The Secret to Finding Happiness

I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news.  After years and years of research and observation I’m able to share with you the secret to living a happy life, and I know you’re excited as I am.  That’s the good news!  The bad news is it isn’t easy and it involves doing a lot of the things you were taught in school but probably don’t enjoy all that much.

Ready?

The key to finding happiness is… knowledge.

FACT: Every problem in your life and every hurdle you will encounter has been already been worked through and solved by someone else smarter than you.  Chances are that someone wrote the solution in a book that you can pick up for a couple bucks.  There is some GREAT advice out there, you just have to be willing to seek it out and read a book or three.  It’s a shame that our education system instills in us a total disdain for books because for many of us our first experience with reading was with books we don’t care about that were being forced down our throats.  I know for me it took two solid years of cool-down after college before I really started reading again.  Tim Sanders, author of the best-selling book Love Is the Killer App said this about reading books:

Do you try and even mixture- magazines, books, television, and radio?  I say there is no option.  I’ve looked at all the possibilities and books are the answer.  Books should be your diet’s staple because they are the complete thought-meal, containing hypotheses, data, research, and conclusions, combined in a thorough attempt to transfer knowledge.  If they’re good, they contain that essential value prop, that meta-idea, or that statement of fact that gives the reader a unique perspective.

I couldn’t agree more.  So what now?  Here are a few of my favorite books, broken down into some categories that might help you decide which one suits you best.

For the “I don’t really like to read” guy (or girl):

The Dip by Seth Godin

I recommend this book to a lot of “first time” readers, because it really helped me get into reading.  It’s tiny and can be read in one waiting room session at the dentist.  I’ve found that once my friends read this book and learn the simple yet profound message that’s contained in it, the idea “hey, I could really learn something from books” pops in their head, and things seem to take off from there.

For the “I really like fiction, tell me a story!” person:

The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho

This is a classic, I almost feel silly recommending it because so many people have read it, but there’s a good reason for that.  It’s a very inspirational story about realizing and following your dreams.  It’s full of lessons and Paolo Coelho weaves everything into a beautiful story that everyone will love.

Here are a few more of my favorites, also check out my friend Derek Sivers’ book list, he’s got some great books on it and he does a great job breaking down the value of each book.

17 Lies That Are Holding You Back & The Truth That Will Set You Free by Steve Chandler

A very straight forward book that applies to anyone looking to improve their life.  Out of all the self-help books I’ve read this one cuts straight to the chase and I found it very useful.

Lynchpin by Seth Godin

I found this book surprisingly useful to creative types.  It’s practically a must read if you want to find more fulfillment with your job but it’s got some great advice too for those who struggle with creativity.

The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss

This book changes lives.  If you like being the kind of person who thinks outside the lines and doesn’t go with the status quo, this is your book.  Don’t read it if #1 You want to stay in your current crappy job and #2 If you enjoy “always fitting in”.

For me personally, I can’t begin to describe the difference books have made in my life.  To maximize the amount of reading I do, I’ve been reading a lot of audiobooks lately, and even though I don’t spend a ton of time in my car, I typically go through one audiobook every 2 weeks, between working out and driving.  Audible.com gives you one free audiobook when you sign up, it’s worth checking out!

Done with New Year’s Resolutions

Well it’s that time of year again. New Year’s Resolutions! I’ll be the first to admit, I love setting goals and New Year’s for goal setters is like Christmas for little kids. Time to flex those goal setting muscles, right? Time to encourage all your friends to set lofty goals and “really mean them” this time, right?

Well… I’m done.

I have nothing against resolutions, I’ve been making them for years now but this year I’m quitting them. I could give you a thousand reasons why they do or don’t work and we could spend all day getting into the psychology of goal setting but I’m not going to do that either. Here is the one sentence reason I’m not doing them.

I did them, they didn’t work for me, so I’m stopping.

Simple as that. Maybe they work for you, maybe they don’t, but years of trial and error have shown that my brain cares as much about New Year’s Resolutions as it does about the WNBA.

This got me thinking… why did it take me so long to come to this conclusion? All you have to do is scroll back through my previous blog posts and you’ll see “December 2009 – Dave is psyched about his 2010 resolutions!!!”. Same thing in 2008, and 2007. I guess we all have this habit of doing things just for the sake of doing them. We make New Year’s Resolutions so we can make New Year’s Resolutions. We work so we can say we “worked”. Why? If I was a football coach and I called a play for the running back to get the ball and run off the right-tackle, and the back didn’t gain any yards, then I called the play again, and again, and AGAIN, still with the same result, I’d get fired and you would think I was insane (or coached for the Chargers). This post isn’t about not making New Year’s Resolutions, it’s about stopping habits that don’t do anything for us.

I guess you could say that my New Year’s Resolution is to stop making New Year’s Resolutions. Hey you know what? That might be the first resolution I actually keep.

The Wedding Cake Facial

I don’t care what she says, no doesn’t always mean no.

Sometimes when a woman says “no” she means “I want you to do this but I can’t ask for it”. How many times do we see this today? I could write a whole book on this topic but I’m just going to stick to one example today.

Wedding cake.

Let me just make this very clear. Wedding cake was meant to be smashed in faces of the groom AND the bride. That is the way things should be but somewhere along the line a few women started telling men “ohhh it will ruin my make-up and all the time I put into making myself look good will be ruined”. Men being the logical people we are thought “oh she’s right, that makes sense so we should follow that reasoning”. What happened to emotion? What happened to the value of passion and playfulness in marriage? Isn’t that what’s missing from MOST marriages today?

What if instead of listening to his new bride, the man cuts a piece of cake, gets ready to feed her but instead looks his wife in the eyes, says “baby, I love you, but you look better like this…”, then smashes cake in her face (we would save the hair). Then after both parties have sufficiently smashed cake in each other’s faces they exchange a passionate, cake-filled kiss.

That action is what we crave in relationships today. There is no passion when we think logically and women, although they are amazing emotional beings, are being taught more and more to think logically. When a man knows a woman’s true heart and can penetrate that logic with passion and emotion, he will unlock the true beauty of a woman and the relationship will prosper.

Plus, aren’t cake smashing pictures the best?

My Art is Communication

I’ve been playing gigs at bars since before I was old enough to drink in them, and one thing has always amazed me:  I don’t get sick of playing the same cover songs night after night.  As I’m playing The Joker for the thousandth time on a stage in a bar somewhere I never think “oh here we go again…”, I’m still excited to hear people’s reaction and to make them want to sing a long.

 

The most beautiful thing about art is that it’s never boring.  It’s spontaneous, exciting and always changing.  It may seem that on the surface I play the same songs night after night but the music is not my art, my art is communication.  My art is how I interact with every single person that steps into the bar.  My art is how I call out to the girls walking by, telling them they should join us inside.  My art is the interaction with the listeners, and that is always changing, always exciting.

 

To me, music is and has always been about communication and interaction.  What I’m not saying is “music should always be about communication and interaction”, that’s not true.  For me, it’s what brings it home.  It’s the reason I started playing guitar in the first place… I saw how people reacted to a performance (I saw how girls reacted too).

 

Next time you see me play, keep that in the back of your mind.  If you want proof of all the things I just wrote here there is an easy way to do it.  Get a few friends together and start reacting to what I’m doing.  You can cheer, chant my name, dance, whatever, just get a little crazy and watch what happens. I’ll get even more excited, sing with more passion and feed that energy right back to you, it happens every time and nothing makes me happier.

 

How could I get sick of that?

 

Stop Trying to Save Money

I’ll be honest here, I don’t consider myself “good at saving money”.  After talking to a lot of people and giving them the “you should save money” advice, I’ve decided to change my tune.  How realistic is that we just change our ways and start saving more money?  It’s not.  Here’s something better.

Invest in yourself.

One of the things I’ve been able to do in the last 5 years is take the money I’ve made and invest in myself.  As a Navy officer I made enough money to live comfortably and spend money on the side.  Instead of buying expensive toys I paid for voice lessons.  Instead of spending money on nightlife, I paid a manager to help guide my career.  Especially in the last 2 or 3 years, I didn’t save much money, but I did spend a lot of money on things that would benefit me in the long run.  Is that to say that I didn’t have fun?  No way.  I prefer spending instead of saving, and by spending on things that would benefit me, I was not letting the money burn a hole in my pocket.

Buy some books, hire a coach, take some classes.  Your stock will go up, buy it now and get the rewards later.

 

What Motivates You?

I got this question the other day in an interview.  It’s an interesting question that I’ve never really felt like I had a good answer to until now so I thought I’d share it.

I’m motivated by the clock on the wall.

I’m motivated by the seconds that tick away, the minutes that pass by and the days and weeks they become.

I’m fully conscious of the fact that we are only here for a limited time, and soon we’ll all be gone.  Too often we act as if we’ll be here forever, and so many people don’t have a sense of urgency.  It’s crazy, that phrase use to get tossed around while I was a midshipman at the Naval Academy all the time.  As I had coffee with a classmate of mine yesterday, I realized it has a totally new meaning for me.  It means that there really is no time to waste.  Does that mean you won’t find me playing the occasional mindless game on my iPhone?  No.  It means that the big decisions in my life are built around the principle that I’m here for a finite amount of years and my job is to give my gift.  My job is to see that through and given then choice between something with short term benefits or something that will live on after I’m gone, I’ll always choose what contributes to my legacy.

As beautiful as a one way ticket

I come from a conservative town.  Not conservative in the sense that we love Jesus but in the sense that we typically play things safe when it comes to big life decisions. As I had coffee with a fellow Massachusetts transplant yesterday I realized something interesting about moving to a new city.

We move to embrace uncertainty.

Whether we realize it or not, something about packing a suitcase, buying a one way ticket and moving with no job lined up is just so damn appealing.  But why?  Why does part of us feel a little guilty about not having a job lined up like our parents recommended?  The reason we’re moving isn’t just for the change of scenery (or the kick-ass weather in California) it’s so we can challenge ourself with some uncertainty.  We want to show up and realize that we’ve got to build this from the ground up.  THAT truly is the American dream, and we get to live it in our own way by leaving everything behind and starting new.

What about failure?

If the goal is truly to get out on your own, challenge yourself and embrace uncertainty than the only failure is inaction.  When the journey is the reward, you can’t fail.

There is something so beautiful about a one way ticket.