When Life Starts to Crumble

Posted on June 17, 2010 by venagozar

For different reasons we all at one point or another find our lives crumbling around us. What we do or do not when our life starts to crumble makes a huge difference on how fast we bounce back from our life falling apart. Sometimes we should react quickly, other times we should barely react at all.

Some of us spend a lot of energy trying to patch our lives back together and try to make it what it was before. Others feel relief at their lives falling apart and good riddance to their old life. Most of us rarely try to manage the transition our lives are go through from one state to the other.

As we live, our life is always in a state of transition. If you have small children it may seem your day to day life is one of juggling events and activities and trying to find time for yourself in the process. If you do not have children in your life, your days may filled with different activities that require your attention. Some of us fill our lives with drama, others strive for peace and quiet. Rarely though do our lives remain the same over time.

How we manage our day to day affairs makes a big difference in how we manage when our lives are starting to fall apart. If we manage through emotion then emotional ups and downs are the norm. If we manage life with some end point in mind, all our decisions are made with that final goal in mind, and the transition to a new life is generally much smoother and stress free.

Too many of us spend enormous amounts of energy trying to keep our lives what they were before our life started falling apart. Most of us do not want anything in our life to change and we struggle to keep things the same. While our intentions are the best, the only real thing we can manage is ourselves and how we choose to act during a life transition.

Occasionally we are blindsided. We come home one day to find our marriage is no more. Our home has burned down, or someone very close to us that we depend on has passed on. Events such as these are very high on the life changing scale, and are not every day situations. When these events happen, we should not let them destroy us.

Upon the knowing of what is our new reality, what we need to do first is make only those decisions that absolutely need to be made. They are not decisions we wish to make, but they have to be made. Usually we find we will be making decisions based on very little life experience. When this happens these crucial and critical decisions have to be made all the same. Gather up whatever information is available and make the best possible decision that can be made while trying to keep emotion out of the process.

Once those crucial few decisions that can not be put off are made, stop and take inventory of your life. As difficult as it may be, place your emotions aside as much as possible and take inventory of the situation. Look for strengths which can be called upon, what assets are available, and what the long term desired outcome is.

Though it my be difficult to not do, lesser decisions should only be made with an end state or end point in mind. Determine a future time, whether it be a month, six months or a year. Decide what life should be at that point. Use that decision as a basis of all more minor decisions.

Each decision will bring one closer or farther from a desired future state. Making more decisions that move towards that desired state rather than away from it, makes getting there a lot easier. Life altering changes changes can be difficult. Making life sized Decisions without thinking about the results will only make ones life more difficult than it has to be.

If ever, or perhaps when your life starts to crumble around you, follow these three simple steps.

Decide what you want your life to be in six months to a year
Make decisions to help you move your life in that direction
Do not be afraid of accepting challenges along the way

Change is hard, and challenges are part of life. Both can be made easier with a goal in mind for where you want your life to be in the future.

Make Fewer Decisions Using Three

Posted on October 4, 2009 by venagozar

If you have been reading my posts for a while you know I like things in three. Three is easy to remember and easy to do. Doing things by three feels natural and simple to do. Three is easy to do in sequence. More steps add confusion and get in a the way of the process needing to be accomplished.

Decision making and the rule of three is a simple way to categorize our options and choices which we use to make our decisions. We almost always have a choice to do something. We almost always have an choice to not do something. We generally have a choice of not making any decision.

Making a decision is an active process. Making a decision changes your life direction and is a proactive action. You are making a change to move your life in a certain direction. Making decision to not do something is an active process. Deciding to not do something is changing the direction of you life by eliminating a certain direction, or life path you could have taken.

Not making any decision is at best a semi-active decision. No choice is made to make a decision. Not making a decision – most of the time is correct – as long as any likely result is not important. Allowing friends on the spur of the moment to take you to lunch is an example of not making a decision. You don’t know what will be served, but you are going to eat something somewhere. Whatever you eat will nourish your body. It is only one meal; what the meal is comprised of does not really matter.

choices Because we are the one making or not making a decision we are surrounded by the decision we need to make. Being at the center of a decision clouds our ability to make the best decision. Our ability to make better choices is clouded because we cannot see all the choices or option available to us. We can only see those options pressed upon us by those around us. We do not have the pleasure of stepping back and looking at our options from a more distant unbiased perspective.

A good example is when you are playing a game, verses watching someone else play a game. When playing a game you make continuous decisions based on what you see from your seat and what you did previously. Watching a game and observing what is happening, a different perspective is achieved.

Being able to watch from a distance allows you to see what is influencing the game direction. Being able to see what other players are doing and why allows you to make better decisions because you see more going on than you can see when playing in a game.

At times is not possible to stand back and see all your decision choices from a distance. The decision may be too serious, too emotional, or a decision needs to be made now, not later.

My rule of three in helping to make the best decision are:

1. Is it important? If it’s not important, whatever I decide makes little difference. I save my decision making for another time.

2. Of my remaining choices which decisions will cause the least harm to my life, family, or other peoples life’s?

3. Of my remaining choices, whether no matter what I personally think about it, which choice is best for my life and future life path?

When decisions are difficult and an easy choice is not present, using these three rules will help you to make choices that are the best choices you can make in the moment. Later if you find your decision was not the best you could have made, there may be a possibility of modifying your previous decision to something better.

In any case use what you learned from previous decisions for the tough decision you have to make using little information. If you know you tend to make bad decisions when you have to make quick decisions, postpone your decision as long as you can. If you find you do not consider all possibilities, share your decision with someone you trust.

Someone you trust may not agree with your decision, but they will provide you with options you may not have considered. Making decisions by a rule of three allows each of the three options to become more valuable by modifying any or all of the three choices of decision making on your past decision making learnings. As you refine your options your decisions become better. As your decisions become better, you will have less decisions to make.

Gambling and everyday life

Posted on December 4, 2008 by venagozar

In the world of gambling there are many choices for those who wish to risk their hard earned cash. Some people who gamble feel they are not risking their money at all. They know they are going to lose their money. The question then becomes what to gamble on or what do as a gambling pastime for a period of time while making their money last as long as possible for as much fun as possible.

The only difference between all other forms of gambling revolves around a sort of triangle made up of: acceptable risk, potential wins or losses, and the amount of pleasure derived from gambling. Some people only require need a bug crossing the floor and they have everything they need to gamble with. For others gambling may be much more complicated, such as the stock market, or a speculative business venture.

For everyone who gambles decisions within the process of gambling can be made to be very be complex but the possible outcomes are simple.

Over ones lifetime one wins more than they lost.

Over ones lifetime one wins more than they won.

Over ones lifetime one comes out even, neither winning nor losing.

Looked at from these three conditions there is not a lot of difference between gambling and life, except adding more gambling in ones life adds the possibility of losing or winning more.

In life enjoying a successful retirement means having a long series of wins. A long series of wins may have meant: Getting the right education for the job opportunities that are likely to be in demand over ones lifetime; finding the right job(s) that turn themselves into successful lifelong careers; making investments that make money; avoiding the traps and pitfalls that other people fall into and never recover from.

Struggling in retirement, or not being able to have a retirement means none, or few of the choices of success came to pass. Not always the fault of the individual, but rather due to a series of events beyond ones control. An individual may have tried to do everything right, and everything turned sour. It happens often. The recent series of hurricanes, floods, and fires for example….

Most of us over the span of our lifetime come out even. We make some decisions that some may see as brilliant and do well for us. We have other situations that may leave us wondering what we could possibly have been thinking about when we made them. Most of our decisions though end up somewhere in between. We made good decisions that did not reach the stars, and poor decisions that did not destroy us. We also made some decisions that were okay.

Over the course of our lives we all gamble. Over the course of our lifetimes we all experience the same outcomes as an active gambler.

Of course we are not starting equally from the same mark in the race towards the end. Rather we are randomly placed on a starting line we can not see, gambling with our lives with the hope we make more good decisions than poor ones.

Do you stay in college or start your life?

Posted on September 30, 2008 by venagozar

Reading various forums and blogs I read one question being asked over and again by college age folks. Each form of the question is different, but all share the same general format. As a group they are asking about the value of starting or continuing their college education. This is a serious question for a young person in college who is having doubts.

People they see that make them question the worth of having a college education, look happy and apparently possess everything they need or want from their life, and start each day with a smile on their faces. It sure does paint a nice picture.

Why should young people go through the pain and hassle of college? Already having spent most of their life in school studying and learning about things they see little benefit in knowing, not going or dropping out of college looks attractive. After all what is the point of going on to study and learn more subjects of dubious value.

I agree these folks do have a point. By not going on to college, it is almost a given they will never use what they have learned up to this moment in their life. It is also almost a sure bet that by not going to college, they will never have meaningful conversations with anyone who really matters in their life.

What not going to college brings for most people:

Poor lifetime health and an early death
No, or very few vacations
Little opportunity to experience real job satisfaction, but numerous different entry level jobs
Release from having to think because thinking will not be required

However making the decision to stay in college, perform the best you can, and graduate you can expect to:

Have options in the type of work you choose
Change jobs because you want to
Buy things you want instead of need
Work and talk with people who can think and form reasonable opinions
Having a retirement to look forward to, instead of working until you can not work any longer
Having regular doctor and dentist appointments

Those happy carefree people you see will be happy and carefree no matter what direction their life takes. For most people like them, life is much different and you do not have to look hard to see it. Having a college education means having choices. Getting the best education you can today means being able to compete in the job market twenty years from now.

Canoeing and decision making in the BWCA

Posted on January 30, 2008 by venagozar

As a kid in the sixties, I sold chocolate thin mints each winter to go to a YMCA Camp each summer. Once I reached a certain age, I was able to go on a canoe trip up to the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area for a ten day trip. One year was especially memorable thanks to the other boys I was with.

There were two boys from Sweden along for this trip, and I was lucky enough to share a tent and a canoe with them for the trip. They spoke acceptable english. The only Swedish I knew was a few words that my family used, and they were not words that would help on the trip, so I left them home.

Freeze dried food was recently affordable, so that is what we ate for most of the trip. Freeze dried eggs, freeze dried something made with beef heart for dinner. Lunch time was unique though. After paddling a canoe all morning on that wonderful meal of freeze dried eggs, and water, lunch was a veritable feast!

Lunch was four pieces of Rye Crisp, which are small crackers made out of rye flour. One those four pieces of Rye Crisp was the treat for the day. One piece had peanut butter, a second piece had jelly, and the other two pieces had a slice Spam between them. This came with a glass of Kool Aid to drink! By the third day we all felt like kings, eating such a great lunch!

The way to get around the BWCA, is you paddle your canoe from an entry spot to an exit called a portage which went to another lake or river. The portages were not fun. It meant carrying a seventy pound canoe, a back pack almost as heavy, or the paddles and life preservers, and anything else that needed carrying. This was carried through the woods and swarms of starving mosquitoes, and deer flies. By the third day, you rarely noticed the bug any longer because you were bitten so many times already, a few more bites did not matter.

There were another type of portage we came across too. This portage was unique to the rivers we would travel on. Paddling down a river we would see a posted sign that would read, ‘Dangerous Water Use Portage’. That sign meant what it said, usually some very rough water that a canoe was not built for. Generally these signs meant we would pull in, unpack, haul everything around the rapids, put the canoe back in the water, repack, and continue.

We started to notice that some of the rapids, were not so dangerous that they could not be navigated, especially by ‘professionals’ such as ourselves. Being kids, and having no leaders present to make decisions for us, we saw others in our group who paddled down the rapids instead of portaging around. We talked it over, and decided that if they could do it, we could too.

One afternoon, I was the bow paddler, one boy who was duffer (in the middle, enjoying the ride), and a boy named Jon Sebinas was in the back paddling, and steering for us. We were on a river and had ran some portage sign rapids. We were doing well, and had not bothered to portage. We were discussing perhaps they were feeling extra cautious on this river when they put up the signs because the rapids were not that bad.

We went around a bend, and there was a portage sign. We could not see anything, and Jon stood up in the back of the canoe, and said to us, “Oh ya, ve can make it.” It looked fast but simple from my bow view, and the duffer agreed too. The water moved faster, and there were boulders to miss as we shot down the river, but it was fairly easy. Then I noticed the river sort of disappeared about fifty yards ahead. Waterfall! It was a painful drop, and we spent the next few nights sleeping in wet sleeping bags.

Over the years, I use that day, and result as a decision helper in my life. Oh ya, ve can make it, rings through my head on many occasions when I find I am feeling nervous.

Thinking and making good decisions, pass it on!

Posted on December 21, 2007 by venagozar

One of the great things about life is the longer you get to live it, the better your knowledge base for making decisions. Having a larger collection of memories makes it simpler to understand why something happened, or why something may happen. When we are young, we do not have any memory base to share from so our decision making is not very good.

When I was a child, and I would be stopped from doing something, or punished after the fact, I would sit and cry, or feel sorry for myself. I was not able to look over a series of similar situations to mine, and see I was doing something wrong, or that could hurt me.

As a teenager, I started to realize there was a connection of sorts between past experience, and present, or future results. I could go to my friends and ask them about it too, which added to my decision making knowledge, although their knowledge was incomplete. So while my knowledge base was better as a teenager, it was not enough to be of real value because most experiences were still new to me.

It is really not until children come into our lives until we realize our system is not quite as perfect as we thought it was. We may notice some of our decisions are flawed. We act in the same manner we were treated at that age, without really thinking. We hear our parents sayings coming out of our mouth. Decisions are made like, “It was good enough in our Grandparents day, so it is good enough now”, or “Because I said so”. It is not until we are questioned that we start to realize that we have to temper our responses with some thought about how they were arrived there in the first place.

Children and telephones is a good example. When I was a child, being found touching, or playing with the telephone brought about swift, negative reinforcement. Children had no business touching a telephone. Each phone call cost money, and most parents did not waste money on their kids to play with telephones. Times change, and these days it is important for a child to know how to use any phone, perhaps to call an emergency number if they have to.

Having survived through our own children, we now are pretty much experts (if we take time to think) on making good life decisions. We have been through everything – growing up, dating, heartache, divorce, family death, family birth, and everything else that makes up our life. What we do not do so well however is pass on this knowledge to our children. I think it is rare for a child to be raised where a parent(s) has actually taken time to teach their children how a decision was arrived at and why.

If we did, most ‘why not, or why can’t I’ discussion would no longer [really] be about who is in charge. It would now be a discussion of is that a good decision – and why or why not. How nice it would be not to be forcing your children to obey, but rather having them go through a sound process for a decision. Talk about defusing an argument, and enjoying a healthier home life!

Most of us with children rarely get around to teaching our children how to think, and make good decisions. Possibly because we were never taught how ourselves. Or we think it is something school does. Thinking, and sound decision making is not that hard. We should not live almost half of our lives before we learn how to make good decisions instead of good guesses, nor should your children.

In the sciences everything we know from the past is written down and studied. It is dated, referenced, and commented on. We should be like this with our children. Taking the time to show our children how to make good decisions, and how to think. This would be would be a precious gift for any child. Think how much easier life could be for you, if you took the time to teach your children how to think, and make good decisions?

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