When we were kids, anything was possible. The wide world lay open and
we saw the future as a great adventure. We could do anything. I believe
that all life should be an adventure, and that happiness is our
natural, default state of being. But clearly we have allowed things to
get in the way of our happiness and freedom. As we have traveled through
the landscape of our lives, we have encountered many challenges and,
sadly, we have allowed some of them to get in our way.
Dale Carnegie is one of my favorite authors. He,
more than most of us, knew how treacherous the journey could be, and he
provided us with some wonderful guidelines for traversing the territory.
Here are some of the traps about which he warns us in his own words.
These traps can rob our happiness and our freedom if we let them.
Circumstances
“It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.”
As he was suffering unimaginable privation in a Nazi death camp, the
psychiatrist and neurologist Viktor Frankl made the discovery that it
isn’t the outside world that makes you happy or not; it’s what is in
your own head. Frankl’s insight, which he writes about in Man’s Search
for Meaning, is that we are responsible for our experience of life. From
Buddha, who said, ‘we are what we think’, to Earl Nightingale who, in
‘The Strangest Secret’ tells us that ‘you become what you think
about’, countless great writers and thinkers have echoed the same
theme. You are pulling your own strings; so don’t give away your power
to anyone or anything else.
Criticism
Criticism
“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do.”
People will often criticize you for getting things wrong or for
making mistakes. I used to take these criticisms very seriously and I
would berate myself a great deal. But when I truly accepted the fact
that I am imperfect and that, like everyone else on the planet, I make
mistakes (all the time!), my own life was transformed. I became more
confident, took more risks and, above all, worried a great deal less.
Now, when someone accuses me of getting something wrong, I will
usually say (at least to myself), ‘Yes, sure, I screwed up. I am human
and I am imperfect. I forget things, I am inconsistent, I get the timing
wrong. But you know what? That’s OK. You’re allowed to do all that.’
And I also remember that whoever is pointing the finger is pointing
three fingers back at themselves.
Of course, we must reflect upon and learn from our mistakes – to keep
making the same mistake over and over again is not a good thing – but
to accept our fallibility and forgive ourselves is a vital part of being
happy and successful. To pay too much attention to our detractors (and
the more we achieve, the more detractors we will have, you can be sure
of that) is, once again, to give away our own power.
Fear
“Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear”
Like many people, I used to be terrified of public speaking. My heart
would pound, my mouth would be dry, my hands would be trembling and my
skin moist. I don’t think anyone could experience greater terror than I
felt when I had to talk to groups of people. I would rather have
confronted a hungry lion than given a five-minute speech. But I found
myself in a job where I had to speak to groups of people on a regular
basis. It was a job I liked and wanted to keep, and the public speaking
part simply could not be avoided. So I did it. And it was awful. Truly,
truly awful. But I kept on doing it and, although there have been ups
and downs, I am now a pretty confident public speaker. In fact, many
people have, over the last couple of years, made a point of
complimenting me on my public speaking, especially mentioning my poise
and the content of my speeches.
I am not telling you this to brag about my achievement (though I am
proud of it), but to illustrate the point that fear is ephemeral – it
can be dissipated. But the only way to do this is to face it down. You
can go through life in fear, or you can overcome it.
We all know that, in the end, none of what we do actually matters. In
a hundred years we’ll all be dead and buried. In a thousand years
nobody will remember us. In a million years the human race probably
won’t exist. So we must seize the day, while there is still day! Don’t
let fear take your power. Face it down; do what you fear and you will
transform your life. I have seen this for myself.
Dreaming
“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.”
Without dreams, life is nothing. It is a great tragedy that so many
of us allow life to crush our dreams. There was a time when we dreamed
of great and fantastic things – it was that time when everything was
possible, when the world was our oyster. Yet dreams must guide us
somewhere. A dream can be a compass and can, if followed persistently,
bring great success and happiness.
Yet to become caught up in dreams is to get lost in a mirage. Today
we prepare for tomorrow, and our actions and thoughts of today shape the
future, but to live in that future is not an option if we want to be
happy. If we get used to living in the magical rose garden of which
Carnegie speaks, then when we finally get there, we shall not recognize
it and we will not enjoy our reward.
As we travel through the rich and complex terrain of our own
experience, we only have ourselves to thank, or to blame, for our level
of happiness and freedom. We are, in a sense, alone. But let’s take
heart – we can lean on the wisdom of others that have been before us and
let them be our guides. I recommend you consider carefully the words of
Dale Carnegie.
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