The Best Years of Your Life… Now!

I’m an advocate for self examination on a regular basis.

What I’m talking about is the introspective kind. Asking yourself the tough questions: Are you happy? If not why? Answering those two questions honestly and fearlessly, will usually pull the plug that’s been blocking many feelings.

The feelings may be both positive and negative.

The funny thing about we humans is that we find it much easier to express the reasons for our happiness than the reasons for our unhappiness. Reasons for unhappiness tend to get overlooked because they, well, make us unhappy to think about them.

If you could distance yourself emotionally from the feelings that come up when you ask yourself if you are happy… you’ll be able to take a deeper look at the cause of your unhappiness. You may also be able to find a solution.

It will usually fall into one or two categories:

1. Changing how you are reacting to a situation or a relationship.

2. Removing yourself from the situation or relationship.

Okay, I realize these may seem simplistic, too black and white… What you’ll find as you work your way through the “grey” areas, which are the building blocks of all situations and relationships, the root of the problem is going to fall into category one or two.

So you might as well work backwards.

Do you have the desire and energy to repair situations and relationships which are making you unhappy? If you don’t they are going to fall into category two. On the other hand, if you have the desire and the energy to “fix” and improve a situation or a relationship then by all means begin to examine what aspects are causing you to not be happy…Then do something about it! Starting with the way you have been reacting.

Sometimes a simple house cleaning is the answer to unease or unhappiness. You have to throw out stuff that’s broken and decide what’s still valuable enough to warrant the time and effort to repair it!

-Bob Baran

We all have goals… wishes or dreams we’d like to see accomplished in the time we are here on this planet. How often are our best intentions left on the table of “no action”? If you have a dream take the action to realize it… to make it complete!

One of the challenges of being a creative person is completion. The ability to complete projects. The main reason being Focus!… Or rather “Lack of Focus”! Focused Action is the key to completing any task. Whether the task is the great American novel or just getting the laundry done.

There are many reasons for the lack of focused action. Distractions of all kinds assail us daily. Sometimes it seems more important to do the laundry than to write the next chapter in that novel. Or maybe it’s seeing the latest movie. Of course, rationalizing that there may be some inspiration there to get you back to your creative project.

What does it take to put the blinders on and say, “Until I am done with this project, I will not be distracted by anything.”? It takes will power and committed focus to the project at hand. Some projects are too large to be able to stop everything. Though there have been creative individuals in the past, who wouldn’t eat or sleep unless someone made them, who had the inspiration and focused action to complete amazing projects. Jackson Pollock comes to mind.

If, even with your best intentions, you are having trouble staying focused on your goals, here are two possibilities you need to examine.

• One: is your goal right for you?…
• And Two: if it is, how important to you is completing this goal?

It may be that your original intention, your goal, has changed and what you are trying to achieve is no longer right for you. There is no shame here. You need to be aware if you are hanging on to something that isn’t right for you. If you don’t have a passion for your goal, distractions will continue to keep you from completion.

Then there is the second possibility, is it important to you that you complete the goal you set for yourself? This can be a heavy realization to come to… That what, at one time, seemed like a worthy aspiration, has become unimportant to you.

It may seem like I am always recommending introspection and you may be right. But if you are finding yourself stuck… Finding yourself with a lot of “shoulds” hanging over you and you find that your dreams, goals and aspirations are from years ago. You do need to sit back and ask yourself, “What is important to me? What do I really want to do with the time I have on this earth?” Make sure that the dreams and goals you choose, you truly have a passion for. Only then will you have the inspired, focused action that will take you to the completion of those aspirations.

To finding and living your true dreams,

- Gwen Baran

When I was a young man, I was a racehorse.

Point me in a direction and one way or another I would arrive at the finish line. Trouble was I didn’t have a jockey to guide me down the track…I won the race but I really didn’t.

Case in point:

My very first full-time sales job, at the age of 21, was in a stereo store. I really had a passion for audio and my enthusiasm was infectious. A friend of mine suggested I stop by the store and put in an application. When I did, I was given a “psychological profile test”. The owner of the store hired me on the spot because he needed the position filled a.s.a.p. .

I fit in easily and because I loved what I was doing (I never thought of it as selling) I moved a lot of product out the door. So much so that the following week the owner told me I was only $200 shy of having surpassed the record for first week sales of a new “sales associate” in any of the 150+ stores nationwide. Believe me, if I had been told there was such a record, I would have stayed a couple of extra hours and broken it!

At about the same time the results came back from the psychological test. According to the test I had absolutely no aptitude for sales…I was accountant material! I remember the owner of the store getting the phone call and remarking “What are you talking about? This guy walks around like he owns the place and is in the top 1% of sales associates nationwide!”

The truth is I was making more money than my sales manager and everyone else in the store…I was flying high and loved what I was doing. I had customers bringing their friends in to buy from me. The owner brought out inventory that was laying around the warehouse and I would sell it by the end of the day… I was good at what I was doing and I knew it…and I let the other guys in the store know it too.

Little did I know my success was breeding discontent in the store.

One day the owner asked me to take a couple of days off…Okay, no big deal. I went to see a potential customer and sold a big system for the store with the equipment sight unseen! (that hadn’t been done before) When I came into the store the owner was amazed and at the same time was obviously down…

“I’m going to have to let you go”…

I was absolutely stunned! I was outperforming everyone, making this guy money and he was about to fire me. “You’ve got a super-ego and it’s causing problems in the store”. He went on to explain: “You are making more money than anyone in the store, even me! The rest of the guys are so demoralized that they don’t want to work when you’re around. The business was designed to support five sales associates and you are making more on commission than all five put together. I’m afraid of losing the sales staff, so I have to let you go”…

I was never given any training or cautioned about the negative effect my “bravado” had on the other guys…I was continually praised and then one day fired? My passion for what I was doing was my source of inspiration, so of course, I was going to be successful at it… But I received no council what-so-ever about being too “cocky” (I was 21)…

I was a racehorse full of steam!

I didn’t realize I was causing problems because I had blinders on! I was left so shattered that it was almost a year later before I attempted another sales job.

The point is, I actually felt (at the time) I was being punished for being too good. That it was wrong to be the best at what you do because it was going to cause others to react negatively… Then again I had no training and no mentoring. No one took the time to coach me on the realities of life. With a little bit of coaching I could have continued to be the best at what I was doing and “finessed” the situation in a way that would have made everyone happy… If only I’d been told.

But hey, the test did say I was supposed to be an accountant!.

-Bob Baran

You know, a List of things you are going to get to. Your, “I have to do List”.

How many things on that List have you put off, procrastinated over or just plain not ever gotten to?

Have you noticed how the things that you put off drain your energy?

I know someone who jokes, “It’s on my List. Oh no, that means it will never get done!”

It is like putting something in a “safe” place. I had to stop doing that. When I put something in a “safe” place, for some reason, I was unable to find it again. It was like my mind equated safe with never being found again and erased the memory of my “safe” hiding place.

A list is suppose to help us get tasks done that would otherwise be forgotten. In my friend’s case, her List is like the “safe” place. She knows there are these things that need to be addressed, but other activities keep getting in the way and taking up all her energy, so she’s unable to get to the tasks on her List. Eventually, she gets to most of them. But the energy drain she goes through with the knowledge that there are things she “should” get to but is unable to, for some very good reasons, could power a small town.

What about you? What is your to do list like? Do you use your List to get tasks done or do you use it to beat yourself up for all the things you’ve yet to get to?

Take a look at your List. Is it a helpful memory tool or has it become something larger and maybe even harmful?

Sometimes there are things on your List that don’t belong there. You may be taking on something that isn’t in your best interests and your inner self is letting you know this by avoiding taking the action.

If there are things that have been on your list for longer than a week and you haven’t gotten to them, reevaluate. You only have so much energy and anywhere it is being drained is not serving you.

If you are beating yourself up and draining your energy over “should have’s”, there is a very good possibility that you have an issue with completion. There it is… another “C” word and a subject for another posting.

Until then, grab your List by its corners and make it work for you, not on you.

You can… I believe in you.

- Gwen Baran

I was contact by an old friend recently.

She had confided in me a few years ago about serious apprehensions, regarding her fiance and marriage. I recall asking some pointed questions. Lke: “What are your reasons for considering marriage”? Based on the answers, I cautioned her not to jump into marriage. She was young and from the perspective of of someone 30 years her elder, many things would change in her life in the next two or three years. “Give yourself some time”, I said.

She didn’t listen.

Less than three years later she has a child and is living alone. When she contacted me she made a reference to our previous conversation: “You kind of predicted this, didn’t you?”…Sadly, I explained to her that you can often accurately predict the outcome of a situation based upon the reasoning given for the actions taken…

In other words, it was no surprise to me.

Your attitudes, opinions and beliefs create a kind of predictability to your decisions and actions. The situations you then find yourself in are the ramifications of those decisions and actions. It doesn’t require a psychic to accurately predict how something is probably going to turn out… Especially when those decisions are being made based upon the ever shifting, easily manipulated attitudes, opinions and beliefs which is the foundation of “immaturity”.

Sorry kid, your reasons for getting married had little to do with the profound commitment two people make to each other… As I recall, you didn’t understand that part of it.

Your reasoning was destined to quickly collapse with a little bit of life experience. You see, only now are you finally beginning to question yourself. What is becomming important to you now had very little to do with your decision 3 years ago. Back then you were honest with me but couldn’t bring yourself to speak with the same honesty to the man you decided to marry.

Which means you were not able to feel safe being honest with yourself.

You got caught up in the whirlwind of the adventure. (of getting married) Once the wind calmed down and the day to day stuff of life took over, you found yourself in a place you didn’t want to be. You were married but still felt alone. The connection you wanted to have with your man just wasn’t there… It never was there and you knew it before you got married…

There is a great life lesson here:

You must become honest with yourself and always acknowledge the truth you know and feel. The fear of losing something or someone has been the reason for more misery than any other factor of human existence. You have an opportunity to get in touch with your true self now. It won’t be a dramatic awakening… it will happen in steps. You need to guard and protect this new relationship, as you begin to make friends with this “person”. She has been waiting and is ready to be your best friend.

Look in the mirror and say “hello”!

-Bob Baran