This week I've been following the USA today series on "The Happiest Woman in America" and I don't recommend that you read it unless you are 1) ready to get deeply unhappy or 2) are a sociologist.

The story ran over a series of four days and analyzed the every movement of Mary Claire Orenic, age 50, "The Happiest Woman In America." It looked at her life, in conjunction with a recent Healthways study in well-being and 23 pieces of data identified as keys to well-being.   Mary Claire was presented as the poster child who demonstrated that when you have these 23 things on the Well-being Checklist, you will be happy.

Nice idea.

Wrong conclusion.

Here's the thing, Mary Claire does seem to be a genuinely happy person. And that's wonderful.  What is less convincing is the assumption that the trappings of her wonderful life are what caused her happiness.  

This is a case of confusing the effects of happiness with the cause of happiness.  Let's look more closely. 

For example:

• "Eating five small meals a day and taking frequent walks has helped this busy mom stay in shape." 

Assumption: stay in shape and you will be happy. 

• A well-timed empty nest is critical for well-being.  "You need to have launched your last child by the time your reach age 50."

Assumption (stated outright):  Because "the intersection between your stage in life and the age of your children will have a profound effect on your happiness."

These assumptions and many more, whether implicit or explicit, make happiness a function of your body shape, of your wealth, of your children and of your friends. 

This well-intentioned article dissects these so-called causes of happiness with a view to instructing people in how to carve their own way to well-being. It misses the elephant in the room.

Well-being is not a stop on the tramway, or a lost sock.  

I know articles like these intend only to be helpful, but they do more harm than good.  At best an article like this does nothing to point to the true causes of happiness. At worst it reinforces the already too-widely unquestioned idea that our contentment and well-being are out there somewhere and the problem is to define the "somewhere" and somehow sneak up on it before you die.  

Only from this logic could it ever make sense to prescribe "1-5 hours of social interaction per day," "Strong support of family," and the other 21 things that are listed as essential contributors to high well-being.  

What a disservice to humanity.  What a lie. 

Look more deeply.   

Rummage around a bit in Mary Claire's real story and you will see that the key information was mentioned only in passing -- cast aside as if it had no bearing on her long-term happiness -- and the real questions were never asked. 

How did she know to follow the roads that she did?  How did she hear her own inner direction to "learn from a past mistake" and to turn away from "being a slacker in high school," to "wait to get married later in life."  Where did her decision to become "an achiever" suddenly spring from? These questions deserve attention because they point to something more important than what happened next.  What was she listening to?  How did she know to follow it?

Something inside her told her to get a sponsor to help further her career.  She and her husband were "deliberate" about when to have children.  Mary Claire keeps up with friends from her past -- all results not the causes of her happiness. Ask rather,  how does she "know" to do that? How does she know to do any of it?    

Where is she getting her information?   

I know one thing, she didn't have a copy of the Well-being Shopping List with 23 things on it.  Many of her choices in life flew in the face of logic, reason and what other people told her to do.  She went her own way.

Everything she has now arose from herself first. Call it good judgement, common sense, self-listening, or just tuning inward.  It doesn't matter what you call it. The point is, she is not special or gifted or amazing.

We all have what Mary Claire has.  She's just using it.

And thus the most important part, the universal and most hopeful part of her story was completely missed.  She's not "The Happiest Woman in America" because she can cross off everything on the well-being check list, she's happy because she listened well to her own good counsel.  She followed her compass.  She saw her own north star and said "that way!"

That's possible for any of us.  That directional mechanism is inside all of us already.

What do you think Steve Jobs was listening to?

So burn the case studies, the research and the shopping list for "Wellbeing."

When you can hear the guidance within you that is telling you what's right for you, make the choices that are in line with you. They will feel right.  Learn what that feels like.  Louise Hay used to call it, "listening for the inner ding."  

Mary Claire is a good example of someone who did just that. 

Forget the rest. 

 "Before enlightenment I was depressed, after enlightenment I continue to be depressed"  -- Anthony de Mello

One of my clients once asked me, "If I'm so spiritually evolved, why am I having a bad day?"

Don't we all have this question in various forms?   

"I'm a coach, why am I having difficulty with this issue?"
"I'm a therapist, why are my own relationships in trouble?"
"I've been doing self-development for years, why am I still getting angry?"

Or perhaps you've had the question tossed at you... 

"If you teach this to people, why don't you go practice it yourself!"  

We tend to see these questions as pointing toward some issue within us; something we need to clean up or some way in which we are inauthentic or out of integrity.

Not so.

... unless the purpose of self-development (or spiritual growth) is to never have a bad day again.

It's not that I think becoming issue-free is unrealistic or impossible.  Perhaps it is.  But what interests me more is this:  Do we study, have our spiritual practices, or hire someone to help us 'get better' in order to never ever feel bad again?

If we make our self-improvement all about becoming a perfect human being with a perfect life, we are in for trouble.  There is no greater suffering than striving to be a flawless human.  It is an endless moving runway with a carrot dangling -- always -- just out of reach.   You make improvements in one area and soon you are noticing all the ways that you are lacking in another and then you are right back on the treadmill. 

It's very easy when we read spiritual masters, reflect, meditate, study or hire someone to work with us, to fall into the trap of believing that a sign of enlightenment (or progress) is that we will stop having strong negative emotions.  Just look at how shocked we are when a one of our icons admits to feeling depression, gets mad at a being stuck in traffic, gets a divorce or declares bankruptcy!  

No matter how much 'work' you do on yourself, you cannot get rid of your emotions -- because you cannot get rid of the fact that you are a thinking being.  The two go together, hand in glove. We always feel whatever we think. 

Thoughts themselves are a kaleidoscope of infinite colors and shapes, many of which are not all that pretty.  We define the bad, uncomfortable, unworthy and wrong ones and then set about trying to extract them as if they were cavities. How would you do that, really?  And more importantly, why would you want to?  You are by definition as 'sentient being'.

'Bad thinking' isn't something to rip out and replace with positivity.  Maybe life would be better if we could do this; but have you ever actually succeeded? Are you sure that's purpose of personal growth? 

For me it proved stressful, and ultimately unsuccessful! 

A turning point for me was when I noticed that I actually do not take EVERY thought seriously.  I've had thoughts of punching someone, and not followed through. I realized I am actually already naturally and effortlessly ignoring all kinds of thoughts. You probably do too, within the last hour perhaps.  

You know how they say "the thought crossed my mind"?  It's true. Thoughts do cross your mind.  AND if you notice, you might also find that, you too have plenty of experience in not taking them seriously. Thoughts themselves cannot compel action from us.  Thoughts are not us. So the types of thoughts you have do not define the kind of person you are.

Seeing this, we can relax. We can understand that thinking is not problematic. It just happens.  It's not who we are, but it happens in us.   

I have given up on trying to change and get rid of certain thoughts.  My life is the better for it.

Last week I was teaching at our CSC Retreat by the Sea and for the 9 hours driving up and back to Santa Cruz from San Diego, I was listening to Anthony de Mello's Wake Up To Life lectures (which I highly recommend!).  He asserts,  

"Do you know it's possible to be anxious, yet not troubled?  Do you realize that you can be happy in your anxiety and in your depression?  The only reason you don't is because you don't understand what happiness is. You think happiness is 'thrills'. It's not..."

Most of us are trying to be happy without knowing and without inquiring into what happiness is.  When we define it as 'never having a bad day' or 'never being upset' no wonder we are never happy! 

I am wondering if perhaps the purpose of life is not to get happiness or even to be happy, but to understand what happiness really is.   

Only then, does happiness have a chance to unfold within us and be recognized.

Many people talk about the importance of 'being yourself'. It's quite a big self-help industry, isn't it, this whole thing of learning to be yourself.  But don't you think that's more than just a little odd, the fact that you have learn to be you?

Yet I can't count the number of times a client has said to me that they are hoping to learn to be more authentic, more 'themselves'. It sounds on the surface as if that makes sense too.  Yet given the number of personalities we all can display, I sometimes wonder which 'authentic' we'd chose from! 

Who is your authentic self?

Where will you go looking for you?

How will you know when you've found you?

Does all this mean that in a lifetime of searching I might miss myself, pass myself by and somehow never experience what it's like to be me?  It sure seems that way. 

So before we run off to find ourselves, what is this me I am seeking?

A friend and mentor I love dearly and have the great privilege to work closely with at Supercoach Academy is Michael Neill.  Michael shared this distinction in this years' class called "Natural vs Normal."  It's an important one.  I'm going to give my version of what I see Michael might be pointing to and why it's so important in the context of being oneself.

'Normal' is what you might call the familiar way in which our human system operates.  In the normal way of things, it's 'normal' to argue when you are upset.  It is also 'normal' to get upset if someone calls your Dad a loser or cuts you off in traffic. It's normal to be worried and stressed out. It's normal to have concern for your children.

I'm not suggesting normal is bad.  I'm just saying it's, well, normal.  Normal is the conglomeration of things that we really take for granted because so many of us agree that it's just the way it is. Normal is what we take for granted.  Which means it is also invisible to us.  More on this in just a moment. 

By contrast, 'natural' is the state we find ourselves in when we are not all wound up.  It's what happens (yes, naturally) when we are not triggered or speeding around. It is less a state you evoke, a more a state that is just there when nothing else is getting in the way.  I'm struck that the saying 'the natural order of things' is one of those sayings we think refers to mother nature alone, and yet it too suggests a state of being (not a way of being) that is utterly effortless, so completely in tune with life itself as to be almost unnoticeable. It's funny how we think of nature and humans as somehow different.  Surely we too, have a natural order. One that really can't get messed up.  

In other words, when we are not lost in our worried thoughts the natural state of a human being is just that: A human. Being.

Our natural state is a human with all the capacities pre-loaded -- to love, feel connected, to sense what's best for us.  And those simply are as natural as it gets. 

I think the problem with going out there looking to find ourselves is that we are always looking to the world and our experience of what's normal rather than the delicious feeling of what's natural within us.  Maybe we wander off from knowing what that feels like, but it is always there waiting for us.  You'll feel it in moments when you might least expect it -- a surge of joy, a sense of feeling nicely settled, a sense of being connected to someone.

Our own authenticity is really what we experience in ourselves when we are simply in our natural state of mind.  

I absolutely know when I am in my natural state, because I feel good.  Warm feelings, pleasant feelings, these are the signs of your natural self. You don't have to go anywhere or do anything for this to arise in you.   It is just there.

In that sense you could say that stress and worry are unnatural states. Even if they are very normal! 

Once a spiritual seeker approached a great teacher and said, "I'd like to find my perfect mate."
 
The teacher responded with a question, "Are you happy?" she asked.
 
"Very much so! I have a nice house, car and a great job and I'm very grateful."
 
"Are you happy?" she asked again.
 
Surprised, the seeker responded, "Absolutely. I have wonderful teachers and I have studied a great deal. I've come a long way."
 
The teacher listened and looked gently at the student and asked again, "Are you happy?"
 
The seeker became irritated.  He pointed a finger at the teacher accusingly, and said  "You know, if I didn't know better I would think you were trying to get me to realize that I'm already happy so that I will forget all about my question!"
 
"Exactly," said the teacher.
 
We all tend to focus our attention on what we think is missing in our life.  
 
It is as if the journey of life were equivalent to completing a puzzle. Sort of like arriving here on this planet, each of us with the incomplete set and with the missing pieces scattered across the world, waiting to be sought out, claimed and placed in their rightful juxtaposition. 
 
Life becomes a continual search for the right pieces and a feeling of being unfinished until the last pieces arrive.  To cope with this we rely on faith or action -- or both. And I'm not surprised that people have crisis of faith, or that action eventually exhausts us and fails to deliver.
 
Not because action or faith are not helpful, but because there is a fatal flaw in the fabric:  The assumption that we are incomplete. We are not. There is no one on earth who came here needing therapy at birth.
 
No matter who we are or what has happened to us, we all possess capacities to live life that were never taught to us. Capacities that are a given from the time we arrive to the time we die.  No one taught you love for example, you arrived with the ability to love.  No one taught you intelligence, you came here with it and it is yours to use.  And if you think about it, love, intelligence, wisdom, and life itself, will still be here long after we are each gone.  
 
What this must mean is that you are not damaged, partial or in need of any of the true basic necessities. Assuming you define 'basic necessities' as these formless qualities, in other words as your ability to finish the puzzle -- not the puzzle pieces themselves.
 
When we focus on what is missing in life we will always find something.  Yet, when we look inward and reflect on who we are as part of the universal intelligence we are born into, we always find that we are completely well-equipped to guide ourselves through life.
 
 

For more than 4 years I have not had a television.  When I left London to move back to the USA, I simply didn't buy one. Then I found I didn't miss it. And so the years have passed with me remaining unconnected from the  grid. 

What is interesting is that, despite not having a television, I have not missed a single major event in the world.  Three of those events are on my mind today -- the riots in London, the tragedy in Norway, and the blackout in my house last night.  (Yes, the one that took out huge tracts of Arizona, Mexico and Southern California).    

I think they all raise the same question for us as human beings.  How do we be with the fact that bad things happen in life?     

An inescapable fact of human-ness is that stuff happens that is out of our control.    

September 8th our power went down in Southern California and many people were stranded and in difficulty.  In London people were horrified to watch their city spiral into chaos.  Shocked Norwegians and a rising death toll left a wake of mourning families and resuscitated our own memories  of 9/11.  

Life simply refuses to stop challenging us. I don't believe that the answer is to resort to rage or numbness. I also don't think we can escape by avoidance.  And that is certainly not what I'm trying to do by not having a TV!  I want to be fully, intimately engaged in all of life, especially my own.

There is a terrible effect on our individual lives if we don't come to terms with what we don't control.

I notice that very often we end up limiting our responsiveness and dampening our humanity because we assume that trying to understand something is the same thing as condoning it.  But that leaves us even less able to deal with our own lives and be happy.  

On the radio show on this topic ("Bad News and Unwanted Events") I explored this more and talked about how to make sense of life and how to be with life in all it's aspects while still getting up in the morning and going on with having a good day.  

As outside events happen you'll notice that individual responses to those events seems to vary considerably from one person to the next.  This is true no matter how catastrophic the event.  Some people recover quickly, some slowly, some are consumed with grief, some move on, some experience stress and immobilization while others experience a compulsion to help.

The fact that there is never any universal response to anything, tells us not only that people are different, but that the individual feeling of one's own life is specific and unique to them -- no matter what events have been a part of it.  When I began to see more clearly that the game of life was being played inside me first and foremost, I began to feel less buffeted by the news of the world and much clearer about how I wanted to help.

As a result I am also more compassionate with everyone else in their own individual experiences and choices.  It doesn't mean I like everything that happens, but it does mean I have a better understanding of how we all work as humans and how it is that tragic things can happen. That keeps me calm enough to be of use to others in tough times.

If you work supporting others through addictions, crisis and difficulty, and want to have real impact without burning out yourself --  it's possible to raise your own level of functioning so you can be of more use to everyone in your world -- my circle for difference makers. 

I remember when I first started my own business years ago, and I thought the freelance life meant I would be more independent, more in charge of my schedule and able to take off whenever I wanted. 

It was the opposite.

I worked harder and longer with fewer breaks than anytime in my life. I let my thinking convince me "you never know when the work will dry up!" So I took everything that came along. I didn't dare take a break or go on vacation -- in case something came up.  I saw myself as a beggar in a world of scarcity with an insecure future.

I became exhausted and my life and relationships suffered.

What's worse, I ran out of the creative ideas I needed to run my business.  The work didn't dry up, I dried up.

I won't make that mistake again. The only thing that secures your future (if there is such a thing) is your own well-cared for internal resources.  And I don't mean just eating well and going to the gym.  To be fully ourselves we need a free mind. One that is unencumbered by mis-interpreted thoughts of fear, dread and doubt.

That may seem to suggest you go get some better thoughts, buy yourself some confidence or get going on those affirmations, but that's not what I mean.

Forget all that stuff.  If you have to plan, go for some well-planned, 'do nothing' time. Nothing in the diary. Nothing in the schedule. Nothing to fix in your head. No 'better thoughts' to get.  No need to become someone different.

Just relax into yourself.

I've just taken some time off from my own diary and I plan to do it again.  If you'd like to join me...click here

Based on the radio show on Focus some of you sent me questions about how you can find more focus in life.

To learn to focus may be an art, but this I know: it is a natural art. 

We all have the ability to focus. You have had it your whole life, ever since you were a child and got so absorbed in the game you created with the neighbor kid that you forgot all about time and suddenly realized "Oh my gosh, I'm supposed to be home right now. Dad is going to kill me!" 

When you were a kid you didn't need coffee, chocolate, Kombucha, or Red Bull in order to try to stay involved in your game, your drawing, or singing into your Mom's hairbrush.

Focus came naturally. 

The idea that you need a substance of any kind in order to focus is simply an idea that we've got used to.  We got so used to it that we don't question it.  But that doesn't make it true.

Focus is not found from the outside.

My suggestions on how to find focus, therefore are not tricks or substances or external things of any kind.  Just some ways I've played with as I looked in different places for new ways of doing things (check my blog for more).  Here's my take.

1. Ask Better Questions.
Ask yourself powerful questions, and listen for the answers.
When your mind does quiet down (and it inevitably will) ask yourself things like:

"What would most nourish me feeling good and feeling focused right now?" 
"What do I do/Where am I when I'm naturally relaxed and happy?" 
"When was the last time I felt really focused? How did that come about in me?"
"If I gave myself permission to do things my way, which project would I do now and which would I leave for later?"

You will get interesting answers. And the idea is that when you do things your way, you'll do them well and with more focus.
Maybe write some notes on these answers, or change the questions to suit you.

A variation on this is to ask other people what they notice about when you are most focused, yet relaxed.   The next point builds more on this.

2. Know Yourself Better.
Notice your natural preferences more and work with them not against them.

We spend most of our time looking around us for what we can do or take or have that will help us focus. But as I said, focus doesn't come from outside us.

One way to really help ourselves is to work with and amplify what is already natural to us. In order to know that, begin to notice things like your natural rhythms, your preferred creative time during the day, your low times and your warm-hearted times. Start watching yourself more and notice the ways you support yourself and the ways you might be draining yourself. Are you saying 'yes' to too many projects for example?  In that case you don't need more focus, you need to learn the word 'No.'

Without getting judgmental, think about ways you can start weighing in to support yourself and your natural tendencies.  One thing I do is meditate. That supports me well. You can find what is really suited to you and your life, rather than just picking up what someone else says works for them.

3.  Work on Your Project When Your Mind is Clear
Try working with your clear mind instead of trying to force yourself to overcome a fuzzy mind.

Find the state you most prefer that allows your mind to settle and come into balance. Notice what that feels like.  The mind will do this naturally when we are not overly lost in thought, but some practices like contemplation, reading, meditation or journaling can help.   If not, the best advice I've ever been given is just WAIT.  Things pass. Our thinking passes.  Moods change. 

Maybe the old idea of taking a walk until your thinking clears up wasn't such a bad one!

4. Stop Motivating Yourself! 
The amazing power of choosing.

Most of us have trouble focusing when we are trying to force ourselves to do something we don't actually want to do (see above, saying NO!).  We have this funny idea that we will be able to do the thing and focus on it while we are spending the entire time complaining and bemoaning having to do it.  We can't. 

You can't focus and have a lot of negative mind chatter going on at the same time.

With the 'musts' in our lives, what most of us then do is to try desperately to motivate ourselves somehow.  Feel free to use rewards and punishments if you like, but they never worked for me to improve my focus.  And the question here was how to focus better, not how to complete things.

If you really have something you know you are going to do and that requires your focus (say, taxes rather than laundry), you will need to make a choice.  A very simple choice to do the thing 100%.  Make the choice to do the thing in front of you with all of your attention and energy. Just decide it's the most important thing right now.  The most important thing in the whole universe. 

Give it your full attention, instead of your half-hearted attempt.   You'll see it will be done faster, better, and you'll feel focuses.  With one simple decision you will hoick yourself into the now.

And in the end the only place where focus lives is in your now.

5. Trust Yourself
Some things that our own wisdom shows us can seem counterintuitive.

If we weren't so worried all the time about getting things wrong and having our personalities hurt, we would be much more curious about life. We would drop things that don't work for us much sooner.  And we would do what we know is best for us no matter what anyone else said or did.

Try it.  And pay attention to what happens.  Sometimes we are too quick to register failures and we don't give ourselves time to get into a new groove.  Sometimes we may even wrongly label a small step toward success as a failure.  That's like pulling up the seedlings because you can't tell the difference between them and the weeds.  Give yourself time and relax into this as much as you can.

It's ok to be learning and trying out new ways - and they can feel strange.

In addition to my recent show on Focus, here is a show where Thomas Sterner recounts some amazing an counter-intuitive practices that helped him increase focus: Focus on Demand. In one great story about tuning a piano under terrific pressure he tells how he saved 45 minutes out of his day by slowing down to simple movements, one-at-a-time. 

See what you think.  Try your own ways.

And let me know what you discover!

I also highly recommend that you read Steve Chandler's book "Time Warrior"