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If you’ve got a nasty viral infection clogging up the plumbing in your head, making you cough, and leading to a sore throat, chances are you’ll head to the doctor if it doesn’t let up after a few days.  When you see the doctor, chances are she’ll prescribe a decongestant, an anti-histamine, and an antibiotic.  That last one is to make everyone feel like the big guns are being pulled out, but that’s beside the point.  Actually, it’s not, because what the doctor is doing is prescribing stuff to help alleviate the symptoms of the viral infection, not the infection itself.  We all know that viruses need to run their course and there’s really not much to be done for them.  It’s all about the symptoms.  The cause of your malaise will go untreated.  Nature has to take it’s course.

 

The same applies to this idea that we have to focus our time more on that fourth Covey quadrant (exercise, vocation, planning, etc.) with the more strategic, forward-facing stuff in our lives.  Don’t get me wrong.  We have to be aware of the problem and of the possible solutions.  We have to bring presence to our daily working lives if we want to have a hope of unleashing our full potential here at work.  What’s often missing in our thought process, though, is that extra step to treat the illness and not just the symptom.  Lots of meetings (bad meetings at that), lots of e-mail, and lots of busy work are all symptoms of something else.  They are simply behaviors.  Behind the symptoms there are illnesses, just as behind the behaviors there are beliefs. 

 

The cause of every behavior is a belief or series of beliefs that life circumstances have positively reinforced over and over again.  Everything we do is a direct result of past experience.  Dr. Phil used to say that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.  I know that it sounds pessimistic, but he always gets to the next step.  The next step is to address the root of the behavior and not the behavior itself.  It’s like the Resolutionaries who invade the gym at the beginning of each new year.  Armed with New Year’s Resolutions and the best of intentions, the Resolutionaries flock to their local gyms and take over.  Gym regulars impatiently wait in lines that didn’t exist a week earlier.  They put up with longer lines, shorter workouts, and crowded locker rooms.  Some of the regulars take a vacation for the month of January.  They know that by February, most of the Resolutionaries will have lost their resolve and will be back into the rut of old behaviors.  It’s somewhat comical, but it is also a great example of the process at work: a New Year’s Resolution often targets behaviors and not the beliefs driving the behaviors.  In the end, that’s why they are doomed.

 

Likewise, if we say that we have to make time on our calendars to focus more on that fourth quadrant, then we’re ultimately doomed to fail.  We have to take a look at the activities that consume our time today and ask ourselves the all-important “why” question.  Why do we spend our time on time-wasting activities?  Why is our attention drawn to other quadrants?  Why so many organization, so many systems of positive reinforcement and punishment, encourage us to engage in activities we would otherwise deem as not worthy of time and attention?  The answer to those “why” questions will point us in the direction of beliefs both organizational and personal.  Seeking to change the behaviors will get us only so far.  Seeking to influence beliefs will help get us started down the path we want to take.

 

First of all, I don’t think this whole thing that happens at 40 is really a crisis. The crisis would be roaring through 40 without a care in the world. I think a little reflection is good for a person.

What really happens is that we get caught thinking a little too much about what we’ve done or even failed to do. It’s like negative accounting of a collection of dusty memories. Reflection is good. Staring in the rear view mirror is what’s dangerous.

I think a far more productive use of time entails taking stock of what you have today and daring to dream about the wondrous things you can do with them tomorrow.

Some Saturday nights are best spent on the couch with a glass (bottle) of wine, some paint samples, a parenting magazine, a movie queued up, and someone with whom to share it all…

I’ll start by saying that the current drama in my life can be categorized as what I’ve heard refered to recently as “First World Problems”.  These are the middle-class problems of America.  For example, “My DVR didn’t record ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ in HD last night!!!”  First World.  “Oh, that’s not really hard wood.  It’s just high-quality laminate.”  First World.  “You can buy 3 Kindle Fires for the price of 1 iPad!”  First World.  “I have nothing to eat, no way to get food, and my village is surrounded by hungry lions.”  Not First World.  There is certainly a difference between some types of problems in life and others.

However, like I’ve often told my wife when she feels guilty about letting her First World problems get to her, your problems are just that: your problems.  As such, they weigh heavily on you.  Don’t feel guilty if they get to you.  Our perception of reality is relative.  We frame the world in terms of our own egos.  It’s one of the weaknesses of the human spirit, I suppose.  We should be stronger, but we’re not.  Too bad.  Life would be so much more enjoyable if we were!

All that leads me to the conclusion that there MUST be something to learn from all this…shit…that we are going through trying to close on this damn house we’re trying to buy.  I won’t publicly bad-mouth another person, and I am sure he has his reasons for why he is making this such a drawn-out, painful process.  What I will do is focus on the fact that I am supposed to learn something from this experience.  There’s a lesson, no doubt.  I just need to tease it out.

That’s life, right?  It’s all about the things that happen, the things you do, and the way you conduct yourself in the face of the consequences, good or bad.  Being gracious, courteous, and open-hearted regardless of what’s going on in my life is really the easiest way for me to gauge if I’m focused on the things that matter.

It’s hard to keep in mind that the “I” that I think of as being me is really the me that I see when I look in the mirror and the me that sizes up the other me in the mirror. So, “I” is really “me” twice over.

I am this pulpy mass of flesh, bones, and the squishy stuff in between. That “me” is the physical vehicle that moves about the world. It is how the physical stimulus of the world is sensed, absorbed.

I am the consciousness, the energy that is connected to the Universe. That “me” is something beyond the physical yet tied to it. It is the true me, something more than my Earthly mind is able to comprehend.

My sense of self is the union of the two “me’s” with which we all grapple. I have been reminded lately that perceiving consciousness beyond the physical senses is a challenge. It takes work and requires presence. It demands energy, and that is something that is often in short supply.

In order to be our most authentic and complete selves, we have to train ourselves to experience our Universe with a wholeness we are not always used to leveraging. If we can learn to do it with more frequency, then we can truly improve the quality of our lives.

Half of 70 is 35.

Life expectancy in the United States for a healthy male is…70-something.

No matter how late into your 30’s you are, you can fudge it and claim that twice your age is within the range of the aforementioned male life expectancy.

When you reach 40, that logic no longer flies. Twice 40 is 80. The reality is that 80 is beyond the average, thus, life is officially more than halfway over.

Did you get that? When you reach 40, you’re suddenly looking down the other side of the hill. Statistically speaking, there is more path behind you than in front of you.

Seeing that you reach mid-life at 40 is generous. You might already be past it.

Door open, ground work laid for proverbial Crisis!

Personally, I’ve got my sights set on 120. I still have a way to go
before I’ve got anything to lament.

Every 40-year-old man deserves a Thundercats shirt.

Pictures versus words…but pictures with words are often the best…

I started blogging in December of 2008.  One of my dad’s friends asked me, “Why?  Why do you write for anybody to see?”  It was a legitimate question.  I didn’t have a great answer.  I think my answer was something along the lines of, “Why not?  A lot of people do it.  It’s a way of spreading ideas.”  I had read Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” earlier that year and also hunted down and read a copy of his earlier work, “The Idea Virus”.  I’d gotten the message that I had something worth saying and just needed a forum to say it.  I also recognized that I needed to exercise my writing muscles and work towards those 10,000 hours.  So, I started to blogging.

 

I think my parents read my stuff regularly.  I have a friend from high school who comments from time to time.  I know she reads.  Apart from that, there’s not a lot of evidence that I get a lot of traffic.  A few people have made their way to my blog using key word searches.  I wrote about paella once, and I got some hits for that one.  I think people came looking for a recipe.  Another time, I saw a spike in traffic because I used the word “nipple” in a story about my kids.  That got some attention, but I am sure there was a good deal of disappointment when they realize where they’d been led.  But I keep writing, anyway.

 

Why?  Why bother continuing to write?  Well, I still have something to say.  The internet still provides the forum in which to say it.  I still need the exercise.  I still want the 10,000 hours.  However, I have found over time that I write fewer and fewer posts each year, not more and more.  To be fair, I write in other forums, too, but even that hasn’t really fulfilled my…desire.  Yes, I have a desire to write, to get better at writing, to use writing as my vehicle for communication.  I just lost my focus, my sense of purpose.  I meandered too far.  I covered too many topics.  I mixed this with that and threw in a bit of that other thing for good measure.  In the process, I lost the desire to write because writing became more chore than pleasure.  Let’s face it: pleasure is good.  I like pleasure.  I want pleasure.  Call me crazy.

 

In February 2012, I will turn 40.  You only turn 40 once, right?  You only wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say to yourself, “Self, I am 40,” once, right?  Well, technically speaking, no.  You actually wake up 40 365 times, every day for an entire year.  And this year’s a Leap Year, so I actually will wake up 366 times as a 40-year-old man.  Therein lies my new purpose.

 

For the next 366 days, I will provide you with unprecedented access to the mind of a 40-year-old man living in the United States of America.  I’m talking about unrestricted access into the inner workings of a middle-class, American male.  It’s all yours for absolutely free.  Am I promising 366 meaningful posts?  No.  That doesn’t appeal to me.  Remember: pleasure.  Pleasure and purpose.  That’s what’s driving the change in focus.  Instead, I will provide you with approximately 5 posts a week for 52 weeks.  OK, maybe 50.  I figure somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 or so posts.  Some will be meaningful, and some will be meaningless.  Some will be expositions of the literary kind seldom seen these days.  Others will surely seem like dribble.  This, though, is the beauty of the American male in the year 2012: you get what you get and you’ll like what you get.  My blog, my rules.

 

So, dear reader (aka Mom and Dad), join me as we explore what it means to be…Man at 40.

 

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