“Proper assessment of reality can be as crucial to life as oxygen.  To try and make it through this world without a reasonable understanding of reality is like stumbling around in a dark room laden with land mines.” – Robert Ringer

If you are waiting for circumstances to change for the better, you are engaging in wishful thinking.  Circumstances are undoubtedly going to change in some way, but you can’t really predict how they are going to change.  If you think you can, you are simply fooling yourself.  They might get worse.

Examples of Wishful Thinking

The following are common examples of people basing their actions on wishful thinking.  Some of these things might actually happen, but often they do not.  The point is you do not know.  The future is not now.  Learning to deal with what is will actually give you far more control over your future than waiting for “things to turn around”.

• Your partner is going to change from who they are to who you want them to be.
• The economy is about to turn around.  Even though in other times and other places it has been in the toilet for 10 or 15 years, that’s not going to happen this time.
• Your home will appreciate in value.
• The stock market will go up.
• Your dream job is right around the corner.
• Your kids are going to do what you wish they would do.
• Doctors generally improve your health.
• Government can make the world a better place.
• Other people can and should make their decisions in a way that you think is fair.
• Stuff makes you happy.
• The alleged coming economic upturn is going to save your business or your job.

You can find freedom in an unfree world or you can continue to try and change everyone else.  You can waste years nagging your partner to be different than they are and make both of you miserable, or you can accept what is and move on.  You can prosper in a bad economy or you can wait for a good economy (and still not prosper).  You can find happiness without stuff or you can try to buy your way to nirvana.  You can bitch about what other people do or you can control what you do.

Positive Thinking vs. Wishful Thinking

I’m not saying you shouldn’t think positively because you should.  But there is a difference between positive thinking and wishful thinking.  Real positive thinking implies action; it’s proactive.  Wishful thinking is reactive.  Positive thinking is figuring out a way to prosper in bad times – and believing you can.  Wishful thinking is waiting for the good times to arrive and save you from your circumstances.

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Am I claiming you can buy happiness?  Probably not, but if you are going to spend money in pursuit of happiness, there are certain ways of spending that are more effective than others.

There is plenty of evidence from multiple fronts that indicate that indicate more income or money past a certain point that fulfills your basic needs doesn’t make you any happier.  Those are averages and so I suspect within those averages there is wiggle room for creative individuals.  There are also studies that indicate certain experiences might make you happier.

Buy Experiences Not Things

Things (homes, cars, clothes, gadgets) are subject to something called “Hedonic Adaptation”, which simply means you get used to them; they fail to continue to provide the same boost to your happiness that they did when they were new.

On the other hand, the happiness boost from experiences seem to last longer.  It is much easier to continually have new experiences than have new things.  Once you buy that dream house, you are going to be in it far past the period of hedonic adaptation.

So instead of locking yourself into those Golden Handcuffs by purchasing goods, especially expensive ones like homes and cars that require regular payments, try spending your money gaining experiences.  Things like eating out, movies, happy hours, parties, travel, biking, hiking, skydiving, scuba, charity work, and so on.  The list is endless.  Make sure you do some of those things with other people.  Spend some of your money on giving and you will get far more happiness than by buying the latest gadget.

Bottom line, if you are thinking of trying to buy happiness, then buy experiences instead of accumulating expensive toys or clutter.  As you look back on your life, you’ll be glad you did.

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“Our default response in life is not to experience happiness.”

“Our default response in life is not to experience meaning.”

“Our default response in life is to experience Inertia.”

– Marshall Goldsmith

In his excellent little book Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It, Marshall Goldsmith describes his solution to the problem of inertia.  It seems simplistic, but I think in its simplicity lies its effectiveness and elegance.

Inertia is simply the process of continuing to do the same thing you are already doing.

The Two Question Discipline

Evaluate every activity with the following two questions:

1. How much long-term benefit or meaning did I experience from this activity?
2. How much short-term satisfaction or happiness did I experience in this activity?

The simple fact that you know you are going to be monitoring your activities by asking those two questions will make you more mindful and awake and alter your behavior.  But you can take it further and ask yourself these questions before you act.

1. How much long-term benefit or meaning am I going to experience from this activity?
2. How much short-term satisfaction or happiness am I going to experience in this activity?

In that way you can alter the activity to get more satisfaction and benefit from it or you can refrain from doing it at all.  You are changing your mindset and no longer defaulting to the inertia of continuing to do what you’ve been doing.

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein

Simple, elegant, and effective.

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“We’re attached to a certain view, a given outcome, and when it doesn’t appear, we waste time mourning the world that we wanted that isn’t here.” – Seth Godin

In the video below, Srikumar S. Rao discusses the If… Then… mental trap and our investment in outcomes.  It is a medium length video of 18 minutes, and I realize in our ADD world, that is a long time.  But is it really?  I think you will find it time well spent.

If you are reading this in email and don’t see the video link, click on the article link and you will find the video on the web page.

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A while back, Jonny at thelifething.com ask me to participate in a success eBook by answering two questions: What is Success? and How Do You Achieve it? I had to answer each question with a single sentence and that made it tough.  There are a lot of ways to answer both questions and putting them in a single sentence is necessarily going to limit your answer, but I thought it was great idea.  Head on over to The SUCCESS EBook (it’s free) and find out how 25 others answered the same question.  I was surprised at how many of the definitions of success reflected thoughts similar to mine in that they didn’t emphasize material success.

I answered that success was having the freedom and ability to do those things you truly want to do and that reflect your most deeply held values.  I said that you achieve success by eliminating the 80% to 90% of your commitments, activities, and relationships that don’t totally align with those values.

You may think that 80% to 90% is extreme, but I’m sticking with it.  When people are making the choices about what to stop doing to make room for the things they really want to do, they generally choose the easy stuff like watching less TV.  In reality most of what they think they have to do or is essential, are the things that do not reflect their true values.  I wrote about eliminating these in The Brain Surgeon, the Janitor, and the Six-Inch Pizza and Edit Your Life.

Another important factor in getting to meaningful success is detaching yourself from outcomes.  That may sound hard or paradoxical, but I don’t think it is.  It’s not what you get, it’s what you do.  A specific outcome is not going to make you happy.  Living your values is going to make you happy.  When you are successful, you aren’t attaining something, you are doing something.  At least that’s the way I look at it.  This was explored in A Values-Based Approach to Goals and Redefining Our Ultimate Goals.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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A mental model is an internal representation in your mind of some portion of external reality.  I believe there is an objective external reality out there that exists independent of your mind, but you understand it and deal with it through your mental models.  Your mind is a big jumble of these models and some of them undoubtedly conflict with each other.  Your jumble is different than my jumble.

Many of our mental models are learned, probably absorbed from our friends, family, and culture by default.  We are likely born with a tendency to some of them.  For example, it appears babies are born with some rudimentary ideas about the basic physics of objects.  Some of our models are chosen and modified by conscious reasoning.  Whether by default or by conscious selection we have them and we use them.  They rule our lives.

My coworkers hate me and undercut me every chance they get.  I’m ugly.  Once I achieve X, everything will be better.  Money buys freedom.  I need things to be happy.  The universe is benevolent.  Socialism destroys individual incentive.  Objects obey Newton’s laws of physics.  These are all possible mental models by which we attempt to deal with and interpret the world around us.

Why Should I Care About Mental Models?

Here is how Srikumar S. Rao said it in his marvelous book Are You Ready to Succeed? Unconventional Strategies to Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life.

“All transformation begins and ends with mental models.  Because these models dictate how you act under different circumstances and how you interpret the events that happen in your life, when you change the model, you change your life.”

When you change the model, you change you life.  That says all I need to know about why I should care.

Mental Models Are Important

The mental models you select to deal with external reality will play a big part in what your reality looks like in the future.  Your decisions and actions accumulate upon each other in a compounding effect.  Those decisions and actions are guided by your mental models.  Therefore selecting the right mental models becomes a critical step in getting what you want out of life.

Are Your Mental Models True?

The problem of course is in determining what that truth is in an absolute sense.  The way you see things is influenced not just by the new data coming in, but also by what’s already inside.  Confirmation bias is a powerful factor even for those of us who are aware of it’s existence.  Once we accept an idea, we tend to hold on to it for dear life.  That fact alone should give us pause on our confidence that we know the “truth”.  There are some incredibly effective and smart people whose mental models differ from mine.  I’m sure that my telling them I have the truth and they don’t is going to motivate them to immediately change to my way of thinking.

Mental Models Should Be Useful

If it is useful, it doesn’t matter whether someone else believes it is true or not.  It may not even really matter whether it is true or not.  What matters is if it enables you to achieve your ends.  For a rationally oriented person like me that’s a hard model to accept, but I believe it to be a key to success in getting what you want.  The value of a mental model ultimately resides in its utility.

Useful Models Will Vary Among Individuals

My genes, my circumstances, my past experiences, my goals, and other factors may impact how well a particular model works for me.  That same model may be more or less useful to you.  What works for one person does not always work for another.  Keep that in mind next time you want to convert someone to your truth and they resist.  Just because it works for you does not mean it will for them.  Maybe it will, but it is certainly not worth getting upset or frustrated about.

You Need to Be Flexible

When a mental model no longer serves your purpose, you need to be willing to modify it or drop it.  You can hold on to your dogmatic truth even while it destroys you.  You can be unhappy, unfulfilled, and frustrated, but you were right and I hope that makes up for it all.  I would have never written or uttered those words ten years ago.  My mental models have changed.

Even moving from context to context you need to be willing to switch mental models if you find it useful.  When a physicist is describing the behavior of quantum particles it may be important that his model include the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.  But when he gets in his car to drive home he needs to be able to reasonably predict both the position and momentum of the cars around him.

Isn’t This All Just Another Mental Model?

Yes it is, but it is one that I find incredibly useful.  I think you will too.

What Mental Models Are Useful?

Srikumar S. Rao in the book I mentioned above believes that a mental model of a benevolent universe is the best general purpose mental model.  It’s hard to argue with that idea because it works for many people.  I can certainly see the point, but that’s a step I can’t take right now.  It would create too much cognitive dissonance.  I prefer a model of an indifferent universe.

In writing this blog I’m sharing with you my opinion of the most useful mental models.  Here are some of my favorites and I hope you enjoy them:

You Cannot Choose the Wrong Path

Redefining Our Ultimate Goals

Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

Are We Disconnecting From Real Life?

Own Your Circumstances and Stop Being the Victim

Choose well and live well.

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Asking yourself the right kinds of questions is a powerful tool to keep you focused on what really matters.  The following are some of the questions I like to ask myself.

1. Is this a strengthening decision that will create good habits or a weakening decision that will create bad habits?
2. Will this take me closer to my goals or further away from my goals?
3. Am I creating long term pain in return for short term gain?
   
4. Am I happy and having fun right now?
   
5. Am I doing what I want to do or what others (partner, family, friends, society) think I should be doing?
6. Am I living my values in this moment?
7. Is this the most important thing I can be doing right now?
8. Will I care about this issue in 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 year, or in 10 years?
9. When I’m lying on my deathbed, will I be glad I spent life’s precious minutes doing what I’m doing right now?
   
10. What action can I take right now to move forward.
    
11. What can I learn from this situation?
    
12. How is this affecting the people I care about?
    

Do you have a question to add to the list?

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How To Be Rich and Happy is the title of a new book by John P. Strelecky and Tim Brownson.  That is rather a bold claim to be made by any book and I have to admit I started reading it with more than a little skepticism.

The authors define Rich and Happy as the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want.  Once again, I see that as a rather bold claim and it sets up a lot of expectations for the book.  Did the book meet those expectations?  In a word, no.  My credibility means a lot to me so I’m not going to say something I don’t believe.  If you assume that means this is a negative review, you would be very mistaken.

I thought this was an excellent book and I recommend it to my readers.  However, I don’t think this book reveals the secret formula to having whatever you want whenever you want it.  That’s just too high of a hurdle for anybody to clear.  But having said that, there is no reason why you should hesitate to buy it.  In my opinion, no book is ever going to do that.  I’m not going to give an obviously false gushing review in order to get a couple of affiliate clicks.  My credibility means something to me and I don’t recommend anything lightly.

I do think the book provides an excellent toolset to give you a lot more of what you want a lot more often than you are getting now.  I read the book all the way through in one sitting even doing the exercises.  I don’t recommend you do that and I’m sure the authors don’t either.  I originally read about 40 pages and then put it down for a few weeks.  Then I came back to it and started over and read it all the way through.  How To Be Rich and Happy started slow for me.  It got interesting in the middle and then finished with a wonderful flourish.  Not often will I read something this long (218 pages) all the way through.  This one kept my interest.  I will be putting it’s ideas to use.

I’ve read a lot of personal development books.  A select few were life-changing and a couple of those I read when I was a teenager decades ago.  Over the years some of these books were WOW type books because they opened my eyes up to something entirely new and amazing.  Many of them were interesting and taught me something I didn’t know before, or gave me a new perspective on something I had previously encountered.  Some of them were just mind-numbing repetition of the same old stuff.

This book was not life-changing for me nor was it a WOW book.  I say that because very little in it was entirely new.  I might have said something different 10 years ago, but that was then and this is now.  There were a couple of exercises or concepts that were new and interesting, but most of them were things I had encountered in various contexts before.  The authors readily admit this about their book right up front.  I loved the Rich and Happy Matrix concept though.  I’m going to hang that one up at my desk.  The Rich and Happy Return was clever.

The fact that I found it interesting enough to read all the way through in one sitting says a great deal about it to me.  The authors should agree since they spend a fair number of pages talking about the importance of the feeling you get from your unconscious mind.  I got a good feeling.

In analyzing the book more objectively I would say that it organizes a number of highly effective concepts and techniques into a common thread that builds throughout. Many books talk conceptually about various ideas without a coherent way to put them into practice.  How To Be Rich and Happy is a very practical book and it’s ideas are amazingly simple and straightforward.  The concepts are explained in an very clear and focused manner.  This book was very well done, make no mistake about that.  The authors show you how to easily put it into practice.  I say “easily” in a conceptual context.  There is nothing complicated about this stuff.  But like everything else you actually have to act.  This is not The Secret.  You can’t attract your wonderful life by sitting around wishing it to be so.

You can’t lose with this book.  You get a unbelievable one-year money back guarantee.  If you buy this and don’t value it simply ask for your money back.  I know Tim and I’m sure he will give you your money back.  If he doesn’t I will.

I’m sure Tim was hoping I would say his book was life-changing.  It may be for you but I can’t know that it will be.  Even if it didn’t have that incredible guarantee, I would not hesitate to highly recommend it.  As it does, the worst thing that can happen is that you spend a few hours on something you think is worthless, you start thinking I suck, and you ask for a refund.  You can always watch some mind-numbing TV for a few hours for the same $0 cost.  I can guarantee that won’t be life changing.  Maybe, just maybe for you, How To Be Rich and Happy will be that life-changing or WOW book.  Or maybe it will just be a nice no-risk investment in a little better life.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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I thought I would list some of the books I’ve read recently and found interesting or enjoyable recently.  I won’t write a lot about them because they are Amazon links that you can follow and get a lot more information than I can provide here.

Heart Warming

I love animals and this book just made me feel good.  A Lion Called Christian: The True Story of the Remarkable Bond Between Two Friends and a Lion.

Happiness and Well-Being

Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life – I highly recommend this book.  It doesn’t seem to be too well known but 64% of Amazon reviewers gave it 5 stars.  I agree.  The author Dr. Todd Kashdan claims the missing ingredient in much of the popularization of positive psychology is curiosity.  Very well written.

Two books by Tal Ben-Shahar The Pursuit of Perfect: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Start Living a Richer, Happier Life and Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment.  The author has a very personable writing style and these books are full of insights that I found valuable.  They are both fairly short (200 pages) and easy to read.  I found the one on perfection to be slightly preferable because it covers less well-travelled ground.

Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want is outstanding.

I wrote a whole article called Positivity Leads to a Flourishing Life on this book so I won’t say anymore here other than I recommend it: Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity, and Thrive.

Productivity

Work the System: The Simple Mechanics of Making More and Working Less is a unique and fascinating book by Sam Carpenter. It gets an 90% 5 star rating on Amazon.

I absolutely loved Can I Have Your Attention?: How to Think Fast, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Concentration.  This book is obviously not widely read and my review on Amazon is the only one out there.  I gave it 5 stars when I was only 1/2 way through the book.  So maybe I’m crazy and maybe I liked it because it was so unique.  I really don’t know, but it is an inexpensive and short 200 page paperback so how can you lose?

I devoured The Age of Speed: Learning to Thrive in a More-Faster-Now World and now I’m trying to figure out how to use it.  It is a quick and interesting read.

OK, I read this one a long time ago but it is an idea that most people just don’t seem to apply: The 80/20 Principle: The Secret to Success by Achieving More with Less.

Good to Great

The book gets a 94% 5 star rating on Amazon: The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great. I truly enjoyed this book and it has a fairly unique thesis.  Rick Smith the author writes about how to make “the leap” without leaping and taking a lot of risk.  It’s 200 pages long and is an easy read.

Health

I bought this book the day it came out.  I noticed it has since received a 100% 5 star rating on Amazon.  It is a fascinating and unique book and I strongly recommend it.  Move into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality

Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever – This is a very interesting and highly valuable book in my opinion.  The nine steps are a mnemonic for the word “transcend”: Talk with your doctor; Relaxation; Assessment; Nutrition; Supplements; Calorie reduction; Exercise; New technologies; Detoxification.  The authors have an extremely optimistic view of the future in health that may not come to pass, but this is an excellent resource.

Odd

I thoroughly enjoyed The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, but it is rather controversial and gets mixed reviews.  To a curious person like myself it was a very interesting read.

Biography

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer is a long (721 pages) biography about the father of the atomic bomb.  I found it engrossing.

True Story

Trail Of Feathers: Searching for Philip True is about a reporter who was murdered in Mexico and the subsequent search for justice.

Life in General

I thought this book was excellent but be forewarned: it is a rejoinder to the very popular The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.  Thus, it is not for everyone.  Robert M. Price writes from a humanist perspective:  The Reason Driven Life: What Am I Here on Earth For?

What do you think?  Leave a comment and join the conversation.

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I don’t claim these 7 simple principles are the principles for living the good life.  There are others that I reluctantly left out, but I chose these because they are simple and easy to understand.  I also wanted to limit the number of principles to seven, otherwise I would be violating principle number one.

Figuring out what actions need to be taken with these principles is not complicated.  Some of them are conceptually simple, but not necessarily easy to implement.  For example, eliminating draining people is a very simple concept.  It is easy to identify the people in your life that drain you and knowing what needs to be done as a next step is straightforward.  However, it requires courage and determination and for some of you, implementing it may be very uncomfortable.

1. Keep it Simple and Quick

   For some reason we tend to complicated everything.  If you want to go from point A to point B, travel in a straight line.  Don’t take any detours by adding unnecessary steps.  Life is not that complicated so why not try simple for a change?  You need to eat, sleep, love, express gratitude, and find meaning.  Pick the obvious, simple, or easy alternative and go for it.  Go with your gut and just enjoy the ride for a change.

2. Reduce Your Choices

   It may sound counterintuitive but the more choices you have the more unhappy you are.  Stop killing yourself with choices.

   Barry Schwartz calls it “the paradox of choice,”.  Facing many possibilities leaves us stressed out—and less satisfied with whatever we do decide. Having too many choices keeps us wondering about all the opportunities missed.

   When you seem to have too many alternatives to choose from, a good way to reduce the problem is to just reduce the time spent pondering the decision.  You want to lose weight and don’t know which diet is best?  Eat less.  Don’t know which outfit to wear?  Put on some damn clothes!  Want to see a movie?  Pick the first one that grabs your attention and head out the door.  Reduce your choices and stop wasting time making the simple complicated.  Stop fretting over the perfect decision and start living a little.

3. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff

   I believe this to be one of the most important attitude changes you can make.  When you don’t sweat the small stuff, you allow your mental energy to be available for the big stuff.  I’ve made a lot of progress in not sweating the small stuff and it has made all the difference in the world for me.

4. Identify the Essential and Eliminate the Rest

   This is the basic principle espoused by Leo Babauta.  It is simple in concept, but takes a lot of commitment to implement.  Most people don’t progress their lives the way they want to because they spend huge amounts of time on the non-essential.  You need to sit down and specifically identify what in your life is essential and then eliminate everything else.  You will tend to think everything you do is essential and nothing can be eliminated.  Don’t get caught in that trap.  What if you only had one month to live?  Would all that trivia be essential then?

5. Eliminate the Drain People

   For most of us, people taxes are more burdensome than government taxes.  It is something that is overlooked and taken as a given, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

   You have it within your power to eliminate from your life the people who drain your resources.  The debaters, the complainers, the victims, the angry, the rude, the needy, and those who think you are obligated to live your life for them should be eliminated.

   If you think you can’t eliminate them, at least reduce the tax you pay to them by limiting your interaction with them.  Most important of all you should set yourself free from manipulative relationships.

6. Living in the Present Moment

   So much has been written on this that I won’t spend a lot of words on it.  Here is a nice article from Psychology Today: Six Steps to Living in the Moment.

7. Be Fit and Healthy

   Some of you may believe that being fit and healthy is not that simple, but it is actually quite straightforward.  It may require intense commitment to habit change in order to implement, but it is most assuredly not complicated. Do short, intense, and interval type exercises like the PACE program (not an affiliate link).  Eat natural whole foods.  Eat a lot of raw fruits and vegetables for enzymes.  Eat fish, chicken, and grass fed beef.  Eat tons of green leafy and cruciferous vegetables.  Eat a variety of seeds and nuts.  Vin’s Natural Bias blog is an excellent resource for natural eating.  See how simple that was?

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