Make the best of Every Day

The other day I came across a great quote by Tony Robbins:

The Happiest People Don't Have the Best of Everything, they make the Best of Everything!

This isn’t just a fun word-play, there is a lot behind a sentence like this. It holds an important message for societies where people are driven by possession and status. Where we compare ourselves to others based on what we have, not who we are.

For me, it links back to a core concept of coaching which is called ‘Be – Do – Have’

These three stages are linked: what person do you need to BE, what do you need to DO in order to HAVE what you want.

Be-Do-Have

I have written before about goal setting, see my article “Be Smarter With Your Goals”. When we write down goals, we are very much in the HAVE stage: what do we want to HAVE at the end? HAVE is typically used as the measurement of success in attaining our goals.

In order to get to our goal, there are some (or many) steps that have to be taken (it is very important to define these intermediate steps clearly). That is the DO stage.

To help us do what is required to attain our goal in a congruent and consistent way, it has to be aligned with our core values, or in other words, with who we ARE. Which obviously is the BE stage.

Who we are, will influence our behaviour. If our actions are not conducive to our goal, then we need to look at what we can change in our core values to have a more productive behaviour.

This links perfectly with Simon Sinek’s great advice: Start with WHY. Finding your WHY is the core of leading your own life (or running a company and let’s not forget, our own life is the most important company you’ll ever manage) in a productive and consistent way.

Simon uses three stages: WHY – HOW – WHAT, which maps perfectly to BE – DO – HAVE:

• The person we need to BE, is our deep internal motivation, it is WHY we do something.
• HOW we do something is very much the actions we take or the DO stage.
• That what we gain, HAVE, is WHAT happens in our lives or companies.

The WHY, or being aligned with your core values is important when it comes to the motivation we need to get things done. As Simon points out very correctly:

Working hard for something we don't care about is called stress.

Working hard for something we love is called passion.

Do-Be-Have

There are however feedback loops in this system. Our behaviour also influences who we are. In order to change certain values, we can start by simply changing our behaviour. Doing that in a consistent way, will start changing brain patterns and become more and more part of who we are. I wrote about the power of change in my article “You Most Certainly Can Change”.

It’s very much “Fake it till you make it”. I can highly recommend to have a look at the amazing TED Talk by Amy Cuddy on body language which illustrates this principle very well: https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_may_shape_who_you_are

Conclusion

To come back to the quote:

The Happiest People

Don't Have the Best of Everything

They just Make the Best of Everything

When we now adopt our system to it:

• BE – Happy: be content with what you have, as I discussed in my article “The Pursuit of Happiness”, surrender to the moment, do not worry about the future or fret about the past.
• DO – Make: from your core being, take action. The best intentions in the world will not materialise if you don’t apply consistent action.
• HAVE – Have: you will end up feeling you do have everything you need, which in it’s turn will increase your feeling of contentment

These days more than ever, be happy with what you have, what you can do. Don’t focus on what is not possible today.

Stay safe, stay happy.