Eyes Wide Open

If it feels like the world isn’t as bright, it may not just be the gloomy weather. The world lost some light last night as my best friend Freddie passed away. Yeah, this post is about me a little bit and me thinking about my good friend. Believe me, it’s a wonderful thing that he has gone home. His cancer was really digging in, he said all of his goodbyes, and no one wanted to see him suffer. Death is simply a part of life. In reality, Fred’s light is not gone – I hold it inside me as will others whose life he touched. I feel the loss that I’m feeling because when we lose someone that we have loved, we ponder. When we go to visitations and funerals and gatherings to say goodbye, we ride the time machine a little bit and revisit those times that we remember with such fond memories.

Fred and I began working together up in Bemidji almost 31 years ago and we clicked almost immediately. Sometimes that how it happens – you just connect. He had kids in school. I was single and had hair (well, a lot more than I have now and it was all brown). Freddie headed to live near the big city a couple of years before I did and when I was down looking for work, I crashed at his place a few time. We both ran into hard times more than once and we always knew about each other’s troubles because we were always there helping each other though when we needed it. When Fred’s wife left, he raised his three kids, and he loved raising his kids. As his kids had kids he loved being Grampa. As his oldest grandson, Ryan, is getting ready to graduate high school this year, Fred’s youngest son, Derrick, had his first child and gave Fred his newest grandson. Fred was so tickled to meet Connor Fredrick (yep, got his Grandpa’s name) and spend some time with the little guy over the last several months.

Fred was the type of guy that got people at work to pool some money together and buy Christmas gifts for needy families, even when he had less than everyone else to give. He loved to give bigger than necessary tips to people that not only gave good service but seemed to be someone that he really thought needed a break. Freddie always liked wayside chapels. Even though they seemed to have fallen out of favor because of all the vandalism that happens to them, he had a passion to get one built. He approached the leadership of the church where he grew up with the idea. Most thought it was a dumb idea and since he hadn’t been a member of the parish for years, who did he think he was pushing ideas like that anyway? Well, that didn’t stop him. The priest liked the idea and he and Fred were in cahoots pushing the idea and getting everyone else in church to think it was their idea. He had to be rather coy in checking on the project but when he found things were getting gummed up somewhere, he would put his nose into it and get things going again. When it was nearing completion, Fred came over to my house for a woodworking party. I’m the woodworker, not Freddie but he had a plan to add his fingerprints to the effort. He had ordered ceramic stations-of-the-cross and brought them along. He and I built mounting brackets for all the stations in my backyard. Using jigs and clamps and power tools, I made it as easy as I possibly could and he and I got our assembly line going. He was so excited. A few weeks later, just before the grand opening of the chapel, we went there with our power tools and mounted the stations around the inside walls of the little church. Behind each one, Freddie put pictures of people and moments that were special to him as we mounted them to the wall. I think it might be behind station #7 where there is a picture of me and Fred building holders for the stations in my backyard. When I last spent a few hours with Fred, we were talking and reminiscing about that day and his great chapel that so few people knew was his idea. If you are ever near the Catholic Cemetery in the town of Foley, Minnesota, drop by and see Fred’s chapel and our handiwork. Fred will be buried as close as he could get to his little church. He will be buried next to his wife Linda that just passed a few months before he did. They will be so glad to be out walking together again.

I will miss my friend so much but he’s not gone from my heart. We did have our time to say goodbye and that is a luxury we don’t always have. This gives me one more reminder that those we love need to hear from us on a regular basis that we love them. Thanks for letting me share some thoughts about my friend. Remember, if we choose to find it, all those that have loved us have left a beautiful light inside for us to help us find our way.

I was thinking of this awhile ago but I didn’t get it up on the blog – sorry about that but, as we all know, there’s no time like the present. The initial thought of a do-over for me came from watching that motivational and inspirational movie ‘City Slickers’. Well, I don’t know if it was inspirational and motivational for you but I did think it was a pretty entertaining movie and what I learned later (we often don’t know what we learn until later) is that the idea that really stuck with me was the ‘do-over’. I’ve not watched it for some time so I don’t remember all the details but I do know that one of the characters (played by Daniel Stern, I think) was depressed because he felt he had made such a mess of his life and because he made such a mess he could never see getting out of the hole he had created. I felt for the character because I’ve been there before. Sadly, I think pretty much all of us have. Well, back to the story… One of the friends stated, “It’s a do-over” and he explained that when you really screw things up you can start over – it’s a do-over. Everybody chimed it and reinforced the idea that when we blow it we can always start over and get going over again. Just a crazy movie idea, right? Well, I think it’s more than that. I mean after all what else can you do? Wallowing in self pity won’t set the world right and staying in an obviously messed up disaster of a life is not a very smart solution. Isn’t that the perfect time to conjure up a new way to think about where you’re at and get started at moving in a new direction?

About a year and a half ago, I was talking to my brother and he was totally bummed out with where he was in his life. He felt he had made some horrible decisions over the previous couple years and now he felt he had destroyed the best things he had going for him. He really was in the same place mentally and emotionally as the City Slickers character. At least it seemed like it to me because as I was trying to think of any ideas that would help him think of his world in a new way, the idea of a do-over came to me and I shared it with him. I don’t know if that’s the thing that helped him through that difficult time (because he did get through that difficult time like most of us all do) but as I explained to him the logic and importance of seeing life’s challenges as do-overs, it reinforced to me how we all need to think that way from time to time, probably a lot more often than we think we should. My brother Dave passed away just over six months ago and he was in a much happier place in his last year even with medical issues because of the do-over he engineered in his life.

I was thinking about this idea a couple of months ago because I just started a new position and was so happy to be starting fresh in a completely different environment. Through the second half of last year, things seemed to be heading south and I decided I really needed to make some big changes in my life. Fortunately, I was able to turn the change in leadership and what I felt was negative energy into a need to question what I really should be doing and better align my passion with what I should be doing every day. Through strong support from my wife and some networking I was able to move into a position that was better suited for me. What I do now is so different than what I’ve been doing it felt like a do-over and it is. However, with further reflection I realized that every day can be a do-over, if we are wise enough to refocus ourselves on a daily basis. Even in my new job, I have the occasional challenge, which is only proof that I have an opportunity to grow. If I recognize that I could have made a better decision then I change who I am – I am now the person who would do that thing differently because now I am wiser. A do-over doesn’t always have to be huge – it only has to be a conscious decision to live the next part of my life as a new person with a new perspective – even if the next part of my life is only tomorrow. Tomorrow is always the start of the rest of my life.

I was about to head to bed and I should go to bed but I felt I needed to write something before I do. Today was the day of the shooting of school children in Newtown, Connecticut. Like so many people, I ache. I turned on the news tonight and of course, that’s all that was covered. Actually it was double covered and triple covered and advertisements were being shown for additional coverage that will air over the weekend. It reminded me of the aftermath of 9-11 when so many people watched all the stories on TV day after day. I was lucky that I was travelling across the country at the time (obviously not by air). I saw a snippet of the news and then I pulled away from it. I noticed how it hurt people deep down. I got that sense again today. It crossed a new line of horror. It will cut into people. People will try to understand. People will try to make sense of it. I don’t know how you make sense of it. It causes outrage. It causes sadness. It causes pain. It takes away our trust of life. Some people will turn their passion into action. The discussion of more gun laws is going to continue to grow. There will be more ways created to turn schools into fortresses. There will be more action to protect us from people with mental illness. This list will go on and on. I don’t know where it will all take us, probably in the same direction we’ve always been heading. We only notice where we’re headed when something scary appears in front of us. Obviously I don’t know where this road leads but I’m saddened by the terrain around me.

I watched some of the news for awhile and I pondered many of the things that I just mentioned. After that, I watched one of my favorite holiday movies, ‘White Christmas’. This time of the year, my wife and I watch lots of Christmas movies, on Lifetime, on Hallmark, on ABC Family, wherever I find them. With my crazy schedule, I even record some so we can watch them when there’s nothing else on. Yeah, many of them are just ‘chick’ flicks with Christmas decorations and Christmas music and some are just so bad. I confess: I like snow, I like Christmas music and, in most cases, I like Christmas movies. As I was headed to bed tonight, I thought that if more people watched these poorly acted, easy to figure out, somewhat hokey Christmas movies instead of the seemingly violent and senseless movies and video games that are so popular today, we would have fewer random killings. I’m not making a stand to outlaw games and movies; we’ve been down that road many times. I do believe that what we put into our consciousness has to define who we become and how we think. I think watching White Christmas this evening instead of immersing myself in all the horror of today’s tragedy was a better choice for me. I don’t think we can or should ignore what happens in the world but I don’t think soaking in it is helping me come up with answers yet. I will sort through pieces of it and admire the heroism of many and ponder the possible responses we need to make. I need to remind myself that how I see the world around me and how I respond to my world will have an impact on the culture that I can influence around me. I need to help make a warmer place especially when I feel that our tendency over the next while will be to make a colder, more protected place.

Obviously, I am just a bundle of thoughts and need to put things into perspective. I am not going to let myself get overloaded with sadness but I will feel some of the hurt. That is my humanity and I can’t be afraid of that. Be strong and be the person that adds powerful, positive structure to the world when it needs you most. Peace and love to your soul. Goodnight.

Sure, that sounds like a weird question but hey, that’s how I get going sometimes. I have always liked easy listening music: you know, the slow stuff, the stuff that some people might think is depressing. As I began striving to think more of myself, I tried to latch on to some ideas that would help me look at the world in better ways. I heard someone say that some popular music was very negative in how it made us think. A lot of it has a theme of “I’m not good enough for you” or even worse, “I’m nothing without you”. Wow, I never looked at it that way before. It is a bad thing to think that you need someone else to make you okay or that if someone is no longer in your life, you are less. Listening to songs that say as much, over and over again, can’t be very good for your self esteem. I understand what they were saying (I don’t remember if it was Brian Tracy, or Steve Chandler, or Zig Ziglar, but it was somebody like that who I hold in high esteem). We need to be reminding ourselves that we may be sad when someone goes away but we need to know that we are not less (even if we feel like it for a little while) and as soon as we possibly can, we need to believe in who we are and move forward.

After not performing much for quite a few years, I’ve returned to my music again. I’ve started learning some new instruments such as the dulcimer, banjo, and mandolin and they really can be fun instruments, mostly used for bluegrass or other mountain music. I started down that musical road when vacationing in the Ozarks. What great stuff to be playing or listening to. Along those lines, I’ve been playing similar types of music on my guitars. However, I’ve been playing and singing some of the styles of music that I’ve loved in the past. Songs that are about heartbreak and love lost and the pain that goes along with it. As I think about that music and the people that really sing it well, I realize that sometimes you really need to feel the pain to put it in the music. I know because I feel it. Tears can come to your eyes easily and some songs hit so close to home that you have to practice them again and again and again to get through them without breaking apart. After my brother died, I wrote a song to say goodbye to him and when I sing it I can get through it but I sure feel it. When I sing the songs that really touch my heart I feel the ache and I know that it can be felt in the music and I know that’s what makes some of these songs so real and so powerful.

I think because I’ve had a challenging year from an emotional level, I notice these things a little more. My brother died. My best friend’s wife just died and he’s is in hospice and will be passing very soon. Holding crying people can be good but it can cut into your soul a bit too – not to weaken it but to shape it. When you feel a little beat up, it’s easy to get beat up some more. When I’ve got the hurt in me and it’s not buried so deep, I feel it when I sing. Sometimes I need to sing just to feel it pouring out of my being. It makes me think of the great artists that get so messed up in their lives but their work is so powerful. It makes me wonder if their work is powerful because they keep feeling the pain and keep it so close to their surface. We know we should move on to higher ground in our life but sometimes the ache and pain have such a strong grip on us that we feel we need to simmer in it. I don’t think simmering in it is necessarily a good thing but in a strange way it has some comfort to it.

I’m not really sharing any wisdom in this message, just pushing some thoughts out tonight. I believe that I need to move away from the pain when it’s pulling me into the darkness because if I don’t it has the power to swallow me up and hang on so tightly. When I do move to the world where I’m (seemingly) running on all cylinders again, it’s okay to touch my soul within, even the sad and painful parts to add my signature to the things that I create.

Life doesn’t always go the way we think it will. As a matter of fact it almost never goes the way we think. As I mentioned in my last article, my brother, Dave, was diagnosed with liver cancer and was only given months to live. That is a pretty general estimate but we knew we would have a little time. I was scheduled to go on vacation this week and with all that has been going on I really did feel a need to renew. However, I knew that I needed to help Dave get things in order and spending time with him is obviously more important. I headed up to my brother’s and got here yesterday afternoon (it’s a 7 hour drive). I was going to come today instead but my wife and I moved a couple of things around so I could get here a day earlier. Dave didn’t have a great night – the cancer has obviously been doing a job on his organs. He was feeling a little better this morning and we were talking and working on what we needed to be working on. And then it was time for him to go. He was getting a little sick and I was helping him (with the waste basket). He didn’t have much in him since he’s not been eating or drinking much. I wiped his nose and mouth and then he sneezed. And he sneezed again. He sneezed four times. There was a look on his face that he was recognizing that it was time to go. I told him that if he needed to go, it was okay. Then he simply laid back and his life left him.

We all thought we had more time with him, but we didn’t. I almost wasn’t there with him. I am so glad that I was. He was afraid that he would be a burden having others take care of him and he didn’t want to go to a care center even though that could have ended up being an inevitable option. He heart has been week for some time. Twelve years ago, he had a double bypass. About two months ago, one of those bypasses fell apart. Eventually they put in a pacemaker/defibrillator that stabilized his heart. It was when he didn’t get better that we found out about the cancer that had filled his body. Just yesterday afternoon, a technician arrived to turn off the defibrillator so that it wouldn’t attempt to restart his heart when his organs began to fail. I’m positive that when he was sneezing, his heart failed. As bad as that heart was, it picked the perfect time to send him home. It kept him going until I was there and then it shut down before Dave had to endure much pain or suffering. I hate that he is gone now but I am so glad that he went on his terms. I am happy that Dave and I were close and we have had the time to share so many things such as camping trips, motorcycle rides, and fishing trips. I’ll never forget talks we shared bunked in an ice fishing house on a frozen lake in the middle of a cold winter night.

Death is a part of life that most of us fear and seldom allow ourselves to think about. It’s gut wrenching, even when it’s not such a surprise and even when it’s the best option available. Even though I knew it was coming and I was as mentally prepared as I could be, it hurts. I realize that I have to let the emotions run through me so I don’t break. I have to be strong and reasonable and make decisions and take care of everything the way that Dave asked me to. And I will. It will still be painful. I will think about calling him and then remember that I can’t. I will see things that remind me of times we spent and I’ll feel some hollowness inside. I always feel we need to appreciate the time that we have with the people we love, to recognize that it is better that we had that relationship than to not have the pain of loss. My mantra is to make the most of life while we are here and this just reinforces how short our time is. It’s always too short. As painful as today is, I know I will cherish it. I cherish that I was with my beloved brother Dave when it was his time to move on. I cherish that I helped him let go of this world as I held his hand and told him that we would be alright and that it was okay for him to go. I cherish that I can love someone so much that I can hurt this much. I miss him so much because I love him so much. Yes, I’m crying right now as I type these words on his computer (that I helped him pick out). Too many people are afraid to love too much because they are afraid to hurt too much. It hurts more not to love that much. I hurt but the hurt I have today just deepens my love – my love for Dave but my love for others in my life too. Because of my love for him, I am not afraid to remember him. When I have a memory of Dave pass by because of something that I see, or hear, or smell, or touch or whatever, I will embrace it and I will smile. That’s what love can power me to do.

Thanks for letting me share my feelings with you. Sometimes we need to share what is inside so we can feel it even more vividly. Don’t be afraid of loving. I embrace the painful feelings of today because it’s a measure of the love I will feel forever.

One of my great passions when it comes to speaking or coaching is getting the most out of life. We say that life is short but do we live like it is? Yeah, when our time feels really short we go like gangbusters. That’s why most people get more done that day or two before vacation than they do in a typical week. But if life, and I mean all of life, is short then when don’t we do a better job of making the most of it. It seems that some parts we make the most of and some we just waste. I’m probably a little more focused on making the most of the time that we have because of current challenges in my personal life. My best friend, Freddie, has been fighting a battle with cancer for quite some time and even though his treatment is going okay at the moment it’s only a matter of time. There is only so much he can do; he’s put up quite a fight but the cancer is winning most of the battles now. He is courageous and has such a wonderful attitude; I admire him so much. Over the last couple of weeks the focus has been on my brother. He had a double bypass about 12 years ago and a couple of months ago half of that bypass failed. They stabilized it and were monitoring it but he just had a hard time recovering. Eventually some other symptoms showed up that needed further investigation. Last week, my brother, my sister and I spent some long days at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. My brother has liver cancer and it is spread out through various organs already. There is a slight chance it can be slowed down but there’s no killing this beast that is swallowing him up from the inside. His time is limited. Now my efforts will be to help him to make sure that he has everything in order so that when the time comes we only have to focus on saying goodbye. I’m lucky that we have a strong relationship and he knows how I feel about him. I made a commitment years ago to make sure that people I care about know of their importance to me and how I feel about them. Obviously, these special people and their battles greatly increase my feelings about the importance of honoring our gift of life and breathing it in as often as possible.

When I ask about making the most of life, I don’t necessarily mean going on cruises or buying the best of everything. That can certainly be a part of it but even if we do those things more than most folks it’s still a small portion of our time. We need to live life with vigor between the high points that we plan out from time to time. I always take a couple of vacations each year and I love them and I enjoy the anticipation in the months, weeks, and days before they actually happen. That’s still only a portion of my life. I have created a beautiful paradise behind my house. Well, it’s paradise to me, because I appreciate it so much. I often feel like I’m on vacation on my pavilion when I’m having supper out there or playing my guitar. When I was out riding my bike this afternoon I was noticing the beautifully crafted backyards that some people have with all the decks and gardens and fire pits and fountains; I also noticed that I seldom even see people out enjoying these wonderful spaces that I pedal past. I’m not about to judge any of these people, that’s not my place. It just reminds me to invest in the things that I find most important to me. Even if we make the most of our evenings, or weekends, or holidays, that’s not enough. We need to experience life during the week, during the work day, anytime that we are awake. I believe it was Steven Covey that said we shouldn’t be focusing on ‘getting through the day’ but instead make our mantra to ‘get from the day’. Believe me, I love my time on vacation or in my paradise most of all and put a great deal of thought into how to create wonderful moments whenever I can but how I live the rest of my life day-to-day probably has the greatest impact on how I view a life well spent.

If you want to live a powerful legacy, make it how people see you live each day. You don’t determine the amount of impact what you do has on others. It happens based on how people see you and where everything else is in their life. You don’t control that. You can’t. However the amount of quality of life you push out to others will have the greatest impact. It increases the likelihood that when all things are aligned for that other person and you deliver the magic of how you live your life; the impact will be beyond whatever you imagine. Think of the instances that have influenced you the most in your life. It likely wasn’t scripted. It was what you needed when you needed it. Live life fully every day. It will fulfill you and it may impact others beyond your comprehension whether you know about it or not. My life is wonderful partially because I regularly ask myself, “am I making the most out of life?” and then I make sure that I am and drink up every moment.

Who do you compete against? Are you more of a golfer or a tennis player or basketball player? Or maybe you’re asking the more appropriate question, “What is Don talking about this time?” Well I’m more of a golfer in the context that I’m talking about. Oh, I’m not a very good golfer, I only get out and play every couple of years if I’m lucky. By being more of a golfer, I mean I play against myself. The tennis player’s goal is to beat the other person. The basketball player idea is to be part of a team that competes against the other team so you aren’t doing it all by yourself but you are a critical component. I could go a lot of directions with this (yeah, that’s what I do) but that was my initial thought when I was out for a bike ride last week. Pretty much all of us aren’t just one type but we have tendencies to be more one way most of the time (that’s probably why we call them tendencies).

I love to ride my bike (I think there’s a song about that); it is one of my favorite things. I don’t get a lot of that in Minnesota in the winter time so through most of spring through fall, I ride whenever I can. Let me say before I go any further, I’m not talking about a Harley; I’m talking about one you pedal. I have a motorcycle endorsement on my driver’s license but I don’t have a motorized bike anymore; I am the motor on the bike I am talking about. Now for the competing with myself part. I have a cyclometer on my bike (speed, distance, time, average speed, maximum speed, etc) and that’s the devil that helps me pit myself against myself. I almost never ride with others except my wife and those trips are more casual and sometimes those are on our tandem. No matter how fast I ride on the tandem she always stays right with me. I do compete with others in the fact that I pass many people and I try to go so fast that no one ever passes me. It does happen from time to time (darn it!). Someone passed me a week ago. I figured he was going about 1 mile per hour faster than me, maybe less. He was right there with me for a very long time – slowly pulling away. I can always remind myself (and I do) that he is at least 20 years younger than me, has a racing bike instead of a road bike like mine and he has a normal size body (read ‘lean’ or ‘trim’). So I am a bit competitive but those situations don’t bother me, they just spur me on (next year, I’ll be even faster – how does that make any sense?).

For me, it’s raising my average speed – every time, if I can. Because I love riding so much, I remind myself that I enjoy my rides no matter whether I’m setting speed records or not. With that being said, once I start pedaling I start thinking about getting that average speed up there. If I am riding to a location and then returning I prefer to ride uphill and/or into the wind on the first half of my trek and then really be able to crank it on the return trip. I learned many years ago doing the opposite can really make for a less fun experience. You take off on a downhill run and feel like Superman. You figure you’ll ride until you’re a little winded with half a tank left and then turn around and come home. We’ll, you only need 10% of a tank to go halfway so you go way too freaking far and when it’s time to head back, you need 90% to get back up that hill and you spent it all on the great ride down. Believe me, THAT ride home is a long one. Going up and against the elements lets you give everything you’ve got and when you finally turn around, it’s so much better that it feels great even if you have miles to go. One caveat here: it does suck when after riding for a couple hours into the wind, the wind changes and you have to ride into it going home. Yeah, it has happened to me!

To me riding feels like life in many ways. Of course, the corollary to this is that you need to work to make your life enjoyable so you can attack it like I attack bike riding. One of the first keys of biking is to keep your cadence consistent. The idea is to keep your legs pumping at a fairly constant rate and use your speeds, or gears, to manage your speed. Life is similar here in that you want to keep your activity going at a regular pace but find ways to maximize your actions. If everything is feeling too uphill and you are not going anywhere, you need to dig up some wisdom to make the most of what you are doing. I need to downshift on my uphills but I keep my legs moving and I keep going at the hill (same direction). I am going slower but I am still making headway, albeit slowly. When things are slowing me down with my uphill challenges, I know there is always a downhill run ahead to start making up time. Of course I can start a tangent here mentioning that if you get off the trail and head through the woods it may not be better up ahead – okay that’s as far as that tangent goes – you can finish that analogy on your own. I can’t give up on the hills. I do make sure I’m heading in the right direction and if I am I don’t discount the impact of my continued efforts. These are the times where I learn patience. I accept a slower rate of advancement but I appreciate that I keep moving and I keep my focus, knowing that there will always be tough spots but just as surely, there will be moments that appear where I can really go.

You may have figured out that I don’t coast down hills after grinding my way to the top. That may be what many people want to do but I can’t even consider that any more, it’s too ingrained in my head to keep pushing. For one thing, I want to hit the bottom of that hill with everything I have so it will take less of me to get up that next hill. Secondly, consistent pedaling has become my standard activity. Sure, I may need to give my legs a good stretch after a tough uphill run but after that I get back to it. I ride because I love riding – so ride. Lastly, I’ve got that darn cyclometer staring right back up at me reminding me of my average speed and what that last hill did to it. It simply taunts me! I need to push that number back up where it’s supposed to be. I need to complete my ride with a good number. And you know what? If I’m averaging 15.6 miles per hour, it’s going to take a long time at 15.8 or 16.0 to pull it up at all so I need a good run of 18.0 or 19.0 or MORE to get what I what before that next evil slow down (notice I said ‘need’ not ‘want’ – compulsive internal struggling happening – “Is this healthy?).

Most of my brain activity during my rides is not the internal struggles I’ve been describing. Most of it is thoughts – about everything (well about a lot anyway). One of the reasons I love my rides is that is one of my best thinking times (hence, you read about bike ride thinking from time to time). When I think while I’m doing what I love to do, I see the power in what I am doing. I see all the analogies (they used to call me Analogy Man) between life and the things that I love to do like biking and canoeing. I saw so many cool lessons in my bike riding that pertain to living – successful living. And don’t ever forget successful living is defined by your standards not by others so it doesn’t have to mean money, or styles, or whatever. It can but it’s always up to you. Here are my lessons (that I remember) from my bike ride.
1) Know where you want to be headed – then you can practice patience and still feel great knowing you are making headway in the right direction.
2) When you are over the current hump, take advantage of the smooth sailing and make the most of it. It only lasts for a set period time so enjoy it and don’t think it’s the end of the world when times get tougher, start looking forward to the next fast run – you know it will be there.
3) Find a way to track how well you’re doing what you’re doing. This is one we often miss. I have my cyclometer that tells me how well I’m doing, when I’m going fast and when I’m not. Develop or find tools that tell you how you’re doing on the things you want to be doing.
4) I mentioned this previously. I think these rules from biking work because I feel the same about other areas of my life as I do about my biking – I need to love it. Do what you can to love what you do. Otherwise why are you doing it? I’m not saying that’s always easy but it is worth it. Find a way to do what you love either by finding something different than what you don’t love or find a way to love what you don’t love today

By the way, on my 20 mile ride this morning, my average was 17.2 miles per hour – my best this year – so far (and nobody passed me).

Have magical day.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched the movie, ‘Soul Surfer’. I had seen the beginning of it previously and I generally knew the story of where a teenager loses her arm in a shark attack and then works her way back to being a competitive surfer. I don’t think it got great reviews but any true story of overcoming unbelievable odds is worth checking out. Well, back to the story of me watching the story. I got bored for a moment and flopped down on the couch and started watching this movie from where I quit watching it before. The story was very powerful but I think the part that impacted me the most was the overall process that our heroine went through and how she found the power to move forward. What draws us to stories like this is often the overcoming of overwhelming physical challenges that we can’t even imagine having to deal with. Our bodies can handle so much more than we believe we can and if we look we see this time and time again. I was just recently reminded of Jim Abbot, a major league pitcher for several years who even threw a no-hitter in 1993. He was born with only one arm! Of course it’s not the physical limitations that keep us from our possibilities, it’s how we think. We have to mentally become a new person or perhaps more correctly, we need to find the real person inside and free them from our self-imposed mental limitations.

After recovering from the shark attack, the main character in the movie wanted so badly to get back to what she felt was her most important passion in her life – surfing. She learned to make adjustments so that she could surf with only one arm. Obviously, these were substantial adjustments! Before you knew it she was ready to compete. She jumped right back in and was battling her former nemesis, who wouldn’t cut her any slack even after she lost her arm (we always have to have someone we love to hate). Well the evil nemesis wins and our heroine is shattered, feeling she just can’t do it. She’s a failure and she shouldn’t have even tried. This is where Soul Surfer turns into soul searcher. She has a good friend who is also her Christian mentor that is headed to Haiti to volunteer after the horrible tsunami created overwhelming devastation. She travels with her friend to Haiti to help the needy and of course, she is the one who ends up being helped the most.

There are two big ‘aha’ moments for our surfer girl while she is in Haiti. The first one is recognizing how much we have by seeing how little others have in the world. For me this was probably the most powerful point of the movie. We need to find that ‘attitude of gratitude’ every day. The people we typically compare ourselves to exist only in our mind (where we load them from TV, books and movies). We think we have so little but it’s easy to see that we have so much. It’s easy to believe that we can feel better about what we have if we compare ourselves to those in broken foreign lands but it’s pretty easy if we look at the real lives of others. Everyone has challenges even if they try to cover them all up. We see it all the time where the world is shocked by the news that Hollywood marriages are not what we thought they were. You are best equipped to handle the problems you have because you have the skills to do so. Work to develop that awakening that you have much and if you have much you need to really make the most of the gifts that you are given. This was the realization that our character in the movie came to as well. Her other ‘aha’ moment was when she used the power of surfing to help a little Haitian boy overcome his fear of the ocean. She saw the power of her passion. Surfing was more than competing. It was about surfing more than competing in surfing.

This newfound wisdom gave her the power to get back to her life. She could compete again but now it wasn’t so much about having to beat everyone else but it was more about being the best at what she could do. Of course, with this new attitude she would eventually go on to win which is still done by beating everyone else. She still had to lose first and that demonstrated her new ability to see the world differently. She had now found a way to passionately enjoy what she was doing and winning was only a part of it and if that part was missing there was still enjoyment.

What a great methodology! When we have setbacks in life, whether they be large or small or real or imaged, we follow a method to overcome. We find a way to get past our physical limitations. We recognize how much we have and commit to ourselves to make the most of the gifts that are given. We explore the power of the things we have a passion for, seeing them with new eyes. We follow our life’s passions in ways that give us true joy. I thought it was a powerful reminder of how we should be looking at life when we find ourselves looking at things in a less than perfect way. Thanks Soul Surfer.

It’s all a matter of perspective. If you have a good day or a bad day is simply how you look at it. We all know this but I’m lucky that I have regular reminders once in a while. I set up the vacation of my dreams and I was really excited about it. I’ve dreamed about going to the Caribbean for vacation for over thirty years. When I was in tech school many, many years ago, I looked at some brochures about vacations in Aruba and St Thomas and various other magical and perfect destinations and I fell in love with the idea that it would be a perfect place to go. I did go to Barbados once. It was for work, I was on the island for less than 24 hours, and I had to catch a plane out at 4:00 in the morning. I did get to see the beauty of the ocean and stayed in the most incredible bungalow on the beach. Last fall, I decided it was time to do something about it and make it finally happen. I set up a cruise to the western Caribbean for 7-days and I was pumped. The only thing I was concerned about was being able to get to Florida in the middle of winter because of bad weather. This is a problem sometimes when travelling from Minnesota but since winter never really showed up this year, it turned out to not be a problem at all.

The day we (my wife and I) flew to Tampa was my birthday – quite fitting I thought after wanting to do this for so long. My pal Tim and his wife Karen live in Florida and were going along on the cruise. They picked us up at the airport and we were on our way. It was really cold for Florida as we waited in line at the pier – 49 degrees and windy. It didn’t matter. I knew we were headed for fabulous weather in the ports of Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Belize, and Isla Roatan. If you’ve never been on a cruise, you need to try it – just once. It’s fun and relaxing. As we were boarding the ship they were handing out flyers about the risk of stomach illnesses that we’ve heard about plaguing recent cruise excursions. As someone who doesn’t believe in being sick, I was hopeful that would not be an issue. A month prior to our cruise, a cruise ship had run aground off the coast of Italy – that’s what most people were concerned about. I figured after all that bad publicity; the crew would really be paying attention where they would be driving our ship.

To cut this story a little shorter, after a ‘fun day at sea’ on Day 1, my wife awoke to the first symptoms of a gastrointestinal illness. More symptoms added up throughout the day. I did go ashore but it did have a bit of an impact on our vacation fun. Lu went to the on-board hospital and because of her doing the right thing, she was confined to the cabin for more than 24 hours and she was unable to partake in all the delicious food that comes with a cruise. Just like hospital food at home, the food they give the ‘sickies’ at sea sucks too. We had set up what we figured would be a fantastic shore excursion in Cozumel but of course my wife couldn’t leave the ship. After being sick for a couple days she recovered, they sent the ‘hazmat’ team into our room and we worked to make the best of our ‘vacation of a lifetime’. About a day later, guess who got the virus next? Yeah, it was me. The scary thing was that I was on the other side of Roatan Island when my symptoms began and I knew the worst was yet to come. I had to get on a jeep for the hour drive over the mountains and through the jungle to get back to my home away from home. I made it out of the van before the worst of the symptoms kicked in (think ‘horrible, uncontrollable vomiting’ [sorry!]). Yes, even though you are treated like a leper when you admit you are sick, I still had to do the right thing and report it. So now I was relegated to very bad food and was locked in my cabin. Needless to say, with four days of our seven-day cruise spent dealing with very bad illnesses, it made our vacation of a lifetime less than fantastic but certainly memorable.

After getting home and getting back to work (and still working to get completely well), I shared with my best friend Fred about our terrible ordeal. He felt so bad. He knew how much I had been looking forward to this vacation and all the things that I was going to do. He kept checking back regularly making sure that I was getting better (getting sick on the ship really seemed to lower my defenses to all the sickness that I had been avoiding for years) and every time you could tell how bad he felt with the cruise not turning out the way we had planned.

Here’s the kicker for me. Fred is going through his second battle with cancer. He’s not going to come out on top this time. He is unable to use any more radiation or chemo therapy and is striving to make the best of whatever he has left. He doesn’t focus too much on his challenges which include helping his wife deal with the cancers (2 types) that she is dealing with. Fred’s just happy that feels as well as he does and he’s able to maximize his time with his kids and grandkids. We may get the occasional vacation that goes bad, or an unexpected bill, or some other thing that doesn’t go right, but there’s a lot more right in my world than there is wrong. Making the most of our lives every day is what the focus needs to be. The time for all of us in limited, it’s just that most of us don’t know where that limitation is. We still need to recognize that time is fleeting and we need to make the most of it – even (literally) crappy vacations.

Please take the day to appreciate all you have because you only have it for sure right now.

Sometimes I have to remind myself to take a moment to appreciate the positive changes that have occurred in me. We are constantly changing. We just don’t notice it most of the time as all things flow from day to day. I believe that if we are paying attention to ourselves and our thoughts we are more likely to notice what’s going on and ideally we influence the direction that we are headed in. Yeah, as always, I did something and that got me to thinking.

I’m working on a bit of a remodeling project and I have some drywall to hang in a space will soon be a functional bathroom. I’m not a speedy remodeler. I work in spurts and I need to do a lot of thinking before I dig in to the next task, all the while juggling thoughts about the entire project in the back of my brain. Before I put my trailer away for the season, I hauled all the pieces of drywall that I estimated I would need and put them in my garage. With the lack of snow this year, I could get my trailer back out but I really don’t want to have the hassle so I’d rather think more and screw up less in cutting my materials. The first big sheet I had to put up is the most challenging. It will take almost the entire sheet but I had to cut out a notch for a tiny wall and, most importantly, a 13 inch diameter hole for the ceiling light fixture. I patiently and methodically took accurate measurements and transposed the locations of all the cuts to my fresh sheet of 5/8” drywall. I even made a compass from a piece of scrap wood to get my hole layout just right. I was feeling pretty confident about my work as I make all the cuts. As I lifted up my prepared drywall to work it into place, I realized that it wasn’t right. My cutouts were on the wrong side of the material! The sad thing is that I had reminded myself to take that into consideration. I laid it out in another room and it was obviously on the floor and facing the opposite direction but even after telling myself to rotate everything in my head, I got it wrong. I chuckled. Yeah, I laughed at what I had done. I didn’t cry. I didn’t yell. Most importantly, I didn’t tell myself how stupid I was and how I sucked at being a carpenter. In the old days, I would have been upset – more internally than externally. I would have beaten myself up. I would’ve been reluctant to get back to fixing my mess and once I did get it fixed it would be twice as hard to force myself to take on projects like that again.

Believe me I wasn’t happy that I had just created garbage from what had been completely good building material but I was happy that it wasn’t tearing me apart. I started right away with the “okay, now how do I find the positive part of this?” method. First of all I saw that I had a nice template to verify the accuracy of my measurements. I couldn’t use it for my ceiling because the finish side faced the wrong way but I could check my work and then use it to quickly transpose the cut areas to a new fresh sheet. My initial measurements were quite good although I was able to tweak one of the cut-outs just a little since I had the ‘opportunity’ to do so. I recognized that since both my cuts were on the same side of the sheet of drywall, I was able to save more than half of it and that was enough to prevent me from having to go buy another piece; I get to leave the trailer where it is for now.

The best thing about this ‘oops’ that I created was that I noticed how I dealt with it. I recognized that it wasn’t the end of the world – few things are ever the end of the world. We just think they are. Things happen and how we interpret them make them to be good or bad. If we make them happen (like I did) and they are not what we want, it’s even harder to not see them as bad. It’s not always easy to see things in the best light but when I do, I’m glad I do. That is my whole point of this story. I recognized that I felt better about this scenario than similar scenarios in my past and I appreciate it. Not only am I liking the new me more than the old me, I know this moment of appreciation will help to make an even better me in the future. You see, how we talk to ourselves in time of stress tends to shape who we become.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from my Time Management instructor, Jim Klausen. He stated whenever you make a mistake, instead of berating yourself and calling yourself stupid, immediately say to yourself, “that’s not like me” and in the same way, if you find yourself doing something really well, take the time to state “that’s just like me”. Give your subconscious mind something worthwhile to constantly repeat by saying what you want your mind to hear. Take the time to recognize how far you’ve come from time to time. Reinforce it by saying, “well, of course, that’s just like me!” because it is just like you. Have a great day.