It's all how you look at it

My daughter wrote me a Father's Day card that said "You taught me to look at life in a different way and when I did I got happier."  First, I think this is about the highest compliment I could get from one of my kids, and second, she is exactly right about the secret to happiness.

Notice that she didn't say that she got happier because I got a better-paying job, or moved into a nicer house, or took a great vacation.  These are all things that so many of us spend our lives chasing, believing that they will make us happier.  But the only thing that will actually make you happier is to change the way you look at life.

Life is hard.  Sometimes it hurts.  That's just the way it is, and wishing that it was different isn't doing you any favors.  Take action to change the things you can in life, then take the equally important action of changing the way you look at life.  What is your reaction when bad things happen?  Do you feel sorry for yourself, choose to be stronger because of it?  What is your reaction when you make a mistake?  Do you beat yourself up over it, or choose to learn from it?

There is only one thing that makes the difference between you being happy and you not being happy.  That one thing is you.  Try looking at things that happen to you, even bad or painful things, as opportunities to grow, to be a better person.  I think you'll notice that it makes everything seem better, and you'll feel happier.

Nobody's perfect

Nobody's perfect, not even dads.  Since today is Father's Day, of course it got me thinking about my dad, which got me thinking about relationships with the people in our lives in general.  Every person in our lives brings us something we can learn from.  Some of it is positive, and some of it is negative, but it is all something we can learn from to shape our own selves, and our own lives.

My dad taught me a lot about how to be a man, and he also gave me examples of how I did not want to be. When I think about him now, I think about the good things that he did as much as the bad things.  But here's the catch; I appreciate both of them.  I try to be like him with the good things, and I try to not be like him for the bad things.  Just because someone has flaws doesn't mean they can't teach you.

Think about the people in your life.  Not just your family, but friends, teachers, co-workers.  What can you learn from each of them?  Think about someone you don't like, or someone who makes you feel bad.  Doesn't that make you think about how you can be a better person, so that you don't make other people feel bad?

Most people go through life making choices without really thinking about what they're choosing and why they're choosing it.  If you choose to live your life on purpose, you can choose to copy the negative behaviors around you, or the positive ones.  It's your choice.  What will you choose?

Are you living?

Are you living your life on purpose, or are you letting life happen to you?  I figured since it's the first day of June, my daughter's 14th birthday, and the 13th anniversary of me starting my business, it's time for a gut-check.  So the question is; what are you doing?

I think it's a  good idea once in awhile to look at where you are, and what direction you're heading in, and see if you're living your life on purpose or not.  Are you making choices that have a good chance of leading you to where you want to be in life, or are you just going through the motions of living, waiting to see what might happen next?

I'm not trying to say that you should be planning out every aspect of your life, or obsessing when things aren't going according to your plan, I'm talking more about an overall attitude towards living.  I'm afraid that so many people go through life doing the things they feel they "should" do, but not ever really savoring any of life.  There are so many opportunities out there for all of us, but so many of us come home and spend six hours in front of the television.  I don't want to get to be 60 years old, and look back and wonder where my life went.

So think about what kind of person you want to be, and what kind of life you want to live.  Now think about the choices you make in your daily life.  Do those two things align?  Are you making the choices every day to be who you want, and to live the life that you want? 

It's never too late to turn it all around.  Every day is another opportunity to live the life you want.

Impress yourself

Stop trying to be impressive.  No one is buying it.  Here's the deal.  If someone is going to be impressed by you, they're going to feel that way whether you try to impress them or not.  And if they're not going to be impressed by you, they're going to feel that way whether you try to impress them or not.

We spend so much time worrying about what other people think about us, and trying to impress them.  Maybe what we should be focusing on is being impressive to ourselves.  Think about it.  Who do you wake up with every morning and go to bed with every night?  Who is the one person who you can't get away from?  Your own opinions about yourself are what really shape your personality, and that is what other people see.

If you are doing things that are impressive to yourself, that will translate into self-confidence.  And few things are more attractive to others than self-confidence.  If you don't really feel like you're good at anything, then why would anyone else be impressed with you?

So pick something that you want to be good at.  Maybe it's work related, or maybe it's physical, like running a 10K or a half-marathon.  Maybe you want to learn to play a song on the guitar.  Whatever sparks some feeling in you, go with it.  Make a plan.  Invest the time in it.  Achieve your goal, and see how good you feel about yourself.  You don't need to go around bragging about what you did; just know that you did it at feel proud of yourself.

When you have set a goal, then worked to achieve it, you will feel great about yourself once you complete it.  And if you can truly feel impressed at what you accomplished, then you have impressed the one person whose opinion about you matters the most.

Deal with it

You don't have to like it, but what can you do?  So many things in life will never be the way you want them to be.  And many of them are completely outside of your control.  So, what are you going to do about it?  Are you going to complain to anyone who will listen?  Will it somehow make your life easier if someone else knows that how hard you have it?  (The answer is no).

Part of maturity is accepting the things in life that you cannot change.  It doesn't mean you have to like it.  It means that you look at a situation, and decide that even though you can't change it, and you can't get away from it, you will make the best of it.  If you can get away from it, then do that.  But if you can't, then accept it.

Life is filled with difficult, often painful, experiences.  That's just part of living.  Do you really want to be the person that other avoid because all they do is complain about how bad things are?  Is it really that much worse for you than for the people who aren't complaining?  Maybe the difference is in how you choose to deal with it.

Here's my advice.  Stop wishing that everything would somehow start going the way you want it to.  Life doesn't work that way.  Look around your life, and figure out what you can change, and what you can't change.  Set a course of action to change the things you can.  Accept that you have to live with the things you cannot change.  I mean, really accept it.  No sitting around feeling sorry for yourself, secretly hoping it will change.  It won't.  There is good and bad in life.  This is the bad.

Now choose to redirect your focus on the things that you are changing.  If you're working at it, then some things should be getting better.  Be proud of yourself.  Be happy about those things.

You'll find that if you choose to accept the hard stuff, and focus on the positive stuff, all of a sudden you life will seem better.  It's still the same life, but it's better.  Wouldn't you like to have a better life?  Give it a try.

There's not enough time

There aren't enough hours in the day to do everything.  So how do you prioritize?  How do you decide what really matters, and what just seems important right now?  We have jobs, relationships, kids, extended family, exercise, and more that we have to try to figure out how to fit into our lives.

As you grow up, most of the things you do are assigned for you.  You may choose to join a team, but the practices and games are all scheduled, and you show up when you have to.  As you get older, you have to make more choices about how to allocate the time in your life.  But typically no one ever shows you how to do this.

First, think about what it really important to you, and why.  Really think about the "why" part.  Is it really important to you, or is that baggage from your parents or from a previous relationship?  What truly matters to you?  Imagine yourself 30 years from now, looking back at your life.  Did you choose the things that mattered, or did you choose the things that seemed important at the time, but didn't have a lasting impact?

For me, family time and relationship time are at the top of my list.  Those are far more important to me than money.  I would not choose to work more hours, even for vastly more money, because those hours would take away from my family time and relationship time.  Those are the lasting memories that I want to create for myself and the people I love.  I'm not saying I couldn't find a use for more money, but the trade-off isn't worth it for me.  I quit a good-paying job to start my business, in large part because I wanted to make sure that I didn't miss my girls growing up.

Once you've evaluated what is important to you, now look at how you spend the hours in your day.  Does the allocation of your time match what you value?  If you work more than 40 or 50 hours a week, is that what you want?  Why?  If long work hours take away from family and relationship time, think about a change.  Would it be worth it to make less money, but have more family time, or more walking the dog time?  Would you be willing to move into a smaller house, and drive a less expensive car?  Again, picture yourself looking back in 30 years.  Are you proud of your choices?

If spending time with the people you care about, or getting in shape, are priorities, but you feel like there isn't time, look closely at how you spend your time when you're not at work.  Do you watch TV?  How many hours a day?  Do you waste hours on the internet?  Could this time be re-allocated?  I unplugged my TV 15 years ago, and my life is better for it.

It's so easy to get into habits of how you spend your time, then feel locked into them.  It's also easy to "golden handcuff" yourself, where you work harder and harder to maintain your lifestyle, at the expense of your life.  What good is a big home if you're too tired to enjoy it?

It may not feel like it, but you really are in control of your life.  Or, at least, you could be.  Choose the life you want, then live it.  Make some hard choices if you need to.  Think about the legacy you want to leave with the people you love.  Are you working towards that?  Are you willing to?

It could be worse

No matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.  I like to keep this perspective in mind when I'm thinking about whatever bad thing may be going on in my life.  Last week I heard an interview with the golfer who choked and threw away his lead at the Masters last year.  He said, "if that was the worst day of my life, I'm better off than most people."  What a great perspective.

It's easy to get bogged down in looking at the things that aren't going your way.  If you're not careful, you can start to think things are really bad.  In reality, things are rarely very bad.  There are always things that you can choose to be thankful for.

The last thing you want to do is think that things can't get any worse.  I feel like this is just inviting disaster.  Go ahead and imagine how things could get worse, then be thankful that none of those things have happened.  And if some of those things do happen, then be thankful that all of them didn't happen.

If you're willing to choose to focus on the good things going on, even when there are bad things going on, you'll find that the bad things don't seem quite so bad.

The past is an anchor

How often do you drive along in your car, mile after mile, looking only in the rear view mirror?  You don't do that because it means you're not paying attention to what's happening in front of you, and you'll crash.  So why does it seem okay to go along day after day, looking back at your life?  Doesn't it seem like you should be paying attention to what is happening in front of you?  Don't crash your life.

Do you know what you have in life?  You have this moment right now.  You have this day you're living.  The past is how you got to this point, but it no longer has any control over you.  Let it go and live your life today.  I'm not suggesting that you should forget life lessons, or forget mistakes you've made.  Rather, choose to learn the lessons, use them to make today a better day, and then let them go.

Let me tell you about a personal experience.  A few years ago, after my divorce, I was looking back at a lot of my life, in hopes that it would help me put the pieces back together.  Specifically, I wondered what affect it had had on me as an adult that my parents were in a cult the whole time I was growing up.  I wanted to know how that experience had changed my life.  What parts of me came from growing up in a cult, and what parts were just me?

I went to Denver to a conference for cult survivors, and met with adults like myself who had grown up in cults.  I talked with some people about getting into counseling.  Then when I came home, I realized something.  That path that I took, even though it wasn't a path that I had chosen, led me to who I am today.  There is no way to go back and change any of it.  None of it will ever be different than it was.  It's impossible to separate out any parts of my past.  I am the sum of those experiences.  

I chose to let it go.  I chose to accept that all of the experiences in my life, both good and bad, are just parts of me today.  And I work every day to be a good person today.  I like who I am today, which means that the path that got me here must have been okay.

Look back, see what happened, then make the choice to live this life today.  Don't let your past crash your present.

Be present

All you have is right now; this moment.  There is nothing else.  You have done things in the past that led you to right now.  Things will happen to you in the future; some good and some bad.  But the only thing that have in life is this moment.  What are you doing with it?

It's so easy to spend time regretting what happened in the past, or worrying about what might happen in the future.  But if you spend all of your time doing that, you end up missing out on your life as it's happening.

This is not to say that you should pretend that the past never happened, or that you should fail to plan for the future, but that you should not put either of those things at a higher priority level than the present.  Acknowledge  the mistakes that you made in the past, and choose to learn from them to help yourself make better decisions now.  Recognize the good choices you made in the past, and make an effort to continue to make them.  Think about how you want your future to look, and make decisions now that will help lead you to that future.

Most importantly, never forget that your life is happening right now.  It is so easy to get hung up on trivial details, or to worry about things that we can't control.  Choose to be present for your own life; truly present in body, mind and spirit, not in body only.  Choose to live every now to the fullest.  Make every now the best now that it can be.

Make the choice to live your life on purpose by making every moment of your life the best that it can be.

Be happy here

If you can't be happy here, you can't be happy anywhere.  So many people wish for something to change in their life so they can be happy.  If only I lived in a different town; had a different job; won the lottery, then I'd be happy.  There's a major flaw in this type of thinking.  You will still be you.

Your environment may change.  The people around you change.  Your finances may be different, but every day you wake up as the same person, and every night you go to bed as the same person.  Happiness is not something that comes from outside of you.  It is something which you choose for yourself, then you work to achieve it.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying you should give up your dream of moving to a warmer climate, or trying for a higher paying job.  Just don't lose sight of the fact that nothing outside of you will change what is inside you.  And what is inside you is the only thing that really matters.  What good will it do if you're living in a $10 million dollar mansion on the coast if you don't really like yourself?  And if you don't really like yourself here, you aren't going to feel any different there.

If there are things in your life that you want to be different, then make them different.  If you're not happy, really look inside yourself to see why.  Talk to a counselor if you need to.

Fix yourself from the inside, then get to work on the outside stuff.  That way, when you have the money, or the house, or whatever it is you're striving towards, you'll actually be able to enjoy it.

It's okay to be scared

We're all scared.  Things frighten us every day.  Being afraid isn't bad, but allowing the fear to control your actions and make your choices for you is.  If your goal is to live your life on purpose, then giving into your fear is allowing life to happen to you, rather than you charting your own course.

Fear is a powerful emotion.  It can affect our actions without our realizing that it is happening.  But usually, we know that we're afraid, and we have a choice.  Will I face my fear, and try to get what I want, or will I make some kind of excuse, or in some other way choose to let the fear win.

I'm training for a triathlon right now, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm scared.  What if I fail?  What if I can't finish?  What will I do if I'm dead last; still plodding through my 10K and everyone else is done?  Would I have the mental strength to keep going?  I know that these fears are the reason that I never took the leap from the long-distance cycling that I did as a teenager into bicycle racing.

Every day, when I train for my race, I acknowledge my fears.  I recognize them, and I choose to try anyway.  There is a real possibility that I might fail; that I might twist and ankle or crash my bike and be unable to finish.  But should that stop me from trying?

It is hard to face your fear.  It is hard to admit that you're afraid; to admit that if you try, you may fail.  But, once again, the hard choice is the right one.

You could live your whole life without facing your fears, but what will you accomplish?  I would rather know that I tried, even if I fail.  The strength that you will gain from trying, whether you succeed or fail, will make you a stronger person.  And imagine how great it will be when you actually succeed.  Imagine for a moment the personal pride that you will feel when you know that you faced a fear, worked through it, and accomplished something great.  Isn't that worth the effort?

Why I'm happy

Why am I so happy?  The answer is simple; because I choose to be.  Happiness is a choice, and I choose it every day.

When I was 16, my parents had me arrested.  To be fair to my dad, he told me that if I left, he'd call the police.  I knew he would.  He didn't make idle threats, and I made sure of it by defying every threat he ever made.  So I was lying in a jail cell, angry at the world, when something occurred to me.  All of those things didn't matter at all.  Everything that was bad in my life was, in fact, irrelevant.  The only thing that mattered was my attitude.

I decided right then, lying in a jail cell at 16 years old, that I was going to be happy.  I chose to focus on the good things in my life, and not allow the bad things to bring me down.  I have been happy ever since.

I choose to believe that everything will work out.  I choose to believe that anything that isn't great today will be great tomorrow.  I choose to be happy.

Plenty of bad things have happened in the years since then, and sometimes I lose sight of my beliefs, and I allow them to bring me down.  Then I remember that it will all be okay.  Nothing in life ever works out the way you have planned it, or the way you think it will work out, but it all works out.  This is something that I choose to believe, and I'm happy because of it.

Would it be easier to expect the worst all the time?  Maybe.  Cynical people feel like they're always right because it's easier to see the bad than the good sometimes.  You need to make more of an effort to see the good every day.  Sometimes the good things are so small, and so simple, but that doesn't mean they don't count.  Should I remember yesterday for the girl on the highway who gave me the finger, or for making smoothies with Mariah?  What do you remember about yesterday?  Is it positive or negative?

Bad things will continue to happen, but good things will too.  I choose to focus on the positive, and to believe that the bad will turn into good.  This is my choice.  I choose to be happy.  What do you choose?

Where are you going?

Are you going somewhere, or going nowhere?  Do you have a goal in mind, whether it is financial, or simply peace of mind?  What are you doing to work towards that goal.

I live my life on purpose, because the last thing that I want is to wake up one morning at 60 years old, and realize that I haven't done anything that I wanted to do with my life.  I think that so many people just go through the motions of life, but they don't really live.  I choose to live my life.  I choose to enjoy it.  I make choices on a daily basis to help myself move towards happiness.

Sometimes its easy to feel stuck where you are.  There are bills that need to be paid, family members who require attention, and a job where you have to show up every day.  But what you need to remember is that all of these things are actually your choice.

You get to choose if you want a new car, or a new house, or to go out to dinner.  You get to choose if you're going to take part in family functions.  You get to pick your job.  Sometimes it feels like none of these things are up to you, because you're locked into them through choices you made in the past.  Remember this: it is never too late to take control of your own life.

I'm not saying this is easy.  It is not easy at all.  In the past few years I have lost my house, and gone bankrupt, but I have never been happier.  I chose happiness over the material things.  Don't get me wrong, I want the stuff too.  I'm working my way back to being able to buy the stuff I want.  But I chose sacrificing a few years of the material things to be happy.

Every choice you make in life has a consequence associated with it, either positive or negative.  It's up to you to decide if the reward is worth the risk.  Are you willing to have your mom be really mad at you in exchange for feeling free from her mind control?  Are you willing to have people look at you like you're nuts because you sold your house and car and chose to rent an apartment and buy a smaller car?  Are you willing to file bankruptcy and suffer through several years of bad credit to get out from under the burden you've created?  Are you willing to go through the prolonged pain of divorce, to try to find happiness on the other side?

Are you living your life for you, or for the people around you?  Are you living the life you want to be living?  If the answer is no, what are you going to do about it?  When are you going to really start living?

Every day is a new chance for you to start living the life you want.  Maybe today can be your day.

Fail to succeed

I have been perfect at everything the first time I tried it.  No, wait.  That's what I've always wanted, but that isn't quite how it worked out.  I got thinking about this today when Mariah decided to teach herself how to make smoothies.  She was getting upset as the counter became covered in yogurt and strawberries, but I just pointed out that this is how you learn.  We cleaned it up together, she adjusted what she was doing, and we enjoyed some delicious smoothies.

You have to fail to succeed.  You have to fall down.  You have to be bad at what you're doing.  We know this about the simple things, like learning to ride a bike, but we seem to forget this principle when it comes to the bigger things in life.  I was a bad manager before I learned to be a good manager.  I burned things before I learned to be a good cook.  I made my fair share of relationships before I learned to be a good partner.

The only way to really know how to be good at something is by experiencing what it feels like to be bad at it, then learning how to improve.  If you're good at it without even trying, you haven't learned anything, and every experience is better when you learn something from it.

So don't be afraid to try new things for fear that you will fail at them.  You may fail.  And that is okay as long as you make the hard choice to learn from that failure, improve yourself because of it, and be better.

If you think about it, it's pretty cool to be able to turn a failure into making you a better person.

Ask for it

It's a good thing the people around you can read your mind, and they all desperately want to make you happy. Wait, that doesn't happen?  Well then, how do you go about getting what you want?  It's simple, you ask for it.

It would be easier to wait patiently for everyone to give you what you want.  But the right choice is the harder one.  Asking for what you want is hard, because you open yourself to the possibility that someone will say 'no' to you.  But if you don't ask, the end result is the same as if someone told you 'no,' but you never even give yourself the chance for them to say 'yes.'

Is there someone you're attracted to?  Ask them out.  Do you want a raise at work?  Ask for it.  Are you having a hard time with something?  Ask for help.  What's the worst that could happen?  They might say no.  You're in the same situation you were in before, but you just made yourself a little stronger by taking some action in the course of your life.

If your goal is to live your life on purpose, then you have to constantly be working towards your goals, and asking for what you want from the people around you.  At first it's hard to do, but the more you do it, the easier  it will become, and the more you will get what you want by asking for it.

It seems like a pretty simple way to make your life better.  Try it out, and I think you'll like it.

Why we criticize

You're not perfect, you know.  I know it may come as a shock, but you have flaws.  Of course, we all know that we have flaws, but we don't like to acknowledge it.  If we acknowledge that we are doing something wrong, then we have to either choose to fix it, or choose to leave it alone and pretend we don't know its there.

Typically what we do instead is to find the same flaw in another person, and criticize them for it.  Subconsciously, we are aware of the things we do that are less than ideal.  But consciously,  we don't really want to fix it.  Identifying flaws in ourselves and fixing them is hard work.  It can take a long time and a lot of effort to adjust our behavior, and most of us don't want to do that much work.

But when we criticize others, we're really just trying to take the spotlight off ourselves and put it on someone else.  The more critical a person is of others, the more insecure they are about their own self.

Think about it the next time you find yourself being critical of another person.  Does their behavior really matter?  Why exactly is it bothering you?  Look inside yourself and see if you see your own flaws in that person, and it bothers you.

It takes a lot of work to do this, which pretty much shows that its the right thing to do.  But if you are willing to put in the time, and to take personal responsibility for your own behavior, you'll find that you enjoy your life a lot more.  Personally, I think that being happier is worth the effort.

Lower your expectations

Dogs are so much happier than their owners.  There is one very simple explanation for this.  Dogs expect nothing.  They don't lie awake at night hoping for good things for tomorrow.  They have no expectations for tomorrow, so every good thing that happens is a thrill.

Dogs don't expect to be warm, or comfortable,  or free from pain.  So when these things happen to them, they are immediately happy.  Imagine for a moment how much happier people would be if we weren't constantly setting high expectations for our lives.  The less you want, the more you have.

How would your days be different if you lowered your expectations?  What do you really need to make you happy?  We spend so much time fixating on material things, but those things won't make us happy.  We spend time wishing that the people in our lives would act differently, and that would make us happy.  The people around us are who they are, and they're not going to change.  Instead of hoping for change, try lowering your expectations of them by accepting them for who they are, and see how much more your enjoy your interactions with them.

Try to be a little more like your dog.  Expect nothing, and then everything you get is a gift.

Own it!

Its your fault.  Don't bother blaming someone else, because the fault is yours.  One of my favorite sayings is "own it."  What I mean by this is that you should stop blaming the people around you for whatever is going wrong in your life.  If you screwed it up, own it.  If you reacted badly when someone else screwed it up, own it.  If you're harboring a grudge, or a lingering emotional wound from something that someone did to you, this is on you, not on them.  Own it!

I read an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine a couple weeks ago.  Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers was asked if his dad had any responsibility for his struggles with drug addiction.  His dad blew pot smoke in his face when he was 4, and was there when he did coke for the first time at age 13.  I bet most people would blame their dad if he did those things, then they ended up struggling with addiction.  Mr. Kiedis does not.  He accepts that the choices were his own.  He owned it.

If your choice is to live your life on purpose; to intentionally create the life that you want to live, you have to accept personal responsibility for your life.  This includes the bad stuff.  It is so much easier to blame others when we are not happy, but where is that really going to get you?

Its hard to accept the responsibility for your own happiness, because it means that if you're not happy, its up to you to fix it.  This is not easy to accept, especially if you have created the habit of blaming others.

We have all been hurt by others, but what does it accomplish to spend your time wishing it hadn't happened, or being angry at the person who hurt you?  What good is that doing anyone?  Live your life on purpose.  Realize that the pain you experienced will make you a stronger person if you allow it to.  Decide how to use the pain to grow.  You didn't choose to be hurt, but you get to choose how you react to it.  What will your choice be?  How will that choice affect your life long term?

Here's an example from my own life.  Last year, I was thinking about why I always feel unfulfilled by my accomplishments.  No matter what I did, I felt that I could have done better and that I should not feel proud of my achievement.  For a couple of months, I really listened to the little voice in my head.  I wanted to hear exactly what it was saying.

I figured it out.  It sounded exactly like my dad when I was a kid.  My dad was incapable of giving a compliment without adding on a dig.  No matter what I did, I shouldn't feel good about it because I should have done more, or better.  Even though he had stopped doing it when I was 15 (that's another story) I had internalized the behavior, and I had been doing it to myself ever since.

So what's to be done?  Blame my dad?  Get mad about it?  How about, own it!  I was doing this to myself, and that was no one's fault but my own.  I decided to stop my little voice from talking to me that way, and I figured the best way to do it would be to set a very challenging goal for myself, and give myself permission to feel proud when I achieved it.  And that is the reason I am currently training for a triathlon.

Will you own it?  Will you take responsibility for your own life and your own happiness, instead of blaming others?  Are you ready to be happy, but accept the work that comes with it?  I gotta tell you, it feels pretty good.

Give back

You are not God.  Whether or not you believe in any deity, one thing you can be sure of is that it is not you.  If for some reason you are a god, you may now stop reading.  There is a reason that in Alcoholics Anonymous it is required that you believe in some higher power.  Dr. Bob was smart enough to know that you have to believe in something bigger than yourself in order to be healthy.

One of the best ways to express and understanding that you are connected to something greater than yourself is to give something of yourself, expecting nothing in return.  Donating blood, donating money, donating time, all remind you that there are others out there.

I donate blood every 8 weeks.  I really don't like needles, and I hate the idea of a needle stuck in my arm, but people need that blood more than I do.  I donate time at the local food bank.  I bag groceries, run errands, do computer work, and serve food for their hot lunch program.  There are other things that I would much rather be doing with my time, but those people need my time more than I do.  It is a very sobering experience every time I'm there to see the number of people in my town who don't have enough money to buy food to eat.  Isn't that more important than whatever else I might be doing?

I have a theory that the reason that teenagers have so much angst is that a teenager views himself as the center of the universe.  This is not a criticism of teens, its just part of growing up.  Teenagers are, by nature, extremely selfish.  And, not coincidentally, they are usually not terribly happy.  Life makes a lot more sense when you realize that there is something out there bigger than you.

Of course it's easier to sit at home and watch tv.  Of course its more fun to spend the money on a new pair of shoes.  But as with all things in life, the right choice is the hard choice.

So give back something of yourself.  Donate what you can afford, even if it is just some of your time.  Consider missing one of your favorite shows each week to volunteer on a food line.  Organize charitable giving at school.  Do something to acknowledge that there is something bigger than you out there.  You'll find that it feels pretty good.

Live life on purpose

The secret of happiness in one simple phrase: Live life on purpose.  Life is a combination of the events that happen to us, and the choices we make in reaction to those events.  Every day we make choices that affect what direction our lives take.  Small choices; big choices; choices that seem small at the time but end up being big; choices that are small each time you make them, but add up to something big.

What this means is that in order to get the life you want, you have to do it on purpose.  You have to have some vision of what you want, and make choices every day to help you towards seeing that vision become reality.  But here's the catch: the right choices in life are nearly always the hard choices.  Nothing good in life comes easy.

What choices have you made today?  What will be the result of those choices?  Do you have the body you want?  What did you do today to work towards it?  Do you have the relationship you want?  If not, what are you doing about it?

Your life belongs to you.  You get to choose your own path.  Accept that responsibility and you can achieve anything if you're willing to make the hard choices, and put in the work that is required.

I worked a long day today, and came home tired.  But since I have chosen to complete a triathlon, I know that I have to put in the work, so I rode my bike for an hour, then went for a run.  I made a choice.

A few years ago, my waistline was slowly creeping.  I had to buy new pants.  When those became tight, I refused to buy bigger pants.  I chose to stay thin, so I joined the gym next door to my work.  I was working at least 10 hours a day, and I didn't feel like working out after work, but I also didn't feel like gaining weight, so I made a choice.

When Mariah was born, I took very seriously the responsibility to shape her into an adult.  The choices I have made every day have been the hard choices, but they have all been made with the end in mind.  Mariah and Emily are now 13 and 11, and I could not be more proud of the people they are becoming.  I have made numerous choices.

In 1999, I wasn't happy with the number of hours I was working, and with how little time this left for me to spend with my baby daughter.  I chose to quit my job and start my own business.  I sold everything I owned, worked 14 hour days, and built a business that now gives me time with my girls.  I made a choice.

In 2007, my marriage was draining the life out of me.  I realized that not only was I unhappy, but that my unhappiness, and the example of a bad marriage, was going to have long-term negative affects on my girls.  So I chose to end my marriage.  I lost my house and went bankrupt.  But I chose happiness and setting a positive example for my girls over any material things.  I am happy now.  I made a choice.

I love my life, but I have worked very hard to make it this way.  And I continue to work at it every day.  I make choices every day with the end in mind.  I can't control what anyone else does.  I can only make my own choices.  And you can make yours.  What will you choose?