Chapter 12. Creating journeys for the next
“best” of your life
“At every moment, we have more
options than we can imagine…”
W.
Mitchell
You no doubt have many times heard
the phrase, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” At a National
Speakers Association Winter Workshop in Honolulu in 2002, Jim Cathcart past
national president changed to quote to say…
“Today is the first day of the
“best” of your life.”
That statement brought much
applause from his audience of professional speakers and trainers, many who do
motivational speaking to help people create the best out of their lives. The statement hit me as meaningful, one to
write down and think about.
Motivational in spirit and sincere
in its meaning I believe it can be rephrased once more time to fit the future
creative journeys you will take in your life.
“Today is the first day of the
‘next best’ of your life.”
You may have already achieved good
to great things you may no longer be able to better at your age and in your
physical condition. You may be past your
physical prime. Your coordination or
dexterity may no longer be as sharp as it once was. You may not be as handsome or pretty as you
were when you were young. These all
represent real limitations or conditions of human life.
You can trim down. You can exercise and strengthen muscles. You can learn new skills.
At the same time changing
conditions of life do not mean you and I still do not have many more “bests” or
“greats” yet to accomplish in our lives.
You can write books and articles.
You can write and give meaningful speeches. You can coach. You can mentor.
You can use the skills and
strengths you have while gaining additional knowledge and skills and use them
to create new ‘bests’ for ourselves.
What are some of the “bests” you
would like to accomplish?
Write a song?
Write a book?
Write a poem or book of poems?
Write your life’s story?
Run a 5K or 10K or perhaps a
marathon?
Climb a mountain?
Visit all 50 states?
Plant a beautiful garden?
Raise prize winning vegetables?
Learn to take professional quality
photographs?
Learn to paint in oil, acrylics or
watercolor?
Build your next home?
Start a business?
Develop new friends?
Travel around the world?
Learn to figure skate?
Complete a college degree?
These are all achievable goals,
creative journeys.
One life lesson I have learned is
to start with achievable goals then push and reach for higher and higher
levels. To write a book first right an
article
The first step is to choose your
destination your goal. The second step
is to gather information. The third is
to begin planning. The fourth is to
begin collecting resources. The fifth is
to gather the support system and people you will need for your journey. The sixth is to draw up your map. The seventh is to begin.
Sounds so simple. Yes it does sound simple. In most cases it is just that simple. The challenges come from the amount of work
you may need to do. Some journeys may
require a great deal of information gathering.
To learn to paint a full wall size mural may take years of painting
lessons and painting to develop the skills.
It may take weeks and months of painting an hour or two at a time to
complete it.
One of our ever potentially present
challenges is losing the confidence and drive to keep moving when things seem
to be going bad or simply go bad.
Catastrophes, tragedies, disasters do happen at all scales. I’ve told you of some of mine already. Getting through and past such negative things
often will require a great deal of support and courage or simply hard headed
stick-to-it-ness, the determination that no matter what you are going to
complete your goal.
One of my biggest challenges in
life is that so many of the things I wanted came too easy. More effort, working harder, longer would
probably have gained me greater results but I usually acquired what I wanted
without having to work that hard.
Persistence is one of my traits or skills. If I am committed to accomplish something I
will persist.
One of my negative traits is
periodically striving for perfection, or setting my goals or standards too
high. Then after fighting to move ahead
and/or procrastinating until it is getting to the point of being too late or
impossible to complete my task or project I finally sit down with a pencil and
paper and I write out all of what really needs to be done and discover that I
can actually get it done if I back off on my impossible standards. Then I move ahead, complete the task and end
up frustrated because I have completed it finally yet at a level I am not proud
or happy with. I got by, just got by
once again.
My college degrees were all like
that. Getting my architectural license
was like that.
I am catharting, dumping negatives
from my life. I am not writing anything
that will be of value to anyone who might buy this book.
Bests.
What do I mean by more bests in
your life or my life?
Choosing projects you have not
worked on yet. Choosing goals you haven’t accomplished yet.
Suggesting that you examine bests
in your life so far and listing them. Review
them and decide which do you think you could and would want to better now.
In my case…
drawn cartoons
drawn cartoons like famous
cartoonists
I have excellent hand and eye
coordination
I can mimic or copy what I can see
publish cartoons and a cartoon
strip
have my drawings put on display
write a play and have it performed
in public
write short stories
write mysteries
design houses
design buildings
design logos
design graphics
design signs and sign systems
design advertisements
lose 30 to 60 pounds
travel to 44 countries
travel/visit 49 states
speak to over 2100 audiences from 1
to 750+
write many articles
get articles published
write some books
have a book published
publish a book
find a wonderful, beautiful, very
loving and sexy wife
have two great sons
have a great daughter
develop a garden and decorative
yard
create my creativity room
refinish rooms in my house
teach at a university
become a licensed architect
teach in Cortona, Italy
travel all around Europe
travel around the world
speak in foreign countries
become an officer of GSA
become a toastmaster
complete CTM, ATM, ATM-bronze,
ATM-silver
complete my NSA-CSP
speak at NSA events
speak in GSA speaker schools
speak in GSA showcases
speak for AIA
been on radio talk shows
Athens,
Taccoa, Springfield, over phone
drawings in a art fair
win a prize for my drawings
designs on exhibit
25 foot long cartoon on exhibit in
Cortona and in Athens
what could be some of my new bests
create new programs
create a new speech
create audio tape/cd series
write new books
complete this book
write articles regularly
get on a television talk show
draw new cartoon characters,
cartoons, cartoon strip
write a play
write stories
write mystery novels
be a main platform speaker at an
NSA Convention or Winter Workshop
do more concurrent sessions
publish more articles in the
Professional Speaker magazine
learn how and create a beautiful
garden
complete my creativity room
create artwork based on my travels,
life, learnings
read more books
learn how to do interior gardening
generate much more business
speak more around the world
take more regular trips around the
world
speak in every one of the 50 states
in a single year
develop new friends
find someone new to love who loves
me
trim down to 160 - 170 lbs
These are all mostly achievable,
doable.
If I chose them as journeys,
gathered information, planned and implemented my plans and work on them
consistently most to all of these journeys would be accomplished.
What about your journeys, goals,
targets?
personal
physical
professional
family friend related
civic or social
religious
The sun is shining. You are
healthy. You have enough money in the
bank to pay your bills for a couple years if you didn’t work at all. You have enough work already scheduled for
the year to pay your bills and allow you to travel to several places and
provide you lots of open or free time.
You live alone. You have no real
obligations except what you choose to agree to do.
This describes a life situation
that would allow free choice of traveling with minimal restraints.
Yet I feel trapped, stuck,
unmotivated.
Am I only happy when I am moving,
busy, traveling, working on some project?
Am I depressed or simply bored?
I have been in 49 of 50 states and
in 44 foreign countries, a dozen or so of them more than once. My work involves
me traveling. I extend my work trips to
include vacation or travel time.
Your life is probably mostly
controlled by your work and family obligations.
Most of 168 hours each week are probably spoken for by your varied
obligations. You would have to sacrifice
a great deal to simply walk away for awhile.
I don’t have to sacrifice much if I
walk away. My son is 31 and supports
himself. My daughter is 29, married and
they both make very good incomes and live very comfortably. I have no contact with one brother. I have whatever contact I choose to have with
my other brother and they both live 1500 or so miles away. Both of my parents are dead and have been for
30 years (mother) and 25 years (father).
My oldest son was killed 13 years ago when he was 20. My wife chose to end her pain and her life
almost 4 years ago.
I am simply me.
My life is mine to create, to design, to
plan, to live, to enjoy.
What I choose to do is mostly up to
me if not almost 100% of the time.
You have to involve other people,
several other people probably when you make choices in your life.
Are you making enough choices in
your life to satisfy your personal desires, wants and needs? Or are you only making or able to make a
minimum of choices each day, week, month, year?
I lead a strange, unusual,
creative, wandering life.
I am paid for talking and saying
mostly anything I want to say as long as my talks and workshops fit into the
categories that my clients are willing to pay for.
I would love to be able to simply
talk about what I want to talk about and still know I could generate income to
pay my yearly expenses and provide extra money for the later years in my life.
Let’s look at your life.
Draw up a weekly calendar or
schedule showing all 7 days. Start with
Monday on the left. Draw up 7 columns
and then divide them up sideways into 24 rows.
Put the earliest time you wake up at the top of the chart. 7, 7:30, 8 and so forth.
Then take a set of color markers,
preferably transparent colors, pens that are used for highlighting words and
sentences in books. You may want to
write notes on the chart and the transparent colors will allow you to. Choose one color for work, one for sleep, one
for family, one for friends, one for you.
So you’ll need 5 colors.
Start by marking in the times you
sleep. Then the times you work. Include the time that you have spend
traveling to and from work. Then color
in times you spend with members of your family whether all together or
not. After that mark in times you spend
with friends alone. If you spend some
time with friends and family then use both colors when you mark those time
areas. Finally mark the times that you
spend with just you no matter what you are doing that has nothing to do with
any of the other categories. This may be
time exercising, working in your garden, hiking, hunting, fishing, reading,
doing hobbies, etc.
show a sample of my life
show a couple samples of typical
people, day shift, afternoon or evening shifts.
include blank pages with charts on
them….one for the first, one for the ideal, one for planning a more creative
life.
Now turn to another blank life
chart and use the 5 colors to create your ideal typical week. This is not a vacation or holiday week. Create your ideal week. Imagine you have won a lottery or inherited a
very large sum of money and can now completely control your life.
chart work
Now compare your two charts.
What would have to happen for this
to become your normal week?
1.
win a lottery?
2.
inherit money?
3.
quit your job?
4.
wife or husband would have to get a much higher paying job
5.
6.
7.
8.
This list of reasons may be enough
to make your “ideal week” seem impossible right now.
Do you think you would be happy for
years living your “ideal week” each and every week, week after week after week?
Now turn to another blank life
chart and block out a more workable while still more like your ideal week.
What would need to change?
Less sleep?
Less work?
Get a job closer to home?
Work from your home?
Change working hours from 5 or 6
days to 4 longer days or possible 2 long days like some hospitals offer their
weekend nurses. They work two 12 hour
days and are paid for 40 hours.
Find someone to do those chores
around the house that fill your free time?
Drop some of your civic, social or
church activities to free up time for you by yourself, with just your wife,
with your kids, with your friends?
Some of these are doable and many
people choose to do them to take back control of their “life journeys”.
Between 1962 and 1966 I worked
freelance, part time, half time jobs whether going to school or not. Once I graduated with my Architectural degree
I began working full time. From then I
went to over time to moonlighting to working full-time in one firm, part-time
in another and also moonlighting. Throw
into that mix going back to school at night.
Except for nine weeks while I was unemployed due to a career choice I
made on my own, when I was trying to move from architecture to advertising, my
pattern was to work, work, work and go to school.
That was a pattern I continued
until 1976 when I was laid off from my full-time architectural and graphic
design jobs (both with the same firm) due to the depression in Florida of the
1970s. For the next 14 or so months I
tried to run my own architecture and design firm. I saw no other options. Most architectural firms had cut back, way
back, many had closed up. I was
separated from my first wife, living in a completely furnished one bedroom
apartment that a business friend had arranged for me to live in through one of
her and her husband’s friends. She and
her husband then offered space in their building for my first architectural
office. They allowed me to move into
without any guarantee I could pay rent.
My life began to change, change
dramatically. I would begin to
wander. I would begin the greatest and
most creative journeys of my life to date.
I didn’t know how to get
clients. I had a diploma, two
diplomas. I had passed the National
Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB) tests and had become a
licensed architect in both Michigan and Florida two years before. I had some left over graphic work to do that
came from the firm that I was laid off from.
Enough to give my soon to be ex-wife some money each week to pay her and
my son’s bills and barely pay mine. Some
times I couldn’t pay my own.
I was working one day a week as a
volunteer teacher of gifted children at my sons’ elementary school. I was a soccer coach of my youngest son’s
team and had never played soccer. I was
the coach of my oldest son’s football team and had never played on an organized
team or league.
I was keeping busy. Always busy, morning, noon and night.
I remember one night after I had
had to move out of the apartment because I could no longer pay the rent and was
sleeping on the couch in my warehouse space office. It had 4 concrete block walls that I had
painted white before moving in. It had a
bare concrete floor covered by a mosaic like carpet made up of scraps of carpet
I had collected, scavengered from dumpsters when I was making a similar one for
the classroom I was working in with the gifted kids on Tuesdays. The ceiling was the underside of bare double
tie precast concrete sections that made up the roof: structure and ceiling.
That night I was lying in the dark
thinking that after all that had happened to me, mostly none of it my choosing,
there was nowhere but up now.
Somehow I made it through that
time.
From the concrete warehouse space I
moved into a beautifully decorated ex-bank board room with 4 walls of walnut
paneling and wall to wall plush carpeting where I would pay no rent. Instead of rent I would provide architectural
and advertising services to my friend, who was the minister of the church that
then owned the old First National Bank in Boynton Beach.
Wandering through my days, one
after another, with no real destination or plan just trying to get by and gain
control of my new life I met several new friends who helped me out.
From 1976 to 1978 I began my
wandering journey through life, consciously knowing that I was then
wandering. I took each day as it
came. My days became filled with various
meetings that hopefully would lead to work that included Chamber of Commerce
committee meetings, luncheons, Kiwanis meetings, cub scout meetings, classes I
tried to teach at the middle school at night, community appearance or building
board of adjustment and appeals meetings to simply meetings with people who I
was told to meet about potential work.
During that time my father died,
October 1976. Unknown to me he had left
insurance money and some savings that was divided up equally among my two
brothers and I. Before Christmas I had money in the bank and no longer had to
worry about how I would pay my weekly or monthly bills, at least for a couple
years if I was conservative in how I spent the money.
Why did I share that piece of Alan
history? Simply to demonstrate that life
often is not what we plan but rather what happens to us. The important life lesson is that “life isn’t
so much what happens to us, it is what we do when things happen that matter and
end up creating our lives.”
14 separate and different negative
to catastrophic things happened in my life from the Spring of 1976 to June of
1977 and totally changed my life forever.
None of the 14 things did I choose or plan. They simply happened. The night I was lying on the couch in the
dark I decided that with all that had happened me I was still alive. Several more would happen in the months to
come. A short while after that night
thanks to my minister friend/client I moved into a little 2 bedroom rental
house that his bishop owned. I lived
there until I left for Europe in June 1977.
By then I had acquired some work and my brother had sent me a portion of
the inheritance money that would help provide me a buffer for a couple months.
None of these things were planned.
They happened and I worked at
trying to make them work for me.
What has happened in your
life? What have you done to turn the
experiences and their results into benefits for you?
Now back to your new creative
journey.
What are some of your dreams?
world travel
owning a race car
acting on a stage professionally
sending your children to college
going to college to finish a degree
building a new home
adding onto your current home
How do you need to alter or
redesign your weekly life chart to help you accomplish and fulfill some of your
dreams?
My life and the lives of many
people I have met or have read about have proven to me that we can greatly
control and affect our life journeys.
Now it is time for you to design
your next creative journey.
Start by thinking about what you
want your life to be like 5 years from now.
Imagine you are waking up on a
Monday 5 years from now. Describe in
detail what you wonderful life would be like then. If you have had a very difficult life so far
this may seem completely fanciful or pretend.
Perhaps your dreams are more practical than other people who will read
this book. That’s fine. Start from where you are. Where would you really like to be?
Write it down. Describe the ideal day for you five years
from now if everything went as you want it to from now until then.
Then make two lists that describe
your life. One list describes it as it
is now. The second list describes it as
you dream it to be five years from now.
Once you have completed your two
lists compare them. How distinctly
different are they? What will be needed
to make the second one happen compared to your current one?
More money?
Greater health?
Some one to love
No debts
Land
a new job
an education
I did this type of thing a few
different times in my life. Because of
my tendency to be a wanderer through life and not a very precise and persistent
researcher I have rarely take much time to analyze the current lives I was
leading nor the dream lives I wanted to lead.
Because I have tended to be a loner most of life and depended mostly on
myself I never gathered a group of friends or my family often to work out plans. Nor have I ever looked for specific, perfect
workable predetermined plans or tours that would lead me to where I wanted to
be.
Instead I would dream. I would write my dreams down in my morning or
night time journal that I have kept off and on since the mid 60s since I read
about the benefits of doing that in motivational, self-help books. Then I would think about my dreams often most
days when I walked to the beach, to my office or sat having a meal. I kept my dreams in my head and my
heart. Periodically, often sporatically
when something would happen that might effect the outcome of my dreams I would
act and move closer and closer toward my dream or dreams.
In the case of my first wandering
trip to Europe I had dreamed about going to Europe since high school, a fact my
mother mentioned at my first wife’s wedding shower that created problems for me
with my future wife for awhile. I had
forgotten the dream. After I had been
married for a couple years and we had moved to Florida I became obsessed with
going to Europe. Every time I saw
anything in my architectural magazines about working in Europe I would think
about it. Then I became aware of the
Rome Prize, an architectural prize that provided 12 months of living in Italy
to study architecture. I applied for it
3 separate times and was not accepted.
When the final check came from my father’s estate I decided to fulfill
that long time dream and take a trip on my own to Europe.
Many hours and days were often
filled for the next 5 months with planning, research, thinking and talking
about my 3-month tour of Europe that I would live on in June.
With a list of the cities I would
travel to and tour on both sides of a sheet of yellow legal paper I boarded a
plane with my Euro Pass, a line of credit, a back pack, a couple travel books,
including Europe on $10 a Day, I took off.
The first week or so I traveled with Kwok-Yee (David) and Mindy Wong as
I mentioned before. Early one morning on
our train ride from Mainz, West Germany towards Lucerne, Switzerland I ended up
taken off the train by a train conductor because he thought I was a most wanted
or simply because he was accusing me of smuggling 100 rolls of slide film and
50 audio tape cassettes.
That night after resolving that
unexpected challenge I was roaming the streets of Lucerne looking for David and
Mindy unsuccessfully. I became so
frustrated and desperate that evening I invited myself to sit at a table with 3
people speaking English that I had over heard talking for awhile. They turned out to be 3 teachers at the
American School in Lucerne.
That night I began my first true
journey alone in a foreign country.
Nothing was familiar. Nothing would be the same again for weeks or
months from day to day. I would sleep nearly
100 nights in strange beds and eat nearly 300 meals or more mostly alone in one
of 22 different countries.
I would learn to survive,
to live,
to creatively journey and
live on my own without any of the protective people
and support systems
I had known the previous 33 years of my life.
