Relish the moment

Tucked away in our subconscious is an idyllic vision. We see ourselves on a long trip that spans the continent. We are traveling by train. Out of the windows, we drink in the passing scene of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at a crossing, of cattle grazing on a distant hillside, of smoke pouring from a power plant, of row upon row of corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of mountains and rolling hillsides, of city skylines and village halls.

But uppermost in our minds is the final destination. On a certain day at a certain hour, we will pull into the station. Bands will be playing and flags waving. Once we get there, so many wonderful dreams will come true and the pieces of our lives will fit together like a completed jigsaw puzzle. How restlessly we pace the aisles, damning the minutes for loitering --waiting, waiting, waiting for the station.

"When we reach the station, that will be it!" we cry.

"When I'm 18."

"When I buy a new 450SL Mercedes Benz!"

"When I put the last kid through college."

"When I have paid off the mortgage!"

"When I get a promotion."

"When I reach the age of retirement, I shall live happily ever after!"

Sooner or later, we must realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The true joy of life is the trip. The station is only a dream. It constantly outdistances us.

"Relish the moment "is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118：24: "This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." It isn't the burdens of today that drive men mad. It is the regrets over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who rob us of today.

So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, climb more mountains, eat more ice cream, go barefoot more often, swim more rivers, watch more sunsets, laugh more, cry less. Life must be lived as we go along. The station will come soon enough.

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The Short and Simple Guide to Handling Criticism

"Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing"

Aristotle

 

Receiving criticism isn't always fun. However, there are ways to handle it in a less hurtful way and - sometimes - get something good out of it. 

 

Here are a few pointers I have found useful when dealing with criticism. 

 

Count to 10 before you speak.

 

If you react immediately to criticism then you'll often react in a knee-jerk manner. And the words that come out may be overemotional, vicious and unnecessary. Count to at least 10 after someone has criticised you. Then respond. This simple way of calming yourself down and regaining some perspective can save you a lot of trouble and help you avoid saying something you can't take back. It's a good approach to avoid creating unnecessary problems.

 

Handle it like Buddha. 

 

Maybe you've heard this one before. It's a great and practical way to look at criticism. It might be extra useful when dealing with angry, destructive criticism and nasty personal attacks.

 

"A man interrupted one of the Buddha's lectures with a flood of abuse. Buddha waited until he had finished and then asked him, "If a man offered a gift to another but the gift was declined, to whom would the gift belong?" 

"To the one who offered it," said the man. 

"Then," said the Buddha, "I decline to accept your abuse and request you to keep it for yourself."

 

Simply don't accept the gift of a criticism. You don't have to. Then it still belongs to the person who offered it. 

 

Take both praise and criticism evenly. 

 

My mindset for praise - that I try to stick to as much as I can - is that it's cool and I appreciate it. It's great to get praise, but I seldom get overly excited about it and jump up and down shouting enthusiastically.

 

A great upside of this mindset is that when you receive the opposite - negative criticism - you can often observe it calmly without too much wild, negative emotions blocking the way. And you can often appreciate that piece of criticism too (if there is something to learned from it). 

 

Basically this mindset is about not caring too much about what other people think. If you care too much about what other people think then you easily become pretty needy and let others control how you feel. Both how good and bad you feel. 

 

So you move from depending on external validation to depending more on internal validation. You validate yourself more and more and then you need less of outside validation. Don't take this too far though. Don't become that arrogant jerk who never listens to criticism no matter how valid it is.

 

If there is nothing to be learned from some piece of criticism you received or it's just nonsense ravings and insults then with this mindset you just go: "Ok". You don't care that much and you quickly forget about it. Instead of spending the rest of the day being angry, sad and riled up.

 

Shifting into this mindset isn't that easy. You can slip quite a bit. But if you learn more about your mind - especially about your ego as Eckhart Tolle describes it in books like the Power of Now  and A New Earth  - then this understanding gives you more control over your reactions and less knee-jerk responses.

 

Listen to the criticism and get the details. 

 

Instead of attacking the other person(s) for their words and building a hostile atmosphere try to calm it down. Try to remain level-headed, open and figure out how this can help you. Even when someone blurts out something not too constructive like "Your work/blog/product sucks!" you might want to ask a few open-ended questions like:

 

- Why does it suck?

- How can I improve it?

- How can we solve this?

 

If they can't answer your questions then they are probably just lashing out. But there is sometimes valuable information in negative criticism. Things no one else may tell you. Try to get practical and concrete details about what's wrong. Perhaps there is already a solution to the problem but you need more information to realise that. By improving the communication and making it more specific and detailed you can come closer to understanding each other and solving the problem. 

 

And if you can understand, help and change the mood of the one delivering the criticism he or she will probably appreciate it quite a bit. And you may have turned a potential conflict into a valuable relationship.

 

Be careful with using email.

 

Since words are only a small part of communication - the remaining and much larger part consists of voice tonality and body language - it may be wise to not reply to criticism via email if possible. It's probably better to get the person who sent such an email on the phone or go see him/her in person. This can help you to avoid creating a whole mess of misunderstandings. Avoiding email is also useful to keep in mind when you are about to criticise someone.

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A Good Lesson

A young man, a student in one of our universities, was one day taking a walk with a professor, who was commonly called the students' friend, for his kindness to those who waited on his instructions. As they went along, they saw lying in the path a pair of old shoes, which they supposed to belong to a poor man who was employed in a field close by, and who had nearly finished his day's work.

The student turned to the professor, saying: "Let us play the man a trick: we will hide his shoes, and conceal ourselves behind those bushes, and wait to see his perplexity when he cannot find them."

"My young friend," answered the professor, "we should never amuse ourselves at the expense of the poor. But you are rich, and may give yourself a much greater pleasure by means of the poor man. Put a coin into each shoe, and then we will hide ourselves and watch how the discovery affects him."

The student did so, and they both placed themselves behind the bushes close by. The poor man soon finished his work, and came across the field to the path where he had left his coat and shoes. While putting on his coat he slipped his foot into one of his shoes; but feeling something hard, he stooped down to feel what it was, and found the coin. Astonishment and wonder were seen upon his countenance. He gazed upon the coin, turned it round, and looked at it again and again. He then looked around him on all sides, but no person was to be seen. He now put the money into his pocket, and proceeded to put on the other shoe; but his surprise was doubled on finding the other coin. His feelings overcame him; he fell upon his knees, looked up to heaven and uttered aloud a fervent thanksgiving, in which he spoke of his wife, sick and helpless, and his children without bread, whom the timely bounty, from some unknown hand, would save from perishing.

The student stood there deeply affected, and his eyes filled with tears. "Now," said the professor, "are you not much better pleased than if you had played your intended trick?"

The youth replied, "You have taught me a lesson which I will never forget. I feel now the truth of those words, which I never understood before: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive".

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Mark Twain's Top 9 Tips for Living a Kick-Ass Life

"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense."

 

"Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."

 

"When your friends begin to flatter you on how young you look, it's a sure sign you're getting old."

 

You may know Mark Twain for some of his very popular books like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He was a writer and also a humorist, satirist and lecturer.

 

Twain is known for his many - and often funny - quotes. Here are a few of my favorite tips from him.

 

1. Approve of yourself.

 

"A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval."

 

If you don't approve of yourself, of your behavior and actions then you'll probably walk around most of the day with a sort of uncomfortable feeling. If you, on the other hand, approve of yourself then you tend to become relaxed and gain inner freedom to do more of what you really want.

 

This can, in a related way, be a big obstacle in personal growth. You may have all the right tools to grow in some way but you feel an inner resistance. You can't get there.

 

What you may be bumping into there are success barriers. You are putting up barriers in your own mind of what you may or may not deserve. Or barriers that tell you what you are capable of. They might tell you that you aren't really that kind of person that could this thing that you're attempting.

 

Or if you make some headway in the direction you want to go you may start to sabotage for yourself. To keep yourself in a place that is familiar for you.

 

So you need give yourself approval and allow yourself to be who you want to be. Not look for the approval from others. But from yourself. To dissolve that inner barrier or let go of that self-sabotaging tendency. This is no easy task and it can take time.

 

2. Your limitations may just be in your mind.

 

"Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

 

So many limitations are mostly in our minds. We may for instance think that people will disapprove because we are too tall, too old or balding. But these things mostly matter when you think they matter. Because you become self-conscious and worried about what people may think.

 

And people pick up on that and may react in negative ways. Or you may interpret anything they do as a negative reaction because you are so fearful of a bad reaction and so focused inward on yourself.

 

If you, on the other hand, don't mind then people tend to not mind that much either. And if you don't mind then you won't let that part of yourself become a self-imposed roadblock in your life.

 

It is, for instance, seldom too late to do what you want to do.

 

3. Lighten up and have some fun.

 

"Humor is mankind's greatest blessing."

 

"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

 

Humor and laughter are amazing tools. They can turn any serious situation into something to laugh about. They can lighten the mood just about anywhere.

 

And a lighter mood is often a better space to work in because now your body and mind isn't filled to the brim with negative emotions. When you are more light-hearted and relaxed then the solution to a situation is often easier to both come up with and implement. Have a look at Lighten Up! for more on this topic.

 

4. Let go of anger.

 

"Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured."

 

Anger is most of the time pretty pointless. It can cause situations to get out of hand. And from a selfish perspective it often more hurtful for the one being angry then the person s/he's angry at.

 

So even if you feel angry at someone for days recognize that you are mostly just hurting yourself. The other person may not even be aware that you are angry at him or her. So either talking to the person and resolving the conflict or letting go of anger as quickly as possible are pretty good tips to make your life more pleasurable.

 

5. Release yourself from entitlement.

 

"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first."

 

When you are young your mom and dad may give a lot of things. As you grow older you may have a sort of entitlement. You may feel like the world should just give you what you want or that it owes you something.

 

This belief can cause a lot of anger and frustration in your life. Because the world may not give you what expect it to. On the other hand, this can be liberating too. You realize that it is up to you to shape your own life and for you to work towards what you want. You are not a kid anymore, waiting for your parents or the world to give you something.

 

You are in the driver's seat now. And you can go pretty much wherever you want.

 

6. If you're taking a different path, prepare for reactions.

 

"A person with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds."

 

I think this has quite a bit of relevance to self-improvement.

 

If you start to change or do something different than you usually do then people may react in different ways. Some may be happy for you. Some may be indifferent. Some may be puzzled or react in negative and discouraging ways.

 

Much of these reactions are probably not so much about you but about the person who said it and his/her life. How they feel about themselves is coming through in the words they use and judgments they make.

 

And that's OK. I think it's pretty likely that they won't react as negatively as you may imagine. Or they will probably at least go back to focusing on their own challenges pretty soon.

 

So what other people may say and think and letting that hold you back is probably just fantasy and barrier you build in your mind.

 

You may find that when you finally cross that inner threshold you created then people around you may not shun you or go chasing after you with pitchforks.  They might just go: "OK".

 

7. Keep your focus steadily on what you want.

 

"Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it."

 

What you focus your mind on greatly determines how things play out. You can focus on your problems and dwell in suffering and a victim mentality. Or you can focus on the positive in situation, what you can learn from that situation or just focus your mind on something entirely else.

 

It may be "normal" to dwell on problems and swim around in a sea of negativity. But that is a choice. And a thought habit. You may reflexively start to dwell on problems instead of refocusing your mind on something more useful. But you can also start to build a habit of learning to gain more and more control of where you put your focus.

 

8. Don't focus so much on making yourself feel good.

 

"The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up."

 

This may be a bit of a counter-intuitive tip. But as I wrote yesterday, one of the best ways to feel good about yourself is to make someone else feel good or to help them in some way.

 

This is a great way to look at things to create an upward spiral of positivity and exchange of value between people. You help someone and both of you feel good. The person you helped feels inclined to give you a hand later on since people tend to want to reciprocate. And so the both of you are feeling good and helping each other.

 

Those positive feelings are contagious to other people and so you may end up making them feel good too. And the help you received from your friend may inspire you to go and help another friend. And so the upward spiral grows and continues.

 

9. Do what you want to do.

 

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

 

Awesome quote. And I really don't have much to add to that one. Well, maybe to write it down and keep it as a daily reminder - on your fridge or bathroom door - of what you can actually do with your life.

 

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