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When you’re in a funk, demotivated, or nursing the wounds from a setback, it can be really frustrating to have people tell you to buck up, put a smile on, and go on about your day. Regardless of whether everything will be okay, how you feel right now is decidedly not okay.

I totally get it. My wife, clients, and friends have taught me well to listen when they’re going through hard times, rather than jumping right into providing solutions.

The posts in this compilation are ones that I routinely share with people (when they’re ready) and that people tell me have helped them when they’ve been having a rough go of it. There’s no uniform style or voice because the posts were written at different times since 2008. I also decided to let each post stand alone, rather than making transitions and tying them all together, so that the pieces stay true to their original forms and expressions.

That said, the ebook starts with the uncomfortable reality of where you might be right now and ends with ways you can create a better tomorrow.

If something really resonates with you, I’d love to hear from you or for you to share the piece with someone else. Each post will have a link to the web version.

Thanks for reading. I get to do my great work only because there are people willing to join me on my journey as well.

Introduction

© 2016 Productive FlourishingAll material copyrighted by Productive Flourishing.

Please do not duplicate or share without written permission.

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Table of Contents

1 You’re Damn Right It Sucks

3 How to Recover from 10 Types of Demotivation

8 21 Ways to Quickly Short-Circuit a Funk

12 To Embrace Greatness, Embrace Failure: 21 Tributes to Failure

14 History, Luck, and Intention

17 ADifferentPastWould’veChanged You—So What?

19 Worrying About What You’ll Be When You GrowUpIsPointless

20 12SimpleWaystoBePresent

26 You Learn How to Live By Living

27 Which Wolf Will You Feed?

29 Next Steps (When You’re Ready)

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You’re Damn Right It Sucks

On a particularly frustrating day on an excessively screwed-up mission, higher headquarters gave me the bad news that the con-voy I was leading needed to change routes and go back on the potentially IED-laden roads we had just come through. The way

I got handed the information was so casual that it stung—it was clear that the delivering officer had no idea of what that meant for us. A change in mission was much more than a phone call.

After doing some thinking and getting my head straight about what needed to happen, I delivered the news to my senior sergeant first.

His reply: “Well, sir, that just fucking sucks.” There was no hyperbole, no whine, no hint of his doing anything but calling it like he saw it.

It was one of those times where you have to really think about how to re-spond to a statement. Sure, I could’ve tried to find the bright side and given some motivational speech about how it was going to be okay. But the truth was that we were tired, frustrated, and really ready to be done and off the roads. I said the only thing that I could while being honest:

“You’re damn right it sucks.”

“When do we roll out?” He was a fine sergeant because he knew that it didn’t really matter that it sucked. The fact that it was a shit sandwich didn’t change the fact that we were going to be eating it.

Yes, it did suck. But it turned out to be another one of those otherwise non-eventful missions that you secretly hate and love at the same time. You

love them because nothing majorly bad happened and you hate them because your stories are lame. I was blessed to have a lot of those missions.

• • •

A few years earlier, while in training, I was horsing around as one of the road guards for our running formation. If you’ve never seen a modern U.S. forma-tion run, road guards are the soldiers wearing kooky-colored reflective vests and running ahead of the formation to block traffic. Apparently some driver missed the 45 troops running in the middle of the road, so it became policy to have road guards.

Anyway, I was joking around and laughing with the other road guards and having a good time, which was unusual for me given how much I hated run-ning. I was looking over at my buddy when a pothole mysteriously appeared and ate my foot. I was mid-smile when I suddenly knew that I would be kiss-ing the concrete, and somehow or other I managed to tuck, roll, and get back to my feet in one smooth movement, all the while never losing pace.

My buddy, unaware of the mysterious pothole, gazed in amazement. From his vantage point, it looked like I had decided to dive forward and do a combat roll. He yelled “Airborne!” and said it was the most hardcore thing he’d seen in a while. My telling him that I really just about busted my ass didn’t change his excitement or praise.

• • •

A dear friend of mine was expressing how frustrated she is about the norma-tive pressure to be awesome. She wasn’t feeling the awesomesauce and was a bit disenchanted with the idea that everything had to be awesome and good.

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Here’s the deal: sometimes things suck. We all have bouts of loneliness, sad-ness, frustration, anger, pettiness, and all those other little dirty bits that make us human. There are plenty of times when the only thing you want to do is scream, fight, and knock some sense into some happy, no-need-to-worry-ev-erything-is-chill, feel-good elf. There are also times when you don’t even want to hear that it’s okay to feel however you feel because you don’t want to turn some feeling you don’t want to have into something that’s positive or okay.

For my part, I feel lonely, sad, frustrated, angry, scared, and hesitant on a fairly regular basis. I tend not to talk publicly about it much because a) when I look inward, I normally find some vice at play and can work on it, b) I tend to tuck and roll about everything, and c) I have a supportive network of people I can talk to about it. I also don’t like causing people concern when there’s nothing they can really do to help—I’m quite sure my mom wouldn’t have made it through my teens and twenties if she’d known how many messes I’d gotten into and out of.

That said, I do wake up excited. I have an amazingly supportive and patient wife who tolerates both my excited chatter and my down-in-a-hole moments. And my work with talented, creative, and compassionate people keeps me focused on positive possibilities. “Blessed” is the word that best captures most of my days, and, strangely, expressing that things are good can be harder than expressing that they’re bad because our culture makes it harder to share the good stuff going on.

Yet I wish I had the courage to show the dark when it comes up, the wisdom to see that it could be just as helpful to you, and the empathy to let you feel what-ever you want to feel without qualifiers. We’re all a work in progress—and I appreciate Erica’s example in The Failure Manifesto.

I’m fighting every natural habit and inclination that I have right now so I can end this post with what you might need to hear if you happen to be in one of those dark spots…

You’re damn right it sucks.

See this post online.

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Motivation is central to creativity, productivity, and happiness. Motivation is what causes us to act, and when we act, we create movement, growth, and change; we feel involved, masterful, and significant; we feel powerful through experiencing how we

can change the world; and we create more of what we love in our lives. And all of this gives our lives purpose and happiness.

Demotivation Is Like SnowIt’s said that Inuit have multiple words for snow because snow is so familiar to them that they can appreciate the subtle differences between different types of snow. These additional distinctions enable Inuit to respond differently to different types of snow, depending on the challenges and opportunities that each particular type of snow is presenting them with.

Most of us have just one conception of demotivation, which means that whenever you’re unmotivated, you’re likely to assume that you’re struggling with the same problem, when in fact demotivation is a category of problems, containing many variations. When you have just one kind of demotivation, you’ll apply the same old strategies whenever you feel unmotivated; for many people, those strategies look like this: set goals, push harder, create account-ability checks that will push you, and run your life using GTD (David Allen’s “Getting Things Done”) methods and to-do lists. These strategies are ineffec-tive with most types of demotivation, and in some instances they can make you feel even less motivated.

At its essence, demotivation is about your not being fully committed to act, and there are many reasons why you might be in that position. Having more ways to categorize your demotivation will help you to identify the real rea-sons for your unwillingness to commit to action, so that you can pick the right tools and strategies to get motivated again.

Here are 10 types of demotivation and the strategies that will help you to get motivated again:

1. You’re demotivated by fear

When you’re afraid, even if you’re entering territory that you’ve chosen to move into, a part of you is determined to avoid going forward. Fear slows you down and makes you hesitant and careful, and though slowing down can be beneficial, sometimes your fears are based on your imagination rather than on an accurate assessment of the actual risks. If your fear is big enough, even if you’re also excited to go forward, the part of you that wants to keep you safe can successfully prevent you from going forward into territory that’s both desirable and safe.

How to get motivated again: To get motivated, you need to deal with your fear. Start by naming your fears so that they’re out in the open. Remember to say a gentle “thank you” to them—they’re trying to protect you, after all. Then question your fears: “Why am I afraid of that happening?” “What are the chances that would really happen?” Some of your fears will slip away now.

How to Recover from 10 Types of Demotivation Editor’s Note: This post was written by Cath Duncan.

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HOW TO RECOVER FROM 10 TYPES OF DEMOTIVATION

Look at the fears that are left. What are they telling you about the research you need to do, the gaps you need to fill, and the risk management strategies you need to put in place? Honor that wisdom by building it into your plan. Final-ly, consider breaking down the changes you’re wanting to make into smaller steps and focusing on just the next few small steps—this will calm your fears.

2. You’re demotivated by setting the wrong goals

Martha Beck has a great model for understanding motivation. She explains that we have an Essential Self and a Social Self. Your Essential Self is the part of you that’s spontaneous and creative and playful, the part that knows what’s most important to you. Your Social Self is the part of you that has been devel-oping since the day you were born, learning the rules of the tribe and keeping you safe by making sure you follow those rules.

We’re all surrounded by so many messages that feed into our Social Selves, and we’re keen to impress our tribes. When you feel unmotivated, it’s because you’re setting goals based purely on what your Social Self wants and this is pulling you away from the direction your Essential Self wants you to take. Your Essential Self uses demotivation to slow you down and to detach you from the toxic goals you’ve set.

How to get motivated again: Take some time to review your goals. Because your Essential Self is nonverbal, you can easily access it through your body. Notice how your body responds as you think of each of the goals you’re trying to work on. When your body (and particularly your breathing) shows signs of tightness and constriction, that’s a pretty good indication that you’re trying to achieve a toxic goal. If you get a constricted reaction, scrap your current goals and question all your stories about what you “should” do with your life. No-tice what makes you smile spontaneously or lose track of time, and set goals related to that stuff instead.

3. You’re demotivated by lack of clarity about what you want

When you haven’t consciously and clearly articulated what you want, your picture of your future will be vague. We like what’s familiar, so we resist what’s unfamiliar and vague and we stay with and re-create what’s familiar to us. If you’re not clear about what you want to create, then it makes sense that you’ll lack motivation to act because you’d rather stay with your current familiar reality.

How to get motivated again: If you want to create something different from what you’ve been experiencing, it’s not enough to just know what you don’t want. You need to know what you do want, and you need to articulate a clear and specific vision of what you want to create so that you can become familiar with that new outcome and feel comfortable moving toward it. Take some time to articulate what you want and why you want it.

4. You’re demotivated by a values conflict

Your values are what’s important to you in life. If you have a values conflict, it means that there are two or more values that are important to you but you believe that you can’t satisfy all of those values in a particular situation. You then feel conflicted and pulled in different directions as you try to find ways to get what’s important to you. You might have brief spurts of motivation to work on something and then lose motivation and start working on something else, or your motivation might dry up altogether because the effort of dealing with internal conflict quickly tires you out and saps your energy.

How to get motivated again: You need to unpack your values conflict and play mediator to get the parts of you that are advocating for different val-ues to play on the same team again. Start with acknowledging the internal conflict. Grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle so that you

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have two columns. Write about the two directions you feel pulled in, one in each column, and then summarize with a statement of what each part wants. Now pick one column and chunk it up: “Why does this part want that? What does it hope to get as a result of having that?” Keep asking the questions and writing your answers until you feel that you’ve hit on the result that this part of you ultimately wants. Now do the same for the other part, and notice when you get to the level where the answers in the two columns are the same.

Ultimately, all of the parts of you always want the same thing, because they’re all you. Now that you know what you really want, you can evaluate the strate-gies that each part had been advocating for and decide which strategy would work best.

Often, once you’re clear on what you really want, you spot new strategies for getting it that you hadn’t noticed before. Sometimes by doing this exercise you’ll find ways to satisfy all of your values, but sometimes that’s not possi-ble. If you’ve taken time to think through your values and you’ve consciously chosen to prioritize a particular value over your other values for a while, this clarity will ease the internal conflict and your motivation will return.

5. You’re demotivated by lack of autonomy

We thrive on autonomy. We all have a decision-making center in our brains and this part of us needs to be exercised. Studies have found that this deci-sion-making center in the brain is underdeveloped in people who have de-pression and that if you practice using this part of the brain and making deci-sions, depression often clears.

In his book Drive, Daniel Pink writes about the research that shows that when it comes to doing creative work, having some autonomy to decide what we do, when we do it, how we do it, and whom we do it with is essential to igniting and sustaining motivation, creativity, and productivity.

How to get motivated again: Consider how much autonomy you have in relation to the goals you’ve been trying to pursue. Are there areas where you feel constricted and controlled? Consider how you could gradually introduce more autonomy in your tasks, time, technique, location, and team, and then, if you’re employed, have a discussion with your manager and ask for greater autonomy in a few specific areas of your work.

6. You’re demotivated by lack of challenge

Challenge is another crucial ingredient for motivation that authors like Dan-iel Pink and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of Flow: The Psychology of Opti-mal Experience, highlight. When it comes to dealing with challenges, there’s a sweet spot. Too great a challenge, and the fear becomes too great and saps our motivation (see point 1); too small a challenge, and we quickly get bored and struggle to stay motivated. We’re designed to be living, growing creatures and we need constant challenges and opportunities to master new skills. Without challenges, our Essential Self steps in and demotivates us as a way of telling us that we’ve departed from the path that’s right for us.

How to get motivated again: Review your goals and the projects you’re work-ing on. Are they challenging you? Are they going to require you to grow in order to achieve them, or are you treading water in your comfort zone, doing only the things you know you can do? Try tweaking your goals to make them a bit more challenging, take on projects that will require you to grow, and find a new thing or two to learn to stimulate yourself.

7. You’re demotivated by grief

At the beginning of any significant change, we go through a phase of wonder-ing if we should or could hang on to the way things were and grieving what we’ll be losing if we make that change. Confusion, self-doubt, mistrust of the world around us, and feeling lost are common symptoms, and the bigger the

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change, the more powerful these symptoms. Sometimes we even go through a bit of depression and social withdrawal. Martha Beck calls this phase the “Death and Rebirth” phase of change in her book Finding Your Own North Star. With all the grieving and fearing and feeling lost that go on in this phase, it’s normal for your motivation to dry up.

How to get motivated again: If you’ve just experienced a trauma or loss, or you’re going through a major change and finding that there are days where you’re hit hard with Death and Rebirth symptoms, don’t try to make yourself motivated and proactive. You can’t rush grieving or the undoing of your old life and ways of thinking, and you can’t skip the Death and Rebirth phase and go straight into Dreaming and Scheming.

You need to give yourself a lot of space for nurturing and reflection. Look after your body with good food, rest, and exercise. Express your grief, confu-sion, and fears with people who can listen lovingly. Spend time in nature and with calm, loving people to center yourself. Accept every feeling and thought you have—they’re all normal and safe. Take one day at a time and go easy on yourself. Confusion, forgetfulness, and clumsiness are all normal in this stage. The grieving will end when it’s ready, and if you relax into it and express your grief, it’ll be sooner rather than later.

8. You’re demotivated by loneliness

This is an especially important one for those of us who work alone from home. You know those days when you feel a bit cabin-feverish, you just don’t feel like working, and you’d rather be out having a drink with a friend or playing a game of soccer? Well, perhaps it’s because we’re designed to be social crea-tures. Sometimes your Essential Self is just longing for some connection with other people, so it steps in and hijacks your work motivation so that you’ll

take a break from work and go spend some time with other people, giving your Essential Self what it needs.

How to get motivated again: Take a break and go spend some time with someone you enjoy. You may be surprised at the motivating impact this has and find yourself much more clear and productive when you return to your work. And then look for ways that you can begin to build more networking and joint venturing into your work.

9. You’re demotivated by burnout

I attract overachieving Type A’s, and as a recovering Type A myself, I know that sometimes we’re banging on about wanting to get more done even after we’ve exceeded the limit on what’s sustainable. If you’re feeling tired all the time, you’ve lost your energy for socializing, and the idea of taking a snooze sounds more compelling than the stuff you’re usually interested in, then you’ve probably pushed yourself too long and hard and you may be burned out.

Your Essential Self will always work to motivate you to move toward what you most need and away from goals, projects, and ways of working that take you away from what your Essential Self craves. So if you’re burned out and need-ing sleep, your Essential Self may even sap the motivation from the things that you’re usually really ignited about—just to get you to meet your core needs again.

How to get motivated again: Sleep. And then when you’re done sleeping and the quality of your thinking has been restored, check back in with your Es-sential Self about what’s most important to you, hang out on the Productive Flourishing blog, and start building sustainable ways to do more of what’s important to you.

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10. You’re demotivated by not knowing what to do next

Your end-goal might be nice and clear, but if you haven’t taken time to chunk it down into smaller goals, you’ll get stuck, confused, and unmotivated when it’s time to take action. Some projects are small and familiar enough that they don’t need a plan, but if you’re often worrying that you don’t know what to do next and you don’t have a clear plan, then this might be the source of your demotivation.

How to get motivated again: If you want to keep your motivation flowing steadily through all stages of your projects, take time to create clear project plans and to schedule your plans on your calendar.

Use your fears to point you to the potential risks you need to manage in your plan. Write down all of your “I-don’t-know-how-to” concerns and turn these into research questions. The first part of any planning stage is research, and you’ll find new research questions along the way, so realize that conducting research should be part of your action plan at every stage of your project. Fi-nally, ask yourself what smaller goals need to be achieved for you to achieve your end-goal, and schedule deadlines for yourself.

Goal-setting and pushing are rarely the answerGoal-setting, planning, organizing, and accountability structures are often collectively touted as the big solution to demotivation and the silver bullet that will get you creative and productive again, but notice that it’s a useful strategy for dealing with only some types of demotivation. With many other types, goal-setting, planning, organizing, and accountability structures will only make your demotivation problem worse.

Ov er to you…• Have you been able to pinpoint the types of demotivation that you tend to

struggle with most?

• Are you stuck in demotivation right now?

• What do you need, and which motivation strategy is going to give you what you need right now?

About the author: Cath Duncan co-founded the Creative Grief Coaching Certi-fication program, where she and Kara Jones train social workers, therapists, life coaches, and nurses to use conversational creativity and art-making to support bereaved people in living wholeheartedly after loss. Cath has also written the Re-membering For Good Grief Workbook and numerous grief articles at Remem-beringForGood.com.

See this post online.

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21 Ways to Quickly Short-Circuit a Funk

The situation: you find yourself in a funk. I’m not talking about the Pepé Le Pew kind of funk—that just requires the generous application of soap and water. The kind of funk I’m

talking about is where you’re almost inexplicably sad, slightly depressed, or down about something.

This happens to almost everyone every once in a while. The goal here is not to figure out how to avoid getting in a funk, but rather to short-circuit the funk when it happens. This is why getting enough sleep is not on the list, because that’s not helpful when you’ve already deprived yourself of sleep.

Note also that I’m not talking about chronic depression. Though the sugges-tions below will help, coping with and recovering from chronic depression takes far more work and may require some radical changes to your lifestyle.

I have a checklist that I start going down when I recognize that I’m in a funk. It starts with the recognition that the easiest way to short-circuit a funk is to work on the physiological level first and then work on the emotional, social, and mental levels later—yes, this is the same Aristotelian schema that I dis-cuss in The 3 Key Ideas from Aristotle That Will Help You Flourish. It takes its cues from cognitive therapy, which trains patients to become aware of nega-tive thoughts and to immediately take action to subvert those thoughts.

The Physical ShortsOftentimes, funks come about simply because we haven’t been taking care of our bodies the way we should. This list focuses just on getting your body back in proper order. Remember: your body is more than a head transportation vehicle.

1. Drink Water

Proper hydration is key to proper human functioning, but for some reason, it’s so easy to forget to drink enough water. The first response when you’re in a state you don’t want to be in should be to drink water—16–24 oz. immedi-ately, and then at least 8 oz. every hour thereafter.

2. Eat a Balanced Meal

The lifestyle that many of us live is not very conducive to eating high-quality, balanced meals on a day-to-day basis. There seems to be a lot of feast and famine in this arena—days go by where we eat fast food and boxed meals until we have the time, energy, or money to have something better. In the meantime, our bodies are depleted of the nutrients we need, and the physical depletion affects all other functions.

Despite the fact that you may not want to, grab a well-balanced meal. Low blood sugar, protein depletion, vitamin deficiencies, and the whole other host of things that occur just from inadequate nutrition are very easy to correct, and all of those, in different degrees, affect the way we feel.

3. Do the Daily Business

Dehydration and poor nutrition lead to another bad thing: irregular excre-tion. Freud spent a lot of time talking about pooping, and though we may question some of his assumptions and implications, his insight that it makes us feel better is right on the money. I’ll not spend a long time talking about this and instead point you to this post on the May’s Machete blog.

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4. Get Some Sun

Sunlight has been found to have a strong effect on everything from mood to fertility. What we are concerned about here is sunlight’s effect on melatonin, the chemical that makes us sleepy, and serotonin, which strongly affects our moods. Sunlight has been shown to decrease melatonin and to increase sero-tonin—which has the collective effect of increasing our alertness and mood.

5. Exercise

Exercise has a whole list of benefits, but the one we’re most concerned about here is the fact that it has a very positive effect on our moods. Do this one after you’ve rehydrated and eaten, though.

6. Take a Bath Break

Okay, so I said this wasn’t about that kind of funk, but it turns out that a nice bath or shower makes a huge difference. While you’re at it, shave, scrub, clip, and do all the other things you feel you must do to present your best appear-ance. That “fresh new you” feeling may be just enough to subvert the funk you’re in.

7. Smile

As sappy as it sounds, scientific research supports the notion that we are hap-py because we smile, not that we smile because we are happy. Smiling causes biofeedback that affects emotions and behavior, and you might just be able to smile your way out of a funk.

The Emotional ShortsThe list below is about rebalancing your emotions and finding and reconnect-ing with yourself.

8. Listen to (or Play) Music

Music soothes the savage beast, but it also gives spirit to the melancholy one. It’s hard to make blanket recommendations here, as musical tastes are so dif-ferent, but look at the music you listen to and try to find something that either inspires you or has an upbeat mood. (Because music strongly affects mood, listening to Alice in Chain’s “Down in a Hole” while you’re down in a hole isn’t particularly helpful.) My go-to guy for funk-busting music is Jack Johnson, as I can’t help but smile and enjoy life as I sing along with him.

It’s even better if you can play a musical instrument, as that can lift your mood while also getting your mind off the funk. The effect of music is even stronger when you’re playing music rather than just listening to it, so make sure that what you’re playing isn’t funk-inducing on its own.

9. Write Down What’s on Your Mind

If you’re still in the funk by now, then it’s a good time to sit down and try to really figure out what’s bothering you. You know it’s not something merely physical—it’s something with your feelings or thoughts. Sit down and journal what’s on your mind. Linear writing may not work, so consider mind-map-ping your emotions, too.

It’s important that you express yourself in writing, as that gives you something to refer to after you…

10. Find a Sanctuary and Sit in It

We each have our own places to find solace. For some, it’s a chapel, church, synagogue, or other place of worship. For others, it’s a deep forest stream or a mountaintop. Find your sanctuary, sit in it, and think about the things in your journal or mind-map from above. These places are great places to…

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11. Review Your Goals, and Dream

Sanctuaries are great places for comfort, but they also tend to give us perspec-tive. While you’re there, review your goals and allow yourself to dream. It’s important to NOT review your tasks or To-Do list, as the point is to reconnect with those things you really want to do and be, not with the long list of things it’ll take to get there.

The Social ShortsStill in a funk? Wow, it’s a powerful one. This (shorter) lists focuses on recon-necting with the social aspect of your being.

12. Go Where People Are Having Fun

Fun and happiness are infectious. Simply being around people who are enjoy-ing themselves has a strong tendency to make us happier. You don’t even have to explicitly be there with anyone for the happiness of others to infect you.

13. Find a Way to Help Someone Else

Helping others generally makes us feel better about ourselves. Whether it’s due to egoism or true altruism, the effect is the same: we feel better. Helping others adds value to the world, so at the end of the day, funk or not, you’ve added more value to the world than you would have if you had just sat on the couch moping.

14. Talk to an Old Friend You’ve Lost Touch With

Friends help us flourish, and old friends have a way of reminding us who we are and who we want to be. Additionally, old friends know how best to help us out of our funks even without our asking for help or saying we’re in

a funk. Lastly, we tend to talk about the important things with old, out-of-touch friends, so this is a great way to think about (through talking about) the important stuff.

The Mental ShortsSometimes just having a nut to crack is what you need to derail the train o’ funk. This list focuses on things to wrap your mind around.

15. Solve a Puzzle

Riddles, puzzles, and mysteries are great at short-circuiting funks because they keep you occupied long enough that the funk subsides. Whether that puzzle is Sudoku, crossword puzzles, physical puzzles, planning your next novel or article, or composing your next song, the process of throwing your mind fully into a process helps immensely.

16. Plan Out Your Goals and Dreams

So, you have your list of goals and dreams from above—it’s now time to figure out how to make them real. How much time will it take? How much will it cost? What commitments will you have to make or let go of? Start from now and go forward, rather than worrying about what you have or haven’t done.

SynergyThe really powerful ways of getting out of funks combine a few of these sug-gestions. The combined effect far outweighs the sum of its parts.

17. Go for a Walk Through an Outdoor Refuge

Combines Exercise, Sunlight, and Sanctuary.

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18. Play Music with Friends

Combines Music, Friendship, and Puzzles. Bonus points can be had if you play spiritual music, if you’re so inclined.

19. Garden

Combines Sunlight, Exercise, and Sanctuary. It’s also been shown that dirt exposure boosts happiness.

20. Plan with an Old Friend

Combines Friendship, Planning, and Things You Value. It helps to look for-ward to the future things that you want to do rather than focusing on your current state.

21. Spend Time with Children

Time spent with children has a great way of fighting funks, for children are the epitome of life, energy, and potentiality. Forget what you had planned today and spend some quality time with them.

No one wants to be or has time to be in a funk. Life is simply too short and we have way more important things to be doing and life to be living. Next time you’re aware that you are in a funk, start working down the list. Spending a couple of hours on personal, emotional, and social maintenance is far better than spending a day or afternoon moping on the couch.

See this post online.

21 WAYS TO QUICKLY SHORT-CIRCUIT A FUNK

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Here’s the deal: You’re smart. You’re creative. You know what you’re doing.

But you’re scared as hell of failing and making mistakes. Maybe it’s because you’ve been so damned good at whatever you’ve done for your whole life. Maybe it’s because you quit a good thing to pick up something risky. Maybe it’s because you’re scared of what happens when you don’t fail.

I get that. I do. I could write all day about how you need to embrace failure and mistakes before you can really unleash your creative potential, but who am I to tell you this? So I’ve enlisted the help of a few thousand years’ worth of creatives to help me out:

If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed. I am not discour-aged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.—Thomas A. Edison (1847–1931), Encyclopaedia Britannica

I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit—I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.—Ernest Hemingway

To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.—Joseph Chilton Pearce

No man ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.—W. E. Gladstone

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mis-takes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.—Plutarch (46 –120 CE)

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.—E. J. Phelps

Some of the best lessons we ever learn are learned from past mistakes. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.—Dale E. Turner

Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.—Steve Jobs (1955–2011)

If you don’t make mistakes, you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.—Frank Wilczek (1951– )

If I had my life to live over… I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.—Nadine Stair

To Embrace Greatness, Embrace Failure: 21 Tributes to Failure

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TO EMBRACE GREATNESS, EMBRACE FAILURE: 21 TRIBUTES TO FAILURE

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.—James Joyce (1882–1941)

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.—Scott Adams (1957– ), The Dilbert Principle

To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mis-take of all.—Peter McWilliams, Life 101

If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.—Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968)

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

You cannot measure a man by his failures. You must know what use he makes of them. What did they mean to him. What did he get out of them.—Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924)

If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. …[T]his thing that we call failure is not the falling down but the staying down.—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)

Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.—John Keats (1795–1821)

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t as all. You can be discouraged by failure—or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because, remember, that’s where you will find success.—Thomas J. Watson

The bottom line: I’d tell you to get over your fear of failure and mistakes, but it’s natural to feel that way. I’m asking you to understand that failure and mistakes are part and parcel of greatness. Either you can let fear of failure and mistakes cripple you and keep you stuck, or you can join the rest of the successes throughout history and rack up a good tab of failures and mistakes while you’re at it.

Your call.

One last thing: failure is like prom night. We make a big deal about it before it happens, but its significance after the fact fades quickly.

See this post online.

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History, Luck, and Intention

Our lives are too complex to be reduced to platitudes and simple chains of cause and effect.

I get tired of people saying you can do anything you set your mind to. It’s not true, and it causes a lot of unhealthy thinking about our lives and prospects. The trajectory of our lives isn’t purely about intention.

But I also get tired of people letting their environment and history define them. Within each of us is the power to make small improvements in our situation—improvements that, over a lifetime, lead to our flourishing. We are not defined merely by our history, but rather have considerable influence on our flourishing through the habits we cultivate and the choices we make.

Lastly, too few people take seriously the role that luck plays in our lives. Some-times you really are just in the right place at the right time. But even during those times, there are choices and a historical background at play. Luck gets you through the moment, but choices and history get you through your life.

These three factors are so interwoven that any analysis that tries to reduce them to one or the other will fail. Life is not that simple.

The movie Recount was actually the catalyst for this post. The film recounts the debacle of democracy that happened in the presidential election of 2000, and I was livid at the end of it. I was angry that so many lives, mine included, were changed by the appointment of W to the American presidency. How different would the world look had things gone differently? How different would my life be?

Had Bush not been appointed, I’m almost certain we would not be in Iraq. We might not even be in Afghanistan if we had a president who spent more time at work than in Crawford in the months prior to 9/11. Not paying for an expensive war may have given different outlets for money flow, thus affecting the current economic faceplant that the American economy has taken.

Of course, had the U.S. not been in Iraq, then neither would I. I’d probably be much further along in my dissertation, and Angela and I would be seriously preparing to leave Nebraska.

BUT…

That things would have been different doesn’t mean that they’d be better. I wouldn’t have had the formative experiences that have now made me who I am, like it or love it. We would be in a completely different (probably worse) financial situation, and I would not have had the requisite skills to get the university job I currently have. I’ll pause on this last one for a second.

I’ve said before that I started PF as an outlet for creativity and a way to help others become more productive. A lot of it came from having entirely too many responsibilities—which I have because of my performance and achieve-ments during my deployment to Iraq. Since apparently it’s common knowl-edge that you give challenging jobs to busy people, I ended up getting more and more responsibility, which made my urge to blog even higher. I’ve picked up many skills by blogging and designing in a year—so much so, actually, that had the particular job I applied for and got come up the year before, I would not have been competitive and able to do it.

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The fact is that I don’t know whether I’m better off now than I would have been had the election of 2000 been different. But I can say with absolute certainty that my life is much different than it would otherwise have been.

I’ll transition from this autobiographical backdrop to the more general train of thought that all of our lives are like this—our history guides our intention and creates opportunities for luck, our intentions create new histories and luck, and luck gives us new intentions and possibilities.

HistoryNone of us are born with a clean historical slate. We are each born into a par-ticular society with its particular rules for how different people interact with each other. Some of us are born poor, some rich. Some of us are men, some are women, and a small few are in different categories entirely. Some of us live in thriving cities, and some of us live in utter dumps.

Our original positions in life determine a lot of the opportunities we have at the outset. Had I not been born into a poor multiracial family, I would have had different opportunities than I did. Had I been born a female rather than a male, my orientation to the world would likely be much different.

There are a million ways in which you can analyze your history and weep or rejoice about your fortune or misfortune. Most of this can be an utter waste of time, for, in the end, we can’t tell whether our misfortune has made us fortu-nate or whether our good historical fortune has been a misfortune.

That seems counterintuitive, but think about all of the silver-spooned people you know who are worse off for being so. Think about all of the people you know who have faced adversity or tragedy and how those struggles have made them better people.

The important thing, as far as history is concerned, is to recognize the im-pact that your history has had on you. It’s important to understand where you come from and to recognize that the times you live in have a very strong role in determining what you’re able to do. But history is changed by…

IntentionWere we rocks, then our history would determine our future. Rocks are formed by certain forces and acted upon by other forces, but they’re passive.

Unlike rocks, we have the capacity to change our futures. We are born into certain settings and, at different levels of capacity, can change those settings. Humans and higher mammals are distinct in the world because we intention-ally change our environment to match our desires.

Few things are more disheartening than seeing people who are in bad situa-tions refuse to make any positive changes in their lives. Few things are more inspiring than seeing people who are in horrible, tragic situations daily will themselves to a better future. The capability and responsibility of choice are the hallmarks of the human condition, yet so few people understand this and instead let history act on them as it does on rocks.

We are not merely leaves in a breeze, destined to go where the invisible forces push us. But from the nexus of history and intention, we get…

LuckYou can think of luck as one of those metaphysical forces that makes life inter-esting. You can think of it as divine will that’s beyond our cognition. Or you can just think of it as the result of untold forces, choices, and interactions. But we all recognize that odd moment when we are exactly in the right place at the right time for a meaningful event to happen.

HISTORY, LUCK, AND INTENTION

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A few weeks ago, Angela and I were backpacking and ran into a family that was lost on the trail. This man and woman and their lovely five (!) kids had gotten lost and had been hiking for four hours or so in flipflops. It was about an hour before sundown.

We had made a few wrong turns ourselves, and had we not made them, we wouldn’t have run into this family. We were five or ten minutes off course, and had we not been, we wouldn’t have run into this family.

The parents thought their car was just a half-hour or so south of where they were. Since Angela and I weren’t familiar with where they were talking about, we told them where we had come from, talked to them for a little bit, and let them go on their way.

But it didn’t sit right with us, so we ran back to them and told them to come with us to our car since we knew where we were going and we’d drive them to their car. They agreed, since they were so lost and disoriented that they’d do just about anything to get off their trail.

It was only when we started walking with them that we realized how bad off they were. Their feet were blistered and sore, and the family hadn’t drunk anything the whole time they were on the trail on this hot day. I happened to be carrying additional water for training weight, and honestly, the only other time I’ve seen people so thirsty was when I was in Iraq. This family had a son who was having surgery on one of his legs the next day, and they still had a few hours’ drive ahead of them.

We led them back to our car, piled them all in, and had them direct us to where they had parked. It turns out that they were six miles south of their van—had they kept going the way they were going, they would not have reached their van that night.

I tell this story because so many purely coincidental features of it converged that it seems utterly unfathomable. Our wrong turns. The exact point on our trail where it ran side by side with another. Our having extra water. Our sens-ing that our decision to let the family go wasn’t right.

For whatever reason, we were in the right place at the right time. It goes be-yond pure history and intention.

This is one small story, but our lives are invariably enriched or soured by these types of events. In my own life, I was lucky enough to be embraced by my best childhood friend’s family, and their influence on me was critical for my development—it really did change my life. Not to mention that that friend ended up saving me from drowning in a flooding river, which kind of made up for his shooting me in the groin with a BB gun a few years earlier.

How Are History, Luck, and Intention Weaving Your Life Together?History and luck are beyond our control, but you can understand and respect your history and social settings and learn to recognize which constraints are beneficial and which aren’t. You can intend to make the world better through your choices and actions. And you can harness good luck and learn from bad luck.

Take the weekend to think about it. How are you embracing and/or overcom-ing your history? How are you spreading value in the world? How are you opening yourself up to luck?

See this post online.

HISTORY, LUCK, AND INTENTION

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It’s natural to wonder about how much better your life might’ve been had you been born into different circumstances. A recent conversation with Tim Berry made me think about this.

Tim is one of those remarkable people who have managed to do well in his entrepreneurial career and be an amazing father, husband, and friend. While I appreciate his personal success, what I’m most inspired by is what his kids are up to. Given who he his, he probably wouldn’t say that they’re doing it because of him, but you can’t deny the presence of a good role model and catalyst. One of his daughters is now the CEO of Palo Alto Software. One of his sons is the CTO for HuffPo/AOL. Another daughter is the marketing director at Klout. And so on.

Great job, Tim. ’Nuff said.

When I hear stories like that, I always wonder how my life would be different if I had been raised in different social circumstances. The brute fact is that growing up as a poor, multiracial kid in the South meant that I missed out on a lot. I didn’t have a computer until I bought my first one in college, so being a programming prodigy wasn’t in my cards. Our financial circumstances pre-cluded my attending many creative arts programs or getting a lot of musical instruction as a kid, so that track was out for me, too. My family culture, com-bined with some of the social dynamics of the South, wasn’t conducive for me to focus on business as a teenager.

I started off “behind” in a lot of ways.

But as I said in History, Luck, and Intention, that things would have been different doesn’t mean they would have been better.

Maybe I wouldn’t have developed the drive I have. Maybe I wouldn’t have learned to use what I had to the fullest, even if I had to use it in novel ways. Maybe I wouldn’t have learned to see people for who they are and what they can do, rather than where they come from. Maybe I never would’ve made the choices that led to important formative experiences that forged my character and experiences. And maybe there wouldn’t have been a lot of people who were willing to give me a chance precisely because I wasn’t born with a silver spoon.

Moreover, it’s likely that being born in different social circumstances would mean that I’d have other personal challenges to go through. I might be wor-ried about filling my parents’ shoes. Or living up to heightened potential or the opportunities they laid down for me. Maybe I’d be dying inside because the people in my social network were all too competitive and lost to check in with themselves and those around them.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. What might have happened isn’t a foundation for what is happening and has no bearing on the choices I’ll be making or the steps I’ll be taking today. Better to take the emotional and creative energy it takes to fuel those “might have been” stories and use it to fuel the “what is” for today and the “what might be” for tomorrow.

A different past would have changed us, but who says it would have been for the better?

A Different Past Would’ve Changed You— So What?

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A DIFFERENT PAST WOULD’VE CHANGED YOU—SO WHAT?

And does the silver-lined story we create as a better-than comparison of our actuality warrant the energy it takes to create it—especially since we rarely create a story in which our actuality is the better picture?

Rather than focusing on what you might have done and been, focus on what you can and will do. The former disempowers you; the latter harnesses the power you have. You can’t rewrite your past, but you can write your way into a better present and future.

What “might have been” narrative are you giving power to?

See this post online.

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A woman in her mid-50s in a local group I’m in stood up and ad-mitted, “I still don’t know what I’m going to be when I grow up!” She was clearly frustrated that she was her age and still hadn’t fig-ured it out. I was puzzled because I don’t understand the yearning

under the worrying about what you’ll be when you grow up.

I saw looks of sympathy and understanding come from many of the other members of the group. This issue seems to be something that creatives and wanderers worry about more than other people. But who knows, perhaps when I’m older I’ll feel the same way.

What puzzles me about it is that creatives are always on a quest of one type or another. Always altering reality around them. Getting bored with “who they are” and what they do. To be a creative is to be a wellspring of change—it’s for good reason that we aren’t known for our predictability and stability.

So, the yearning to “know what you’re going to be” or what your “true calling” is seems to be a wish to be something you’re not, to know where things are going, like there’s a there somewhere in the future that we’re heading toward. But as Spanish poet Antonio Machado said, “wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.”

There is no who or what we’re going to be out there in the future; we become who we are and what we are by walking.

I think there’s something deeper at play: the person who yearns to know who she’ll be is looking for meaning and acceptance. She wants to know that the

choices that she’s made—the adventures and the misadventures—were all headed in a direction that made sense and meant something. She wants to be able to tell her story in a coherent way that doesn’t look like it’s been aim-lessly going from one thing to the next; a story that doesn’t look like a score of unfinished creative projects, half-careers, and sojourns in a yurt in a desert somewhere (real or metaphorical).

She wants a simple story of a successful life well lived rather than the complex, wandering weirdo life that looks more like a tapestry constantly being woven or like damaged goods constantly being repackaged.

Every choice we’ve made in the past becomes a part of our story, and some stories are simply more complex than others. There’s rarely a correlation be-tween the richness and depth of a story and its simplicity. We write our stories and make meaning daily. We are conscious beings hurled moment by mo-ment towards a void that becomes firm on impact.

Most of us couldn’t have imagined the life we live today 5 years ago, let alone 10 years ago. If we truly show up, we have no idea what our life will look like in 5 or 10 years, either. Next year, I can see. Next quarter, I can make concrete. Next week, I can plan. Tomorrow, I can live in the present AND build a better tomorrow.

But I’ll pass on the helping of worrying about what I’ll be when I grow up, thank you. I’d rather have a generous portion of the adventure du jour.

See this post online.

Worrying About What You’ll Be When You Grow Up Is Pointless

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12 Simple Ways to Be Present

Learning to be present cures a lot of ills and prevents them from happening in the first place.

Frustration, anxiety, regret, and worry often come about because we’re consumed by thinking about the past or the future. Past-focused think-ing anchors onto what we coulda/shoulda/mighta done, whereas future-fo-cused thinking latches onto worries and fears of uncertainty.

But we can’t change the past, and as Thomas Jefferson remarked, “How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.”

As with meditation, there are more ways to be present than by lighting in-cense and sitting in the lotus position. This post explores other ways of bring-ing yourself back to where you are in this moment, and (gasp!) some of them may actually be things you want to do.

I have these ordered by how simple they are to do. Items earlier on the list are things you can do pretty easily and won’t require any major disruption to your work or whatever flow you’re in. Items further down on the list require a little more effort but also will likely have a bigger presence payoff.

As I mentioned in 21 Ways to Quickly Short-Circuit a Funk, look for ways that you can stack these tips. For instance, “step away from all electronics,” “get some nature therapy,” and “play with kids and animals” all go really well together. “Play with kids and animals” and “take a meditation moment,” not so much.

1. Drink Water

My military trainers apparently went to the same school of life as my foot-ball coaches, because for anything that ailed you, the instruction was always “drink water.”

Headache? Drink water. Sprained ankle? Drink water. Homesick? Drink water. Nervous? Drink water. Confused? Drink water. Sore? Drink water. Hungry? Drink water. Hot? Drink water. Cold? Drink water.

As asinine as it may seem, they were right. For every one of the items above, drinking water has a positive effect, but I’m going to focus on emotional states like being homesick.

Drinking water works because:

• It makes sure your emotional state isn’t a reflection of your being dehydrated

• It makes you slow down and breathe

• It gets you to take a mini-break from whatever external situation you’re in

So I’ll just join my lineage of coaches and trainers. Want to be more present? Drink water. (About 20 ounces [0.5L] is a good guide.)

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12 SIMPLE WAYS TO BE PRESENT

2. Breathe Deeply

Speaking of my lineage, there’s a technique known as combat breathing that has you breathe in while counting to 4, hold for 4 counts, and breathe out for 4 counts. Repeat for 3–5 breaths.

The technique is used by athletes, first responders, police officers, soldiers, and other people in high-stress environments. You don’t need to be under fire to be in a high-stress environment, and there’s no need to reserve a perfectly good presence technique just for high-stress situations.

You can use the technique between every email you send or perhaps after doing 10 minutes of email processing. Or maybe it’s between meetings. Or during meetings when you’re not talking.

Again, the trick here is that it’s hard to do the technique without being pres-ent, so it makes for a great way to slide into being present.

3. Wiggle Your Toes

Seriously. Our toes are anomalies from the rest of our bodies, for they’re one of the movable parts that we don’t reflexively move or incorporate into the rest of our motion or lack thereof. Our toes are just there, not moving.

Rather than over-thinking this one, trust me and do the following:

• Scrunch your toes up to make a toe fist

• Wiggle them

• Stretch them out

• Focus on moving your big toes without moving the rest of them

• Now do whatever feels right for your toes

Did you notice that you couldn’t really think about anything else while you were actively moving your toes? You might also be noticing other parts of your body.

The great thing about wiggling your toes is that you can do it in social sit-uations and no one will notice. I’ve had breathing and toe-wiggling in my grab-bag of responses to social stress for years now—so much so that I almost forgot to include them here.

Toe-wiggling is also a reminder for me about the love, presence, support, gratitude, and forgiveness that are available to me if I were only to be present to and activate them. The fact that those reminders are tied to something as silly as toe-wiggling reinforces my experience that spiritual insight comes from being silly and joyful as much as from being “focused” on doing my inner work.

4. Stretch

No list like this would be complete without including stretching. A stiff, con-stricted body leads to anxiety, and it’s hard to be present when you’re anxious.

William James remarked that “we don’t smile because we’re happy; we’re hap-py because we smile.” His insight was that we can use our bodies to create moods. Stretching helps us be present in the same way that smiling helps us be happy.

Why? Our “fight or flight” response is triggered not just by outside stressors but also when our bodies are tense. This response can lead to a feedback loop whereby we’re anxious because our bodies are tense and we’re tense because we’re anxious.

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Stretching short-circuits this loop, so we’re more likely to be present. Aside from the general relaxing of your body, focused stretching also incorporates breathing deeply.

5. Take a Meditation Moment

As I discussed with Susan Piver in Demystifying Meditation, there are some misunderstandings about meditation that prevent a lot of people from ben-efiting from it. Chief among those are that it’s something that requires a lot of time to do and that people just don’t know how to meditate because they believe there’s some particular way it must be done.

That said, I know it can be hard to sit somewhere for 5–10 minutes with your own thoughts.

If you don’t have a meditation practice, I highly recommend using Insight Timer because it has guided meditations of varying lengths. Tara Brach’s “Gateway to Presence” guided meditation is 10.5 minutes long and, while short for my normal practice, is great for taking a meditation moment. (Her other meditations are quite good, too.)

Susan also shares a new 10-minute meditation every week in her Open Heart Project and you get access to the last four of them, so just follow along every week and save your favorites on your computer or phone so you have some go-to, accessible meditations at the ready when you want to take a meditation moment and be present.

6. Take a Jam Break

Have you ever been belting out your favorite song in the shower or in the car and realized that for the last 45 seconds, you were 100% in the moment? Or

have you busted a move because you simply couldn’t not-move while listening to that song, only to realize that you’ve been dancing in front of strangers?

It’s good stuff, embarrassment aside.

Let’s be intentional about it, though. Depending on where you work, cranking up the music and dancing may not be an option, but some creative thinking and recon may illuminate places you can go to have a jam party. (If I could find safe jam spots while being deployed, I’m sure you can find safe jam spots in your environment.)

Your jam break may include listening to music, singing, dancing, or playing an instrument. Bonus points if you can do all four.

What’s important here is that it’s music that you really feel and it sinks you into that special place that only your favorite music can take you to. For musi-cians, I’m not talking about practicing—I’m talking about playing. (You know the difference.)

Whether it’s one song or 10 minutes of jamming, it’s a great way to be right in the music and in your body. And have fun while doing it.

7. Step Away from All Electronics (Including Your Phone)

You might think that it’s just the notifications that are pulling you out of pres-ence, but it’s deeper than that. Given the ways that our brains work, when we touch tools, we start to reflexively do the activities that those tools help us do.

Pick up a hammer and you start looking for things to hammer AND your arm is primed to do the hammering.

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Try this: touch your phone and pay attention to where your mind and fingers start to go.

When I do this in live workshops or with my clients, most of them notice that they start reflexively thinking about checking stuff on their phone, and their fingers start moving to those apps.

So, next time you’re wanting to be present, step away from all electronics (in-cluding your phone) so that you’re not priming your mind and body to do all of the activities that are probably what’s keeping you from being present in the first place.

You might be wondering how you’re going to keep track of time. Consid-er getting a for-real watch so you’re not tied to your phone. You might also consider getting an iPod Nano or a Fitbit, which help you listen to music or exercise (respectively). They’re much better servants without the chance of becoming your master like smartphones are. (When’s the last time you want-ed someone to look up from their watch to have a conversation with you or had to practice not looking at your watch at the dinner table?)

8. Shut Off All but Critical Notifications from Your Devices

I mentioned notifications above, so let’s wrap back around. You’ve probably already heard tips about shutting off email notifications, and that’s sound counsel. I want to take it a step further and think about all notifications from all of your devices.

I’ll start with a question: does knowing that someone just liked your Insta-gram photo or Facebook post really nourish you? Does it matter in a deep way?

If not, then why get the notification that will pull you out of being in the present?

Same with emails. The fear keeping us tied to email is that we’ll miss some-thing important. The truth is that being tied to email means we’re missing out on something even more important—ourselves and the mundane magic right in front of us.

Try removing all but critical notifications from your devices for a week. If you don’t like it, go back. If you miss something really important that could not wait until you looked for it, go back.

But take that week to come back to yourself.

Quick tip: if you use a Mac and an iPhone, create a “DND Passthrough” (DND = Do Not Disturb) list in Contacts on your computer and add people who you always want to be able to reach you. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Do Not Disturb > Allow Calls from [DND Passthrough]. Now you can leave your phone on Do Not Disturb without worrying that you’ll miss calls and texts from your kids, family, friends, and others who you want to always pick up the phone for. Then batch-process your voicemails and texts just as you would your email. (I’m sure other phones can do this, but I’m not sure how because it’s not the tech I use.)

9. Get Some Nature Therapy

There’s a growing body of scientific literature that’s showing a correlation be-tween happiness and getting outside. For instance, in “The Cognitive Ben-efits of Interacting with Nature,” the authors state that “[their] experiments demonstrate the restorative value of nature as a vehicle to improve cognitive functioning.” Their hypothesis is that the types of stimuli that exist in nature

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focus our attention in ways that relieve stress, whereas the types of stimuli that exist in urban environments tend to induce stress responses. More simply put, interacting with nature allows our minds to restore and replenish.

In a similar vein, the authors of “Environmental Preferences and Restoration: (How) Are They Related?” show that viewing natural environments made people feel better and concentrate better than did viewing built environments.

Yes, it takes some effort to get out of your house, car, office, and stores, but it’s worth it. The constant buzzing, whirring, honking, and concrete mazes of modern existence take their toll on us.

10. Play with Kids and Pets

Aside from the exercise components and the way they get us to unplug, there’s another really good reason to play with kids and pets: they fire up our oxyto-cin factories. Oxytocin—sometimes called “the love hormone” or “the bond-ing hormone”—is a key hormone that promotes trust, relaxation, and happi-ness in humans.

For instance, the authors of “Oxytocin-gaze Positive Loop and the Coevolu-tion of Human-Dog Bonds” show that merely gazing at dogs increased oxy-tocin levels in their subjects. Many activities with children releases oxytocin as well.

While being happier and more trusting are good things, you might be won-dering how they help you be present. One theory posits that oxytocin causes us to pay closer attention to socially relevant stimuli — in short, it helps us be present with the people we’re with.

Note: If having kids and pets isn’t in the cards for you, now or ever, you don’t have to miss out on the oxytocin fun. Parents need some adult time and, in

my experience, are quite happy to have unpaid sitters to get it. Borrow your neighbor’s dog. Watch their cats. As every great uncle and aunt knows, you get to have a lot of fun and turn over the kids and pets to their real parents at the end of the day. Everybody wins!

11. Declutter Your Space

Clutter affects us in two ways: 1) it forces our brains to chunk clutter areas into one unified mass (to make sense of it), and 2) it reminds us of unfinished business. The stacks of papers, books, random wires in the closet, and other miscellania tug at us more than we think they will. Even when we close the closet door, we know the stuff is there, waiting for us.

It’s hard to be present in a cluttered space. One of the reasons many people have to leave their houses to actually think and reflect is that all of their un-processed stuff is at their house and they can’t think with it all there.

If you want to explore decluttering without diving too deep, check out Josh-ua Becker’s The Simple Guide to a Clutter-Free Home. You don’t have to be a minimalist to benefit from decluttering, but I’ve found that the less excess stuff I have, the more I’m able to be present with the stuff that really matters.

12. Ask “What Really Matters Now?”

While we’re on the subject of clutter, consider your cluttered To-Do list. One great way to thwart your ability to be present is to be overwhelmed by every-thing you have to do right now.

I’ve worked with hundreds of people with their goal-setting, planning, and To-Do list-making, and I’ve rarely come across a “clean” list that’s focused only on what really matters to the person right then. Usually, it’s a hodge-podge of want-to’s, need-to’s, shoulds, might-do’s, and need-to-think-abouts.

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Throw in the tasks related to projects that are effectively dead and you get a cluttered, unfinishable, crazy-making list.

Sometimes the best thing that you can do to be present is step away from the list and ask “what really matters now?”

Here’s how I suggest going about this:

1. Grab two clean pieces of paper or notecards.

2. Step away from your deck or working area.

3. Ask yourself “what really matters now?” without looking at your To-Do list.

4. Write down whatever comes up.

5. For each item on the list you just made, ask yourself “does this really mat-ter right now?” Scratch through any items that don’t get a resonant yes from you.

6. Transfer the remaining items to the other piece of paper.

7. If nothing is time-sensitive for the next 30 minutes, do something else on the list. (Make sure to look at your calendar first).

8. Come back, look at the list you made just before leaving, and work on whatever matters most. If you do this at the end of the day when you’re really just looking at the screen and clicking buttons, consider not coming back at all.

To be clear, time-sensitive, important stuff on your list can matter. Important stuff that isn’t necessarily due today can matter, too.

Many people find that when they get grounded in what really needs to happen now, there aren’t that many things that have to get done right now or at all. Remember: eliminating things from your list is a better strategy than learning a way to organize stuff on your list.

Any Presence Practice Will WorkIf you’re wondering which of the tips above are right for you, I have some very good news for you: any would be right for you. You can’t go wrong with any of them AND some are more simple for you to do right now.

So, pick whichever tip most calls to you, that you know you can do right now, and go from there.

Over to you: do you have any tips or go-to practices that help you be present? I’d love to hear about them so I can explore them, too.

See this post online.

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You Learn How to Live By Living

A Creative Giant who’s still in college shared that her biggest obstacle to achieving her top goal was:

“[P]rocrastination, but mainly fear of failure I guess. Fear that at the end of the road, I’ll find out I was never good enough to even start in the first place.”

I started to respond to her, but then decided to share it here, too.

• • •

First, what would you do differently if you assumed you were already good enough? What might open up for you if you remained curious about what more you could do that you didn’t know you could do?

Second, there is no “end of the road”—there’s just the next project you’ll have to start, regardless of how successful the last project was. That’s one of the gifts of living in Project World, with a corollary being that you don’t have to wor-ry about picking the wrong project and having that choice deterministically drive the rest of your life.

At a deep level, many of us have our own stories about our being damaged goods, but we’re also so much more than damaged goods.

You learn how to live by living, and as Durant’s summary of Aristotle states, “we are what we repeatedly do.” If our daily choices place a bias on action, courage, and vulnerability, then we learn how to live a courageous, action-ori-ented, and wholehearted life. If our daily choices are governed by fear, pro-crastination, and limited beliefs, then we learn how to live a fearful, hesitant, and smaller life than we otherwise might.

The art of living well isn’t something we’re born with; it’s learned and prac-ticed. Which means that at any point in time, we can learn and practice it.

Lastly, perhaps worse than finding out that your work wasn’t judged to be good enough (by whose standards?) would be never doing the work. The pain of failure is felt once; the pain of regret is felt for a lifetime.

I know I may sound preachy here—forgive me for that—but I’m wanting to remind you to feed the wolf you want to win.

See this post online.

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Which Wolf Will You Feed?

I want to kick this one off with a parable. It’s from the Native American tradition. We’re going to say it’s Cherokee because, well, that’s the closest reference I’ve been able to find.

One evening, an elderly Cherokee brave told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

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 wolf is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Grandpa, which wolf wins?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one that you feed.”

As we go about our lives, we can choose which of the wolves we want to feed. We can choose to feed the wolf of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, and all those good things in every moment, or we can choose to feed the bad wolves. We have to remember that it’s not often one choice, one feeding of one wolf or the other, that creates what we see inside ourselves and what we see inside the world. It’s a long history of feeding one wolf over the other. It starts every day.

These wolves live inside us. Though one wolf—say, the good wolf—might at any given point in time be a little bit malnourished, we can always feed it.

Though one wolf, the evil wolf, may be a little bit plump because of choices we’ve made in the past, we can choose today to feed a different wolf.

It often turns out that what we see in the world from other people and from our circumstances is very much correlated with the wolves that we’re feeding inside of us and inside of other people. When we encourage other people, when we feed their good wolves, we see that. We see that in them, and we see that in the people they change, and they tend to want to feed other people’s good wolves. When someone’s bad wolf has been overfed, we tend to see that, and those are the wolves who bite us. Those are the wolves who hurt us, as opposed to the good wolves, who protect us and help us out along the way.

In some ways, it reminds me of a song called “Flame Turns Blue” by David Gray, who is one of my favorite artists. I had the great blessing to see him in concert with Amos Lee a few nights ago here in Portland. The lyric that really catches me is, “I’m in collision with every stone I ever threw….”

I’m in collision with every stone I ever threw or, as we may say in proper En-glish, I’m in collision with every stone I’ve ever thrown. Such a beautiful line. It’s just another way of saying that the energy we put out there in the world, we get back. We throw stones. We get hit by them. We throw out ripples of goodness. Some way or the other, we get hit by those, too.

The funny thing about this is that we don’t always see it come back at the source where we share it. We may smile at somebody today, and tomorrow when we need somebody to smile at us, they smile. In some traditions, they call it “karma.” We can call it all sorts of things, right? I think that the more we feed those good wolves in the world, the more they come back to us.

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WHICH WOLF WILL YOU FEED?

As you’re going about your days, as you’re going about your weeks, I hope that in those moments in which it seems so much easier to feed the bad wolf, you’ll choose instead to choose the one that you want to win, the good wolf.

See this post online.

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Next Steps (When You’re Ready)

I don’t expect that reading this ebook has cured what ails you, but I do hope that it’s been good medicine for your soul. And while I’ve been avoiding bright-siding the situation, I’m going to take this opportunity to remind you that you are stronger than whatever you’re going through.

You also don’t have to go through it alone. When you’re ready, come join us at The Creative Giant Campfire, our free Facebook group. You’ll find a vibrant, welcoming community of other Creative Giants who can meet you where you are without judgment.

If you’re not quite ready for that, though, here are some other tools, how-tos, and resources we’ve created that may help. Check out:

• How to Find Your Motivation to Start Finishing—This page is the rest of the content iceberg of which this ebook is just the tip. The page shares posts that’ll help you overcome procrastination, move through failure, ditch de motivation, and cultivate nurturing relationships.

• The Top Posts page—This page is (unsurprisingly) a collection of our top posts throughout the years. We update this one semi-regularly—it’s hard to beat your own best stuff—so you might want to bookmark it or check it out every once in a while to see what’s new.

• The Creative Giant Show (our podcast)—It’s all fine and well for me to hand-wave that other people are fighting their own inner battles. It’s another to hear other people’s actual stories. One thing to note about the Show: we go places other shows don’t, because I want us to see life as it is, not as it’s marketed.

So we’ll occasionally go into topics like depression, suicide, divorce, death, bankruptcy, addictions, and whatever else comes up for people. Life is beauti-ful AND imperfect—appreciating the beauty while navigating the hard is the name of the game.

If you haven’t done so already and what you’ve seen so far resonates with you, subscribe to get the Pulse (our weekly newsletter that comes out every Tuesday) and access to the Subscriber Library. We’re continually creating new resources and sharing them in the Pulse—don’t miss out! Click here to sub-scribe.

Until next time, Stand Tall!

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Please do not duplicate or share without written permission.