Welcome to Things I Wish I Knew Earlier Sunday!
Here are 3 ideas I found to spur your creativity this week.
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Mahatma Gandhi
‘Cacophony’ is one of those words I had to read then look up the definition several times before it stuck in my mind.
According to merriam-webster.com, it means “a harsh or jarring sound.”
Imagine you’re at a concert and the band is playing your favorite song. Then one of the musicians starts playing in the wrong key. Now all of the musicians are playing in different keys.
The hideous sound you’re imagining is what I hear when I read the word ‘cacophony.’
Now imagine the opposite. Every note in perfect accord with every other note. We have a word for that too: ‘symphony.’
In an earlier edition of this newsletter, we looked at how the word ‘universe’ means “one-song.”
Your life is a uni-verse unto itself. Happiness is when all the notes in that song sync up into harmonious melody. The opposite of happiness-sadness, anxiousness, etcetera-is when the notes are playing in different keys.
This is why lying always precedes unhappiness. You cannot say one thing, do something different, and expect to be happy, even if you get away with it.
Why?
Because you know the truth. The truth is in your thoughts, and the only escape is to make the truth known.
A couple of years ago, I was launching a national TV show and running two business generating a lot of revenue. From the outside, it looked like everything was going very well. Harmony.
But in reality I was living inside a cacophony. And it took two years of hard work and truth-telling to bring on the harmony that I now get to live inside of.
If you are currently unhappy, where are the notes that are out of key, in your thoughts? in your words? or in your actions?
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
The only way to change the past is to change your perspective on it
“If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going.” Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
We often take for granted that we can’t change the past. It happened the way it happened, and all we can do is deal with it.
But a little consideration reveals that idea to be untrue.
I once dated a young lady who had been abused by her father’s best friend.
When we met, it became obvious to me that there was a blackhole in her personal history around which everything else spun.
We spent hours talking and I felt her dance around this, approaching as close as she dared, but always retreating at some point before telling me what happened.
Eventually I asked her directly what she wasn’t telling me. And she told me…every ugly detail.
By the time she finished her secret story, she looked like a changed person. As if she had put down some heavy thing she had been carrying for a long time. She was lighter…happier.
She told me that I was the only person she had every told.
I couldn’t believe that it was possible for someone to hide the experience that most shaped who they were. But it was.
We spent many days and many more hours talking about the fallout from that experience. The shame, the fear, the sadness.
But after some time, she came to understand that the results of that experience weren’t all bad (even though the act itself was pure evil). It made her more independent. It made her more aware of her surroundings. It made her…more courageous.
She had spent all her life up to that time running from it, avoiding it, looking away from it. When she turned to look directly at it, to give voice to it, she initiated the healing process.
The great psychologist C. G. Jung said, “What you want most to find will be found where you least want to look.”
How could it be any other way? The dragon always guards the gold and the princess.
And we are always faced with the choice, to become a dragon slayer or not.
People spend their whole lives running from the worst things that happened to them in their childhood, but they never truly escape.
You can spend your life running toward your destiny or away from it. The path toward it is always the hardest in the short-run and most fruitful in the long-run.
We are not made by what happened to us. We are made by how we choose to react to what happened to us.
And you can choose to react differently now to things that happened to you long ago.
In that way, you can change the past. And in that way only.
There is no greater threat to fear than courageous, intentional action
You know how to abolish fear? Action.
Any action.
Fear is the Great Paralyzer. Our reaction to it is built into our DNA.
When the predator emerges, we freeze.
This is an excellent technique when you are trying to avoid getting eaten by lions, tigers, and bears.
But it is a terrible technique when you are trying to create something of value, like a better version of yourself.
There is no greater hindrance when you are trying to write a great book, start that business you’ve always wanted to run, or get back in shape.
Because the consequences of taking a risk and making yourself better are almost never life-threatening, even though it may feel like they are.
If our biological reaction to fear is to freeze, it follows that the way to counter fear is to MOVE.
That means taking action. Really, any action will do.
You want to write a book, write a paragraph.
You want to start a business, open an LLC.
You want to get back in shape, take a walk.
Take your little action, then assess how afraid you are afterwards.
I bet you’ll be a LOT less afraid.
Then what? Another action. Then another. Then another.
The great cliche says that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Guess what? Nothing of value was built in a day.
Nobody ever wrote a great book or started a business or got in shape in a day.
They did it by stringing together little action after little action until they finished.
There is no greater threat to fear than courageous, intentional action in the direction of your goal.
One brave step at a time.