February 10th, 2008 Gennaro Brooks-Church
There is so much pressure in life for success. The pressure is both internal and external. I think it is genetic. We are programed to improve on what is perfect. Sometimes we fail. But often, I hope, we succeed.
True happiness is to love ourselves exactly the way we are. Right? That is true happiness for me. When I am exactly perfect exactly in my current state is when I can finally relax and just be. My whole soul gives a big breath of relief.
Yet I have to actively try to be ok with who I am. That is not my normal state. I have all these knee jerk, primordial, instincts to compare myself with the world or with some made up fantasy from my own crazy head and conclude that I can become better.
And sometimes I do.
And sometimes it is a big waste of time that tires me out and I realize the goal was not worth it and I should have stayed home and chilled with the dog who thought I was just fine.
Life is ideally a balance but more commonly a tension between perfection as we are and the possibility to improve. Either way you can’t have one without the other.
Perfection is completion. Perfection is a goal. But our lives are spent either moving towards the goal, or having accomplished it, moving away from it. You never spend any time exactly on the goal.
This means we are eternally reaching our goals, but upon reaching them we skew the balance between perfection and striving and we immediately become imperfect again and are forced to get another perfection to strive for.
As we move from goal to goal we seesaw between being focused on improvement and being perfect (the later lasts no time at all, the former lasts a lifetime).
The moment you reach perfection and are able to keep it is the moment you become one with God, which according to my belief means you explode into a zillion non-pieces and scatter all over the universe - Not exactly practical if you have a job and children.
So….Yes we are genetically programed to improve ourselves. Yes happiness is to be perfectly ok with youself now.
So how do you solve this balance between perfection and improvement?
Here is one novel solution:
Success is being perfectly ok with yourself while you help OTHERS improve.
What if we all did this? Sounds like perfection to me.
And I’m not talking about donating to hungry kids half way across the globe, which is a nice of course. I think much more important are the people directly connected to you. How can you help them improve?
And I don’t mean heroic acts of kindness, which is also nice. I mean helping them get dressed, cleaning up after them, making them laugh, listening to them.
You are doing that already, you say?
Ha! I tricked you! You see, you are perfect just the way you are. Keep it up.
Tags: balance, happiness, life, success
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February 1st, 2008 Gennaro Brooks-Church
The secret to success isn’t really a secret. it is more a series of subtle things done together.
Here is my take on how to achieve all your goals and desires. It is called “Emotionally Clean Attachment” (Yes I made that up as I wrote it). The theory behind it stems from my study of stuff - Buddhism, get rich seminars, rich people, happy people, healthy people, successful people, etc.
The Tenets of Emotionally Clean Attachment are:
Overview:
1. All failure is the result of being emotionally attached to the outcome.
2. Most people are failures or successes due to random luck or lack of, inherent character traits, or random events.
3. Few people knowingly follow the tents of Emotionally Clean Attachment.
4. Anyone can follow the tenets with increased success.
5. Shit happens which can reduce or increase the success of following the tenets.
Actions:
1. Success results when your emotional wellbeing is not hinged on the outcome of your goals, acts etc. Your emotional wellbeing comes from within and you realize that the ups and downs of the world will never give you true happiness.
2. Stick to the facts. Stay away from emotional interpretation. You remove your emotional attachment from worldly events by focusing on the facts of your goals and life events. “He screwed me” is an emotional interpretation. “He took my car” is a fact.
3. Set goals. Make all goals and actions fact based, not emotion based. “By noon I will have all papers cleaned off my desk” is fact based. “By noon I will be free from clutter in my life” is emotional and unfocused. A focused goal must have a time of completion and exact factual details of what needs to be done to achieve the goal.
4. Stay focused. Emotions will always pull you off track. Depression, happiness, helplessness, these are all emotionally based interpretations of the situation and have very little use in helping you attain success. Whenever you get emotional, hold onto the facts for dear life. Focus on the facts of the goal. This gives you meaning.
5. Realize NOTHING IS PERSONAL. You partner dumped you? Your dog died? You got a raise? Somebody hurt you? These are all important facts but they are not personal. We are all living out our own story. Their story was to interact with you in that way. Learn the lesson and move on.
6. Life is a canvas for you to paint your own story. Paint one that works. Your partner left you? You can paint the story that you were dumped or that you were given the chance to be free. Nobody cares and it matters little what the story is. So make one that works.
7. It is not important what you do but how you do it. So don’t take things seriously. You hate your job? Leave it. Or look at it in a different way. It does not matter. Your job has very little to do with whether you become successful and happy.
8. Since we make our own stories we all have very different viewpoints. Neither is right or wrong. They are just stories. What is important is that we see that the stories are an illusion to help us live.
9. Nothing is a joke and everything is a joke.
Tags: goals, happiness, success
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