TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

#67 – Being a Successful Person

The very first step in being a successful person is to realize the truth: there is no single path or definition to being a successful person. Sounds Zen-like? It isn?t. It?s a simple truth that the sooner you realize, the sooner you can stop wasting your time on things that appear to improve yourself and distract you from the things you should be doing. Self-improvement is a pretty rigorous process, like trying to get a six-pack. Anyone who believes that the path to success in life involves a Dr. Phil book is the same guy who would buy the 6-second abs thing I see in Target (no joke, this product exists). Since all things worth doing are generally hard, let us focus our minds toward a few basic concepts that may assist you in framing the stuff that will become what your life is.

Trouble and Pain ? Let?s get these out of the way first. You think you know trouble? How about pain? You will learn. Trouble and pain are two very integral parts of being an adult and your response to them is more or less humanity?s yardstick for your worth as a human being. Pain and trouble, like wine, come in the fine variety and the two-buck-Chuck type. The two-buck-Chuck stuff is the daily living. You get those driving to work: late to work, ?the noise? coming from under your only means of transportation during the 60-mile-roundtrip commute to your lame-o job. The fine wines of pain and trouble are stuff like your house burning down, your close relatives dying, war or natural disasters. You will learn the difference. Sometimes it?s so much and so new that you laugh only to keep from crying. And the funny thing is, once you?ve tasted that pain or trouble once, you recognize it every time. And you learn. What do you learn? The simple truth that I hinted at before: You will survive. Learn to enjoy pain and trouble as much as you do joy and happiness ? there are plenty of all to be had.

All Thanks to Chuck Palahniuk ? Chuck P. wrote the book ?Fight Club? which detailed a schizophrenic young man?s attempt to reconcile his life against the meaningless, consumer-driven wasteland it had become. A few basic truths were uttered in the course of the novel, one of them being: You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. Now saying that and living that are two separate things. You can say that you?re not about money, but how good are you at avoiding buying that new car and living within your means, however meager? Easy to say, very, very hard to do. It means that you?ll be making unfair comparisons with all your peers and wondering why your apartment, house, car, clothes don?t look as good/expensive/cool as theirs. It also means that you?ll need more than just what you possess to define you as a person. That means a lot more soul-searching, more introspection. It will involve more thought and most likely, you won?t be happy with the answers at first. The guy who taught my psych course in college called it ?The Long Dark Night of the Soul? in which you make a harsh appraisal of the situation and come out the other side a different person. That?s not easy, by any means. It?s scary and hard. It?s an investment in yourself that cannot come by any other means. It will also mean that you are truly not your job or your bank account or your J. Crew sweater or your belt from Hot Topic or your VW Jetta or your music collection or your idiot friends who read ?Harry Potter? and consider themselves literate. In the end, once you?ve cleared all the crap away, you can really think about who you are and what direction you want to go in.

Brad Bird Teaches Us About Life ? I love ?The Iron Giant? for a lot of reasons. Well-drawn, good story, made me laugh in some spots. Mostly, the little moral at the end of the story comes back to me at times. The part where the Iron Giant, being turned into the 65-foot-tall killbot is about to introduce the kid to the business end of his death ray. The kid starts in with the whole thing about ?You are what you choose to be?. Not to give a review of the movie and/or talk about cartoons as a vehicle for meditation, that little statement does actually work outside of the movie theatre. The way it works is the hard part. You have to actually align your head with the direction you want to go, imagine who you want to be and then do things that help make that dream a reality. I?m not talking about the ?What will I do when I become a rock star? daydream or the ?What would I do with $100 Million?? one. Those are the same ones every one has and for about 99.999999148% of the population, they stay just that: daydreams. If you can turn that focus toward some realistic goals like where you want to live, what you want to do and who you want to be with ? it?s a huge difference. You?ve gone from ?where do I want to go?? to ?how do I get there?? There?s a big difference between the two. All of this being said, be aware that you do have the privilege and the responsibility to decide where you want to go, who you want to be and how you would like it all to look at the other end of the line. Choose wisely.

Make (and Keep) Promises ? When you?re 18, you?re beginning to understand a little more about the world and how it works. You?re seeing the possibilities, you?re seeing what could be done and it?s got you thinking. Along the way with all of these revelations, you?re also noting that for all the patently obvious things wrong with the world, precious little is actually being done about it. This leads to that insufferable self-righteousness that people love to hate teenagers for. Me, I see that for all intents and purposes those observations are valid even if they seem a little na?ve. They are about life, the universe and everything as they ought to be. I made some promises to myself when I was younger about how I?d do things differently when I got older. They weren?t made with the benefit of knowing just how rotten and grinding being a grownup is but having overcome a few obstacles and learning just how narrow my viewpoint is?I still think that they?re worth trying for.

Make (and Keep) Friends ? Your friends will be a social yardstick that will ultimately help you in your quest of being the best you can be. The real ones will tell you when you?re being a jerk. The real ones will pull you out of the senseless funk you?ve slipped into. The real ones will tell it like it is and are not afraid to smack you around when you deserve it. Something else I forgot: the real ones are few and far between so do what it takes to hold onto them when you find one. Why is that good? Isn?t it better to change and get new friends when the old ones get tired? It?s kind of like being married to one person your whole life or getting married 6, 8, 10 or 12 times. If you keep leaving, you?ll never become a person who knows how to keep a long-term friendship going. Making friends is like getting along with family, siblings or a marriage mate. It involves a lot of talking, listening and conflict resolution.

The Times (and You) They Are a Changin? ? The saddest thing I?ve ever seen are people who have just reached a point in their lives and stop. It?s like time stops for them ? they don?t change clothes, living room furniture or tastes in music and food for years at a time. I get that feeling walking into some peoples? houses where the furniture can be charitably referred to as ?60?s Garage Sale?. Those massive green-glass lamps and the gold/green shag rug. The sofa still wrapped in yellowing plastic. The smells of mothballs, tobacco and mildew. Just visiting places like that throw me into a funk that takes days to remove. People, like sharks, need to keep moving or they die. There are some things that need to remain the same in life but allow for change in your life. Allow change to happen with other people, too. It?s kind of painful at times but only through conflict lays resolution. Sometimes carrying all of that mental baggage around is like hauling around a bag of stinky diapers. People will ask you why you?re still holding them and you reply ?I?ve had ?em so long that I don?t know what I?d do without ?em?. But finally, you see what they see and you drop them to the ground where they kind of hit the floor with a squishy thud. You take a few steps and realize that the air is fresher. That funk you grew to expect all the time is suddenly gone. You take a few more steps and the memory of the stench is fading. The weight of the diapers is gone from your shoulders, you move easier and find that people are more inclined to be around you now that you?ve dropped that load. All of this makes for a pretty bad illustration. I do know that there are times when I get myself into a nasty funk and make myself miserable. Dropping a few ideas that my funk was based on is very medicinal ? changes your whole day around. It?s scary because it also forces you to reexamine all the other assumptions you?ve been basing your life on. After a few days, things gel again and you find that the exercise has been worthwhile. Change stuff every once in a while ? even if you?re just rearranging the bedroom furniture.

Never Give Up ? There will come some dark times in your life. Some people have had it worse than you; some people have had it better than you. I?m not going to waste your time with a bunch of garbage about how life is not fair. Long story short, the dark times are tests of you as a person. Can you make it? Will you make it? That is entirely up to you. You should know going into those tests that, as long as you are breathing, you have a chance of making it through. The subject of giving up will come up ? rest assured. You will wonder what the point is, when it will ever get better and the dark thoughts will make you seriously consider doing some self-destructive things. This is why so many healthy people commit suicide ? they came to that crossroads, decided that it was too much and took the way out. I bring this up to make up a stronger point to you, one that was made to me by a friend whose first husband committed suicide: Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. If you decide to take that option, remember that you are going to hurt the person who finds you for the rest of their lives. Suicides are not the clean exit people think they are. Someone will find you after it have happened, probably someone who cares about you and they will be haunted with the experience for the rest of their life. You will not have a chance to explain things to them; you will not be able to make them feel better. Even if you think you explain everything in a note, there will be questions that will linger for years afterward.

So ? get that thought out of your head. You are not a quitter ? you are not going to hurt your friends and family like that. Whether by suicide or another equally useless and self-destructive behavior. You will not give up, no matter how many times you?re knocked to the mat. You will help make this a better place just by being around. Never forget that someone, somewhere loves you and that there?s always the option of coming up to me or someone else and saying ?I need help ? I can?t do this alone anymore?. You will be helped?I know that to be a fact. Winston Churchill gave a commencement speech to a bunch of kids years ago. He stepped up to the podium and said simply this: ?Never give up?. That always stuck with me and it?s something that I wanted to pass along to you.

Since the journey is never-ending, I may want to add to this later on. I wanted to get all of this on paper now so that I can refer to it from time to time. Hope you got something out of it ? it took me 10 years to get to this point.

- Tim Woolery, 7/13/04