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  • Find Awe and Be Present – It\’s more important than goals

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    Many people ask me why or what kind of websites lifesparcs.com or HappyWisdom.com are? Eventually they end up jumping immediately to productivity something like Lifehacker or something like that. Yet, I\’m not necessarily using goal achievement as my…well…goal of either of these efforts. It\’s about happiness, which is attained through presence, which can be attained by finding awe in your life.  Let me explain. 

    The aim of many systems is to make people happier, and the belief is that if you manage your life with intention and wisdom, you will achieve that.  We are cautioned to avoid living the unexamined life, but one must also must avoid the never-ending whack-a-mole effort that is goal achievement.  

    I really think people who are too oriented towards goal achievement may run into serious existential crises. Either they fail to get there, which mean they\’re losers, or they actually achieve everything, and the question of  \”now what?\” arises.  Perhaps this is why some successful child actors have trouble later in life.

    Life is an amalgam of goal setting goal attainment and presence.  That is why I call my blog \”happy wisdom\”. Wisdom begets Happiness, and Happiness begets Wisdom, and it has nothing to do with material goods. This \”happy wisdom\” can be found at any rung of the socioeconomic ladder.

    Alan Watts

    But how can we find more presence? Alan Watts is quoted to saying that accepting insecurity, living your life in the present, is the secret.

    When I was in India I saw some of the most happy people do in their daily work that included street sweeping with the primitive brooms made of straw, people dangerously laying out crops on busy highways to get the cars to run over them, to folks in tiny rooms crafting beautiful silk.

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    Some of these people were the happiest people I met there. There\’s no connection material wealth and happiness providing that you\’re beyond the bottom floor of Maslow’s pyramid.  Anyway, lets check out three quotes from the excellent Brain Pickings blog: 

    1. What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present

    My daughter and I have this running joke, albeit dark, that there\’s this giant maw waiting to consume us. We speak, of course, of death. The Giant Maw.  How can anyone be really, truly, happy when the nashing for metal teeth can be heard in distance?  Mr. Watts had the same question.

    If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.” We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. If, then, we cannot live happily without an assured future, we are certainly not adapted to living in a finite world where, despite the best plans, accidents will happen, and where death comes at the end.

    Fortunately he doesn\’t leave us there.  Watts is a bit opaque, but most mystics are.  Here\’s what he says about alleviating this situation, and as much as I can gather, he\’s saying- Ignore the Maw!

    \”Working rightly, the brain is the highest form of “instinctual wisdom.” Thus it should work like the homing instinct of pigeons and the formation of the fetus in the womb — without verbalizing the process or knowing “how” it does it. The self-conscious brain, like the self-conscious heart, is a disorder, and manifests itself in the acute feeling of separation between “I” and my experience. The brain can only assume its proper behavior when consciousness is doing what it is designed for: not writhing and whirling to get out of present experience, but being effortlessly aware of it.\”

    2. New years resolutions make us distressed

    In Mr. Watt\’s theory, we must in a way demonize part of ourselves to admit that one of me is bad, and the other me\’s mission in life is to improve the Bad Me. Check it:

    “I can only think seriously of trying to live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must be a good “I” who is going to improve the bad “me.” “I,” who has the best intentions, will go to work on wayward “me,” and the tussle between the two will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently “I” will feel more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings which make “me” behave so badly.”

    3. To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening

    So for him, this is clearly a problem, and ht talks about being insecure and unified in his experience.

    “The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the “I” out of the experience. We pretend that we are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. Sanity, wholeness, and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate “I” or mind can be found.”

    Happiness, he argues, isn’t a matter of improving our experience, or even merely confronting it, but remaining present with it in the fullest possible sense.  But how?  I think the key lies in having a health curiosity about the world.  How can anyone not feel awe? We exist on a planet spinning through space with six billion other souls, using minds that are most complex organization of matter known linked together by a network of computers that is hard to fathom, in a universe that is all but unexplored, and we\’re not even sure how much of it works (like ,where is all this dark matter?  Light is a wave and a particle?  Quantum mechanics?) .  

    Faith

     I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else. – C.S. Lewis
    Faith is another source of awe, which comes as no surprise. It is also another way I find presence. If I have faith that God is in my heart, that there is some indescribable positive force that has called all of this into being and that has in some way fit us into a narrative, it evokes an awe that cannot be matched.

    Awe of the Mundane

    But awe doesn\’t have to stem from the extreme. Check out this adorable video from \”Shots of Awe\” host Jason Silva. I\’m not sure I would call this baby a \”steak with a brain\” in front of his mom, but if you know Jason, you understand….

    Along with my never-vanishing awe of my own children, I love doing new projects. Recently I started doing more significant home improvement tasks. While mundane to some, I\’m terrible at it which makes it exciting. Installing a sink has been an undiscovered country for me.  When I succeed, I can feel awe on many fronts – how easy it was to find parts, how clever people are in creating these systems, and how patient my wife can be when I have to go to Lowes…again.

    Let\’s call in Albert to close it out:

    “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.”
    — Albert Einstein

    It is my belief that if you can retain a sense of awe it\’ll actually assist you in goal attainment since its easier to have grit when you\’re not existentially depressed.

    How do you folks find awe in the everyday? Does that help you with presence?  Mention it below – I\’ll be in awe if you do !  🙂

     

     

     

     

  • Results of one SPARC – How\’d The Week Go?

    So, last post I covered a simple version of the SPARC process, and here we\’re looking at the results of the week on this one SPARC.  The image below shows what it was on Sunday the 6th of November, and I\’ve got an updated version, done last night on the 14th.

     

    Before After

    \"Beginning

    		 \"Sparc

    As you can see I did some different things than I intended.  This is typical for my personality type, where I test as generally laid back  (low on Conscientiousness) and align well with Gretchen Rubin\’s \”Rebel\” personality type.  (Its the most difficult personality type to create habits for – lucky me!)

    Anyway, I\’ll call the week a success on this front because I did get out and got some good results on the exercise front.  Since my handwriting is all but illegible, I\’ve put a handy little table below so you actually read it.  The responses are in italics.

    Situation & Possibility Review & Renewal
    Situation: Having trouble finding exercise time,

    Possibility: I\’ll feel better if I can get into the gym and eat better

    		 See the Movie \”Arrival\”

     

    Moved to monday! 

     

    Action Collect & Coach
    1. Go to the gym twice Rough week for exercise!  Just tough to motivate a gym visit so I did a couple of sessions of yoga and went hiking on Saturday.  For coaching I reached out to GaryVee.com and watched some of his stuff. 
    2. Eat protein for breakfast (less carbs)   Got this done – this is easy when we have bars in the house.  Love the lara bars. 🙂 
    3. Run 400  meter  Totally didn\’t happen.  

    Results Analysis 

    So you might think that this week was a failure but I don\’t.  One thing that really worked for me is that this paper was sitting out on my desk all week. Therefore when I went to do stuff at the computer, this would be a nudge in the right direction.  This inspired me to get off the chair and do a pretty aggressive yoga session.  It also allowed me to record some of the coaching I received for free by viewing Gary Vee\’s website. I recommend it if you don\’t mind a little language.

    Its amazing what simply writing things down and leaving them out as an information radiator can do for regaining your focus.  What have you seen that works in your life to inspire you to do those things that you might not normally do? How do you think your personality affects your journey to a better life?  Comment below and share your story!

  • Get ready for the week in fifteen minutes with SPARC

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    We all want to have a plan for our week, to reach for new heights, and accomplish amazing things while not hating ourselves.

    One of the best ways to reach higher is to plan for it, and it is with this spirit I created LifeSparcs.com and the SPARC process.

    SPARC is the specific process I developed to help people live more happy lives. Nothing too grandiose! ( Click here if you want to read more about the genesis of this process and see the LifeSparc memobook).  But its not about the tool, its about the process. So, for this posting, we\’ll be using the basics – pen and paper.

    Sunday is the day that I recommend you plan your week, but since I\’m posting this on a Monday that works too ( Be Agile!).

    If you haven\’t done the work to decompose your thoughts into actions, we\’ll have to take a brief detour.  Close your eyes and look into your mind.  What\’s that one thing you really want, one you might have thought you should have by now, and don\’t.  Is it that dream trip to Ireland?  Is it a new car?  A new romantic relationship?  Get more fit? Whatever it is, open your eyes and write it down.

    Now, take a piece of paper and draw a line down the center of it, vertically, and then draw one horizontally, dividing the paper into four quadrants.  Now in the top left corner write Situation and Possibility.  In the remaining quadrants write  Action, Renew, and Collect & Coach in each quadrant respectively.  This is shown below.  Do this all in pen.
    Okay, now, google what week it is. Currently as I write this its the 45th week of the year.  Every \”iteration\” we do in SPARC is exactly one week. This sort of cadence will make things easier.  In the top right corner of the paper write this number, with the year next to it, e.g. 45th year of 2016.

    Let\’s say you really want to focus on fitness before the holidays, since you know that\’s going to be rough. Put into a statement, and write that down in the Situation/Possibility area. In this example I\’ll write the following:

    Situation: \”I want to get into the gym and eat right now to prepare for my inevitable transgressions that are ahead of me\”

    Great, now you have it down on paper.  But so what? You go to the gym…big whoop! We have to figure out what possibility this will enable…the why behind the need.

    Possibility: \”If I can do this, maybe I won\’t transgress as much, and I can look a bit more buff,and maybe be able to participate in some activities that will make it easier to burn off those calories. \” 

    But wait…is that really why? NO!  Try again:

    Possibility: \”If I can get to the gym, I\’ll feel so much better about myself, and maybe not gain ten pounds like I did last year and feel embarrassed\” Better! You\’ve got feeling in those statements.

    \”Emotions drive us, not logic. Get your feels out there in the possibility section.  There of course can be more than one statement in this area, but they should be motivating, not a downer.

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    By now, your paper should look like mine does to the left. Looking down at the next sections, you\’ll see Action, Renew,  and Collect.  Think about them together.  What actions am I going to do to successfully attain the Possibility?  I can\’t just write \”go to gym\”  or \”eat less\”  – these are too vague. Try to find something you can count, something that you can control.

    How about , \”Go to the gym three times\”?   That might work, but not if you haven\’t been in three months.  (don\’t look this way…stop looking at me…)

    Go to the gym twice.  Okay, very modest.  What if we added, eat protein for breakfast instead of cereal?   ( this betrays my affinity for the Paleo eating style).   Okay, one more.  How about – do a 400 meter run practice.  I\’ve done this practice before – I get on a track and burst around it like Usain Bolt (when he was toddler).

    There we have it- three Actions:

    1. Go to the gym twice
    2. Eat protein for breakfast instead of cereal
    3. 400 meter run practice

    But what about the R? Renewal is imperative for humans, since we are more successful in general when we can wrap an unpleasant task with one we look forward to.  Carrot, not stick.  So for this week, of the huge list of things I do for fun ( you have that list, right?) which will I pick? I think there\’s some amazing movies coming out soon, namely Arrival (awesome!).   I\’ll see that one as a reward for doing these items.  Now, what if I don\’t get all three done by Thursday? Well, I say you do the movie anyway, since you\’re working on hard stuff here.  We need to refill the tank before it runs out, not after.

    Um, that\’s it!  Congrats, your planning is DONE.

    Your page might look something like this:

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    Now you might laugh, since that process appears too simple. But as with any good process the challenge is in the doing. This also becomes more difficult when you have a few of these.  Say you\’re also trying to fix the sink, and you know the family is coming over on Thanksgiving and you\’re running out of time. Get out a new piece of paper, and go through this same process. Hopefully you can pin this on something more motivating that fear of embarrassment.  As for collect and coaching, we\’ll fill that in as we move through the week.

    I\’ll post again this week as I progress on these totally random items that might be mine or not :).  Please feel free to share some of your work below in the comments!

    – Joe

     

  • Wisdom Wednesday – How to come home after work the right way

    I love the poetry of David Whyte. If you don\’t know, he\’s a Northwest poet, and one that specifically targets the squishy area of being in the business world. Poetry aimed to address and frame work, career, family life, and the mess that all adds up to.

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    In his excellent book, Crossing the Unknown Sea, David has an excellent passage about returning home after a long day of work. Many of us have been on one side of this or the other.  Either the money earner role, waiting for solace, or the homekeeper waiting for an adult to talk to.  Its challenging to make this transition, regardless of which side. We pick up the topic on page 214.

    For single folks, coming home can be great, and not so great:

    \”Like the monk returning to the shelter of a narrow cell we find the actual spaciousness of a palace. Blissfully single, we turn on our favorite music,, at precisely the volume we please, make tea, lie horizontal on the couch an look around our little private kingdom. [However] in periods of unhappiness we return to the bleak shadow of loneliness, desperate for someone to simply ask us about our day, for the chance to exchange and receive sympathy. \”

    Families of course have their challenges:

    \”Coming home to our families presents its own possibles and prohibitions…we forget the privilege of marriage or cohabitation when we walk through the door with our own tiredness and are presented immediately with their own competing tiredness.  It is exhausting to be exhausted and then to be presented with someone else\’s exhaustion.  We had hoped for respite and sympathy and find ourselves having to call on reserves we don not feel we possess.\”

    But what is this exhaustion telling us?  If its extreme, Whyte tells us it could be indicating that something is off-kilter:

    \”The tragedy of our over-commitment to work is often marked and made clear to us in these hours …. Obsessive commitment to our work, whatever fictions we tell ourselves in the office, sacrifices the timelessness of our children, the romanced of our marriage, and the necessary ability to enter the sweet territory of our own solitude.\”

    What can we do about the moving into the threshold of our home the right way? How can we make sure we don\’t engage in \”exhaustion competition\”, to see who had the worse day, with our significant other? He gives us a clue in the following passage:

    \”The voice and the identity we occupy on the threshold of our homecoming tells us whether our human pilgrimage through life is being emboldened or completely overwhelmed by our careers.\”

    Voice and identity.  During my graduate program at Seattle University, I was taught to pay attention to my voice.  To my identity. To focus on those things that could slip by if you\’re not aware of them.  To engage, as much as you can, your intention.  So its not that we can change our voice and identity before we enter our homes as if we could slip off our skin.   It is more about paying attention to what we\’re carrying in with us and dumping on those behind the door of our home, be it a dog, a family, a roommate, or the worst critic of all, ourselves.

    A terrific Wednesday Wisdom Action is found in Whyte\’s suggestion to create \”something timeless\” for our homeward return. This would provide everyone a chance to find grounding, and establish the right voice and identity if it isn\’t present.  He suggests a  ritual team time for adults and children; a glass of wine, or a cup of coffee, for the tired couple; a time for everyone to say how it went, or didn\’t. One ritual I have, to enter the threshold to those I love with intention is to occasionally wait in the car until I\’m ready to be present.

    What rituals do you practice before you pass the threshold from work to home?  Or how do you greet those who are coming home? 

     

     

     

     

  • DIG Your Life – Get your Goals on Paper

    We\’re getting close to the new year!  Are you looking forward to setting new goals? Or is it dreary and awful?  As we approach the end of the year, it\’s traditionally time to start thinking about goals, though it\’s always a good time to do so. That is, unless you plan on not achieving them.  If so, never mind.

    DIG stands for Discover, Implement and Gather, and I use the mnemonic as a framework to live, plan, and evaluate my life.  In the next few posts, I\’ll be going into each of these in some detail, but for now lets just touch at the surface what I mean by them.   By remembering DIG you will be able to see yourself in a process, feel grounded that you have a path forward, and that you have some mechanism to claim your life as your own, not someone else\’s.

    Discover – This process is about dreaming. What are the goals you’re after? What is stopping you?  One thing I\’ve used for the discovery process that really works, especially for those folks who are more visual than not, is mind mapping.  Mind mapping is the art of taking ideas and writing about them spatially.  Just a couple of tips here.  Keep the bubbles small (one or two words) and don\’t try too hard to make sense of it. This isn\’t an outline.  Draw pictures, be silly, be outlandish.  And shoot  high! According to Gretchin Rubin, studies show that those big goals tend to motivate people more than smaller, more achievable goals. Jim Collins calls this concept BHAG – Big Hairy Audacious Goal.  

    Create that mindmap without goals in mind at first – just radiate out what you feel, in images and symbols. The idea is that we\’re tapping something deeper and non-linear in our minds.

    Here\’s a video by one of the originators of Mind Mapping – Tony Buzan.

     

    Implement –  is about execution – now you gotta do it. It is where we see LifeSparcs, the journal/app, being used. Week by week, tough task by tough task, we get there.  Yet, for rebels like me, scheduling doesn\’t work – I rebel against the notion itself.  Therefore for us rebels, create that list, free of dates, and put stars or something to indicate priority. Then when you review the list, you can do whatever you choose of it since you already prioritized it. 

    Gather – Despite doing this every week ( this is the C in SPARC), its also a good practice to have a bigger picture review with yourself or your coach.  The forest now, not the trees.  How are you feeling the thing you’ve been trying? Has the weight loss gone okay?  How about that book you\’re writing? Have you gotten much feedback?  Is it time to try that new thing?  Or, should you give it another go? Another chunk of the LIfeSparc effort, to see if it\’s YOUR thing.  Gather is a chance to say, we’re doing okay.  We’re gonna be alright. This is the chance for us to enjoy the music of life, regardless of the outcome of what we’ve done.

    Action Step: Try mind mapping!  Get out a few pieces of 8×11 white, unlined paper, and have at it.  Doing this step will line you up well for the next part of the process – Implement.

    P.S.  here\’s a great example of a very creative mindmap.  Shoot high!  Use color.  Use paper and and color colored pens. Most importantly, get ready to do a few of them as you get closer to …you.  🙂

     

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  • Life\’s complexity can stop your goals dead in their tracks

    Hello my name is Joe Fecarotta, and welcome to Happy Wisdom, the site that will help you live a bigger life by attaining your goals while actually enjoying your life.

    Companies hit goals that were thought impossible just a few years ago. We\’re all amazed by the progress that has been made, but many attribute it to simple brilliance, a level above the ordinary person. How does Elon Musk say he\’s going to land a rocket on a pad in the middle of the ocean, and then actually get it done?  How do Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon consistently push the envelope of innovation and excellence?

    I\’ve been working in the coaching field for over a fifteen years, dealing with some of the most complex software projects in the world. During that time I\’ve learned a great deal of techniques that the world\’s biggest companies use to deal with complexity and uncertainty\"\".  These companies scour the top colleges, startups, and the most experience coaching and consulting out there to get the upper hand.   One day it hit me: wait – my life is complex!  Why not use some of this stuff in my personal life?

    So I did.  I created and prototype many systems, my own planner, and this blog to communicate my findings  and experience in working with complexity.

    • Have you ever felt overwhelmed by life? With all the interconnections, both in-person and online, its beyond any of us to manage it.  How can we feel effective and connected in the 21st century?
    • Maybe your a Gen Xer and your in a career that has bogged down. Perhaps the flavor is out of it for you.  What now, in mid-career, can you do? You can\’t quit your job and roam the world, but you still want to find that passion, that next Big Goal in your life?
    • Maybe you\’re a millennial, and your path is opaque. The world is changing so fast – how can you find that thing and go for it?  In a \”gig economy\”, what gigs should you take?
    • Maybe you\’re ready to retire ( or being forced to) .  What now, after a lifetime of doing something for a company?
    • Do you feel like your personality just isn\’t fit for goal attainment? You might think yourself too messy, too distracted, too undisciplined, etc.

    If you fit into any of the above categories, as I do, this community is for you. HappyWisdom mission is to provide proven tools and techniques to take your life to another level. HappyWisdom is where ideas, motivation, and a process to succeed will be shared and discussed. We are all uncovering new ways to deal with our reality.

    Ours is a time unlike any other ! We can\’t use ideas from the past. Day planners, Life Planners, and the such are stuck in the past.  We need to be agile in our everyday life, to respond not only to a changing world, but a changing us.  Everyone can make it.  We know that life isn\’t a destination.  There is no \”goal\” where you say \”I\’ve done it!\” and its over. Life is about continual self-discovery, about growth, and how you serve and get served by this wonderful life.   When we try to achieve that new goal or milestone, that heretofore elusive target, we will hit bumps in the road.  If we didn\’t, we\’d likely already have attained it.  It will be there that you get discouraged, stop your pursuit of happiness, and live for the weekends alone.

    Alan Watts compare our lives to music.  We don\’t listen to a concert for just the ending – we\’re enjoying each song and each and every moment.  Goals are important, but they are not an end in themselves. Through wisdom we can find continual happiness; through happiness we can be open to wisdom.  HappyWisdom is dedicated to helping people achieve  goals, discover their new selves, while maintaining that ear for the music of life. How are you keeping your ear tuned to the music while fending off life\’s complexity?  

     

  • Bring light into your world!

    We\’re currently having a storm in the northwest. We\’ve got a lot of flashlights and candles about.  It makes me think how luck we are in the West, and how tough world we live in.

    Fear, as I covered in my first Sway presentation, is not conducive to goal creation or the pursuit of dreams.  Getting your dreams accomplished isn\’t super high on the list when you\’re existentially afraid for your country, your kids, yourself.  These trying times take us down Maslow\’s Hierarchy, and it is well known that we make poor decisions when operating in a place of fear.
    Should we pursue our dreams when faced with such a world?
    I think we have to, because this is where we are.  Reality isn\’t going anywhere, and we can\’t cancel 2016, unfortunately.   We have to deal with reality now if we are to avoid massive surprises later.  So here\’s my three tips to keep driving to your dreams while the world seems to be falling apart:
    1. Openness to Reality – Don\’t shy away from the news, but don\’t obsess either.  My family doesn\’t watch TV much and this includes the news. News, if you haven\’t seen it recently, is like a horrible Facebook feed. Bad news story after bad news story, then a completely awkward switch to the sports and weather.

    \”Janice, 543 people died today after encountering yet another horror in our world… Now over to Sam for Sports and Weather!\”

      Today\’s 24 hr news cycle can overwhelm anyone.  Things aren\’t going to \”settle down\” because that doesn\’t drive ratings.   Chaos drives ratings, and crazy Internet posts, which brings me to point # 2…

    2. We aren\’t there yet – Humanity is in the early birth pangs of modern global civilization    You might think the Internet a crowded place, but  billions of people are yet to even get on it.  Think about just a 100 years ago – 1916.  People were taking horses around.  The car was known as the horseless carriage.

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    This is what we were driving.   Oil lamps included!
    3. Hate simply cannot win.   Hate eventually eats itself.  There\’s not enough fuel to feed the fire of hate, since eventually humans realize that the people they\’re fighting, the people they feel free to kill, are just like them.  That God does not want them to kill. That we are all in this together, that we love our children, that we want a better life for them, and that we all have the same dreams and desires.
    No matter how dark it gets I think about the greatness of men like MLK who saw through so much hate and retained their hope for humanity.  We have come so far in 100 years, 200 years….lets acknowledge that love does indeed win.
    So, take here\’s an action – take a picture of something that makes you happy, even if it is from Pokemon Go.  Draw something, write something, anything that brings light and love.  Got a picture of your new puppy – post it!  Wrote a great blog post?  Share that sucker. Bring light into your world!
    I hope this article will help you find your serenity in the storm, enough to carry on to live your best life.
    – Joe