by miami | May 24, 2008
For years I have been writing about happiness. What it is, where to find it, how to keep it, and how to share it.
The more time goes by, the more certain I am happiness is what we all really want.
And I also believe the more we all tie happiness to having money, the less happy we will be.
Speaking only for myself now – I feel the most alive and happy when I am super excited about a new project, goal or journey.
There is something extremely attractive in a new challenge.
When we built our first sailboat. When we built the horse farm we currently live on. When I went to sea for the first time. When I took the engineer crew position on a 165 foot mega yacht in Acapulco Mexico. When I joined the Navy and to serve on nuclear submarines. When I met my wife.
All these and many more are dreams manifested to reality. Manifested means I was so passionate I would do anything to get there!
Our newest goal is to go back to the cruising life – and share it with our two sons – Ian who is 16 and Ryan who is now 9. I want to show them there is a whole another world of people, places and cultures beyond their current experience.
With the challenge of manifesting such a dream comes work. Lots of it. We have a horse farm and business to sell (great time I picked to sell property!), 11 years of accumulated stuff to get rid of, a boat to find, purchase, and get ready for sea – and finally to move us all from a home to a small boat!
Easy.
The thing is I am so excited about it – I want to skip all the steps and just go right to sea! Why can’t it be this way?
I’ll leave that answer to you…
(But now you know what I have been up to!)
So my point is – what is it that makes you so passionate you can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning to get started? What keeps you up late at night?
Is this what you are doing?
by miami | Mar 18, 2008
If you are thinking about changing careers – or partners for that matter – this post from Seth Godin is well worth reading…
In the last few days, I’ve heard from top students at Cornell and other universities about my internship.
It must have been posted in some office or on a site, because each of the applications is just a resume. No real cover letter, no attempt at self marketing. Sort of, “here are the facts about me, please put me in the pile.”
This is controversial, but here goes: I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all.
Not just for my little internship, but in general. Great people shouldn’t have a resume.
Here’s why: A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, “oh, they’re missing this or they’re missing that,” and boom, you’re out.
Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords, and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine. Just more fodder for the corporate behemoth. That might be fine for average folks looking for an average job, but is that what you deserve?
If you don’t have a resume, what do you have?
How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?
Some say, “well, that’s fine, but I don’t have those.”
Yeah, that’s my point. If you don’t have those, why do you think you are remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don’t have those, you’ve been brainwashed into acting like you’re sort of ordinary.
Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for… those jobs don’t get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.
by miami | Feb 1, 2008
My friend David in Atlanta has been going through an absolutely horrible divorce for the last couple of years. I have watched him deal with issues I would not wish on any one (like not seeing his 5 kids in over a year).
He wrote this to me after his (almost) final court date – and I thought so much of it I asked permission to reprint here for you…
What he doesn’t say in this article is that he learned this from me! But that aside – congratulations Dave!
A number of people have recently been surprised at by response when they ask how I’m doing. I am wonderful; great; fantastic; fabulous… but they all expect me to say “hanging in there” as if only basically coping.
The forensic psychologist at my divorce case asked me how I was… and when I said “wonderful” he asked “why” in the most confused manner. My response, “you can try to fight a roller coaster or just ride and enjoy it… either way the coaster is doing what it wants to; they only difference is what you take away from the experience” floored him… “great way of looking at it” with a big smile.
So here is my observation:
When something really bad has occurred in ones life, many people seem to think they can only count themselves happy if they experience a greater-magnitude event in the positive… if you had been in a concentration camp, then winning the lottery might offset the bad with overall good… and you could say you were sum total, happy. These people seem to keep a running tally of happiness; basically counting the number-of-good versus number-of-bad of some reverse-yet-equal-magnitude happenings… a streak of awful events can be overcome by a greater number of similar-offset pleasant events… finding a dollar offsets losing one; having a girlfriend offsets having lost one; praise from your current employer offsets having been fired at your previous one; on and on.
Here’s an alternate way of looking at happiness “scoring”… the balance sheet. In business, one common form of performance evaluation is a snapshot of here-and-now, called a balance sheet… simplified, it means “what are the checking account balance and the credit card debt right now”. Nothing is said of “how you got in this state”, only that you are in the state right now… and you are sum total positive if your banks balance exceeds your debt level. Obviously, the past plays a role in what your current state is, but the events themselves don’t matter, only the lasting effect to that moment… so if you had a million dollar debt a year ago and fought yourself back to a mere thousand dollar debt today, all that shows is the thousand, not the million or where it went; if you had a million dollar balance and spent all but a thousand, all that shows is the thousand, not the million or where it went.
Well, you can do this with your life too… “how good do you feel today versus how bad do you feel today?” Note that your past plays into this “somehow”, but the parts that you have forgotten, and the parts you have learned to cope with, and the parts that you put aside… they no longer make you feel bad today… so as long as you feel better than that smaller, remaining amount (today), you can call yourself “happy”. It is like there’s a half-life to the radioactivity that is your past… and the only part you need to overcome on any day is the part that remains to that day. Note how different this is… you are happy once the “half-life decayed, partial bad that remains” is overcome with good… you do not have to experience a “big good” that equals and offsets a “big bad”, nor do you need a number of these events to bring your score to zero or better… you only need to do something “happy enough” to offset the “lingering pain” in your life; a much easier obstacle to overcome. And the better you get at putting “things that were” and “things that you cannot control” aside, the smaller the amount of “residual bad feeling” is that you need to out-do with “good” to be happy… the overall magnitude and/or number-of-occurrences of the bad events no longer dictate “what must occur for you to call it a good day”.
Just something to think about.
by miami | Jan 2, 2008
One of my readers asked me when I was going to find happiness myself!
What a surprise question that was! But I realized that I am not writing clearly enough. So let me make this more clear.
I am happy. Can I be more happy? Yes. Can I be less happy? Sure!
Overall I am happy. Much of this comes from gratitude. I am very, very grateful for what I have which includes a wonderful wife/partner and two boys, a beautiful place to live (a horse farm in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains), income sufficient to meet all obligations and then some, and so much more that I could continue to list.
The purpose of my blog is not to make me happy – it is to do my best to help others understand (if needed) how they can find happiness as well.
Don’t I look happy here?
Finding happiness is simply a matter of thinking differently. notice I did not say it was easy – just simple!
