“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.” – The Dalai Lama

How much time do we lose each day to anger, resentments, grudges, and hostility?  How much time do we spend dreaming up things and planning versus actually doing? Life is about action. Think about the steps. They aren’t esoteric principles or mystical meanderings – they are actions you take.  You take your inventory. You make direct amends. You keep track daily of your attitudes, behaviors, and actions and make amends if you harm anyone. You reach out to help others. Action after action.

We don’t get anywhere just thinking about how we should live. We get there by living it.

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”

I particularly like the phrase “your old nonsense.” If that doesn’t describe the garbage of my past, I don’t know what else does. Utter nonsense much of the time. It’s better not to think about it too much once I’ve made my amends, because frankly, it’s cringe-worthy embarrassing.

Make amends and move on.

I remember reading some years ago that humans tend to overestimate risk where this isn’t much, and underestimate risk when there is a lot of risk.  Ain’t that the truth. We get in our cars without thinking for a second the risks of driving, yet get nervous when flying, where the odds are so much lower that anything would ever happen to you.  We might fret and worry about the quality of a relatively minor purchase we intend to make – a computer or washing machine – yet think nothing of plunking our 401K savings into the volatile stock market.

One behavior I’ve worked on over the years is getting myself all worked up before a meeting where I expect a confrontation. I’ve worked on it because I’ve discovered the confrontation I expected rarely materialized. I lost sleep and added a few gray hairs for now reason.

Think about it for a moment – how much energy have you put into worrying about a problem that never materialized? Where else could that energy have been put that would have been a better choice and a more productive choice?   I think I could climb Mount Everest if I could bottle up the lost energy I put into worrying about stuff that never happened.

Structure works because it gives me guideposts throughout the day or the month to know where I am and what I still need to do.  Structure, by design, keeps the house from falling down around me because I don’t forget I need joists and supports before I start nailing down the floor.

I know a lot of people who say they just wing it most of the time – and usually everyone but them can tell they are winging it. Projects don’t get completed, or if they do, there is some missed detail that threatens to derail it.

Some people here the word structure and think “prison!”  But structure isn’t a prison. Frankly, having no structure can put more limits on your freedom because you are often haphazardly grabbing different pieces, trying to pull everything together at the last minute.

If you ever feel like you just can’t get things done and you can’t believe you missed this detail or forgot that part, you might need to add a little structure to how you do things.

My primary tool for structure is The List.  The List details all the steps I need to take to reach the best outcome possible.   The List keeps you on track.  If you forget to look at The List for a few days, you will be very surprised by how when you look at it again you realize you really did miss something.  I almost always regret it when I don’t make The List because I inevitably miss something that would have been easy to fit in five steps ago, but now it means backing up and starting over.

If you try one thing to get a little more structure to your day – so you can really check off things as you work towards a goal – try The List.

I can’t describe this moment as anything other than an epiphany:  I recognized in that moment that I had become addicted to be discontented. I liked complaining!  And because I had developed this attitude that everything was blah, I felt like blah.   It’s one of the cornerstones of cognitive behavioral therapy that beliefs and attitudes influence how you think – and hence, how you feel.  It seems almost too simple to be true, but it is.  People who tend toward depression tend to think things like “this always happens to me,” “nothing ever goes right,” “no one understands.”  People who do not tend toward depression have more rational reactions, like “this wasn’t so good, but maybe it will be better next time,”  “Oh well, live and learn,” and “could be a lot worse.”

Perpetual discontent has its advantages, otherwise we wouldn’t fall into it. First, it gets you a lot of attention (at first, until people get sick of it) because it’s just so sad how pathetic your life is based on what you continually tell people.  You poor miserable thing! Let me see if I can help you!  It solicits attention, and sometimes attention is what we want.  Sometimes we just want the badge of honor of being the sickest person in the room.  But this is not fun. It wears you down and wears you out.  It’s exhausting to be lamenting life on a regular basis.

It’s hard sometimes to see the addiction to discontent. It feels very real to you when you are in it.  But in 99% of cases it is not rational.  Life is not that bad for most people. Oh, there are bad things that happen and we don’t always get our way, but most of the time the bad things are just things – they do not define our whole life.  I hope if any of you have a case of perpetual discontent that you have your epiphany too. It feels oh so good.