The Art of Being

Why is it that some days it just feels so hard to stay on? 

You might have started off strong. You had some move in your step, a smile in your heart, heading out to conquer the day. But then things didn’t get conquered. Maybe the day didn’t defeat you, but you also don’t feel like you won it.

Perhaps you got to work feeling sure about the day ahead. And then everyone else showed up, and they had different plans. 

They complained and half-assed their way through every single thing. Everyone else seemed to accomplish nothing while wanting everything from you. You spilled coffee on your pants. Your laptop went kaput in the middle of an important meeting. Your boss was an ass. 

Am I right?

Maybe you got home, excited to hang out with your kids and have a nice dinner, glad to put the workday behind you. But the kids didn’t have the same plan. They weren’t interested in talking. They complained about the food. Or maybe they all felt like talking, right over one another, all at once, incessantly, forever and ever until the second coming of Christ (may your soul rest in peace, amen). 

Am I right?

Those days are real. They happen to me. 

But here’s the thing…

They used to happen to me a lot. I’d say almost every day was either an emotional roller-coaster or some numbed version of floating down a river I didn’t really want to be on. The scenarios above would play over and over again. I kept thinking “it’ll get better.” But it never really did. Yeah, there would be ebbs and flows, weeks and even months where the light seemed to have broken through and sandy beaches were coming. But eventually I’d wake up more or less right back where I was mentally and emotionally.

And I began to believe that this was what life was. I understood why so many religions teach of an amazing promised land after death, one full of free mansions, endless vacations and sunset views with our loved ones. (Because how awesome would that be after all the bullshit?!)

Am I right?

Now here’s the next thing…

Those days don’t happen to me very much anymore. Like, rarely. So rarely, in fact, that when it happens, I’m like, “what the f*ck?! This isn’t me!” and I correct it, pronto. I’d suddenly found myself waking up, day after day, fully charged and psyched to go crush.

Here’s where most people think, “well, something happened to create the change.” Yes and no. But let’s start with this: my circumstances hadn’t changed at all. At least, not at first. 

I was still divorced, still in debt from that process and from COVID-19 having nearly killed my businesses, still a single father to three kids, alone half the time, and then in even more in debt because I’d paid a bunch of money to life coaches to help teach me something, anything that could help make things permanently better.

I say “anything” because I hadn’t even known what it was I needed to learn. I didn’t know what I didn’t know I didn’t know. What questions does one ask when he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for?

If you want to learn to read, you find people who can read and you ask them to teach you. But how do you learn how to live?

If you can’t read, you know you can’t read. Everyone around you is reading. The gap is obvious to you. They say, “it’s easy! You do it like this!” You have the desire, they have the knowledge, and they teach you how to do it. As a rule of thumb, you follow this process, and you learn to read.

You knew that you didn’t know how to read and you were surrounded by people who did, so it was pretty easy to get the art of reading down pat.

This is the same way we began living our lives the way we do now. You might not be living the life you want. But you are definitely living life the way you know how to live it. 

But how do we learn how to live?! Most turn to traditional religions. There, we typically find more focus on what we’re heading for when we’re done living than on the important task at hand: what’s happening right now. 

This is a sticky situation, because there just aren’t many teachers. 

Seriously. How many people do you know who are skilled at the Art of Living?

I think when I say, “the Art of Living,” you know precisely what I mean… The fabled perfect life: wealth, health, happiness; family, friends, an awesome relationship; beautiful homes and beaches and sunshine.

Look at everyone you know and have known. How many of them would you say are living lives they would choose to live if they knew they had a choice? Not many, I assume.

So, I did what came natural to me: I found people who are skilled at the art of living AND skilled at teaching it and I paid them some money to teach me.

Where did they start?

They began by teaching me to be happy where I was. They just said, “we’re going to teach you to be happy right now, right where you are, with no change in circumstances. That’s step one.”

My circumstances sucked royally in so many categories. I smelled a pile of bullshit a mile high.

But I’d paid a whole bunch of money on a credit card to talk to them every week, so I figured I might as well try. Plus, clearly their lives were far closer to where I wanted to be than mine was, so why not give it the old college try?

Last week I earned more money in one week than I’d ever earned in a month.

And, at the end of the week, I felt like I’d barely “worked” at all. I actually said to my girlfriend “I feel like I did nothing this week. I could have done so much more.” And she said, “babe, you made over $___________ this week, I’d say you did pretty damn well. And isn’t that what you’ve spent all this time studying?”

By the end of the summer I’ll be easily earning more in a month than I’d previously ever earned in a year (and, mind you, I was earning pretty good money before). Turning my annual income into my monthly income was a goal I set for myself and have consistently worked at for some time now.

Remember that reading analogy? Because of the people I’ve been introduced to through the coaching network I joined, I’m hanging with people who say, “man… making money is easy. Sure, it’s daunting at first, but everyone can do it, and once you learn it’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s like reading.” 

The difficult part is first becoming the person you need to be to make it happen.

Once you’re that person, it all starts to show up for you. Just like when you learned to read.

And here’s the coolest part… I not only learned how to do this, and do this well, but I learned how to teach it.

There is a science to being healthy, wealthy and happy. It isn’t a secret. There just aren’t many people who know how to do it and know how to teach it. In that way, it’s not like reading.

Earnest Holmes, in his book This Thing Called You, said, “It is not Reality that you must change, but your reaction to It.”

Most of us feel like if our realities could just shift, then we could reach that fictional amazing place our spirit tells us is possible. That’s not how it works. The action must come before the reaction. The movement before the result. The primary condition addressed before the secondary will shift.

You don’t say, “Once the water learns to float me, I will swim.”

No. You learn to swim in the water as the water is. The water neither floats you nor sinks you. It’s your willingness to gain the knowledge of swimming and practice at it that trains your mind to suspend your body in the water. The water is indifferent. The water just is.

So it is with the universe and god. These forces will suspend you and conspire for your good, but only once you learn to work with their laws. Once you do, you will steer yourself in the endless ocean of motion that is life. You will learn to work with the water of life as it is. You learn, you float. You don't learn, you sink. It really is that simple.

That’s all very spiritual. Of course, there are mechanical things I did to make a massive change. I didn’t just sit on my couch with a bong in my hand wishing for it. I took action. And I can teach you some of those things too. If they’re a match for who you’d like to be and what you enjoy doing, maybe some of those will be good strategies for you to make money too… And to be happy, and at peace, and enjoy this Game of Life. 

You only get to do all of this once, and it will end one of these days.

So, as you sit here reading this, if life isn’t what you’d like to be, you need to change it. I can show you how. There are many others that can as well, I’m not the one and only. If working together isn’t a fit, I’d be glad to give you some other names.

If you’d like to talk, let’s talk.