In this post I want to focus of something that that I see as a big over commitment  problem for most of the people I know.  It probably doesn’t fit into a typical view of what it means to be over committed.  I’ll get to all those more traditional situations in the third and final post of this series but I want to attack this problem first because it is so important.

When you are an over committed parent (I can hear the screams now about how that is not possible) you are doing your children a great disservice.  You are failing to provide for yourself and you are creating unnecessary stress and tension for your family.

You would both be better off if you spent more time investing in the job of taking care yourself; making sure YOU are a happy, healthy, and a productive member of the human family.  That is a role model that your children will respect.  They will remember their childhood fondly and be proud and thankful for what you did for them, instead of being resentful of your constant helicopter hovering and interference.

Remember that you too were once a child who actually was an individual human being trying to make your way in the world.  You had a mind and you had ideas and you probably just wanted to have fun some of the time.  Give your children the opportunity to grow and learn on their own, with you there to help catch them when they fall and to give them advice when they want or need it.  You might be surprised to find how often they seek out your help once you stop shoving it unsolicited and forcefully down their throats.  I realize this is going to sound crude, but you need to face up to the fact that when you do that your “advice” generally passes undigested and right straight into the toilet.  Your children get to be kids just once.  Please don’t take that unique experience away from them in a misguided attempt to be the perfect parent.

This is a win-win situation because it will free up a great deal of your time that you can then spend making yourself into what you want to become.  It’s ok if you get mad and yell at your children sometimes.  It’s ok if sometimes you’re too busy to deal with their crisis of the moment (oh no surely not?!).  They will learn that they can solve some of their own problems and that you will not always be available to rescue them from life’s inevitable challenges.  It’s ok if you fail to make the perfect decision or the perfect meal or whatever it is that you think you are failing at.  They are incredibly resilient.  They know you are not perfect and if you give them some breathing room they will love you despite all your faults and they will forget and forgive your sins long before you forget and forgive yourself.

Love them, hold them, talk them like they are human beings.  And then let them spread their wings and fly.  In return they will love, hold, and to your utter amazement they will actually talk to you and return to the nest again and again.

Now apply the exact same principles to your life partner, your friends, your extended family, your colleagues, and the world.  You will find that they too return the favor and you will build healthy and lasting relationships that actually matter.  The constant relationship chatter that occurs now days has gone too far and is also suffocating and unhealthy.  You and your partner are individual human beings with different needs and desires.  If you want to change your partner to be the person you want them to be then I suggest that it is you that has a problem.  Love them for who they are and realize that the all of those things, the good and the bad (from your point of view), make them who they are and who you probably fell in love with.  If they choose to change something then great.  If not and you can’t live with that then part as friends and realize that your experience with them is now a part of what makes you who you are.  Those mutual experiences that you both enjoy together will be the most precious that life has to offer.  Where your needs and desires are not mutual you must fill them separately.  If your partner loves movies and you’d rather play games online then let him or her go to the movies with a friend.  Your time together later will be more beautiful and fulfilling as a result.

See the pattern?  You are not doing anyone a favor by imposing your will upon them.  You are not a bad person if you get a “B” on a test or skip a boring lecture to go on an exciting road trip with your friends.  You may find that life changing experience as a result.  It’s OK to be who you want to be and not be who your parents or your friends want you to be either.

When you let go of all these unhealthy and unproductive commitments to mold the world and it’s people to your desires or yourself to the expectation of others, you will discover that there are plenty of beautiful people ready and willing to go along with you until the end.  And also as a result you will discover that suddenly you now actually do have the time, energy, and passion to live YOUR life to its fullest.   You will be able to make many more of those precious minutes count.  Whether you like it or not the world is passing you by and it is up to you to choose to get on it and enjoy the ride.   You can leave just a little bit of yourself behind and make the world a better place if only you will let it happen.  Getting what you want and leaving the world a better place are not mutually exclusive. 

Leo Babauta would say “Less is Better”. Amen Leo.

Have Your Great Life!

Chuck Stanley

Secret #1 was to simplify everything. Put that together with a reduction in unnecessary commitments and you have a strategy to dramatically increase the amount of time you have to spend doing those things that you really want to do – those things that will lead to Your Great Life. See the How to Have a Great Life Life series for the most powerful method available for figuring out what makes you truly happy and fulfilled.

Over time you have accumulated your commitments one at a time.  In isolation each one seemed justified at the time you made the commitment.  However you can’t make those decisions in isolation and you are likely operating under an assumption of unlimited bandwidth when you do so.

Imagine you found a great cause or charity that you wanted to donate a small amount of your time towards.  Let’s call it C1.  Imagine that C1 is unarguably worth 30 minutes of your time each week.  What’s 30 minutes when you can contribute so much right?  Then you find another cause C2 that is also worth 30 minutes of your time each week so you commit to C2.  You can play this scenario out over and over until you have committed to cause C3, C4, etc.  What happens when you get to C50?  C100?  The mistake you are making is assuming that your time or bandwidth to do these things is unlimited.  You are not considering each commitment in the total context of every single minute of your life and all of your other commitments, needs, desires, etc. You also are not considering it in the context of other potential uses of that same time resource.

The same thing applies to your money. If only everyone gave $10 a week to help this or that children’s charity the world would be a better place.  Yes but at what cost?  There is a limit.  Further when you allocate $10 to one thing you are not allocating it to another.  The whole idea of wastefulness in consumerism is at best an oversimplification and simply a value judgement.  One person’s hedonistic indulging may be another person’s food on the table.  When I indulge in a tropical vacation there are local people living there who are putting food on their poor families tables as a result.

Personally I think the #1 contribution I can make to the rest of the world is to take care of myself and my family and not become a burden on anyone else or destroy the planet in the process.  If I produce more than I need I will likely be helping a lot of other people indirectly.  When I can afford to pay for my own health care I am also paying for someone who cannot.  It’s built into the price.  When you are a net producer you are ultimately giving to others regardless of what anyone else thinks.

This does not help you with figuring out how to identify and eliminate commitments, but I hope it eases your mind a little when you do start that process.  If you are committed to having a great life with the limited number of minutes you have to live, you need to feel comfortable with this process.  Part #2 will give you some ideas on how to go about identifying and making these reductions.  Also keep in mind that I am making no judgments on what might constitute your particular great life.  To some people a life totally devoted to helping others with little consideration of self is the ultimate great life.  To that person, reducing commitments that are not geared toward helping others are the kinds of commitments that need to be reduced.  To each his own.

Have a Great Life!

Chuck Stanley

This does not mean you will do less.  In fact it means you will do much more of the things you most enjoy doing and/or those things that are most important to you.  Simplifying your life will allow you the time to actually enjoy your life.  It even makes it much easier and much less burdensome to get through those tasks you don’t enjoy but feel you have to do for one reason or another.  You can’t expect to have a great life if you don’t create the time to live it.  Simple will be a big theme on this blog and on my site Your Great Life which I have only barely begun to construct.

The best introduction to simplifying your Life is the book Power of Less, The: The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential…in Business and in Life by Leo Babauta.  If you don’t get this book you will regret it.  Leo is a rising star online.

It took me a long time to realize how much of my life was unnecessarily complicated.  Despite my own life being way too complicated, I was naturally inclined to much greater simplicity than many others around me.  Trying to survive the team lunch car pool decisions or restaurant choices was and is almost more than I can take.  For whatever reason, in the modern world we tend to over-complicate everything.  All this time spend stewing over minor decisions and adding unnecessary steps to everything is very unhealthy and totally unnecessary.

On his blog Zen Habits, Leo posted a list of 10 things you can do today to simplify your life.  I reproduce them here.  I strongly encourage you to visit Leo’s site and read his material.  It is second to none.

1. Make a short list. Take out a sheet of paper and fold it into a small square, perhaps 3×5 inches. Or take out an index card. Now make a short list of the 4-5 most important things in your life. What’s most important to you? What do you value most? What 4-5 things do you most want to do in your life? Simplifying starts with these priorities, as you are trying to make room in your life so you have more time for these things.

2. Drop 1 commitment. Think about all the things in your life that you’re committed to doing, and try to find one that you dread doing. Something that takes up time but doesn’t give you much value. Perhaps you’re on a team, or coaching something, or on a board or committee, or whatever. Something that you do each day or week or month that you don’t really want to do. Now take action today to drop that commitment. Call someone, send an email, telling the appropriate person or people that you just don’t have the time. You will feel relief. I’d recommend dropping all commitments that don’t contribute to your short list (from Item #1), but for today, just drop 1 commitment.

3. Purge a drawer. Or a shelf, or a countertop, or a corner of a room. Not an entire room or even an entire closet. Just one small area. You can use that small area as your base of simplicity, and then expand from there. Here’s how to purge: 1) empty everything from the drawer or shelf or corner into a pile. 2) From this pile, pick out only the most important things, the stuff you use and love. 3) Get rid of the rest. Right now. Trash it, or put it in your car to give away or donate. 4) Put the stuff you love and use back, in a neat and orderly manner.

4. Set limits. Read Haiku Productivity for more. Basically, you set limits for things you do regularly: email, RSS posts, tasks, feeds, items in your life, etc. And try to stick with the limits. Today, all you have to do is set limits for a few things in your life. Tomorrow, try to stick with them.

5. Simplify your to-do list. Take a look at your to-do list. If it’s more than 10 items long, you can probably simplify it a bit. Try to find at least a few items that can be eliminated, delegated, automated, outsourced, or ignored. Shorten the list. This is a good habit to do once a week.

6. Free up time. Simplifying your life in general is a way to free up time to do the stuff you want to do. Unfortunately, it can be hard to find time to even think about how to simplify your life. If that’s the case, free up at least 30 minutes a day for thinking about simplifying. Or alternatively, free up a weekend and think about it then. How can you free up 30 minutes a day? Just a few ideas: wake earlier, watch less TV, eat lunch at your desk, take a walk for lunch, disconnect from the Internet, do email only once today, shut off your phones, do 1 less thing each day.

7. Clear your desk. I can personally attest to the amazing feeling that a clean desk can give you. It’s such a simple thing to do, and yet it does so much for you. If your desk is covered with papers and notes and gadgets and office supplies, you might not be able to get this done today. But here are the basic steps: 1) Clear everything off your desk and put it in a pile (either in your inbox or on the floor). 2) Process the pile from top to bottom, one item at a time. Do not defer decisions on any item — deal with them immediately and quickly. 3) For each item, either file it immediately, route it to someone else, trash it, or note it on your to-do list (and put it in an “action” folder). If it’s a gadget or office supply, find a place for it in your desk drawers (or get rid of it). 4) Repeat until your pile is empty and your desk is clear. Be sure to get rid of any nick knacks. Your desk should have your computer, your inbox, perhaps a notepad, and maybe a family photo (but not many). Ah, a clear desk! 5) From now on, put everything in your inbox, and at least once a day, process it in the same way as above.

8. Clear out your email inbox. This has the same psychological effect as a clear desk. Is your email inbox always full of read and unread messages? That’s because you’re delaying decisions on your emails. If you have 50, let’s say, or fewer emails in your inbox, you can process them all today. If you have hundreds, you should put them in a temporary folder and get to them one chunk at a time (do 20 per day or something). Here’s how you process your inbox to empty — including emails already in your inbox, and all future incoming emails: 1) process them top to bottom, one at a time, deciding and disposing of each one immediately. 2) Your choices are to delete, archive, respond immediately (and archive or delete), forward (and archive or delete), or mark it with a star (or something like that) and note it on your to-do list to respond to later (and archive). 3) Process each email like that until the inbox is empty. 4) Each time you check your email, process to empty. Ah, an empty inbox!

9. Move slower. We rush through the day, from one task to another, from one appointment to another, until we collapse on the couch, exhausted, at the end of the day. Instead, simplify your life by doing less (see Items 1, 4 and 5) and doing them more slowly. Eat slower, drive slower, walk slower, shower slower, work slower. Be more deliberate. Be present. This isn’t something you’re going to master today, but you can start practicing today.

10. Single-task. Instead of multi-tasking, do one thing at a time. Remove all distractions, resist any urge to check email or do some other habitual task like that while you’re doing the task at hand. Stick to that one task, until you’re done. It’ll make a huge difference in both your stress level and your productivity.

Once you have all of your results from the question answering process described in part 2, you will want to look back through them and write down any words or phrases that occur more than once.  It’s ok to have too many but if you don’t feel comfortable with that, look for words or phrases that occur more than twice.  You will be making a mistake if you get too few the first time through the process.  When you have finished creating this list, you need to separate the results into three categories: needs, means, and structures.  What you are ultimately going to end up with is a list of your core needs.  This list will be a foundation for maintaining your great life for the rest of your life.

Core needs are those experiences you “need” for happiness and success in life.  Means are the ways you get those experiences.  Structures are those “structures” within which you use various “means” to fulfill your core “needs”.  Means and needs are sometimes very similar and easily confused, but don’t worry about that.  You can tease them apart over time.  For example going for walks along the trails in the woods is a “structure” I have to use the “means” of being alone in nature to fulfill several of my core “needs”; those being beauty, serenity, alone time.  I used to think that going for walks in the woods was a core need of mine, but it in fact is not.  It is simply a means.  There are other structures such as snorkeling alone along a reef that I can use for the same means of being alone in nature  to fulfill some or all of the same core needs.  I could also use completely different structures and means to have alone time or to be surrounded by beauty and fulfill the same core needs.  Someone else might take walks in the woods to fulfill a different core need.  One person might use the structure of a high paying job as a surgeon to enable the means of making a lot of money to fulfill the core need of independence.  Another may use the same structure and means to achieve recognition or a feeling of superiority.

The genius of this approach by Brodie is to allow you to identify those core needs which can be filled by any number of means.  Once you have identified them it is often fairly easy to create structures and means to achieve them.  The structures and means may come and go but the core need can be filled in other ways.  For instance you may lose your job and have to fulfill your need for independence by some other means and structure. Or maybe by using the same means (making a lot of money), but using a different structure such as starting an online business.  You may be transferred to a desert outpost and find a walk in the woods to no longer be the structure by which you use the means of being alone in nature which fulfills some of your core needs.  You might have to find a different structure like hiking down the wall of a desert canyon to get to the means of being alone in nature.  Once you know the need is not the money itself or the walk in the woods you will find other ways to meet your core needs.  Brodie’s book provides a simple and elegant way to understand exactly how you can have a great life.

I cannot do justice to the book with these three posts, but you can get a fast start at identifying your core needs by using what I have described.  Good luck and may you get past ok and find Your Great Life!

Chuck Stanley

First you answer a series of questions.  This is the heart of the process.  When you answer these questions focus on the experiences and feelings and not the event.  Write liberally on the experience with only a sentence or a few words about the thing or activity.  For example when I said that being in alone in nature made me happy, I described how I was inspired by the raw power and beauty of nature.  I described the feelings of peace and tranquility I felt being in the natural environment and how  I love listening to the sounds of nature. Getting away from my hectic life in this way gives me the opportunity to think and meditate without distractions.This part is very important so be liberal and write execessively if you want.  Please be very truthful.  You are the only one who will ever see this.  Here are the questions (note I added the first question myself - it is not in the book).

• What things give you that feeling of true or genuine happines?
• What do you want (try to come up with 10)?
• What have been the greatest successes of your life so far?
• What is it about other people that you admire?
• What are your most important values?
• What did you really enjoy doing as a kid at play?
• Describe your ideal job.
• Describe your ideal relationship.
• Describe what life is like from the point of view of your pet, or any other non-human object or being.  When you say “I”, the “I” is the pet.

It is critical that you don’t just list but describe experiences and feelings.  Otherwise this won’t work.  If you take this to heart and do it thoroughly the results from the follow on steps are simply amazing.  This is truly a life changing method.  Thank you Mr. Brodie.  I don’t want to write really long posts and this will take you a few hours so I will continue in Part 3.

Please comment on my blog and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Have a Great life!

Chuck Stanley

There are a few really good books available and an ocean of information on the internet.  The problem with the information on the net is that it is like trying to get a few ounces of pure mountain spring water while drinking from a lake on a muddy delta.  I will help go straight to the gold without having to dig through the ore or drink from the muddy water. I went through that process myself and was aided by a number of outstanding blogs and other net content. I encourage you to explore the Web but don’t make the mistake I did and try to absorb it all. You end up spending all your energy on reading about how to have a great life and filtering out the muck. You forget about the action part of the equation. Action is the ultimate key to getting anything in life. The information you have in your head is useless without action.

The single best quick piece of advice I can give you for the most important element of a great life (having a happy life), no matter what your age, is to get a copy of the book Getting Past Ok: A Straightforward Guide to Having a Fantastic Life. The author is Richard Brodie. You have undoubtedly had at least some exposure to him if only very indirectly.  He is the original author of the Microsoft Word program.  As he explains in his book he should have had a great life.  He was an early employee of Microsoft and as the author of Word, he was wealthy and successful by traditional standards.  Apparently he was miserable.  The value of his book and approach is that it is very straightforward and understandable by anyone.  It is not laced with psychobabble or new-age mysteries. You don’t have to believe in anything but some very well articulated common sense. When he subtitled his book “A Straightforward Guide…” he meant it.  Finally it does not require that you do anything but what already makes you happy.  His methodology is to help you figure out exactly what that is.

If you completely wasted your $10 on this book you would have lost the equivalent of a few cups of coffee or a single movie ticket.  How can you lose? Isn’t it worth a shot?  I will be summarizing his approach in the next post but I cannot do him justice so I highly recommend you give the book a chance.

Please comment on my blog and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Have a Great life!

Chuck Stanley