Get Out of Your Own Way and Focus on What Matters

Last week’s thoughts on simplifying our lives seemed to strike a chord with a lot of people. I was a bit surprised.

Perhaps we’re at a point where we realize that we’ve been going about things the wrong way when it comes to leading happy, healthy lives.

If only we could figure out what matters, and focus on those things. That would naturally lead us to stop focusing on what we’ve been told signifies success, but instead leaves us feeling hollow.

Well, we actually do know what matters. It’s the aspects of our lives that lead to well-being.

It’s not a big house and a fancy car …

In other words, these are the things that we can do something about that lead to a healthy and happy life. And they’re basically true for people everywhere.

Gallup conducted a comprehensive global study of more than 150 countries, which provided insight into the well-being of more than 98% of the world’s population. They discovered five universal elements of well-being that make the difference between a thriving life and one spent suffering.

The findings were published in the book Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements. Here are the five categories of well-being that are essential to people across the world:

• The first element is about how you occupy your time or simply liking what you do every day: your Career Well-Being.
• The second element is about having strong relationships and love in your life: your Social Well-Being.
• The third element is about effectively managing your economic life, regardless of the amount of wealth: your Financial Well-Being.
• The fourth element is about having good health and enough energy to get things done on a daily basis: your Physical Well-Being.
• The fifth element is about the sense of engagement you have with the area where you live: your Community Well-Being.

You’re probably doing really well in at least one of these areas — the study found that to be true for 66% of people. But only 7% are thriving in all five, which means most of us are struggling in key areas of our lives in ways that are damaging our well-being and wearing us down.

Life sucks when work sucks

As you might guess, people tend to rate health and wealth as the most important contributors of well-being. But the five categories are ranked in order of average importance, which makes whether you enjoy your work the top dog around the globe.

This brings us to the dissatisfaction of midlife. What’s termed a mid-life crisis is really a mid-career crisis. You may have by all accounts a “great” job — except you’ve come to realize it’s not all that great for you personally.

If you’re not driven by a sense of purpose to get up in the morning and do what you do, you’re likely nowhere near as satisfied with your life as you could be. But what can you do? You’re 40-something, with kids and perhaps parents to support.

There will always be reasons why you won’t let yourself be happy. And we usually externalize them to forces outside of our control. But that’s generally not the case.

Get out of your own way

The single biggest threat to your own well-being is you. For much of the time, we’re on autopilot, and our short-term decisions override what’s best for our long-term well-being.

The instant pleasure of that doughnut trumps your health goals, even though you feel crappy almost instantly. A new pair of shoes gives us a great short-term feeling compared with investing the money — but that feeling quickly fades.

And yet somehow we think the answer is to head back to the metaphorical shoe store? That’s the cliched definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

The truth is, you can stop letting things that don’t matter run your life and damage your well-being at any time. You can focus on what truly matters right now, because the U-shaped happiness curve tells us that around the age of 50, you’re likely going to anyway.

Why wait?

Keep going-

Brian Clark

P.S. Remember when Billy Corgan had hair and didn’t look like Uncle Fester? No? Well then, you’re going to want to rock out to this week’s Further Flashback. You’re welcome. 😉

Why rational optimism is the key to success and less stress

By Brian Clark

Overly optimistic people can be annoying. These shiny happy people seem out of place in a world that is definitely not all unicorns and rainbows.

On the other hand, without optimism, how would we even keep going? Why would we seek to improve ourselves? The key is to be rationally optimistic:

Rational optimism means taking a realistic assessment of the present moment. It means maintaining the belief that you can put one foot in front of the other, take action, and overcome a challenge or reach a goal.

It’s no surprise that rational optimists tend to meet more of their personal and professional goals. But does this success lead to satisfaction?

The experience of success

Michelle Gielan is a positive psychology researcher and the author of Broadcasting Happiness: The Science Of Igniting And Sustaining Positive Change. Her work suggests that optimism and financial well-being are closely linked:

We surveyed 2,000 adults nationwide and found that optimists are seven times more likely to experience high levels of financial well-being. They feel better about their money, no matter how much they make or have, and they’re significantly more likely to make positive choices about it.

Well, that’s reason for optimism. But what if you’re not exactly Panglossian in temperament?

Optimism can be learned

Things are looking up on this front as well — Gielan’s research reveals you can learn to become more optimistic. Here are some simple things to try:

1. Take a ‘now’ step: Don’t wait until you have a perfect plan with everything figured out. Start now with a meaningful first step, and celebrate your incremental progress. This gets your brain into “win” mode, which provides encouragement to keep going when things get tougher.
2. Focus on the good: Our minds tend to focus on the negative, which leads to stress about our slow progress. Each day, take two minutes to write down three new, specific things you’re grateful for. This switches your mental frame from negative to positive.
3. Expect the unexpected: You’re going to make mistakes and experience setbacks, so let’s just get good with that now. When you accept this reality, your resilience grows each time you recover. Then setbacks actually fuel your optimism — because you know you’ll get past them.

Realistic optimism isn’t about demonstrating your sunny disposition. It’s about taking action in the face of adversity, and continually coming out on top.

This is what optimists can teach you about dealing with stress (Fast Company)

The key to life-long learning is teaching

By Trudi Roth

George Bernard Shaw was a 47-year-old curmudgeon when he wrote in the play Man and Superman:

Those who can do, those who can’t teach.

For the rest of us, midlife is the perfect time to learn and develop new expertise. Turns out, the way to develop expertise is to teach someone else what you learn.

Acquiring new skills is an evidenced-backed way of keeping your brain sharp and memory keen. Sharing new knowledge gives you an extra brain boost from synthesizing what you’ve learned and then paying it forward.

Explain, please

Teaching has long been seen as an effective tool to sharpen your intelligence, going all the way back to the ages of Seneca and Socrates. The magic lies in the interactive exchange of information, or as author Michael Simmons calls it, the Explanation Effect:

Looking at text and expecting to learn is not far off from looking at food and expecting to get its nutrients. We need to digest our life experiences just like we digest our food. Without some form of active processing, almost everything we read is lost within weeks.

This doesn’t mean that you have to scramble to find a gig as an adjunct professor. Teaching things to others is something you can do in the context of daily life.

Teach something new every day

Research shows what makes learning-by-teaching effective lies not in passively reading or redoing notes, but in the active retrieval process. You’ve got to know what you’re talking about to explain and retain it.

Simmons has a few easy suggestions about how to incorporate teachable moments into daily life:

• Talk to a friend about a book you’ve just finished
• Show your coworker a new production technique
• Explain a life lesson to your children
• Join a mastermind group
• Think through a challenging concept out loud

Or you could just keep a Today I Learned log by recording it in a journal for yourself, or sharing a new concept with others in person or on social media. You can start now by teaching someone what you just learned from reading this article. 🙂

Memory & Learning Breakthrough: It Turns Out That The Ancients Were Right (Medium)