more than we see here
Don't burn the day away

Is this not enough?
This blessed sip of life,
Is it not enough?
Staring down at the ground
Oh, then complain and pray for more from above,
You greedy little pig
Stop, just watch your world trickle away
Oh, it's your problem now
It'll all be dead and gone in a few short years

Just love will open our eyes
Just love will put the hope back in our minds
Much more than we could ever know
Oh, so don't burn the day away
Don't burn the day away

Come sister, my brother
Shake up your bones, shake up your feet
I'm saying open up
And let the rain come pouring in
Wash out this tired notion
That the best is yet to come
But while you're dancing on the ground
Don't think of when you're gone

Love, love, love, what more is there?
'Cause we need the light of love in here
Don't beat your head
Dry your eyes
Let the love in there
There's bad times
But that's okay
Just look for love in it

And don't burn the day away...

Look, here are we
On this starry night, staring into space
And I must say
I feel as small as dust lying down here

What point could there be troubling?
Head down wondering what will become of me?
Why concern "WHAT" we cannot see
But no reason to abandon it
The time is short but that's all right
Maybe I'll go in the middle of the night
Take your hands from your eyes, my love
All good things must come to an end some time
But don't burn the day away
Don't burn the day away...

Come sister, my brother
Shake up your bones, shake up your feet
I'm saying open up
And let the rain come flooding in
Wash out this tired notion
That the best is yet to come
But while you're dancing on the ground
Don't think of when you're gone

Love, love, love, what more is there?
'Cause we need the light of love in here
Don't beat your head
Dry your eyes
Let the love in there
There're bad times
But that's okay
Just look for love in it

Managing Your Space

I was recently in the Stanislaus National Forest living for a week among some of the tallest trees you will ever see. I noticed how there is a natural spacing between the trees and wondered - how does nature know how to space itself out? If so many pine trees are dropping pine cones and pine seeds, what controls which take root and which do not? If they all took root there would be no space between the trees and they would not thrive.

True to my theme in this blog, I quickly thought how does this apply to my life and the human condition? Just like trees and pine seeds, not all human seeds take root. I read somewhere a long time ago that the odds of just being born are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 in 350 billion. Stop and think about that for a minute - the very fact that you are here reading this means you are one of the lucky ones. What this also means is that all 7 billion people walking the face of the planet have all won the lottery of human existence.

Just like the trees, some of us will grow and thrive while others will not. So much depends on the circumstances we are born into and the circumstances we create for ourselves. Most humans are much more in control of their circumstances than most other parts of nature, but the general rules of nature still apply. What makes a tree grow? Fertile soil, sunlight, water, and space. What makes a human grow? Well, I could dig at that question for a long time - and grow vs. thrive is another long chapter. Generally speaking it has a lot to do with basic nutrition, sleep and avoiding disease. But so much has to do with meeting emotional, physical, and psychological needs. Another level above that to me is having a purpose in life and as Viktor Frankl once wrote in Man's Search for Meaning, if you have a why to live for, then you will figure out the how.

How does space relate to this discussion? Well I strongly believe that we all need a certain amount of physical, emotional and mental space to thrive. Have you ever had a day or moment in time that you just need your own space? I often get this way and just need to literally recluse myself in order to move forward. That is probably the hardest part of the life we lives we lead today, there is so much competing for our attention and taking up our space. Life was not always this way for me, but with kids and the information revolution, it is harder and harder to find space.

But when I do find space, I find my soul waiting for me. And with my soul I always find wisdom. Wisdom that is usually well beyond my years which makes me then believe that in those moments when I find space and I can plug into something bigger than my small little life, I actually connect with God and the bigger part of nature that we are all part of.

More and more I am finding it harder to get into space. Modern society is consuming us minute by minute, email by email, and tweet by tweet. Free time when we find it is filled with entertainment of all sorts. Whether it is television, computers, internet, email, FaceBook, Twitter, or those deadly time killers called Apps, our lives are more tethered to technology than ever before.

What is even more bizarre is we are more connected with each other than ever before, but I feel less connected to the people in my life than ever before. How strange is it that I can know everything my friends are doing without ever spending any time talking to them? Is that true connection? Is that our new human existence?

This all brings me back to where I started. I would say 30, 50, 100 years ago we all had plenty of space. Life was harder in some ways, but much less compressed. The demands on our time were far less than they are today. Sometimes I look at my personal email inbox as more of a burden than a benefit. If I wanted to get in touch with a friend far away 20 years ago, I would probably send them a letter or call them if I could afford it. There was a natural rhythm to corresponding via letters. You would write and mail a letter and it would take up to a week for it to get to your friend. By time they wrote back and it arrived, 2-3 weeks of your life would go by. By then you had a good amount of material built up to write the next installment. Email is so wham-bam-thank you ma'am, that the back and forth happens within a day and then you go on with your life for a few months before someone gets the impulse to write again.

While I make my living off of technology and in particular all things that torment me in terms of technology and speeding up my life, I do yearn for a simpler time. If we are all spending more time on the computer and cell phones than we were before, and if we have not given anything up, then we have lost our space. In losing that space, we are disrupting the laws of nature because we all need our space. Basically we are overpopulating the forest with trees and as a result most trees will not have the natural sunlight and space to grow.

I believe that will be the final result of this experiment called social networking. We will all feel super connected, but will have far less time to simply ponder our existence. Without truly taking time for self reflection, we will not know ourselves as well as we could and we will not get as much out of life as we could. Without understanding where we have been, how can we figure out what we want to change to move forward down what we believe is a meaningful path? Therefore, in the absence of space and time for self reflection, we will all grow a lot less than we should and as a result there will be far less meaning to our lives.

My Higher Self

Through all of my years filled with numerous experiences and lessons of life, I always come back to my higher self this time of year. I am sure everyone has a different version of their higher self, but mine is this lofty place where I am close to God and in grounded in a life filled with purpose and direction. When I manage my life from this place, my decisions are clear and decisive, my thoughts are compassionate and caring, my motives pure and high.

I often hear myself tell others that it is best to take the high road. When I operate from the high road, I feel noble, regal, and close to God. I feel like I am living the good life, a life filled with a caring soul, a loyal disposition, a pure heart. I have the best of intentions for myself and for the other people in my life. I live a life with no regrets because I did right by other people.

I have found that I live most of my life on the high road, but recently I have found it harder to find the high road and take the high road. The world of sadness and depression entered my family six months ago and sent me totally reeling. Part of me thinks it has been in my life in many ways longer, but the obvious impacts have left me scrambling for my higher self, my center, my foundation.

I have learned that depression is not rational. It operates from a place that is nowhere near the higher self and it does not listen to the wisdom of the higher self. I have tried from months and probably years to reason with it, but it does not heed the call. Instead it resents, rejects, and refuses the outsider. It pushes it away...hard.

I am now working on removing depression from my house. Taking it by the hand and showing it the door. I am hopeful that in time I can begin to climb the high road in my life again. I can again lift my life up and begin to reconnect with my higher self. I can live a life filled with integrity, happiness, love, laughter, and wonder.