A sperm and egg got together around nine months before your birthday. Some of you let your mother know about your personality before you left the womb. You breathed air for the first time. You learned what the boundaries were by doing first and discovering the consequences afterwards. You grasped the language of your parents and then learned the boundaries of what you could repeat. You learned what you needed to do and/or say to get what you wanted. Whether it was attention or some toy. This continued until you decided to no longer rely on your parents to directly support you in life. Some of you broke the “umbilical cord” in your teens, some of you have not and are still relying on your parents will into life.

Somewhere during this time, you learned what was “right” and what was “wrong”. This came in the form of what to do or not do to not get yelled at, have something taken away or in general avoid pain and strife. If you were fortunate, this was consistent as well as flexible as you progressed from a one year old to an eighteen year old.

Now back to the question, “What philosophy are you currently working with in life?”. If you have not given much thought to this question, then the odds of you being in a reactive mode of living is pretty high. Your philosophy is to survive by doing enough of what you have to do so you can get what you need to eat, sleep and pursue pleasurable activities. You have a flavor of the philosophy, “If it feels good, do it”. Now this does not necessarily mean that just because it feels good you will do it. My point is, this is the guide you use to make decisions. With this philosophy, if something brings you pleasure, then it is ok to pursue it.

What is wrong with finding those things that bring you pleasure and pursuing it? The pursuit of happiness is supposed to be one of our inalienable rights according to the writer of the United States Declaration of Independence. Some might make a distinction between happiness and pleasure, but I feel it is splitting hairs for the moment.

How else are you supposed to find happiness except to find those things that bring you pleasure or makes you feel good? I hear taking drugs, getting drunk, getting married, having children, owning a home, running your own business, multiple sex partners, living frugally, being a vegan, being a vegetarian, voting are all things that make you feel good. Yet, some of these activities have long term consequences that I am not so sure is beneficial for long term pleasure.

What if a guy, a male, were to lock themselves in a room. Food was arranged to be brought in on a daily basis of whatever he wished to eat. He then had all the time he wished to masturbate in privacy. Would this be an acceptable way to pursue pleasure?

What if he were looking a child pornography, would that still be ok? He is not hurting anyone. Now why would I bring that up as a rational to support this being ok to do? Does it matter if our actions affect others? Why should we care as long as what we are doing brings us pleasure? Now what if his getting excited about cartoon drawings of children? Would that change your opinion?

I digress.

Pursuing your own pleasure is tempered by how it affects others. The less you care about how it affects others, the more the label “selfish” applies to you. Yet, we all pursue those things that bring us pleasure. We should be asking ourselves, does that pleasure last long enough to justify the efforts it takes to attain it?

*nods* There you go, that is the way to win the lottery.

Quit pulling my chain, AC, you are probably thinking. If that is all you have to say, then you are wasting my time. You are quite right, my friend, I would be yanking your chain if that was the substance of this article. However, it is not so put on hold the flaming email you were about to send me.

I think just about everyone has dreamed of what they would do if they won the lottery. What would you do first if a few cool millions came your way? What would you buy first? How much would you save? Who would you bestow gifts upon? Whom would you not? If can be a fun and revealing exercise.

I have indulged in this fanciful thinking. I have envisioned the home repairs I could make. Forget that, I have envisioned the home I would build on the land I would buy that would only be accessible by helicopter or mountain goat. Dreams of swooping in and doing a home make over a la a certain TV show that rebuilds homes in a week. How about a trip around the world first class all the way? The biggest screen TV, a powerful computer along with the largest monitor available and throw in a few vehicles and screw thoughts of the environment. Sounds like a few politicians I have heard reported, but now I digress.

I have never bought a lottery ticket.

Yep, you read that right. I have not pick one single set of numbers for any lottery. For at least 25 years I have imagined what I would do if I won the lottery. I have virtually wasted this time. I have wasted energy in trying to decide what I would do with something I have made zero effort to make happen.

I have finally had enough with this useless path of my imagination. Whenever, I start to think about this scenario, I look to find something to focus on that I will actually pursue. I now have a notebook that is filling up with journal entries, goals, objectives and the status on the goals/objectives. A couple of the goals have been accomplished as I try to make sure they are not so far out that I get frustrated.

What have you dreamed about that you have never gotten beyond daydreaming? What can you do to take that first step?

How do you guarantee yourself that you will never reach a destination? Never take a single step down that path. It is never enough to think about doing something. There must be some sort of action.

How do you view children? Are they seen by you as an annoyance? Are your children a burden? Do you feel they are out to wear you down and suck the life out of you? I don’t ask these questions to trick you or to make you feel guilty. I know how you are supposed to view children. You know, as a blessing, as the ultimate fulfillment in life.

Children are no more the answer to happiness and fulfillment than anything else you will encounter. Yes, children can be a blessing and bring great satisfaction. Children can also be the greatest trial you have ever encountered.

Raising a child is not rocket science, yet it is not a trivial matter either. I personally believe that bringing another human being into this world is mostly made up of endurance, perseverance, patience and listening skills wrapped in forgiveness, mercy and grace.

When the child first comes into your life things are actually very simple. Feed one end. Clean the other. If you are lucky, the child sleeps through the night soon. If not, you find out how hellish life is when you don’t get a good night’s sleep for a year (I got to experience the latter.).

You need to keep in mind that their first experience on how to interact with a man and with a woman is shaped by the parents or lack thereof. Daughters will be shaped by the love or lack of love of their father. Sons will be shaped by the love or lack of love of their mother. The son’s level of respect for women will be influenced by the respect they see their dad show their mother and the level of respect he requires them to show her.

Dads, you will provide the foundation to the kind of guy your daughter looks to date. You will influence the degree of desire she has to have a man in her life. The more love you show her the less likely she will settle for any boy. The less love you show her the more likely she will look for any kind of attention.

I am acutely aware that these are general statements. No one person is the same as another. No one situation is the same. You don’t interact exactly the same with a 0-2 year old as you would a 13-16 year old. Yet, that 2 year old is looking for independence just like that 16 year old is looking for it. The only difference is the 2 year old can be restrained and can’t drive.

This leads me to say something that I cannot stress strongly enough. Do not take anyone’s advice blindly. I don’t care how many degrees they may have, I don’t care how many books they have sold, I don’t care how many people they have legitimately helped. Do NOT follow their advice blindly.

How to know you are raising your children to be healthy and well adjusted?

1. They do what they are told … the first time they are told.
2. They offer to help you with household chores
3. They like to sit in the same room with you and talk with you
4. They volunteer information about their activities that they think you would not like

When your kids do those things above, you know you are on the right track. It takes patience, forgiveness, grace and mercy to build the trust for some of these things to happen, but it can happen.

Love is shown in action. If it is not, then don’t bother saying it.

I leave you with this. Rules without relationship leads to rebellion. Dads, never forget this for if you do, the teenage years will be unkind to you. If you learn this and come to understand this, the teenage years will be constructive and so much smoother.

This morning I was reminded that just because I don’t live in California does not mean I don’t have to worry about the ground shaking things apart. My first warning at 5:37am EST was my cat, who likes to sleep on my ankles at night, tearing off the bed, slamming into a wall and dashing for the door. He sounded like a person running down our stairs. My bed and our house shook for a good 10 seconds.

I remember years ago about the scare of the New Madrid fault line letting loose a big one again back around the late 80’s. Nothing happened of course. I say “of course” because predicting such things is chancy on the best of days. I believe the scientist that it will happen … soon. However, “soon” is relative to the thing that is doing the action. “Soon” to my teenager is RIGHT NOW! When my wife hears me say “soon”, she knows it won’t be today. “Soon” from the earth’s perspective could be a hundred years give or take a few decades.

We can’t live in fear of things that are beyond our control and expect to live life with a sense of contentment about what we are doing. I am still more likely to suffer injury from driving down the road than an earthquake. Make sure that today you are building someone up, that you are taking time to truly listen to your kids, to your spouse, to your family.

Don’t let today go by without giving them a hug, taking a walk with them or listening to what they have to say. Put some action to your feelings.

Update:
11:16am - I do believe that an aftershock has hit. Lasted about 15 seconds.

I applaud him.

How many times have you taken that first step and then quit? You got discourage because the results did not come after a couple of days. You let laziness creep in because it was easier to sit in front of the TV. You spent more time with people you have never met face to face (online gaming) than with your kids.

I have kept a journal at different times in my life. Consistency would not be a word to describe my efforts in writing down my thoughts. It is comparable to touching a grasshopper. At times you can push and shove the grasshopper and it stubbornly will not move, then suddenly it leaps and flies a great distance just to not move again. I will write furiously for a week or two or three and then abandon it. Sometimes I abandon it for a couple of years.

I have made attempts to record my musing/dreams/rants to better organize my thoughts. The hope was that something “better” would come out of it, some sort of progress would rise up from the pages. After a period of time, I found I was writing the same thing I wrote in the last journal attempt. I found it incredibly frustrating.

So instead of making a change, I stopped writing. I continued doing what came easiest to me which was my normal activities. Just like water finds the easiest way down a hill, I found myself doing what I always did with the same justifications, day after day, week after week, year after year. I did not really want to put much effort in making changes.

I am not sure when I learned this about myself, if you pressed me for a guess it would be in my mid 20’s. I learned this, I was a perfectionist. I was not a perfectionist in the sense that things had to be some arbitrary way. Instead things just had to be done the “right” way and it had to done that way the first time. Ok, you can stop laughing now.

So when I could not do things the “right” way the first time, I would simply no longer attempt to do it. If you don’t try, then you don’t fail. If you don’t fail, then you don’t feel bad. I stopped journaling as it was not making any difference in my life. Then I would go back to it to be at least doing something. When I look back in hindsight, good has come out of it. I learned I am stubborn in my laziness. It showed me that I thought about things too much and then let laziness rob me of opportunities.

Now, I am sure that some of you might have thought or said, “Duh, AC, if you don’t do anything, you can’t expect change”. In my earlier years, I sure would have said something similar. I could list many sayings about failure, experience, redefining how to view failure. I won’t, not in this post anyway. This post is about taking that next step, about the need to press on, to continue making an effort in your journey.

At the end of November 2007, I started a journal again. I have continued to use it almost daily since that first day. It is the longest I have kept at it. The difference is that I am more determined to make changes in my life. Remember the last post I made about taking the first step? I have learned this about myself, when pressure is applied in my life, I respond by making changes to meet those pressures.

“Inside every old person is a young person wondering, ‘What the heck happened?’” I don’t know the original person to attribute this quote, but I heard it from the fount of wisdom, Larry the Cable Guy himself. In my mind where my thoughts live, I am not that old. Yet, my body tells me that all is not the same. I don’t heal as fast as I did at 18 years old. Eating junk food for a weeks on end hides the stomach muscles I know are in there somewhere.

This time my journal is more than a journal to dump thoughts and feelings. It has goals recorded along with objectives. A goal is something “better” I want to see happen. An objective is something that accomplishes the goal but can be seen happening by others. For example, a goal I have is more focused time with my wife. Focused time means where we are doing something that involves interacting that does not involve the pets, kids or household issues. One objective has been just the two of us to go out to eat. Another objective has been to have the kids not talk to us for a period of time so that we could talk about our day. Some have called this “Couch time” although it is kitchen time for us. The first 30 minutes I am home and the wife and I are in the kitchen, it is our time to talk about the day without interruptions from the kids.

You are on a journey of a thousand miles. Each step that moves you forward is a successful step.

What has kept you from taking the second step, the third?

I think that the statements about cover of Vogue with LeBron James and Giselle referring to King Kong is nothing more than sensationalistic posturing. The guy is dribbling a basketball. When a basketball player makes a fantastic play and screams in the moment, I have seen crowds go nuts in support of the play. I see an athlete with his game face on and a model with her game face on.

Anything else means the person is looking to get their face on the news. In fact, you could make the same accusation about this post of mine in the context of wanting to take advantage of the uproar. Oh well, my intent is to give my opinions.

If you look at someone and make a decision or judgment based on their skin color, you are unfairly discriminating against them, even if that decision is favorable to them. This applies to gender, how fat or skinny, financial condition, education level or any other factor that is not based on their actions and/or abilities.

What do you think?

“An unexamined life is not worth living.”
– Socrates

How to start living the good life? Know yourself. This is the first step in making progress towards any lasting change. You may be thinking, “Well, AC, I know where I am at and I don’t like it. You are wasting my time telling me to look at something I already know and I want to change it, not dwell on it.”

What I mean is, do you know yourself? Do you understand the “why’s” of your life? Why do you make the decisions that you have made? Are those decisions made out of spite? Are they made because you waited so long that there is no other direction to go? Do you understand your motivations? Are you aware of your weaknesses? Do you understand your strengths? Do you see how strengths can be weaknesses?

When you encounter different situations in life, what you are comfortable with doing can be a hindrance to living a full life. For example, being stubborn is good when someone won’t take no for an answer, but bad when money is spent on shopping instead of bills. One that I am familiar with, being analytical is great when programming software, but can be a hindrance when wife is crying.

I am not some philosopher who likes to hear himself talk. I don’t care to get into discussions about some tree falling and does it make a sound if no one hears it. I know enough about the world around me that the blasted tree makes plenty of noise even if no one is around. If someone tries to convince me otherwise, then I know they are trying to manipulate me by creating a world that does not exist. If I decide to start down that path, if I let go of what I know to be true , then I can be convinced of anything.

We can create many lies with our imagination. I know I can and it gets me in trouble every time. I don’t need help of others to disconnect me from reality so they can take my money, my resources, or my time from me.

“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” – Helen Keller

So, in your pursuit of how to live life, stick with what you know until you know yourself very well. Do not go making large changes in a short matter of time. It took years for me to gain weight by a combination of age and overeating, it should take time to get it off . Please take that in context and not as medical advice. Looking for quick shortcuts only causes more heartache in the long run.

I once saw a counselor/life coach because early on in my life things did not feel right. Things were just not making sense for me. One exercise resulted in an insight that stunned me. I had chosen to emulate, to pattern, my life after my mother’s example. You see, I was very conscious to not be like my father. My father was and still is a stereotypical car salesman. He is a decent guy, however his focus is always trying to get the best deal, to negotiate and even manipulate to “win” in any situation.

I have learned when you run away from something, you are running towards something. I found out I ran towards being like my mom. I learned to be quiet, to try to smooth things over, and use passive resistance techniques when things did not go the way I wanted.

The first step in how to live your life is to know how you are living life now.

• How do you decide to spend money that is leftover from paying bills and food?
• How do you handle pressure? Do you rise to the challenge or fear making a mistake?
• Do you make changes reacting to some outside force?
• Do you make changes by simply deciding to make them?
• Are you more like your mom? Your dad? Why?

Discuss and share your experiences.