5 Ways to Get Your Act Together

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5 Ways to Get Your Act Together — Life isn’t easy. We all need help figuring out elegant ways to live

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It is pos­si­ble to have a full, rich and mean­ing-filled life. It is just not easy. Here is a list of 5 ideas that just might get you fur­ther along the path to “Get­ting a Life.”

1. Get over Yourself

Back when I used to lead sem­i­nars and work­shops, I’d invari­ably start the things with danc­ing, and my favourite first song was “Get over It,” by The Eagles. 

The song is a none-too-sub­tle reminder that the “Cult of Vic­tim­iza­tion” is alive and well, espe­cial­ly in the US of A. 

We live in an age where peo­ple want com­plete free­dom and no respon­si­bil­i­ty / con­se­quences. (see # 4). 

This plays out in lots of weird behav­iour — and when things go south, the fin­ger point­ing starts.

Getting over yourself involves determined effort at no blame.

That’s not the same as say­ing “any­thing goes.” We need to step up to the plate and decry the present state of our plan­et, but a whole lot of whin­ing does nothing. 

We change the world by chang­ing our­selves. And I mean that lit­er­al­ly and practically.

Dwelling on the inter­nal “I was so bad­ly treat­ed” sce­nario changes pre­cise­ly nothing. 

You are not required to approve of what hap­pened in the past. You are required to move heav­en and earth to get past it. Obsess­ing about it changes nothing.

Remem­ber: argue for your lim­i­ta­tions, and they are yours. Define your­self as a poor help­less vic­tim, and you are one. Mag­ic. If you do not like where you are right now, the only thing that will change this is you doing some­thing (any­thing!) differently.

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2. Get a Life

I’m not so big on “every­one has a des­tiny to ful­fill.” I hate New Age clap­trap like that. 

I do believe that each of us is here with a skill set and a set of attrib­ut­es and abil­i­ties that is as unique to us as our fingerprints.

ou are it, as far as your ‘mod­el’ goes. Talk about a lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion unit!

The world like­ly is not going to end if you choose to sit on your butt and do noth­ing but put in time. Thore­au was right — most peo­ple live lives of qui­et desperation. 

I won­der about that, though. It’s as if fit­ting in and not mak­ing waves is a rea­son­able life choice.

Many peo­ple go through the motions for decades and arrive at 60 or so, and won­der “Now what?”, or “What was that all about?” Oth­ers seem to be in that state in their 30s. 

Well, what it’s “all about” is show­ing up for your life.

Notice the pro­noun — ‘your.’

• You are not here to be what your mom­my wants you to be. 
• You are not here to “fol­low in your father’s footsteps.” 
• You are not here to fol­low the rules and not make waves.
• You are not here to fol­low some archa­ic set of rules found in out­dat­ed holy books.

You are here to carve out space that is yours alone.

Think about ‘famous peo­ple’ that come to mind — and for the most part, let us leave pop stars out of this equa­tion. I’m think­ing Mar­tin Luther King, Gand­hi, Man­dela, Edi­son, etc. 

What makes them spe­cial? They applied their per­son­al­i­ty and skill set to the world they lived in, and in a sense, bent the world to their will. 

I do not think they were ‘spe­cial’ peo­ple in the sense of unique. I think they were spe­cial because they chose to act.

Notic­ing a pat­tern here? 

I believe that action is the real key to liv­ing a mean­ing-filled life. And the only action you can take is the action you take. In oth­er words, if you don’t do it, it won’t hap­pen. And the world gets a lit­tle weird­er and more bor­ing as a result.

Remem­ber: Only you can bring forth what you can bring forth, and the only time you can do it is now. The paint­ing that is your life is only real when you stop think­ing about it and actu­al­ly paint it.

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3. Be Honest

Not “be cru­el,” but rather “be honest.” 

Most peo­ple think that being hon­est means rip­ping those around them a new one. “I only told him that for his own good.” Crap. 

That kind of hon­esty is meant to hurt and to pun­ish oth­ers, there­by some­how mak­ing your­self feel better.

All true hon­esty is self-hon­esty

In Bud­dhist thought, you are the Uni­verse and there­fore all there is is you, acting. 

But you don’t have to join me there. What I’m nudg­ing you toward is total accep­tance that who you are is who you are, and you got that way sole­ly by the choic­es you made.

I am urg­ing you to com­mit to being hon­est about the only thing you have a chance of know­ing — yourself. 

In this moment, all you can know is what you are choos­ing to be aware of. This might include sen­so­ry data, your inter­pre­ta­tions (the sto­ry you are telling your­self) and your intentions.

And here is an inter­est­ing twist. I often say that I don’t care what oth­ers tell me they intend to do. I only care about what they actu­al­ly do. 

Hon­esty, as I am using it, is all about let­ting my near­est and dear­est know what is “up” for me, in this moment. As such, hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion is always “I” language. 

I can­not know any­thing about “you” — any­thing I say is a guess based upon my expe­ri­ence, and is there­fore about me, not you. So, I must let go of ‘play­ing Kre­skin’ and get down to being open, hon­est and reveal­ing — about me.

Remem­ber: hon­esty is about self-rev­e­la­tion, and all I can tell you about is what I am aware of today.
Gand­hi (after can­celling a salt march because of threats of vio­lence) was crit­i­cized for not fol­low­ing through — for lying. He replied, “I promised you truth, not con­sis­ten­cy.”
Hon­esty is all about report­ing what is going on for me, right now. Here is what I am telling myself, here is what I am judg­ing to be going on for me, and here is what I intend.

And then, be a per­son of integri­ty. Do what you say you will do.

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4. Be Self-responsible

Self-respon­si­bil­i­ty is not pop­u­lar, and it’s because of the stuff I’ve just writ­ten about. 

To be self-respon­si­ble is to “own” the present state of your life, and to do this all the time. 

This own­ing up has the fol­low­ing basis: I am where I am sole­ly because of how I have cho­sen to view and live my life.

No one is doing any­thing to any of us. No one makes us feel. Short of putting a gun to my head, no one can ‘make’ me do any­thing. No mat­ter what I tell myself, I am the cap­tain of my fate.

You may want to argue with me and pull out all of your tried and true abuse sto­ries, and let me know, in no uncer­tain terms, how hard done by you were. Or are. And my only ques­tion to you is, “How is that sto­ry work­ing for you?”

If you like feel­ing stuck and sor­ry for your­self, keep telling your­self the same stuff. Keep pre­tend­ing that the stuff in your head is true. Keep re-enact­ing the same sor­ry sto­ries, and add embell­ish­ments as soon as the sto­ry starts to get lame.

Or, become self-responsible.

It begins with hon­esty. Before you get into sto­ry-telling, start with “Here is the sto­ry I am telling myself. It’s not true, it’s not false, it’s just this momen­t’s story.” 

Admit­ting you are mak­ing it up as you go along is the first step in self-respon­si­ble living.

This is all about let­ting the rest of the world off the hook for what you are doing with your life. 

I am not deny­ing that ter­ri­ble stuff hap­pens to peo­ple. I see the world. I also know that the only way past the hor­rors of the past is to choose to live and act in the present.

I rec­og­nize that this is not easy, but play­ing the “poor me” card is guar­an­teed to get you more of the same. That may not be ‘fair’ (who­ev­er told you life was sup­posed to be fair was lying to you) but it is the way it is.

Self-respon­si­bil­i­ty is, like our pre­vi­ous exam­ple, “I” lan­guage enact­ed. It brings our atten­tion to the only thing under our con­trol — our selves and our actions (which are real­ly the same thing — you are noth­ing beyond what you actu­al­ly do. 

I claim own­er­ship for who I am and what I do, and for noth­ing else. As such, my favourite word, integri­ty, comes to the fore.

Most peo­ple are out of integri­ty, as their actions are far from their self-descrip­tions, pro­nounce­ments, and commitments. 

Integri­ty, on the oth­er hand, could be seen as fol­low­ing the AA mod­el — here is who I am, here is my ten­den­cy, and here is my ‘5‑year-pin’ for per­son­al ‘sobri­ety’ (how many days I have actu­al­ly done what I said I’d do.)

Remem­ber: we are peo­ple of integri­ty only as our actions match our words, and we are self-respon­si­ble only inso­far as we let every­one else off the hook for how we con­duct our lives. Blam­ing and excuse-mak­ing are games designed to salve our guilty con­science. Far bat­ter to step up and be and enact who you are.

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5. “Go out of your mind, and come to your sens­es.” (Fritz Perls)

Some of you young­sters might not know that Fritz Perls was one of the founders of the Gestalt Ther­a­py movement. 

The Ger­man word ‘gestalt’ is one of those “hard to trans­late” words. It means a com­plet­ed pat­tern or con­fig­u­ra­tion. In its ther­a­peu­tic usage, it means that the issue is brought to completion.

Perls sug­gest­ed that we spend alto­geth­er too much time up in our heads, think­ing, plot­ting, plan­ning, and blam­ing, and nowhere near enough time in our bodies. 

In a sen­so­ry world, (which is pre­cise­ly where we live, even if we choose not to notice) we are sur­round­ed by “felt data and experience.”

One of the best ways to come alive is to acknowl­edge our inter­nal feel­ings by actu­al­ly hav­ing them. 

Rather than walk­ing around pre­tend­ing that I am not feel­ing anger or hap­pi­ness or horni­ness or sad­ness or grief or ecsta­sy, I find a safe and ele­gant way to acknowl­edge and express what I am feeling.

Hon­esty entails using ‘I’ lan­guage ahead of nam­ing the feel­ing. I say, “I am choos­ing to (for exam­ple) anger myself right now.” 

No one ‘makes me’ angry, or sad, ecsta­t­ic or horny. My feel­ings are an inside job.

When I am sad, I cry. When angry, shout or hit a heavy bag. When ecsta­t­ic, my eyes fill and I get all ‘soupy.’

Most­ly, we shove this stuff down, and then go into our heads and come up with all kinds of rea­sons why “I should­n’t feel that way.”

We do this because we were taught, by adults, that feelings are scary. 

Most adults have low tol­er­ance for ‘neg­a­tive’ feel­ings, and mid­dling tol­er­ance for the expres­sion of the ‘good’ ones. 

Most of us were told we had to jus­ti­fy our feel­ings before express­ing them. This does noth­ing to release the feel­ing or the ener­gy con­nect­ed to it. 

Most feel ‘odd’ even talk­ing about feel­ings and inter­nal felt-states, let alone express­ing them. Not that they go any­where, but deny­ing their exis­tence seems to cre­ate in us a feel­ing of some­how fit­ting in with our soci­etal norms.

We sug­gest doing Body­work with a trained pro­fes­sion­al, learn­ing to breathe prop­er­ly, and doing activ­i­ties (yoga, tai chi, aiki­do, etc.) con­sid­ered ‘inter­nal arts’ in order to free the trapped ener­gy and let it out in use­ful and safe ways.

Remem­ber: hav­ing a life is a self-respon­si­ble, moment-by-moment action. Includ­ed in this are speak­ing hon­est­ly, act­ing with integri­ty, and hav­ing your feel­ings. Each is a dance of let­ting go of our cling­ing to our sto­ries, let­ting go of blam­ing and judg­ing, and care­ful­ly and clear­ly design­ing the life we enact.

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