Susan Mary Malone's Blog: Happiness is a Story, page 19

YOU HAVE THE POWER TO IMPACT HAPPINESS IN OTHERS

We tend to think that’s not true.  Don’t we?  We often believe that others are so wrapped up in their own lives, what happens with us doesn’t matter.

Especially in our culture—which believes and touts our citizens as rugged individualists—we tend to discount the idea that what others do affects us, and vice versa.

But, it does.

The groundbreaking study by Fowler and Christakis published in the BMJ, found that people who are happy—or become happy—greatly affect the chances that people they know will be happy.

“Happiness is contagious,” Nicholas A. Chritakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard University, said.

“You would think that your emotional state would depend on your own choices and actions and experience.  But it also depends on the choices and actions and experiences of other people, including people to whom you are not directly connected.” 

The study followed more than 4,700 people over 20 years.  And it found that the power of happiness can span another degree of separation.

Hm.  Makes me think I need to clean up my social network!  LOL.  But on second thought, I tend to associate with happy folks.  They make me smile J

Isn’t it amazing how impactful being happy can be.

Christakis and co-author James H. Fowler’s previous research found that obesity actually spreads from person to person.  But so does the likelihood of quitting smoking!

The Weight Watchers organization, along with all 12-Step groups, have known this for some time.  Gathering with folks having the same positive goals ups your chances of succeeding.

The implications for having a positive impact on our world are astounding.  Christakis and others have found that happy people tend to be better off in so many ways—being more creative, productive, and are overall healthier.

“For a long time, we measured the health of a country by looking at its gross domestic product,” Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California at San Diego who co-authored the study, said. “But our work shows that whether a friend’s friend is happy has more influence than a $5,000 raise. So at a time when we’re facing such economic difficulties, the message could be, ‘Hang in there. You still have your friends and family, and these are the people to rely on to be happy.’”

Even though this is an older study (2008), its relevance has not waned.  What we know more than ever is that we are truly connected—in ways we hadn’t considered before.

One thing I know for true is that when one of my friends, colleagues, or clients has a big book sale, my heart surges.  I’m so incredibly happy for them!  And that happiness spills over to my own work.  It makes me joyous, and yes—more creative.  Which in my world is a big plus  

So next time you think your bad mood doesn’t matter, think again.

Now is the time to make the world a better place.  You have the power to do so.  Will you?

 

The post YOU HAVE THE POWER TO IMPACT HAPPINESS IN OTHERS appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

10 HARSH REALITIES OF A MONDAY THAT I CAN’T ESCAPE

Did you know that more heart attacks and sudden death occur on Mondays than any other day of the week?

Yikes!  It’s not just a common mantra about folks hating Monday.  That day actually kills you! 

Okay, so the day itself doesn’t.  But our perception of it sure does.  How often do you say after messing something up, “Well, it is Monday.”  Or when things go awry later in the week, “It sure feels like Monday.”  Monday being a demon is just encoded into our vernacular, and our psyches.

Researchers have found a surge of stress hormones (that dreaded cortisol and adrenalin) in working folks on Mondays.  And amazingly enough, participants in the study showed enhanced arrhythmias on Mondays even if they no longer worked!

Dr. Stephen Sinatra attributed this to “. .  . your body always remembers and anticipates stressful events.”

So why are Mondays so problematic?  Here are my top 10 reasons:

              That stinking alarm clock. I don’t know about you, but I hate the danged thing.  Hate the sound—and yes, I’ve tried those transitional ones where waves slosh, etc., to gently wake you up.  Made me hate the sound of waves for a while.

Mainly, I just want to sleep until I get up.  And the funny thing is, my waking time on weekends isn’t that much later than during the week!

Perception is reality.

              It’s no longer Sunday. I love Sundays.  Don’t you?  If I’m home I love not having a clock to watch, feeding dogs, getting coffee, then sitting in the floor with them having a puppy-love fest while watching Chuck Todd (I confess, I am a polywonk).  Often I’m off to a dog show or hunt test or training, all with great friends.

Monday’s alarm just means another week will pass before that happens!

            Work has reproduced on my desk like rabbits over the weekend.

How can that be?  I mean, I cleared my desk Friday evening before shutting down for the weekend.  Didn’t you?  So how do piles arrive there as if by magic?

Demons.  I’m quite sure demons see how much fun we’re having and turn one piece of paper into twenty while we’re sleeping.  Time to get one of those ghost alarms and catch ‘em.

And I love what I do!

             No more sitting in the puppy room with babies. I have an 8-week-old litter of Labrador puppies right now.  Have I told you how precious they are?  Well then, let me . . .  Okay, okay.  But the puppy breath!  And then they run around like banshees and fly into my lap and . . .  Okay, okay.

And that title isn’t exactly correct anyway.  I can’t help myself from sitting in their box and having them crawl all over me.  Oh, about a hundred times a day.  I just can’t sit there all day as I can on Sunday if I want.

             No more just sitting on my butt and lollygagging. Okay, so I sit on my butt almost all day, but that’s different. That’s work.  I mean the kind of hanging out where again, that clock isn’t constantly ticking.

You know that feeling.  When the body relaxes (banishing that cortisol to Hell!) and bliss hormones take over.  Ah . . . I can feel them now.  Can’t you?

              A big fat white blank computer screen.

I truly feel for folks who get writer’s block.  I know it’s real, like the bird flu or something.  But it’s not a virus I get (thank you, God!).

Still, the screen glares at me to begin the week, shouting in a frenetic voice how much needs to be written over the course of the next 5 days.

I’m sure you know that feeling—you look at what must be produced over the week and think, a cruise would be nice right now . . .

                Time again to eat healthy. Not that I don’t most of the time, but weekends are free days for me.  I used to be a fitness trainer (oh, the litany of jobs writers do when starving!  LOL), and my system of nutrition was (and is) based on the 80-20 Rule: Eat healthy 80 percent of the time and then eat whatever the heck you want the rest.  Since math is hard, I just translate that to mean weekends are free.

I don’t believe in diets, but I do eat pretty low on the food chain—lots of vegetables, etc.  And I love that.  But now and then that old greasy hamburger and fries calls my name!  And if it does on Monday, I have to beat it on the head until Saturday.  Of course, often by then I’m craving crab legs or something.

                I miss my friends. Don’t you?  Typically we see or talk to them on weekends, and while co-workers can be great, I miss hanging out with close friends and laughing and having a glass of wine or two and  . . .  well, you know.  And it’s not like I can’t talk them during the week, but those 2-hour phone calls (which of course men can’t begin to understand, preferring a root canal to talking on the phone to anybody for that length of time) won’t happen again until the week is done.  Oh, I spend some evenings that way, but still.
                 I’m not a pirate. This fact becomes blatantly austere in the Monday-morning light.  It’s a fantasy of mine, you know?  I’m sure you have one equally as insane, and sometimes those seem actually achievable on weekends (especially when the wine is flowing!).

But I talk about it with my friends, especially when times are hard, and only in a half-joking manner.  I mean, can’t you see it?  Sailing the high seas, robbing from the rich to give to the poor (okay, so a few metaphors were mixed here), Labradors on the bow facing the wind like some Kings of the World!

Next lifetime, I suppose.

                It’s just friggin’ Monday. And you can’t get around the fact.  Okay, so you can, but lying to yourself will make you neurotic, and who has time for that?  I mean, when you go batty, you don’t get your work done and that means possibly having to work the weekend and horrors!  Perish the thought.

So, might as well buckle down and dive in.

The good news is, as soon as I do that, I’m smiling and laughing and happy again.  Because I really do love what I do! 

How do you get through your Mondays?

 

The post 10 HARSH REALITIES OF A MONDAY THAT I CAN’T ESCAPE appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

THERE ARE NO ANSWERS, THERE IS JUST HOPE

We seek answers.  We strive to understand why something happened, how it happened, what it means now that it has happened, where we go from here.  The human mind just wants to know.  To make sense of this crazy life.

One of the most untenable situations to find yourself in is that hazy gray-foggy place of not knowing.  Your loved one didn’t come home on time—did something terrible occur?  Your friend was in a bad wreck, and you sit at the hospital waiting for the surgeon to come tell you whether she’ll make it.  Your parent goes through a grueling treatment for a terrible disease, and much time will pass before you know if it proved successful.

And then, even when you know the score on any of the above, you can find no answers as to why.

Those answers, often, just don’t exist.

I’m going through that right now with one of my sisters.  On pre-op x-rays to replace her hip, a spot was found on her lung.  The CT scan showed a large tumor.  “Significant” was what the docs said.  With other organ involvement.

We know just enough info to freeze our hearts.

Then we waited on the biopsy, its results required before the Petscan could be ordered.  And of course all the tests then take days and days for the reports to come in.

All this hurry up and wait is driving us all pretty much up the wall.

Because when all we know leaves so much open to the dark side of the imagination, well, it’s tough to keep the faith.  Monsters lurk around every bend.  The kind with bloody fangs and gleaming claws.  Especially for those of us who have been down the road before . . .

But keeping the faith is the only way to sanity.  Oh, not in the “all will be fine!” sense.  But in the knowing that there is only one anti-dote to the insanity—hope.

After going through a particularly bad course of life events, I said, often, that hope was too expensive.  When you put your faith in hope, the disappointment when bad things happened can be just too much to bear.  And from that perspective, it’s surely true.

But I’ve since learned that hope is a different thing from my earlier perception. It’s not hanging onto the idea that healing will come, or that deliverance from evil sits in the palm of your hand.  Because sickness will occur.  Evil does exist.  We will all outlive many we love, and many will outlive us.

Neither hope nor faith will change that.

Faith to me is a belief that there is a reason for this life.  We may not have the answers as to what those reasons are, but deep in my soul I know for true that they exist.

I don’t mind at all if you disagree with me—lots of people do.  And I’ll never try and change your mind.  Your beliefs are as valid as mine—to you.  And I understand the Freudian analysis of that—very well, actually.   But I’ll take my deep knowing over anyone’s mental analysis any second of the day.

“Faith being the evidence of things not seen” doesn’t mean you lie to yourself, or spout something you don’t believe.  But when you get it, truly get it, the understanding is unwavering, quiet, and deep.

Hope, to me, is that knowing that we will go on.  That no matter the horrors of the road ahead, both individually and collectively, encoded into our DNA is the will to live, to survive, and yes, even to thrive—despite pretty horrific odds.  The we that is all of us—from a spouse to a family to the entire family of woman.

So as I sit and wait for more tests, more reports, more treatment, then more tests and reports after that, with no answers anywhere close on the horizon, I also sit in my faith, with hope in my breast, and love in my heart.

What do you do when answers just won’t come?

 

The post THERE ARE NO ANSWERS, THERE IS JUST HOPE appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

DO YOU EVER FEEL LOST?

Lord knows, I do.  Not so much these days, but for a long stretch of seemingly endless time, I felt like Moses’ people lost in the desert.

You know what that’s like.  You’re doing what you’re supposed to, handling your responsibilities, putting one foot in front of the other.  But all things fertile and creative and luscious have dried up like so much sand blowing through the Sahara.

Makes life sloggingly tough.  And I found that when I feel lost, a reason exists for it.  Well, duh, you say!  She is fairly thick J

But I’m not talking any old reason.  In fact, an intense pattern has weaved its way through my adult life.  And even though I know the cause, at times it seems that life just conspires to keep that thing you must do just out of your grasp.

Those dry sands of time fill my life, burying me up to my eyeballs in choking dust when that one thing is out of whack in my world.  I bet you can point to that thing as well—that thing that brings joy along with all the hard work.

I went for a span of four years where real life was fairly awful.  Where I had more on my personal plate than I can even count at this point.  My elderly parents were in a wreck, which proved to be the catalyst for sending my dad on a long sliding descent as if pushed off the edge of a steep mountain down a black-diamond run.  He suffered already with dementia, but was still himself most of the time.  After that, not so much.  And past a certain point, he no longer even knew who he was.

About Alzheimer’s and dementia, God just has some ‘splainin’ to do.

Then Mom went through a brutal bout with cancer, and for a while there, I didn’t know my name.

And then all the dealing with legal and etc., etc., and although I was no longer going through illness and dying, death itself lingers.  And the thing that I must do to keep me sane just wasn’t in the cards.

I can only laugh when I remember as well that I got a divorce during that time.  With all the other, I almost forget about that!  When divorce, one of the top-ten life stressors, doesn’t even register on your radar screen, well, you’ve had a pretty bad go . . .

Man, did I ever go a bit bonkers!

And when things finally settled down, and that thing that I must do hadn’t happened in years and years, well . . .

I’m sure you have a similar story.  We all go through those bumps in the path we never saw coming, in varying degrees.  Those trip-ups that knock us for a loop, and get in the way of that thing we must do.

And if that parameter lasts long enough, you find yourself adrift.

Again, when I feel lost, I know the reason—even if I can’t do that thing I must do at the very time.  And what helps the most is that I know how to find myself again.  I know the remedy.

Because for me, that thing is writing.  It’s the creative side of me begging for expression, then screaming to be let loose, and finally whacking me in the head like some scythe coming down on Marie Antoinette’s neck.  I.e., it doesn’t much take no for an answer.

And as soon as humanly possible, I dove back into the wine novel that has been sitting not-so-patiently for years to be finished.

Ah! Water after such a long drought!  I could almost feel my cells plumping back up with moisture as the days went by.

So next time you feel lost, adrift, arid as the Big Bend landscape, focus back on that thing you must do.  It’s the very life force that sustains you.

What is that thing for you?

The post DO YOU EVER FEEL LOST? appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

ARE YOU REALLY AFRAID OR ARE YOU JUST LAZY?

How could those two be connected?  I mean, you’re not lazy, right?  You work hard at what you do.  Give your job your all, take care of your family (sometimes multi-generations worth), apply yourself to school or learning any new task, work out hard, and any number of other endeavors in front of you.

Lazy?  No way!

But fear is a pesky emotion.  Quite often, if not almost always, it covers itself in a mask or fourteen that says it’s a beast of a different sort.  Conversely, sometimes it jumps up from the ego and says, “Don’t do that!  Danger!  Be very afraid.”

And then, once you’ve run fifteen miles away from whatever, stop to catch your breath and let the hormones settle, a deeper little voice arises and asks, “What, exactly, were we afraid of back there?” 

The smoke has cleared and no monster formed from the mist.  Hm.  But man, are we a bit tired now—all that running and adrenaline, you know—and this is a great time for a cookie.  One with chocolate in it.  Because that was surely a near miss and we flew instead of fought and either way, well, we deserve a break.  Right?

All those hormones give a great rush.  Ah, such energy!  No wonder so many folks get off on anger and the blast it brings.  Which as long as you don’t stay there, can be invigorating indeed.

And instead of facing the daily grind of whatever, we succumb to the lure of that energy.

We pay for it of course.  What goes up must come down. But more importantly, we’ve just wasted productive time by running from beasts invented.

And especially if this happens more than once, and god forbid, frequently!—that fear is masquerading as something it’s not.

I mean, again, we’re not lazy, right?  Who could ever accuse us of such!  Why, the very idea that I could even have time to be lazy is ludicrous, no?  Look at all I do, all that I accomplish, look what my day’s like, for Pete’s sake!

Um hm.  Yep, that’s me, actually.  But you know what?  There’s a pretty big pocket inside me that says, “Ahhh . . .  we’ve worked so hard, why don’t we just to lie in the hammock and read the new Sarah Gruene book, the first-edition signed copy of which just arrived in the mail.  Or you know, take the day off and watch a movie.  Or, talk on the phone to someone not about business.

Oh, no! What was I thinking? Just the idea of it plunges me into, you guessed it, fear!  Now I’ll never get my work done today!  And more just piled up and, and, and . . .   And away we go again, down the fear-road propelled by adrenaline rush.

Yep, inside me is a lazy place.  I do believe I would make a great lady of leisure!

Then again, President Teddy Roosevelt sums it up for me,   “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

So before you believe that ego voice inside saying, run!  Take a look at what you’re running from.  Perhaps, as in cases with me, it’s your own laziness.

How do you overcome it?

 

 

The post ARE YOU REALLY AFRAID OR ARE YOU JUST LAZY? appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

DO YOU EVER THINK THAT HAPPINESS IS BULLSHIT?

There is certainly enough woe in this world to support that idea.

We all struggle.  As the Buddha said some time ago, “Life is suffering.”  And man, does evidence abound!  If nothing else, as Author M. Scott Peck summarized, “Life is difficult.”

Yeah, buddy.

And nobody gets out of here alive.

Gulp.

Funny thing though, if you study what else the Buddha said, and the sutras, you find quite different messages from what the statement would appear.  Seems the Buddha wasn’t so good at soundbites!  And unfortunately, in our culture, soundbites rule.

If you take “Life is Suffering” at face value, then happiness is indeed, bullshit.  Life becomes meaningless and it’s easy for your mind-view to go straight to the negative and pessimism.

But what is happiness?  What, when we delve deeper, did the Buddha actually say about this?

The sutras say, “Impermanence therefore suffering.”  Wait a minute!  That’s not life is all suffering.  But the impermanence of it causes suffering.  If you’re sick or poor or lose a loved one, you sure may be suffering.  But if you’re rich and healthy and have those you love around you, you’re quite happy, no?  Some folks are.  Some aren’t.

Nothing lasts forever, right?  And that brings on change.  And change for most of us—even positive change—is stressful.  I.e., it produces suffering in some form.  But neither is happiness lasting—there comes that impermanence thing again.

As Comedian Gilda Radner said, “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. ”

The Buddha taught that in the midst of this suffering, we can gain insight into the Truth, and learn what actually provides lasting happiness (and what can’t).

So, suffering will absolutely occur.  The point of the Buddha’s teachings (and many, many others—I’m just structuring this article with it!) is that in the face of impermanence, of suffering, we can transform all of that into peacefulness, joy, and freedom.

It’s all in our heads.  All in being receptive and letting go.  All in trusting the universe that order exists somewhere in it, even if all appears as chaos.

All in realizing that we will die.  Either before those we love, or after.  We all will have goals reached and those unrealized.  All of us.

If you think your mid-set doesn’t matter, just look around you.  See how some folks are content and peaceful, and some bitter and angry.  And remember, once again, that although everyone walks a different path, we face similar heartaches just in dressed in different garb.

The choice is always ours.

“We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.” –Buddha

So, what is happiness to you?

 

The post DO YOU EVER THINK THAT HAPPINESS IS BULLSHIT? appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

AT THE RISK OF BEING WRONG

Encoded into our DNA is the desire to be right.  And oh, how we hold onto positions or dreams or relationships or jobs—even when we know they’re wrong. 

 

And the more we bolster up a false truth, the longer before we accept reality.

Denial of the real truth always comes from a hidden fear nestled deeply within the breast.  The ego thinks that stuffing it keeps us safe.  He doesn’t really drink that much, does he?  My job isn’t that bad.   I’m too old to pursue my dream of _____.

And staying safe causes one to keep from trying.  Whatever the trying is about.  Funny, too, so often, that fear couches itself in colorful clothing, calling itself wisdom, experience, analysis—anything to mask the underlying fear, stopping you in your tracks.

You don’t have to get too far in this life to have had enough failure that it can, indeed, seem wise not to grasp for that brass ring, not to focus on a goal where the path is fraught with potholes and demons.  You’ve been bit before, no?  Stumbled perhaps.  Fallen down.

So why should you trot down a road where that’s sure to happen again?   What fool would keep taking chances, especially to achieve something long ahead and far away?

Indeed, to continue to do the same thing over and over, hoping for different results, is surely insanity.  But that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about that voice that tells you not to try for something new, because you’ve fallen in the past.  The one that keeps you safe and warm and cozy—and not achieving to your highest level.

And once you’re in that place, listening to the safety voice, overcoming fear may seem the least of your worries.  That voice is saying it’s not fear, right?  It’s hammering on you about how wise you are not to do the thing you desire.

It flattens out your life.  Which after a trauma of any sort isn’t a bad thing.  It only boxes you when you stay there.  As Author Anais Nin said, “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

Once you dissect that fearful voice, hear it for who it really is, then you have a choice.  Stay where you are, full well knowing you’ve stopped your growth, or buck up, pull your bootstraps to where they need to be, put on those big-girl panties, and try.

We can analyze and argue with ourselves till the cows return to the barn, but that’s not going to get you where you want to go—on that path to your destiny, which awaits as a shining beacon in the sun.

And we all have a destiny—we all have something to which the Creator put us here to do.  Sadly, that’s rarely easy!  LOL.  Our best successes, our best achievements of goals and dreams always comes with a price.  But far, far more expensive to not pursue . . .

In the end only one action serves in overcoming fear.  Only one real way to slay that demon and move forward.  After all the analysis and arguing and planning, only one thing remains for you to do.

Just do it.  Take the leap.  Know in your heart of hearts that even if you’re wrong, the trying itself brings a boon that you could never foresee.  This I know for true—one never takes on a worthwhile endeavor without learning from it, growing, becoming enriched by the process itself.

And that’s worst-case scenario!  In the end, you just might reach your goal.

As Author John W. Gardner said, “We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure — all your life. It’s as simple as that.” –Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society. 

 

 

 

The post AT THE RISK OF BEING WRONG appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

7 TIPS FROM MY TIME DEALING WITH FAILURE

Failing just sucks.  Doesn’t it?  No matter how you couch it, and all the positive (yes, to follow!) attributes that stem from it, failure just sucks eggs.

We live in a world that worships success. Whether on the playing field, the art world, running a Fortune 500 company, we glorify those who win the game.  We make celebrities of them.  We keep their pictures in our minds of what’s possible at the end of the rainbow.

Not that that’s a bad thing!  Often when slogging through the darkness, a great way to deal with stress is to remember those who traveled a similar road and won—whatever “winning” meant in their fields of endeavor.

And the funniest part is that we tend to forget all of those folks’ failures.  Or perhaps those are kept hidden.  But fail they did—or they never would have succeeded at all. 

Man, have I had my share of it.  Being an author gives you the opportunity to fail almost daily.  Big misses and little ones pepper the world of anyone playing the game.

I’ve had more learning experiences than I can even count!  And if you’re invested in, well, just about anything in a serious manner, you have had your own opportunities revolving around dealing with failure as well.

Here are the 7 most prevalent tips I’ve learned to deal with the stress that comes from it:

       Recognize that You Will Fail.

Gulp!   Now, that’s not the mindset I need when beginning my marathon!  You tell me I’ll fail?

Yep.  Comes with the territory.  There is simply no way to try something—truly try something—without stubbing your toe.   In both big ways and small.  Learning can be truly tough. And even when you’re no longer a beginner in your field, well, failure will still come.

I began my wine novel 7 years ago.  Seven years!  Real life got in the way.  Yet the characters kept talking to me and when I finally could settle back into it last year, I realized that the last third of it had gone off track.  The remedy?  Ditch that part.  Yep, throw away over a hundred pages, get back into the stream of it, and write an entirely new last chunk and ending.  Ugh.  And ugh again!  Now, that hurt.  Was the novel failed?  No. That part, however, was.

But I have the skills to write it better.

President Theodore Roosevelt talked a lot of effort and failure and rising again.  I love when he said, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”

        Failure Comes when You Least Expect It.

Isn’t that the danged rub?  I mean, we visualize our goals.  See ourselves running the good race.  Envision crossing the finish line.  Yeah!  We have everything planned out meticulously in order to win.

But obstacles arise that we never saw coming, of course.  In the marathon’s course, you planned for the run up graveyard hill.  But who knew about the killing stretch, against the wind, under the blazing sun?  Dang. 

Just knowing that unknown factors will arise to trip me up always comforts me, in an odd way.  I know I’ll have to deal with demons I didn’t know existed.  And just knowing that takes some of the sting out when it happens.

One of my favorite quotes ever is from boxer Mike Tyson:  “Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face.”

Yes, sir.

       You’re in Good Company when You Fail.

Now, doesn’t knowing that ease your fear a bit?  All of our heroes—all of them—have failed in the process of their quests.  Refer to number 1.  Anybody anywhere who’s in the game has failed.

When it comes down to it, nobody knows what he’s doing when he starts.  Nobody.  You can’t know how to do something until you do it, no?  And even when you’re an “expert,” you’ll face trials that are new and unforgiving.

The truth is, we’re all winging it.  Nobody actually knows what she’s doing, even Fortune 500 CEO’s, successful entrepreneurs, athletes of the highest caliber.  We think we do, we try to learn all we can, but there will always come a time when you realize you’re flying without a net.

As Olympic Champion Runner Wilma Rudolph said, “Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time.” 

Note the Olympic-champion part 

        Admit to Your Failure.

That’s another gulp.  So often, we want to re-frame our failings into something they’re not.  Mostly, that they were successes in disguise.  And while it’s true that by learning from them, we grow and point back toward success, first we have to admit that well, yeah, we failed.

Because if you go straight to the re-framing, you’ll miss key lessons. 

Why did I fail?  Where did I miss the mark?  How did this happen?  Spend time figuring that out first, before you go on to the next step.

When I went back to that novel, and could see it had gone so off-track (that is the beauty of letting a manuscript sit—when you return you see it with fresh eyes), I dissected the wheres and hows and whys of it.  Ah, that character wouldn’t have reacted that way.  And oh, there, I took the easy way out.

As Author C.S. Lewis said, “Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.”

 

       Face Your Fear of It.

That’s at the root of not admitting to failing in the first place.  We all fear failure.  It doesn’t feel good!  And we like to feel good.  But paradoxically, being afraid to fail stops you from acting, which just ensures your failure.  And even if you do act, but haven’t faced that demon fear, you’re going to stumble at some point.

Fear is like that.  It keeps you rooted, attached, to whatever you fear.  Isn’t that just the nuts?  But any fear you keep stuffed grows fangs you cannot see, and spins around to bit you in the butt.

It shackles you as if running that race with one arm tied around your back.

Instead, take it out, into the light, and stare it down.

As Statesman and Author John W. Gardner said, “We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure — all your life. It’s as simple as that.”

      Learn the lessons from the Failure, and more about Yourself.

That’s the true gem in failing—it teaches you not only why you failed at this particular venture, but also helps you identify the weakness in yourself that caused it to happen in the first place. 

I’ve spoken before about my editorial client who was a 3-pack-a-day smoker, took up jogging to help her quit, and eventually set her sights on Everest.  She failed—twice.  Ouch.  Her problems weren’t from lack of preparation, training, nutrition, etc.   And after the second failed attempt, she finally faced the snarling fear deep within her psyche.  And a beast it was, indeed.

And she returned for her third and final try up that monster of a mountain.

As Psychologist B. F. Skinner said, “A failure is not always a mistake, it may simply be the best one can do under the circumstances. The real mistake is to stop trying.”

          Success can only Grow from Failure.

Failure is not just a glitch on the road to success.  It is that, to be sure, but failing is actually a tipping point—that place that determines whether you go on.  And if you go on, you’ve learned—often vital things—that place you in a much better position to succeed.  Without failure, humans don’t learn. 

Isn’t that just the nuts too?  I so wish I could learn from others’ failures, and not have to stumble off that same road!  But when it comes down to it, no one else can tell me how to write my novel.  Folks can point to where it failed, but it’s up to me to figure out its success.  As Winston Churchill said, “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”  

It’s the walking part that always strikes me.  Because I know that what I have learned from the failure, will point me toward success.

As Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister said, “All my successes have been built on my failures.”

Yes, indeed.

Failure, in the end, is not at all a bad thing.  I can point to a number of failures, which led to successes.  Can’t you?  Maybe it didn’t feel that way at the time, but in hindsight you can see it clearly.

Because as Real-estate Tycoon Donald Trump said, “Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.” 

How do you deal with failure?

 

 

The post 7 TIPS FROM MY TIME DEALING WITH FAILURE appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

5 WAYS TO STOP OVERTHINKING YOUR LIFE

Man, am I ever the Queen of this.  The World Champion.  Overthinking has been my nemesis for quite some time, and while thinking things through helps us to organize and plan, continuing to carry this out to infinity only serves to drive us batty.

At least, it does me.  Not to mention, my friends.  They don’t even use the term with me, but rather, go straight to flat-out obsessing.

Yep.  That’s me!  But ways exist that work to stop overthinking everything and get on with what matters.   And these work for me:

1.      Stop.  Yep, just stop. 

Did you know the psyche has a stop button?  It does.  And though that sounds simplistic and/or not doable, I’m always amazed when I put my hand out like a traffic cop in my head and say, “Stop!”

Gets my psyche’s attention every single time.

And no, that’s not the end of it of course, but it pauses those insane voices just long enough to drive a wedge into the continuous rotating hamster wheel and get something done. 

      Examine those thoughts. 

Has there been a new one in the last hour or just a rumination of all the existing ones?  I’ve yet to see that answer be yes.   Because once you get into obsessing, you’ve quit actually thinking.  That hamster wheel is spinning on its own fuel, and I can guarantee, nothing productive is being done.  

        Sort out the fact from the fiction.

That’s the work part of this.  Okay, so maybe the Stop part is too!  But this is where the brain actually comes into play.

Write out an actual Pro/Con list.  If I do X, this could happen.  If I do Y, this.

On a facing page, write out a True/False list.  Which of the “facts” are actually true?  Can you verify that?  Which are actually false?  Can you verify that?

Most of the time I find that an awful lot of them are blurry—I’m not exactly sure if they’re true or false.  And if I can’t verify them, then why am I obsessing on the negative ones?

You got it—that’s where the mind goes when faced with uncertainty.  Straight to the negative.

       Choose Your Own Thoughts.  Sounds really airy-fairy, no?  But if you don’t know if something is actually true, and another is false, choose to focus on the positive one.

Funny thing about the subconscious mind—it can be programmed.  While the theory that the subconscious mind cannot act on the negative is a theory still, and many don’t agree with it, scientists widely hold that the subconscious is programmable.  I.e., what we feed it through our conscious thoughts, is what the submerged part of our brain acts on. 

Well then, this really is a no-brainer!  If that vast part of us that governs our lives acts on what we feed it, then why on earth wouldn’t we feed it positive thoughts?  And that is, of course, completely up to us—it’s our choice.

    Just Relax.   Easier said than done when on that obsessive wheel, no?  But once you’ve done the above, 99 times out of 100 you’ve already started to relax.   And consciously relaxing is the final key to stop overthinking your life.

Meditate.  Breathe.  Go stare at the birds.  Go train the dogs.  Do anything you find relaxing and enjoyable and forget the current situation for a time.  Nothing clears the old noggin like doing so.

And then things look different.  And that mind, calmed again, can get back to being productive in a positive way. 

How do you stop obsessing?

 

 

The post 5 WAYS TO STOP OVERTHINKING YOUR LIFE appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.

SHAKE LIFE UP AND JUST DO SOMETHING

Sometimes it seems like life just stagnates.  You know how that is?  When you’ve been working toward something, or perhaps just working.  When you’ve been trying to get off of high center, whether in your personal or professional life.  When it just seems like nothing is happening, to get you closer to your goals.

What’cha gonna do?

Shake things up!

Anytime you find yourself trudging through the same mud fifteen times over, or I swear, when that horizon line keeps moving faster than you do, or you’ve dug a hole so deep the light grows ever fainter, it’s time to do something different.

My ex-husband used to say in these situations, “It’s time to do something, even if it’s wrong.”

And while that sounds goofy, there was actually valid thought below his mental process.  Because he would say it in situations where that rock just couldn’t be budged off its perch.

So, quit pushing.  Quit racing after that horizon.  Quit digging that hole.

And do something entirely different.

One thing artists of all ilk know, is that when creativity heads south for the winter and won’t seem to return (no matter how much you cajole that muse!), it’s time to take a hard left turn from your known world.

And it doesn’t have to be a big something.  The ticket is to do something different.

If you write fiction, go to the museum.  If you paint, read fiction.  If you’re caught in the simple drudgery of the day-to-day grind, go the Renaissance Festival and dress up as a tart.  Flirt your head off.  That’s imperative!  Flirt shamelessly with every man, woman, and child you encounter.

If you’re too busy for words, take the day off.  Mental health days are imperative, especially the busier you are.  Seems counter-productive, but it pays off in spades.

Dr. Lloyd Sederer, medical director of the New York State Office of Mental Health, said, “”It’s about learning your own self-management, an ongoing steady attention to a healthy life.”

Go to the movies, by yourself, in the middle of the day.  Cook a chocolate layer cake and eat it (unless you cook all the time!).  Go visit that vineyard—you know the one, whose wines you’ve been really wanting to taste.

Do the thing you never give yourself permission to do.

The point is to twist your mind in an entirely different direction from your “normal” day.  When you have fun, endorphins release. Confidence returns.  This rewires the brain and you literally “see” things different.

And perception is reality.

This is most likely not the time to sell all your possessions and go sell coconuts on the beach at St. Thomas.  We’re not talking full-blown mid-life crises here! That’s a different discussion entirely  

But rather, shaking your life up to make the one you’re living better.

As Joe Namath said, “When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have fun, you can do amazing things.”

Namath was fairly successful!  And also known to have a lot of fun. 

How do you shake yourself out of a rut?

 

The post SHAKE LIFE UP AND JUST DO SOMETHING appeared first on Susan Mary Malone.