Also, I’ve heard that people experience these things differently. Some people hear a voice. Some see an image. What I write here is how I experience these things. Your mileage may vary.

With that said, let’s get on to the terms.

Heart of Hearts: This is the part of yourself that can’t be fooled. It communicates in feelings. When you ask yourself a question it’s the flash of feeling you get before you can verbalize your answer.

Sometimes you won’t be able to hear your heart of hearts, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t have anything to say. If you’re out of practice, for instance, it will probably be very quiet and you need to listen harder in order to hear it. It could also be that you can’t handle the truth.

In general your Heart of Hearts has something to say about everything, even something as mundane as brushing your teeth in the morning. Mine says “Yes, this is the right thing to be doing. Why are you asking me?” Of course, I’m translating from a feeling, I don’t actually have a little voice in my head.

Intuition: You may have wondered, how do you know when your heart of hearts has something to say? The answer is Intuition. Intuition, like your Heart of Hears communicates nonverbally, but to call that communication a feeling would be a bit strong. It’s the “something is not quite right here” “feeling”. It’s the part that tells you something you spelled doesn’t “look right”. Or says that 2 * 254 = 502 doesn’t look right.

When your Heart of Hearts has something to say, but doesn’t feel comfortable talking to you, your intuition will let you know.

Like the bunny in this picture, your Inner Bunny can be quite destructive if left to its own devices.

Inner Bunny: I haven’t actually used this term before, but I probably will in the future so here’s the definition. Your inner bunny is old old programming. It’s the part that tells you food is good, sex is good, sleep is good. It’s the part that really believes in fear. It’s the part that craves security.

Your inner bunny will have an immense amount of power over you if you don’t pay attention to it. And even if you do try to pay attention to it, more often than not it’ll run away because is it just got caught. Being found out about is scary! Like a cute little bunny, when it’s scared it needs to be petted and feel it’s secure. When Bunny feels secure Bunny will help you.

If you’re a fan of Seth Godin, you may recognize this term as “The Lizard Brain“. It’s the same thing, but has a more heartwarming connotation. And even if you want some ruthless visualization, you can always think of the Killer Bunny.

Intuition lets you know if you’re talking to your inner bunny. The big cues that you’re dealing with your inner bunny is irrational fear.

I sometimes confuse Heart of Hearts and Inner Bunny because they can answer your question at the same time. To illustrate, let’s say you’re going to give a presentation and you’re scared. You ask yourself “why am I scared”? Part of you says SCARED! FEAR! THIS IS THE WOST THING EVAR! That’s Inner Bunny. At the same time if you’re listening you’ll hear, “You’re scared because Inner Bunny says you’re scared”, and if you pay attention you’ll hear the implication that there’s no reason to be scared.

The two things aren’t the same thing. Your Heart of Hearts speaks from a place of calm. Your Inner Bunny is usually not very calm. But they do talk at the same time, and often your Heart of Hearts will point out that Inner Bunny is the one causing you trouble. Once you get used to listening to Bunny you won’t need to listen for Heart of Hearts because you’ll know what it has to say.

Subconscious: All of these things are part of your subconscious. Any part of your brain that speaks in feelings, I say is part of the subconscious. The part that controls how your limbs move or your automatic breathing function…. yeah not so much. Those things probably should have their own name, and for the time being “subconscious” isn’t one of them.

Of course, I’ve been using “subconscious” all willy-nilly like on the site, and I will fix that in the future. These parts really are different, and I intend to refer to them by name in the future.

There are two parts to the process. The first is to be the kind of person who not only gives good advice, but gives it in such a way that it strengthens the relationship. The second step is to use the right words so they take the message the right way. In this post I’ll focus on cultivating the mindset. Next week’s will be on using the right words.

So let’s get to it! Below are things you can do to help yourself BE a better advice giver.

Ask your friend for advice

Chances are your friend has some area of expertise that they’re dying to give you advice on. Maybe they’re an excellent cook, and you have a complicated dinner party you’d like to prepare. Maybe they’re incredibly well organized, and you’d like to improve that in yourselves. Basically, humble yourself by asking them for advice. The idea here is that if your friend sees you humbling yourself, they’ll feel more comfortable doing the same with you.

One caveat: Don’t do it just to improve your chances at getting your friend to ask you for advice. That is, don’t ask them for advice on something you don’t need advice on. If your friend is a master chef, don’t ask him for advice if you have no actual interest in cooking. If you’re more organized than your friend, don’t ask them for advice on organizing… unless there’s something specific they do do that you’d like to do. Just be genuine when you ask for help.

If you aren’t being genuine, they’ll be able to tell, and you’ll get labeled as condescending, which… honestly… would be accurate. Your friendship can’t be very good if you can’t think of any area in which your friend can actually help you.

Again, the goal here is to be humble enough to ask for advice where you aren’t knowledgeable and to value your friend for what he/she is good at. It feels more comfortable to ask someone for advice if they owe you a favor and we like sharing/being valued for our passions.

Actively Work on That Area Yourself

Let’s say there’s something you specifically want to give your friend advice on, one of your first steps ought to do is to work on that area yourself. “Get the log out of your eye before telling your brother to get the speck out of his” and all that jazz. This has the benefit of establishing yourself as an expert (so you can actually give good advice), showing your friend that it’s alright to work on that area, and improving yourself in that area yourself. (If it’s good enough for your friend, it’s good enough for you, right?)

If you’re lucky you might even get some insight into why your friend is still struggling with it, although in my experience you probably won’t. You want to fix it right now, your friend doesn’t. Your experience will be fundamentally different. Resist the urge to get frustrated with them as that will make it harder to listen to them when they try to explain what’s stopping them.

Be Patient; Care But Not Too Much

Detach yourself from the situation. If the person you want to help sees that you care too much, they may avoid you even if you’re the best person to go to. Why? Because you’d put too much pressure on them to change, and not only to change but to do so at your pace. Think about it, why do many of us seek out self-help books or blogs instead of asking our friends and family for advice? One reason, of course, is that our friends and family don’t give great advice, but another is that they want too much for us to follow their advice. We don’t want to disappoint them if/when we fail the first time. We also don’t want to feel obligated to do it their way. Books don’t care if you disregard their advice.

When I’m trying to figure out who to go to for advice, I look for/expect three things in my advice-giver:

1. They’ll be supportive.
2. They’ll give me good, honest advice that’s in my best interest.
3. If I fall they’ll help me pick myself back up and try again.

If I suspected any of these is false, I probably won’t ask… and I won’t appreciate it if they give me their unsolicited thoughts. (Although I am trying to work on the last part.)

The only way to meet all three conditions is to be detached. I can’t really be supportive if I’m clouded by my own expectations. I can’t give good advice if I’m basing it on what I think the situation is. I can’t help them when they fall if I’m too frustrated when they do.

Nurture Your Love

Common advice for married couples is to put some time and effort into keeping the feeling alive. Focus on the things you enjoy about your partner. Do fun stuff. If you don’t you run the risk of only thinking about the qualities in your partner you don’t like.

This advice can be applied to all of your relationships, especially those where you’re starting to see the other person’s flaws. It’s important to remind yourself why you care. Like your significant other, you run risk of focusing on the negatives with your friends too. In addition you might start seeing them as your project, someone you want to fix to give you an ego boost. This is not good.

By nurturing the love, you remind yourself why you’re friends with this person and that they are your equal. They have as much to teach you, as you have to teach them. You respect them.

If you do all of these things you can be pretty certain that your intentions are aligned with good things. I think if any of my friends embodied these qualities, that is,

• They were humble enough to ask for help
• They were experts in or were working on an area I needed help with
• They were detached from the outcome of my situation
• I knew the loved and respected me

I wouldn’t hesitate to ask them for advice, since by doing this they would meet all of the criteria I mentioned earlier. And not only that, if they told me out of the blue that I was doing something that was self-defeating there’s a good chance I wouldn’t see it as a personal attack.

So, next week, you can look forward to a post on how to use the right words convey your advice and how to give them unsolicited advice.

These days I’m fundamentally happy with myself, and I’ve found that being happy helps way more people than just me.

A Few Reasons You Should Work on Your Happiness

First off, when you’re happy you are more pleasant to be around. Misery may love company, but no one in a so-so mood really wants to be around someone who’s miserable. By being happy you either lift other people’s moods or frustrate them by showing them what they’re missing out on.

It’s only when you’re happy with life that you’re really, truly in a position to be able to help others. Oh, sure, there are plenty of people out there who bury themselves in their good works–doctors who work overly hard to avoid their family, teachers who focus more on their students than their own kids–but these people aren’t really doing as great work as they think they are. They send the message that you can’t have a good home-life and do great service for others.

If you don’t believe me, just think about your own life. When you’ve been depressed and sad, are you really in the best state of mind to help others? Are you really focused on other people’s best interest or are you actually just trying to distract yourself from your own issues?

When you need help, who would you rather receive advice from? Someone who’s fundamentally happy or someone who’s giving you attention to avoid dealing with their issues?

Is it even possible to be happy all the time?

The short answer is, it’s complicated. No one can feel happy 24/7. Feelings are fleeting. If you’ve got a stomach ache you’re not going to feel as good as when you don’t. If you lose someone close to you, you’ll probably feel sad. Etc.

It’s not really about feeling happy 24/7, though. It’s about your default mood in life being happy and content. It’s about feeling good about who you are and where you’re going. When you have positive feelings about these things, you general state will be positive… how can it not be? And speaking from experience, it is absolutely possible to have this be your default state.

How Does Being Happy Affect Your Motivation to Help Others

The happier you are with your own life the more you will want to help others. You’ll want people to experience the good things you are experiencing. You’ll want to do something about the suffering of others.

There’s more to it than that, though. Happiness is a stabilizer. When you feel happy you feel like you can take on the world. But too much stability is a recipe for boredom. If you’re too happy with your life, that happiness will make you unhappy. (Weird, I know… but life is weird that way.) If you’ve ever thought that the promise of eternal bliss in heaven sounded a bit boring, you’ll know what I mean. If I had to bet, I’d say this is a leading cause for why people who seem to have it all sometimes do incredibly stupid, self-defeating things.

If you’re wise you’ll channel the restless energy caused by too much personal happiness (stability) into finding a mission. As I said earlier, you’ll be frustrated by people you know who are suffering. Not to mention that there are plenty of things wrong with the world.

In short, the pursuit of your happiness increases your motivation and ability to help others. It’s not something you should ever feel guilty about.

Why Aren’t People More Courteous?

I think the primary reason people are discourteous is because it’s a way to let out whatever frustration we have without causing a scene and without showing our vulnerability. My guess for why the library patron didn’t drop the issue when he found out that Josh’s ticks weren’t intentional is that he was afraid of showing his embarrassment. He’d have to be vulnerable, admit that he was wrong and for some people that’s hard to do.

There’s a great anecdote from 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which shows a similar scene that ends completely differently:

I remember a mini-paradigm shift I experienced one Sunday morning on a subway in New York. People were sitting quietly — some reading newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It was a calm, peaceful scene.

Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate changed.

The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, even grabbing peoples papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man sitting next to me did nothing.

It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so insensitive as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it, taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was an unusual patience and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little more?”

The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation for the first time and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know how to handle it either.”

Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. Suddenly I saw things differently, and because I saw differently, I thought differently, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart was filled with the man’s pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion flowed freely. “Your wife just died? Oh, I’m so sorry! Can you tell me about it? What can I do to help?” Everything changed in an instant.

In the anecdote, Covey is arguably being discourteous when he confronts the father. He assumes that the father didn’t care about how his kids were behaving and how their behavior was affecting the other people in the subway car. But after he finds out he was wrong, he — unlike the patron — doesn’t let his embarrassment keep him from being compassionate. It turns into a beautiful soulful interaction.

Would it have been better of Covey had kept his mouth shut and not confront the father at all? I don’t think so, even if it may have been more courteous.

What Would the World Be Like if Everyone was Courteous?

This question is not as straightforward as it looks. Courteousness is not a clear cut good trait. Someone can be courteous and be a doormat. Someone can be courteous and not a doormat. What’s the difference? Let’s examine.

The Courteous Doormat
The main characteristic of the doormat is the lack of ability to relate to others as an equal. When the doormat is wronged she takes it and does nothing about it. Maybe she fumes in private, but she does not take steps to correct the situation. She lacks courage. She lack’s strength of character. She probably lacks self-worth. Yes, she’s kind and courteous, but it’s not really all that healthy.

If the world was full of courteous doormats life would be not much different than it is now, except maybe worse. There’d be a lot of passive aggression. Kind words would lose their meaning, since you’d never know if someone actually meant them or was using them as a mask to hide their contempt. Not good.

The Courteous Non-Doormat
The difference between this person and the doormat isn’t that this person never gets stepped on. Anyone who is kind an courteous will eventually encounter someone who tries to take advantage of their good-naturedness. The difference is the reaction. The doormat does nothing. (Or effectively nothing if she fumes in private.) The non-doormat takes action. She courteously confronts the person. She asks what’s the problem is. She assumes it was a misunderstanding. If it wasn’t a misunderstanding, the non-doormat simply cuts ties with the person. If it was a misunderstanding she works with the person to fix the problem.

The courteous non-doormat is not afraid to see others as an equal. That is, she’s not afraid to confront them when she feels wronged. After all, why would you be afraid to approach someone who’s you’re equal? Also, because of her strength of character, she can act out of compassion — be vulnerable — without fear of injury. She has a thick skin without a wall.

To be a courteous non-doormat is without a doubt a positive trait. If the world were filled with this kind of person life would be much more pleasant. There’d be a lot more happiness, openness, and understanding. ^_^

See! Way too long for a comment!

First: What is detachment? Why is detachment a good idea?

Detachment is not letting your primitive brain get emotionally involved with a situation. It’s not letting emotion be the sole driver of your decisions. It’s pretending that you’re an outside observer watching what’s happening. Here are some examples to illustrate the concept and show you when it’s a good idea to be detached.

Buying a house When you’re buying a house (or making any large purchase or big decision) it’s a good idea to not be too attached to it. Meaning it’s a good idea to not care about what your buying or at least remind yourself constantly that it’s not yours yet. If you fall head over heels in love with it you run the risk of not seeing the flaws it has or of getting incredibly disappointed when it fails the house inspection or when your lender refuses to give you the money you need to buy it. On top of that, the house is a physical object. It could burn down. A meteorite could crash into it. It’s impermanent. The more attached to it you are, the more unnecessary disappointment you risk.

Your kids Or more specifically, the dreams you have for your kids. The truth is your children are not what you dream, hope, or wish them to be. You may envision them as captains of industry when really all they want to do is teach. You may envision them as staying nearby forever when they really want to travel the world and go on adventures. The more attached you are to what you want your kids to become, the more difficult your life will be. Your kids either won’t fulfill their potential and will resent you, or they’ll go off and live the life they were meant to live and you’ll mourn the loss of something you never had. The less attached you are to the dreams you have for your kids, the more able you are to help them flourish. By being less attached, I mean you still care and love your kids but you’re willing to put aside your expectations of them. You’re willing to remind yourself that your hopes are not necessarily reality.

Beliefs Your beliefs are based on the experience you’ve had until now. In the future you may find that beliefs you’ve had no longer make sense to you anymore. The less attached you are to your beliefs the easier it will be to live in keeping with where you are at any given moment. This is where things get tricky. What does it mean to be detached from your beliefs? They make up your identity, after all. The trick here is to be attached to truth. That is, be attached to what’s real, to what is. Our understanding of what is true changes over time, but the commitment to truth doesn’t have to change. All of us, whether we acknowledge it or not, want truth in our lives. Identify yourself as a truth seeker, and you’ll almost automatically be detached from your beliefs.

Proposals Let’s say you’ve made a proposal for some project that you need to get approved by an executive board. The more you attached you are to each of the details in your proposal, the less likely it will get passed. And if it does get passed it’ll be with a lot of changes you feel uncomfortable about. On the other hand, if there’s a goodly number of aspects you don’t really care about and only a few things you can’t compromise on, the more likely your proposal will get passed and the more likely you’ll be happy about what got passed.

Detachment is not about suppressing emotion

Whenever I heard or read about detachment I’d always felt uncomfortable about it because I was afraid it meant I was supposed to be totally and completely rational. That my having warm attachment feelings was bad. That it was a bad idea to let those feelings have any say in my decision making. Whenever I thought about it I’d see that actually doing what I thought detachment meant would be stupid. If you’re choosing your career based solely on what’s practical you may find 9-5 schedule unbearable. If you’re choosing a partner based solely on practical rational things (How much debt does he have? How much money does he make? Do I like her parents?) you’ll find your home life lacking. It’s often an excellent idea to follow your intuition.

On further examination and after practicing detachment anyway, I realized that’d I’d misunderstood what was meant by detachment. Detachment is not the same as not feeling anything at all. When you’re detached from your emotions, you still feel them. They even can play a part in your decision making (Acting on intuition, anyone?), but your emotions do not control you. They’re a source of information.

Take the house, for example. Aaron and I are buying a house right now and it has been a fairly emotional process. For one thing the house I’d sort of been eying since the summer turned out to be in our price range, was still available in the fall, was one of the first houses we looked at, and when we went to see it it fit a lot of our wants. I basically fell in love with it. But I didn’t let that attachment feeling drive me to make an offer right there. I acknowledged the feeling, made a mental note, and then Aaron and I got a buyer’s agent and looked at 20 more houses.

Waiting to get a buyer’s agent and looking at more houses was a great idea, and something I could only do by forcing myself to be somewhat detached from the strong warm feelings I first had toward the house. By getting a buyer’s agent that meant that we weren’t the ones doing the negotiating, and by looking at all those other houses we really appreciated what the house had to offer. Also by being at least somewhat detached, I was mitigating the disappointment I’d feel if the house failed the inspection or we couldn’t get a loan or something. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still be disappointed if it doesn’t go through, but it won’t be nearly as bad as it would be if I let myself be totally attached to it.

In short, detachment is a really good idea. It gives both sides of your brain a chance to work out a problem. It lessens the pain you feel when things change unexpectedly. It makes you feel happier because it aligns your life with truth. Yay detachment!

Conventional wisdom says that putting up an emotional wall is bad, but many people do it. It’s a common trope in romantic stories: the main character’s been hurt over and over again and has put up an emotional wall, has a heart of stone, and only the new lover can break down the wall and warm the heart. Ah, so romantic. ^_~

So, is a fully opened heart really all that wonderful?

I think the answer is “sort of”. Clearly an emotional wall isn’t good. With a wall you cut yourself off from the outside world. You aren’t allowing yourself to see the truth of your situation. You feel lonely. But having a fully opened heart, with no barrier whatsoever is like sunbathing without sunscreen. It’s dangerous. When people say hurtful things you have no shielding at all. You’ll get burned.

What you really want is a thick skin. You want the ability to see and understand the feedback the world is giving you without it injuring you. You want the ability the accept criticism of what you do and not see it as a personal attack. You don’t want to feel offended. If someone does make an ungrounded personal attack you want to be able to shrug it off. Essentially you want to choose your reaction.

How do you get there? Here are some things you can do.

Create a Bigger Gap
There’s a great saying that Covey likes to quote in his books, “There is a gap between stimulus and response”. The greater you make that gap the easier it is to deal effectively with feedback. If you respond to stimuli instantly you’ll be responding with your primitive brain’s emotional reflexes, the “fight or flight” response. The longer the response time the more time you allow for you higher faculties to get involved.

Practice Detachment
Detachment really needs it’s own article. It’s a big, somewhat complicated topic. Multiple situations count as detachment. That being said, I’ll try to give a short summary here.

Detachment is basically a form of not caring. Or at least not letting your primitive, reactive brain care about anything. If someone says something mean to you, you shrug it off. You listen, but it doesn’t hurt you. If you present an proposal, detachment means you won’t feel much if it’s shot down or accepted. It means you can listen to criticism and actually improve yourself without wasting energy dealing with hurt or over excitement.

This may sound like an “emotional wall”, but it isn’t. A wall is when you see positive feedback as being lies, (Block it out! You might be hurt!!!) and negative feedback as something to ignore or as justification for dismissing the positive feedback. It’s a cancellation filter on reality. Nothing (good or bad) gets in.

With detachment you do experience reality, it just doesn’t hurt you. The filter is applied to you, not reality.

You are Your Only Competitor
If you are your only competitor, then feedback and criticism takes on a new meaning. It doesn’t matter if fifteen people are better than you, just as long as you’ve improved over time.

This is a tough idea to really internalize since competition with others can be really motivating in the short term. External competition is a dangerous game, though. It can lead to you developing contempt for your adversaries. It can lead to you being afraid to reach out for help or afraid to show your awesome ideas to others for fear that others will steal it. The short term boost in productivity is probably not worth the risk, especially when coupled with the benefits you get by being able to focus your energies on being better than you were.

Ask for lots of feedback
The more often you ask for feedback the easier it is to receive it and be detached from it.

If you’re a software designer you’ll be used to getting a lot of feedback. When you’re debugging you want to find out where you went wrong so you can fix it. You get input from users to find out how to improve the program. Feedback isn’t something to be feared or worry over. It’s something to react to. It’s something to show you where to improve. When you get feedback often and when there aren’t dire consequences to receiving the feedback it gets easier to receive. Receiving criticism is no longer the same as being criticized.

Assume People Aren’t Out to Hurt You
I’ve found that when my friends say something that seems hurtful, more often than not it wasn’t intended that way. And when I look back on some of the things I’ve said, I’ve found that many of them could have been interpreted as an attack when really it was me just expressing my own hurt.

I suppose once in a while people do say things that are intentionally hurtful, but how awesome/weird would it be if the person on the receiving end assumed it was supposed to be a positive or neutral comment?

So to sum up. Emotional Wall Bad. No Shield at all: Bad Thick Skin and Detachment: good. How to get Thick Skin: 1) Create Bigger gap between stimulus and response. 2) Practice detachment. 3) Compete with yourself, not others 4) Seek out Criticism, and 5) Assume first that people aren’t out to make you feel bad.

So what do you do if you have parents who are making your life miserable? Here are a few suggestions:

Act Like You’re Self Sufficient
Start doing the things you would be doing if you were living on your own. Do your own laundry. Fix your own breakfast. Wash the dishes. Clean the bathroom. Do these things independent of whether or not your parents ask you to. If you have a co-dependent relationship with your parents (i.e. you make your decisions based on how your parents will react), this is an excellent practice tool for working toward acting independently of them.

In addition you’ll get several other benefits from doing this:

• A feeling of power Honestly, as much doing household chores is a pain, doing them freely really does make you feel like you’re an adult. You are using your ability to take care of yourself. When someone tells you you’re incapable of taking care of yourself, you’ll know that in fundamental way you indeed are capable.
• You improve your quality of life a bit. A cleaner room is a nicer room. The food you cook is of as high a quality as you can make it.
• Your parental units may start seeing you as more of an adult. And not just any kind of adult: a responsible adult. The more responsible you are in their eyes the more privileges you get. (Usually) All parents are different, so I can’t guarantee this will be the outcome for you, but I can say that there’s virtually no chance that taking care of the house will hurt your credibility.

Even if you’re planning to leave your room a mess, never do your own laundry, and leave the dishes in the sink for weeks when you actually do get to live on your own, I’d highly advise you to consider becoming the kind of person who’s tidy all the time. Ask yourself if part of the reason you’re a slob is just to piss off your parents. If that’s the case, you’re being co-dependent. You’re better than that.

Follow Your Conscience
Adults are perfectly capable of giving you advice and then going about acting irresponsibly. Sometimes ideas you know are right will be shot down by people who are older than you. They’ll tell you you haven’t lived, that there’s no way for you to understand until you’re older. If you’re getting this response, it’s unreasonable.

I’m 24 now. I’ve had a fair amount of life experience compared to my high school self. There’s only a handful of things I don’t think I’d have understood prior to experiencing them, and those weren’t the things I got into arguments about.

I spent a fair amount of time in high school angsting about my lack of experience. Looking back, it was wasted time and energy. I’d have done a lot better to trust myself and fall once in a while than feel bad that I could convince the authority figures (and myself) that I was right. Alas.

Get your advice from people with real experience
Related to the last point, many adults will have no problem giving you advice which they’d never consider giving their peers. They’ll tell you about investing when they’re buried in debt. They’ll tell you about how to deal with your significant other when they’ve been divorced three times and had two affairs. It’s unwise to take advice from someone when the subject of the advice is an area in which the person continues to fail. Don’t call them on this though. More likely than not they’ll attack you for it.

Instead get your advice from people who have reached the goals you want to reach. Ask someone who appears to have a good relationship about how to deal with your significant other. Ask someone who owns a business about what it’s like to start one. Etc.

Don’t complain
This will get you a lot of the way toward a good experience in high school. Whining doesn’t win you anything, and even when it does it comes at a price. You aren’t respected. You’re seen for the dependent child that you are.

Instead, acknowledge your situation, and try to find ways to work within it. If there’s injustice, accept it. It’s really hard to convince parents that they’re favoring one of your siblings, no matter how obvious it is to an outside observer. Same thing with a parenting decision. It’s not worth fighting since you do not have real power. The faster you accept it, the less hurt gets into your heart. Take heart that the situation is temporary.

Acting independently will help you in this endeavor.

Be Judicious in Your Openness
This is entirely dependent on who your parents are. There are some that will actually help you be your own person, who will reward openness with helping you think through the problem. If you have one of those, feel free to be fairly open with them. Let them know what you’re doing, what your beliefs are, what you aspire to do. They’ll help you get there.

If your parents are still believe they can “mold” you into their version of the ideal you, your openness will not be greeted with happy things. The best advice here is to give them only what they can handle hearing. If every time you talk about your dreams of traveling you’re dreams are shot down, don’t talk about it. They haven’t earned the right to your openness. Find other people to share it with. Lots of people, less attached than your parents, will be able to support what you want to do.

In short, they aren’t entitled to your openness just because they’re your parents.

Like the post on getting through high school, if I’d done these things while I was a teenager my life would have been a lot more pleasant. Such is life. Don’t repeat my mistakes.

Does this sound familiar? Are you afraid of what people will think of you if you actually lose weight? Or more importantly, what you will think of you? Does that mean you’re the kind of person that’s focused more on physical appearance than inner beauty? Does that mean you’ll have to sacrifice something that’s important to you in order to make the time to eat well and exercise? Does that mean you’ll be the kind of person that sacrifices spiritual things for the physical?

Or what if you’ve always wanted to be an artist or an actor or a comedian? That culture has a reputation for promiscuity, ungodliness, and other not so wonderful traits. Does that mean you’ll have to develop those traits? Do you want to be that kind of person? Do you want to be thought of being that kind of person?

Or what about money? What if you were rich? How would you feel about being a wealthy person? What would that say about you? Is it something you want to be? Is it something you’re OK with being?

All of these things are fears of success, or more accurately fear of the kind of person you’ll become if you succeed.

There are a few ways you can tackle the problem depending on both your faith in your decision and your faith in your ability to deal with problems if it was the wrong decision.

Superman You have strong faith in your ability to fix problems associated with your change if they arise.

If you’re in this category, it doesn’t really matter how much you believe in your decision. Just dive in and see what happens. No matter how much of a hole you dig you’ll learn a lot, and you can climb your way out afterward if it’s not really where you want to go.

If you’re in this category, you probably don’t really have this fear of success thing either.

“Compass say that’s the right direction, but the clouds are ominous” You’re fairly certain this is the right direction for you, but you’re a bit scared about what it means to be that kind of person. An example is the would-be artist who’s afraid of being the sinful person he envisions all artists to be.

There’s a few things you can do to ease this block:

• Identifiy what scares you Is it that you’ll be a bad person? That you won’t have time for what’s important? That you’ll have to drop all of your friends and family?
• Visualize yourself having your cake and eating it too Figure out how you can do the new thing, be the new person and still do what’s important to you.If you’re trying to stay your pious self, maybe while you’re pursing your art and getting to know artist type people you also spend extra time at Church or with people who keep you honest and good. Maybe find someone to talk to about the challenges you’re facing, someone who can honestly assure you when you’re still on the right track or who can warn you when you start veering off.
• Do it When your safeties are in place, start taking action to achieve your goal. If you’ve thought of everything, you should be able to make progress without your subconscious nagging you. And if you notice you still have the nagging feeling, figure out what it is and tackle it. Eventually you’ll weed all these issues out.

“My compass is broken” You aren’t even sure why you’re considering this goal.

This is deserving of its own post, but the short answer is:

1. Figure out what’s important to you and where you want to go with your life
2. Figure out what appeals to you about this goal
3. Do those thing fit together?

If you can answer “yes” to question 3, then your compass isn’t the issue. Move on to the “Ominous Clouds” section.

Chances are you fall into one of these three categories. Hopefully this advice will give you some insight on how to deal what you’re facing.

At some point I’ll expand on the “broken compass” category, since a functioning inner compass is useful and not all that trivial to set up.

1. Organized People are Not Good people There are two things you need to do in order to be organized and stay your same sweet self. The first is to make sure organization/cleanliness stays as a means to an end. Using organization as a means to do the things you want to do keeps your mind focused on what’s really important to you, whatever that may be. Being organized is not the goal. Doing the things you want to do is.
   
   The second thing to do is to avoid identifying yourself as an organized person. If being organized really gives you an ego boost it’s only a small step to looking down on people who don’t meet your cleanliness standards.
   
   It’s really not that hard to do either of these things. When your projects are important to you, it’s hard to see organization as anything but a means to an end. And when you see it as a means to an end it’s hard to identify yourself with it. It’s like identifying yourself as a person who brushes her teeth daily. It’d just be silly.
2. People will make fun of you for having changed It’s true that this could happen to you, but does it really matter? Their discomfort with your changing is their problem, not yours. If you’re confident that you’re moving in the right direction, that organizing your life is the right thing for you to do, to hell with all of the nay-sayers.
   
   Once you’ve been living this way for a while, people will get used to it. It’ll be your new normal.
3. Identity Crisis The truth is people change. You will change. The question is not whether or not you’ll be you, but is this the right direction for you? Is an organized life more preferable to a disorganized one? If yes, then go for it. You’ll get used to your new skin after a while, especially since it’s something you develop for yourself. Your system will be uniquely you. How could that feel strange?
4. You can’t be spontaneous anymore If you’re following a rigid schedule, then I guess this would be true, but if you’re going to have a system that really works for you it’s going to have to be flexible. Few things go exactly as planned anyway. If you want to be go somewhere on a whim no organization system can or should stop you. It’ll just make you aware of the consequences of that whim and how to get back on track.
   
   A key aspect of a good organization system is the ability to renegotiate commitments you’ve made to yourself and others. If it’s for the sake of some random fun time, all the better!
5. You’ll have to face your limits Yep, you will. But is that bad? Knowing the truth of what you’re able to do right now is important for your personal development. If you can commit to the system, then you’ll have to exercise courage to say no to the unimportant. You’ll be a better person for it. And over time you’ll be able to do more of the things you want to do.
6. You’ll look funny You’ll look even funnier when you either have a hard time keep your commitments or do very little with your time. And after a while, you’ll get used to the weird looks anyway.
7. You’ll spend your whole day doing stuff you don’t want to do I used to feel this way a lot when I was still in school. If I made a schedule of things I was supposed to do or needed to do, I’d end up spending my whole day doing unpleasant things. I’d never get around to having fun.
   
   The truth is, the amount of unpleasant stuff you have to do is totally up to you. Also you don’t have to get it all done in one day. Spread the work out over several days. Don’t do mind intensive work when you’re tired and you’ll go a long way toward avoiding burnout. Or make fun things a higher priority.
8. You won’t have time to do what you want to do The solution to this problem is the same as above. Let your to-do list last over several days and only do mind intensive work when you have the energy to do it. When your brain is tired do something that you want to do.
   
   Of course, if the kinds of things you want to do are mind intensive–taking a leadership position in a club for instance–you may find yourself in a more difficult situation. But you’d be there with or without a planning system. At least with a planning system you can make a more realistic assessment of your ability to succeed in all the things you do.
9. Actually implementing the organization scheme will take more time than it saves When you first implement a new organization scheme, for the first few weeks it will take a lot of time to use. You haven’t come up with ways to streamline the system, nor is it set up to your satisfaction. There’s no getting around the growing pains.In spite of that, even in the early stages a good planning system will give you piece of mind. You’ll know what you have to work on, what stage projects are on, what stuff you’re waiting on, what you need to buy at the supermarket. That piece of mind, I think, is worth the extra time it takes to use the system. And in the end, once you’ve set it up to meet your needs, using it should take little time at all.
10. You don’t have time to get organized If you really believe this, then you don’t have time not to get organized. Seriously. There’s only so long that you can run on empty before you burn out. Things will slip here and there because your mind isn’t really meant for the task of keeping your life in order, and if you have trained your mind to do that task you wouldn’t be disorganized, would you?

So, as you can see, the excuses don’t really hold up to much scrutiny. (At least they don’t stand up to my scrutiny ) There is only one good reason I can think of to not implement a planning system, and that’s if your life is simple enough not to call for it. If you already know at every moment what you need to be doing, then you’re all set. That’s the main purpose of a planning system, after all: to confidently know what it is you should be doing right now.

Are there any reasons you have to not get organized?

Maybe what’s blocking you is in this list.

1. Organized People are Not Good people There’s a great episode of Wife Swap (which for the record I don’t usually watch) that swaps a new-agey mom with an uptight uber-clean mom. For all the faults the new-agey mom has, namely not keeping her house clean and not being on time to things, I’d much rather grow up to be her than the uber-clean punctual one. To give you an idea of what I mean, here’s a clip from the show of what uber-clean mom thinks of the value of meditating.When I think of many people who keep incredibly tidy homes I tend to see bits of this personality. That punctuality and cleanliness are the most important things in their life, even though it’s obvious that they aren’t really happy with where they are. Also, new-agey mom, for all her faults, comes across as way happier than uber-clean mom, and again, I’ve seen this in my real life as well. Of course I’ve also seen unhappy messy people too.It doesn’t take much to see how this could turn into a mental block. If leading a clean, organized, virtuous life means that you’ll be unhappy why would you ever want to do that to yourself?
2. People will make fun of you for having changed I’ve experienced this in my life. There’s always a whiplash from loved-ones when you make a change for the better. When I started to exercise I remember some of my friends and family asking “what changed”, and not in an encouraging way. Same thing with becoming vegetarian. Same thing with organizing.I think this happened to me because I used to be very antagonistic toward doing any of these things years ago. They’d try to get me to change and it wouldn’t happen. So now out of the blue I have changed and not because of their excellent persuasive technique. So it’s not really that surprising that they’re not entirely happy for me.
3. Identity Crisis Maybe you just can’t see yourself as an organized person. If you start living an effective life, if you change who you are, will you still be you? It’s a scary thought!
4. You can’t be spontaneous anymore If you know when you’re going to do everything in your life, how can you possibly go off somewhere on a whim? Do you really want to give that up?
5. You’ll have to face your limits When attempting to find a time for everything that’s important to you, you may discover that you can’t do it without some sacrifices. Prior to actually using a planning system you can always tell yourself, “If I got organized I could fit everything in”. That won’t work after you’ve done it.
6. You’ll look funny Carrying around a day planner is not what most people do. It’s not nearly as hip as an iPhone or a Blackberry and it doesn’t fit in your pocket. If you’re really using it, you’re going to end up taking it out in public, not just at home or in the office. People might stare at you.
7. You’ll spend your whole day doing stuff you don’t want to do When you’re in planning mode it feels good to think about getting all the necessary but unpleasant things done. Before you know it your days are full of Work, Laundry, and Taxes. Yuk. Looks good on paper, but not so good in real life.
8. Won’t have time to do what you Want Sort of a combination of 7 and 5, in order to do the stuff you need to do and really would like to do you won’t have time to do things that are just fun. Reading fantasy novels. Watching TV. Those are rewards you’ll never get to experience if you use a planning system.
9. Actually implementing the organization scheme will take more time than it saves Between all of the writing/rewriting of stuff in the planner and the weekly review, there’s no way you’ll be saving time.
10. You don’t have time to get organized In spite of needing to get on top of your life, right now if you took any time out of your day for it you’d be weeks behind. It’s too late for you.

At some point or another I’ve felt all of these things, and many of them have blocked me from successfully using a planning system. They, of course, are not actually good reasons to not use a planning system, and in the next post I’ll show you why.