Over the last couple of years, I watched nearly identical tragic romances unfold, and having a window on these two relationships reminded me not only of the immense influence of guilt on some people’s decision making, but the amazing absence of guilt that some people may feel in nearly identical circumstances. These “tragic romances” I’m referring to were fairly common stories of marriages in which the woman believed the man had become emotionally or sensually vacant, tried to address the problem, and then, out of frustration, turned to infidelity to find the attention they craved.

The woman in one of these relationships expressed very little guilt about her actions, and moved on to get divorced. In the other instance however, the woman apparently felt enough guilt that she eventually rejected a man she had told repeatedly for several years that she loved, and returned to the psychologically abusive relationship with her husband. It was the latter situation that struck me more; as this friend sobbed about the dual guilt of hurting one man to return to the one she had cheated on, I did my best to encourage her to do what she thought was right, and suggested that while it was alright to feel badly about doing something one knows is “wrong”, it’s literally toxic to ourselves to dwell in the guilt. I suggested that once she had acknowledged to herself some wrongdoing, that she “shed that shroud of guilt” and move on.

There’s a remarkable range of things a person probably should feel guilty about, but I can’t help noticing the widely disparate manifestations of guilt or lack thereof that we encounter in modern life. The other day, I was talking to a fellow whose wages were being garnished because of a student loan that was in default, and I asked him how he would feel about mass protest to dismiss or defer student debt. He said he wouldn’t support it. I asked him why – in light of the fact that bankers and politicians were dumping the debt for their financial failures on current and future generations of taxpayers through bailouts – he wouldn’t demand a reciprocal arrangement. He said that what they did was wrong, but that didn’t mean he didn’t owe the debt he had taken on.

That pretty effectively sums up the poles of the range of human responses to feeling guilt over wrongdoing right there. Regardless of the fact that a person may be able or likely to find rationalizations for wrongdoing (especially if the rewards are high enough, as with emotion or riches), there is one kind of person who will feel genuine guilt whether or not they get caught, and another kind of person who will NOT feel genuine guilt whether they get caught or not.

If you’re in the latter camp, I’m not sure why you’re reading this; there’s a decent chance that you’re mildly sociopathic! But if you’re like most of us, you may find yourself in situations where guilt gnaws at you for a variety of reasons. While guilt serves a perfectly positive purpose – it’s our own negative reinforcement for behaviors that don’t benefit us – it can also be a poison that dwells within us, and eventually destroys us.

In the simplest view, there are really only two kinds of guilt. Guilt about something you did, or guilt about something you didn’t do. They can both be incredibly self-destructive, and they can both be fairly easily dealt with, once you identify lingering guilt as the little monster that it is. But that’s probably the real problem. Many people don’t even REALIZE they’re driven by guilt. Are you? Do you fret about how you could have done a better job on something at work? About how you don’t spend enough quality time with your family? Those are both just as likely to be forms of perfectionism, which is another issue worth looking at. Do you feel guilt about how you broke little Jane or Johnny’s heart in college, or the friend you jilted at some point in the past? The first two items aren’t really that hard to deal with. It’s simple as CHANGING YOUR BEHAVIOR. Do better next time at work, learning from the mistakes you made. Spend more time with the family! How hard is that? And the latter two things can end up being almost comical once one takes the right steps toward addressing them. Quite often, when we go to repair this kind of guilt by reaching out to make amends, we discover that the person we thought we had harmed cares so little that they barely remember who we are! Sometimes guilty obsessions can honestly be that out of proportion with reality. The guilt factory in our head can be quite productive.

The strategy for minimizing guilt in your life is actually pretty damn simple. Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. Don’t fear. Communicate! Things like the infidelity I mentioned at the top arise from one’s fear of the confrontation one thinks will result from expressing one’s true feelings. Telling someone what you think will almost never have results as negative as those that come from subterfuge, deceit, and avoiding the facts.

Dealing with persistent guilt has other solutions, but they all center around self-forgiveness. If you’ve done your best to make amends or change your behavior, and are still feeling guilt, there are several things that can help you. One is simply time. While a confession or making an amend can sometimes provide instant, almost magical relief, sometimes we just need to process and heal. Another is obviously therapy. Talk therapy can really help us hear the fallacy of our own thoughts, and free us to move on. And if you have faith or a spiritual side, ponder the fact that while bringing your problem to a church figure may actually AGGRAVATE the problem, since guilt is one of the key tools of many religious organizations, the PRINCIPLES of your faith may provide an incredibly easy answer. Most faiths and spiritual practices have something devoted especially to release from guilt. Think of the entire purpose of a figure like Jesus, for instance, who – if you believe the teachings – was sent here to free us from our human flaws, partly by acknowledging that we all have them!

It may just be time to shed that shroud of guilt you’re wearing.

It’s not very becoming.

The other day I was standing at an intersection, waiting to cross the street. A local panhandler asked the man in a business suit standing next to me “can you spare some change?” to which the guy in the suit smirkily replied “change comes from within, my friend”. This tired exchange – which has probably happened thousands of times in cities all over America – got me thinking. About a lot of things: change, fear, compassion, security… a whole world of things. But but at the core of my thoughts was fear, because it’s such a fundamental force in our lives. And it often is attached to change in one way or another. And although there are lots of strategies for dealing with change and fear, I was reminded recently that there’s only one cure for fear, which I’ll touch on after we explore some more basic strategies for dealing with change.

These two fellows I encountered were a great metaphor for how we deal with change. I would bet that if you asked the two of them how they got where they are today, the panhandler would have a story about how a series of things “happened to him”, and how these misfortunes led to him having to ask strangers for money in order to survive. The guy in the suit would probably have some story about his education, his career, and how he “made things happen” and worked hard to get where he is. There may be some truth to both stories, but you could fairly bet that these two fellows had one thing in common: a lot of their actions are probably driven by fear, and what they fear is change. In the case of the panhandler, his fear is probably a more basic anxiety about getting however much cash he thinks he needs that day. And in the case of the business man, his fear probably takes a much stranger form. He probably fears two things: 1.) Not having the prestige that comes with his accomplishments and possessions, and even stranger, 2.) The possibility that he won’t have financial security in his old age, or enough money if something happens to his health.

Worrying About Security Doesn’t Create It

The funny thing about security is that it doesn’t exist, especially for those who seek it the most. Nothing makes one feel more insecure than spending their whole life worrying about their security. Interestingly, the morally decrepit business practices of the last decade or two have begun to dismantle this big illusion of being able to create security, but not many have put the pieces together in a useful way, and they go right back to the grind. Looking for more security. How many people do you know who had relatively secure jobs and were either handed what seemed like a hefty buyout, sent into early retirement, or in the worst cases, simply informed that if they still wanted their jobs, they’d have to accept completely different condtions of employment? Or how many people do you know who’ve actually had to make a significant claim against the insurance policy they’ve put thousands of dollars into, only to find the insurance company seeking as many methods as they can to avoid a payout? Or maybe you’re in that age group that has spent their entire life paying into Social Security, and only recently figured out that you won’t see a penny of that money.

The Destination vs The Journey

If you think it sounds corny to say that life is more about a journey than a destination, you obviously haven’t gone through the rather common experience of getting the perfect job, buying the perfect house, and marrying the perfect spouse, only to find that everything is perfect except you and how you feel. A lot of divorces and other manifestations of dissatisfaction really are caused by the realities of people and the world in general not matching the huge projection we place on them. As Yogi Berra said, “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there”. The fact is that many of us are so immersed in the modern myth of happiness that we forget what happiness is altogether.

Enjoying the Journey

So how do we get back to this place where we can enjoy the journey and stop worrying about that illusory destination? The painter Edgar Degas said “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do”. The funny thing is that in order to enjoy a life that is full of constant change, the only real solution is acknowledge that you have no idea what’s really going on in the big picture. No, it would be foolish to stop making as much money as you can and handling it sensibly; I’m not suggesting that you stop planning for the future altogether. Although if you WERE able to do so, it would make you one of the happier people on Earth, because you would have achieved the ultimate expression of the one simple thing that will make you happier in the present. That thing, as absurdly simple as it sounds, is LIVING IN THE PRESENT. If you can get into that place on your own through learning how to slow down, be grateful, breathe, and simply appreciate where you are, more power to you. Personally, I rediscovered this ability to enjoy life and be less fearful by quitting drinking, taking part in a 12-step program, and doing a lot of refresher reading. Wherever you are in life, there are a few great books to help you remind yourself how to live for right now and enjoy it, and learn that real security will stem from doing that, not from elaborate planning and a high-income job. If you don’t have issues with the words “God” and “faith” (I personally do sometimes, so tuned them out a little when necessary) Marianne Williamson’s The Gift of Change: Spiritual Guidance for Living Your Best Life is a great resource. One hook for me early in the book was her remark that “We’re in the habit of thinking fearfully, and it takes spiritual discipline to turn that around in a world where love is more suspect than fear”. We’ve become so cynical that most of us don’t realize how true that is until it’s pointed out to us. Another great refresher in getting centered in the present (which also may require some tuning out when he gets a little to “woo woo”) is Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. There’s nothing new in this book, but the guy does a great job of putting the concepts into a very actionable form while reframing a plethora of sources of wisdom on the topic. And lastly, if you enjoy the “grumpy buddha” approach, Krishnamurti’s Think on These Things is more a critique of our confidence in modern beliefs than anything, but amongst the weighty topics it tackles in its weighty fashion is change, in rather heavy handed passages like the one where he compares the security we seek to a stagnant pool cut off from the river of life, and says:

“A mind which is seeking permanency soon stagnates; like that pool along the river, it is soon full of corruption, decay. Only the mind which has no walls, no foothold, no barrier, no resting place, which is moving completely with life, timelessly pushing on, exploring, exploding – only such a mind can be happy, eternally new, because it is creative in itself.”

Or more simply observational passages like:

“We don’t want to leave the known; so it is our clinging to the known that creates fear in us, not the unknown. The unknown cannot be perceived by the known. But the mind, being made up of the known, says, ‘I am going to end’, and therefore it is frightened.”

But reading books should just be a trigger to action. And it turns out the actions here are simple. Try being grateful. Pick one thing in your current surroundings or situation that you’re happy with, and focus on THAT. Find as many things like that as you can in your life, and you find the effect snowballs, and your life becomes your friend instead of an adversary. And then you attract more positive things. And the peculiar side effect of “making things right” NOW is that they will automatically be this way in the FUTURE. Because the future is just now, only it’s happening later.

Making Change Happen

Ironically, all this seeking of security has the dreadful side effect referenced above in that Krishnamurti passage. We spend all our time carving out some sense of stability, only to realize that it’s a prison of sorts, sometimes just psychologically, but sometimes financially. Changing our behavior is much easier than we think, once we let go of this delusion that we’ve created some kind of lasting security. One easy thing you can do is simply identify the voices that control you. Self-talk can be both a positive and a negative tool, but it’s important to at least realize we do it! We all make decisions based on a certain amount of internal dialogue. Some of these internal voices are our own, and some – especially the ones based on comparing ourselves, the ones that drive us to buy things we don’t need or seek jobs that we won’t enjoy – are ENTIRELY adopted from what other people say and internalized as our own. A book I often recommend that helped me a lot in this area was Taming Your Gremlin. It presents some easy-to-implement tools with a moderate dose of wit and humor. Another thing you can do is simply DO THINGS YOU DON’T DO. Nick and I are finishing a little book along these lines. Look for teasers soon. And perhaps one of the most expedient things you could do is seek a life coach. I got more tools for positive change in four one-hour sessions with a life coach than I have from a dozen books or the hundreds of hours I’ve spent living in fear.

The Only Real Cure For Fear

So at the outset, I mentioned fear, and the only cure for it. We can treat a lot of the symptoms of our fear by taking action, trusting life, being brave and bucking up, but something that I rediscovered recently was this: the only “cure” for fear is LOVE. If you strip fear down to what it really is, you realize that it is simply a discomfort with the unknown. And if you think of the first times we experience fear, i.e. as an infant or toddler that has little or no “rational” reason for fear, you quickly realize that the thing that makes that fear go away is when someone who cares about us gives us some love. Try it in the real world, and you’ll be astounded by the results. The next time you’re anxious or frustrated with someone or some thing, try expressing love or sympathy instead of anger. The transformative power of this – especially on another human – is astounding.

Who knows if the guy who made this video is on the right track, but at least he’s taking action. Let’s just hope he had permission to use the much talked about song Friday by Rebecca Black.

The saying is “everything happens for a reason.”

People say it when something bad happens to them. Keith Miller was the guy being interviewed on NPR. He’d been a professional football player, and he’s now actually a very successful opera singer! That’s an extreme change, right? He had played for five years in the European and the Arena Football leagues, both of which no longer exist. When the leagues went out of business, he found himself without a job. He said he was a fan of opera, and he went on to study it and is now one of most celebrated bass-baritones on stage. He’s singing Madame Butterfly with the Washington National Opera.

What You Say Affects What You Think!

When Keith Miller said “everything happens for a reason,” he meant basically the same thing we mean when we say “when one door closes, another opens.” If we’re wired for success, we should re-write both of these phrases to get them out of the passive voice. We should say them this way:

“Everything doesn’t happen for a reason, I choose the reason.”

and:

“When one door closes, I open another.”

You Have Control When You Take Control

If we’re really going to excel in life, we need to stop thinking in terms of when something is going to happen to us, and start thinking in terms of making things happen. Which mindset you choose can make a gigantic difference to what you get in life. It made a difference of epic proportions in Keith Miller’s life, and that’s because he chose to make things happen. Here’s what he said, and if you get chance to read the whole interview, I recommend it, because he’s a very articulate guy and his story is a fascinating one. The show is in the NPR archives for March 2, 2011. Anyway, here’s what he said:

“It’s the one thing I’ve learned, is everything always happens for a reason You know, the biggest losses that we’ve suffered, I mean, in personal life, professional football, you know, when you lose something, you have to go back and diagnose. You’re more apt to go back and diagnose the things that you did wrong, what you can improve upon. And when things go well, you don’t really at the end of the night you know, you just say, oh well, you know, thanks, that was great. You don’t take the time to really assess.

“So you really need to have speed bumps in your life to kind of say, hey, what – you know, make some adjustments, fine tune things or just, you know, change the transmission completely.”

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

I don’t know if he’s studied success systems, but that’s a great way to explain the benefit of adversity in our lives. When bad things happen, we should reflect on what happened, consider whether we could have done something better or could do something better in the future, and then make adjustments to our actions. The adjustments may just be fine tuning, or we may need to completely change the transmission! It’s as though he’s been reading my journals. Look at steps three through seven from my last talk “Don’t Just Do Something, DO SOMETHING!”

3. Do something!

4. Pay attention to your results

5. Multiply your successes

6. Modify or discard your failures

7. Do something else!

You’re Not the Problem, Unless You ARE the Problem!

The people who fail, who don’t grow, are often people who, when they experience a failure, either keep doing the same things that caused the failure or simply stop trying. That leads to paralysis. Soon they feel like they can’t do anything, and that can lead to a pretty miserable life.

The people who succeed recognize that, as Zig Ziglar says, “failure is an event, not a person.” And how they think about that event makes all the difference in the world. They recognize that they can learn from failures.

When you try to do something great – that’s step three: Do something! – and you don’t succeed, you can  “go back and diagnose the things you did wrong” – that’s step four: Pay attention to your results. Steps five and six are what Keith called making “some adjustments, fine tune things or just …. change the transmission completely.”

Change Something, and Pay Attention!

What a great lesson! No wonder people who do really well say that it’s not about winning and losing. It’s about doing! If you DO SOMETHING with your goal clearly in mind, then the failures will be lessons clearly written out for you to modify your actions in the future. If we could go through life enthusiastically doing things without worrying about whether we instantly succeed or fail, think how much we could learn! What a great mindset to teach our children. “When one door closes, I open another.”

You know what, I’m going to go share this idea with my daughter right now. Everything doesn’t happen for a reason, you choose the reason. And if the reason is to teach you what you need to do to succeed, you can be as wildly successful as any human being can ever hope to be.

A Little About My Friend Ian

Now, before I share my ideas of how you can achieve success, I want to tell you a little about Ian. He’s a true friend of mine, and we’ve known each other for over 30 years. I get a little emotional talking about it, because we’ve been through some extraordinary experiences together. At one point, we formed a band together and wrote some really amazing songs. I remember getting some real interest from recording agencies. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look how our futures developed, Ian and I and the other members of the band had a lot of growing up to do at that time, and the band basically self-destructed.

Anyway, the reason I’m going on about Ian is that he’s one of greatest facilitators I know. What I mean is that he has a gift for bringing out the most creative, powerful parts of your personality. This gift comes from a life lived through a lot of adversity. He’s got a profound energy that has to be experienced to be appreciated, and if you ever get a chance to talk with him, I encourage you to do it!

Seven Key Principles of Achievement

So, back to our conversation about the key principles of achievement. I was very inspired by Ian’s leading questions, so I rattled off seven principles. Here’s what they were:

1. Clearly identify your goal

2. Learn the path others have taken to reach similar goals

3. Do something!

4. Pay attention to your results

5. Multiply your successes

6. Modify or discard your failures

7. Do something else!

If you follow success systems at all, you’re going to hear a lot of echoes in my talks of the big players in success coaching, like Napoleon Hill, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, and others like them. That’s because over the past ten years, I’ve consumed massive amounts of their writings and teachings. I’ve compared what all the success leaders are saying to the wisdom of the ancient teachers of Asia, and found that they have a LOT in common. If you can afford it, I encourage you to go to seminars taught by these great motivators.

If you can’t afford it, go anyway!

My first choice for you, just because he’s the rock star of personal achievement right now, would be to attend a Tony Robbins seminar or read one his books, like Awaken the Giant Within!

Here’s the Point

So, after that long digression, let me get back to the one thing I really want to share with you today. I’m sure you’ve heard to the old expression, “Don’t just stand there, do something!” If you study leadership at all, you’ve probably heard of the book by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff called Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!: Ten Principles for Leading Meetings That Matter. My suggestion to you is a little different. If you want to realize a goal, don’t just do something, DO SOMETHING! What I mean by that is that when you have a powerful idea, the most effective way to bring it into existence in the real world is to take action, take big action, and take it now!

Small Results Are Hard to Measure!

Small results are hard to measure. If you do something right, but it’s very, very small, you may need a microscope to figure out if it helped you get closer to your goal. But if you do something big, you’re going to know if it worked or not. And if it didn’t, you’ll be able to see what didn’t work about it.

Now, I’m not saying you should just willy nilly do something huge and crazy just to be doing something! You have to clearly identify your goal and learn what the path is that will take you there. I’ll share a lot more about these two steps in the future. But the point I want you to take away from today is that if you’ve clearly identified your goal and figured out the major steps needed to get there, you can work out some action to take to get you started. That’s the “something big” I encourage you to take on.

Ideas Have a Shelf Life

And, finally, do it now! Ideas have a shelf life. If you doubt me, go back and look at a newspaper or book from 30 years ago. It looks pretty quaint, doesn’t it? You don’t want your ideas to spoil because they’ve festered too long! Take the first opportunity to act, before doubts creep in, before technology leaves your idea behind, or before you get too caught up in your everyday life to work hard on the one thing that is really important to you.

So … if you want to realize your dreams … don’t just do something, get out there and DO SOMETHING!