Were you ever wounded?

I wasn’t a stupid kid.

Well, that may depend on who you ask or who you are comparing me to.

What’s more, after I unload this on you, there’s a good chance you will take issue with my first point.

For those of you who don’t know, I spent most of my life morbidly obese.

The first time I lost a bunch of weight, it was because I elected to have surgery.

Between gastric bypass and regaining most of the weight back, I had a year or so of skinny.

(Yes, you can easily re-gain weight after gastric bypass.  Some of you know that all too well.)

So, I was in my skinny year and, for the first time ever, I could do what skinny people do.

Sit in booths…

Buy clothes at normal stores…

Pee standing up…

You know, the stuff all you fit-for-life types do without thinking about it.

It was bliss!

One afternoon, while chatting on the phone, I rested my head on my free hand and felt a lump in my cheek.

It wasn’t a pimple, a bug bite or anything else identifiable.

It was a lump and I was concerned.

My Dr. didn’t know what it was and he was concerned too.

The specialist he sent me to was also concerned and requested a CAT scan.

Can you even imagine???

The thought that kept going through my mind was, I finally got my life back and now I have cancer.

When I arrived at the hospital for my scan, my sister in law’s sister, Jean, who I thought sold real estate, greeted me.

On my back, in a tube, amidst lights and noise…

My heart pounded and, with every worried thought spinning in my head, suddenly the machine stopped.

Through the intercom I heard Jean ask, “Jimmy, can you hear me?”.

“Yes Jean, I can… What’s up?”

“Jimmy, did you ever get shot in the face with a BB gun?”

“STEVE FOURNIER!” I replied…

“What?” she asked.

“Never mind. Yes, I was once shot with a BB gun, but it bounced off…”

“That’s what you think,” she exclaimed with a chuckle.

Before paintball, laser tag and common sense, I was a teenager.

This where I sound like the old man, lamenting: “When I was your age…” things were different.

We didn’t have your fancy paintball nonsense. We had BB guns, bottle rockets and the woods near Dave McCormick’s house.

I think I had safety glasses, but that didn’t protect my face and when Danny Cruise and I realized we were out of ammo, we made a run for it.

Fournier hid behind a tree and yelled, “Sneak attack!” Like a slow motion war movie scene, where a guy gets shot and falls to the ground, I was a man down.

I graduated from dear old Haverhill High with a welt on the left side of my face. When the swelling went down, I was so chubby I couldn’t tell that the BB was still inside.

As I write to you, I am 45, which makes the BB twenty-seven years old.

No, I didn’t have it removed…

Why?

I kept the BB to remind me of the fact that, sometimes in life we think something that wounded us years ago bounced off, only to find we were carrying it around the whole time.

No friends, you are not alone.

Are you ready to try life coaching on for size?  Email ThatLifeNow@gmail.com today! If this post was helpful like it, share it, subscribe and live it.  Follow Jim Trick on twitter @JimTrick

"It's better than nothing" might not be...

"It's better than nothing" might not be.

Sometimes better than nothing is more damaging than nothing.

Nothing is empty and eventually creates a Vacuum.

Vacuums suck…

See what I did there?

Zero action = nothing.

Nothing creates a vacuum that sucks and magnifies the lack of action aka the "nothing".

The suckiness of the vacuum eventually leads to rock bottom.

Rock bottom, if it's doing its job, inspires powerful action.

Presto change o, nothing has sparked something and that something has the potential to change everything.

You're obese so three times a month you go for a walk during which your heart rate never really gets elevated.

You long for a companion so six months ago you went on two match.com dates.

You've hated your job for years so once every couple of months you play around with your résumé.

"I'ts better than nothing" is what we say when we are basically doing nothing but won't admit it.

“It's better than nothing” is what we say when we are doing a bit of something but not enough to get any meaningful results.

If this is hitting home with you try these steps to start your shift.

1.  Admit that you have choices and be honest with yourself about what you have been choosing.

2.  Replace the phrase “its better than nothing” with “its basically nothing”.  This is not about beating yourself up, its about keeping it real in service of your goals.

3.  List twenty potential actions then choose the four that have the most juice.  Write a little about what you thinkthe potential resultswould be if you were to engage each of the four action items for nine months.

4.  Use your calendar to schedule these action items, keep those appointments and track each action item’s result.

Initial steps are courageous and can be really hard.

“Its better than nothing" is a mindset that is neither courageous nor is it difficult, and in fact may not be what it claims to be.

Curious about life coaching?  If you are ready to schedule your sample session or have any questions just call:  978.994.0431 or email thatlifenow@gmail.com

Are you choosing happiness?

He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him…

We had been chatting for a while and my friend Alan had started the conversation.

Then it hit me…

The guy we were hanging with was famed educator, Shawn Achor.

My life is very strange…

I have been a fan of Shawn’s work for a long time but out of context all I knew was that he seemed like a nice guy and we were having a shockingly detailed conversation about the places where the four noble truths of traditional Buddhism overlap with some of Christ’s teachings.

You know…. just a little light chit chat.

Shawn is famous for his work in positive psychology and is a global game changer in the area of happiness.  With over nine million views on his TED Talk and 12 years at Harvard University, he knows a thing or two about a thing or two but his primary obsessions as a researcher / speaker are happiness and success.

His research has resulted in these realizations:

Success does not lead to happiness. Happiness leads to success and often redefines it. Happiness is a choice. Engaging in five specific daily activities will increase your experience of happiness.

I had heard about his research and thought that it sounded interesting but like a lot of things that sound good or seem too easy I let it go.

I let it go until hanging out with him and pressing him a little.

It became very clear that Shawn walks his talk, believes his research and that means a lot to me.

He says if you will do these fivesteps for 21 days,  you will begin to see a lasting shift in your mindset towards more positivity.

I have been playing around with his happiness practice but as of today I am committing to it for thirty days.

Will you join me?

The five daily activities

1) Bring gratitude to mind: Write down three NEW things that you are grateful for each day

2) Journal: About a positive experience you’ve had recently for two minutes once a day

3) Exercise: Engage in 15 minutes of mindful cardio activity

4) Meditate: Watch your breath go in and out for two minutes a day.  I add to this practice a listening prayer.  Sitting in silence with an open heart to what Christ wants for me in that moment.  There are so many approaches to meditation.  For Christians you may choose a scripture or a listening prayer.  For others of you, you may just sit quietly.  I do fifteen to twenty minutes.

5) Engage in a random, conscious act of kindness.  This can be as simple as sending an encouraging email or as big as paying for a stranger's groceries.  The key here is for it to be conscious.   Don't look over your day trying to see if something fits the bill. Be intentional and thoughtful about it.

If you are reading this and you have been going through an extended season of unhappiness, perhaps asking yourself if it will ever pass, you have a choice.

The inner critic does not have to win this one.

The voice that says “it’s too easy”, “he doesn’t know about MY particular situation” or “I don’t know what to do but I do know that this won’t work”.  You have a choice right now to engage these five daily habits as an experiment and see what happens.

30 days…

Who’s in?

Curious about life coaching?  If you are ready to schedule your sample session or have any questions just call:  978.994.0431 or email thatlifenow@gmail.com