Choose the Life You Want

This is Chapter #1.

We need to “Choose to choose.”

It’s tempting to think that the quality of our lives comes down to getting the “big decisions” right. But that’s just not the case. It’s far more important to bring more awareness to the fact that we’re making a choice every.single.moment of every.single.day!

Here’s how Matthew Kelly puts it in his great book The Rhythm of Life (see Notes): “Everything is a choice. This is life’s greatest truth and its hardest lesson. It is a great truth because it reminds us of our power. Not power over others, but the often untapped power to be ourselves and to live the life we have imagined.

It is a hard lesson, because it causes us to realize we have chosen the life we are living right now. It is perhaps frightening for us to think that we have chosen to live our life exactly as it is today. Frightening because we may not like what we find when we look at our lives today. But it is also liberating, because we can now begin to choose what we will find when we look at our life in the tomorrows that lie unlived before us. What will you see when you look at your life ten years from now? What will you choose?”

In his great book The Compound Effect (see Notes), SUCCESS magazine publisher Darren Hardy tells us: “The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices. What’s most interesting about this process to me is that, even though the results are massive, the steps, in the moment, don’t feel significant. Whether you’re using this strategy for improving your health, relationships, finances, or anything else for that matter, the changes are so subtle, they’re almost imperceptible. These small changes offer little or no immediate result, no big win, no obvious I-told-you-so payoff. So why bother?

Most people get tripped up by the simplicity of the Compound Effect. … What they don’t realize is that these small, seemingly insignificant steps completed consistently over time will create a radical difference.”

In short, Hardy tells us: “Your life is the product of your moment-to-moment choices.”

Back to you.

How can you shed a little more light on your moment-to-moment choices?

Here’s to the most important choice: Choosing to choose!!!

The five-minute takeoff.

Tal tells us this is the #1 way to deal with procrastination. It’s awesome.

The next time you’re feeling stuck and you’re tempted to procrastinate, first realize that you’re at a choice point.

The choice (as per the title of this chapter) is:

Procrastinate

—or—

Just do it!

Then, quite simply, just start.

Turn off the part of your brain that thinks you need to *feel* like it to do it.

And, just do it.

*Cue Captain’s voice* → “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. Although motivation was low, we’ve decided to embrace the five-minute takeoff and look forward to a great, productive session. Please buckle your seatbelts and prepare for awesome.”

Here’s to the five-minute takeoff!

Tal shares another Drucker gem to kick off this chapter: “It’s abilities, not disabilities, that count.”

And Tal tells us: “We need to invest in our weaknesses so that we can survive in the world; we need to invest in our strengths so that we can thrive.”

Happy people focus on their strengths.

What are your strengths?

If you’re feelin’ it, take some time and reflect on Tal’s great questions above to discover your strengths and identify more ways to integrate them into your life more consistently!

Here’s another good thing to know:

In Happier, Tal walks us through four primary happiness archetypes.

In short, we have the Rat Racer (who is always delaying gratification and seeks happiness in the future), the Hedonist (who is all about pleasure right now!), the Nihilist (who has given up hope for pleasure now or in the future) and the Happy person (who experiences happiness now while pursuing future goals as well).

It’s easy to fall into the Rat Racer-mode where we’re constantly delaying gratification and, unfortunately, rarely experiencing it. (You may have noticed. Hah!)

One key practice to keep our enthusiasm and joy high?

Engage in what Tal calls “happiness boosters”—bite-size activities that elevate your mood. These mini-breaks give us the fuel we need to continue to rock it with energy and zest.

Tal’s happiness boosters include listening to inspiring music, taking a meditation break, reading poetry or fiction and stuff like that.

Mine include enjoying a few deep breaths, lying down and enjoying a “napitation,” watching a movie, going on a hike and even just looking at the mountains outside my office window.

You?

Here’s to seizing the joy in this moment fueling our journey!

That’s from a chapter on the choice:

Avoid Making Mistakes by Not Trying

—or—

Learn from failure

As Tal advises, “The choice is a simple one: Learn to fail, or fail to learn.”

Although a simple choice, that still doesn’t make it an easy choice, eh?! :)

That lizard-brain of ours screams at us to avoid the pain of failure at all costs and, as a result, puts a very tight lid on our potential.

Remembering that EVERYONE (!!) we admire has experienced a ton of failure en route to their success is incredibly empowering.

Tal shares some stories from members of the “failure hall of fame.”

He tells us that Thomas Edison had 1,093 patents to his name—more than anyone in history. And… He failed tens of thousands (!!!) of times. It’s easy to overlook, but how else do you figure out *that* much stuff?!

Per Tal: “Edison himself, however, did not see these experiments as failures. When he was working on one of his inventions, a storage battery, someone pointed out to him that he had failed ten thousand times. ‘I have not failed,’ responded Edison, ‘I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.’ Recognizing the real path to his accomplishments, Edison remarked, ‘I failed my way to success.’”

Other members of Tal’s failure hall of fame include such giants as Babe Ruth (home run king AND strike out king), and Abraham Lincoln (failed in business several times + nervous breakdown at 27 + lost 8 elections).

Spotlight back on you: Are there parts of your life where fear is holding you back? How can you take a step out of your comfort zone and in the direction of your potential?

P.S. All this reminds me of Walter Russell who, among many other things, sculpted an extraordinary bust of Edison. In The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe (see Notes), he tells us: “I have had my share of what one calls defeat, in plenty. I have made and lost fortunes and seen great plans of mine topple through my own errors of judgment or through other causes… But I do not recognize these as defeats. They are but interesting experiences of life. They are valuable stepping stones to success. Defeat is a condition which one must accept in order to give it reality. I refuse to give it reality by accepting it. In my philosophy I have written these words: Defeat I shall not know. It shall not touch me. I will meet it with true thinking. Resisting it will be my strengthening. But if, perchance, the day will give to me the bitter cup, it will sweeten in the drinking.”

Amen.

Isn’t that odd?

We’re often way nicer to those we just met than we are to those we most love.

I love Tal’s modification to the Golden Rule: “Do not do unto those close to you what you would not have done unto others (who are not so close to you).”

In The Pursuit of Perfect, Tal shares another brilliant tweak on the Golden Rule. He calls that one the Platinum Rule and it goes like this: “Why the double standard, the generosity toward our neighbor and the miserliness where we ourselves are concerned? And so I propose that we add a new rule, which we can call the Platinum Rule, to our moral code: ‘Do not do unto yourself what you would not do unto others.’”

Here’s to integrating these radiant Gold and Platinum Rules into our lives as we give ourselves and those closest to us a ton of love! :)

This is big.

Research is unequivocal: Our words do not “merely describe reality, they create reality.”

What words are you using to describe your reality? Remember: You’re co-creating your reality with every word you use to describe it. Let’s choose wisely!!

Meaningful endurance.

It’s a key component to optimizing.

In fact, one of the greatest risks to our actualization is the naïve idea that it should be fast and easy. As Tal advises, that’s a sure way to experience disappointment and frustration.

We want to embrace a functional optimism a la Jim Collins’s Stockdale Paradox where we have absolute confidence in our ability to grow and learn and succeed AND we embrace our current reality and the inevitable challenges we will face in our process of mastery.