Books: Designed for Happiness
(chapter five was added February 15th, 2010)
The Foxes That Spoil the Vineyard
King Solomon is one of my all time favorite guys. He dedicated his years to the study of life. He did experiments to find out what was worthwhile and what was not. He studied wisdom and folly. He contemplated man’s meaning on earth and devoted himself to the search of understanding for everything being done under the sun. In his day he was kind of like the self-improvement genre version of Leonardo D’Vinci. Nobody had more insights into life than he did. Back in the day when paper was pretty scarce he wrote a book of proverbs, a fascinating philosophical paper and he even wrote a steamy love story that actually made its way into the bible. Considering the fact that he lived 3,000 years ago I’d say he was way ahead of his time. If he was alive today there is a good chance that he would be writing best sellers on life and living. It’s from his love story that we get the title for this chapter. The phrase was originally used in the context of a wonderfully intimate romance. The foxes that spoiled the vineyard represented the little things that distracted the lovers from each other and eroded quality from their relationship.
Big problems are sometimes easier to fix than a bunch of little ones that practice guerilla warfare tactics on our lives. A few times while working in an extremely poor province we planted demonstration farms to highlight agricultural practices that could benefit the local farmers. Some of them went well but I’m not a good farmer and most of them didn’t. One of the most memorable failures came not because of a drought or something I had done wrong but because of field rats. We planted a few acres of feed corn and as harvest time approached we started noticing ears with the kernels eaten off of them. At first I thought what can a couple of rats do to all this corn? Each day I would check it and each day would find a lot more corn eaten than I thought was possible. We tried poisoning them but they were too smart. We hardly ever saw them. They didn’t destroy the crop quickly. It took them about a month. When I looked at the acres of standing corn stalks with almost no corn I was amazed at what those little teeth were able to do because no one was able to stop them.
Life forces us to look at some pretty big issues. Sometimes the bigger issues are easier to deal with because they are easy to see. But all of us have small, seemingly insignificant things that eat away at our quality of life. Sometimes those things are like a bunch of nocturnal rats that eat our harvest when we aren’t looking. Sometimes they eat it so slowly we don’t notice the damage until its too late. The amazing thing is that sometimes the little things can get under our skin, upset us and cause even more damage than the big things.
Having a positive outlook on life is crucial to living well. If we don’t consciously choose to tear our minds away from the many negative things in the world that compete for our attention we will tend to develop negative perspectives and emotions. The gratitude exercise we did in a previous chapter is a practical example of rational positive thinking that focuses our minds on good and healthy things. The bible encourages us to focus on positive things.
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things.”
Philippians 4:8
I want to emphasize rational positive thinking because if we base our optimism on unrealistic ideals while in denial of the real negative things in our lives we end up playing silly, self-deluding games that end in disillusionment and disappointment. We have to focus on the positive but we can’t ignore the reality of the little things that eat away at the things that are valuable to us.
That being said, it’s the unpleasant things that naturally get the brunt of our attention. Anyone who has ever had a broken toe knows that no matter how strong and healthy the rest of your body is, it’s the toe that gets your attention. That’s the way it is with negative things in our lives. Even if we’ve got a lot of good things going for us, it’s the negative things that usually have the loudest voices. That’s why rational positive thinking is a lot more difficult than it sounds. Here again we’ve got to analyze our situation. There are real negatives and perceived negatives in everyone’s life. Some of the negatives can be changed. For others there is nothing you can do about them so you need to learn to live with them.
Sometimes the little things that drain away the goodness in our lives seem almost too small to bother with. Sometimes there are so many we just learn to live with them. Remember that the most dangerous kind of stress is the small, incremental kind that builds every day without release or resolution. We learn to endure these things but they are wearing us down more than we realize. In most situations there is something we can do to remove or reduce the little constant irritants in our lives. We should view these joy extractors in our lives like little thieves. They take good things away from us that aren’t theirs (like peace and enjoyment) and they usually get away with it. If they’ve been getting away with it for a long time we sometimes grow to accept them. This really needs to change.
In our house we went through a period when a lot of things disappeared. At first we jokingly brushed it off and kidded about “borrowers” in the house. Then it started to get serious. Cell phones, calculators, clothes, DVD’s went missing. During all this time there was one common denominator. Each time something disappeared a certain friend of my daughter had been at the house. She was close to the family so I was hesitant to make an accusation but I watched her closely. Then one day I put some cash on my daughter’s dresser for her allowance. Within minutes after the friend arrived the cash was gone. I had to make a choice. I wasn’t going to make a huge drama and invite potential litigation by searching her but I could do something. I banned her from our house. She had stolen from us and there was no reasonable solution to get the stuff back without looking like a bully. But I didn’t have to allow her in my house to continue stealing from us. That is the way we need to be with the little thieves in our lives. We may not be able to do anything about what they have stolen in the past but we can certainly make sure they can’t steal from us in the future. We don’t have to allow them proximity to our lives.
I know that when you begin reading about something you want to be able get all your questions answered in the text. The problem is that each of us occupies a unique situation. That situation requires us to do a little thinking beyond the text and toward application of solutions in our lives. In this light it will be valuable for you to list all the negative things in your life that you believe take away happiness that you otherwise would have. This is a list for some of the things that may seem minor. They often won’t be the major life changing things we’ve discussed in other chapters. You may have some things in your life that you absolutely cannot do anything about. That’s a separate issue. We really want to focus on the things that something can be done about. Once you get going you will see what I mean. When you finish the first list, next to the ones that are in your control to change, write down what you can do about them.
My List of Happiness Thieves What I Can Do About Them
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
10)
This list is usually a lot easier than the positive lists because we’ve been paying a lot more attention to the negative things in our lives. Now look at your little thieves and put a check next to the ones that you can do something positive about this week. It may be a problem to be solved, a relationship to work on, a deficiency to be supplemented, a nagging unresolved dispute, a money issue, a health issue, or something else. The key is that until you have identified a problem you can never solve it. Problems don’t get solved by accident. And usually they don’t get solved in packages. We tackle them one by one with thoughtful, proactive measures. That’s what we need to do with our list of negatives here. Make a plan and follow it until your negative is gone or you have successfully turned it into a positive. One thing that helps a lot when you can get it is accountability. If you have a trusted friend or family member that you feel comfortable sharing your plans with, you have a powerful tool to keep you from losing interest and settling for unnecessary frustration. Knowing that we have to answer to someone about our action or lack of action can be a strong motivating factor.
How to set up an accountability system?
1) find someone who understands and supports your goals and preferably has similar ones
2) arrange a schedule and format that isn’t burdensome or that makes your partner feel uncomfortable.
3) Keep track of progress
4) Encourage
5) Continue
WHAT I'VE LEARNED ABOUT MEAN, SELFISH PEOPLE
In a perfect world we would never need to think too much beyond being proactive in our lives. But because human nature is selfish sometimes we have to react to people who try to hurt us or impede our progress in some way. Think of the game of football. If there were no defense we’d be scoring touchdowns on every play. The very fact that there are mean, selfish people out there who will try to knock us down as soon as we pick up the ball makes life a lot more difficult to navigate.
As an overseas missionary I usually return to the states every two or three years to visit churches, friends and family. Years ago, while making travel plans, a couple asked us to stay with them for two weeks. We felt close to this family. We had vacationed together, gone to church together, dreamt of the future together and shared interests and passions. There had never been a glimmer of tension between us for an entire decade. They were the godparents of our first child. When my “best” friend playfully told me on the phone, “We’ll be offended if you choose to stay with someone else” and reemphasized his invitation of hospitality we naturally didn’t think twice about it.
The first few days with them were good. Sharing meals together, having talks about each other’s lives, working out together in his basement, feeling a sense of camaraderie, there was nothing I picked up to clue me in on the Pearl Harbor experience to come the next day.
We were visiting some other friends one evening during that visit when our “best” friend called us. Still no sense of foreboding. They were probably just calling to tell us they would be out late that night or something else compatible with the pragmatic courtesies of having house guests. This is what I heard from the other side of the line. “You are the worst father and the worst husband I have ever seen. As soon as your daughters are old enough they will leave home to get away from you and rebel (with the connotation of shacking up with someone just to get back at me). You have been a complete disappointment as a friend. For years we were patient with you hoping that someday you would grow up. I pity your miserable wife. We no longer want to be a part of your life. etc”. It went on for about five minutes I guess. I think I asked “why” a couple times but was lambasted each time I tried to speak.
Eventually I hung up the phone not sure of what had just happened. The folks who had invited us over for dinner saw the bewilderment on my face and asked what had happened. I tried to explain but naturally it was hard for them to understand such sudden bile from people that they knew as well. They advised me to call back and try to talk to them. I did, and it was probably worse the second time. There was no raising of voices; just the cold, calculating excision of my heart while I stared blankly, watching it happen. No explanation, no remorse, no admission that maybe they had gone too far. Just a conclusive infantile meanness, “we don’t want you as a friend in our lives anymore”. That was it. We quickly packed our things that night, bundled up our young daughters and called around for someone to take us in for the night. No I wasn’t numb. Numbness is the absence of pain. I was in agony. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think of anything else but what had just happened. No matter how hard I was on myself I couldn’t think of anything I had done to justify that kind of meanness. I don’t think it wasn’t a particular event that caused the outburst. It seemed that they had decided to take the ten years of what I had thought was a good friendship and in one fell swoop reject my value as a human being. Based on the conversation that I replayed countless times in my head I surmised that I was kind a project for them. Maybe ten years of me not moving toward their particular lifestyle emphasis was too much for their patience. Who can tell? Within three weeks my hair started turning noticeably white. The hurt and stress that event caused tormented me for several years afterwards.
Sucker punches hurt…a lot. Life is full of vicious and undeserved ambushes that leave us shaking our heads. You’re out there trying to do your best and seemingly for no reason, from time to time, someone attacks you. We’ve all been there and it sucks. A false accusation, a personal betrayal, being cheated. Sometimes the punches are so unexpected and unprovoked they leave us retching our guts out and trying to catch our breath. In the famous words of my father, “Life’s not fair”. I’m tempted to share more of my “mean, selfish people” stories, but we are so familiar with being on the receiving end of unfairness I don’t think it would add anything to the chapter. Suffice it to say, I usually win the prize for the most neurotic relationship stories. Whenever I think of people who have deeply and unfairly hurt me, about five or six prominent people come immediately to mind. In each of these cases people took something from me that could never be replaced.
In some cases it took me years of conscious effort to forgive them to the point where I didn’t feel animosity toward them anymore. All those years I faintly held out the hope that they would realize how utterly cruel and unfair they had been to me… but the call or letter never came.
All of us have had our own personal
Because all of us share the same human nature with only minor variations we can be pretty sure that we process unjust meanness directed toward us in approximately the same way. First you’re shocked, incredulous. What? I didn’t DO anything., Then because meanness usually takes something from us, either emotionally or materially, we feel assaulted, violated, hurt. How could they possibly do something like that? Then, comes the anger. How dare they? Who do they think they are? Its right about here that lots of violent fantasies begin flitting through your head. At the very least you envision crushing defeats for your antagonist where you are dramatically vindicated before your peers. But life goes on, your fantasies fade and like most people you are left with an unresolved injustice. Bummer.
Injustice and meanness come in many forms but they all have the same basic affect on us. Someone has stolen from you, someone has falsely accused you, someone has cheated you out of a job, money or some rightful recognition you deserved, someone has violated you in some way, someone has rejected you for no good reason. When innocence or good intentions get stomped on, life’s steel toed boots kicks us in the gut. And we are left to process the unfairness without any written rules of engagement.
HERE’S WHAT I’VE LEARNED: Unfair stuff is going to happen and most of the times there isn’t going to be any satisfactory resolution to it. Life is hard and people can be even harder. When people act out meanness, whether out of selfishness, insecurity, jealousy, competition or greed, they always take something from you. It can be self-esteem, reputation or something more tangible like money or a promotion. The anger at this unprovoked theft leaves us stewing and miserable. Human nature says, “take something back”. But if you’ve ever done that you’ve discovered that retribution doesn’t fix the way you feel. As long as you feel miserable because of what someone has done to you that person has power over you. To take that power back and start feeling better there is one basic but difficult thing that works. Forgiveness.
We may not have written rules of engagement but we do have a biblical guiding principle. Forgiveness is emblazoned in history by mankind’s most innocent person, falsely accused, railroaded in court, tortured, mocked and killed for the sins of others on lonely Golgatha hill. The very person who taught us to forgive our enemies in the same way we wish to be forgiven demonstrated that forgiveness on the cross by forgiving his false accusers and tormentors. “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Anyone who has been in the church for awhile should have a pretty good understanding of the concept of biblical forgiveness. But the point I am making in my reference to Christ is that he taught forgiveness by his words and then, more importantly, in the midst of the cruelest injustice ever, demonstrated it by his behavior. Forgiveness is more than a word. We need to understand the importance of that if we are to enjoy the liberating qualities that forgiveness brings to us. The bible makes some important distinctions about forgiveness.
If we don’t forgive we won’t be forgiven
We are to forgive…from the heart.
We are to forgive in the way we want to be forgiven
The purpose of this chapter is not to do a biblical survey on the topic of forgiveness. Strangely, it is one of Christ’s teachings that is easiest to understand mentally. Conversely, it is emotionally one of the hardest biblical principles to apply.
When you think of the person that hurt you there will be feelings of anger and spite. A good rule of thumb is this: As long as these negative feelings continue you have not yet been healed from what hurt you in the first place. As long as hurt is there, the person who hurt you still exerts some influence over you. This is why the bible tells us not to let the sun go down on our wrath. The longer we hold on to a hurt the deeper its root of bitterness grows into our soul. The deeper the root the harder to extract. This is serious business and we need to make it a priority.
Since our angry thoughts and feelings after being treated unfairly are indicators of an emotional toxin unfairly injected into us by someone else’s hurtful behavior, they serve as a target where we can focus our remedy.
THE REMEDY: Whenever you feel these negative thoughts about the person who hurt you, consciously and sometimes even verbally (to yourself), express your forgiveness for the individual. Say something like this, “I choose to forgive (whatever his or her name is) for hurting me (by doing such and such).” You can go into more detail if you want. The negative feelings are your trigger to release forgiveness for the person and healing for yourself. There have been extreme situations when the healing process has taken me over a year. When you can think of the person and feel pity or sadness for them instead of anger and spite, it is a good indicator that you have been healed and have fully recovered from the event. Then it is the time to learn lessons of wisdom from the difficulty you have just successfully passed through.
Forgiveness = healing.
Lessons learned = wisdom.
When we emerge from hurtful situations with both of these two elements we have turned the bad into a net gain for ourselves. What is probably more important is that now this powerful force of hurt has less influence over us to divert us from our purpose and design in life. The reason this is so important is that unresolved hurt turns into bitterness. When bitterness lives in our lives it eats at us like a cancer. To add insult to injury, this bitterness we feel has no retaliatory effect on the person that hurt us. The only way to get rid of the damage is to forgive. We don’t forgive because the person deserves it. We forgive because Christ forgave us when we didn’t deserve it. Bitterness will rob us of our ability to enjoy life as God intended. We also forgive because we have been unfair to others in our lives. When we give mercy and forgiveness when it is not deserved we put ourselves in a better place to receive it when we need it. By forgiveness, I mean an emotional transaction that takes place within you. I’m not suggesting that you need to become buddies with the person who hurt you but strange as it may sound, it can sometimes happen. The point is don’t cut anything off. Threats, ultimatums or impositions of severe boundaries are really only slightly veiled ways to get back at the person who hurt you.
This is important.
1) Take the time to write a list of the people you still cannot think about without negativity, anger or spite.
2) Write down how this person(s) unfairly hurt you next to his or her name.
3) Then, following the procedure I described in this chapter, systematically express unconditional forgiveness for each individual each time you find yourself thinking angrily about them.
4) Keep the list handy. When you can think of them without angry or vengeful thoughts and emotions, cross their name off the list. Congratulations you have disarmed one of the most notorious thieves of your personal happiness.
Chapter Four
Relationships and True Wealth
One of the General absolutes of God’s design for each of us is that he has created us to be in right relationship with each other. When we actively function according to that design in healthy and mutually beneficial ways our life grows richer. When we become too individualistic and neglect this aspect of our design we make our life experience much more destitute than it needs to be.
Whenever I visit one of the few high school buddies I still keep in contact with an amazing thing happens. After catching up with each other’s life and family we invariably start reminiscing about our off the wall teenage adventures. The result of this is a level of silliness that grown men are not normally accustomed too. Our wives observe us, sometimes with concern in their eyes, but we are oblivious to them. We make sure not to reveal details, which if overheard, could inspire our children to become juvenile delinquents. We tell stories and laugh ourselves into near asthmatic comas. At the end of the evening we part amazed that after thirty years the bond of friendship we enjoy is still there.
Have you ever noticed that the closest friendships we establish are usually made during the high school, college and young family years? Sure we make friends and colleagues after that time but the elusive “best friend” status is almost impossible to find after the responsibility of family, job and house starts to kick in. The difficulty we have forming strong bonds in middle age suggests a kind of poverty many of us experience in the value scale of life. I think we get kind of insular the more people and things grow to depend upon us. We seem to be inclined to commit less because there is such a large part of us that is being spoken for during our most productive years. I was on a baby boomer web site recently and checked out the forum entitled “making friends”. There were about a dozen posts and most of them described what they felt a friend should be. “Always there for me, honest, encouraging, reliable, ready to help” etc. The more I looked at it the more I started to see that maybe we look at friendship more for what we can get out of it that what we can contribute to it. Frankly, the descriptions I read sounded pretty one-sided. That might explain a few things. As demands for our time, our money and our energy grow we tend to lose our willingness to give. I know first hand what over commitment and burnout feel like it but we tend to look at our finite capacities as being static instead of dynamic. Kind of like Marxist economics. The pie always remains the same size. For me to increase a commitment to one something must be taken from another. I never did like Marxism. For one thing, even though we are finite, our capacity grows. The pie doesn’t have to stay the same size. It can get bigger as we nurture it in service to others. Picture a balloon. If you blow it up half way it is 100% full. If you add more air it is still 100% full but the volume of air has increased. The “fullness” didn’t change but the capacity of the balloon did. Our capacity for love and giving can and should grow. As it does our capacity for joy increases and that makes life for you and everyone around you a lot more pleasant.
Of course if you overfill a balloon it will pop. The goal of this book is to avoid those kinds of extreme over extensions while strenuously avoiding the under extensions of self-centered mediocrity. Sustainability is the name of the game. We don’t want our joy to ebb and flow like a tide chart. Solid relationships help keep us consistent and steady. The premise of this whole book is that we were specifically designed to function in a certain way unique to us for maximum, productivity, fulfillment and joy. In addition to this there are some general aspects of our design that are true for all of us. One of these is that we were designed to be social beings. Its part of who we are. Again, as we function according to our design, everything gets better in our lives. The more we work against it the more we stiff arm away an important part of our personal completeness. In this chapter we will look at: How to develop strong, mutually fulfilling relationships.
Who Will Remember You?
The people who will attend your funeral will be your family, your friends, and those you have helped during your life. This gives us a pretty good indicator of where we should be investing ourselves. We have lots of acquaintances in our spheres of familiarity. We usually call them “friends” even if they don’t represent a relationship that we have some level of commitment too. There has been a lot written on how men need to bond with other men and how they are emotionally distant and how this makes intimacy and bonding difficult and so forth and so on. Put in simpler terms, we all need a buddy or two who are really committed to us as friends. But the problem isn’t just with men. Women need that same sex camaraderie and commitment too. That kind of elusive relationship brings a richness and fullness to people’s lives. But there’s the rub…if we don’t already have these kinds of relationships to develop how can we find them?
We are attracted to people who are like us. That is a secret that successful internet dating services have discovered. Compatibility has to do with how much we have in common with the things we value in life. Once we have identified what is unique and valuable about us we will have a better idea of the kinds of people that we have the best chances of developing close friendships with. Even with a lot of differences, as long as the deep core values are compatible there is a potential for true friendship. Unfortunately, friendship isn’t something you can plan or prepare for. The best you can do if you want to expand your network of good friends is to identify people who relate to the things you relate to and interact with them. Something might click but there are no guarantees. The thing to remember is to enjoy yourself doing the things that matter to you and surround yourself with like minded people.
Selfishness Is the Spine of Shallow Relationships
You’ve all been there. The obligatory function or party where there is a lot of milling around and unavoidable small talk. You ask some questions but you’re afraid of being too intrusive so you keep them safe and generic…name, job, number of kids, place of residence, etc. For men the conversations almost always goes to work or sports. Someone approaches you and says, “How are you” and is gone before you can say, “fine, thank you”. On the drive home your spouse comments that it was a nice get together. You agree, say some nice things and continue driving home. If this sounds familiar to you maybe you understand why I’m not crazy about normal social functions. Once in awhile I’ll try to shake things up. When someone asks, or rather, says, “How are you”. I’ll really tell them about my day or how I’m feeling. The almost universal look of shocked panic in the eyes of my potential conversationalist as they hurriedly excuse themselves gets me every time. If it wasn’t so sad I guess I really would laugh.
We go to work, we go to church, we talk to our next door neighbor but we never get to sharing the things in our hearts that are really important to us. The reason we maintain this superficial façade is simply that deep down inside we know that no one is really interested. If you’ve never actually thought about it in those absolute terms the realization can be pretty depressing.
First Giant Step to Building Depth in Your Relationships
So here’s the dilemma. We need solid, committed relationships for a well rounded life of sustainable joy. We were designed to be social beings. But most people are so wrapped up in themselves that you can never get far beneath the veneer of polite conversation. If you have the same one-sided expectation in relationships that I mentioned reading on a web site earlier you are at an impasse. But it doesn’t need to be that way. We can take the initiative. But before we do we need to prepare ourselves by understanding one simple truth. The most important person in each person’s life is himself. This is a hard truth to swallow because it sounds so selfish but in the end, you don’t know anyone better than yourself. You’ve spent more time with yourself more than anyone else and you are more interested in your own needs than anyone else is. Every human on earth shares this perspective. There are no exceptions. Think how it affects people when you, despite your busyness and obligations, take the time to be actively interested in them. Think of how it makes you feel. If you’re like a lot of people its hard to think of how it makes you feel because you haven’t felt it in so long you’ve forgotten about it.
We are familiar with the person who listens only because he is waiting to speak. The person who asks a question walking into the room and listens to your answer with his back to you while walking out. The person whose eyes are looking around at other things while you are talking. The person with the blackberry disease that forces him to excuse himself from the conversation to urgently answer a message that is probably not urgent. All of these are symptoms of the greater problem. Our eyes are so narcissistically glued to ourselves we can’t find others interesting.
Many years ago, when I was single, I remember the first woman who actually stopped everything, looked into my eyes and listened when I spoke to her. She wasn’t attracted to me. She was just a great listener who was honestly interested in other people. Her interest in what I had to say made me feel so good that for awhile I confused her attentions with romantic attraction. No romance developed because none was there but we did become great friends. The reason I noticed this person was that her practice of making other people feel legitimately important was so unusual. By way of contrast with most of the other people I interacted with she made me notice how rare and important this quality is.
Listening Importantly
Being interested in someone’s life is more than being a polite listener. Anyone can pick up on those vibes through the vacuous gaze in your eyes and the unmoving compulsory half-smile on your nodding face. Cultivating an interest in what is important to your friend is easier when you do it because that person is important to you. The key to any successful relationship is to unselfishly meet the important needs in the other person’s life even though they may not be important to you. It’s not hard to figure out what those areas of interest are in other people’s lives. People are normally, just beneath the surface, begging to tell you if you only give them the time and attention. For years one of my family members was obsessed with baseball cards. When I spoke with him on the phone he would go on and on about the cards he had. He was so consumed with what interested him that he forgot someone else was on the other end of the line. While he was talking, I could literally go into the kitchen, make a sandwich and come back without him ever knowing I had left. It’s pretty obvious that he didn’t have a clue about the principle we’re discussing right now. But on the other hand, I was faced with the challenge of showing interest in what was important to him, not because I liked baseball cards but because I liked him. I’m not saying that we have to listen with rapt attention to every nonsensical conversation that comes our way. But we do have to consciously choose to put other people’s interests at the front of the line frequently if we want to deepen our relationships. I remember the advice my father gave me shortly before I got married. “If you are willing to give more than you ever hope to receive, you’ve got a shot at a good relationship”. At the time I didn’t fully grasp how true this was. But it didn’t take long to discover that good relationships are defined not by what we receive from them but what we give to them. My wife and I have been actively applying this principle in our relationship almost as long as we’ve been married. It took awhile to get used to but after twenty years together we’ve never had an actual fight. No one believes us when we tell them that but it’s true. We’ve had misunderstandings and have been irritated with each other but we’ve never had an argument or raised our voices against each other. The reason for this is that when you develop the habit of identifying what your spouse’s important emotional needs are and selflessly make efforts to meet them AND she reciprocates, you grow a LOT closer. As emotional intimacy increases so does mutual respect. When you have a misunderstanding with the person you are most intimate with and respect most in the world it’s pretty unthinkable to lash out in anger at her.
A funny thing happens when you take the time and effort to take an interest in other people and actively work toward occasionally meeting these emotional needs of theirs. They in turn will be more inclined to do the same for you. When someone is meeting emotional needs that are important to you it makes you feel good about that relationship. You are receiving positive things more and more when you interact with an unselfish person. As these pleasant interactions increase you accumulate a history of stuff that makes you feel good about being with that person. This includes both romantic and friendship relationships. The result is that you bond or feel a sense of deepened quality in your relationship. In his book, His Needs, Her Needs, Willard Harley refers to this as the “love bank” principle. The more you make deposits in the relationship bank, the more your balance increases and the more pleasant feelings the other person in the relationship feels in association with you. However, withdrawals have the opposite effect. If you continue to make withdrawals from the bank through negative interactions, the other person in the relationship will begin to lose the feeling of closeness associated with you. It’s a pretty easy way to understand the mechanics of a good relationship: Unselfishly choose to meet the emotional needs of others even if they are different from your own and you will build a sense of goodness and quality in the relationship.
So what happens if you make all those sacrifices and the other person just soaks it in and doesn’t reciprocate? In a romantic relationship you will need to gently, and at the right time share the things that are important to you, that make you feel better about being in a relationship with the other person. No demands, no drama, just communication. And remember, communication is not what we say it’s what people hear. 65%-80% of what we communicate we say nonverbally. You can technically say everything right but if you communicate in the wrong tone of voice, the wrong posture or even the wrong timing, what the other person actually hears is quite different than your words.
If you are in a friendship then the level of expectation is a LOT different. It will get creepy if you start telling your buddies how you expect them to meet your emotional needs. They will probably run away like scared rabbits. In the context of friendship you need to hang a lot looser and trust the principle that occasional, often small gestures that show you are thinking of what is important to someone else will make them feel good enough to eventually reciprocate. But don’t get tired of initiating. My wife and I have spent countless hours and immeasurable energy extending ourselves to people. Coming over to dinner, going to a movie, doing an activity together, having breakfast before work are all social things that we are familiar with in friendships. A lot of us are also familiar with being the one who always calls and initiates stuff. After awhile it gets kind of old and you start wondering if they really want to hang out with you or are just being polite. Some people have been raised in a way that makes them practically social cripples. We can’t hold that against them but we can lead by example. Ultimately chemistry in friendships has a lot to do with how much you are like them combined with how unselfish you are willing to be for them.
I remember a time when my wife and I met a couple that we really liked. They were involved in the same kind of work had similar values and a good capacity for abstract thought that led to some fantastic philosophical discussions. The clincher though was that he was interested in scuba diving. With me that’s huge. Our friendship was still pretty young but once when I went out of town I let my new buddy use my truck. Little did I know that he had less mechanical aptitude at the time than my daughter did. He used my truck for his daily commute to work over several mountain ridges. During the two weeks he used it the radiator hose sprung a small leak that made the engine run dangerously hot. He apparently didn’t know the significance of a spiked temperature gauge because he kept driving even as it was pegged in the red. In fact he kept driving until the engine died. The funny thing was that when the engine cooled down and he put more water in the radiator it ran again. I’m not sure how many times he ran it until it died but what I do know is that when I got back my engine had a cracked head and needed to be overhauled at a cost of about $2,000. I was incredulous at first. But then I realized something. He honestly didn’t know any better. So there I was, three weeks without my truck, spending money I didn’t have for damage a friend had caused and I hadn’t yet heard an apology. I thought about washing my hands of this friendship and writing him off. But then I started thinking. How much is a good friendship worth? Eventually I concluded that a good friendship is worth a lot more than $2,000 and never mentioned the incident to him again. The result was that we stayed good friends. I never lent him my vehicle again but we enjoyed a lot of good dives together.
The Second Giant Step to Building Depth in Relationships
I remember a time when I was single and working in Malaysia. I was pretty much on my own and really wanted someone to hang out with. Life gets lonely when you are 12,000 miles from home. This was before email so I was really isolated. By a weird convergence of circumstances I once ended up sharing a taxi with “Steve”, a Turkish art dealer who was a former Hare Krishna monk. We exchanged cards and afterwards thought nothing of the ride. Later that week I called him on a business related subject and he invited me over to his apartment. We drank tea and talked and were eventually joined by Noruz, a former Pakistani Air flight steward who was now trying to start his own business in areas that I’d rather not reveal. That was about the most unlikely group of guys you would ever expect to see drinking tea together. The strange thing is that we made our tea an almost daily event. For some reason, despite the enormous differences between us, we really enjoyed talking with each other and developed a very close friendship. After I left Malaysia I often wondered, what was the link that made us such close friends in such a short period of time? Religiously, I read the bible, Noruz read the Koran and Steve read the Bagavad Gita. We had absolutely no religious compatibility. Morally, I was in a very different place from the other two. The element that forged our friendship so strongly was the attitude of openness we all had. By openness I mean complete honesty without judgment. Someone willing to be known for who they really are even if it isn’t flattering is a definition of open humility. Steve and Noruz had nothing to prove to me. They didn’t feel the need to impress me or to deceive me by making me think they were better than they were. I felt the same regarding them. But you cannot be open unless there is a non judgmental environment that allows openness to live. That was the key. Even with almost nothing in common, we were “safe” with each other. The darkest secret (and believe me there were some pretty dark ones), when not met with judgment from a superior attitude is no longer something that drives people away. People feel comfortable when they know you are not judging their value based on the ways they are different from you. In that kind of comfort, everyone is welcome because no one has to hide who they really are. Unfortunately I don’t experience that attitude in a group very often because we are terrified to let people know who we really are. We don’t open up because of the very real fear that someone will judge or condemn us for being different than them. When acceptance for the individual (not necessarily his self-destructive or otherwise negative behavior), is fostered, openness has a chance to open the door to much deeper relationships. If you wait for someone to introduce you to an environment like this you’d better be as patient as a glacier because it probably won’t happen for a long time. But why wait when you can initiate it? You can provide an environment of non-judgmentalism for others. Not judging doesn’t mean we stop distinguishing between right and wrong, truth and error, wisdom and folly. It simply means that despite a person’s differences from you none of us are in a place to judge the value of an individual. When we step out of the judge’s seat everyone feels better around you, relationships have more fertile ground to flourish in and you take a lot of pressure off yourself too.
Summing it up
1) We are designed to be social beings and so social function plays an important role in our personal fulfillment.
2) We are attracted to people who share our core values and interests
3) When we take initiative to meet important needs in people’s lives, even if those needs are different than our own, we build goodwill and closeness.
4) An open, non-judgmental environment is the best climate to grow true friendships.
Chapter One
Middle Aged Father of Four Stumbles upon the Secret to Life
For three years I lived a few hundred yards from the beautiful beaches and coral reefs of the
My friends and I frequently talked about all the things we could do if we had a boat. Our imaginations ran wild as we pictured ourselves filling the cockpit with huge tuna or discovering WWII shipwrecks. Our conversations usually ended with my friends encouraging me to build a boat.
I was flattered at first that they believed I had that kind of skill. I now understand what a good deal they had: a friend with a boat that they didn’t have to finance or maintain. Finally, after almost a year of constant temptation, I gave in and ordered some boat plans on the internet. Knowing very little about boating, I decided on plans that met three criteria: 1) The boat would be easy to build and wouldn’t take too long since I was a missionary and had ministry obligations. 2) It could fit in my garage. 3) It looked cool.
Months later, we were finally ready for our maiden voyage. Picture six guys in an eighteen-foot flats boat with enough gear for a week. It was going to be the fishing trip of a lifetime. No one could tell us we weren’t going to catch enough yellow fin to fill the boat. Whitecaps in the bay would have made a seasoned captain stay close to shore, but we were oblivious to the rising seas.
About seven miles out with the two biggest guys sitting on the bow to trim out our overweight craft, we were in four-to five-foot seas. A Swiss missionary had asked to pilot the boat, so I gave him the wheel..
Sitting on the console seat, I was rubbing in the sun block when it happened. We were at the bottom of a swell going about twenty miles an hour when an eight-foot wave met us head on. In an explosion of white, a 240-pound Maori rugby player and a 220-pound Malaysian chef flew backward toward me in seated positions as if they were blown up in an action movie.
A weird kind of shell-shocked silence followed for a few seconds. I didn’t hear anything but saw our fuel cans floating in the boat. After a lot of bailing and yelling, we limped back to shore with a broken transom but no injuries to the passengers.
Anyone who has ever taken a boaters’ safety course will recognize that we didn’t use a lot of wisdom that day. Despite the fact that there are no boaters’ safety courses in the developing world, no functioning coastguard, and no weather service, we had no excuse for not planning better.
A boat designed for the open ocean would have had no problem with our sea conditions. But that was our problem. Our boat was designed for flats fishing in calm, shallow water. We were using it for something contrary to the function it was designed for, and it fared predictably.
Have you ever considered that each of us has an individual design that predisposes us to function better, more effectively, and with more fulfillment when we cooperate with that design? If not, don’t worry. Most people haven’t.
We read verses like Ephesians 2:10. We learn that not only are we God’s masterpiece, but that he has created us to do specific, good things. On top of that, he has prepared those good works for us to do. It’s a mind-blowing concept, but there isn’t a clear guide in the biblical footnotes showing us how to discover what we were specifically created to be and to do. Therefore, we often neglect this area and move on to other truths that are easier to apply.
We are, in fact, made to know and enjoy God and glorify him through our worshipful obedience and service. These general truths about our design are beautifully depicted in the Bible in countless ways. God gives us the basics, the things that are true for all of us in his Kingdom. It’s the individual specifics of God’s will, his purpose, his destiny for us that that force us to seek harder and dig deeper. The fact that we have to search for the answers to our personal design clues us in to that design’s great value. It isn’t common. You aren’t common.
If you want to find gold, you have to prospect for it, study subjects that improve your chances of finding it, take risks and time, and dig for it. If you locate the nuggets, the value of the payoff is far greater than the sacrifices of the search. God has already equipped us for our best life.
God’s will for each of us is that we reach the potential that he has created us for. The effect is that we accomplish God’s purposes on earth. That is our noble duty as disciples of the Lord Jesus. But the fantastic fringe benefit of cooperating with this potential is a life of happiness.
“…To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life--this is indeed a gift from God. God keeps such people so busy enjoying life that they take no time to brood over the past.” (Ecclesiastes 5:19-20 NLT)
The phrase “lot in life” is important. We tend to think of it as our current situation, but the meaning in this verse is different. It has to do with what we have already been given to work with. Our current situation is usually the result of choices that we have made. God has given each of us a special mix of personality, gifts, interests, and passions before we began making the significant choices in life. When we actively cooperate with this mix we fulfill our individual purposes in God’s kingdom. In God’s infinite wisdom he knows our weakness and how hard it is to stay motivated and on track. He has engineered things so that when we fulfill this “lot in life,” he will keep us preoccupied with joy! That is a powerful motivator.
Most Christians embrace the truth that we have a God-given purpose in life. It’s easy to believe that our relationship with God is the foundation of that purpose. From time to time we think about specifics that relate to our lives, but when clear answers with easy handles don’t present themselves right away, we naturally continue with what we know. We do the best we can while seldom thinking that our current good life experience could be light years from the best that God has created us for.
And then there are lots of Christians who may not feel that they are experiencing much good at all right now. Many of us live with anxiety, demoralization, and drudgery on a daily basis. Both kinds of people are missing the best that God has for them. The perfect mix lies just beyond them. If they do not reach for it, the joy and purpose they inwardly long for will remain perpetually just out of reach.
You may not have consciously considered this idea before, but your inner circuitry does try to remind you about it when you give it the chance. Maybe you’ve paused at times during reflective moments and entertained a fleeting thought, an amalgam of childhood dreams and adult ambition concerning the place you wanted to be at this point in life. Maybe you throw out a prayer once in awhile: God, what is your will for my life?
You are working and raising your family. You have a relationship with God. You go to church. You are doing good things . . . but something is missing. Some of us are satisfied with a modicum of success and respectability. But some of us remember that when we were younger, something in us hungered for purpose and value and lasting meaning. Does it seem so far away that it’s hard to remember what it felt like?
We try to be mature and realistic about disappointment in life. The older we get, the more we accept present reality as the best we can hope for. But the expectation for something just a little more spectacular in life is like a hibernating instinct that can’t be completely suppressed. We forget about it for a while, but something always brings it back. It’s as if we have an internal compass telling us where we ought to be but not how to get there.
Our frustrations and disappointments, our perceived lack of purpose and fulfillment all reinforce the idea that we expect happiness in life. We believe in God and the Bible, and that gives us comfort. The joy of the Lord is supposed to be our strength, but sometimes we get the feeling that in Christ there is more to life than what we are experiencing. The things that make us unhappy remind us that we are supposed to be happy, but we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. We flail about, looking for the road back to something we may not consciously remember but still know is there. We go to church more. We try to make more money. We try to get into shape. We look for Mr. or Miss Right. We change our lifestyles and ultimately discover that momentary satisfaction is nice, but it isn’t really the thing we were looking for after all.
But it wasn’t always this way.
Each of us is born with a unique and original design made up of our personality, our talents, our interests and our purpose in life.
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (Ephesians
When we function according to that design, beautiful things happen. I know this from personal experience. In that harmony of purpose and reality, happiness is no longer something to be pursued, because it becomes a natural traveling companion. That’s the way God planned it for us.
But the trick is discovering your unique design and then applying yourself to it in real life. When we were younger, the specific features of our design were so much more obvious. We responded to that inner code without even realizing it. We intuitively understood that cooperating with what we were, using our interests and curiosities as a guide, was a lot easier than pursuing interests that others placed upon us.
When our second daughter was three or four, she would frequently go missing. We always found her in some quiet, solitary place. When we asked her what she was doing all by herself, she would reply, “I just wanted to worship the Lord.”
Now more than a decade later, she feels called to lead the youth worship team and finds great fulfillment there. The amazing thing is that she had this inclination when she was born. It was part of her design, and she stayed in touch with it.
We have all heard Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” (KJV) The traditional understanding of this verse is that we are to teach our children the right paths so they will make the right decisions when they get old enough to choose. The Hebrew takes us a little deeper. The word translated as, “way” means “course of life” or “mode of action.” God plots this design for us before we are born. The mode of action he intends for us to take has already been determined by his purpose and equipping. This verse might best be interpreted like this: “Train your child in the way he was designed to function, and when he is old enough to make choices in life, he will already be on the right track.”
In my daughter’s case, I didn’t have to teach her to love worship. That was something she was born with. My responsibility was to recognize God’s code in her life and encourage her to cooperate with it.
We are all born with a sense of wonderment, interest and curiosity. However, most of us forget this when we encounter the responsibilities and difficulties of adulthood. No one denies that every person on earth is unique. But that uniqueness has much more to it than appearance and experience. Each person thinks differently. We feel differently. We see things differently. We develop much of our uniqueness, but the core that defines our psyches is with us when we are born. To unlock God’s design code, we must take note of what our lives looked like before the process of growing up smothered the specifics of that design.
Our childhood imaginations generated exponential fun without money, fame, sex, or success. Think about how easy it was then to hope and dream about a big world and our place in it. We all start with this passion to explore the adventure of life. God has engrafted specific elements in our emotional DNA that make us do and enjoy certain things better than anyone else. In our youth, we unconsciously explore the fundamentals of these elements. Because it’s fun, we never really think about it.
As we get older, we progressively adjust to our environments. New schools, friends, jobs, and obligations. We experience hurt, stress, and the burden of responsibility. Life becomes more than simply putting one foot in front of the other. We also have to dodge or absorb the unexpected bummers in life. Our focus becomes trying to drive our cars through life without crashing. We try to learn how to function with minimal turbulence and never give much thought to purpose and passion because we grow to believe that happiness can be acquired without them.
Years go on. After a while, the hope of getting hold of something really great becomes unrealistic or childish in our perspective, and we abandon it. People who don’t understand call it “growing up.”
The amazing gift of unique design that God engineered into us is abandoned like a forgotten child. It is replaced with a good, respectable life that has lost sight of the best, spectacular life that God has created us for. The best is always within our reach if we are willing to work for it. But as long as we are satisfied with the good, we are never motivated to extend beyond our comfort and find the best. Good becomes the enemy of best because it keeps us satisfied while we fail to fulfill our destiny in Christ.
What Happened To Fun?
The surprising aspect of my early childhood is that although we lived in a 650- square-foot house and had a mother who yelled and hit a lot, the only memories that stick with me involve our adventures. Shovels were for digging treasure and building forts. Later, when we watched Charles Bronson in The Great Escape, we discovered that shovels were exclusively made for digging tunnels. The woods were for exploring. Trees were for climbing. Feet were for running. We never walked unless we were forced. Bikes were for racing, clouds were for watching, summers were for camping, or at least pretending to camp. Snow shoveling was fun, and snow was considered a toy regardless of the temperature.
Just about every memory of my childhood seems to have something to do with fun, conspiring to have fun, or getting into trouble for having too much fun. This is an important point because so many of my adult memories seem to revolve around the complete opposite of fun. This happened so gradually, I didn’t notice the fun was gone until the gnawing lack of fulfillment during middle age brought it to my attention—again.
Twice in my life, I had the “Designed for Happiness” principle down intuitively. I was living happily and productively in sustained joy beyond my wildest dreams within my perfect mix. And twice, distracted by other opportunities, I consciously walked out of that ideal place.
Whenever we can’t consciously articulate what we truly know and want, it’s easy to wander off and get lost. After a lot of unnecessary wandering in a frustrating wilderness, I’m now armed with the realization that happiness comes not from external perks but by flowing with the way I am hardwired. My emotional wilderness experience was the catalyst that drove me to discover the “Designed for Happiness” principle. I hope you can find and embrace your unique design without the struggles I had.
No one can unravel the mystery of how to function according to your individual design except you. This adventure will stretch your thinking a little, because we aren’t used to thinking about cooperating with what’s been there all along. We are conditioned to think of happiness as something outside ourselves, something to be created or conquered.
The self-discovery exercises and reflections in this book will show you where to start. The lessons I’ve learned will help you get over obstacles that keep you from making progress on your particular path. But taking the steps is something you alone can do. It’s like a treasure hunt. There are lots of clues, and it may take a while, but it’s out there for each of us. I hope this search will be fun and exciting for you, like a treasure hunt. This book is dedicated to helping you get started toward lasting joy that isn’t dependent upon or diminished by external props. The goal is the life God intended for you all along. Because God initiated it, we know it is attainable. For most of us, this prize won’t be found by casual inquiry. The extent to which we value God’s perfect life for us is the degree to which we will pursue it to his glory.
Middle Aged Father of Four Stumbles Upon the Secret of Life
I’m not a psychologist. I’m not a professor at a university. I’m not a nationally syndicated talk show host. I don’t wear my hair in braids, and I don’t have an exotic, hard-to-pronounce name. I probably couldn’t get into the lotus position if my life depended on it. Probably ninety percent of people who write published works about personal acheivement and fulfilment fit those descriptions.
I’m just a normal middle-aged guy who’s lived a productive adulthood, for the most part. I’m a baby boomer who, like most folks, has had a life with some rough spots in it. If you Google “baby boomer,” most of the hits are articles on the demographics and spending trends of our generation. Our sheer numbers make us a statistical aberration that sends greedy shivers up the spines of marketing managers throughout the country.
But there is a lot more to our generation than our demographics. I recently read a study by Live Science that identified baby boomers as the most miserable generation on earth. It also mentioned that unhappiness peaks for men around age fifty and women around age forty. Depression generally peaks around age forty-four, and men are generally more unhappy than women.
We are the generation that has had more opportunities than any other. As a whole, we are the richest group in
Somewhere there is a disconnect. The things we thought would make us happier are all around us, but they are not making us happy. If the largest generation in the history of this country is the unhappiest, there’s a real good possibility that we might be missing something.
Enough Straws Really Can Break a Camel’s Back
During my seventeen years as a missionary in
When I moved back home to
Mid-life crisis is a real struggle for some middle-agers. Add to that the unthinkable burden of stress we carry around while internally working against the way we were designed, and some pretty scary scenarios start presenting themselves.
A lot of people have encouraged me to write about the adventures I had while living overseas. However, no one has ever encouraged me to write about the struggles I’ve had to overcome in life. This is primarily because, like most guys, I’ve been very good at hiding my struggles. Secondly, our culture conditions us to look for slam-dunk successes and people living the good life, the rich life, the sexy life, the celebrity life. We like to experience the vicarious thrill of someone else’s success or lifestyle. But in the battlefield of reality, a friend in the trench with you is more helpful than an unrealistic fantasy of your idyllic life.
Through this book, I would like to become that friend. Life is hard, and sometimes it’s not fair, but that’s no excuse for not chasing it down and squeezing every drop of God’s goodness out of it. Contrary to the bombardment of media messages, having great abs and a million in the bank has nothing to do with dialing in to the happiness that God has already put into your mix.
We Are Defined by Our Pursuits
King Arthur searched for the Holy Grail in
In a very real sense, we are on a pilgrimage through this life. The Bible speaks to this. We are here temporarily, transient as we move through our years as pilgrims. The defining characteristic of a pilgrim is the very thing he is traveling toward or looking for. Biblically, our pilgrimage is for heaven. In this life, our pilgrimage doesn’t have much to do with maximizing or optimizing our opportunities. It has much more to do with simply cooperating with God.
When we actively cooperate with the way God has designed us, we do his will and glorify him. The more we obey God and live lives of practical worship, the greater our reward and experience in heaven when we finish our pilgrimage.
Our generation is good at understanding goals for things like career and finances. But how much do we really want to define our lives by those things? If we really thought money and jobs were all our lives were about, our cemeteries would be full of head stones with inscriptions like: “He was able to save 1.7 million and pay off his house by age 62.” Or, “He made senior VP by age 51.”
Career and finances are important, but what is the real finish line we are advancing toward? Better yet, do we even have an idea of where we want to finish? I’m not talking about a golf course retirement community in south
The Paralyzing Matrix
In the movie, The Matrix, all mankind existed as human batteries for the machines and was lulled into accepting a “reality” that wasn’t real. All this was to keep them passive and pliant. Self realization caused Neo and the gang to break out and live lives not defined by others.
Of course this was just a movie, but the philosophical insight is pretty deep. Apart from the evil machines, many of us live in our own matrix, not thinking at all about navigating because we’ve pretty much left that to the expectations of society. We don’t have the evil agents who try to kill us for stepping out of the matrix. What we have are the harsh social sanctions of rejection if we don’t play by the rules that most people have accepted as the only responsible way to live.
This worldview is typified by a friend of mine I’ll call Bill. You probably know someone like Bill. He has willingly accepted limitations the “matrix” has placed upon him and has happily embraced the mediocrity of his life. He has no real goals or ambitions apart from building his portfolio and surviving life until retirement. He has no desire to make the world better or significantly improve his relationships. Worse, he has no desire to explore, be amazed, learn, or create. He has learned the “rules,” and he plays by them.
My grandfather bought a new house every three years or so. He retired early and spent the rest of his days in his Lazyboy reading spy novels, smoking his pipe, and eating enormous quantities of Milky Way candy bars. When that indistinct voice within him suggested that there was a bigger world out there, he responded by moving. Maybe he just got bored. He had defined his life by his career. Once he no longer worked, he simply had nothing of value to live for.
He sat in that chair until his battery ran out at age 87. He allowed ambition and society to define him by his productivity. Once he ceased being productive, he had no direction, so he basically killed time for thirty years.
Have you ever given thought to what will happen to us if we don’t get some defining purpose in life besides outliving our working years?
Getting Down To It
So far you’ve read about fifteen pages of me basically saying there’s a whole lot more to life, even as Christians, than most of us are currently experiencing. I’ve made some far-reaching claims like identifying and cooperating with our individual design being a key to lasting, sustainable happiness. We glorify God when we cooperate with the design he has specifically engineered into us.
I’ve suggested that we are not normally predisposed to consider that design in choosing our paths in life and by implication pointed out the need to possibly readjust our paths. I’ve mentioned purpose a couple times, and this has far-reaching implications. But if I have nothing more to offer than a sad commentary on the unrealized emotional potential of our generation, I’ve slipped into the depressing rut of an amateur armchair analyst.
I have no interest in trying to impress anyone with my insights into life and living. What I really want to do is be a source of encouragement to my generational peers to help them move toward their perfect mix—one that will bring God the most glory and will bring an enduring lifestyle of happiness and purpose.
I wish there were a magic wand that could make this happen quickly. I wish there were some application of positive thinking that could muscle its way through our poor emotional configurations. But when it comes to real answers that stay with us, sometimes we have to rearrange the furniture. That takes time, but if we can see where we should be and can take practical steps to work toward it, hope will buoy our spirits for the journey. It’s like that energy drink commercial. We need to “Get To It!”
Summing It Up
1) We are born with a specific design comprised of our gifts, interests, core personalities, and purposes that God has engineered into us.
2) We are happier and more productive when we function according to God’s specific design for us.
3) Our psyches often try to remind us of where we ought to be through the realization of unhappiness and lack of fulfillment.
4) Most of us will have to make some changes in order to function according to our personal design and experience the ideal life that brings us into alignment with God’s will.
Chapter Two Living for Something Larger Than Yourself Most of our decisions are based on finding happiness. It sounds superficial to say it that way, and it probably doesn’t mesh with your theology. I don’t blame you if you struggle with denial at first, but think about it. You’ve never made a decision hoping it would make you unhappy. You may have ended up that way, but it wasn’t your original intent. Thanks to God’s design, our inner compass guides us toward real fulfillment and happiness. The abundant or fulfilling life that Christ promises is a result of his plan for you. Unfortunately, our internal compass guides us only to the way we want to feel. There aren’t any GPS points fixed to concrete destinations, navigating us to the life we inwardly seek. So basically we’ve got a homing beacon that tells us how we want to feel and how we think we should feel, but it doesn’t direct us specifically toward the place we should be in our lives. But that gives us a great start. We have the general outline of God’s will for our lives clearly spelled out in the Bible. To find the specifics, we will need to do a little more hunting using the clues God has given us. I learned something about looking for what I couldn’t see one morning when I went fishing with a couple of my friends. We had slept on Talikud Island, seventeen miles out from the Mindanao mainland in order to be at our secret fishing spot at 4:00 a.m. The tuna were waiting. We could barely sleep. When we woke at 3:30 AM we found that the guy who was supposed to watch the boat had fallen asleep. The tide had gone out, leaving our eighteen footer stranded thirty feet up on the beach. Needless to say we missed our By seven the tide had come in enough for us to take the boat out, but by that time the fish weren’t biting. We decided to cut our losses and head home. On the way back we dinged a coral head and bent our prop. As we limped back at quarter speed a storm rolled in, surprising us with a heavy fog. It was Christmas Eve day but none of us felt the least bit festive. A few miles out, we couldn’t see land anywhere. We knew where we wanted to go, and we had a vague idea of the direction. But in the fog, we had no point of reference to guide us. Desperately frustrated, one of the guys with me started shouting neurotically into the wind…then we ran out of gas. Completely disorientated, we learned an important lesson about navigation. You can’t guide a boat in the fog without instruments. Most of us go through life the same way. No bearings, no compass, no GPS. All we know is that we want to go “home”. We have the Bible, and in a general way most of us allow it to guide us. But the nitty-gritty of digging deep to discover and seize our destiny in Christ often takes a second place to our afternoon meal after church on Sundays. We know there is something better, but the chances of us getting there in the fog are about the same as me getting the “Small Craft Captain of the Year” award. Baby boomers have been called the “Me Generation”. Younger generations have been called narcissistic. We probably deserve it; Christian as well as non-Christian. The emphasis we place on self, regardless of how we justify it theologically, can blind us to the obvious. I sometimes feel like a mechanic looking under the hood of a car with no engine, saying, “Well, there’s your problem.” We feel emptiness and a lack of fulfillment, purpose, and value. All the while we are looking almost exclusively at ourselves. Well, there’s your problem. The Back Door to Joy Finding joy can be one of the greatest paradoxes in life. We want to be happy. God has designed us to be happy. But if we focus exclusively on ourselves, that happiness will remain superficial and elusive. When we look outside ourselves with a conscious commitment to meet the needs and wants of others, we discover a key to the fulfillment we seek. “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” (1 Peter 4:10 NIV) Gifts. God has given them to us. We all have them. Some we are born with; others are given later in life. But they all have the same purpose: serving others. In fact, service is one of the most practical ways to discover our gifts. Our lifestyles ring hollow when we focus those gifts on ourselves. Even though our emotions demand we make personal happiness our focus, we find it only as a byproduct of unselfishness. Realistically, we will probably never get everything we want out of life. Disappointment is proportionate to expectation. If you expect to attain the lifestyle of the rich and famous by reading a get-rich-quick-book or jumping into the latest “triple your income from home” scheme, it’s a pretty good bet that the disappointment fairy will be beating on you with an ugly stick before too long. Why voluntarily set ourselves up for almost sure disappointment? If you accept the fact that you’ll never have everything you want for yourself and instead make more selfless choices that benefit others, joy will often ambush you when you least expect it. My wife and I sometimes like to dream about what we would do if we ever got wealthy. We talk about starting foundations for scholarships, supporting more mission work, and opening local charities that will target problems in our community. Regardless of the big plans we visualize, we always end up thinking of ways to fund a sneaky conspiracy to bless people. We want to be gift-giving ninjas. In our plan, we identify our prey, monitor his movements, and then swoop in. Before he knows it, we have given him an unexpected surprise that dramatically helps his current situation. For the longest time we discussed our secret plans as a future event. “When we are wealthy, we will . . . ” Then I started thinking that might be a long time from now, or it might never happen at all. Does that mean we can’t act out our plans? We didn’t have much money coming in at the time but we did have some savings. We knew a couple who were desperately trying to make ends meet and were struggling more than we were. They became our targets. Now we had to spring the plan. We had them over for a barbeque. Before they left, we surprised them with a check to help them with their bills. It didn’t completely solve their problem, but it helped. We had done something dramatically out of the box, and we felt great about it. Our bank account took a hit, but who knows the good we may have done that we will never know about? Needless to say, joy chased us around for awhile. We didn’t need to look for it. Most of us can’t do this kind of thing on a consistent basis if we expect to make our mortgage payments. But most acts of selflessness are free. They will cost you something but it usually isn’t money. You will sacrifice time or something you want to do, but in the end you will probably get what you wanted all along: a sense of pleasant equilibrium in your soul. Selflessness is counter-intuitive, like forgiving someone who has treated you unfairly. These aren’t things we normally gravitate toward. They are principles that we need to learn and practice. In the end, they pay out more than we invest in them. People who live primarily for themselves have generic eulogies at their funerals. “He was a family man, a good provider, and he will be missed. . . .” You never hear glowing memories of these people. “He lived for himself as much as he could” doesn’t make a very noble epitaph. What you lived for will distinguish you. Every head stone has a birth date, a dash, and a death date. 1963-____. Our whole lives and everything we will be remembered for is represented by one little dash. Everything we do during the “dash” period gives the last date meaning. If you are reading this book you are in your “dash” period. When the last date is inscribed, it’s too late to make anything better. Doing What You Love . . . No, Really How many times on TV or in a book has someone told you to do what you love? I used to think, “How am I going to make a living as a scuba bum?” Of course I wanted to do what I love, but a little thing called responsibility got in the way. Almost every week I hear someone telling me to discover my passion or follow my dreams. Having the Scottish blood of a depression-era father, I have a pretty strong resistance to fluff. But even before I knew what my real dreams and passions were, something about the exhortation to find them resonated with me. Living your dreams and passions in today’s culture is usually synonymous with the idea of having it all. Since most of us will never “get it all,” this paints an inaccurate picture of the abundant life. Getting everything we “want” will never complete the puzzle of attaining a happy life. With my current obligations of a mortgage, wife, one daughter in college and three more on their way, I don’t foresee an idyllic life of financial abundance anytime soon. I can deal with that because I recognize the gap between who I am now and who God has made me to be. The more I narrow that gap, the better my life gets. On top of that, the timing of the seasons of life isn’t consistent with my impatient nature. Although I wish winter were shorter, spring would last longer, and summer wouldn’t be so hot, my desires don’t have much affect on reality. Patient cooperation with the season I am in while actively planning for the next is the sane way to live with purpose in a situation or season I can’t quickly change. In the end, we must factor delayed gratification into our plans. This doesn’t mean that we passively sit by and wait for our lives to move in the right direction. It will never happen by accident or luck. We have to choose to live principles that give us quality lives regardless of the season we are in. As our years of school prepare us for life, our years of work and responsibility can help prepare our character for purpose. I’m not saying that while you are toiling at your daily job you are not fulfilling a purpose, but those who haven’t yet nailed the perfect mix for themselves already usually long for something more significant. “We’re Here, We’re Here, We’re HERE” In Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss, an elephant hears a voice coming out of a dust speck. The voice is so faint, the other animals can’t hear it, and they think Horton is crazy. Being an elephant, Horton has big ears and a better sense of hearing. Now, if we all start hearing voices I think we’re in trouble. However, we all have intuition that can help us. We have to listen intently if we hope to break out of our cultural matrix. A lot of distracting noise makes it hard to hear the small voice inside…but it’s there. The stress of life, the burdens of work, pressure of responsibilities and insecurities fueled by incessant product marketing generate a lot of noise in our lives. As a baby boomer, I find that my ears perk up when I hear commercials about retirement planning. In my age demographic I’m about twenty years out from retirement age… just enough time to do something to help ensure that our golden years aren’t spent living in a one room storage unit. Most of the planning booklets all boil down to the same thing: spend less, save more. Some of them advise us to dream of the things we would like to do later in life. In the past I did the dreaming exercises but maybe I was just too visionary. None of my ethereal dreams seemed realistic enough to get excited about. It’s like a conference on sustainable development for the I get the same feeling dreaming about the future sometimes. Will our dreams give us what we really want—lasting fulfillment and happiness? Do our dreams move us toward alignment with God’s perfect design for us? Probably not, because most of our dreams are one-directional: How can I receive the most enjoyment from everything I do? Another pitfall of dreaming is my tendency to see myself in the crystal-clear waters of That poses a problem for my practical mind. A lifestyle revolving around recreational passions sounds fun but way too superficial to have much meaning or fulfillment. So what am I passionate about, beyond recreation? What passions has God embedded in me for his purposes? I struggled with this question for a couple years during a five year hiatus from the ministry. Then it came to me. When we were children, all kinds of things lit our eyes with amazement, passion, interest, and curiosity. One characteristic that distinguishes a genius from a normal person is the genius’ ability to be fascinated with things the rest of us take for granted. Albert Einstein once said, “I have no special abilities, I am only passionately curious”. Can you see how our receptivity to learning can expand our capacities? We can redevelop that fascination and appreciation for the simple goodness we no longer notice in life. We can consciously stop and smell the roses. That’s not a huge stretch for any of us. However, identifying the particular things hardwired in our psyches to bring us enjoyment and productivity is sometimes more difficult. As I began to grasp the “designed for happiness” principle, I was thinking of ways to give it traction and reality in a fast-paced world that doesn’t have a lot of time for introspection. This inspired me to do an experiment. I assumed that our core psyches are essentially the same now as they were when we were children. It’s common knowledge that our core personality is nearly completely in place by age seven. Theoretically, whatever gave us enjoyment then should have some relation to the things that will give us enjoyment now. The problem is, we are no longer in touch with what moved us back then. We have become calloused from years of living in a hard, adult world. Remember the movie, Citizen Kane? Orson Welles played a filthy-rich character consumed with himself, wealth, and power. On his death bed, he spoke his last word, “Rosebud.” The meaning of the word wasn’t clear until the last scene in which men tossed estate trash into an incinerator, including a sled with the word “Rosebud” stenciled on it. After an eventful life of myriad accomplishments and financial empires, Kane’s dying thoughts were of the last time he was happy—playing in the snow as a child before he inherited his fortune. But really, you’ve got to see the movie. The following lists will help point our thoughts toward the specific uniqueness of our design. We can’t always take them literally because, frankly, most of us are too old to become astronauts or fighter pilots, ballerinas or actresses. Instead, our childhood inclinations and activities can indicate the general way God has designed us to function. Please thoughtfully complete the list below. Take your time. You probably won’t be able to fill it all out at one time. Feel free to come back to it periodically as you get additional insights. LIST #1 1) List the childhood activities or interests that enthralled you. Try to remember the specific things that fascinated you and that you spent a lot of time thinking about and doing. 2) Identify the things you would end up doing on your own without adult or peer encouragement (only the good things). 3) What were you were naturally good at or drawn to? 4) Did you have any personality traits or talents that made you better at some things than others? What were they, and how did you use them? 5) How did you interact socially? (initiator, leader, problem solver, peacemaker, advocate, supporter, etc.) 6) List the general categories these interests or activities fall under. For example, if in list #1 you wrote “exploring new places,” your general category might be something like exploring, discovery, research, history, etc. 7) Take the insights from the first five questions and identify one or more activity, interest, or occupation that you could, with some effort, realistically express in relation to the categories. For example, if some of your identified categories included things like saving, helping, rescuing, or problem solving, you could apply those categories to actual activities that would express those values for under privileged students in need of mentors or tutors, the homeless, financial counseling, humanitarian or church work, animal shelters, third world hunger or poverty related issues, etc. Your list might be less altruistic than this, but that’s okay. The point is finding something worthwhile to aim for that meshes with the way you are already wired inside. For instance, one of my daughters has always been good with small details with her hands. She is creative, compassionate and enjoys helping people build their self-esteem. She is studying to be an orthodontist, which suggests a perfect match for some of her talents, interests and personality. These lists will be works in progress for a while. As you refine them, specific passions will present themselves, giving you something specific to prepare for. You may feel trapped in an unfulfilling life and think that your commitments won’t let you make major changes. It’s amazing how many self-imposed limitations we unconsciously build around our lives. If we’ve not seen something done close to our experience we assume it isn’t a realistic option. One of my favorite lines in the movie, The Princess Bride is when the princess and farm boy are reunited only to have the bad guys catch up with them. They race to the fire swamp and Buttercup exclaims, “We’ll never survive”. Farm boy, casually responds as he continues toward the swamp, “Nonsense. You only say that because no one ever has.” Brilliant! I love the attitude that attempts things even if you’ve never personally seen anyone do them before. We all have absolutes in our minds that we feel can’t be touched; certain furniture that cannot be moved. However, the more we look at a problem, the more options come to mind and the more possible it becomes in our minds to make the changes that really matter. We will need to make sacrifices to get to the place where we function the way we were designed, to align our core and our activities. Your lists will become more of a composite the longer you analyze them. That’s fine. Our lives are complicated mosaics. Eventually, as you look at your findings and try to connect them with an activity or involvement for your future, you will combine skills, abilities, and experiences you have developed in adulthood. Don’t be afraid to be creative. You will probably come up with a couple different possible scenarios. That’s great. This book is the result of one of my scenarios from the list exercise. When we have something valuable to work toward, we have a valuable purpose. Some people are reluctant to take surveys or answer questionnaires. I’m one of them. Personally, I don’t like the time it takes because I’m used to making fast decisions. But realigning our lives with our core design isn’t something that can be done quickly without effort. Again, we will be fulfilled only when we function according to our design. The purpose of these self-discovery exercises is to help rediscover our core design and then figure out how to cooperate with it. The most unhappy man I know is a guy who has rejected all his natural good qualities. He has spent his entire adulthood trying to recreate himself into something he thought was more valuable in other people’s eyes. From a self- improvement standpoint, that sounds great. But self- re-creation is almost always a disaster…unless you are in a witness protection program We are born with personalities that develop values and other things we don’t fully understand during early childhood. Soon afterward, our core personhood is pretty much completed although we develop it throughout our lives and grow as individuals. Consider the implications if we try to develop a new core while the old one is there with all the wiring still attached to our psyches. Reinventing the wheel is an unproductive concept. We already have the keys for our ideal lives. Once we identify how we are designed, we simply need to cooperate with that design. Summing It Up 1) Most of us have not consciously considered God’s design in our life before we’ve made significant life choices. 2) Without an understanding of how God has created us to live we will navigate poorly because we have no clear points of specific reference to guide us where we were created to be 3) We are blessed with gifts so that we can be a blessing to others. 4) By living for something larger than ourselves we invite joy into our lives. 5) The things God has put in us to maximize our potential in him were already there when we were children. 6) By identifying aspects of our design and realigning with it we move toward the perfect life God has created us for. Chapter Three Bad Breaks and Disappointment Obstacles to fulfilling the purpose God has designed us for A few years ago, a friend and I decided to dive into real estate development. Filled with optimism and confidence, neither of us realized what a speculative play it was at the time. The business model seemed simple: buy some cheap land in a decent location, rezone it for a more profitable development project, then . . . Never mind what was next in our plan. We spent a lot of money, but we never got there. We worked our numbers over and over, but the pressure built as our savings continued to dry up. Both of us put large amounts of our savings into the pre-development phase of two major projects (major for us at least). Eventually we realized we had put ourselves out on a limb. It was like one of those cartoons in which the character sits in a tree, sawing off the branch from the wrong side. Only we weren’t the ones doing the sawing. Community activists, dishonest politicians, and manipulating city employees all had saws and were busy trying to bring about our demise as aspiring developers. In theory, we stood to make enough money to leap-frog ourselves into early retirement. I put everything I had into the venture, spending many long hours thinking about the financial success of these projects. Then came the fateful day when we were to make our case before the city council one more time. One by one, the council members came up with false statements about our project which I wasn’t allowed to rebut. Then with the blood rushing in my ears, I heard them vote it down and go on to the next item on the agenda as if nothing had happened. I was ruined. At least that’s how I felt. It didn’t matter that we had spent over a year working with the community to make this the best possible project for the area. A petty power struggle between a few elected officials determined our fate despite the approval of several council members, the mayor, the director of public works, and the city engineer. I remember staggering from the room, trying to keep my face from betraying how crushed I felt. Then it was down to the pit of despair for longer than I care to remember. Not too long afterward, the real estate housing market crashed. I couldn’t find construction work to save my life. I was advertising on the radio, bidding on every job I could find, calling friends in the trades, putting up flyers at lumber yards, but still the phone was silent. Every day I felt a sense of terror in my gut. I was doing everything right. I had a good reputation and lots of experience. Still nothing. My oldest daughter was going to college, and I wondered how I could afford the payments on her school loans. Serving seventeen years in overseas missions, scrupulously maintaining my integrity in business, helping people when they couldn’t afford things and now this! How did my life get to such a place? The last two large contractors I had worked with had cheated us, and we were spending more on attorney’s fees than we would probably ever collect. I felt hopeless. I was furious with myself every time I had to say “no” to one of my wonderful daughters. No ballet lessons, piano lessons, or summer vacation. No church camp, no new Easter dress, no new athletic shoes for the volley ball team tryout. More than once my younger daughters innocently asked me, “Daddy, are we poor?” At times I didn’t know how I could continue to endure the disappointment. Most of us have been through times in which we have no control of our direction. All of us have had tough breaks we didn’t ask for or deserve. Some of us have lost jobs, gone bankrupt, lost loved ones, suffered accidents, missed opportunities and made mistakes that have affected our entire lives. All of us are familiar with disappointment. Here’s What I’ve Learned The degree of our disappointment is proportionate to our degree of expectation. Anything speculative in nature has higher odds of failure than more solid business models or any other solid thing in life, for that matter. If I had moderated my expectations of our real estate venture, I wouldn’t have invested so much of my soul in the hope of its success. The results would have been the same, but I wouldn’t have been as crushed when it was shot down. But there is the conundrum. Do I abandon reaching beyond my comfort zone to seize my destiny in Christ just so my disappointments aren’t as traumatic? Of course not. What I need to do is clearly identify my expectations because most of life’s misunderstandings are caused by unexpressed expectations. I’m talking about identifying the expectations you have for yourself and your life. It helps to write them down. When you do that, it becomes clear which expectations are realistic and which have a high likelihood of bringing big-time disappointment. I’m not saying we should never take risks or shoot for our dreams. I am saying that it can be fun to take a long shot, but we need to keep the long-shot expectation. Perspective keeps things real and healthy. We have some casinos in the town I used to live in, and I know some people who work in them. Their stories validate this principle. Why did one guy lose fifty grand at the black jack table? Because he expected to hit the long-odds score. He expected it so much that he was crushed when he didn’t get it and had to part with his life’s savings. This example probably represents a gambling addiction, but it also shows a serious disconnect with reality regarding expectations. The personal story I shared about my business venture was, for me, a major event. Ironically, it was an event that got my attention focused on identifying God’s designed purpose for my life. However, most of our expectations aren’t that concrete. Usually they are no more than assumptions that we don’t think about much, if at all. The result is vague, unidentifiable disappointment with our lives. Identifying or putting our fingers on specific expectations is the goal of this next exercise. It has a lot to do with the anatomy of disappointment, how we understand it and how we process it, so let’s get working on that list. Take some time and try to articulate your expectations for your life. You won’t be able to do a comprehensive list in one sitting, but at least get it started. Make it a running tally. Remember, this isn’t a wish list. Hope and expectation are two different things. List what you are realistically counting on to happen and you’ll nail your expectations: health, family, career, finances, spirituality, etc. Be honest with what you expect, and you can deal with what you want later. You’ll be surprised how things will look after you’re done. You might not have ten concrete things you fully expect to happen in the course of your life. I didn’t the first time I wrote my list. Look at your list and analyze how realistic it is. The more unlikely the steps to the completion of your list, the more unrealistic your expectations are. Consider how many things need to happen for each listed item to become reality, then give them an attainability value on a scale of one through ten. My expectations of life and the probability of attainment 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) Over the years I’ve discovered that some of my smaller expectations in life didn’t turn out to be very realistic. It’s funny now, but for a while I really expected each of these to work as I thought it should: Expectation #1: If I’m nice to people, they will be nice to me. Expectation #2: If a local politician makes a promise, he or she can be trusted to keep that word. Expectation #3: You can pretty much eat anything you want and not gain weight if you balance it out with more exercise. Expectation #4: If the financial expert on TV says you can’t miss with this stock; you will make lots of money if you buy it. Expectation #5: If you’re the most qualified, you’ll get the job. If you’ve listed some of your realistic expectations, you probably wonder how to strike a balance that doesn’t trap you in a risk-free room without sharp corners for the rest of your life. The answer has layers of depth: easy to understand but hard to do. The trick is to define what represents real value to you. How do you do that? With another list of course. This one’s a little easier. Take some time and honestly write your list below each heading. If these things were taken away, it would be almost impossible to for me to experience happiness: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) If I never get these things, it would be almost impossible for me to experience happiness: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) After you finish these two lists, you should have a good idea of what you have intuitively placed value upon. It may have been harder to resist placing wants instead of expectations on the second list, but the dichotomy of contentment and ambition is something we will discuss later in the book. Finally, look at all the work you’ve done on your lists and identify the one thing that has the most power to take away your sense of well-being. Superman had his kryptonite. We too have chinks in our personal armor. What is your Kryptonite? Identifying it is important, because naturally you will want to build a defense against it.