We all want to feel good and function well, that’s the definition of well-being. But for many of us, we struggle to find the perfect approach to unlocking the secret to living our lives at peak performance.

We seek an easy fix, a coping mechanism, a band-aid: anything that can offer relief from suffering.

Sometimes we choose the path of least resistance. Sometimes we get stuck. And sometimes happiness feels far off or perhaps even impossible to obtain or feel deserving of. What we forget is our mood and emotions are influenced by biology, psychology, and environment…and finding balance among all three can be a challenge.

The key to unlocking the secret of life—however you choose to define it—is directly related to the power of our thoughts, self-awareness of our personality, and the choices we make.

We are a direct result of the choices we have made. We need not be victims to life’s circumstances. Our situations were made by us because the choices we made yesterday impact us today.

The beauty of life is we can start right now and choose something else. We have the power to decide to learn from our past, recognize life lessons, and apply that knowledge to our current state.

Better decision-making is possible when we evaluate:

+What are our life goals?
+What information do we need to succeed at those goals?
+What are our immediate, 5-year, 10- year and beyond life plans?
+What are alternate paths to our visualized success?
+What are the pros and cons of our decisions?

We cannot change who we are—we were born uniquely us. But what makes us more powerful than any computer is we have the ability to change our perspective.

We are animals with neurons. Neurons are found in our brains, our hearts, and our gut (aka enteric nervous system). We are people with the ability to think. And we are only 100% accountable for our every thought, word, and action. We are not responsible for the thoughts, words, and actions of others. We can only logically control our own lives; but how we respond to stimuli is our choice.

Because we are people, we have the lows and downs in life just like we have the highs and ups. Sometimes the lows can feel small and easy to self-correct…especially as we age and gain more life experience.

But when the lows feel big, it can impact our lives on a much larger scale. We need the perceived mistakes just as much as we need the perceived successes. And we have the power to navigate our life in success, determined as we choose to define it.

EXERCISE

Reference:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Silver_Bullet

"No Silver Bullet—Essence and Accident in Software Engineering" is a widely discussed paper on software engineering written by Turing Award winner Fred Brooks in 1986.[1] Brooks argues that "there is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order of magnitude [tenfold] improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity." He also states that "we cannot expect ever to see two-fold gains every two years" in software development, as there is in hardware development (Moore's law).

Brooks distinguishes between two different types of complexity: accidental complexity and essential complexity. This is related to Aristotle's classification. Accidental complexity relates to problems which engineers create and can fix; for example, the details of writing and optimizing assembly code or the delays caused by batch processing. Essential complexity is caused by the problem to be solved, and nothing can remove it; if users want a program to do 30 different things, then those 30 things are essential and the program must do those 30 different things.

Brooks claims that accidental complexity has decreased substantially, and today's programmers spend most of their time addressing essential complexity. Brooks argues that this means shrinking all the accidental activities to zero will not give the same order-of-magnitude improvement as attempting to decrease essential complexity. While Brooks insists that there is no one silver bullet, he believes that a series of innovations attacking essential complexity could lead to significant improvements. One technology that had made significant improvement in the area of accidental complexity was the invention of high-level programming languages, such as Ada.[1]

Brooks advocates "growing" software organically through incremental development. He suggests devising and implementing the main and subprograms right at the beginning, filling in the working sub-sections later. He believes that programming this way excites the engineers and provides a working system at every stage of development.

Life is change. Permanence is an illusion. Societal, cultural, religious, familial, classist belief systems are constructs of the mind. They are not real unless we give them thought. We often choose suffering because it is the path of pattern and familiarity. Suffering is easier to believe in because it is experienced. Self-awareness is the path to enlightenment. It is often easier to believe we cannot instead of believing we can. No action is still a choice.

Many of us have an awareness of our “labels” or the words we or others have given us to describe ourselves, our patterns, our beliefs, and our behaviors. Since we have control of our thoughts and behaviors, how we respond to stimuli is a choice.

People choose labels to help draw context of understanding between thoughts, feelings, emotions, moods, and behaviors. Some labels give us comfort, some carry negative connotations, and all can be thought of as a two-sided coin. On one side of the label coin are our associated negative experiences. On the other side of the label coin are our associated positive experiences. Some of us have never experienced the positive side of our labels.

Self-awareness is the key to manifesting our dreams into reality. To be self-aware of our labels…the thoughts that turn into our belief systems we have for ourselves…is a natural step toward enlightenment.

Some of my labels I have come to know about myself based on individuals who assigned them in a specific setting are:

highly sensitive - assigned by a therapist, clinical

workaholic - assigned by myself, celebrated

activated - assigned by a supervisor, misunderstood

As a highly sensitive, I know the negative side of this label is steeped in being overwhelmed by my environment. Too much sensory stimulation can drain my energy. The positive side of this coin is an innate awareness, knowingness, a sixth sense…it’s a superpower if my highly sensitive label is flipped on the positive side.

I know I’m not the only one, but I have a bucket full of labels I’ve accrued living five decades of life. If I were to dump the bucket of labels onto a table, statistically speaking, 50% would land positive side up and 50% would land negative side up. That’s how most people live their life: between the ebb and flow of some labels pro and some labels con. But we have the power of thought. Imagine if we could flip all of our labels simultaneously to the positive side? What would life be like then? What couldn’t we do?

What are your labels?

How have they been applied to you in your life?

What circumstances did you receive the label?

Who is the source of the label?

Is it true of you? Is it misunderstood?

What are the positives and negatives of each?

What thoughts help you flip your label(s) to the pro side?

Stop making requests.

Take action to empower yourself. Purge “sorry” from your vocabulary when you are stating your needs. Default all choices to lean on self-control. It is impossible for others to cross your boundary when you are in control of your behavior.

Boundaries are only about how far you can go. That is always in your control.

How long does it take to begin a relationship?

How long does it take to end a relationship?

Like totaling a car…how do you estimate the value of a relationship? How do you know when it’s time to move forward, pull back, break up, perhaps try again?

In The Big Lebowski the zen character of the Dude is celebrated most; but even the best of fans must admit how interdependent the Dude is with his complement in the warrior spirit of Walter. If either character did not exist, the move wouldn’t work. Both Dude and Walter are challenged by each other’s behaviors: Walter wants action, Dude wants inaction. They make the perfect yin to the other’s yang…the personification of the taiji.

I struggle with people that “have my best interests” or want “what’s best for me.” It triggers a feeling and thought within my highly sensitive, Gen-X brain. The feeling is instant shame and guilt; the thought is, “this person does not inherently trust me.” I then feel grouped into a “less than” category and can can caught in a negative thought loop.

I love these people, so I’m not going to scratch them out of my life. Instead, I set my forcefields up when I am around them—I’m choosing to invest my energy with them, I acknowledge my responsibility to protect myself and grow my self-awareness.

I have named this “I know what’s best for you” trait of theirs as Boba, who I have imagined would have been my favorite great grandmother had I had the chance to know any of the. These people always mean well, but it’s usually sprinkled in with some passive aggressiveness and unsolicited advice.

From a neurobiological perspective, people are driven to seek pleasure over suffering.

For years, neuroscientists have studied how the neurotransmitter dopamine, which affects motor and emotional control, is responsible for our feelings of reward and pleasure.

It has been called the “feel good” or “happy” neurotransmitter but it—like much of neuroscience—has been misunderstood and unknown.

Current research suggests dopamine is less related to the actual feeling of happiness and more related to the anticipation of feeling happiness.

If we were invited to a fancy soirée, the expectations we place on what to wear, how to style our hair, and deciding which hors d'oeuvre to bring all creates excitement—which may be a stronger feeling than actually attending the party itself.

This excited feeling is because dopamine levels rise during the anticipation of the party resulting in a neurotransmitter release that lasts all the way up until when you walk through the door.

For introverts, dopamine levels have been found to be lower; whereas levels are higher in extroverts.

Dopamine is considered to be a ‘reward chemical’, as it its release is driven by reward seeking behaviour.

Yet there is new research indicating “dopamine levels increase in response to stressful stimuli, and not just pleasurable ones, potentially rewriting facts about the “feel-good” hormone.”

All of the relationships in our life are chosen. We choose a relationship when we invest our energy into it. These relationships may have illusory roots of proximity, family, companionship, work, love, co-dependence, anger, circumstance. Conduct an inventory of the relationships in your life.

Backward design is an approach used to first identify goals—what you will use to define your success—then second link to outcomes (the actions you will take to meet your goal).

For many, this approach serves as an efficient and effective way to push the reset button on their life and prepare for proactive, life-long change.

Because you can think, you have the power to create a customized map for life-long success.

Reference
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00762/full

As a cybernetic system, the human brain must encode information about (1) desired end states or goals, (2) the current state, largely comprising evaluations and representations of the world as it is relevant to those goals, and (3) a set of operators potentially capable of transforming the current state into the goal state; operators are skills, strategies, and plans that aid one in moving toward one's goals (Newell and Simon, 1972; DeYoung, 2010c). (All of these may be encoded both consciously and unconsciously. In psychology, the term “goal” is sometimes reserved for explicit, conscious, specific formulations of goals, but the term is used here in the broader, cybernetic sense.) The amount of uncertainty in these three cybernetic elements of a person constitutes psychological entropy, which reflects the number of plausible options or affordances available to the individual for representation (both perceptual and abstract) and for behavior, at any given time (Hirsh et al., 2012). In other words, the harder it is for the brain to answer the questions, “What is happening?” and “What should I do?” the higher the level of psychological entropy. Again, the brain addresses these questions both consciously and unconsciously; thus, they need not be explicitly framed in language to be a constant feature of human psychological functioning.

Build your life management framework by setting goals. Use an active verb first followed by developed SMART Goals:

(1) specific

(2) measurable

(3) achievable

(4) relevant

(5) time-bound.

This helps you identify the milestones necessary to achieve your desired goals.

Review these examples and write your own goals.

Writing Objectives

Dreams are not the same as goals, but they do give direction to move toward.

Dream 1: I want to run my own relationship coaching business to help people find their personal success.

Dream 2: I want to eliminate my earning ceiling and become more self-sufficient and independent.

Dream 3: I want to be debt-free.

Dream 4: I want to cultivate intergenerational wealth for my children.

Dream 5: I want to be a millionaire.

Be sure to ask yourself the following questions:

Question 1: Who are the stakeholders that are a part of or may support you in building your dreams?

Question 2: What are the goals you need to achieve your dream(s)?

Write your goals using an active verb first with SMART Goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound). You will be revisiting these goals often and may need to adjust accordingly.

Dream 1: I want to run my own relationship coaching business to help people find their personal success.

Goal 1:1 Enroll in an accredited coaching course before the end of April 2022.

Goal 1:2 Become a member of the International Coaching Federation by the end of April 2022.

Goal 1:3 Buy the domain for my new coaching business before the end of May 2022.

Goal 1:4 Build out a simple website for my coaching business before the end of June 2022.

Goal 1:5 Begin developing the outcomes-based mapping process by the end of July 2022.

Goal 1:6 Begin writing a manual for the mapping process by August 15, 2022.

Goal 1:7 Investigate by September 15, 2022, whether the course will serve as required training to renew my teaching license.

Goal 1:8 Complete the coaching course by December 2022.

Goal 1:9 Launch my coaching business by January 2023.

Goal 10: Book five coaching clients by February 2023.

Milestone Schedule

Create a milestone schedule based on your goals to breakdown each one into smaller, achievable chunks to help guide you to success. Align the smaller chunks of action to your goals.

Goal #1 Enroll in an accredited coaching course before the end of April 2022.

Milestone 1:1 Research courses via ICF’s TPSS portal https://coachingfederation.org/credentials-and-standards/find-a-training-program

Milestone 1:2 Select a program

https://www.brainfirsttraininginstitute.com/brain-based-coach-certification-program

Milestone 1:3 Pay for the program

Milestone 1:4 Complete the course

Accepting our own actions requires objective transparency. To be responsible is to accept the duty of following through on a task. To be accountable is how you respond and take ownership for what happens after completing the task.

Accountability is results-focused. We face consequences when we are held accountable for our choices.