Creating my Future

“Have you found joy? Has your life brought joy to others?”

- Carter Chambers (Morgan Freeman) explaining to Edward Cole (Jack Nicholson) the questions asked of ancient Egyptians as they entered heaven, in The Bucket List

But why should I wait until the portals of an Egyptian heaven to answer these two questions? Four days ago I turned 51 and traveled to Bali to celebrate the day, like I did last year when I passed through the grand doorway of midlife. The future I am creating is now taking shape, and it is a perfect time for good questions.

Have I found joy in my life? My answer is a wholehearted yes. What comes to my mind is the movie Bienvenido a Casa, where actress Pilar Lopez de Ayala tells her boyfriend that she loves him for five minutes, and then another five, and so on. My love affair with life is growing in that way, as I learn to celebrate each moment, every five minutes, and every day.

Over the past few years, I have invested more and more in this love affair, and I enjoy the daily sense of thrill, joy and risk it brings into my life. I feel that Richard Carlson was right when he encouraged his male readers to nurture their passion for life with the intensity of having an affair. “The idea is to reignite your passion for living, and to see the extraordinary in the ordinary,” he wrote in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff for Men.

Have others found joy because of me? This question enters into my thoughts more often these days. It feels as if I am entertaining a smiling visitor with a mission, like “God” (Morgan Freeman – again!) popping repeatedly into the life of Congressman Baxter in the movie Evan Almighty, to remind him of life’s purpose. I know I am on the right track, and the results will surely follow.

My life coaching is one way to help others enrich their lives. I have been making good progress with my course in the past weeks, which encourages me. I also noticed that when I live in the moment, in “the zone”, it sends a good signal to those around me. It must be generating a field of positive energy that affects others in a good way.

Normally I like to keep the subject of my blog post to myself while I am reflecting and writing it. Yesterday, however, I decided to ask a good friend about the second question, and her response startled me.

Joy is a choice, she said, going on to illustrate this with her own experience. She explained how a lot of people she met from all walks of life, would find joy in meeting her, and were able to express it readily. However, some others would look as if they were caught up in a self-spun web, that prevented them from expressing joy, regardless of the circumstances or the people they met.

I appreciated and learned from her point of view, as I realized anew that making a difference in someone else’s life requires giving, as well as a willingness from the other side to benefit joyfully from the relationship.

Recently, I met a professional coach from Australia who told me of his first job as a parole officer, when he was still in his early twenties. The lesson he shared with me was that only a few of the delinquent boys under his care would show interest and benefit from their interaction with him, while the majority did not, or at least not yet. This pattern, he said, continued all through his career as a coach. He learned to enjoy the process of discovering the people who were ready to benefit from his service.

Here in Bali, where I am spending a week to select an architect to design my Ubud home, it seems to me that most people are innately endowed with an ability to find joy in meeting people. They show it with happy faces, warm smiles, and friendly words. I have experienced it with shop keepers, bank staff, farmers, architects, home owners, passers by, and even the manager of the laundry shop. Their smiles reflect, and amplify mine.

I feel that I can tick two boxes on my own bucket list, and will check out the Egyptian heaven some day.


Photograph: Carter and Cole discussing the Egyptian questions, in The Bucket List.

Bubbles and trinities

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

- Peter Drucker

Although it is still early in the new year, the first month has already come and gone. In magazines and websites around the world, sharing advice on personal resolutions for 2008 has made way for encouragements on how to spend money during Valentines, which is closing in fast on those who allow themselves to be led by such advertising.

I don’t mind at all that I am running behind on this score. The question how to live my life better in 2008 still keeps me wondering, and in fact I reflect on it every morning and evening. And why not? I know that if I don’t pay attention, I might end up joining the throngs of people whose lives are decided more by others than by themselves.

Brian Tracy says that only 10% of people are proactive and “take their lives into their own hands and make things happen.” He urges people to step on the accelerator of their own personal journey of discovery.

Yesterday morning I read Steve Pavlina’s 10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job. His enthusiasm and inquiry are infectious for me. They inspire me to keep finding ways to live life better.

Two weeks ago I threw out my old to-do list and replaced it with a new approach which is much more alive. I am blowing bubbles now, every morning. And in the evening I gaze at the results happily. I have learned to resist my habitual urge to write everything important (which adds up to an impossible number) and limit myself to jotting down, in long hand, what strikes me as most important for the day.

I have created bubbles for my current priority areas in life, all on one page. The tasks written are now part of areas of life I like to see prosper. Some are for my soul, one about music, another about writing practice, and growing money, and several for different aspects of my work.

Nothing much has come between me and my bubbles these past two weeks, especially in the early morning when I blow them. The rest of the day is for watching them grow and glow. My life has definitely become more successful and enjoyable as a result of this new practice.

Blowing bubbles also helps me to reconfirm that being positive is best. Even though my mind keeps churning out reasons for being negative and attention for what could go wrong this day, month, and year, I have decided that it is best to drop this thinking altogether. I have no wish to abuse myself or others.

Perfectionism is a form of self-abuse. As a friend pointed out, it blocks personal freedom. I was able to see it for what it was at Jim Paredes’ Tapping the Creative Universe workshop in 2003, and let it go.

As for criticism by others, I have no need to prove anything, as I am good and whole. I can clarify my track record if needed, and that's enough. I have limitless access to the resources of Dao. 2008 is a good time for upsizing, not criticizing. When criticized, I will turn that energy around and direct it to a positive purpose.

For sure, I could not manage to live my life in this way if I still followed my earlier evening pastimes of spending long hours watching TV or doing computer games (in my case flight simulation). I realized that it just consumed my time and stopped me from creating things myself.

I rarely watch TV at all nowadays, and just click on CNN’s website a few times a day to update myself on important news. I am happy for myself that I found more creative things to do than watching TV.

My life coaching study is on track again, and I got a good rating for the last assignment I sent in to my tutor. I discovered how to apply sets of 3 core messages to inspire people to change. I had to think of the holy trinity. What holy trinity? Well, any will do, as it seems that many leading spiritual traditions recognize a holy trinity at the core of their “beliefs”. Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism all pay respect to a trinity. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more to be found.

Is this because people cannot remember more than 3 core messages? That is what I learned from public relations friends. Tell people more points and they are likely to forget all, they said. So distilling 3 fundamentals on which to base action is key.

On the other hand, when trying to help people answer the question of why to change, good reasons to adopt a new practice are often presented in numbers of 10, I noticed. Firing more arrows at the target seems to be the more effective strategy here, because people face different situations and hurdles for change. We simply don’t know in advance which arrow will hit the target.

After accepting a key message, and understanding the reasons to change, it is time to stimulate people to take action, and set targets for results. In this third area of focus, it seems that 5 is an effective number. Ask people more than 5 things to do, and it will likely be too much. Actually 5 is still a lot.

But 5 actions fit nicely into a bubble! It works for me...

Photograph: the pleasure of blowing sax, courtesy of my Nokia Music Xpress 5300.