How has the first month of this year been for you?

In a previous article we presented action as the antidote to brain-lock --which is what happens when the quest for getting it 'just right' results in too many details that tangles your thinker into knots. Purposeful action unkinks the mess and jump-starts you into moving again.

On the other hand, today is about sharing the methods we use to to keep steady while still aiming for the best possible results...with a little side order of Zen thrown in. Ahem, here goes:


When you work on something that is vital to you, you and the work change each other. Do you recall the Chinese symbol for yin and yang? Imagine that going on in your life: you influence your work, your work influences you, both carry pieces of the other inside them. Finding the balance, the particular rhythm, is key, but sometimes that's hard to do because so many things get in the way.

What are the little things that have tripped you up as you were turning over a new leaf, and attempting to make things better for this year? Have you noticed any commonalities in the way they went off-kilter? What were the things that contributed to the mistakes, now that you think about it? Here are some of mine that I noticed after feeling the crash.

Fuzzy thinking is a rather involved subject (luckily it has its own page on Wikipedia) and the simplest way to describe it describes is as "a many-valued logic."

The kind of fuzzy thinking I'm talking about is a few steps away from the yes-no logic you may have seen plotted out in many business procedural flowcharts. Fuzzy logic isn't yes-no. It's " yes," "No,"  and "I'm not sure/ I don't know/ Hey, wait. What's that?/ What about this?/ Let's do this and see what happens while we do other stuff too."

Why cultivate it?
It's easier. Fuzzy logic is closer to the way human reasoning processes work. You get to see multi-dimensionally, not just 'the obvious choice' or what's right in front of you. You get branch out into little known eddies and creeks of new knowledge-- and while knowledge is power, knowledge plus new insight? That can open up a whole new ballgame for you to play in.

How do you practice fuzzy logic?

• Play with the way you look at things. Look at the obvious. Now look at what's next to it. Then look at what's under that.
  
• Info-dump. Keep current. Don't assume all you know is all there is. Ask for other people's points of view, and remain open to where they're coming from.
• Read the hell out of stuff that interests you, and ask other people what they'd recommend.
• Go out and experience things -- without a plan, and without judgment. In other words, be willing to get lost.

See, linear thinking tries to find the shortest distance between two points -- thus the straight line. Apply it to life and that flies out the window.

First off, let's make a distinction between being nervous and being anxious, at least for the purpose of this discussion. Nerves, the jitters, the 'butterflies' -- these terms describe the mixed ball of fear-excitement that's usually rooted in the belly and sends tendrils of electricity out under the skin. Usually it's in response to a new environment, or at facing an unknown element. You may be told what to expect, but you don't know for sure, and so you still get 'first-day nerves' or "What the hell is this now?" playing in your mental background noise.

Anxiety is a pervasive, niggling vague ball of tangled fears, key words being 'pervasive' and 'vague'. Picture anxiety as a disgusting little mess plugging your mental shower drain. Sometimes it lets your thoughts drain a bit, but never all the way. Eventually, with everything going on in your noggin backing up, you can't relieve the pressure, and it builds up to affect what you do and how you do it. You can't settle on any one thing, and this frenetic mental activity drains your attention, your energy and your vitality.

In what ways does anxiety affect your decision-making capacity?

• Anxiety scatters your focus - You aren't able to settle down and be in the right frame of mind to make a clear-headed, informed, conscious decision. You're not there, you're all over the place, like trying to listen in on half-a-dozen on-going conversations at once.
• Anxiety leaves you indecisive - There's not enough of you to make a united, singular choice, being you've split up trying to cover all the bases. You're a house divided, you want to make the best choice but you're just not sure, and you're caught with one foot half-way out the door.
  
• Anxiety can leave you looping (and feeling loopy) - You get stuck in a repeating tangled track and you can't get off.
  
• Anxiety can leave you paralyzed - You can't move and this weighs you down even more.

How do you deal with it in real-time action?

Welcome to the tail-end of the first week of a new year! How have you been? How have things gone for you this week? Made any, ah, changes, lately? *Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more.*

It's traditional to consider the new year as a blank canvas, one open to all the dreams, goals and plans you want to draw on it. And while envisioning a beautiful life for yourself is the first step, making it real takes a lot of things into consideration: a supportive environment, a clear vision that begs to be given life, and the magnetic quality of a dream you're so passionate about that it attracts help from the universe. Making it possible, however, begs a few questions.

Are you in a good position to make your goals attainable?
If the environment in which you plan to realize your goal is unfriendly, that takes a toll on your emotional, mental and physical health. You've probably heard or read about jobs where the only thing that kept people there aside from the money was their co-workers.  And we all have our own 'best conditions' for growth and real involvement.

Some people prefer working in small, tight teams, or mostly unsupervised, while others need the social stimulation of a big group and a team leader to give clear directions. What you need is a place that will challenge you to grow and stable enough to help keep you steady at the same time, not one where you'll get lost, flounder and be left without support or options.

If the things you need to make your goals achievable are in in short supply or unavailable, you have to take it on yourself to introduce these things into your environment. Sometimes that means a consistent, demanding investment of time and labor: to carve out a space for serious study, or strengthen the habit of getting up early to exercise first thing in the morning, or to write two pages every day, no matter what. Sometimes that means a continuous resistance to the impulse to buy something to cheer you up when you're feeling down. Sometimes that means saying "No." And meaning it.

Well, we're there. The year's almost over, and whether you say goodbye to it with a wistful, bittersweet smile, or let go with a sigh of mixed relief and sadness, when faced with a brand new year to fill, by golly, one can't help but feel hope at the thought.

The past three articles deal with trying to see what you want to happen in your life in the next 12 months. Committing to a year-end review gives you a solid record of events on which to base your major moves for the next year. Knowing what you want to get out of your goals fuels you for the journey you're about to take, and examining your general world-view helps you in the problem solving and anticipating stages.


The last article of the year deals with the aftermath of all that mental activity. The major points and their supporting details are in place, now it's time to look for the loopholes and think about how it can go awry. Think of it as planned last minute jitters.

In Anticipation Versus Worry, we drew a thick line between the act of anticipating a problem, and worrying about it. Today will include a little exercise that only requires about 15-30 minutes at the most, then another revisit some time later. Ready?

You now have blanket permission  to wring your hands, pull at an earlobe, and to execute whatever nervous tic you most feel comfortable with while worrying. Before you do so, however, kindly have some different-colored pens and some clean sheets of paper handy, as well as the results from all the questions asked in the previous articles. Review those answers first, okay?

Done? Go. Worry your little black heart out. Write all your mental mosquitoes down. Then leave the list in a safe place and sleep unencumbered with the weight of all those pestiferous black thoughts buzzing at you. Sweet dreams.

(Now pretend it's tomorrow).

How are things looking up for you next year? This is not a trick question.

Today it's all about understanding perspective -- your own, and that of others. The way you look at something affects how you treat it, see it and handle it. It's quite obvious, right? You don't handle things of no consequence -- you just sweep them aside, ignore them, don't even see them -- until someone tells you these things are important, or something happens to make you see them in a new light -- and you shift a little in your world-view. When it comes to a lot of things, you just won't care until you do.

You learn perspective the more life experience you willingly expose yourself to, and the more viewpoints you entertain from other people.  If you get stuck in your head for too long without real-world feedback from others, you only have your own feedback to fall back on -- and it would be like being stuck with only the music from your childhood playing on a loop.

Depending on the soundtracks you grew up with, this can go either way.  And since every family's dysfunctional in its own way, more often than not you get less than stellar messages: "You're too stupid to succeed, you can't do this, you can't do that, you'll never be worth anything, don't rock the boat, play it safe, don't trust other people. Do what it takes to get ahead, but don't be more successful than your family, etc." ( And you wonder why you trip you up further down the road. )

Navigating between conflicting messages, you need to find a way to keep the balance. Putting things in their proper perspective: you share this world with other people, it's only fitting that aside from learning to get along with others and respecting their viewpoints, you learn as much as you can from what other people have to show you.

Made any plans lately?

Why are you doing the important things you do? Why are you drawing up the plans you're making? There's got to be something that keeps you doing them, and when you get to know what that something is, you can surprise yourself with how many ways you can get more of that something into your life.

• Your crazy hours are running you down, leaving you open to every sniffle and cough that presents itself. When your friends and family are still sleeping, you're up, and vice-versa. You hardly get the time to have a meaningful conversation with any of them.  You want to feel healthier and more connected to the people important to you. You want to keep to a regular schedule, and you struggle to do so.
• You're tired of scrimping and saving and feeling poor, dammit, but when you look around everyone's in the same boat, and you're not the only one hurting, so you put on the boots and keep going. Things won't stay like this forever, and you end your 30-minute pity party to seize the day and kick its ass.
• It sticks in your throat like you've swallowed a whole pineapple -- or a grenade -- but you don't run, and you start that very important conversation that you've been meaning to have with your wife/boss/co-workers/employees/friends, etc. for weeks.
  

Thinking about how you think about things is called metacognition  -- And when you examine your way of thinking, you can uncover long held biases you, haha, never though about. You Are Not So Smart, David McRaney's website, lists down many of the ways we fool ourselves into thinking that we make unbiased decisions and hold balanced views.

When you actively become involved in "thinking about thinking," you become more adept at seeing things clearly, as they are, not as you think on the surface they are. You develop clarity. When you see things clearly, with little illusion or self-delusions, you can act unencumbered by false information, inflated expectations and sketchy data.

You see what you truly need to live the life you're happy with. You know what matters, and these things  that matter to you are both goals and spurs.

Welcome to December. Congratulations, you made another year!

It's around this time that networks start promoting their December "Coming Soon!" program schedules, traditionally going all out at year's-end by running special broadcasts with titles like "The Year In Review" , followed by "The Best and Worst of 20__" and "The Top Ten Lists of The Year."

It's not just the media doing this, though. It's a thing we all like to do around the tail-end of the year. We take this time to re-cap, looking back on everything that happened and everything we've done, and then making the time to visualize what we would do differently next year, planning for these things and hoping we would get to accomplish them within the next 365 days.

And it's almost next year, you know. Blink, and you'll be surprised how quickly it gets here. So before this year ends, how did it go for you? What stood out? Anything new you learned about yourself this year? What are your heartfelt goals for next year? Better have some pen and paper handy, then. You have some work to do.

And here are a few bits of advice to help you along with the planning process:

Do not make New Year's resolutions. They will only make you feel bad about yourself.

How do you chase a moving target?
You don't lose sight of it. Period. You do whatever it takes, scramble, hustle, hot-foot it, but you keep your eye on the prize. If you lose visual, don't panic. Be still. Keep your eyes peeled for movement. Anticipate the easiest, fastest, sneakiest ways the target will try to use to escape. Be ready to move.

How do you chase a moving goal?
Keep it in front of you as much as you can. Make a regular reminder for yourself with it if you want to make it a habit that will last -- by regular I mean daily and by reminder I mean actionable items. If it's a big goal, break it down into bite sized pieces and remind yourself to deal with those pieces everyday.

• Big goal broken down into small chunks over time = success
• Small goal broken up into smaller chunks over time = big success

The goal is something you want to happen. Maybe it has to happen for something you want more to become a reality. Or maybe you want it out off the way so you can move on to better things. Whatever your reasons, hitting the goal lets you do what you want to do after it.

The goal is a target. A target is something to aim for. Or to follow, like a game animal, but in a weird theoretical way where instead of following the tracks, you connect the dots that lead to completing the goal.

If you want success on your own terms, you have to define your terms.

"Defaulting" is what we call what happens when you don't make a move in your favor...the situation either stays the same, or it shifts to the most likely outcome to happen without your influence. You don't get to have a say anymore even if you are affected, because you didn't speak up when you had the opportunity. This goes for action too, not just words.

This is another facet to knowing exactly what you want. If you are clueless about what you truly desire in your life, if you don't know what you want, you'll take what you can get...again, you land in the default zone. You didn't know any better, or maybe couldn't have cared less at the time. You drifted, went with the flow or followed the status quo. You followed the rules. So, take a look at where you are now. Assess your life.

Are you satisfied with what you're doing with your time? Are you content in the life you have? Are you enjoying the security that you envisioned for yourself? Are those visions actually yours?

Success on someone else's terms are their kind of success, not yours. As a kid you may believe they are yours because those standards are what you grew up with, and measured yourself against. Since you grew up with these standards, they're normal to you. They become your default standards -- but sooner or later, living by default standards can get wearing. Teenage rebellion is only the tip of the iceberg, but it's a very honest example. As an adult, you can take the initiative to test things for yourself and find out what you can do, find out which standards you can truly claim as your own....and you can say it's because you're trying to find out who you are and what you stand for.

For example, which of the following means "success" to you?