In my last post, I told the conclusion of my recent real life ghost story. Along with it, I shared something that adventure taught me about finding happiness – choose to embrace it all. In this post, I’ll unpack that idea further.
Throughout my ghost hunting experience, choosing to embrace it all meant focusing on the good and joyful aspects of each step. That doesn’t mean I denied the exertion and the injuries of the search or my disappointment at the commonplace explanation of the light’s source. It means I chose to focus on the child-like wonder during the search phase and the feeling of accomplishment in the unmasking phase.
It makes me think of the parenting approach my wife, Lisa, and I tried to take with our kids. Every season of child raising had its challenges but they each had their joys too. We did our imperfect best to embrace it all, in every season, finding the good and the wonder at each stage. Diapers and sleepless nights were hard but holding a sleeping infant was amazing. The teen years brought worries and challenges galore but it was awesome to have real conversations with our kids and watch them grow into thoughtful young adults.
My feet in Santorini, Greece
When they left the house for good (they are 24 and 21 now), we let ourselves be sad for about week and then took a trip to Greece with friends to celebrate becoming empty nesters. In those parenting years, choosing to embrace it all led to happiness not by denying the reality of the difficulties but by finding and focusing on the good and joyful aspects of each step.
Think of the seasons. Each has things you could complain about. The muddy sludge and allergies of spring. The heat and humidity of summer. The impending doom that hangs over autumn. The cold and darkness of winter. But each has amazing things as well. The new life and promise of spring. The sunshine and recreation of summer. The crispness and beauty of autumn. The stillness and snow covered wonder of winter. Which will you choose to focus on?
Some clarification on this point. Obviously, not everything in your life is equally enjoyable or offers the same degree of potential happiness. Right now some of you are going through terrible trials and struggles. In no way do I mean to minimize your pain. What I’m saying is that even the hardest things we face provide an opportunity for something good. During college I learned some horrible news that I knew would affect me deeply for many years. While I was devastated and grieving, I found a spark of hope underneath it all, a quiet excitement that came from knowing that going through this journey could make me a better, stronger person if I let it. That experience was one of the lowest and most difficult seasons of my life but I am so grateful for the things I learned and who I became through it. I did my best to embrace it all.
What does applying this idea look like in your life? Here’s a couple examples:
1. If you struggle to find happiness at work, an obvious though often challenging first step is to consider moving toward a more fulfilling career. In the meantime, try to celebrate that you get to be productive, help provide for yourself and your family, be a positive influence on your co-workers, and hopefully do something meaningful.
2. If you’re having a hard time finding happiness in your relationships, first make sure they are healthy and have proper boundaries. Then choose to embrace the time you have with family and friends, roommates and co-workers. Look for and focus on the good in every person you know. Try to savor the relationships in your life, even when it’s difficult, knowing that they will likely change or end more quickly than you think.
We all want to be happy. Life is filled with obstacles to fulfilling that desire and we need to find a variety of ways to overcome them. Choosing to embrace it all is just one approach that’s been helpful for me. Look for the good, the beautiful, and the joyful in every season. Choose to embrace it all. If you do, you’ll take another happy step toward Becoming Yourself.
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Spiritual Sidebar (for those of you with a spiritual bent): My belief in and relationship with God definitely helps me “choose to embrace it all.” Here’s a verse from the Bible that relates to this idea:
I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:12-13 (New Living Translation)
I had an impromptu conversation with a good friend a while ago. She’s in her thirties, highly intelligent and inquisitive about life. She grew up going to church but stopped after high school. Since then, by her own admission, she hadn’t thought much about God until recently. She said she had a question for me. It went something like this:
“When I’m in nature, I feel like there’s something else out there with me. It’s like I’m sensing something bigger than myself but I don’t know what it is. I’m not sure if I think that’s God or something else. How can I tell?”
A clarification before going any further. The point of this post is not to try to prove the existence of God or to convince anyone to believe like I do. I consider myself a “faith and reason” person, meaning that I believe in God because of some very personal, subjective experiences I’ve had and also because of some intellectual reasons that I find compelling. But sharing those is not my goal here. I just want to give one of many potential frameworks that you could use to address the God question if you are like my friend.
Sometimes when we’re wrestling with what we believe about something, having someone else ask us specific questions about that topic can help clarify our thinking. So I asked her a series of questions:
You may read those questions and have different answers than my friend did, which lead you to a different conclusion. Either way, I think the “is there a God” question is an important one for each of us to answer one way or the other. Why? Because it has pretty big implications on your worldview, the way you see life and your place in it. And your worldview has a huge impact on your choices and actions, on how you live and who you become.
A long time ago I was making small talk with someone when he started talking about extra-marital affairs. I had asked him why he changed jobs. He said he left his old career because cheating on your spouse was rampant in that industry. To get away from that environment, he moved to a more family-oriented occupation. I admired him for that. A year after our conversation he had an affair with someone at his new job.
Please hear me clearly, I am not throwing stones at this guy. I know myself well enough to remember how I’ve failed in various ways in the past and how vulnerable I am to failing again in the future. We all have our issues. We’ve all fallen short of the person we want to be, many times. I use that story to remind me that if I want to become my best self, I have to own my own problems vs. blaming other people or my circumstances for my shortcomings.
Here’s the difficult truth I have to embrace – the biggest problem I have in becoming the person I want to be is ME. Not my job. Not my spouse. Not how much money I have. Not my kids. Not my circumstance. It’s me. My attitude. My choices. My perspective. My thoughts. My actions. Me. And, if you’re like me, I’m guessing your biggest problem is you.
So be honest with yourself. Stop blaming external things. Own your own issues. Define your goals. Articulate your dreams. Make a plan. Take the next step. Get some help. Turn to friends, faith, family, experts, whomever and whatever you can for guidance and support. It’s not easy but it’s so worth it. You can do this! And if you do, you’ll take a giant leap toward Becoming Yourself.