Would you rather be right or happy?

Continuing with what I wrote about last week, I always get a big kick out of the reactions I receive when I mention the truism: would you rather be right or happy? I don’t think most people really get the significance of that statement so let me elaborate.

For those of you that are familiar with the philosophy of Unshackled Leadership, you know we suggest we live in a world of duality represented by the world of our higher consciousness and the world of the ego. As I explain on page 37, “the higher mind is the home of our ‘higher consciousness.’ Every philosopher, every religion and every great thinker, from Buddha to Jesus and many others has acknowledged the presence of our higher consciousness. This is the voice of peace, love, oneness, togetherness, possibility and harmony. Theologians call this the voice of God. Call it whatever you want.

“The lower mind is the home of the ego. It is the part of our mind that was programmed as described above when I discussed the birth of ‘the conversation.’ As we will see, it is the voice of fear, limitation, separation, scarcity, greed and much more.”

To make the point even further, there is a story of an old Cherokee Indian on pages 108 – 109. “One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, ‘my son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside each of us.

“One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.

“The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

If you’re with me so far, the question for each of us, at every moment, and at all times, is: which world are you living in? You can’t live in both. You can’t have one foot in heaven, so to speak, and one foot in hell, again so to speak. You can’t serve two masters. Now you might go back and forth, but at any given time, you’re either listening to the voice of love or the voice of fear.

The world of the ego is all about right/wrong, win/lose, good/bad, you’re over there, I’m over here, we’re separate and you’re the enemy. In that world, you always want to be right. There is no other choice.

In the world of your higher consciousness, there is no separation, no competition, no winners and losers. We’re all in this together, when one person wins, we all win, and we all get to be happy.

Got the point? No need to further debate and discuss this? So you don’t get to be happy by being right! You either live in the world of your higher consciousness or you live in the world of your ego. In the former world you get to be happy and in the later world, you give up the opportunity to be happy because you choose being right. So you don’t get both. One or the other. Now choose.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade

I’m sure that every one of you can relate to the fact that life often throws you a totally unexpected curveball that both comes from out of the blue and makes no sense whatsoever. Sometimes it’s a health challenge for you or someone close to you. Or maybe it’s unexpectedly bad news in your business or career. All you have to do is watch the evening news any night of the week and you’ll see the wide range of events that befall us. None of us are exempt. So the question is: how do you relate to the event and what do you do about it?

I’m writing this because life threw me such a curveball and I’ve watched how I related to it and what I did about it. I trust you will learn something from my experience. Specifically, I had a bout with prostate cancer back in 2004 and having had my prostate removed, I assumed I was done with that experience. Not so, this winter, the cancer came back with a vengeance and ultimately started to spread to my bones. The cancer impacted my appetite and last week landed me in the hospital for the better part of the week, dealing with acute pain in my leg and a serious blood condition.

Now before you get too alarmed, we have the situation in hand, I’m home from the hospital, and feeling better every day. But as I said, it’s been interesting watching myself go through this entire experience. See if you can relate.

My very first reaction, when confronted with the situation, was to ask: why me? I’ll bet we all do that. I’m such a nice person, I live a good life, I take care of myself, I eat well and exercise, so why me? But I didn’t stay there very long and my concern is that most people do just the opposite. It’s so easy to feel victimized by life. For far too many people, life just happens, we have no responsibility in the circumstances, and our only choice is to decide how to respond.

That, my friends, is NEVER the case. Like it or not, we are the creators of our lives and we are responsible for all of it. Whether you believe that or not, it’s worth living as if what I said is the truth because the alternative is to end up feeling like a victim and that never feels good. But when you take responsibility, you give yourself power, the power to do something about your circumstances.

So for me, what quickly began was an inquiry into how was I responsible for what was happening. I looked everywhere I could think of looking and then looked some more. While I don’t have all or maybe any of the answers yet, I’m seeing all kinds of things I wouldn’t have seen if I didn’t look and I’ll write more about what I’m seeing in the days to come.

My next reaction was to resist what needed to be done to deal with my circumstances. Western medicine is very good at providing “treatments” for medical conditions but not so good at providing “cures.” Unfortunately, most treatments come with pretty serious side effects and the desire to avoid those had me set out on a path to find the “cure.” While I think I may have found it, it’s a bit too early to talk about it, so that will come later. The important point is that my unwillingness to accept the “treatment” is what landed me in the hospital and in a critical condition. So my next lesson is summed up in the truism: would you rather be right or happy. I chose “right” and ended up unhappy. I’ve now learned it’s often better to give up the need to be right so you can be happy.

And finally, my wife asked me the other day if I ever get “the blues” or depressed about what I’m going through. Happily, my answer was never. I have learned to take the advice of Albert Einstein when he said to believe we live in a friendly universe. In my heart, and from the beginning, I have had faith that God’s will is my happiness and I have chosen to trust that this is all going to work out just fine. I am quite sure that some famous person once said: it doesn’t matter how many times you fall down as long as you get back up one more time!

This will make a huge difference in your relationships

If you take the time to understand what I’m about to share with you, I promise this will make a profound difference in all of your relationships, both at work and at home. My message requires you to understand certain things that are not so obvious, but your willingness to go along with me will be well rewarded.

First, you must understand that there is a profound difference between something that is actually present in the physical universe and something that is purely an interpretation. So, for example, in the former category, you can actually see and show me a chair, an arm, a glass of water, an automobile and a telephone. Now each of us may have a story about the chair or automobile, but that’s not the point here. The point is that each of those items, like millions of others, actually exist in the physical universe.

In the later category, there is rude, impatient, hostile, disappointed, anxious and much more. Can you actually show me rude? Can you show me impatient? Yes, you can demonstrate behavior that could be interpreted in those ways, but you can’t actually hand me some rude or impatience or nervousness, etc. All of the things in the later category are interpretations that live in language.

Let me explain further, since I know this sounds a bit weird if you haven’t thought of this before. A person acts in a particular way and based on our experience with others, we “interpret” their behavior as “rude.” Is that the truth? Maybe, or maybe not. We often have no idea what’s going on with another person and what we don’t see is that we’re constantly evaluating and interpreting their behavior based on some standard that we have about how a person “should” behave.

So a person acts in a particular way and we “interpret” that behavior as rude, or anxious, or nervous, or whatever. Regardless, the rude, anxious, nervousness doesn’t actually exist in the physical universe. As I said before, all of those “things” are interpretations that we create in language.

If you’ve followed me so far, here’s the point. Most of those interpretations, in addition to being questionably accurate, are disempowering and combative. And we do it all the time. My experience is that we all are constantly judging and interpreting other’s behavior based on some standard we’ve established for ourselves to live by and whenever another deviates from our standard, we make them wrong for whatever they did. This is why it’s disempowering and combative to do this.

Whether we realize it or not, we all have a set of standards that we constantly compare other people’s behavior to and when you realize this, it becomes pretty clear that there’s no better than a 50 – 50 chance that others will live up to your standards. The result is we constantly accuse others of inappropriate behavior as if they actually did what we accuse them of, rather than realizing that the real problem is your interpretation.

So is there a solution to this? Is there a way of eliminating the constant judging and accusing we do of others? Is there a way we could be that would actually foster relatedness? Absolutely. Forget about your standards and adopt a belief system in which you allow yourself only two interpretations of others behavior. In every case, others are either being loving or looking for love. Period. Now if you object to the word “love,” substitute “kind” or “sensitive” or some word like that. So people are either being kind or looking for kindness. People are either being sensitive or looking for someone to be sensitive to them.

By the way, you know why this works? Because it’s the truth. As a matter of fact, people are either being loving or, when they’re hurting, looking for love. Now it may not seem that way. It may look like they’re being angry or hostile or rude. But if you could climb inside their reality, you would see that what they’re looking for is love.

Can you see why this would make an enormous difference in all of your relationships? It totally eliminates all of the critical, combative assumptions we make of others, which invariably lead to conflict. Instead, in every situation, where someone is not being loving or kind or sensitive or compassionate, you decide that that’s what their looking for and give it to them. I promise you that if you take this on, you will have a breakthrough in every one of your relationships. Let me know if you have any questions or how it works out for you.

This too shall pass

I just went through what surely could have been a very stressful experience. To some small degree it was, but only to a small degree. I want to share it with you for two reasons. First, you will hopefully understand why this experience could have been so stressful. But more importantly, it will allow me to make an important point that I assert can make a huge difference in your life.

It all started about two months ago when my realtor found the house I have been dreaming about for several years. I immediately made an offer which was accepted. I didn’t make the offer contingent on the sale of my existing home because (1) I didn’t think I had to and (2) I didn’t think the seller would accept my offer if it was contingent.

About two weeks later, a series of circumstances we did not anticipate made it abundantly clear that we could not go through with the purchase unless I sold my existing home. This was potential stress point #1. So we launched into a full court press to sell my home. After several weeks of open houses, ads, and other efforts, no buyer showed up for my home. Having been made aware of this reality, the seller of my new home threatened to cancel the sale and put his house back on the market. Potential stress point #2.

Finally, a qualified buyer showed up, but he was unwilling to pay my price. Back and forth and back and forth we went until a price was agreed upon. Potential stress point #3. While it looked like he was well qualified and we could proceed quickly with the sale, it turned out that he had an unknown problem with his credit which would have to be resolved for him to get a decent loan rate. Getting this handled literally dragged on for weeks as my seller became more anxious and made more threats. Plus, the loan I had qualified for and gotten approval for, now expired, leaving me having to reapply. Potential stress point #4.

Meanwhile, all of this was supposed to be resolved before Christmas, but it wasn’t. And, while we knew that we had to do a lot of work in the new home before we could move it, our seller refused to let us do any of it until the sale was complete because by this point, he had lost all faith in our buyer. (Can you begin to see how crazy this was becoming?)

I’m happy to say that all sales went through and all escrows closed two days after Christmas, Friday, December 27^th. But now we knew that with the weekend coming up and New Years day the next week, the time was limited to get the work done on the new home before we moved in. We had negotiated not having to move for 10 days after the sale was complete but it actually took 13. We kept on our contractor to get the work done so we could move last Thursday. Potential stress point #10 by now.

Now we had to pack and for those of you that have lived in a house for 10+ years, you know how much “stuff” you accumulate and packing took days and days, even with the help of many of our friends who came over for our packing parties. So the day finally came, the movers showed up and over the next 9 hours, our house was unloaded and our belongings delivered to our new home. Potential stress point #11.

We expected the work on the new house to be done, but of course it wasn’t and so now 5 days later, there are still workmen here almost every day, we still can’t get into our master bathroom and we are still slowly, very slowly, unpacking everything and getting settled. I’m hoping it will all be done by the end of next weekend.

With that long and really edited story, here’s the point of it all. I made a decision, the moment stress point #1 reared its ugly head, that I would absolutely not allow any of the events that would occur to rob me of my peace. Why? Because all too often, we have little or no control of the circumstances of life and if you allow those circumstances to rob you of your peace, you will frequently become an unhappy person. And it’s just not worth it.

I learned a mighty and powerful expression in a seminar I did many years ago and here it is: “This too shall pass!” And before very long, we will be happily settled in our beautiful new home and will have long forgotten all of the trials and tribulations that it took to get us here. So what would have been accomplished if I had allowed those circumstances to rob me of my peace? NOTHING! NO THING! NADA!

So I encourage you, whatever is going on in your life that you would have be different, don’t let it rob you of your peace and keep remembering to say: This too shall pass! 

2014: Have it be a breakthrough year

I hope you did the exercise I gave you in December to complete 2013 and that you have a clean slate on which to plan 2014. If not, please go back and read the last post and complete the exercise. It will make a huge difference if you do.

There’s a great story in Alice in Wonderland. Alice is going down the yellow brick road when she comes to an intersection. Sitting at the intersection is the Cheshire cat. Alice asks: “which way?” The cat responds: “where are you going?” Alice says: “I don’t know.” Whereupon the cat says: “Well then, it doesn’t matter!”

So first, planning has to start with clarity about where you are going. What I’m pointing to is your vision. In a business context, this means what you’re committed to creating. Not just next year or the year after or even the year after. It’s the big picture. Who are you? Where are you going? What are the fundamental commitments in building your organization? What would you have it look like some day, when all of your hopes and dreams become a reality?

On an individual basis, what is your life about, really? Where are you going? What are you committed to? What do you want to leave behind when you’re all done?

There are a whole series of questions like these in Chapter 19 of Unshackled Leadership. You might want to consider getting a copy before you go too far with your planning.

Why is it so important to start with the big picture? Several reasons.

First, when the context for all that you do is your vision for the future and that vision is big, clear, inspiring and challenging, it creates excitement and enthusiasm for you and everyone else in your organization. And, if you remember the discussion of cause and effect in previous blog posts, you know that a mood of passion, excitement and enthusiasm has you attract into your life and your company more things to be passionate, excited and enthused about!

Second, when all you do is look at what you accomplished in the past and set some goals for things you want to accomplish in the future, you unwittingly design a future that is an extension of the past! And then you wonder why you’re not inspired or motivated.

Third, for those of you that are long time readers, you know we live in a fundamentally fear-based, scarcity-based world. If you’re not standing firmly in your vision for the future of your company or your life, it is so easy to get sucked into fear-based, scarcity-based thinking. And all that does is attract to you scarcity and things to be fearful of. And isn’t that what’s going on right now? Really?

I worked with a client some time ago which so clearly demonstrates what I’m talking about. Great company, great people, great products and services, but not going anywhere very fast and not being real profitable.

Each year, in their business planning process, they did the conventional. They looked at what they had done in the past, looked at the opportunities on the table at the moment, attempted to project what they felt they could predict in the future, and set some goals. Sound familiar?

What wasn’t apparent was how much their thinking was fear and scarcity based. And, each day was more of the same, business as usual. We did a retreat early in the year with the management team and went through the Designing the Future process outlined in Chapter 19 of Unshackled Leadership. What emerged was not only a vision for the future, but a clearly identified mission statement and clarity about the culture they were committed to creating. Standing in the vision, which was truly exciting, a set of objectives to be achieved within 5 years were created. Those objectives included almost tripling the company in 5 years, as well as dramatically improving the level of profitability.

By the time this vision was filtered throughout the company, what was unimaginable earlier in the year not only became the total commitment of everyone in the company, but it became the prevalent conversation that they would blow past the objectives well before then. And the whole fear-based, scarcity-based way of thinking is now long gone. Plus, they had the best year ever!  

In planning for next year, what happened in the past is really irrelevant. What happened in the past was a reflection of your thinking in the past. If you want to have a different future, you need to think differently. And creating from your vision is a great place to start that process.

Once your vision is in place, and looking from there, the first question to ask yourself is “what’s missing?” Not what’s wrong, not what’s bad, not what isn’t working, just what’s missing? Standing in your vision, you’ll see lots of things missing. Just make a list.

When that’s done, ask the next question: “what’s possible?” What’s possible is very different from what you can predict. The later looks to the past, the former looks to the future. Again, just make a list of what’s possible.

Then, standing in your vision, seeing what’s missing and what’s possible, see what you’re willing to take on, what you’re willing to commit yourself to. Not from what you know, not from what you’ve done, not even from what you don’t know. Just looking to the future and seeing what calls to you, what inspires you, what would get you out of bed in the morning raring to go because you have work to do.

Create intentions, goals, projects, commitments, whatever words work for you. But whatever, have it be an expression of the future you are committed to, not some prediction based on what you’ve done in the past.

And then, let it all go, proceed with faith, trust and optimism, and let the Universe take you where it knows is best for you. The Universe is really on your side. The Universe wants you to have everything you want. That is the truth. Move boldly in the direction of your dreams. Bring your passion, your excitement, your gratitude, appreciation and thankfulness to life, and you will indeed have the best year ever!

If you’ve never done planning this way, and I suspect very few of you have, it can be a somewhat daunting task. Please give yourself the gift of a breakthrough year and give us a call. We’ll be happy to work with you to make this all simple, straightforward, exciting, and doable.