There isn't a rule, one way or formula

I'm sorry, but it makes me laugh when people say in order to be happy or successful or achieve goals you have to be this and you have to do that.

Like there's only one true way to go about it.

Like if you follow this exact pattern you will succeed and if you don't you won't.

There are definitely things we can say tend to work better for most people, other things that tend to not work so well and models that tend to be helpful; but when people cling on to such rigid rules and structures, I just see all the people who broke those rules and were happy and successful anyway and all those who followed the rules and still aren't.

I believe in models and observations and experimentation but not rules.

Then again, if I turned my experience into a set of rules for other people, I'd be making the same mistake.

By all means let's share ideas and tips with each other but let's not fall for the illusion of rules, rigid structures and falsely predictable if-then outcomes.

Life is yin and yang. Some people make a rule that you must have great, big, enormous, painful goals to succeed; and others make a rule that you must not set goals to live spiritually free.

There's some truth in both.

Life is rich in paradoxes.

Or are they not really paradoxes but examples of yin-yang cyclicism?

Some people could do with a goal or two, to be honest. Some people could do with no goals or less. It all depends on where we are right now and what nourishes our soul right now. Sometimes, it's time for doing, sometimes it's time for letting go.

Whilst it would be a mistake to turn this observation into a rule too, it often turns out that people who are addicted to goals actually don't need more goals, they need a holiday from goals; and people addicted to doing nothing sometimes, just sometimes, could do with a bit more structure. It's like a water mixer. It's not about absolute hot, absolute cold or even absolute middle. It's about turning the tap up a bit and down a bit as we need.

(Even spiritual practice might require some planning, discipline and structure.)

So, screw rules.

Feel where you are and turn the tap appropriately.

But don't make a rule out if that!

Wishing you health and happiness,

Steve

Sometimes life is about pushing more, sometimes it's about pushing less

My friend Chris once said life is the yin and the yang. I saw it. A dance between the active and the passive; between being the guide and the guided; between being the mover and the moved.

It seems to me our passage through life is a dance between doing and allowing. Sometimes it's time to do more. You're not going to build that business or write that book from the couch. Sometimes, though, it's time to allow more—to stop pushing against the resistance and allow life to guide you, rather than you guide it.

Peaceful wisdom knows exactly when to do each.

Fragile ego chooses poorly.

As a tip, I can only say this, though I've found it a profound guide in my life:

When we feel spiritual and emotional wellness—smoothness, like we're dancing in time with life, carry on.

When we feel spiritual and emotional illness—resistance, like we're dancing out of time with life, stop and take a moment. It may be a signal that it's time to change between doing more and allowing more.

It can go both ways. If we're being too passive, that feeling can be a call to get more active. If we're being too active, that feeling can be a call to get more passive.

Like I said, peaceful wisdom knows. The ego gets it wrong. If the ego is telling us we need to push more, we probably need to push less. If the ego is telling us we need to push less, we probably need to push more. Stopping and taking a moment is what allows wisdom to speak. It knows.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Steve.

We need to cut blame, shame and judgement out of our narratives about success

"Don't blame your lack of success on the world," they said.

They were right, in the sense there's no point blaming the world, other people or the weather for why things aren't working out for us. The problem is, the obvious turnaround is that we should blame ourselves instead, but there's no point doing that either.

Look, if things aren't working out, the only thing we can do more powerful than hope is change what we're doing now. It is down to us.

The thing is, though, there's a truth to success that a lot of old school coaches don't want to admit to: you can do everything right and still fail.

You see, unless we're talking about a simple goal like building a wall, which requires no cooperation from anyone or anything, there's going to be factors outside your control.

Take getting a job.

You can have your goal, you can have a plan, you can write your CV, you can register on the job listing sites and you can religiously apply for every job you find, every day, and present yourself well at every interview.

There are at least three factors in the results you'll get that are just not up to you. The first is what jobs are available. The second is who else you are competing with. The third and most crucial thing that just isn't up to you is the hiring manager's decisions. You can influence them, but you can't make them.

There is a point you have to surrender and let what is out of your hands take you over the line or not.

The smarter you work, the luckier you get.

Yes! But you can't deny there are still factors that are simply not up to you and you can still do everything right and fail.

What's worse, but it's real so get over it, is you can still do everything right and fail, then look over your shoulder and see someone doing everything wrong and succeed. You can persevere dilgently for years and see someone else score first time.

Sometimes the other guy gets the job even though you know you're better.

When that happens, what's the point of blame and shame? Seriously.

If there's a new play in town looking for someone to play the lead part and twenty actors audition, nineteen are not going to get selected no matter how good they are and no matter how perfectly they went about getting the audition.

If ten tins of beans sit proudly on the shop shelf, they're already doing as much as they can to be selected. If only nine people are shopping for beans that day, one tin isn't going to get selected and it means absolutely nothing about how good that tin is or its strategy for getting picked. It might not get picked the next day either and it still means nothing.

In fact, here's one of my rules of life:

You're going to get lots of rejection and it means absolutely nothing about you, your goals or your worth in the world.

The problem with blame and shame is they both lack love. They don't make us more successful, they just make failures more painful and they make us needy and desperate, two states that pretty much always work against us.

In fact, let's also kick out the word 'failure', because we've only truly failed in any venture when we give up or die.

Look, sometimes we screw up and we can see that's why we didn't win that time. Okay, so look at it, learn and do something differently, but don't insist on beating yourself first.

For as long as you're doing the best you know and are willing to keep learning, quit it with the narratives about blame and shame. Stop looking at the next person and comparing. Stop judging yourself.

Walk in peace and compassion.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Steve

I no longer believe in chasing success to become happy, peaceful or worthy

Success isn't the prerequisite of happiness, peace and worthiness, no matter what the 1980s era gurus told you.

The old 1980s-era success gurus used to teach us that we had to chase success to be happy. Some said we should create massive pain in our lives to motivate us towards our big, huge wealth and material, ego-expanding goals. Only then, they told us, could we be happy.

There was just one catch: If you actually achieved your big, huge goal, it clearly wasn't huge enough, so you had to set a bigger goal and mortgage your happiness again.

When do you get happy doing that? Who are you really doing that for?

It's like throwing a stick, chasing the stick and if you find the stick, throwing it again. Chasing sticks can be fun, I get that. That’s why we do it. But let's stop doing it because we think we need to do it become happy.

Stop mortgaging your happiness on possible future success.

Instead of chasing success to become happy, make time for your success projects because you are happy.

For as long as we keep putting happiness, love, wellness, peacefulness, worthiness or whatever it is we value "over there" and putting assault courses, our definitions of success, between us and it, we're telling ourselves we can't be happy, loved, well, worthy now.

The more blessed path is to not make our happiness, wellness or worthiness dependent on a goal. It's to be those things first. It's to be those things now.

It's more joyous to work our success projects from a base of happiness, wellness and worthiness, not as a way of getting to those things.

If you are still chasing success to become happy, well, worthy, peaceful, etc., I invite you to turn it around. Besides, if you think succeeding is what's going to make you happy, Impact Bias predicts you're probably wrong. Impact bias predicts the good feelings we think we'll get from achieving things we want will not be as strong and long-lasting as we think.

Wishing you health and happiness,

Steve.