Tag Archives: Self help – helped me

Career changes and lasting relationships

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If I were a carpenter, and you were a Lady…. If you listen to old country music, or happen to be a Johnny Cash fan, you know this song was sung by Johnny Cash back in the day. If you are not familiar with the song, the song is questions asking the woman different trades and if she would still love him.

What I enjoy about the song, is the different ways the man asks the same question. If I were a carpenter, tinsmith, so on and so forth will she still love him? It may seem that the man is not sure that the woman would love him and be with him, so he keeps asking to make sure the answer stay the same.

And of course the answers are the same throughout the song. June Carter sings that, yes, she would still love him and support him at whatever he does. That is a pretty strong bond the man and woman have between them, and her validation that she will and would love him no matter what came down the pipeline shows how sure they are of their relationship.

I think this song has a lot of relevance today with our world as it is. For some of us, this is our second, third, or maybe fourth major career change in the making between the job we were going to do the rest of our lives and today. For others the track record is the same in the relationship department. It seems many of those truths we were given as children are no longer true. Rarely is there a one lifetime job, or a lifetime long relationship.

Where is the balance in our lives? How do we as individuals meld our personal values, wants, and needs into something that fits our life, where not everything is forever any more? How can we go through a lifetime full of ups and downs, where the downside brings up stressors and pressures that ripple out and back, rocking our personal values, wants, and needs to there very core?

Most of us follow some variation of two main methods. One group tries to maintain order in their life, and the other group takes life as it happens. The key of course is balance. If a healthy balance is maintained between being a control freak, and letting life take you this way and that, it is possible to live a happy contented life most of the time.

In the song, what the man does for a living is not important. The relationship between the man and the woman has nothing to do with his past, present, or future career(s). The relationship is not centered on money. The relationship does not revolve around what they have or do not have. The relationship does not center on how they look, or how witty they are. The relationship is centered on the love each has for the other. As long as love is the center of their relationship, nothing else matters.

Nothing else matters to the couple in the song. They know what is important for them and why. They know that not compromising what is most important to them by life’s other distractions brings them the most happiness possible. Letting yourself be distracted away from what is most important to you is the second biggest cause of unhappiness. The biggest cause of discontent and unhappiness is not knowing what is most important in your life until after you have given it away, or otherwise compromised it.

Take time at the end of each day before you fall asleep and review at what you are doing with your life. Is what you are doing bringing you closer or farther from what you truly want? Is what you are doing making you happy, or does it tug on you, stealing a little of your happiness away every day? Decide what is most important to you each night, and start each day trying to make it happen. Before you know it, you will wake up and realize you are there!

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We are waiting for you

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We should not define ourselves through the approval or disapproval of others, but rather by accepting ourselves and appreciating who we are. When we are young children, maybe even babies we do things that elicit a reaction. If moving the muscles in our face receives a response, we try it again. If it works a second time it becomes a part of who we are.

Being accepted and approved of by those around us is very important to our well being. It is what makes society function from a tribal setting to a country of billions. If we are not accepted by those around us for who we are, it is hard to be happy.

Often we take the need to be accepted farther than we should. We do certain things or perform certain acts, not because we want to, but because it is something we think we need to do to receive acceptance from those around us.

Often those rituals we are performing are restrictions we place upon ourselves. Dressing a certain way is a good example. When we are children it never enters our minds how we are dressed. It is only when others in our social circle start to notice what we are wearing that our clothing becomes important to us.

This forming and changing to conform rules our life throughout our high school and early adult years. We conform and change so often we are not even aware we are doing it, and have been doing it. As we change, we change our speech, our taste in television, books, and other entertainment, and opinions of people and the world.

We wake each day and put a happy face on for the world to see, showing everyone we come into contact with how much like them we are. We observe certain few people who seem to be naturals in our chosen circle and emulate them. We also start feeling less than because we are not that talented and natural at being who we want the world to see we are the same as that person or persons.

What would happen if instead of trying to be like everyone else with a few minor differences, we worked on becoming ourselves? Really being who we are, and not settling for being a little bit of who we really are?

Each day we wake, each of us makes almost invisible changes from who everyone thinks we are to who we really are. Most of the time we are not even aware of the process. It may be something as odd as waking up, and wondering why we said what we said to someone the day before. Or maybe why we watched a different television program the night before instead of the program we always watch.

Our inner self knows who and what we really are, and manipulates subtle changes in our lives to help us become us, and not a poor clone of who we think we want to be. Women are the most obvious and successful example during middle age. We men go through a major process too, but we are not as successful as women are in identifying and becoming the real us.

Those people we tried to emulate all those years, were themselves, and they were comfortable with who they were. The real us is perfect too once we remove all the additions and subtractions we made to ourself to fit in. The real us is the person who has stripped away all expectations belonging to others about us, and they become the person they were born to be.

Once we are us, and not an act, we start to have a clear understanding of why we are in this world, and what our true purpose is. At this point we enter in a race against time to accomplish whatever it is we were meant to do.

How much healthier it would be if we did not wait until some future time to become us, stripped away the facade starting right now, and became the real us. How much more we could accomplish as we perfect ourselves along the way instead of going through separate processes. Who am I, and what is my purpose would not be as painful of a process. We need you, start now on the path to finding you.

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A few lives apart!

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It took me along time to figure out how to enjoy my life. I used to think that I had to be busy every minute, and every day should be filled with non stop events morning to night. After all that is what all the life style books, and the circuit speakers would talk about, doing what is most important each day.

They were the four windows, pyramids, and there were numerous scales where you could rank your projects, line up you meetings, your day, your life, other peoples lives. I lived in California at the time in the Sierra Nevada mountains. There was only so much to do, and I had a lot of time to read when the money ran out and I was partially homebound.

I read another version about how to live life to its fullest and to get the most out of life explained in a new way. At least if you left off the main purpose of the books and distilled what was left – that is what I came up with.

Except I did not really understand what I was reading…. How could I have a very full day generally doing nothing at all? How was it possible to get up each morning and enjoy one boring day after the next? Some years later I started understanding. I started having little short glimpses of how life is supposed to be.

I think it started with an old worn out man. An old man, and not good for much by a younger man’s standards, and pretty much a waste of space by an average teenager’s view of the world. But he had something I had never seen before. This old man who could not walk twenty feet, enjoyed going outside every day, sliding around on his butt and taking care of his yard!

An old happy man sliding around the grass digging up dandelions and tending flowers, drinking a beer, and not really caring that he could barely walk, I was curious enough to spend some time with him – an hour a week maybe spread across summer afternoons.

He used to tell me about when he was a younger man and able to do more. He said he lived pretty much the same as everyone else. He told me he thought life was okay back then, but nothing to get overly excited about. He said he drank a few beers, smoked cigarettes, and went through the motions of raising a family.

Eventually the kids grew up and started their own lives, his wife eventually took ill and died. His only boy left in town did not spend much time with him, had his own family. He figured that was pretty much the way life went.

Then he told me he became ill himself. He was in the hospital for a while, I am not sure with what, but as he lay in his bed, he started thinking about his life and how special it was even though by everyday standards it was pretty simple and common. Work, eat, sometimes sex with the wife, and sleep. Do it again, play with the kids on Saturday, and go to church on Sunday.

Somewhere in thinking about his routine he said he realized just how special those days were. He told me of those days were special, and every day was special, even if it was spent in a hospital bed. As time went on, I found a few more people like him, men and women both. Usually older, but they all understood just how precious their life was, even if it seemed dull and average looking in. It was the only life they were going to get, and they looked at the world with new eyes each day.

I know some of what they learned rubbed off on me, because eventually I too started to find life more exciting. I could even enjoy going to work most days! My life is what I choose to make of it. Once I decided to enjoy mine, time became short and precious. Now even the simplest things are more enjoyable, although my time is much more precious than I ever thought possible.

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Life growth and changes

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One of the biggest and most difficult hurdles in life is learning who you are and what you are about. Most people dabble with this process a little in their teens, then the drive to have a family take precedence. As the family grows we have internal rumblings of dissatisfaction and being lost in our thoughts from time to time. Usually with an urge to get away from it all, and rediscover who we are, then reality appears, and it rarely happens. When formerly married people find themselves single again, they go through a modified version of finding themselves, but usually complete only part of the process. They discover how and why they are ok, but their ex partner is not. They generally halt the process at this point for the most part.

For most of us, it is not until our kids leave home, or we are cruising through our forties when we realize we really do not know a lot about us. We know what our beliefs are, and what our likes and dislikes are, but most of us we have no real idea why they are who we are. We only really know that we have been this way all our lives. It is during this period when we really start to find out about ourselves. Some of us like what we find and some do not, but it is generally a time of both inner and outer exploration.

A lucky or perhaps not so lucky minority of people go through this stage early in life. Perhaps in their teens or early twenties. It is much harder to explore yourself when you are younger because a number of life’s tools that come from living are not present. To compound the difficulty many common ideas in the adult world are still new to us, and we think we invented or discovered them for the first time. For anyone who finds themselves in this position, it is best to remember that what you are learning is new for you, but perhaps not new to others.

One area we exploration is finding how we think about the world and our place in it. When we are growing how the world effects us, and our immediate family. People who hold a world view that encompasses the world first, and not themselves are a rare prize. Generally, great struggles have gone on within their core being before they found this new plateau of seeing the world and their place in it.

This is only a minor example of how we change as our life unravels. There is a good learning here that applies to all areas of our lives. If you have ever heard or read the story of the blind men and the elephant you may already know how and why our views change. In the story, some blind men all examine different parts of an elephant and have different ideas of what an elephant looks like.

Whether you are one of the few who have more advanced ideas on the world and your place in it, or are just starting out on the journey and have no idea of how you fit into the world remember everything is perfect in this moment and time, all is as it should be. All roads lead to Rome as the ancient saying proclaims. What is important to remember is that unless you and the person you are discussing life with are touching the same spot on the elephant, your views will be different, and that is okay. Of course each of you will grow at different rates and your views will cease to be the similar, and that is how it should be too.

Conflict in these situations starts when one party forgets that neither party holds the correct view. The correct view is still somewhere ahead on the path of life. As soon as one party involved remembers either holding that view in the past, or that the other person is speaking from a experience level they have not arrived at conflict goes away. We can not pull or force another into our level of life. We can only hope that we are on the right path ourselves, and eventually others will join us.

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Enrich your life by helping another

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When we pause long enough to look back over our life, we like to assess how we think we are doing. We look at our accomplishments and satisfy ourselves that we are somebody because we have completed some number of trials and tribulations successfully over the years, while others we choose to compare ourselves to have not.

We like to prim ourselves, fluff up our feathers, push out our chest, and strut around hoping someone will notice. If no one notices that is all right too, because we at least know how good we are. We know how well we have done in the face of adversity, overcoming obstacles and proving ourselves while other watched. It really does not matter though except to us and what we think of ourselves.

I stumbled upon a good analogy of our true worth some years ago. We have all heard about how we can stick our hand in a bucket of sand or water and splash it or move it around and shape it to our liking. Of course we know when we are all done and we remove our hand, it is like we were never there to start with. My observation is from a different perspective

I was watching an ant hill a number of years ago and I saw what our real importance is through the ant colony. If you have ever watched and ant colony at work, you know they have there set trails they follow initially when leaving the ant hill. In the morning as the sun warms up the colony hundreds of ants follow trails out to some end where once upon a time a lucky ant found a food or water source.

Usually the food source has long been forgotten and once the ants reach the end of the trail they start foraging in what appears to be a wandering pattern. If they have particular destinations in mind, I have not deciphered how they work. So out away from the hill there are all these ants working away, walking all over trying to find food for the colony.

At the nest there are other ants whose job it appears to excavate new tunnels. You see them walking out one of the tunnels to somewhere at the edge of the ant hill with a tiny pebbles in their pincers, or maybe a clump of dirt. They walk out near the edge, drop whatever they are carrying, and walk back in to do it over again.

I am sure there are many more ants who each have individual jobs in the colony of which I am unaware. As the day progresses, all the ants go about their tasks and the whole colony enjoys the benefits of the communal work. As I watched the ants working away, it dawned on me that even though they were working towards a common goal, they were not in any apparent way attached to each other.

When I removed an ant from its task whether the ant was foraging, hauling tiny pebbles from far below, or smoothing the ant hill and possibly reshaping it, the loss of a single ant was not noticed, or so it seemed. In fact unless I disturbed the ground there was no notice of an ant disappearing from its appointed task.

In reality so it is with us. If something appeared and took one of us from where we were sitting reading this, not too many people would notice that we were missing. After a few hours, it would become noticeable to those close to us we were not around at that time, but for the majority of the community, the loss of a single person is really a non event.

So when we are looking back over our accomplishments, and puffing ourselves up and feeling important, we also need to take a few moments and reflect on the truth. Are our accomplishments something that really make a difference to our community, and improve the quality of life for everyone, or are our accomplishments of a singular nature, in that they only benefit us?

Hopefully by the end of our lives we will accomplished many things that stand out in our mind as something that was really worth doing, and not a something that was important only to us. If we spend our lives doing those things that are only for us, we are like the single ant I removed from the ant hill. Nobody will really notice the difference, and our feeling of self worth will feel a little hollow to us.

On the other hand, if we some memories of how we made life better for the community or someone in it, we have fueled fires that will continue to burn in peoples memory’s long after we are removed. These changes need not be something that changes the very foundation of civilization, but may be something more humble and simple. Generally the more humble and simple whatever it is we do, the more it is appreciated by those people we do it for. Making life better for others, has a bonus of enriching our own life.

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Be who you are, not who you were

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I am sure you have heard, or read the (possibly mildly offensive to some) joke about the young bull and the old bull? In a cleaned up version, two bulls on top of a hill see a group of cows in the valley below. One, a young bull, being young, wants to rush in and mate with one of the cows. The old bull wants to walk down slowly, and mate with a number of the cows.

This joke is probably thousands of years old. There was a form of it in the movie, ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’, in the parking lot scene. It is also a premise in many other books and movies. At the end of all of these, the logic is immediately apparent: Why waste energy on small stuff when there are more important matters coming up? When you are older you will have more to contribute. While youth is great it is not the end all of existence, there is much more to life.

We should be who we are. When I was younger I enjoyed knowing there was someone around who was older and had more life experience than myself. I could go to and use them as a sounding board to help me through a hard decision, and present choices I had not thought of. I have never wanted to live in a world like that of Time machine, Logan’s Run, Brave New World, or any of the other books and movies where young is all there is, and life is controlled. Where and once you reach a certain age, you disappear. That’s not living, thats a lie in action.

It is a disservice to younger people to be much older, and try to be one of them. A much better tact is let someone younger than yourself be younger, and you be yourself at your correct age. There is much more to be gained from the relationship, and more satisfaction for both parties.

Take advantage of your life knowledge and life experience, to help young adults make the world a better place rather than helping them repeat the same mistakes that have already been made. If you are a young adult, take advantage of your enthusiasm, and energy to make the world a better place, but stop once in a while and ask directions.

No one would seriously argue the generally hasty decision making processes of some young adults. They do things on an instant. They are driving to a friends house, and they show up late, but with a new car. They push too many limits, and sometimes they pay a tragic price, either in themselves or the harm they have done to someone else. Thankfully, our society is set up in such a way, the damage they can do is limited.

There is a reason why people must meet a certain age requirement, either by law, or by general consensus. The reason for an minimum age, is peoples life experience, and decision making abilities have to be at a certain level before they can be effective in certain life roles.

I think it is a disservice to yourself, and young people, to be much older pretending to be young. A much better tact is let someone younger than yourself be younger, and you be you. There is much more to be gained from life, and more satisfaction for everyone. Take advantage of your life knowledge and life experience to help young adults make the world a better place rather than helping them repeat the same mistakes we did.

If you are a young adult, take advantage of your enthusiasm, and energy to make the world a better place. There is a lot to be said for youth, and there is a lot to be said for the knowledge and wisdom of age. Think about how much can be said when the two combine forces! Don’t be afraid to be the age you are. If you do not be your age, the only person you are fooling is yourself. You are also cheating yourself of some very good years in your life, and you probably do not like the person in the mirror to much either.

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