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Just when I think I’ve got a handle on things, and I’m feeling like I’ve wrestled my life back into the general direction that I’d like to see it going, I somehow lose control just as quickly. It’s kinda like that poor schmoe on sesame street with all those pies that still can’t walk the stairs.

Remember him? No? Here he is.

Fast forward to 1:25 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.

Remember him now?

I thought you might. You see, I kinda feel bad for him. He spends all this time making coconut custard pies, which is no easy task, I’m sure. I think it’s a pain in the ass to make ONE pie, much less NINE. Anyway, so this guy spends all day making nine coconut custard pies. They’re beautiful, delicious-looking, and he’s got them all on a beautiful silver tray. As he enters the dining room and announces himself, he realizes “Oh shit! Stairs! I haven’t been able to walk these bitches YET without falling and messing up my shit!” And even knowing that his track record with walking stairs isn’t so good, he’s got these pies that he’s worked on all day long, and the people are here to eat these pies. It’s up to him, and it comes down to these eight little steps.

And even knowing what’s always happened before and what’s at risk, he steps forward anyway.

So just a few weeks ago I was really struggling to hold things together and keep the wheels from falling off my life. Megan and I went away for the weekend, loved each other, re-connected, and I really thought I had it all handled. Sure, there was still stuff to handle and plenty to still work on, but I had my nine coconut custard pies on their pretty trays, perfectly balanced and ready to walk the stairs.

And I’m still perched there, at the top of the stairs, ready to take that first fateful step and deliver these amazing coconut custard pies to all the people waiting below, but today somebody greased the steps and threw a bunch of marbles down. Oh, and the whole room started to tilt and sway like a funhouse ride.

Good times. It’s like somebody is saying “you SAY you can walk these stairs, but let’s see how serious you REALLY are!”

And I take the first step…

So, you know how sometimes life throws you a curveball? Y’know, something you weren’t expecting, and it takes every bit of life experience you’ve accumulated to take a shot at this unforseen situation and swing for the fences? Well, I guess I was getting pretty good at hitting curveballs, because life decided to throw a beaner and hit me square in the face.

This last few months has been a pretty interesting and challenging time for me. I’ve had struggles in my career, my marriage, and my life in general. Now, I’m not complaining – I lead a good life, and I feel like on the whole, I’ve handled everything that life has offered me pretty well. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy, just that I’ve kept swinging. Well, over the last few months I started to question myself. As a result, I kinda got stuck and started to slip into a routine of lethargy and stagnation. Never a good place for me. I like to be challenged and to grow, even if it’s just a slight challenge and a little growth, which was kinda what I’d been looking for. I mean, when was life going to get easy? It’s supposed to get easy after awhile, right?

Yeah, not so much.

What do I want to DO?

I’m damn near 40 years old, and I’m still trying to figure out what I want to DO, y’know? I’ve had jobs I loved and plenty of career opportunities, but as I approach what should be roughly half-way to retirement (in the traditional sense) I have no idea what I’m going to do to make money over the next 20 years. I’ve only really got three requirements – I have to be good at it (and I’m okay learning to be good at it along the way), I have to be passionate about it and really believe in it, and I have to make a good living doing it. That’s pretty much it.

I’m envious of my sweetheart in this respect. She has a job that she’s amazing at, that she genuinely loves, and that she is able to make a living at. I’m incredibly jealous of that, and I’m so very proud of her for following her heart even at the times when it’s scared the shit out of her.

The other day I had a conversation with one of my Facebook friends who recently got her dream job as a teacher in Vernal, Utah. She absolutely LOVES her job, just bought herself a house that she’s so excited about, makes a decent living for herself, and is altogether happy with her life. I told her I wished I could fiond that. she replied with a single word that has stuck with me.

“Teach”

Now my initial reaction was “WTF would I teach?” And as much as I wanted to blow it off, I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that there’s something there in her one-word answer. I don’t know what it means, but I know that it’s my next step. Stay tuned, we’ll see where this one leads…

The balance with my sweetheart
The last year has been an interesting one for Megan and I.  You see, she’s always been my supporter and cheerleader, handling all the little pieces of day-to-day life while I was out working on being fabulous and successful. Last March, we switched roles a bit. She was hired as the Executive Director of The Great Life Foundation, and we both knew this would require a great deal of her time, attention, and energy. She straight-up asked me if I was willing to be the support structure, and I willingly said yes.

As it turns out, I kinda suck at it.

I continue to work on improving, and remembering the little things, but I’m certainly not a pro (yet). The important thing to know is that because I had lost myself in my own world, I hadn’t been taking care of the relationship Megan and I have. Our relationship is very strong and very delicate, all at the same time. You see, we’re very different people, and we require very different things. She is the Yin to my Yang – we balance each other because of our differences,m and they make us stronger, but only when things are working in the relationship. Even a slight imbalance can almost immediately cause the relationship to start tearing itself apart.

That’s where we were, until we took the time to bring things back into balance this weekend. Like I said, it’s a very delicate balance, but it’s a wonderful thing that truly nourishes both our spirits when it’s working. I just need to remember to keep it in balance.

And what’s with the man behind the curtain?
I’ve known all along that by simply deciding who and how I want to be that I naturally start moving in that direction. I realized that over the past year or so, I had started to move in the direction of “grumpy old man”, which I always thought would be funny and entertaining, in a “shit my dad says” kind of way. Turns out that in order to get the occasional nugget of comedy gold, you have to go through a lot of cynical acidic and condescending attitude. After realizing that I didn’t like the path I was on, I’ve made conscious and deliberate steps to be the kind of man that I want to be. The best way to describe this is that I want to be like Tim Gunn – he’s polite, refined, direct, honest, charming and entertaining. That’s the kind of man I want to be.

Life moves on
A few days ago I went to David’s Kitchen with one of my friends. If you’ve never been, you should totally check it out – he’s got the best chinese food in Utah, hands down. I’d been hankering for some of his pot stickers and hot/sour soup. It was delicious as always, and David was typically friendly and gracious as our host. When he presented the bill with two fortune cookies, I gave him $30 and opened my cookie. My fortune read as follows:

“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes”

Simple, and perfect for where I was in my world. Time to start living as a hero.

Oh, and sorry for the baseball analogy at the beginning of this post. I really should let Megan take care of those.

“Are you living your highest self?” she asked.

The question didn’t hurt, but it really scared the shit out of me.

My sweetheart had asked me a question I knew the answer to, an answer that I really didn’t like and had been avoiding.  I mean really, why can’t I just take a breather and coast for a little while? Why do I always have to be working on SOMETHING, always GROWING? Can’t I just be content in what I have?

The deeper truth is that I’m NOT content with what I have. Oh, I can coast along and pretend that it’s true, and I can always put on the “Mask of J” and play the part of the enlightened one, the inspiring one, the brilliant one, the entertaining one, the one people want to be around… Underneath the mask, I’m still just me. I DON’T have answers, I just know what to say to appear like I do. The thing is, I really WANT to be what the mask appears to be – I don’t want to play the role, I want to BE that man.

But that requires living my highest self, and that’s scary. What if the mask is a better version of me than the truth?

Right now, whether I like it or not, I am the leader of a group of six people. These six individuals have been entrusted with the work of inspiring and coaching a group of 22 people to take on the relationships in their lives and make huge changes to the way they view the world and live their lives – inspiring these 22 people to live their highest self. I’ve been entrusted with the work of inspiring, challenging and coaching the 6 people leading them to do the same. What I know for sure is that if I’m not living my highest self, I can’t expect my coaches to live theirs, and they can’t expect their trainees to do any differently.

So it comes to this. Living my highest self is not just about me. We’re all connected somehow.

Here goes…

On Tuesday, as you no doubt have heard, a 7.0 earthquake struck and all but destroyed the tiny (and desperately poor) nation of Haiti. The tragedy and damage are almost incomprehensible. Tens of thousands of people dead, three times that many injured or missing, and approximately 3 million affected. As I have read news reports and followed the pleas for donations on Facebook, I was most affected by President Obama’s position that “We have to be there in their time of need. We have to be there for them.”

Just a short time ago, one of my close friends attempted to end his life, and I posted much of my reaction to it here. Had I been there for him, if he had come to the conclusion that the lives of his friends would be better without him as a part? And have I been there for him since?

I’ve reflected on the President’s admonition not just as it applies to the people of Haiti who so desperately and obviously need our help, but to my circle of influence as well. I believe that we all share a commonality, that each of us are connected. what hurts me affects you, what brings you joy, lifts my spirits, etc. We are all inextricably connected in one way or another, and regardless of ideologies, politics, religions or station in life, I believe we CAN be there for each other, and as the president said, “we must”.

As this year has started, I am in a place of turmoil and renewed growth. What I have said jokingly that I aspired to be is no longer of any appeal. I want to be there for people. I want to be a support, a friend, a trusted companion and an inspiring man. It’s not so much a “New Year’s Resolution” as a stand I am choosing.

I’ve just recently discovered a new show that I love. It premiered on November 29th on The Travel Channel, and I haven’t missed an episode. It’s called Meet The Natives, and it’s probably NOT what you think.

The basic premise is that five members of a tribe indigenous to the tiny South Pacific island of Tanna journey to the USA to meet the natives of America and share their wisdom and kindness.

There’s not much more to it than that. As they journey across the US, staying in the homes of host families in six cities. Their experiences are drastically different in each of the cities they visit and the homes in which they stay, but their simple wisdom is the same. They are open to any experience the host family shares with them, from a say at the spa in Orange County, California (where they learned about grooming, shaving, and waxing as well as mud baths) to the towering sky-scrapers of New York City, where they had difficulty locating the sun over the tops of the buildings (very disconcerting for them).

What compels me to watch week after week is that these five men have no judgement about how these different families live. In fact, as their host family in Peoria, Illinois put it, after seeing the simple joy that their visitors took in just being together, the family was somewhat embarrassed about parts of their lifestyle and the things they do to fill their lives rather than just take joy in each other.

One of the other things I really love about these men is that in addition to their chief, translator, and medicine man, they brought their head dancer who is always ready to sing or dance (and get everyone involved with him) and their “Happy Man” whose only job on the island is to generate love and happiness. In fact, he said before leaving for America, “I will make them happy! It’s great!” And the truth is, he does just that with every family he meets. What a concept! How many of us would be better off having a Happy Man or Woman in our life?

In fact, I was surprised at how just about every one of the host families had bonded with these men so deeply over just a few short days. Most of the host families were in tears as the men left, having been touched so deeply by these wonderful teachers from a tiny island thousands of miles away and completely foreign to them that their emotions simply overflowed.

And I’ve been touched by justy watching them. These men are truly teachers of joy, happiness, and simplicity. Their only purpose is to share a message of peace and harmony with the Americans, and the do so in a gentle and unassuming fashion, never even thinking that their way may be “better” or that our own ways are “wrong”.

It’s a wonderful show, and it’s not real often I find a show that reminds me of the difference I make and inspires me to be the open compassionate man that I am.

Check it out, let me know what your thoughts are.