Year in Review 4 & 5: Happiness and Bad Stuff

Well, I better finish this up, since the year is moving on.

One of my key lessons this year was realizing that happiness is a skill. I think that for so long I was trying to make certain things happen that would make me happy. I think this is pretty common -- thinking that some new material possession or some new and improved relationship or a new job or whatever will "make" us happy. But this year I really took to heart that happiness has more to do with internal circumstances than external ones.

The other major life lesson for me this year is this. Bad stuff happens to all of us all the time. Maybe we get out of bed late, or our wife/husband/other-relationship-person yells at us, or the kids don't listen, or our employees or bosses or co-workers are jerks -- it all raises a level of anxiety that we seek to escape. Most of us work very hard to try to prevent the bad thing from happening again. We say, "Hey, don't yell at me. Why did you yell at me? You're a jerk for yelling at me. Don't ever yell at me again." In effect, we react. I've come to see that there is a certain intrinsic futility to this approach -- trying to get the bad things to stop. The real key is figuring out how to respond to the bad thing with grace and dignity. You can't make it stop, but you can choose how to respond. That's the one thing you can control -- yourself (sort of). When bad things happen now, I try to stay focused on how I respond rather on trying to get to to go away.

Okay, so there is a number 6 also. Anxiety/fear triggers the reptilian brain in our heads that yells either "fight" or "flight". This happens like a million times a day -- anxiety wells up from all kinds of little things. Some of us respond to the anxiety with some form of aggression (harsh words, anger, a fist) and some respond with some form of passive escape (stay quite, leave the room, avoid the situation, etc.). We're programmed to respond to anxiety with either passiveness or aggression -- these are survival mechanisms that work for all kinds of species. But being human has to do with staying in the middle. Neither running away, nor fighting, but staying present, calm and firm. This is a tough one, but it's major cool when you can do it. Don't fight back, don't run away. Just stay with it, stay with the person or the situation that is evoking your anxiety. Be present.

It was a great year for me because of these collective insights and skills.

Year in Review 3: Fun and Friendship

Part and parcel of this transformation from being achievement oriented to just being present, has been my shift to pursue some things just for fun. Probably the biggest new pleasure for me this past year was playing on the co-ed soccer league. And our team very much fit my state of being. We all enjoyed learning the game, no one was too set on winning, and we just went out and had a good time. I hadn’t really been involved in a purely recreational sport since college. The co-ed league inspired me to try out for the men’s national team which in turn inspired me to get into better shape. Angelo and I took up running together a few mornings a week, and it’s been something that I’ve come to really look forward to. It’s a time to just run, like a kid (well, at least for the first 100 yards), and to socialize and solve the world’s problems. It’s been a great new friendship.

Blogging has been another source of new friendships. The blogging itself has been fun, but at times, it seems like a pain, and every time I feel the pressure of having to post something, I just sit back, and let the week go by, trying not to get anxious about the lack of posts. Boni, Jeff and Brad are friends that I’ve gotten to know through blogging, and although I hardly spend time with them, I enjoy their perspectives, and being in touch with their lives, radically different from my own. Any year with new friends is a great year.

I’ve also adopted a new set of criteria before engaging in new endeavors. I get a lot of requests from people to join their cause, or to pursue various business opportunities, and although I’m almost always tempted, I’ve been successfully sticking to the criteria that emerged during the year: Will this be fun, and will this simplify my life? If not, then I let it glide by. For 2008, one of my major goals is in a way a non-goal – to have fun. Woooohooooo!

Year in Reivew 2: I am, therefore I am

My whole life I’ve been an achiever. This year I realized the source of this drive to achieve, and it hasn’t been pretty. But it has resulted in a whole new way of approaching life for me. You see, for the vast majority of us achievers, the motivation, so deep-seeded and unconscious, is a drive for acceptance – to be seen as “good enough”, to be loved. When I realized this as the driving force, it was a liberating shock. I’ve often admired people who achieve a lot, particularly those that do great things in many areas – run twenty companies, excel at many sports, etc. With this new insight, I actually began to feel a bit of sorrow for them, realizing that in most cases, their octane achievements are built on this ache for love. I was a bit sad for myself as this all settled in too. “Wow, all these achievements are really a symbol of this desire for acceptance and love. That hurts.”

But now, I feel freed from that drive. I’m not seeking out new achievements. I’m seeking the things that bring me joy, and pursuing them, without the need to excel at them. The achievements still come, but their meaning is in the process of getting there. The end result seems so ephemeral to me now, like a cherry blossom that blooms full of beauty and then disappears. It’s been a shift for me to see that I am not what I do. But rather what I do is a reflection of what I am. I am defined by me, not by the achievements.

I finally got a copy of my new book in my hands. For a few days I would look at it, feeling, “Wow, here it is. I did it.” And then someone asked for a copy, and he was leaving for another country, and I just gave the only copy in existence to him. It was somehow symbolic of this new awareness.

I’m still pursuing a lot, but somehow, the things I’m doing I’m pursuing for the sake of themselves – the fun, or the intrinsic value of the action itself – rather than for the hope of receiving some recognition or love. I achieve things now, and sort of say, “cool!”, and then move on. I’ve realized that who I am has more to do with who I am and not with what I do. As a friend of mine said, you were a “human doing”, now you’re a “human being.” It’s been liberating.

Year in Review 1: Spitting in the Eye of Fear

Happy New Year to everyone. I got back from Guam with Nava and Arman on the 31st. Our family got a call from Boni, inviting us to her house for the New Year. Arman and Nava were too tired, so Mara stayed home with them, and I went up with the younger two. It was nice to finally meet Tony and the rest of Boni's family. We left around 9, but it was the most we've done on a New Year's Eve in a long time. Thanks, Boni for a great time, great food, and great company.

The New Year and my birthday come around the same time, so it’s always a doubly opportune time for me to review the year. This has been one of the most important years in my life, because it signaled major shifts for me on many levels. I suppose the changes have been incubating for the last year or two, but this year they seem to have hatched, and I’ve set out on a new course of sorts. Over the next few days I’ll write a bit about some of the big shifts of the year.

At various times in my life, I’ve designated what I considered to be, “life’s most important skill.” At one point, it was “discipline.” At another it was “the ability to effectively set and pursue goals.” This past year, I came to realize that one of life’s most important skills is to face your own fears. What scares you? Face it. Stare it down. Spit in its eye. The rush, the sense of accomplishment, the internal strength that comes from it is amazing. It has nothing to do with the “success” or “failure” of what you undertake. The success is in simply facing your fear. In my case, if I fail, all the better, because one of my biggest fears has always been the fear of failure. This realization has been huge for me – realizing that my own fears limit me more than any external forces or any intrinsic abilities. This is what was so invigorating about taking my guitar down to the acoustic idol contest at GIG. I knew I sucked. I knew I would flop. But the glee was in leaning into the fear and conquering it. And amazingly, with each new fear that I face, the next one seems trivial. Now that we’re putting together the stand-up comedy night, I’m not in the least bit scared. When I think about what scares me the most right now, I realize it has to do with having a specific conversation I don’t want to have. That conversation for me is like engaging with the dark side of the Force. I know I'll have to face it.

So, this is one of the big lessons of this year. Be daring when it comes to my own fear. Lean into it. Seek out my fears, and one by one, free myself from them. Find out what scares you to death, and then do it. It’s one of the most fun things (and scariest things) I’ve every undertaken.