DO YOU TAKE RESPONSIBILITY OR REACT LIKE A BILLIARD BALL?

It’s another beautiful morning in Santa Barbara. It rained yesterday, but it was wonderful in between the brief downpours. Though it’s January, the rains had an almost tropical quality about them. They came and went and came and went. They were fast and hard. Then it was sunny and windy.

Kind of like life can be some days. One hour you feel like it’s a great sunny day. You’re happy and things are going your way. Next minute psychological clouds gather, the mind darkens, and you’re not even sure what made your mood turn from sunny to cloudy.

Then, something else happens, that you may or may not really notice, and your mood changes again and you’re feeling happy and alive.

Not everyone goes through this everyday, but fluctuating moods are a challenge for many of us, though we may label the moods and deal with them in different ways. Not everybody gets noticeably depressed or unhappy when things don’t go right. Some of us get stressed, or angry, or we move faster, or we eat, surf the net, or distract ourselves in another way. Some of us go for a run, or call a friend, or meditate, rather than having a beer, or a smoke.

            Some of us deal with emotions by trying not to have them. This only works to a point. Trying not to have emotions is a little like trying not to sweat or go to the bathroom. It’s not a wise plan for the long run. Heart attacks, ulcers, hemorrhoids—you name it—a whole slew of health problems are related to an ability to handle difficult emotions.

Not having emotions also makes it a little tough to be a satisfying partner, and being emotion-free, like a robot, is probably a good way to have seriously messed-up kids. You hear this when troubled kids say things like, “My dad’s body might have been there, but he was somewhere else.”

To show up as a human being means to show up emotions and all. And we really wouldn’t want it any other way. Psychopaths and sociopaths seem to lack an ability to feel what is going on inside themselves and an inability to feel what is going on in others. And look how wonderfully their lives turn out.

To show up as a human being is to feel and be felt by those around us.

Our emotions, our feelings, have a great deal of intelligence in them. They help us do the right thing. They guide our intuition, which research is starting to show has a lot more going for it than we ever thought. Our emotions connect us and motivate us to do great things. Our emotions add color to life. They make us human.

They can also get us into trouble. That’s why we’re told we have to control our emotions and not let them control us. Emotions like fear make us run when we should stand. Anger makes us lash out when we should listen. Sadness makes us collapse when we need to rise.

This sounds like we are a house divided with good emotions versus bad emotions, with good cops versus bad cops. Emotional intelligence involves more than simply controlling our emotions.

Who’s being ‘emotional’ and who’s doing the controlling, anyway? Are there two people in there? Two personalities?

Can we bring about a bit of unity, which may lead to a bit of harmony and a bit more ease?

The more aware you can be of what’s going on inside you as you ‘react’ emotionally to things, the better. React is the operative word here. Often our anger, our fear, our sadness, is triggered by events, or more precisely, by events and the thoughts we have about those events. This often happens quickly and automatically.

 “Of course, I’m angry. The kids aren’t ready.”

We say this as if we’ve stated a law of nature and that our anger necessarily follows our kids’ lateness as necessarily as the planets follow Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation.

So why does your wife get depressed rather than mad when the kids are late? Is there a different law of nature working in her case than in yours?

This example may seem trivial, but it’s not. If you look, you will see many places in your life where you are saying, “I feel this way because…” and then you fill in the blank.

One of the most powerful things you can do to increase your happiness, success, and sexual prowess (Do I still have your attention?) is to take more and more responsibility for your life, including your emotions.

This is a very important step. Your emotions are yours. They are not simply caused by outside events. You are not a billiard ball being hit by another billiard ball that has no choice but to ‘react’ in a certain way. You have many degrees of freedom. You can look at what is going on when something begins to upset you. You can begin to cultivate a space between the action and your reaction. You can, if you want to, if you’re willing to accept the power and the possibility and the responsibility.

Responsibility can be said to mean ‘the ability to respond in a number of different ways.’ If you only have one way of responding, like a struck billiard ball, then you can’t be held responsible.

Is that what you want? To be free of responsibility for your emotions and your actions, like a billiard ball? Or do you want to stand up and take the responsibility and the opportunity to live and act like a human being?

Being human is a wonderful opportunity, but it’s also hard work. Life is often not easy. Most of us do not come pre-programmed with everything we need to live a full and happy life, nor do outside circumstances always work to make our lives safe and fulfilling. Life can be ‘red in tooth and claw’. Many of us are hurt even before we crawl, and have to work hard to find our way.

One of the most powerful moves we can make is to take more and more responsibility for our lives, beginning with our emotions and our reactions. Once we take responsibility, we can begin to learn how we’re built, how we operate, how we react. We can learn to be more aware.

Like building up our bodies, we can build up our ability to feel and be with uncomfortable emotions without reacting. We can learn to see the thoughts and belief systems that keep us imprisoned and restrict our ability to handle challenges. We can challenge those patterns and beliefs and live less reactively.

But for all this to happen, we first have to accept responsibility for our lives. That’s the foundation.

And that’s where most of us give our best excuses.

First things first, take responsibility wherever and whenever you can. That way you give yourself power and dominion over more and more of your life.

Don’t misunderstand me. This is not contrary to a religious or spiritual position that says you need the help of a higher power to fully live your life. Maybe our very existence is only possible because of a sacred energy creating and sustaining all things. Maybe not.

            You get to choose which is true for you and how you will live.
            Or you can choose to live like a billiard ball.
            That's your choice as well.

            I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572

HOW MANY FAILURES DOES IT TAKE TO BE A SUCCESS?

You may have read or heard some of these before, but like good green vegetables, you probably can’t get too many of them in your mental diet. I find them refreshing and encouraging, inspiring and amusing. They help me breathe a sigh of relief, and they lighten my load. They free me up when I start wanting to feel sorry for myself. They help put life in perspective. They help prevent whining.    

Henry Ford had five businesses that failed before he started a successful car business.

RH Macy had seven failed businesses before he opened Macy’s department store.

Soichiro Honda applied for a job as an engineer with Toyota, was rejected, and was unemployed for months before starting Honda Motor Company.

Akio Morita, founder of Sony, designed a rice cooker as his first product. It burned rice and was a total flop.

Colonel Sanders had his chicken recipe rejected hundreds of times before he opened Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of imagination.

Lucille Ball was considered very unpromising by her drama teachers and was advised to look for another line of work. Early in her career she was considered a B actress, at best.

Most of Emily Dickenson’s poems remained in her desk drawer during her lifetime. 

Helen Keller, well, you know about her.

John Lennon was dyslexic (dyslexia: has a hard time with words. Ha!).

Einstein was considered slow as a child.

He didn’t speak till he was four.

He couldn’t get a job at any university at the time he wrote four of the most important physics papers ever written by anyone, anywhere, at any time. 

Darwin’s father was very unimpressed with his young son’s intellectual abilities. (Way to go, dad!)

Isaac Newton failed at running the family farm before his uncle sent him to Cambridge.

In his day, Socrates was labeled an immoral corruptor of youth.

Edison failed at least a 1000, if not 10,000 times, designing a damned light bulb that would work.

The Wright Brothers suffered numerous failed attempts at making a plane that would fly, which only made their depression worse.

Mark Victor Hansen went bankrupt and wanted to kill himself before starting The Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books with Jack Canfield that sold over 100 million copies.

Lincoln suffered from depression and failed throughout his life, until he didn’t. 

Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade. He went walking the black dog, his code words for depression, quite often.  

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a television reporter, since she was unfit for t.v.

Harry Truman went bankrupt before becoming president.

Jerry Seinfeld froze during his first performance and was booed off stage.

Fred Astaire: “Can’t act, can’t sing, can dance a little,” comments from his first audition.

Hollywood studios initially rejected Charlie Chaplin as too nonsensical.

After his first film, executives told Harrison Ford he didn’t have what it takes to be a star.

Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime, to a friend, for not much money.

Beethoven’s teachers thought he was hopeless.

A crowd ran the composer Igor Stravinsky out of town after his debut performance.

Mozart was dismissed from his position as a court musician.

Jack London’s first story was rejected over 500 times.

During his lifetime, Claude Monet was mocked as an artist.

Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, was rejected 30 times, so he threw it in the trash.

Steven Spielberg was rejected by USC film school.

Charles Schultz was turned down for a job by Walt Disney. Schultz later created Peanuts.

27 Publishers turned down Dr. Seuss’s first book.

“The colossus of independence”, John Adams, second president of the United States, “who was learned beyond all but a few,” suffered from self-doubt.

 Elvis Presley was told to go back to truck driving.

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team.

And so on.

The lesson I walk away with from these examples is that most of us are not failing enough. We’re playing it safe. We’re picking up our toys and sulking off to our rooms before we’ve even given the game our best shot, and then our next, and our next, and our next until we break through to the place where we are gifting the world with what we have to offer.

            Another word for a failure is a mistake. A mistake is a mis-take, a shot that didn’t take, a shot that didn’t quite make it into the basket. So take a shot, and then another, and then another. Learn something each time, like Edison did, like Lucille Ball did. Miss as many shots as it takes until you start sinking them, because that’s what it takes, even if you’re Michael Jordan, Lucille Ball, or Abraham Lincoln.

            So go out there and fall on your face. Get it over with. Do it again and again.
            If you really want to live, you’ve got to fail. If you really want to learn how to shot, you’ve got to go out there and miss a few shots—or a few thousand shots.   
            There’s no other way.
            But there is a way.
            So get on the court and keep playing.
            And enjoy the game.

For coaching or SE sessions please contact me at 805/680-5572 or drjohnluca@gmail.com

JOHN LENNON REMEMBERED

If you were alive and old enough in December of 1980, you probably remember where you were when you heard the news.

“John Lennon was shot and killed tonight outside his home on the Upper West Side of New York City.” 

At least it was a madman who did it, killed John Lennon, of all people.

When I was eleven, a few years after my father’s death, I’m a Loser, the Beatles hit written by John Lennon, became one of my most cherished songs.

Alone in our apartment, I would sing along at the top of my lungs as tears trickled down my cheek, “I’m a loser. And I lost someone who’s near to me…”

           

John Lennon was born October 9^th, 1940 while a World War II bombing raid was in progress.

His mother couldn’t handle raising him. He was raised by his aunt Mimi.

He was expelled from school for misbehaving when he was five years old.

I’m a Loser, Nowhere Man, and Help are biographical songs based on John Lennon’s personal  experience.

He saw his father for the first time in 17 years in 1964.

“All art is pain expressing itself,” he once said.

He kept a light on while he slept because he didn’t like the dark.

Without glasses he was legally blind.

            Supposedly he was dyslexic.

“Part of me suspects that I am a loser, and the other part thinks I am God Almighty.”

He may have been a petty thief, enjoying a bit of shoplifting now and again, when he was a teenager.

             He ate very little after a reporter labeled him the ‘fat Beatle’.

He didn’t like his voice and often asked his producers to change how he sounded on recordings.

“My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple.”

In 1970 John and Yoko checked into a hospital for wealthy addicts.

“Temperatures rising, fever is high, can’t see no future…can’t see no sky,” is a lyric from his song Cold Turkey.

             John Lennon signed his autograph for Mark Chapman six hours before Chapman shot and killed him on December 8^th, 1980 at around 10:50 p.m.

“If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”

John Lennon wrote Imagine, which is now the official song of the human rights organization Amnesty International.

Along with Paul McCartney, John Lennon is considered one of the most influential songwriters of the 20^th century.

             “I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It's just that the translations have gone wrong.”

           The Beatles have sold an estimated 1,000,000,000 plus records worldwide. Sales continue to go strong. 

           “And we all shine on, like the moon, the stars, and the sun…”

           Remember John. Do what you have to do, though it’s not always easy. And shine on.

           Namaste.
           I can be reached for coaching at drjohnfluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572. 

HOW GOOD WAS I? COMPARING YOURSELF INTO A FUNK

             It’s been a hard few days, I must confess. Not sure why. I think it’s the economy. People are struggling. I feel under-utilized. My circuits jammed on me. I had a meltdown. Found myself very frustrated. Negative. Physically upset with a headache that wouldn’t respond to meditation or medication.

Who wants to hear about a helping professional and life coach having a trying few days? 

“I have enough of those, myself,” I can hear you saying, “I don’t need to hear about yours.”

I was worried. How could I write something that might help someone else when I can’t keep myself from feeling this way?

I felt like a bit of a sham.

I sometimes envy people who seem to glide through life, like the old James Bond, seemingly without a sensitive, self-reflective moment of doubt, worry, weakness, or a bit of despondency.

Do those people really exist? They might, and bully for them. Oh, I have my days, and even my weeks and months, when things are just going swimmingly and everything is great with the world, days when I could probably kick 007’s butt.

Then there are, what I call, the ‘drowning’ days, days when I have to work hard to keep from sinking. And though they’ve gotten fewer and further apart and less severe, I still have my drowning days. That’s how it is.

I know there are billions who have to struggle. Maybe everyone struggles, sometimes, and James Bond is a big fat liar. He leaves out the parts where he’s lonely, and worries about that arthritic shoulder and, well, sometimes, even with a beautiful woman, he just doesn’t seem, well, as solid down there as he once was.

Know what I mean?

Sure you do.

Anti-depressants, anxiety medication, joints, pints, and kegs are sold by the boatload each hour to help us get through the tough work of being a human being.

Maybe that’s what it’s all about: how you make it through the tough times, how you behave, how you show up, how you keep going.

Do you get your work done, the real work of living? Can you keep loving those around you, lending a helping hand and a listening heart? Can you forgive yourself when you fall so that you can get up stronger and more quickly?

The Prophet Mohammed said, “There will always be times tougher than these.”
The Buddha said suffering is part of the world.

So, it’s all about how you handle the tough times. How you learn from them. How you take responsibility and action. How you move on.

The tough times will always be with us.

But why do I compare myself to others, even James Bond, or to myself on better days?

It was the teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti who first showed me the damage we cause by comparing. I can hear his high distinctive voice with his British-Indian accent and I can see his raised finger as he admonished his listeners, “Never to compare.”

What would a mind be like if it were never to compare, but to simply be with itself just as it is from moment to moment?

There is a Buddhist practice of labeling our thoughts and feelings as they are happening. You experience a thought and you label it, “thinking,” for instance. You feel an emotion, and you label it, “fear”, and so on.

But that already has a separation between the part of you that is experiencing the emotion or thought, and the part that is labeling it.

It seems you have to compare your experience to something else to be able to know it is fear, or anger, or desire, or joy.

You have to compare it before you can label it.

But what if you could never compare?

Wow.

But what did I do just then? Did I compare my good-old comparing self to some amazing me who might someday never compare?

What a drag, because obviously you can’t use comparison as a way to get to a point in your life where you no longer compare, just like you can’t go north by going south.

            Never to compare, and to go on doing your work and living your life from moment to moment. What would that be like?

But if I don’t compare, you might ask, how will I know how I’m doing?

Why does it matter? Why do you need to know how you are doing? Who will tell you? How will you keep score? What will it mean?

Of course you might use a scale to see how your weight is doing, and things like that, but you would not use anything to tell you how you were doing. That’s the kind of comparison we’re talking about, not whether this box of cereal is a better deal than that box. Never to compare your self with anyone and anything, but to simply be yourself from moment to moment.

What would that be like?

I don’t know, but I do know the pain of comparison. That I know. Comparison has often made me miserable.

There’s an old eastern teaching that says, “You suffer because you spend 99% of your time thinking about your self, but there isn’t one.”

I think comparison gives rise to the self. When you are not comparing, but just being and doing in the moment, it’s like you, your self, are not there. You forget about yourself and simply drop into life. When you’re really happy, you don’t know about it in the moment, because you’re so in the thick of your happiness. It’s only afterwards, when it’s over a little bit, that you can compare and notice how happy you were. You have to come out of your happiness a bit to even know that you’re happy.
 It’s like a great orgasm. In the middle of it, you’re gone. That’s what we love about it. Great sex or lovemaking is one of the best ways to get out of your own head so that you’re not there for a while.

And then, of course, we return and say, “Wow, that was great. Can we do that again?” It's amazing how good it feels to have your doors blown off for awhile so that you're gone, even if only for a moment or two.

 Check it out for yourself. Observe how comparing serves you and hurts you. Let me know what you think.

So, there it is. I wrote it. My commitment is two articles per week and this is article number two. That’s all I can tell you. You put one foot in front of the other, eyes open, mind quiet or mind in turmoil, you do what you can to keep walking the walk. You walk through fear, confusion, doubt, worry, moodiness, and even depression. You walk like you’re on some great mission like Frodo, in Lord of the Rings, because you are. You are walking the path of your one and only life—at least till you get to heaven or you reincarnate.

             Namaste. 
             I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

SAYING NO, SAYING YES, AND CHANGING YOUR LIFE

For some, Monday morning is a hard day. For others, it’s Tuesday, or Thursday, or maybe Sunday. Any morning can be especially hard if you’re unemployed or under-employed. It can be especially hard if you’re unemployed and over fifty. I’ve read that many unemployed men over 55 are not expected to ever work again, even though they want to and need to.

What’s up with that?

If you’re expected to live to be 80 or so, and you’re now 55 and unemployed, that’s 25 years of being an unemployed monumental pain to yourself and everyone around you.

Of course, we may find that unemployed men and women just don’t live that long, and that will solve the problem.

Well, my response to that is, “To hell with that.”

            Now, I know that strikes a different tone for a guy like me, at least in writing. Usually, I’m a touchy-feely, let’s talk calmly, understanding-the-other-guy’s-point-of-view, kind of guy. 

            Not today.

Today, my attitude is, “To hell with that.”

            I say this quietly, not stridently. I’m not shouting it out my second floor window like Albert Finney in Network, who screamed, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I won’t take it anymore.”        

A lot of us are getting our butts kicked, one way or another, by the changes in the American and global economy. While one-third of Americans can’t pay their mortgages, corporations have their most profitable quarter ever, and an Andy Warhol painting sells for a record-breaking 71 million dollars.

To those inclined politically, I say continue to fight the good fight to get this country more equitable, and to re-direct some of the cash that relentlessly and dangerously keeps floating to the top of the economic pie where it accumulates in the portfolios and bank accounts of the ever more wealthy top 1% of the population.

But here, I’m not talking only to the political types. I’m talking to the rest of us who have to do our best while the machine whirs away, sometimes grinding us down as we go about our daily business.

            There are many empowering emotions. Just a few days ago we celebrated Thanksgiving, and I, along with a host of others, put out a few words in praise of gratitude.

            But that was yesterday.

Today I feel the need to offer a few words in praise of attitude, the attitude captured by the words, “To hell with that.’

            I can hear some of you now. “Oh, John, please watch your tone, and your language. You’re starting to sound like one of them.”

Them, being those people who get upset and make loud noises that make finding solutions even more difficult.

I’m not offering, “To hell with that,” as an addition to the noise.

            “To hell with that”, is a strong way of saying ‘no’ to what we don’t want, and “yes” to something else.

The ‘yes’ part is crucial.

Mother Teresa embodied the, “To hell with that,” attitude towards the idea that the poor always suffered and there wasn’t anything she or anyone else could do about it.

She said, “To hell with that,” rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

How about Martin Luther King Jr.?

What was his attitude towards, “The Negro in America would never have rights and opportunities equal to those of Whites”?

And what did he do about it?

What about Gandhi?

Can you hear a little of the, “To hell with that,” attitude spoken with love, but with the strength and conviction of shifting tectonic plates?

            We all need a bit of that, “To hell with that,” attitude sometimes.

But attitude can get us only so far. After attitude comes the hard of work of making things better.

            I heard a very insightful person say that to live effectively you need to be able to take your life in your hands like a crisp apple, bite it, break off a piece and chew.

What’s the energy that helps us do that?

That’s what I’m calling the, “To hell with that,” energy.

There’s the energy of inertia, the resistance that says, “No, you won’t work again. No, you will not solve that problem. No, you will not write that book, or get that job, or overcome that illness, or make that contribution. No. No. No.”

            Then there’s, “To hell with that.”

“To hell with that,” is Yes. Yes. Yes.

Or it’s just feckless noise.  

To those who say we are down for the count, we have to say, ”To hell with that.”

“To hell with that depression.”

“To hell with that anger.”

“To hell with that stuff about the glory days of the past.”

 “To hell with that stuff about Democrats, Republicans, Tea Partiers, and Socialists.”

I’ve got work to do. Decisions to make. Things to learn. People to meet.

Life itself is nothing but an epochs-long struggle with inertia and resistance, a counter-force to increasing disorder.

Life is one big, TO HELL WITH THAT, to decay, death, and nothingness.

You need gratitude, but sometimes you need a little attitude.

“You can never find peace and liberation from the suffering created by your own mind.”

            Can you hear the Buddha’s response to that?

            Maybe, if Buddha were from Brooklyn rather than from India, instead of chanting “OM,” we’d be chanting, ever so slowly, but clearly, “To hell with that.” 
            Namaste.
            I can be reached at drjohnfluca@gmail.com. Or 805/680-5572.

NEAL YOUNG AND EMINEM SHARE SOME SECRETS

Whoever you are and whatever you’re up to, you know when you set about to do something new, whether it’s write a new piece, go to a new class, talk to a new client, start that exercise program, or learn something new, especially if it pushes against your boundaries, you know resistance is lurking, resistance that hides in that tightness in your gut, in that irresistible urge to clean the refrigerator, in that seductive call of a bar of chocolate, or the allure of that nasty website.

Here I am writing, as a dozen little itches, distractions, thoughts, desires, judgments and genies try to draw me away and keep from doing my work this morning.

“Why are you doing this?” they ask me. “No one will listen. It won’t make a difference. It won’t be any good. It’s been done already. Who are you to do this work anyway? Don’t you need to go do something more productive that will make more money?”

Resistance will try to make you forget what you are doing and why. You have to pull yourself back to the center where your work and your life are waiting for you.

I saw an amazing interview with Neal Young on the Charlie Rose show—Neal Young from Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, who wrote Ohio, Southern Man, and has been rockin’ in the free world for over 40 years.

Day in and day out, married to the same woman, suffering from epilepsy, father of kids with cerebral palsy, Neal plays on. 

Neal Young explained to Charlie Rose that everyone who knows him, knows that when Neal hears the ‘call’, unless there’s a life or death reason not to, he’s going to answer it.

Tired. Having fun. Down. Busy. Worried. Guilty. Afraid. None of it is going to stop Neal Young from heeding the call to go write that music and those lyrics.

            It was a gift, he explained. It had been, not given to him, but offered to him. He had accepted. Now it was his responsibility to show up.

            That was the deal. He’s given his life to this thing, and it has given him his life.

I imagine some of you are saying, damn, I wish I were Neal Young. Where’s my muse? I wish I were called like Neal Young to write a song, or a poem, or to paint, or to sculpt, or take a photograph, or to design a product, or create a business, or choreograph a dance, or code a cool I-phone app, or run an amazing experiment, or think of a new line of work, or called to come up with a novel solution to a problem.

I’d give anything. Just please call me!

Like former President Clinton, I can feel your pain, but, sorry, I don’t believe you.

You have heard the call. We all have. More than once, but you didn’t heed it. You were too busy, too tired, too afraid, too something. And now, you think you don’t hear it anymore.

            But it’s there. The whole universe is bursting with the call. No matter where you look, there is change and creation. You are part and parcel of a God-refined creation machine. There’s destruction and decay, too, but you have to destroy some of the old to make way for the new. Destroying the old, that’s the part that scares us.

In Rolling Stone, Eminem shared that fear was one thing that made him do so many damn drugs in the past, fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of being too connected to all those adoring fans. One of the most successful musicians alive has to face fear and anxiety.

Neal and Eminem have to face their demons before they can answer the call. So do you, and so do I, if we hope to do our work.  

The particulars are going to be different for each of us, but once you get the inkling of the direction of your contribution, whether it’s to make your job more meaningful, to write that poem, or to be more present to those children, you’ve got to show up every day like Neal. Commit. Get professional. Get your crap out of the way. Sit down, stand up, go in, go out, whatever answering the call looks like to you, do it everyday—at least every workday.

Act like you hear the call even when you think you don’t. Keep doing your work. Keep showing up. The call is there, like leaves rustling in the wind. If you’re not paying attention, you won’t hear it. In doing the work, the call becomes clearer.

You don’t wait. You act. You don’t clean the refrigerator. You don’t call that friend. You sit down and you write. You go out and take those pictures. You learn that skill. You send out that resume. You go to that exercise class. Even with nineteen kids, four husbands, and eight cakes baking, you do what has to be done. And you keep doing it. Why? Because your life depends on it, just like Neal’s life and Eminem's life depend on it.

So, learn your craft, which includes studying the ways of your own mind and personality. Observe the deviousness of your excuses, the disabling power of your limiting beliefs and self-criticism. Observe your broken-heartedness over the past. Forgive yourself for things done and not done. Get out of your own way.

Your life is calling you, right here, right now, to be who you are.

And that’s pretty exciting, and damn frightening.

“My God, if I could just be fully and completely who I am, it would be like heaven. But what if I fail? What if they laugh? What if they ignore me?”

That’s fear we have to face, step by courageous step, as we work to become who we are called to be. And we do it knowing we will never be fully who we are. We’re too much of a mystery for that. The best we can hope for is to be a living part of a universe that is a becoming more than it is a thing, more of a dance than a sculpture. There’s no end to it.

So, where is your place in the great dance? What music do you hear? Who are your partners? What is your instrument?

Whatever it is, be open to it. Work to find it. Do what you can.

Listen. Do you hear it? Your life is calling.

Namaste. I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com or 805/680-5572.

MICHAEL VICK SUCCESS LESSONS

If you’re a sports fan, or live above ground, you probably know the story of the NFL quarterback, Michael Vick, who was thrown out of the NFL a few years ago and sent to United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth for breeding, fighting, and ultimately killing dogs. I was not familiar with the details of Vick’s story until after last Monday night’s football game when Vick played what some consider to be the best game played by a quarterback in NFL history

When the Atlanta Falcons first signed him, Vick was the most highly paid player in the NFL. He was described as ‘electrifying.’ His ten-year contract was worth $130 million dollars.

The guy could throw, and the guy could run. I mean he could really throw, and he could really run. When you see footage of his running game, you feel sorry for the defensive team. Vick could outmaneuver half a dozen guys like the Roadrunner could outmaneuver Wiley Coyote, a pile of dynamite, a shotgun, and an avalanche. Vick made his opponents look like they were on drugs. With his wild life-style, and his showing-up-last and leaving-first attitude towards practice, you could imagine some people might have wished the cocky s.o.b. would be brought down.

But, like in a Shakespearean Tragedy, it was Vick who brought himself down.

Dog fighting, of all things. Beating dogs. Electrocuting dogs. Shooting dogs. Eight dogs were found buried on Vick’s farm in Virginia where he ran a dog-fighting operation. Some dogs had been hung. Some had been drowned after surviving being hung. It was bad.

His fans, his family, his team, and the league were shocked and outraged.

People said he was a psychopath, a freak, a sick savage.

“My whole life was a lie,” Vick would say later.

He was thrown out of the NFL. He lost his contract. He went bankrupt. He sat in Leavenworth prison for two years.

            But he came back. After spending two years in prison and losing everything he had, Michael Vick worked his way back into society. He became a spokesman for the Humane Society. He repeatedly accepted responsibility for what he had done, and said he was sorry. He was given a second chance. He was signed by the Philadelphia Eagles, and last Monday night Michael Vick quarterbacked a fifty-nine-point game that started with him throwing an 88-yard touchdown pass on the first play.

            “Whom do you blame for all this?” he was asked on Sixty Minutes after he got out of prison.

“I blame myself,” he said.

In prison, he said he felt shame, guilt, and he said he cried.

“You cried?” he was asked. “Yes,” Vick answered. “I cried. For what I did to those animals, for what I did to my family. I let them down…when I think about it…it sickens me to my stomach.”

When asked if it was losing his contract and being thrown out of the NFL that he was most sorry for, Vick responded, “I deserved to lose everything. I lied to everybody. I was a living example of what not to do.” 

In another interview, his former head coach, Jim Mora, asked him, “Did I miss something? Was there something I could have done?”

Vick shook his head and answered, “No. The best thing for me…crazy as it may seem, was getting shipped off to Kansas [to prison]. I wasn’t going to change. My mom tried…Nobody could have done anything to change my situation, except the Man upstairs, who was seeing it and said, “Listen, before this goes any further, I’m going to have to take all of this away from you for awhile. And you’re going to have to get your priorities in order, but you gonna have to sit over there [in prison] to get it done. And that’s what happened.”

On Monday night, November 14, 2010, Michael Vick played one of the best games in NFL history. I, for one, hope Vick is telling the truth, and that he really learned his lesson, and that he is truly sorry for the savagery he showed those dogs, and for his other crimes and mistakes.

Though he had seen his first dog-fight when he was eight years old, Vick said, “I was twenty-five, twenty-six years old at the time, a man, old enough to be responsible for my decisions.”

I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I want to believe that his outer game is a reflection of his inner game, that the Michael Vick we saw on the field Monday night was proof of the man inside. I want to believe in second chances, and third chances.

We could sit here and debate what’s really going on inside Vick’s head. Is he really sorry? Does he get it? Has he changed?

As the saying goes, only God, and maybe Vick’s hairdresser, knows for sure.

I want to believe the guy, because that way I can learn from him.   

         

             You’re given amazing gifts in this life, no matter who you are. Do not take them for granted.

            Take responsibility. If you make a mistake, own it, but don’t kill yourself over it. Even if it takes you a few tries to get it right.

             Learn from your mistakes. Like Vick, you can make your biggest mistake the biggest learning experience of your life.

            Learn, don’t wank. “I deserved to have it all taken away from me.”

Get real. “My whole life was a lie.”

            Work with what you’ve got. A few years spent in the slammer is not the best way to become the best quarterback in the NFL, except in Vick’s case, it was. 

            When you’re knocked down, especially by your own actions, get up.

            Be honest. Be vulnerable. Go deep.

            Look for the bigger picture. Find the meaning and the lesson in what happened.

           And be grateful.

Vick looks like a new man. His game is better than ever. He’s got a family. He’s working hard. The leeches, who were supposed to be his friends, are gone, so are the wild parties. On Sixty Minutes, Vick said he ‘cried’. This is the same guy who a few years ago was getting his rocks off watching dogs killing each other. Vick chose to see what had happened to him as being much bigger and much more important than the $130 million dollars he lost and the two years he spent in jail. He chose to learn and find meaning from what happened.

Time will tell if this is the real Michael Vick. I hope so, because I want to keep watching the guy. I want to keep learning from him. Damn, if Michael Vick keeps it together he may even turn me into a football fan.

           

I can be reached for personal coaching, etc. at drjohnluca@gmail.com.

BEFRIEND YOUR DRAGON: OVERCOME FEAR AND RESISTANCE

 

Seth Godin, marketing guru, author of Linchpin, wrote a blog entitled “I Think Laziness Has Changed”. Seth sees that, where once physical labor was demanded from us, now our work, if it’s to be vital and alive, demands that we do the emotional labor needed to overcome our fears and resistances so that we can be productive and creative.

“You’re hiding out,” Godin says, “because you’re afraid of expending emotional labor. This is great news, because it’s much easier to become brave about extending yourself than it is to become strong enough to haul an eighty pound canoe”

          Sorry, but I disagree. For many people, it’s much easier to become physically strong than it is to become emotionally strong. That’s why physical labor is easy to find, and therefore cheap, in comparison to emotional labor and the emotional intelligence needed to do vital, creative work in a rapidly changing world.

Look at how challenging many of us find it to change ourselves, to overcome our fears or the story we carry. Yet life may be nothing more than a fantastic opportunity to work through our fears and resistances so we can express more fully who we are.

I want to offer something for overcoming fear that is usually not discussed, and is a big part of my coaching practice. 

We often deal with fear and other difficult emotions only from the neck up, and that’s a problem.

Oftentimes, even very insightful advice boils down to, “Just do it.”

Just make that phone call. 

Just put your butt in the seat and write that book.

Just get that product to market.

It’s amazing advice and very powerful, but what about all the times you just can’t seem to get yourself to do it? What about all the times you want to go east and you just can’t seem to stop yourself from going west?

In spite of your best efforts, you go right ahead and do what you don’t want to do, and you feel like a failure for doing so.

If you really want to go east, then why can’t you resist going west?

It’s because you’re ignoring a big part of you. You’re ignoring your dragon, and the dragon doesn’t like to be ignored.

We often think we’re nothing but our thoughts, nothing but our frontal lobes and neo-cortex where we think and plan all day long. But there’s a dragon living in the lower regions of our brain running much of the show. It’s old, similar to the brain of a lizard, and based in primal emotions like fear and anger, but when you wrestle with lizard brain it feels like you’re wrestling with a damn powerful, fire-breathing dragon, and not a four-inch-long chameleon.

          There are two very powerful tools to overcome the resistance of the dragon. One is to have an inspiring vision that calls you forwards, whether it’s to write that book, fix that relationship, make that move to a new city, or to take that non-profit to the next level, a vision that gives you the energy, the commitment, and the power to do what you need to do.

The second tool is to stop fighting the dragon, or ignoring it. You need to become present and aware of what your body is doing as you begin the work of dealing with difficult feelings or emotions. That change in your breathing is the dragon starting to awaken, so is that constriction in your chest, or that tightening in your throat or your butt.

Maybe your feet are tapping, or your palms are warm, or you have crossed your arms. Whatever it is, it is your limbic brain, the dragon, responding, usually with fear, to the threats of the new project, the new relationship, or the new possibility.

Pay close attention to the body. Don’t get lost in your head, in your words, in your arguments, or in your attempts to cover up your fear or explain it away. Just stay put and get a good look at the dragon.

And keep breathing. Keep gazing around the room. If the physical distress gets too powerful, remember a time and a place where you felt more fully alive. Maybe it was your child’s first birthday, or hiking down the Grand Canyon. You’re not looking away from whatever difficult emotion is coming up, but you’re bringing in resources to support you while you get a better look at the snorting son-of-a-dragon who you could swear is breathing fire down your neck. You are doing the emotional labor necessary to tame your dragon, so you can do the creative, challenging work of living.

Dealing with fear and resistance requires the will of “just do it”, but it also requires imagination, and the ability to stay with the feelings in the body, which is where the emotions come from.

As you practice this, you will observe that your body has multiple intelligences and ways to find balance and healing. Your body and your dragon will begin to settle down. This is an art and a skill, like riding a bike. You get better with practice. What else is new?

So, go do your work. Begin that project, but as you do, do it with all the resources available to you. Do it with your emotional brain, your dragon brain, working with you, rather than against you. Get the dragon to lie down in its lair, not by slaying it, but by befriending it. You do that by paying your emotional brain its due. And what your emotional brain wants is to know what’s going on, and that things are safe. The way you let dragon brain know things are safe is by letting it look around and giving it the time to really see, feel, and experience what is going on in the body, without your thoughts getting in the way, either with negative thinking, or with commands.

Just do it! Is not always a helpful way to speak to a dragon.

Let it feel and experience in and through the body.

Is there tightness? What does that tightness feel like?

Is it hot, cold, electric, tingly, watery, or dizzying?

Where do you feel it? How do you feel it?

Take some time to do this. If you’re like most of us, you will be a bit handicapped. You will find yourself thinking and interpreting. But keep at it. If it gets to be too much, take deeper breathes, bring up comforting images and memories, and slow it way down so you can process what’s going on. This is not about thinking, but about simply letting the body feel what it needs to feel. That will give the dragon what it needs to settle down. Do less rather than more. Come back again later, or tomorrow, but don’t give up.

In this way you will help the dragon feel safe and to lie down. Then you will have more freedom to do what you want to do. You will, over time, increase your ability to, “Just do it.” And your life will be richer and more fulfilling.

Now go do your work, and be prepared. If you start to push at your borders, trying to expand your limits or comfort zone, the dragon will awaken. That’s its job. You will never slay the dragon, nor should you. The dragon is part of you, and so is its fire. It has warned you of danger. It has kept you alive. It remembers to keep you breathing when you forget. It’s part of your many intelligences. It just doesn’t live upstairs in the house of words and thoughts, but it lives in the body of feelings, images, and stories.

The dragon is an extraordinary ally, so why would you venture into strange territory alone when you can ride a dragon into victory?

Just asking.

Namaste.

I can be reached at drjohnluca@gmail.com and 805/680-5572.

ONE MORE TIME: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE SAVED CHILEAN MINERS

It’s been weeks since the last Chilean miner was rescued. Numerous articles and programs have covered the 69-day ordeal, but before this remarkable journey fades into the past, it might be worthwhile to take one more look at the lessons we can learn from this rescue mission.

            The facts: buried 2300 feet underground, 90 degrees Fahrenheit, 80% humidity, 69 days, 17 days before anyone knew they were alive, 17 days on 2 days worth of food, 2 spoonfuls every 2 days for 17 days.

Makes one think of the story of Jesus feeding the masses with a few loaves and fishes. Goes to show you what you can do with cooperation, faith, discipline and a shared vision of the common good. No violence, no madness, no cannibalism, no mutiny, just an inspiring testament to what we can do when we are at our best.

            Some lessons for us to consider:

1. DO NOT LET WHAT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE STOP YOU. A mining rescue of this magnitude had never been attempted before.

2. GET HELP. They asked for help and got it. They went to NASA, for example, for help with building the rescue pod Phoenix.

3. TAKE ACTION. DON’T LET WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW STOP YOU. There were three boring operations going on simultaneously since no one knew which if any would be successful. The drilling teams came from America, Canada, and Chile. Get real. Get the best. Try different methods. A team from a small outfit in Pennsylvania got there first.

4. KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BIG PRIZE.

They left politics, ego, and national silliness out of it. It wasn’t about the mining company. It wasn’t about Chile. It wasn’t about the president of Chile. It was about saving the miners.

5. COLLABORATE AND EMPOWER. It was acknowledged that expertise was distributed so they distributed power to get the job done. Mining experts. Psychologists. Medical specialists. NASA. And most importantly, the miners themselves. 

6. HUMOR IS A LIFESAVER. Who will ever forget that first miner coming out of a hole in the ground after 69 days and handing out ‘souvenir’ rocks?

7. FAITH HELPS. Faith in yourself, in your team, in the people working to rescue you, and in your God. The miners were helped by their spiritual leaders, the shrines they set up, and the 34^th Miner, the higher power that many of the miners said kept them going.

8. WE CAN BE OUR BEST UNDER EXTREME CONDITIONS. Though fear can be overpowering, and can cause nightmares, as it did in a least one trapped miner, help, support, and courage can win the day.

9. YOU NEED A PURPOSE. Each miner had a job to fulfill. He had a purpose, a role, a function, and he had a meaning.  You had the tour guide, Dr, House, the chief, the writer, the spiritual guide and his assistant, the delivery man who handled incoming and outgoing packages, the gas man who monitored gas levels in the mine, and so on.

10. ROUTINE IS GOOD. They set up lights with timers and areas of light and dark so they could stick with a ‘normal’ routine. Each miner worked an eight-hour shift, with three shifts per day.

11. FOCUS ON THE PRESENT MOMENT. The miners kept focused on the tasks at hand, never forgetting the bigger picture, so as not to be overwhelmed by what might or might not happen in the future.

12. KEEP A HOPEFUL VISION. The miners all worked to keep alive their vision of their lives after they were rescued and would be returned to their families. They shaved. They bathed. They did their jobs. They wrote. They took videos. Esteban decided to renew his wedding vows. Claudio decided to get married. Ariel watched the birth of his child via video.

13. LEADERSHIP IS CRUCIAL. Leadership saved the day. Without leadership, the miners might never have survived the first 17 days with so little food.

14.  EMOTIONS ARE IMPORTANT. The miners talked. They shared. They laughed. They played. They told stories.

15. TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE. The miners were not passive receivers waiting to be saved. They each played their part. They saved themselves by working together to live through the first 17 days on so little food. And they each worked every day after that, each contributing in their own way. Mario had a crucifix and statuettes sent down.

Edison led Elvis sing-a-longs. The doctor made regular rounds.

16. KEEP IT MEANINGFUL AND LEARN. One miner said, “I buried 40 years of my life, down there.” He said he saw God and the Devil, but he never doubted that God would win. Now it was time for him to make some changes in his life.

       You're not trapped underground, but you may be trapped, nonetheless. What do you need to escape from? What might your amazing rescue mission look like? Learn from these miners and consider doing the impossible. They did.

LONGING FOR HAPPINESS

You think you know where you want to go. It’s hard enough just trying to get there. That part you know too well, and you’ve learned to accept it, mostly. But what if a Harvard professor, the Harvard College Professor of Psychology, Daniel Gilbert, told you—supported by about 350 references—that you were pretty much clueless about what would make you happy in the future? Gilbert starts his book with a quote that pretty much sums it up:

“One cannot divine nor forecast the conditions that will make happiness; one only stumbles upon them by chance[.]” 

Willa Cather

If you thought the book of your life might, if you were lucky, be entitled Sailing Towards Happiness, Gilbert argues you’d be lucky to have a life where you were Stumbling On Happiness, the name of his book.

Gilbert’s stated intention is “to explain why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.” And because we know so little about who we are to become, we know little about what will make us happy tomorrow.

I think he’s right.

I wish I could accept his premise right down to the core of my being. It would be radical to really get what Gilbert is saying. In a sense it would put an end to the future psychologically. It would put an end to becoming. It would put an end to the idea of tomorrow being better than today. If we really got that we have no idea about what would make us happy in the future, we would see that our only choice is to be happy now.

It would put an end to any sentence that began, “I will be happy when…”

Gilbert argues from oodles of psychological studies what mystics and wisdom teachers have been teaching for millennia. There’s only now to be happy. This is not to say that there isn’t suffering and pain. It’s not to say all moments are happy. They are not and never will be, though I think there are radical possibilities here nonetheless.

The point is if you are going to be happy, it better be now, and since you don’t know the conditions that will make you happy, you must free yourself from your happiness being conditional on circumstances outside yourself.

“I will be happy when I get my driver’s license.” Remember that one?

Or how about, “I will be happy when I graduate college, or get married, or have children?”

I will be happy manana. I will be happy someday, but not today.

A haiku by Basho, translated by Robert Hass, captures so much of what we struggle with even when we get what we’ve longed for.

Even in Kyoto --
hearing the cuckoo's cry --

I long for Kyoto.

Don’t you know that feeling? I’ve experienced it a thousand times. How hard it is to simply be in the moment and be happy, even while walking the very streets of the old city you so longed to see.

In the first few pages of his book, Gilbert makes his great statement, what he half-jokingly calls The Sentence, and which he italicizes. “The human being is the only animal who thinks about the future.” Gilbert finds this capacity for consciously imagining the future to be humankind’s greatest achievement.

It’s also the root of a good deal of our unhappiness.

You can set this book aside, and ignore it, or simply find it of casual interest, but the danger is your life may pass and you will never be happy. Happiness is here and now, if it’s anywhere. It’s an inside job, which you’ve heard before. And the good news is you can work the inside.

Tibetan monks seem to smile a lot, the Dalai Lama included, so does Robert Thurman, a former Tibetan monk, and Uma Thurman’s dad. The venerable monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh told a gathering of western meditators that he wouldn’t come back again unless they started smiling more often. Sounds silly, but it’s not. These practitioners spend time each day engaged in practices meant to open the heart and lead to acceptance and gratitude and happiness for the moment just as it is.

Daniel Gilbert states, “Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy.”

            I could not disagree more fully. Gilbert offers us an invaluable, though very difficult, lesson to swallow.

You do not know what will make you happy tomorrow.

So, you cannot effectively plan for your future happiness.

            Therefore, my conclusion, which I stole from countless wisdom teachers, is you must learn to be happy now, and give up the illusion of being happy tomorrow.

            I think that’s a pretty useful lesson.

You can email this to a friend or post it to facebook and twitter by clicking the icons below. Please comment and share your thoughts. Namaste.

NEVER GIVE UP

         Here's a 2 minute video that will put some rocket fuel in your tank. These folks--you'll recoginze a name or two--lost once or twice or more, but they got up and kept on truckin`.
         It's a good one. It's worth 2 minutes even if you've seen it already.
         Enjoy your weekend, and don't give up.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmTxr7OsPj0&feature=player_embedded


You can send to a friend by clicking the envelope below, or post to facebook by clicking the 'f'.

BE A HAPPY LOVER: THE VIDEO

Statistics are crazy and sometimes they’re tossed around like rice at a wedding, but if you’re not a statistician and a specialist in the field it’s hard to know what they mean.

That having been said here are a few stats for your consideration.

In her book, The How of Happiness, Sonya Lyubormirsky, states that 40% of our happiness is set by genetics and possibly unchangeable effects of early experience, 10% is due to our circumstances, like being rich—though money only helps make you happy when you are close to being poor, above that, money has a rather small effect on your happiness—and a whopping 50% of our happiness is due to us, to what we do with our lives, and more importantly, what sense we make of our lives, what meaning we give it, how we think about it and how we respond to it.

This is not a new idea, but old wisdom is no less wise and no more common simply because it’s been around for a while.

Epictetus, in “The Art of Living”, said, “People are not disturbed by things, but by their view of them.”

William Shakespeare, no slouch when it comes to understanding human nature, wrote, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

Of course this is often a lot easier said than done, but no one said it was easy, just that it was possible.

The performance artist, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed’s partner, said in a recent interview, “There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re a human being, and being human is hard.” 

It’s up to you to decide whether you want to pick up the gauntlet and fight for your share of happiness, or whether you want to live your life at the mercy of that 50% that you seem to have little or no control over.

But before you go off thinking that it might be too hard for you to make yourself a good life, take a look at this guy’s video clip, and know that no one has a monopoly on hardship, nor on happiness. Your life may not always be easy, but there’s a lot you can do to make it a good one.

Namaste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILYziCZjAWM