No matter what is your actual station in life, it is easy to feel poor these days. Your house is worth a lot less than it was a couple of years ago, but your mortgage is still the same. If you've managed to keep your job, you probably won't be seeing much in the way of a raise or bonus anytime soon. And don't look to your 401k or investment account statement for solace: that's like staring over the edge of a cliff. (Oh look, way down there--there's my balance!) And even if things are going pretty well for you financially, the reality of the culture right now is that you'd better act like times are tough--so don't be too flashy with new clothes, restaurant meals, or God forbid a new car. Conspicuous consumption has been replaced by conspicuous thrift.
But, if anything, the recession has thrown into even greater focus the absurdity of seeking happiness in money and the stuff it can buy. When you levered up and bought the big house three years ago, I'll bet you thought it would make you happy forever. Did it? Be honest with yourself: even before the markets melted down, and the pressure of the mortgage started to hurt, hadn't the happiness already faded a little bit? Did you settle into the house, then your mind moved on to the next thing that you thought would secure your happiness? (e.g., "I would love a big screen TV over the fireplace. Then we could really use this room.")
Stuff is beside the point, and so is happiness, to be honest. Happiness is a byproduct of a life well-lived, not our life's goal. If we now, in difficult times, get stuck in the past (we used to live so well!) or stuck in the future (once the economy turns, then I'll be happy), we are going to repeat our mistakes and once again miss much of what is good in life today. Yes, even in austere times, there is much to find that is good.
How to find it? The Present Tense way: focus on REM--Relationships, Experiences, and Memories. Become rich in these three, and life will be good. Yes, losing a job or facing reduced hours will be hard to cope with, but spend some of your freed-up time with your partner or children or friends, and make those relationships richer. No, you can't afford the 4-star restaurant outings anymore, but get the family together in the kitchen and build a wealth of experiences cooking, eating, and cleaning up together. You will be rich in memories regardless of the balance in your bank account--and, I daresay, you will be much happier than the richest person in your neighborhood.
There will always be limits to the money we have--and right now, those limits feel uncomfortably tight. The one thing you have without any limits is love--so spend your love on those around you, and bank the memories to serve you for the rest of your life.
This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Being Deliberate, Pt. 2
Last post was about being deliberate about what you do, and I presented the "bottom-up" method for being deliberate. Now, I'll present the top-down method, which leads you to the same place: a life spent undertaking the activities that YOU choose, rather than letting yourself get pulled along by the crowd.
The difference in the top-down method is that you start with a blank sheet of paper rather than a list of all your activities. Use the blank sheet of paper as a metaphor for your life: suppose you could clear you schedule of all appointments; relieve yourself of all current obligations; and start fresh deciding what you wanted to do. Your life is now that blank piece of paper.
So, begin filling it. What do you want to do? What do you need to do? (Sorry, no clean sheet of paper can make you independently wealthy so you don't have to work.) For things you need to do, how do you wish you could accomplish them? If you could spend your days any way you wanted, how would you do it?
This may be harder than the bottom-up method. Try not to fall into the trap of listing things you think you should do--we are doing blue-sky, what-if thinking here. You may find that, relieved of the burden of your current obligations and responsibility, you have no idea what you would do with your time. This is not uncommon, and it is strong evidence that you really, really need to give yourself a break, or you are in danger of being defined solely by others.
Your list may have major projects (e.g., "learn to sail") or it may have more mundane items (e.g., eat a sit-down meal with the family at least 4 nights a week), or both. It will still have your responsibilities--family, work, spouse/partner, etc.--but should include your ideal of how those responsibilities should work. The idea is to imagine your ideal life, your ideal way of spending your time. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to be known for? With whom do you want to spend time?
Once you have a list, the rest is simple to understand yet difficult to undertake: compare your ideal life with your actual life, and think of one action you can do today to start moving toward your ideal life. Then do that action. Tomorrow think of another, and do it. And the next day. And the next. One step at a time, your real will start to become your ideal.
None of us is ever likely to fulfill 100% our ideal life. But nor will we ever even approach it if all we ever do is dream about it. Dreams without action will always only ever be dreams. With action, they could come true.
Be deliberate about what you want to do, and be a person of action in getting those things done. Therein lies contentment and a life well lived.
The difference in the top-down method is that you start with a blank sheet of paper rather than a list of all your activities. Use the blank sheet of paper as a metaphor for your life: suppose you could clear you schedule of all appointments; relieve yourself of all current obligations; and start fresh deciding what you wanted to do. Your life is now that blank piece of paper.
So, begin filling it. What do you want to do? What do you need to do? (Sorry, no clean sheet of paper can make you independently wealthy so you don't have to work.) For things you need to do, how do you wish you could accomplish them? If you could spend your days any way you wanted, how would you do it?
This may be harder than the bottom-up method. Try not to fall into the trap of listing things you think you should do--we are doing blue-sky, what-if thinking here. You may find that, relieved of the burden of your current obligations and responsibility, you have no idea what you would do with your time. This is not uncommon, and it is strong evidence that you really, really need to give yourself a break, or you are in danger of being defined solely by others.
Your list may have major projects (e.g., "learn to sail") or it may have more mundane items (e.g., eat a sit-down meal with the family at least 4 nights a week), or both. It will still have your responsibilities--family, work, spouse/partner, etc.--but should include your ideal of how those responsibilities should work. The idea is to imagine your ideal life, your ideal way of spending your time. What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to be known for? With whom do you want to spend time?
Once you have a list, the rest is simple to understand yet difficult to undertake: compare your ideal life with your actual life, and think of one action you can do today to start moving toward your ideal life. Then do that action. Tomorrow think of another, and do it. And the next day. And the next. One step at a time, your real will start to become your ideal.
None of us is ever likely to fulfill 100% our ideal life. But nor will we ever even approach it if all we ever do is dream about it. Dreams without action will always only ever be dreams. With action, they could come true.
Be deliberate about what you want to do, and be a person of action in getting those things done. Therein lies contentment and a life well lived.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Being Deliberate, Pt. 1
One of the fundamentals of Present Tense Living is being deliberate about what you do. Being deliberate means that, to the greatest extent possible, you decide on what and with whom you are going to spend your limited time and attention. You do not let the culture or your peers decide; you decide.
Now it is unavoidable that some of our time has to be spent on activities that we may not choose to do. Most of us have to work for a living, and perhaps we work at something we wouldn't choose to do if we weren't paid to do it. Or, even if you find meaning in your work, all jobs involve some activities that are mundane or downright boring. (I call this administrivia.) This is true not just at work: if you are a parent, there are certain activities (like sitting through sports practices) that no sane person would choose to spend so much time on but which are part of the deal of having kids.
But sometimes we get swept up in what is popular and find that most of our time is spent doing stuff that "everybody" does but that isn't really meaningful to us. Not that these activities aren't fun, but they add up to more than our available time, so we find ourselves being "so busy" yet not accomplishing anything meaningful. Have you ever heard anyone say (or said yourself) "I'm on the go all the time but I never seem to get anything done."? Much of the rat race consists of doing/buying/giving attention to things merely because everyone else in our social or professional circle is doing them. This habit of keeping up with the Joneses with our time is easy to understand--we don't want to seem "different"--and difficult to break.
There are two ways to start being deliberate about your life: bottoms-up or top-down. The bottoms-up way begins with writing down every single thing you do. You could get really detailed and keep a time journal for a week or two, accounting for every hour of your day. But at a minimum, sit down and list on a sheet of paper each activity you do, both at home and outside the home, both for yourself and for others. Be as thorough as you can.
Once your list is complete, check off the things that you must do--work, commute, pick up the kids at school, make dinner for the family, etc. There are probably ways to minimize the time spent on these things, but for now we'll leave them alone and just accept that we have to do them.
Next, look at the unchecked items on your list. Before you do anything else, add to the list things that are missing: the activities you wish you had time for, but somehow never do. Now, thinking carefully about your goals, dreams, talents, and desires, rank the things on your list in order of importance to you. What do you want to spend your time on? To what do you want to direct your attention? Rank them in order of importance/interest to you. You may even want to cross some completely off the list; things you no longer want to do.
You can probably see where this is going. Once you have that list in order of priority, it is just a matter of being deliberate about making time for your important activities. You allot time first to the things you have to do, then make sure your high-priority items get some time in your day or week. After that, if you have time left, you can work in the lower-priority items, or just drop them all together.
In the next post we'll look at the top-down method for accomplishing the same thing. But the point of both methods is the same: to ensure that we are not spending our time on activities that we really don't care about, that are just a form of competition and keeping up that are every bit as prideful as spending our money on things we don't care about just to maintain appearances. In both cases, we are ceding control of our lives--whether money or time--to the culture around us. That's no way to live!
Now it is unavoidable that some of our time has to be spent on activities that we may not choose to do. Most of us have to work for a living, and perhaps we work at something we wouldn't choose to do if we weren't paid to do it. Or, even if you find meaning in your work, all jobs involve some activities that are mundane or downright boring. (I call this administrivia.) This is true not just at work: if you are a parent, there are certain activities (like sitting through sports practices) that no sane person would choose to spend so much time on but which are part of the deal of having kids.
But sometimes we get swept up in what is popular and find that most of our time is spent doing stuff that "everybody" does but that isn't really meaningful to us. Not that these activities aren't fun, but they add up to more than our available time, so we find ourselves being "so busy" yet not accomplishing anything meaningful. Have you ever heard anyone say (or said yourself) "I'm on the go all the time but I never seem to get anything done."? Much of the rat race consists of doing/buying/giving attention to things merely because everyone else in our social or professional circle is doing them. This habit of keeping up with the Joneses with our time is easy to understand--we don't want to seem "different"--and difficult to break.
There are two ways to start being deliberate about your life: bottoms-up or top-down. The bottoms-up way begins with writing down every single thing you do. You could get really detailed and keep a time journal for a week or two, accounting for every hour of your day. But at a minimum, sit down and list on a sheet of paper each activity you do, both at home and outside the home, both for yourself and for others. Be as thorough as you can.
Once your list is complete, check off the things that you must do--work, commute, pick up the kids at school, make dinner for the family, etc. There are probably ways to minimize the time spent on these things, but for now we'll leave them alone and just accept that we have to do them.
Next, look at the unchecked items on your list. Before you do anything else, add to the list things that are missing: the activities you wish you had time for, but somehow never do. Now, thinking carefully about your goals, dreams, talents, and desires, rank the things on your list in order of importance to you. What do you want to spend your time on? To what do you want to direct your attention? Rank them in order of importance/interest to you. You may even want to cross some completely off the list; things you no longer want to do.
You can probably see where this is going. Once you have that list in order of priority, it is just a matter of being deliberate about making time for your important activities. You allot time first to the things you have to do, then make sure your high-priority items get some time in your day or week. After that, if you have time left, you can work in the lower-priority items, or just drop them all together.
In the next post we'll look at the top-down method for accomplishing the same thing. But the point of both methods is the same: to ensure that we are not spending our time on activities that we really don't care about, that are just a form of competition and keeping up that are every bit as prideful as spending our money on things we don't care about just to maintain appearances. In both cases, we are ceding control of our lives--whether money or time--to the culture around us. That's no way to live!
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Today vs. Someday
I spent last weekend with my extended family, mourning the loss of my uncle, Tom Corts, and celebrating his life in a nice family funeral service as well as a bigger memorial service at Samford University. There is nothing like a funeral of someone who died too young to remind one that tomorrow is not promised, so make the most of today.
One of the neat stories that came out of the weekend was that on New Year's Day, members of the family sat around a table discussing their "bucket lists" (i.e., lists of things they wanted to do before they die). When Tom's turn came he stated that if he died tomorrow, there is nothing he wanted to do that he had not done. A life lived with no regrets!
Do you have regrets? Have you thought about what regrets you or your family would have if you suddenly died? Think about the various ways we live our lives in the future. Do you ever find yourself making comments like these?
We can't do everything we want here and now--that would be irresponsible (unless, of course, you really do want to work a lot). But we don't have to put everything off until tomorrow, or next year, or someday, either. It is a balance that requires us to examine our lives regularly to ensure we are keeping all facets--work, play, family, community, and self--in perspective. Then, make the most of every day.
One of the neat stories that came out of the weekend was that on New Year's Day, members of the family sat around a table discussing their "bucket lists" (i.e., lists of things they wanted to do before they die). When Tom's turn came he stated that if he died tomorrow, there is nothing he wanted to do that he had not done. A life lived with no regrets!
Do you have regrets? Have you thought about what regrets you or your family would have if you suddenly died? Think about the various ways we live our lives in the future. Do you ever find yourself making comments like these?
- "Once the kids are grown up, then we'll be able to decorate the house."
- "When the economy recovers, then I'll change careers."
- "Once the baby grows out of diapers, then we'll start traveling."
- "When I finally make partner, I'll be able to come home for dinner every night."
We can't do everything we want here and now--that would be irresponsible (unless, of course, you really do want to work a lot). But we don't have to put everything off until tomorrow, or next year, or someday, either. It is a balance that requires us to examine our lives regularly to ensure we are keeping all facets--work, play, family, community, and self--in perspective. Then, make the most of every day.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
The Unexpected
On a flight to Minneapolis this morning I passed the time reading Seneca, including this observation:
"Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.....If God adds the morrow we should accept it joyfully. The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others."
That nicely summarizes a principle of Present Tense Living: enjoy today, for today is all you have. We sometimes worry so much about tomorrow and the next day and the next that we fail to appreciate what is good about today: the bright sunshine, the joy of our family, the fun of our friends. Learn to appreciate what is good about today and you will go a long way toward conquering the power of worry over your life, which will lead to contentment.
Elsewhere Seneca writes to "practice" your death--in other words, to finish every day saying "I have lived" (quoting Virgil) and being satisfied with your life, as if when you fall asleep you will never wake up. It sounds morbid at first, but with such practice you truly will learn to view each day as a gift. You don't have to think you are going to die every night; but as your head hits the pillow, why not utter the simple prayer: "Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of today."
"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!" Practice "dying" and you will live more abundantly each day.
With those thoughts in mind this morning, I deplaned in Minneapolis to find an urgent message waiting for me from my dad with unexpectedly stunning news: my uncle, Thomas Edward Corts, aged 67, a mentor to me during my years at Samford and one of the most generous people I have ever known, died suddenly of a heart attack this morning. And so it hit me: you can "prepare" for your own death, but there is almost no preparation you can do for the sudden loss of a loved one. It is going to hurt, and your reactions are unpredictable until it happens.
Tom and Marla were surrogate parents to me during my college years, formative years during which their strong presence was an unqualified blessing. During my years as a young banker in Birmingham, making only $22,000 a year, Tom paid for countless dinners out for me, and even more valuable were the hours of conversation that I enjoyed with him and Marla, discussing Samford, family, Birmingham life, and the people in our lives. I was inspired by his work ethic, high personal standards, integrity, and eloquence in written and spoken word. I have especially thought often of his generosity to me, and have looked for opportunities to pay it back by passing it on to others in need. I will miss his wise counsel and good example.
So enjoy your own today, but be sure to enjoy the days you have with your friends and loved ones too. Every day is precious for every person; resolve today to reach out to a friend you haven't spoken to in a while; a family member you've not seen; an acquaintence you need to know better. Each day is a gift for you, and an opportunity for you to give of yourself to someone else. Seize that opportunity!
"Every day, therefore, should be regulated as if it were the one that brings up the rear, the one that rounds out and completes our lives.....If God adds the morrow we should accept it joyfully. The man who looks for the morrow without worrying over it knows a peaceful independence and a happiness beyond all others."
That nicely summarizes a principle of Present Tense Living: enjoy today, for today is all you have. We sometimes worry so much about tomorrow and the next day and the next that we fail to appreciate what is good about today: the bright sunshine, the joy of our family, the fun of our friends. Learn to appreciate what is good about today and you will go a long way toward conquering the power of worry over your life, which will lead to contentment.
Elsewhere Seneca writes to "practice" your death--in other words, to finish every day saying "I have lived" (quoting Virgil) and being satisfied with your life, as if when you fall asleep you will never wake up. It sounds morbid at first, but with such practice you truly will learn to view each day as a gift. You don't have to think you are going to die every night; but as your head hits the pillow, why not utter the simple prayer: "Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of today."
"This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!" Practice "dying" and you will live more abundantly each day.
With those thoughts in mind this morning, I deplaned in Minneapolis to find an urgent message waiting for me from my dad with unexpectedly stunning news: my uncle, Thomas Edward Corts, aged 67, a mentor to me during my years at Samford and one of the most generous people I have ever known, died suddenly of a heart attack this morning. And so it hit me: you can "prepare" for your own death, but there is almost no preparation you can do for the sudden loss of a loved one. It is going to hurt, and your reactions are unpredictable until it happens.
Tom and Marla were surrogate parents to me during my college years, formative years during which their strong presence was an unqualified blessing. During my years as a young banker in Birmingham, making only $22,000 a year, Tom paid for countless dinners out for me, and even more valuable were the hours of conversation that I enjoyed with him and Marla, discussing Samford, family, Birmingham life, and the people in our lives. I was inspired by his work ethic, high personal standards, integrity, and eloquence in written and spoken word. I have especially thought often of his generosity to me, and have looked for opportunities to pay it back by passing it on to others in need. I will miss his wise counsel and good example.
So enjoy your own today, but be sure to enjoy the days you have with your friends and loved ones too. Every day is precious for every person; resolve today to reach out to a friend you haven't spoken to in a while; a family member you've not seen; an acquaintence you need to know better. Each day is a gift for you, and an opportunity for you to give of yourself to someone else. Seize that opportunity!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)