Thriveology

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” — George Elliot

this is one of my favorite quotes.  He reminds me that we are never finished developing into who we want to be.  Who we are becoming is a constantly changing and developing piece.  We are always growing, changing, and becoming more and more of who we are.

Were reading about how Michelangelo talked about his creating a sculpture.  He said that he looked at the rock,  decided what was in it, then chipped everything else away.  In other words, he was looking to see what the rock was supposed to be.  That’s what we do.  We are constantly seeking to find what we are supposed to be.  Then our job is to get rid of everything else.

We grow up becoming who others want us to be.  Then one day we look around, realize that the path we have been on has not been ours, and we have to make a decision.  We have to decide whether we will continue following someone else’s path or whether we will start our own path.  Sometimes, people decide that it’s too late in life to change paths.  Too bad.  When we realize that we were on the wrong path, then we have a chance to take the right path.

Sometimes, we just know that were not on the right path, but we don’t know what the right path is.  That’s when we have to get rid of the things that are in our way of discovering a new path.  That’s when we have to chip away all that doesn’t belong.

Once we do that, our path becomes much more clear.  In fact, what we discover is that fear has kept us off the right path.  Fear has kept us from doing and being who we want to be and what we want to do.

Until we face that fact, we keep ourselves from being who we could be.  More importantly, we keep ourselves from the being who we want to be.  Perhaps, we even keep ourselves from being who we should be.

It’s never too late to be what you might have been.  Decide if you are on the path you want to be on, or if it’s time to change paths.

Who are you?  What are you worth?  That is the question of this rule.  Too often, we confuse our wealth with our worth.  Or more importantly, we confuse our possessions with our worth.  Secondarily, we confuse our role with our worth.

Now, just for fun, let’s look at what we are REALLY worth, meaning how much our body is worth.  One article pegs our body’s value at $4.50.  So dead, our bodies arent’ worth much.

We aren’t our possessions.  We aren’t our profession.  We aren’t even our roles.  We have an internal value that starts as potential.  All of us have great potential.  Few of us tap into that potential.

What if you have a specific task, a mission on this earth, that nobody else can do?  What if you just assumed this?  What would you be doing?

Marianne Williamson wrote “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness which scares us. We ask ourselves – who are we to be brilliant, beautiful, talented, and fabulous. But honestly, who are you to not be so?”

What is clear is that we are all unique creations, unlike anyone else that comes before us or after us.  Even identical twins have changes in their brain and chemistry based on experiences they have.

We all come into the world with potential.  Then we spend our lives either accessing that potential or wasting it.  Our worth has nothing to do with the balance sheet, or “net worth,” but from accessing our potential.

Part of doing that is living within your ethics and morality.  We have the opportunity, on a daily basis, to stand on what we believe or allow the world to mold us away from our own beliefs.

Our worth, then, is based on knowing what we believe and living it, then seeking our purpose and bringing it to the world.

OK, let me say just a bit more:  “Mistakes don’t matter.  How you deal with them does.”  You see, we often get so caught up in fearing that we will make a mistake that we don’t stretch.

We stop ourselves before we even begin, or we freeze up in the midst of trying, all because we might make a mistake.  But that really is the nature of life.  We make mistakes, pick ourselves up, learn from the mistake, then move on.

Well, that SHOULD be the rhythm of life.  In fact, when we don’t live that way, we have trapped ouselves into what Carol Dweck refers to as a “fixed mindset.”

Dweck distinguishes between the fixed mindset that refers to our expectations that we have innate skills, natural abilities.  A mistake would seem to be an indication that we lack in skills or ability from this frame.  So, for instance, a child is told that she is a “natural athlete.”  As time goes on, the child fears that she cannot live up to that, so she either quits trying or constantly works to prove others right.  In either case, she comes to fear making a mistake.

The “growth mindset,” on the other hand, is the (correct) belief that we are all growing, developing individual capable of learning new skills and ideas.  In that frame, a mistake is just part of the process of learning.  In fact, mistakes may be one of the best ways of learning!

I help teach SCUBA classes.  In the beginning, I ran around trying to make sure the students made no mistakes.  Then the instructor pointed out that the students needed to make these mistakes in our controlled environment, so that they did not make them when it mattered.  I broke myself (mostly) of that habit, and instead turned to the idea of helping the students learn and recover from the mistakes.  I believe they are much better divers now.

As Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.” Start taking the shots!  Make some mistakes, then decide what to do about them!

In the last rule, I proposed that the question “what’s the worst that could happen?” can be a useful “reality check” when fear grabs and limits you.  This rule goes from the opposite end.

My wife brought this question to my attention, and even if I tease her (when my son said he was nervous about a basketball game, my wife asked this question, “what’s the best that could happen?”, I suggested that my 12 year old son could be spotted by an NBA scout and called up!), she is right.

Too often, we get caught in the fear and dread.  And while asking “what’s the worst that can happen?” helps us stay in reality, it can also keep us on the down side of a situation.

What about the upside, the opportunity?  The question “what’s the best that can happen?” brings the upside into perspective.  It provides an openness to possibility.

For example, you are thinking of that bungee jump.  Your fear grips you, and you find yourself unable to step up to the edge and take a leap.  So, you ask, “what’s the worst that could happen?”  The outfitters have only stellar reviews, the cord is in good shape, the harness is secure.  Given the safety record, it is safe to say the worst would be a little soreness tomorrow from the swing.

Still, you find yourself rooted in place, unable to command your feet to move.  Now ask “what’s the best that could happen?”  And you find you might just prove to yourself that you can tackle your fear of heights.  You can get a huge adrenaline rush.  You get a t-shirt.  You get to jump off a bridge with no injury!  Now, we are into possibilities.

In the previous rule, we talked about speaking in public, given how high this fear ranks.  So, let’s take a look at that one.  You have already established the worst that could happen, and you know you will not die giving the talk.

Now, what is the best that could happen?  Perhaps you could make a difference for the organization?  Maybe someone will see you give the talk, be impressed by your willingness, and give you even more opportunities.  Or at a minimum, the best would be you face your fear, do the talk, and walk away more confident.

So use this question to balance the fear.  It helps us to both test our reality (risk assessment in Rule 7), and think about opportunity.

Today, the question that can help you challenge your fears when thinking about doing something.  You see, fear pretends to befriend and protect us.  So it whispers into our ear all kinds of thoughts about not doing something because “something could go wrong.”  But in actuality, there isn’t much fact behind the images of utter destruction.

So, the question is “what’s the worst that can happen?”  Then think through the answers.  Are they really that bad?  If they are, and it isn’t your exageration from fear, then perhaps you shouldn’t do it.  Say you are standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon and you want to jump to a rock outcropping 6 feet out from you.  You are scared, but still thinking about it.  You ask the question:  “what’s the worst that can happen?”  And you answer “Oh, I don’t know, a 5000 foot drop.”  Then, your fear was well-intended!

But let’s face it, that is not the typical situation.  No, our fears are normally about non-lethal situations.  In fact, our fears often only serve to constrict our lives, keeping us from growning and developing.  That is when the question is magic!

How about this one:  someone asks you to give a short speech during a business gathering!  Fear whispers in your ear “I’ll mess that one up. . . that’s scary!”  Quickly, you find a conflict on your schedule, a reason why that is not going to work out.

But what if you asked the question “what’s the worst that could happen?” and you were realistic?  The worst may be that your words don’t come out as clearly as you would like.  Or people won’t agree with you.  Or you will die of embarrassment (there has never been a verified case of this!).

OK, so maybe your words don’t come out as clearly as you would like.  Maybe your tongue gets tied, but haven’t you seen others do the same in a speaking situation?  Even presidents get tongue-tied and say the wrong things.  But they are still presidents.  In other words, there is likely far less risk than you think.

You answer the question, you face your worst fears, realize that they aren’t so bad, and you decide to take a risk.  That is the nature of life, growth, and learning.  That is how we develop into better humans.  So ask the question, question the answers, and see that fear isn’t the friend it pretends to be.

We have established that fear is a given.  We cannot get rid of it.  We can only decide whether or not fear will run our lives.  And we can decide how we will respond.

But what if you find yourself constantly in the grips of fear?

There are two basic approachs to life that are steeped in fear: Controlling and Passive. These approaches, on the surface, appear to be opposite. But in reality, just below the surface, they are identical. They are steeped in founded in fear.

In fact, there is a core terror involved in both approaches.The Passive person chooses to let life make the decisions for him or her. Wherever the waves toss, there is where the person lands. Being active feels either futile or terrifying. For some, the terror is based on feeling as if others will be watching and judging. And perhaps even more frightening, life might just hold that person accountable.

Passivity comes in many flavors. For some, it is just a matter of inaction –staying in the same job and miserable year after year, staying in a miserable marriage but doing nothing to make it better, or a myriad of other things. We stay and do nothing.

Then there is the inactivity of avoidance. This is when we pretend not to notice, put those blinders on, and keep moving. Miserable job? It hasn’t even registered. Relationship falling apart? What relationship?

Some master passivity as a way of expressing anger. Instead of expressing our anger, we use passive behavior to sabotage the other. Someone asks us to do something. We agree to do it, then don’t. They confront us, and respond with “I forgot.” Abdication of responsibility on a silver platter!Some maintain passivity as a philosophy better known as futility. It is much easier to pretend that nothing matters, that actions account for nothing. In believing this, we are relieved of any responsibility. At least we pretend this to be the case.

When I was a boy, my father returned from a trip with a gift, a small piece of granite with these words painted on it: “Not to decide is to decide.” To a small boy of eight or so, those words don’t mean a lot. But they have become more and more pronounced as I have grown older. In actuality, there is no such thing as passivity.

Every moment of every day, we are making decision after decision. Often, we make those decisions by not deciding. We pretend we have relieved ourselves responsibility by not deciding. Yet a decision has still been made.

The Controlling person is just as fear-based as the passive person. But the control is based in the clear illusion that anyone has any level of control over life. Okay, that might sound paradoxical or even contradictory to what I just said about being passive. I moved the conversation to the importance of being active. Yet now I state that there is no control.

Here is the key: people who act in controlling ways fool themselves into pretending they have some ultimate control over their life. People who are pro-active in their lives assume that nothing is guaranteed and everything is at risk. But moment-to-moment, pro-active people move in ways that allow them to meet life, to approach life with hope, an antidote to fear.

Fear is a fact of life.  We may as well get used to it.

I say that because we all spend an inordinate amount of energy avoiding fear.  For what?  We still feel it.  In fact, very often when we avoid fear, we really only grow that fear.

Let me be clear:  I am not talking about the fears that keep us alive (our survival instincts), but about the fears that rule our lives.  Someone gets anxious around others, so he or she stays away from people.  Someone fears speaking in front of others, so she or he turns down a great job to avoid that.  Someone fears a broken heart, so he or she avoids getting close to someone.

Fear pretends to be our friend.  It whispers in our ear that it is only protecting us, but fear restricts us.  It keeps us from living a full life.

Unless we learn to accept it and move on.  As Susan Jeffers says, “feel the fear and do it anyway.”  What powerful, and counterintuitive, advice!

This rule fits into the previous rules about thoughts because fear is tied into our thinking.  We use our thoughts to stay caught in our fears.  In this way, we misuse our thought capacity.

Just for a moment, let’s think about fear.  Remember the old “fight or flight response” from Biology 101?

Imagine yourself living millenia ago. The world was far less safe to you than it is now. Replace our city streets with small paths running through the jungles or forests. Imagine miles and miles between safety. Imagine not being at the top of the food chain (that’s a big one!). You are, literally, at the mercy of the elements! In some ways, it is amazing that our genes are even still around.

Through the process of natural selection, those capable of getting away, steering clear of danger (in other words, quick to feel danger and fear) survived to pass on their genes. Those more reckless or those unable to detect a threat no longer have genes to pass on. Those genes became extinct.

Now, in evolutionary terms, it has only been a blink-of-an-eye since then. While we have used our intellect to tame the wild, pushed back nature and its threat to the edge of town, we still live with those genes that were selected way back! In other words, we are wired to have a fear response.

Not only are we wired to have that response, it is a response that happens automatically. Remember that class when you heard how animals have a fight-or-flight response? That response is also a part of our make-up. Not only is it a part of our make-up, it still happens as automatically as it does for that animal.

For survival’s sake, our bodies do not need for our minds to take the time to consider a risk analysis. It needs for our minds to go on automatic while our bodies get out of the way. Imagine again, being alive millenia ago. Imagine walking down that path we mentioned. Imagine seeing a shadow move across the path. Our body does not need for us to have this thought: “Hmmm, I wonder if that was a saber-tooth tiger? Or maybe it was just my imagination? Perhaps a bird flying by?” By this time, if it were a saber-tooth tiger, our questions would have ceased, and a very satisfied tiger would remain.

And if we determined that it was, indeed a tiger in time, our mind does not need for us to ask the question: “should I run away? Or perhaps I should climb that tree? Or maybe I can scare the tiger away?” Our body needs us not to think, but to act. And in order for it to act, our body goes on automatic. It responds in ways that are almost impossible (notice the “almost” part) to control.

We see the shadow, and our pulse quickens, our breathing becomes more rapid. Our stomach tenses, and our palms become sweaty. Perhaps we even feel our feet take on a life of their own: they want us to run, move, get clear of the danger!

Our brain and body need for this to happen nearly instantaneously. That is what is necessary to survive. So we perceive a threat, and we respond.

Now, fast-forward those millenia. There are no saber-tooth tigers. Rarely do we find ourselves below the top position on the food chain. And our threats have become much more difficult to ascertain. Who is the enemy? Is it that person around the corner? Is it the boss? Is it our spouse? We still feel that immediate and automatic response to a sense of threat, even if that threat turns out to be nothing more than someone who had a bad day, someone who is not a threat but a grouch!

We have this automated system that scans for threats.  That is true for all crawling, flying, swimming and walking creatures.  There is only one difference for humans:  we add our thoughts into the process.  We feel some natural anxiety, but decide there is a threat.  Then we move into fear mode.

Think about two events for a moment.  Recall something that made you excited, gave you an adrenaline rush that you would seek out.  Now recall something that scared you, made your stomach do flip-flops and that you would avoid.

Got it in your mind?  For your body, there is no difference between those two reactions.  Your body is doing the exact same thing in either case.  The same chemicals are being released.  Your muscles are responding in the exact same way (including your heart)!  The difference between those two events?  Only the thoughts you attribute to each item.

And the same event may be interpreted in opposite ways by different people.  For example, I SCUBA dive.  I love it.  I find the experience to be exhilirating and freeing.  My wife does not care for the water.  The thought of being 80 feet below the surface is more frightening than exciting.

The task is to work through whether the fear is really protecting us, or if we are adding our thoughts in.  In other words, it is once again about becoming aware of our thoughts.  Once we are aware of the thoughts, we can choose to act in spite of feeling fear.  The presence of the fear is non-negotiable.

The second rule ties directly into the first rule.  In fact, it is probably step 1 in watching our mind.  What is going on in our mind?  Thoughts.  What trips us up?  Thoughts.

The problem is not the thoughts.  The problem is that we don’t recognize they are just thoughts.  Thoughts are merely constructs of our mind.  And it is not that a thought is right or wrong, good or bad.  I would prefer to ask the question of whether it is helpful or unhelpful.

First, let’s challenge the Right/Wrong illusion.  Our thoughts are our interpretation of reality.  They are not reality.  As has been said by others, the map is not the road.  The map is a representation of the road.   A specific type of map leaves off details.  Another map is based on those same details.  The details are information, and we either process or ignore information every second (millisecond) of every day.

We get caught up in believing that we “see things for what they are,” but we don’t.  Wayne Dyer titled a book “you will see it when you believe it.”  That is the truth.  Our thoughts are woven by our beliefs, not by reality.  How often have you been completely convinced that you were right about something, only to get some more details that helped you see you were wrong?

Again, thoughts only have the possibility of being partial reflections of reality.

How about Good/Bad Thoughts?  Well, we all have thoughts we are not proud of.  That, again, is the nature of the mind, and probably a good reason to not want to read someone else’s mind!  It would be one loud, ugly, noisy place!  Thoughts are just thoughts.

And that is the realization here.  We can get caught up in a thought so much that we continue to find ourselves pulled away from experiencing life.  We become spectators through our thoughts.  And when we forget it is a thought, we start acting in ways that represent a thought.

Let’s take a quick example.  Let’s say I walk into my boss’s office for a meeting.  I see him reading my report with an expression I view as critical or angry.  I think “he didn’t like my work.”  This leads to thinking “what if he fires me?  What then?  How will I explain it to my wife?  How will we cover the bills?”  Within a few seconds, I have woven a story about how worthless my work is, then how worthless I am, then the fact that I am soon to be homeless.

Too bad I didn’t notice that my boss forgot his reading glasses today, and going over some spreadsheets has already given him a headache, so he is doing all he can to concentrate on the excellent report he is reading!  Too bad!

Too bad, because I begin to talk with him from my assumption that he doesn’t like my work. I begin to excuse my poor writing, my lack of ideas, my lack of creativity.  Then my boss pauses and looks up at me.  He is still thinking about my great idea, but can’t process it because I just told him it was terrible.  His thoughts start rolling.  Then, we are both caught in our own thoughts, no longer relating to each other.

Now rewind it.  What if I had walked into his office, saw the same expression, and had the first thought.  But when I noticed my stomach knotting up, I asked myself what I was thinking about, realized I was writing a story in my mind, and chose to realize a thought is just a thought?  I wait for him to tell me what he is thinking.  I wait for reality to continue.

That story ends very differently.  And the difference is merely because I recognized that a thought is just a thought.  It may be correct, but it may not be.  Either way, it is still just a thought.

OK, so let’s set some parameters for these 99 rules of thriving.  You see, these rules are not pulled out of thin air.  They come from my frame for what I understand are the elements of a thriving life.

As I have studied this, four areas of concern emerge in the pursuit of a thriving life.  Each area is important, but it is the presence of all four that really put the whole thriving life into motion.  Here are the four areas:

thriving life graphic

So here is a brief overview, and we will begin to enlarge as we move through the rules:

Thoughts and Mind: This broad category basically means that a thriving person understands the role that thoughts play in creating our reality, weaving our paradigm.  In fact, I maintain that the majority of people misuse a major resource in life:  their mind.

I believe that we have come to have very poor mind hygeine.  We let our thoughts rule us, not us ruling our thoughts.  We fail to notice that we are just thinking, and instead believe that our thoughts are reality.

Let’s face it:  our mind was designed to think, to create thoughts.  But it is up to us to decide on whether this will be a productive or destructive process.

Letting Go and Moving On: Our capacity to let go of something that is on our mind, has happened to us, or has not happened to us, is in direct ratio to our capacity to thrive.  I would use the term “forgiveness,” but there is a great deal of extra baggage attached to that term.  So I will say that forgiveness is a subcategory of this.

And in order to thrive, we must be able to take the next step past letting go of something; we must move on.  People who thrive have discovered how to keep moving forward, regardless of the circumstances around them.

Gratitude and Appreciation: A hallmark of thrivers is the ability to experience gratitude.  No, let me change that:  to choose gratitude.  Not only do they live in gratitude, they live in appreciation, the application of seeking out gratitude.

This is a choice in the stories we tell.  Am I upset that I don’t have a big bank account, or am I grateful I have been able to pay what is necessary to keep going, for instance.  This is partly about optimism, but is slightly different.  Optimism is about how things will be in the future.  Gratitude is choosing to be grateful for what already is.

Gratitude and appreciation helps to shift us out of the scarcity “what I don’t have” model to abundance.  This keeps us from feeling desperate, which then leads to creative responses.

Meaning and Purpose: This is the final element of my model.  It is the most important, and yet the most difficult to master.  It is not the question “what is the meaning of life?”  Instead it is the question of “what is meaningful to me?”  Having a sense of meaning keeps us moving ahead, regardless of what is going on around us.  Purpose is the way we live out that meaning.

When we have discovered our sense of meaning and how we find it, our purpose, then life becomes a joy to live.  Too often, we pursue happiness, forgetting that this grows out of a meaningful life, lived with purpose.

Well, time for my own challenge.  This one crossed my mind some time back, but in a very un-thriving way, I find myself caught doing what “needs” to be done, versus what I “want” to do.

On a slight detour, let me unpack that.  We are often caught spending our days doing those things that seem to need to be done.  I say “seem” because there is an endless list of those items.  As Richard Carlson said, “the inbox is never going to be empty.”  So at some point, we have to make the distinction that Stephen Covey makes between urgent and important.

Now the next part of my sentence.  It is not that I think we ought to be doing whatever we want to do.  Instead, I am thinking about that inner yearning, that urging to do something that pulls us toward purpose and meaning.

To put a little flesh on that, I would love to be laying on a beach in the Caribbean about now.  That is a plain want, but I feel a sense of urgency, even calling, to look at thriving.

So, onto this project:  My goal is to post what I consider 99 rules of thriving.  They are not the only rules, and some may be more important to you than others.  But as I have been thinking and working on this topic, these are what strike me as important rules.

Understand, I do not see myself as the most thriving of people.  In fact, as I write this, I am writing more for myself than anyone else.  I do hope you enjoy reading over my shoulder, and find it useful.  That would be an honor.

My business card gives my title as “Full Time Thriveologist, Part Time Thrivealist.”  I am always studying the subject, and I am doing my best to become a thriver, but that is always a learning task.

Finally, I don’t expect or intend on writing a rule-a-day, or really any other time.  I would love to promise that, but my goal is only to, on a consistent basis, share the rules as I see them.

Enjoy!