Midlife Mastery Journal » serenity

The REAL ‘Secret to Success’

Les Brown — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 13:00:00 +0000

I Googled 'secret to success' and I came up with over 617,000 listings! Some secret! In fact, I know I've written more than one article on the subject myself. Yet I'm still learning and still pressing the Universe for answers to the deepest questions, especially those that plague most of us at the midlife transition. Midlife, you know, is that time of life when we transition from doing what we were supposed to do, to doing what we were destined to do . If you are having trouble figuring out what I mean by that, then the midlife transition may not have hit you quite yet. But, be patient! It will!

Now, back to the REAL Secret to Success. After the life-altering experience that I underwent a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to write about something significant that I had learned . . . something that might be of benefit to others. I thought about the biggest obstacle that people (men especially) have to face at midlife. I know that 'stopper' very well: self-sufficiency. I also remember the one piece of important advice that almost every entrepreneur I interviewed on my former radio program (The Frazzled Entrepreneur) gave as his or her parting comment: "Get yourself a coach, mentor or adviser!" Seeking the counsel of others is of critical importance to anyone who is in pursuit of success. Yet, in itself, this is not the REAL Secret to Success. What is?

Before I answer that question directly, let me first reiterate the one reason I believe that many people delay the midlife transition unnecessarily and thereby cause themselves so much needless pain. I think that trouble with the midlife transition begins with the mistaken idea that we should know how to handle it. So long as we believe that without assistance we should have what it takes and everything we need to transform ourselves from duty-based to destiny-based decision-making, we will remain self-deceived. In fact, if you take just one step back from that statement, you'll see the inner contradiction: the word 'should' is real give-away that we're still dealing with a duty-based core values system. When we're 'should-ing' on ourselves, we're not operating in authenticity. We're not accepting life on life's terms. We're not accepting ourselves just as we are. As a result, and out of fear, we find the need to pretend to be other than the people who we really are. We pretend that we're capable and adequate, all the while dreading that others might find out the truth: that we're frauds and that, if you really knew me, you wouldn't like me at all.

What, then, is the REAL Secret to Success — and the REAL secret to a successful midlife transition as well? Get out your pens and papers (no stone tablets necessary) because here it is: the REAL Secret to Success is humility. Wait! Don't stop reading yet! It's true, and I'll show you why! First, though, I'll repeat here once again my favorite definition of humility (which I have so far been unable to trace back to its source): 'seeing yourself as God sees you and acting accordingly.'

Now, I want to share with you the two greatest gifts of humility, and then I want to discuss how to obtain this elusive Secret to Success. The first gift of humility is honesty. In all the 12-step recovery programs, it is an often-stated (and well-demonstrated) fact that people can recover from addiction but only "if they have the capacity to be honest." The kind of honesty that can lead to healing is only one that is willing to offer the unvarnished truth to one's self, to one's fellows, and to one's God. Humility strips away the need for pretense. When your self-esteem no longer depends on what you think others' opinions of you may be (and when those opinions no longer matter), then there no longer exist any reasons to hide behind dishonesty of any sort. You're free to be the exceptional person whom you really are . . . without excuses.

The second gift of humility is courage. Cowardice consists only of giving in to the fear of facing overwhelming consequences. Yet, humility allows you to see yourself with both your limitations and your strengths. Self-acceptance and the honesty that it provides allows you recognize that you're not a super-hero, you never were a super-hero, and nobody expects you to be a super-hero. You have incredibly valuable gifts that are uniquely yours and the universe stands in need of your courageous generosity. The universe (and the people who inhabit it) are also more than willing to provide you with whatever you need, once you summon the courage to ask. No consequences are truly overwhelming for the humble: they know that life is a gift that's both given and sustained by a Power greater then themselves. Living life on life's terms for them is a matter of acceptance, trust, and engagement.

Gaining humility is at once both an inside and an outside job. On one hand, it takes willingness to confront ourselves exactly as we are, without pretense, and it takes a specific commitment to do the work to make that happen. It takes a commitment to yourself, to your future, and to every person who either depends upon you right now, or ever will depend upon you in the future. It takes a commitment to become the person who you were destined to be without complaints or excuses. It means looking yourself in the eye in the mirror and telling yourself that you'll no longer settle for anything less than everything you deserve.

On the other hand, you can never gain humility by yourself. Notice that, even when you look at yourself in the mirror, the image is distorted. It's backwards. That's why you look so strange when you see yourself in a picture or a video. It's only then that you see yourself as others see you. You need others to reflect back to you the person you cannot see on your own — with all your strengths and your limitations. These people see in you everything that escapes you. They know (and very often play along with) your dishonesties. They silently step in when they see that you're shrinking back out of fear. They know the truth about you even when you're ignorant of it. These mirrors of your soul give you the gift that you desperately need: perspective. And, it's not only those who like you who are your friends; the people who dislike you, who are your fiercest critics, are your best friends. They are the people who'll show you things about yourself that even your 'best friend' won't tell you. Listen to them: all of them.

You're probably very familiar with the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." If you change one word, you'll discover the Humility Prayer: "God, grant me the humility to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference." What does that tell you? Only that, humility and serenity are interchangeable. If you want serenity, seek humility. Seek it in the eyes, the words and the deeds of those around you. Because, once you've found it and embraced it, you'll discover that you've found integrity and courage as well. If that isn't 'success', I don't know what is. How's that for the REAL Secret to Success?

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

. . . The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Les Brown — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 13:00:00 +0000

One of the most difficult virtues to attain is wisdom. Nobody becomes wise through an accident of birth or by osmosis. As has often been said, wisdom derives from good judgment, which, in turn, derives from bad judgment — and an awful lot of it. Jesus told his disciples, "By their fruits you shall know them." Human history is an immense tapestry of good and bad judgment calls, wisdom and folly, all intertwined. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," represents a sad epitaph. Yet, when the smoke has cleared and the results of our decision-making have been revealed, there's no escaping the evidence. Credit default swaps certainly must have seemed like a good idea at the time, but now it'd take quite a stretch of the imagination to pretend that the results were anything short of disastrous.

There's never a shortage of denial among us human beasties. Just when you might imagine that all the evidence is in and irrefutable, someone shows up with his (or her) head in the sand, proclaiming the black is white and up is down. The world sadly experiences no shortage of Holocaust deniers . . . and that's only one example. Yes, wisdom can be very hard to come by and, when you do come by it, it can be very expensive. As a boy, my dad was having a lot of fun feeding paper into a reel lawn mower and watching the blades shred the paper. That is, he had fun until it lopped off the tip of his thumb, giving him a bump (where they reattached it) that he carried with him to the grave. Of course, I was much wiser than he: I was cutting photographic paper into narrow test strips on the paper cutter in my darkroom one day until it lopped off the top of my index finger. Unlike my dad, I'm carrying a flat top finger with me to my grave. As the Pennsylvania Dutch were fond of saying, "We're too soon old and too late smart."

"The wisdom to know the difference," says the end of the Serenity Prayer (short version). The difference between what? Between the things I can and cannot change. What, after all, actually falls within my power to change? Only time (and a lot of it) teaches the truth about that. There's very little (if anything) outside of myself that I can change. In fact, one of the things that I've learned through this long life-education process is that changing myself offers the only hope I have of changing situations. It's a Great Truth of systems theory that the more you try to impose change from the outside, the more resistance your system will offer. Yet, people keep pouring their resources into trying to change the world only to find themselves exhausted and the world virtually unaffected. You know the explanation the guy offered when asked why he kept beating his head against the wall, don't you? "It feels so good when I stop," he volunteered.

At some point, there exists a watershed point between the courage to work for change and the serenity to accept the world as it is. The Wisdom Point reveals itself in the continuum between commitment and insanity: between doing what you can and doing the same thing over and over again with the same results. Age seems to be of little help here. You've got more knowledge, skill and experience and can handle more difficult and challenging situations, so you'd expect to be able to accomplish more. Life allows you glimpses of progress from time to time, sometimes only to bolster your hopes. Successful casinos always let you win some; they know you'll be back, encouraged, and ready to fall prey to their lopsided odds. "The wisdom to know the difference." "Strange game. The only winning move is not to play." [War Games] There comes a point — graced by wisdom — that you experience the existence of that watershed point and you learn that it's time to say 'enough is enough'.

It may be true that winners never quit and quitters never win, but then along comes the midlife transition and you get to see that what got you here won't get you there. [Marshall Goldsmith] Wisdom gives you the power and authority to change from courage to serenity, from engagement to acceptance. I speak sometimes about the cardinal virtues: acceptance, engagement and trust: acceptance of the past, engagement in the present, trust in the future. While never abandoning trust, engagement must always give way to acceptance. That's the way of wisdom. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus recommend to his disciples: "When you have done everything you were
ordered to do, say, 'We are but unworthy servants. We have done only what
we ought to have done.'"

So, there comes a time when you stand and look around you and see that there's no more that you should do. Evidently, there's much more that you could do ('could' is a bottomless well of possibility), but there's no more that you need to do. The Wisdom Point comes when you reach Stage Five grief: acceptance. It arrives when it finally sinks in that your business is finished; when you look at your career and finally acknowledge that you can't do this anymore; when you realize that leaving a marriage will be much less painful than staying in it; when you finally accept that doing the things you love to do isn't worth dying for. That, after all, is the ultimate 'dead end,' isn't it? Wisdom dictates that you don't have to take it that far; you don't have to let your stubbornness kill you. Until the ultimate 'dead end', every ending is a new beginning, though sometimes it's hard to know one from the other. We can pray for "the wisdom to know the difference."

Since 2004, I've been working long hours to build my coaching practice and to produce programs that would provide great value to my prospective clients and anyone in a stressful transition. Out of those programs came the book, The Frazzled Entrepreneur's Guide to Having It All and the Frazzled Entrepreneur program. That expanded into The Balanced Life Program. A chance conversation on a shuttle bus launched the Midlife Mastery Program. Finally, insights from all of them merged into the Turning Point Strategies program. Unfortunately, in spite of the advice and encouragement of many talented and exceptional people, the market was not interested. Who knows why. It is what it is. So this is my Wisdom Point, my encounter with the Dead End.

As a writer, I'll continue to write, and who knows what shape or direction it may go in. As a coach, I'll continue to work with my handful of dedicated clients. But, the entrepreneur in me must acknowledge the facts of the situation, and it's time to close it down. Thanks to everyone for gifting me with your support. It's time for this guy once again to pray for "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change." Amen.

H. Les Brown, MA, CFCC

Copyright © 2009 H. Les Brown

Repent! The End Is Near!

Les Brown — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 20:13:14 +0000

Well . . . to be honest with you, the end is near whether or not you choose to repent: the end of the year 2008, that is. We humans have a particular affinity for the ending of things: like graduations and funerals (not that there's any other similarity between the two). Yet, we mark transitions at least partly by looking backward while, at the same time, we're looking forward. That, my friends, is the nature of all change: it's a movement from something old to something new. We're transitioning from 2008 (and bidding all it held for us adieu) to 2009 with all the hope it has to offer us. Regardless of our experience with the old, we still believe in our hope for the new.

Over the last few months, I've received e-mails from a number of people — men and women — who have awakened one day to find that their spouse (in his or her mid-forties) has filed for divorce. They tell me a little about what has preceded this moment, and then comes the question: "What should I do?" As you can well imagine, there is no 'one size fits all' answer that will prove to be the 'magic bullet' that fixes everything. The road ahead is always totally dependent on the free-will choices that two individuals are going to make. Yet, as we approach the end of the calendar year, I think it wouldn't do any harm to offer some suggestions about what to do when a midlife crisis threatens to end a relationship. Here are some of the suggestions that I'd offer to anyone facing such a serious transition.

First and foremost, ask yourself what it is you need the most. When I was taking my first flying lessons, we learned, then practiced a series of maneuvers that a good pilot would use when he or she experienced an engine failure. My flight instructor, Ulf, would always have me go through the list verbally before we practiced it. The first item on the mental checklist was: "Fly the plane." It may sound obvious, but it's not! How often have you made a situation worse by trying to correct a problem without first taking care to see that everything else was going along smoothly? As a result, I would say to anyone who asks, "What should I do when my husband or wife files for divorce?" here's what you do: Fly the plane: Take care of yourself! Handle the important and urgent situations that you must give your attention to, but provide for yourself everything you need physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, socially and economically. Don't be deceived into thinking that neglecting yourself will somehow fix the problem; it won't.

Secondly, seek information. If what's happening seems like it's a result of a man's midlife crisis, read Jed Diamond's book, The Irritable Male Syndrome. Even if you suspect that it's your wife's midlife crisis come to haunt you, Diamond's book will give you insights that apply equally well to both sexes. Check out the articles and information that I have made available over the past year. Research as though you were going for a PhD in midlife, because when you're facing your spouse's midlife crisis, you're the only one who's got to deal with the day-to-day decisions that have to be made.

Thirdly, seek help. There's no reason why you're going to need to walk through this experience alone. Share what's going on with you with the people whom you most trust in your life. If possible, seek out professional counseling. Isolation is your enemy. Keeping your own counsel reminds me of that old saying from President Abraham Lincoln, who said: “He who serves as his own counsel has a fool for a lawyer and a jackass for a client.” As we learned in physics, your being part of the system changes the system; you need someone who has a certain perspective from outside to help you maintain yours.

Finally, There are important lessons that you can learn from the people in Alanon. When your partner gets caught up in a midlife crisis — as though he or she were involved in addictive behavior — you need to remember the three 'C's: you didn't cause it, you can't control it, you can't cure it. Wisdom (in so many areas of life) lies in recognizing when we're powerless over people, places and things. You remember the serenity prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. The difference is actually very clear and simple: you cannot change anyone else; you can only change yourself. That's why Alanon (and I) recommend when dealing with others who are causing you grief: Detach with love. Otherwise, it'd be like hanging on for dear life to the railing of a sinking ship. By all means, be there for your partner who's struggling and in pain; but separate yourself enough from him or her so that, regardless of the outcome of the current crisis, you'll ultimately be OK. Remember: always do your best, but leave the outcome where it belongs, in God's hands.

What to Do When the Tables Are Turned

Les Brown — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:19:38 +0000

Recently, I had a question from a man who was in serious pain because . . . his wife was going through a midlife crisis. In some ways, there's nothing odd or strange about that: women and men both experience the physical and emotional changes that signal the transition from adulthood to maturity. In the vast majority of cases, though, men have a harder time with it because of the negative acculturation they've received throughout their whole lives that blocks them from getting in touch with their deeper emotions and from sharing their emotional struggles with an intimate network of friends outside of their primary relationship. With culturally-encouraged access to these critical factors, women generally have more support and more grounding that helps them keep their balance through tumultuous times.

Sometimes, unfortunately, for reasons better explained by a psychologist, the support system supply can't meet the demand, and the consequences in women parallel what we see in so many men: restlessness, irritability and discontent. This may seem like a somewhat odd reversal of roles (women showing signs of a classical male midlife crisis), but it only seems strange because of the difference in frequency of occurrence between men and women — not because there's anything inherently unusual about women having midlife crises. Even when roles have been reversed, and the male partner has enough sensitivity and social acumen to be able to cope with the personal transformations that come with midlife without turning it into a crisis, I think that the same wise counsel would be equally applicable no matter who may be having more difficulty.

Should you become the 'injured party,' your first priority would be to take care of yourself. Here's a truism that you may find difficult to accept (at least at first, but, accept it you mist): nobody can hurt or take advantage of you without your permission. So long as you cling to that fact, you never need to become a victim. The corollary to this truth can be expressed this way: you are powerless over persons, places and things. Trying to change these things ('making him/her understand') not only brings with it frustration for you, it's also very likely to produce exactly the opposite effect from what you were striving to accomplish. Taking care of yourself, then, means, first of all, letting go of all the stuff out there over which you have no control. It also means taking all appropriate measures to make sure your needs are being met. True humility has nothing to do with neglecting yourself; neither does true pride mean 'playing through the pain' without making sure that you're keeping yourself at least physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually OK.

I know that it seems counter-intuitive and unhelpful to be told that the best approach to your partner who's showing signs of a midlife crisis is 'hands-off,' but it's exactly true. Take for example the advice that's given to people who are in a relationship with people in active addiction (not an unusual situation during a midlife crisis either, I dare say): detach with love. What does that entail? That means, first of all, to let go of the current situation and its eventual outcome. Secondly, it means resisting the temptation to become passively aggressive (playing 'hard-to-get'). Keep in mind that your partner has become entirely engrossed in trying to manage his/her transition. Without sufficient personal awareness and wise support, that task easily becomes overwhelming. You — regardless of your history together for good or ill — have been relegated to the status of 'collateral damage.' Once again, regarding your partner's midlife crisis, the facts are these: you didn't cause it; you can't control it; you can't cure it.

How can you then best survive what feels like a crushing blow to your ego and your relationship? The same advice that I'd give to someone who was personally trying to manage a midlife crisis would also apply to you. Two essential strategies are: 1) Deepen your awareness of your own feelings. Any avoidance techniques — particularly denial and blame — need to be banished from your life now more than ever. 2) Share what's going on with you — especially your feelings — with your most trusted advisers (apart from your partner who needs to be 'off-limits' to you during this period). Hire someone to talk to if nothing else. Share what's going on with you only; don't concern yourself with your partner's behavior or motives; focus on how you feel and what you need to do to cope with it all. Remember, once again: what your partner is thinking or doing right now is none of your business. And, finally, here's a third strategy that'll help you cope: learn as much about the midlife transition as you can. In addition to my own writings, I can also recommend anything written by Dr. Jed Diamond, PhD. His work is as scientific as it is inspired.

The virtues of humility, acceptance, and spiritual connection to your Higher Power (whatever your understanding) will be your strongest allies — particularly if you're a man facing the possibility of losing your wife to a midlife crisis. You can't change the outcome of this whole process, because you're not the one in charge of it. The Serenity Prayer will help you to discern the difference between the things you cannot change (other persons, places, or things — including the past) and the things you can change (yourself). Clean up your own side of the street. That's the challenging but magnificent opportunity you're being given through this experience. Your choices may not have a lot of effect on whether or not your relationship survives, but they will certainly determine the quality of your life from this point forward. My advice? Take advantage of it!