How are you?

I'm amazed at these three words that start off everyday conversations. How are you? Does anyone really care when they ask the words? And does most care what the answer is going to be?

In certain context, I have genuinely asked someone I hadn't seen in a long time, "How are you" or aka "What's up". It's such a general question that could take hours to answer. Yet in looking for a quick answer, the question and answer have very little meaning

Answer the phone, door, check email, or facebook and I'm sure you'll get at least one cliche HAY (how are you) per day. Most people that ask me this question couldn't care less how I am. They use these words as a bridge to the real reason they contacted me.

As the question gets thrown around like a clean pair of jeans at a frat house, the answer to the question has become as unremarkable as its predecessor.

Yesterday at the grocery store, I watched an interaction between two people that I see on a daily basis. Two women approached each other. As they got closer, one asked the other how she was. The second woman, never slowed down, never made significant eye contact, and did not seemingly care. Her response was "fine", followed quickly by a "and how are you" response. The second woman had already passed by her inquisitor. It was so contrived, I almost started laughing.

There was a time when I used to answer the question honestly. Once I realized this was a systematic, almost rhetorical question, I changed my answer to a systematic answer. Guess what happened?

I started getting a legitimate response from a few. I could feel some interrogator's break out of their cliche shell and their true personality would emerge.  

My answer was a series of five different words: Perfect, Awesome, Amazing, Unbelievable, Fantastic.

I made the answer as automatic as the question. My initial thought was no one cares, so I should use strong, positive answers that could at least help me feel more positive.

It worked! My days got better and better.

The drones who have a hard time getting through another workday, never noticed and continued the conversation with whatever their true intent was to be begin with.

The most influential person in my life

Some give credit to a parent, a teacher, or a mentor. I believe the most influential person in my life was my Gramma.

I loved my gramma. She was one of the most interesting people I have ever known. She was smart, articulate, and quick witted. She loved her music, could play guitar, piano and a bit of violin that I know of it. She could cook. She loved to laugh, but hated being teased. To me, she knew everyone and never forgot anything.

I spent a lot of time with Gramma. When my parents worked, I would stay with her. Most of our time was spent reading, playing cards and cooking. She taught me all nine planets of the solar system before I started school. Funny enough, she never taught me how to play guitar.

Gramma loved education. Her dictionary was well used and always close by.  I remember seeing two grad pictures of her two kids that finished high school. At six years old, I remember talking to Gramma about education. Somehow a thought was planted that I would go to university one day. I would be the first in her family. It was never a question that I would do anything else. I think she may have planted it. There's no way I knew what university was at that age.

I never really knew my Gramma the way her kids knew her. I was the grandchild. She spoiled me.

She told me something when I was 14 that I have never told anyone until recently. She told me what she expected of me by the time I turned 40. I actually forgot about the conversation until one day I was talking to a friend about predictions and laws of attraction. Swoooooosh, that day with Gramma came back to me in a flash. She was bang on. Just another seed that was planted that I forgot even existed.

I'd rather not share the exact details, but I assure you she got it right

The day I graduated from university my dad took me aside and made me cry. He said Gramma would be very proud and that she was looking out for me. Two years earlier, Gramma died from a long bout of lung cancer.

Near the end of her life, I've been told that she asked one of her daughters to look out for me. Not sure if that was true, not sure why.

Every time I eat banana bread, see a guitar or hear someone playing piano, I think of her.

Rumours

When was the last time you talked about someone in a bad way?  I’ve done it. Most people get afflicted with this. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it happens. Right?

Have you ever played Chinese Telephone? 

Get in a room with six people and whisper a personal story to your neighbor. Get your neighbor to repeat the story to her neighbor, and so on. Once all of the people have heard the story, the last person will share the story with the entire group. Funny enough, the story will have changed dramatically. 

Isn’t this the essence of what happens with rumours?

I met a guy yesterday who told me a story about someone I knew. He didn't know my relationship with this guy. I knew the truth quite well, and his story was so badly rewritten, all I could do was smile.  I thought about correcting him, but it meant that I would be involved in the gossip. What was the chance he would get the story right afterwards? I was sure he'd mess it up and then firmly state that he heard it from me. I don't need my friend thinking I've started a rumour about him. So I kept quiet.

We had friends that used to talk about others on a daily basis. Most of our conversations were of the gossip kind. We stopped being friends at one point for no reason but the fact that we drifted apart. In talking to my wife about the lost friendship, she hit a home run with her clarity.  I pondered calling them. She reminded me our friendship was dead. She said that our old friends talked too much about other people, including those who were close to them. There should be no doubt that they were also talking about us. Instinctively, we couldn’t identify the issue at the time. But she is right. They are good people. I love them. There will always be a special place in my heart for them. 

We can never be friends. We're fundamentally different when it comes to gossip.

I want to be around encouraging, honest people who have integrity, passion and energy.

Talking about someone in a negative light is a waste of conversation. Unless you’re trying to protect a friend from getting into a relationship with a sociopath or if you're trying to protect a friend's reputation, you should avoid it at all costs.

Ultimately, it's nothing but stinking thinking...

Stinkin' Thinkin'

Zig Ziglar coined negativity as stinkin’ thinkin’. He was so right. Negativity will bring you down. It impedes growth. It can ruin you.

I’ve learned that negative thinking has no place in my life if I want to succeed. Negativity is so draining. Sometimes I even start to feel sick when there’s too much of it around me.  

I used to ask myself, “Aren’t I allowed to wallow even just a little bit”? The simple answer is NO. This morning I read a section in Brian Tracy’s book “Goals”. He says that negativity is a result of a person not taking full responsibility for the results of her actions.

I watch people complain on Facebook. I wonder why they look to the Internet to dump their worries. Complaining gets words of encouragement.  It seems like everyone is trying to live in their own reality TV show.

I got onto Facebook to find out where all my old friends were and what the people I knew were up to.

I don’t write a lot of status updates because my life isn’t that interesting.  When things bother me, I tend to internalize them first.

Then I started blogging. I started to blog for three reasons:

1.       I have a goal to write a book.

2.       I was told to be a better writer, I needed to write every day.

3.       I learned that journaling was important for self improvement.

People started commenting on my writings. The personal experience of writing became less important than the feedback.

It is energizing to get words of encouragement. It is fulfilling to think I am helping. I opened my chest and bore it to the world.  And the feedback has been amazing.   Each time a comment comes through, I get an email. Just the fact of getting an email makes me feel special. The dopamine effect is very addictive.

I wrote a blog about boredom and my mom called me. As any good mom, she’s worried. That’s one of the reasons I love her, she cares about me.  The stinkin’ thinkin’ of my weekend de-motivated me. It caused conversations that didn’t need to happen. Why did I feel that way? It doesn’t matter. I have to take responsibility to pick myself up and get going again. And so I have, because I control my life. I am the only one responsible for the crappy way I feel. I may not be able to control actions of others, however I can control how I process the actions and how I react to them. 

Life is too great for negativity. Here's my new coping strategy. Next time I'm down I'm gonna go look at pictures of babies and puppies. If that doesn't change my mood, then nothing will.

Ta ta for now!

 

Power of Now

I wake up some days thinking that I’m a failure. I ask myself “What do I really know”? I’ve had success in business. I have a wonderful family who loves me. I have a good support network and I am in reasonable health. Yet I feel like I’m not where I’m supposed to be.

I am where I am because I am.  There is no such thing as “supposed to be” is something I heard once. The presence of being in the now is much more important than yesterday and tomorrow. 

Living in the now is tough. It’s appreciating all of the little things. It’s enjoying life as it happens. It’s being happy.

I know someone who recently survived a scare with cancer. The person he is today is much different than the person I knew 2 years ago. Putting things in perspective, he got a new chance on life. And he sees life's minutia very different than I. In his Facebook posts, I see a more positive, energetic ray of light. I am so happy for him.

In grieving a co-worker's death 12 years ago, I vowed that I would not take life for granted. Yet I did just that as death's feeling slipped away from my perception. What if today was the last day of my life? What would I do differently? I've got to make an impact with every moment I have left. I can feel it slipping away from me.

That's a heavy dose of mortality! 

Eckhart Tolle’s book “Power of Now” is a book that I’m going to read again. The last time I read it, I put some of his thoughts into action. One afternoon I put all of my worries away. I remember feeding the ducks.  Watching them interact with each other and with my children was magnetic. It's such a vivid moment in time because I was totally present with my kids. The kids were happy. The phone was at home. Life was perfect. Then it kicked back in. Dreams, goals, to-do lists, stresses, email, phone calls, TV…

Living for today is the most important thing any of us can do. I really need to read that book again. I’ve lost my way with so much focus on goals and to-do lists. My kids are getting older. Soon enough I’m gonna wish I could return to the past to enjoy them. I got them right now. It's easy to say but it's f'ing hard.

Life passes us by as we think about we need to do tomorrow and what we already did yesterday. If I was to be graded on life, I would give myself a C. Barely passing by, doing the necessary, but not excelling. 

I got a lot to learn...

Lowest form of conversation

I remember a few years ago I watching the Soprano's series. In one of the episodes, Tony Soprano and two of his henchmen were reminiscing. A darkness comes over Tony, and when asked what's wrong, he says, "Remember when is the lowest form of conversation".

It's ok to remember the past. We have to remember our past so we don't repeat the same mistakes in the present. We cannot forget.

It's not the remembering that's the problem, it's the living in the past. To live in the past, talking about what use to be means you're looking too much in the rearview mirror. It may suggest when we spend too much remembering that we are forgetting our present or our future. Life was lived, but we need to live on.

"Remember when's" are fun. They are nostalgic, but the conversation ultimately needs to change.

I get the "remember when's" out of my system every year with an annual get-together with old childhood friends. The times are fun. I get to relive my past and listen to old stories. The old stories are always the same, but the laughs never are. I've been doing that once a year for the past 16 years. I wouldn't trade that day away. In fact I look forward to it every year.

We cannot live in the past.

My dad and I used to go hunting together. We would walk to our deer blind before sunrise, then wait until daylight for the deer to emerge. One morning, as we creeped along the dirt road, our flashlights fell upon a new set of deer tracks. I was excited. If there were deer on the road, maybe we'll get a shot this morning. I started thinking about what might be. In his wisdom, my dad said, "Don't get excited, the tracks taste muddy".

Dad basically told me not to live in the future either.

I get caught up thinking about what could be, what I will do and what I want. It's what drives me forward all of the time. I try not to live in the future, and it's my wife who constantly brings me back. Sometimes I feel like Leonardo DiCaprio's character in "Inception". It's so easy to get lost in this forward thinking mindset.

The present is the only place life happens. We can prepare for the future. We can set goals for the future. But life happens right now.

I could go on for hours, but my kids are waiting for me. I need to spend it with them today.

Ta ta for now.

Am I bored?

I hear the words "I'm bored" all the time. My son needing to be entertained states them as a matter of fact so someone will play with him. Using the tactics that my parents used on me never works on my kids. When I give him something to do, he just laughs and slouches back into the chair.

Today, I know how he feels. In between laziness and depression, boredom settles in like a kitten cuddling for the night. I hate being bored. It's limiting. It's draining. It's awful.

At first I thought I was just being lazy, so I went and cleaned the garage. Four hours went by like 10 minutes. The garage is no where near finished but at least I accomplished something. I don't have the energy to read, to exercise, to talk to anyone or to do anything but sit in front of a TV or computer.

Not knowing what depression really is, I entertained the idea that I was encroaching on it. So I went for a nap. Hoping to sleep away whatever it is did not work. Although the nap felt great, I still feel this heavy weight on my shoulders.

Did I not get enough sleep last night? Am I not eating right? Not enough exercise? Probably all of the above.

I know one thing. I don't like this feeling.

Since I don't know what to call this feeling, I'll call it boredom.

Here's to a better tomorrow...

Ta ta for now.