Making Life a Masterpiece

True success.

It’s easy to get all wrapped up in the idea that success comes from doing something great—being wealthy, famous, or powerful.

But that’s not where it’s at.

True success—and its accompanying true happiness—comes from doing the little things well as we strive to be loyal to our highest ideals and serve our families and communities.

Tom Morris, the modern practical philosopher with a double Ph.D. from Yale (in Religion and Philosophy) who taught for years at Notre Dame, wrote an entire book on the subject appropriately called True Success (see Notes).

Here’s how he puts it: “The kind of success I am most interested in is the sort available to every human being living, breathing, thinking, and doing things on this earth. It does not require wealth, fame, power or high social status. It needs not involve aspiring to any of these things. But it does require making the most of what we are, for the benefit of others as well as ourselves. It means making a difference and experiencing the deep satisfaction that brings. It means using your talents and following your heart. It involves being true to yourself and being good to others.”

Here’s the true success found by being true to ourselves and good to others!

I love everything about that.

First, Swett Marden wrote this in the early nineteen hundreds—shortly after electric light was harnessed and wattage was still measured by “candle power.” (Awesome.)

This is such a great image: “We are human bulbs attached to the great universal current of force and power.”

Beautiful. And, of course, we need to remember that “the light which we give off depends on the candle power of our lamps.”

In other words, if you are a four power candle lamp, you’re not going to be able to handle 20 candle powers of energy let alone 200.

This is the essence of all of our work together: Strengthening our connection to ourselves and to something bigger than ourselves such that we can more consistently shine with a brighter and brighter light!!!

How?

Via consistency on our chosen fundamentals, eliminating the habits that don’t serve us while living more and more integrity with our highest ideals, etc.

As Swett Marden asks, why be a candle when you can be an arc light?

Amen to that.

Here’s to lighting up the neighborhood with our bright lights!

Imagine the sea captain who, at first glace of a fog settling in on the waters or a storm coming up, would turn his ship around and head back to the port he had left. D’oh.

The hardy captain knows that storms are inevitable and knows how to weather the storm by keeping his ship true to the compass and plowing through those obstacles to reach his goal, eh?

And, so it is with us.

All good journeys have their storms. We must stay true to the course if we want to reach our destination.

Of course, that presupposes we actually know where we’re headed!

Which leads us to the next Big Idea:

I’ll repeat that (in all caps no less): NOBODY EVER DRIFTS INTO ANYTHING DESIRABLE.

Reminds me of Earl Nightingale’s wisdom from Lead the Field (see Notes) where he tells us: “If you should visit a ship in port and ask the captain for his next port-of-call, he’ll tell you in a single sentence. Even though the captain cannot see his port, his destination, for full 99% of the voyage, he knows it’s there, and barring an unforeseen and highly unlikely catastrophe, he’ll reach it. All he has to do is keep doing certain things every day.

If someone asked you for your next port-of-call, your goal, could you tell him? Is your goal clear and concise in your mind? Do you have it written down? It’s a good idea. We need reminding, reinforcement. If you can get a picture of your goal and stick it to your bathroom mirror, it’s an excellent idea to do so. Thousands of successful people carry their goals written on a card in their wallets or purses.”

So…

What’s YOUR next port?

(Exciting!)

P.S. On the topic of navigating storms in sea odysseys, let’s also remember Emerson’s wisdom:

“The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency.”

So, we don’t want to turn back and head home at the first sign of rough seas, but there often times when we will zig and zag to find the proper course. From a sufficient distance (and with a consistent uber-aim to our destination of fulling expressing ourselves and actualizing our potential), those zigs and zags straighten themselves up quite nicely. :)

Swett Marden is *ALL* about having an iron will, grit, resolve, determination and a tenacity to stay the course in pursuit of our highest ideals. (It’s remarkable how many times he uses those words in all of his books.)

AND…

Embracing those qualities *does not* mean we need to work constantly. When we’re truly in it for the long haul, as masters we realize that we need to pace ourselves—optimizing our energy via proper rest and recreation and all that goodness.

As Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz put it in The Power of Full Engagement (check out those Notes from some great ideas on optimizing your energy!): “To maintain a powerful pulse in our lives, we must learn how to rhythmically spend and renew energy.”

Tal Ben-Shahar puts it this way: “The problem in today’s corporate world, as well as in many other realms, is not hard work; the problem is insufficient recovery.”

And, I love how J.P. Morgan put it: “I can do a year’s work in nine months, but not in twelve.”

How about you?

How can you dial in your work/renewal cycles a bit more?!

Loehr and Schwartz tell us positive rituals are the way to go: “Creating positive rituals is the most powerful means we have found to effectively manage energy in the service of full engagement.”

Plus: “All great performers rely on positive rituals to manage their energy and regulate their behavior.”

And: “The more exacting the challenge and the greater the pressure, the more rigorous our rituals need to be.”

So…

What are YOUR positive rituals and how can you dial them in a bit more?

This is big.

In short: It’s all about the little things. :)

Nearly 100 years after Swett Marden wrote this passage, leading neuroscientist Richie Davidson essentially proved it in a lab.

Here’s how Davidson puts it in The Emotional Life of Your Brain (See Notes): “My research has consistently demonstrated that recovery from the minor challenges we administer in an experiment, such as being burned by the thermode or seeing an upsetting picture, is strongly correlated with and predictive of how someone copes with real-life adversity, particularly how quickly they recover. Resilience on the little things is therefore a good indicator of Resilience on the bigger ones… If they recover quickly from the little setbacks, they tend to be resilient in the face of big ones, and if they become paralyzed by or obsess over the little things, they tend to be laid low for a long time by the big things, too.”

What’s exciting about that is the fact that we can build our resilience for the big things by PRACTICING on the little things.

Let’s take a moment to reflect a little more on this.

What little thing do you allow to annoy you more than you should?

Is it waiting in line at the grocery store a little longer than you’d like? Maybe it’s getting stuck in traffic that gets you all (unnecessarily) jacked up? What not-a-big-deal-until-you-make-it-one thing gets you riled up?

Identify that and see if you can choose a more calm, empowered response the next time you find yourself in that situation.

And KNOW that as you do that you’re building your resilience muscles to more effectively handle the (inevitable) bigger challenges with more grace!

An hour a day.

It’s simultaneously a relatively tiny amount of time and a HUGE chunk of time when aggregated and compounded over a year and a decade and a lifetime.

There are a couple things to note here.

First, we need to establish that you DO, in fact, have (at least) an hour a day you could use more wisely. Then, of course, we need to identify what you can (and will!) do with that hour a day!

Let’s start by identifying where that hour is going to come from. You may already know precisely where you can reclaim that hour from wasted activities. If so, awesome.

If not, let’s be honest about the fact that there are *very* few among us who don’t waste at least an hour a day—whether it’s on blatant time wasters or inefficient management of tasks throughout the day. And then have FUN reclaiming that lost time and put it to much better use!

(If you’re one of the exceptionally few humans on the planet who fully utilizes every moment in your day, well, congratulations! Hah.)

Of course, the obvious places to look: Online time. TV shows. Movies. etc. We get an hour or three back yet? :)

OK. Step 1 complete.

Now, what are you fired up to DO with an hour a day? Read? Write? Create? A blend of meditation + exercise + creating?

Awesome. Let’s do this!!

P.S. I highly recommend you slide that hour into your schedule a consistent, repeatable slot in your day. Easiest for a lot of people? First thing in the morning. (Which, of course, requires you go to bed at a reasonable hour—perhaps by eliminating a time-wasting activity at night?) Whenever it is for you, have fun and good luck! :)

That is genius.

Reminds me of Emerson who tells us that “Genius appeals to the future.” And: “A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds.”

What’s your best work?