Three Keys to a Happy Life
1. Make friends with your past.
2. Live in the present.
3. Be optimistic about the future.
…go on and be happy.
Tulips in La Conner, WA during the Tulip Festival a few years ago. It's almost that time of year again.
You Become Your Habits
The things you do every day, repeatedly, end up shaping you. Waking up early. Eating natural food. Drinking plenty of clean water. Working hard. Being nice to people just because you can. Being grateful. Giving others the benefit of the doubt. Helping when and where you can with whatever you can offer. Saying sorry when you mess up…
I’ve listed many positive habits but the same holds true for the not so positive ones. Watch over your habits for you will…slowly but inevitably…become them.
(Pic taken by me in the Galapagos Islands in December 2010. One of my habits is to travel…and visit a new country every year.)
Farewell Caballo
In loving memory of Micah True "Caballo Blanco"
It saddens me to hear this evening that Micah True – “Caballo Blanco” – has been found dead after being missing for almost a week in the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico. Search and rescue along with many ultra-runners participated in the search…..his body was found today.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Caballo on several occasions, and spent over a week with him during my own trip to Mexico to participate in the Copper Canyon Ultramarathon in 2011.
He was a man who truly followed his bliss, and gave everything he had to support the Raramuri “Tarahumara” people and their way of life.
Run free Caballo, we will miss you.
Getting Perspective on Your Problems
Sometimes I hear or read something that makes my jaw drop and puts all the problems and nagging things in my life in complete perspective.Today was one of those days.
Driving home from work today, annoyed at the traffic on my short 5 mile commute – and dreading my impending 5 mile run in the cold pouring rain…… NPR played a story about Shin In Geun.
He is, as far as we know, the only prisoner to escape from the horrid (and rarely talked about) political prison camps in North Korea. He was born into the camp, and lived there for 23 years…under the most extreme conditions.
He has been free for 7 years now, and The Guardian has an amazing story about him. It boggles my mind that these camps have ever existed…but is even more disturbing to think that in this modern-day and age…they STILL EXIST. The US State Department estimates ~200,000 people are in North Korean labor camp prisons right now.
Blaine Harden, an author and journalist, has just published a book about Shin’s ordeal – “Escape from Camp 14“. You can find articles and interviews about it on his website and get it on your Amazon Kindle now.
Like this:
Starting from Where You Are
I think a bigger predictor of if someone will achieve a goal or not is based on their ability to see things as they are, not their ability to envision a brighter future. Envisioning can be the easy part. It gets the juices flowing and creates motivation.
However the trickier part is honestly assessing the current state of affairs. It’s only through understanding how things are showing up for you, right now in the moment, that you can know what first steps are required to make progress toward the brighter future state. It’s through the polarity created in comparing today vs tomorrow that change can manifest, not unlike the current flowing through a circuit.
Pic of an elephant hanging out in one of our office buildings…
How to Finish What You Start
A lone Bison in the dead of winter, solely focused on finding food. Yellowstone National Park. By Ravi Raman.
Once you have set a goal and motivated yourself to get started, following through and finishing it is the next stumbling block. I have a friend who at one time had a list of almost 100 goals written down that he carried on a piece of paper with him in his wallet at all times. He felt they were all worthwhile and stressed about having to make progress on all of them.
Sound crazy? How many of those goals do you think he accomplished? Setting goals can be the easy part, making initial progress and then actually achieving something meaningful is far more difficult.
Another example can be found at your local gym. In January it was probably packed with people working towards their new years resolutions. Now look around, you will see far fewer people.
Finishing what you start can be a lot easier when you are really clear on why you are going after a goal to begin with. During your goal setting process, write a page (by hand ideally) about how your life will be different once the goal is achieved. Re-read this every week.
You can also perform a trick I like to do. Take your goal page, put it in an self addressed envelope and give it to a friend. Have them mail it to you in a few weeks. Write your goal page as a letter to yourself. Better yet, make a few copies and have a few friends mail it back to you at different intervals.
Doing this also makes you realize that having a ton of goals can be counter-productive and an overall distraction. The same thing applies to daily to-do lists and tactical things you need to get done. Focus on the one big thing and everything else will fall in order.
It helps to have just a few goals, but make sure they are really meaningful (which usually means they are challenging ones). It will be easier to focus and the payoff will be worth it. Instead of 100 or even 10 or 5 goals, start with just one big one!
Harvard Business Review has some other good ideas for staying committed and following through on your goals.
I’m Now a Homeowner!
After 12 years on my own post-college and renting all these years, I am now a homeowner!
The whole thing came about suddenly. I started thinking about potentially getting my own place 4 months ago, but didn’t start actually searching online until 3 months ago. 2 months ago I started visiting open houses and about 1.5 months ago I found a place, put in an offer….and got the keys last week!
I expected owning a home to feel like a burden, but it is exactly the opposite. It feels incredibly grounding and freeing at the same time.
Most of the house is empty (I’m coming from a small studio apartment) and I am in no rush to fill it right now, just enjoying the empty space…and small yard!
Geoff Roes’ 2012 Iditorad Trail Victory – a lesson in endurance potential
Geoff Roes – an elite American ultra-marathon runner – won an incredible race in the rugged Alaskan outback last week. Though, instead of saying he ‘won,’ it would be better to say he ‘survived the fastest.’
The 350 mile foot-race took a full week to complete in absolutely insane conditions. He pulled all his own gear in a sled behind him, often breaking trail through fresh snowfall and dragging himself up and over hills. It is worth reading his race report. To me it was a good reminder of what we are really capable of as humans from an endurance perspective.
Tony Robbins Interviews 108 Year Old Nazi Concentration Camp Survivor
If anyone has a reason to be angry at the world it is 108 year old Nazi holocaust survivor Alice Herz Summer.
She lost her family. She suffered incredibly at the hands of her captors. However, what is so remarkable is that she isn’t angry. Not at all. She considers herself as “optimistic and laughing from the beginning of my life.” She lives by herself, plays the piano daily and has an outlook on life that we can all learn from. For her, life is never terrible…it is a gift.
What I took away from this video is:
- Be grateful for everything – a smile, the sun, “everything is a present”
- Never hate, we are all sometimes good and sometimes bad
- Things are not so terrible, no matter what you might think
- Focus on the good and learn from the bad
- Learn, learn, never stop learning
- Music is her food, her religion…and her medicine…”Bach is better than 100 pills!”
For me, the most powerful insight comes 10 minutes into the video…..”living ones life backwards.”
Take 12 minutes out of your day and watch this video. I’ve watched it several times already since this morning. It is guaranteed to shift your perspective in a positive way.
