There’s nothing like rhythm in your life to energize and ground you.

Rhythm went missing in my life for awhile recently. It happens to all of us. The only way to get life’s rhythm back is to keep dancing even though you can’t hear the tune.

How did I lose my rhythm? Pretty simple, really. As is the case with many people these days, my wife and I faced some big financial challenges over the past two years. Some of those challenges came from choices we made. Some from an unexpected downturn in my communication consulting business. Certainly there were external circumstances beyond our control, but I prefer to own my situation and take complete responsibility for it.

Someone, in an effort to offer some support, told me that times are hard right now, that life is a struggle, and that I shouldn’t beat myself up too much over our situation. That’s not quite right. Truth is, I started struggling with life. I lost my rhythm.

So what’s a guy to do when he loses his rhythm?

Sometimes the Only Way Through is Paying Attention While You Ride It Out

Have you ever watched a rodeo cowboy ride a bull? I have. The rider settles himself onto a restless, 2000 pound animal and grabs hold of a thick, braided rope. Then the bucking chute opens and the bull charges out into the arena, bucking and kicking for all it’s worth in an enraged attempt to dislodge the man riding on its back. The goal? Stay on that bucking bull for at least eight seconds.

The rider is either thrown off or dismounts more or less under his own power. What amazes me is the way the best riders match the bull’s rhythm, remaining on the massive creature until that eight seconds has lapsed.

Muscles tire. The rider is ever in danger of losing his single-handed grip on the rope. Then the ride is over — but not before he manages to become one with one of the great forces of nature.

Not a rodeo fan? Neither am I. But I appreciate the metaphor.

Life Has Rhythm. Ignore It At Your Peril.

Life has a rhythm we can choose to match or ignore. But every time I let my attention get distracted from that rhythm, I’m thrown to the dirt.

Okay, so if I’m working to the rhythm of life, how do I express myself? What about my own rhythm? Good question. When I’m tuned into life’s rhythm, I’m improvising around the beat. I can sing to it, dance to it, slide, glide, whoop, or play my guitar until my fingers ache.

You have to find your uniqueness and express yourself through it. That’s what I do, anyway, and it’s the only thing I’ve ever found that consistently works. I’ve lost my focus and abandoned my uniqueness more than once in this lifetime, and paid a heavy price as a result. My uniqueness manifests itself in writing, in sharing my experiences with anxiety and depression, and helping people and organizations collaborate to solve high-stakes problems. From time to time I also help people choose and use technology without doing something dumb.

Somehow I got sidetracked again these past couple of years. Yet as soon as I returned to expressing my uniqueness, started dancing my dance and matching the rhythm of life again, something shifted. And though we’re still picking up the pieces — including a move in the next couple of months to who knows where — we’re in a much better position now.

What’s your dance? What makes you unique? Find your dance and shake that money-maker.

Surely more to come…

Where would you store 104,445 books?

If you were to purchase every book on success available at Amazon.com right now, that’s how many you’d have. Seems as though success is a pretty hot topic, and why not? Everyone wants success. No surprise, right? After all, you want success for your life.

Of course you do. So I’m going save you the trouble of purchasing 104,445 books and tell you exactly how to have all the success you want.

It starts where you are right now.

Deliver Effective, Purposeful Action  in Service of Others

Well, now, that’s simple enough. Performing that one activity — I call it EPASO for short — from the right perspective will guarantee all the success you can possibly stand. The results of EPASO are far-reaching. When performed from the right perspective, thousands and even millions of people benefit from doing it as effectively and as inoffensively as you possibly can.

So what’s the right perspective all about? The right perspective for success is about knowing what you want for you life, doing what you want in life, and delivering to others what they need to help them get what THEY want. Success is creative, never competitive. Success is large, not small. Success is always seeking alternatives. Success is doing what works.

The right perspective of success is built on personal certainty, the faith that you will be able to respond appropriately to whatever life brings your way.

Know Specifically What You Want for Your Life

Success is knowing specifically what you want from life. If you are vague about what you want, all you’ll receive is vapor. When you can clearly imagine what you want for your life, in every aspect and with ever-increasing detail, you have made the first step toward it.

But imagination is not enough. You must act where you are right now with a certainty of mind that the life you want is coming to you. It’s within your grasp right now. It is as real as the last dime in your pocket. Life is always reaching for greater and fuller expression, so you must honor the natural urge to grow and become all of what you were born to be. Keep always the specific image of what you want in your mind as you go about your day. Then do what you can do as completely and as successfully as possible each day.

As you get specific about what you want for your life, identify the things you want to have, do, and be in your life and calculate the income require to bring what you want to fruition. Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, provides a great way of getting specific about what you want in a process he calls dreamlining. It’s a simple process and an effective focusing agent. In essence: Add up the cost of the things you want and what you need to be and do what you want, then determine the income you must generate to have them. Once you know that number, act in your present situation in such a way that you generate that income.

Easier said than done? Maybe. But my own experience has been that when I focus myself specifically and act with certainty and faith in service of others, remarkable things happen that seem to come out of nowhere. That’s success in life.

Feed Your Mind Well

Never look back at past  mistakes except to extract information about what not to do. When something doesn’t work, add that to your “things that don’t work” database, just as Thomas Edison did. Never beat yourself up for the missteps of your past.

Keep your attention focused on the idea of increase, and act so as to insure increase for all with whom you interact.

Disregard all “news” of a negative or derogatory nature. The fate of celebrities or of someone two cities over is of no importance in your life. Bringing your attention to death and mayhem only feeds a lower vision of life. Be mindful about what you consume. It’s all well and good to know what’s going on in the world, but look always for examples of increase and opportunities to give increase to all.

Never Abandon What You Do Best

Be faithful to what you do best, for when you align what you do best with the purpose to serve you will always enjoy the greatest success. In fact, by keeping the image of what you want and how you want to live clear in your mind as you do what you do best, you find a new freedom and greater energy in your life. Magical thinking is not required. And what’s wonderful about this process is that it works when applied with certainty through EPASO (see above).

Success is simple, perhaps even easy. Success requires consistent faith and gratitude as you act with certainty in what you do best each day. Success in life demands your complete attention and your unwillingness to settle for anything less than what you want from it.

Stop now. Take a long, hard look at your life. Do you have the enjoyment and excitement you want? If you want more from life, then write down the specific details of what you want. See it clearly in your mind’s eye. See yourself living that life NOW. See yourself having, doing, and being what you want. Then bring the attention of your action to bear about helping others get what they want.

You will find the success you desire. No one can keep you from it.

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all. — Norman Vincent Peale

Through years of walking through anxiety attacks and depression, I found a single imperative that always restored my sanity and gave me a new focus for the future. Action was the key. And though, as Peale wrote, any action is better than no action at all, there is one type of action that consistently brings clarity to the mind.

Taking structured, even outrageous purposeful action in service of others.

Outrageous Purposeful Action in Service of Others

There’s a mnemonic posted on my office wall. “OPASO” reminds me to seek ways I can take Outrageous Purposeful Action in Service of Others. Why outrageous? Because it focuses the mind on seeking unique ways to serve others. That word reminds me to go the extra mile, to over-deliver, to serve others with open hand, open mind, and open heart.

For action to be purposeful, it must actually help people get what they want. Not what I think they want, but what helps them get more of what they want from life. How do you make sure you’re taking purposeful action? Start by observing the sorts of problems people struggle with. You will automatically be attracted to the problems you’re best suited to serve. When you identify a need, fill it to the best of your ability. It really is that simple.

Deliver More Value Than You Receive in Every Exchange

Here’s something that works wonders: Over-delivery on your promise in every exchange.

You see, every time you enter into a transaction with a person or business, you’re exchanging value. If you are the provider of a product or service, then that beneficial value exchange is the key to attracting more good business. When you deliver more than someone asks — something of measurably greater value in the planned exchange — you plant the seeds for future growth. That goes true not only for business, but for every interaction you have in this world.

Over-deliver to your spouse. Over-deliver to your children. Over-deliver to your cats. Over-deliver to your friends. And to your enemies. Especially to those you consider your enemies.

“But Michael, Doesn’t That Make Me a Sucker?”

No. Anyone who tells you to do just enough to get by is no doubt barely getting by themselves. Don’t fall into the trap of doing “just enough.” I know of no relationship in which “just enough” has ever worked. I’ve been in a few partnerships over the years, and the ones that failed are the ones in which one of us committed only to doing “just enough.”

“Just enough” doesn’t cut it.

Be one of those who does more than “just enough.” Give more than you receive, and you’ll receive more than you can possibly imagine.

Try it. You have absolutely nothing to lose.

Just getting back into the swing of posting this year, and I came across a mention of dirt that can make people happy.

Yes, gardeners, you’ve always known it was true! No wonder children love getting dirty so much.

An article in the December/January issue of The Economist — “The Joy of Dirt” — mentioned a study at Bristol University showing that certain bacteria found in soil stimulate neurons in the brain that produce serotonin. Dig into the subject a bit further if you like in the Discover Magazine article “Is Dirt the New Prozaz?”

Remember the last time you took a good walk? Cast your mind back to your experience of it: Fresh air invigorating the mind and refreshing the skin… the rhythmic motion of every step creating greater blood flow and filling every cell of  your body with goodness. A good walk produces a clarity of thought that’s hardly accessible any other way.

When did you take that last, good walk?

Put a Little Dirt in Your Life

How much time do you spend indoors? Granted, it’s the dead of winter and frigid in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Who wants to get out for a nice stroll when the thermometer drops below freezing? Could our tendency to remain indoors in the winter months contribute to a greater sense of depression simply because we aren’t getting enough dirt in our lives?

Oh, there’s much more to seasonal-affective disorder than lower levels of light. We’re less active overall. We hole up in our dens and offices too much, and we suffer for the lack of activity and interaction with the world. Yes, and our bodies miss the connection with the great outdoors.

Bring a Little Life into Your Home

One little thing you might consider doing this week is to bring a new plant into your home. Pick up some potting soil and a beautiful pot, then get your hands a little dirty and move the plant into that new pot and the fresh soil. Let the dirt get up under your fingernails. Smell that little bit of earthiness and watch your spirits lift.

It’s funny how simple things can cause a shift that puts us into a new and better frame of mind.

Perhaps you’ll even plant the seeds for a new project that grows and bears wonderful fruit against the so-called dead of winter. Marvelous!

The oddest thing about prayer is that it is always answered. It’s never a Yes or No answer, either, dramatic statements in television programs and movies notwithstanding.

What you think or believe about prayer — or who/what may answer it — doesn’t affect its efficacy, either. The answers to prayers always come.

We are, however, often too arrogant or self-involved to perceive the answer. Our suppositions, positions, and inhibitions blind us often as not. In our desperate urgency to get The Answer we roll right past where it sits patiently on the sidelines, smiling, waiting patiently for us to stop and pay attention.

Answers are never disguised. They are responses to the real request or need underlying what we believe our need is.

I don’t know about you, but I always believe I know what I need. My “needs” usually fall into one of three categories: More of “A,” less of “B,” or (my favorite) “rescue me from the consequences of my own choices and actions.” But as I have repeatedly and often painfully learned, I’m usually looking in the wrong places for the answers to the challenges in my life.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the truth is that I came with all the answers I needed preloaded into the old MOS (Mikey Operating System). Just like the computer you buy, it’s all inside.

All I have to do is stay present with any problem I encounter without wishing it to be any different. The answer always comes.

I’ve seen angels, too, though never ones with wings. I see one in a friend who hears my complaints and loves me anyway… in the person who waves me in ahead of them in traffic… and in the bell ringer standing outside my grocery store.

Every now and then, if I’m not looking too hard, I see one in my mirror.

Just like you.

Okay, bear with me on this one.

Solitaire — straight up, Klondike-style solitaire — is a game of patience. The player deals out 52 cards in a methodical arrangement on a table, then moves cards from one pile to another in an attempt to break the game in accordance with the rules.

In Klondike, the outcome is usually “oops, play again.” But every now and then you get to clear the table.

So what does a silly card game have to do with survival?

When faced with adversity, I’ve observed that the first reaction of those facing it (myself included, I admit) is to ask the somewhat panicked question, “What are we going to do now? How are we going to get out of this one?” It gets to be “deer-in-the-headlight” time before you know it with questions like that. They look open-ended, but they’re actually closed-minded.

The real question to ask is, “Why don’t we deal the cards again?” There it is. Klondike. Fail to break the game and what do you do about it? Deal another round. In fact, you keep dealing rounds until one of the following happens:

• You give up, in which case you can never win, or
• You win after dogged persistence.

See, you can only ever fail if you let fear — a natural reaction when survival threatens you or your family — keep you from dealing another round.

In life that means keeping your eyes open… looking for patterns… seeking the opportunity to take massive useful action in service of others. When an opportunity falls through, you don’t quit, no matter how loudly your head weasels holler. Stand up, shuffle the cards, deal another hand. And another. And ANOTHER.

Yes, I know things can get ugly. Believe me, I’ve been on the verge of being busted penniless more than once. Yet here I am, writing again, hoping to give you just a little inspiration to shuffle that deck, to deal another round, to keep on keeping on no matter who or what tells you to do otherwise.

Come on, people. Let’s play.

Or, How to Be Part of the New Stress Global Snowball Effect.

I swear to you, if hear hear another person talk about “how bad times are right now,” I am going to have my ears permanently sealed. While I’m at it, I’ll have my eyelids sewn shut and take up residence in a nice, calm desert.

Oops. I’m stressing over other people’s stressing. How is that working out for me today? Not so much, that’s how it’s working.

I’m told that moods are, in fact, contagious. According to this point of view, we’re a bunch of human tuning forks interconnected in a Universe so mind-bogglingly big that even thinking about a bigness on that scale can give you an ice cream headache.

Change the Channel?

But, see, here’s my problem with the whole “bad moods are contagious” point of view. If we are all truly interconnected with everything, and if the Universe is as unfathomably huge as all that, then it should be a simple matter to change the dial on our Contagio-meter. That makes sense, doesn’t it?

Maybe I can choose to move my attention elsewhere.

I’ll grant you that the gravity well created by a stressed out, depressed person can suck you right in if you decide to park near it. Bad moods are not, however, some sort of cosmic black hole so powerful that we cannot hope to ever see the light again.

The human mind is a funny thing. It plays tricks on us. It makes things up all the time.

Let me give you an example.

My wife and I were having a conversation about depression. She asked me what it was like when I was having a bed spell of it, and I described my symptoms. She listened, made the comment that everybody feels that way sometimes, and that maybe you just have to get on with life anyway.

Well. I got angry about that. I got ashamed that I sometimes have a difficult time snapping out of a depressive state. I got all down-in-the-gravity-well of self-pity about it.

My mind made all of it up.

Yes, I Choose Every Thought

Mind you, the type of what I labeled as anxiety and depression I struggled with over the years was very real to me. The physical symptoms and thinking I labeled as anxiety and depression seemed as solid as the chair I’m sitting in right now.

However, there are the symptoms and there is the story I tell about them. They are not the same thing.

My anger. My depression. My fill-in-the-blank. Mere labels and explanations. Those labels represent my attempts to make sense out of it all. But the explanation is not the fact.

So when I got angry about what my wife said, I wasn’t simply making up a story of anger in my mind. I was choosing to do so. I was getting angry about ANOTHER fiction — HER story. I had gotten myself worked up over a story.

All I had to do was shift my attention to recognize the story, and the bad feelings went away. Vamoosed. Skedaddled. Split.

So all this talk about stressing out and so on is really just that. It’s talk. I stress out because I tune into the stress-out channel. I hook into a fiction. I choose to stress. Yikes. I can become a self-eating watermelon of stress faster than you can say, “monkey brain.”

Owich.

So, the next time I decide to be the stress I want to see in the world, I’ll take a little comfort in the fact that it isn’t real anywhere except in the story-mongering talk radio station of my mind.

Then maybe I can tune in another station. Like the Silly Me station. Or the Bad Pun station.

Might as well. It’s all made up anyhow.

Remember the last time you were stuck? Trapped by inaction… telling yourself you didn’t know what to do or where to turn for help.

What’s being stuck like for you?

When I get stuck I’m usually in deer-in-the-headlights mode. For me it has always been a combination of fear, inaction, and body chemistry that work in concert to lock me into place.

Being Stuck is a Big Fat Lie

I’ve learned a few things about stuckness over the years. Stuckness goes hand-in-hand with anxiety and my deepest personal fears. One of the biggest fears for me was the fear of people laughing at me and making fun of what I said or did. Heck, I can feel my body reacting to the memory of what life was like for me 30 years ago. I refuse to go back there again.

Here’s the thing about the sort of anxiety you and I face: It’s not only complex, but we also have powerful built-in stories around it. As Steve Chandler says in The Story of You, we make up these stories about ourselves to make it okay for us to behave in certain ways.

Your story about yourself is made up. It’s a fiction. You live according to the script you’ve written for your life. I live according to mine.

But if we create the stories that we live, then any story would do, wouldn’t it? Especially one that represents the very best of who we are. It therefore stands to reason that we can write any story we like for our lives. Why not write a story that involves being excited about your life, and about expressing that excitement through massive useful action?

Get Excited About Taking Massive Useful Action

I like the idea of taking massive useful action with excitement rather than out of fear. I don’t know about you, but every time I try to do something because I’m afraid of what I’m not getting or might get, the results are definitely not exciting.

So the next time you get deer-in-the-headlights stuck, here’s what I suggest you do:

1. Pause. Recognize that you’re stuck, then become aware that the part of you that ISN’T stuck is observing the part of you that is. Aha.
2. Eat something that has a low glycemic index. Give yourself some good fuel. Even a bowl of Cheerios or an apple with hard cheese will prime your body for the next step. You might even find that your stuckness goes away as soon as you’ve eaten. Funny how that works.
3. Close your eyes and imagine that you’re a script writer. You’re creating a story for a new character who looks and acts an awful lot like you. Your character is stuck, and has to take massive useful action to become un-stuck. Write the script that has the character completely overwhelm the problem he or she is facing with a burst of exciting, massive action.
4. Get your notebook out and write the following question at the top of a page: What massive useful action could I take to completely overwhelm <insert your problem here>?
5. Write 25 answers to that question as fast as you can. Be outrageous. Make up things that no sane person would do to solve the problem. Go after it with excitement. Get edgy. Rip it up.
6. Take a deep belly breath. Look at your list. Commit to doing the actions on that list as though you could not fail, as though your life depended on it — as though you were a one-person wrecking crew of massive useful action.

I promise you that if you’ll take these steps, you will get unstuck.

Works every time.

Rant coming. You’ve been warned.

I think I may be ill. And I think “news” has done it.

I want someone to explain to me how the stories in my newspaper and in TV news programs are adding any benefit to my life.

I keep wondering where all the information that contributes to well-being and helps us all take useful action is hiding.

Call me curmudgeonly or ignorant. But I don’t get it.

Because I happen to believe that news could be the story of life happening all around us. It could be a call to useful action that helps people create more goodness in the world around them. I’ll agree that, from time to time, we actually get a bit of that in this medium we call “the news.”

So why is it important that a man was gunned down in a town 50 miles away? Why is it important to share stories of tragedy and pointless violence as though they were the only events worth reporting?

And why is it people are drawn to negative news like moths to a flame?

I’m not proposing that we stick our heads in the sand. There are events in our communities and the world that carry significance for us all. What I propose, however, is that we take a break from news for a week and see what happens. What better time to do so than December, a time during which much of the world celebrates peace on earth, goodwill to men?

What would happen if instead we stepped out of our homes, saw each other in less of a hurry at the market, greeted each other with a simple honest smile?

What would change in us and in our communities if we decided to engage our worlds in some small way over the next 30 days?

Give the guy on the corner a few dollars. Help someone carry an armload of packages. Help out in a food drive. Join your neighbors and have a street-cleaning party. Make a little less noise… think of yourself a little bit less.

What would it hurt if you decided to be a little bit more of what you’d like to see in the world? Rather than shaking your head in sadness at a headline, why not nod your head and say hello to each person you meet this month?

Heresy. Yes, I know.

But just imagine the next 30 days.

Imagine. And do some good out there

There’s no need to belabor the point:

Make no mistake: Gratitude is a practice. To enjoy maximum benefits, develop the habit of practicing gratitude twice a day. Once in the morning and once before going to bed at night is my recommendation.

I recommend writing your declarations rather than thinking them or speaking them aloud. There’s power and release in seeing, feeling, and hearing the rush of gratitude form itself on the page before you.