Year: 2023

How many of us are walking around with the damage done (to us) in the past, severely coloring our steps into the future? All of us. Yes, past mistakes are to be learned from but not a constant whipping in slavery to the past mistake. Learning from mistakes is important, but what is equally important is moving on. We must learn the lesson and MOVE ON. If we don’t, if we stay in agony over the mistakes made in the past, it breaks down our mind and messes up our future (we don’t perform well in the next shift.)

Sports Coaches have ways of dealing with this. In the NFL you will see players do push-ups who drop passes. You will see the coaches often throw the ball right back to the same player, so the dropped pass doesn’t stay in the players’ head and his future performance hindered. you will also see basketball players with rubber bands on their wrists. The rubber band is to snap their inner wrist in punishment for a mistake made, but once the sting is gone, so is thinking about the mistake.

I wear this. A rubber band with the Smile in the ARENA logos (and website here) scrunched to show the writing. When I make an error, I snap the band in punishment for the mistake but also as a reminder to move on and not let the past mistake mess up my next shift out in the world.

whether it’s push-ups, rubber bands, or anything in between: when you make a mistake, minor or major, accept the punishment, learn the lesson, and most importantly – MOVE ON.

Now, equipped with the knowledge of lessons learned, let the past go, do your pushups, snap your band, smile, and get out there and have a great next shift out in the arena of life!!!

I sit here about to play D4 hockey, I started playing ice hockey after a 20 year break 6 months ago. I am not good enough. I sit here and think: Roosevelt was Man in the ARENA, I play at 3 different ice ARENAs, what is this word, ARENA? Apparently the literal translation is latin for “sand.” The coliseum has a sand floor. Arena is a place for combat in public. Ready or not, here I come, smiling in the (ice) arena.

Whether it’s a professional path, you deciding you are going to better yourself, or in any other aspect of life where you are going in the right direction and are overwhelmed by haters, complainers, negativity spewing obstacles preying on your will – horse blinders. Focus on what’s in front of you, go only FORWARD

Behind Us: They say the windshield of a car is so much bigger than the rear view mirror because we should focus all that much more on what is in front of us, not on what’s in our toxic past only serving to weigh us down.

To Our Sides: we are constantly bombarded by people attacking our journey- organizations asserting dominance over your path, complainers too coward to get off the sidelines themselves, the world happier with you being a sheep. Put horse blinders on and focus forward.

People love to tell people what to do. A little bit of power infecting their ego. People criticize what they don’t have the courage to do. Even saying you are going to eat better, eat more fruit, simple, right? Go tell someone they will say but the sugar is high and isn’t healthy. Nice attitude, you should probably have more fruit.

To those with power over us: jobs, organizations, the public, government, they all want you in line and quiet. It’s better to beg forgiveness than to ask for permission because you just won’t get it and be sure if you need to ask permission that the right entity have dominion over you.

I started this blog as a resource for those fighting in life, a meditations for my son, which makes this next part a little weird but I am telling my son anyway, even if the person in power is me. Connor, when you are going in a direction you know to be correct, righteous, and honorable, smile and nod to those that need to block your path, and go forward. Only God above you, in that direction, towards the good, the righteous, let the chickens cluck

I let a trial attorney know I was nominating her for an award. She said she was touched but a different attorney would win, one who has gotten million dollar verdicts. I said I don’t care, I’m still nominating her. I told her I’m into people that get their ass kicked, not just get victories.

I am into the person that shows up to the flagpole at 3pm to confront their bully. I don’t care who wins the fight. Our bully can be a person, an addiction, an event, a disorder, a sickness, it can often be ourselves.

Our arena can be school, the office, court, a cage, or in silence. What matters isn’t the type of arena, the critic, the fan, the winner or the loser of the fight to come. What matters is that we show up. So show up, smiling.

I was playing hockey and (crazy, if you would have told me I’d be playing hockey 6 months ago, I would have laughed – quit drinking, start living) I got tripped from behind. My back hit the ice which slingshotted my head into the ice: wham! All thoughts erased in an instant. Headache, mental fog, dizzy, ears ringing, where am I? Not here. I really got my bell rung, 2 days later I still feel the effects, maybe I shouldn’t play hockey tonight. Nah, still playing (dumb, I know).

As I think about it, feeling the effects of a slight concussion or at least a good bell-ringing, I can’t help but think getting a good head whack/concussion is what PTSD episodes feel like, what trauma feels like. Complete overwhelm at the same time as a complete erase of all things. Dizzy, ears ringing, unstable psyche, slight headache, “thick” thoughts that can’t be held onto, dissociation.

what do I do in these moments? It’s like the reversal of the old saying “Don’t just stand there, do something!” But instead, “don’t just do something, stand there.” We often have to keep doing something, move, solve, what’s next?” Well, for now, give that part of the brain a break and just be, let your brain find its stability, let your life find its stability after really bad news, trauma, disaster, let it be before trying to solve it. Time is a beautiful monster, don’t fight it, it wins. But it also heals, so let it.

When life really rocks you, when life concusses you, if you aren’t in danger or have to move quick, stop, don’t just do something to do something, stand there. Recharge, reset, to reengage.

I want X, then I will be happy. I get X, time passes, then I want Y, then I think I will be happy. Whether or not I get Y, I am never happy, the cycle continues. This is the hedonistic treadmill and we never get off. “Your conditions for happiness are the chains of your suffering.” You see, happiness is one of those tricky things where in order to get it, we have to be it. We have a base line level of happiness that we return to. We return to this baseline, regardless of the bad and the good that happens to us, see below. 

In a prior post, I stated life is like the stock market, we have our ups and our downs, but we revert to the mean. So if we can make sure we are overall going in an upward trajectory, to accept the highs and lows as necessary and invest in the “index fund” of life. If we think our desires = happiness, we are mistaken, every single time. If it worked, you would have been happy a long time ago, when all you wanted as a kid was an ice cream cone. But guess what, times changed, so did you, and so did what would make you happy. 

What would make you happy now? A bigger house? A Ferrari? How many Ferraris could you get before THAT was boring? 1? 100? Desire is an itch that cannot be scratched. 

If i think a $100 million mega yacht will make me happy then I have 3 options: 1) I can never be happy if I don’t get it, 2) I get it, then something else will make me happy, or 3) my happiness had nothing to do with a $100 million mega yacht. Desire is a trickster, a magician, a liar that our brain gets tricked by every single time. More, more, more, never enough until like drinking alcohol, it’s more until too much. 

So how do we get off the treadmill? “Conscious appreciation.” There is no scarcity, except in your mind. You are enough. You have enough. Your level of happiness is what you are and will be, regardless of the good and the bad things that happen to you. practice gratitude for what you are and what you have, that person is what a past you would have dreamed of being. Conscious appreciation- being grateful, is the mental hijack to be in the NOW, not the regret of the past or the fear of the future.

This does not mean to stop achieving, merely to stop attaching your happiness to it. To find happiness, be happy. Today, tonight, tomorrow. Be in the now, consciously appreciative, smile in the arena. 

But, they say “money doesn’t buy happiness but I’d rather cry in a Ferrari” haha 

The unbelievably beautiful future or perhaps the catastrophe coming, the regret and pain of the past. How often do we spend wishing we would have acted differently? A mistake made, a witty counter to an argument we wish we would have said in the moment, wishing we would have. We could have, we would have, we should have. 

How often do we spend in agony thinking of the pain yet to come? The school speech, the work presentation, trial, Monday morning on a Sunday night. In a declassified interrogation manual, the CIA found that a person is more likely to talk with the fear of pain, rather than the inflecting of pain. Know why? Imagination. 

We are extremely creative, us humans, often to our own detriment. In our minds we can imagine the worst of torture chambers, true catastrophic demise that neither happened in the past or will happen in the future. How often do we do the thing we are afraid of and say “that wasn’t so bad!” How often do we think we want a cheeseburger, nicotine, more money, and the reality wasn’t as good/bad as we imagined? 

Stay in the now, the past wasn’t as good/bad as we think it was, the future won’t be as great/awful as we think it will be. Nothing is forever, you will be ok. Until tomorrow, smile in the arena of life today.

If you want to feel better, be kind to someone else. This Smile in the Arena stuff is not bullshit. Spreading kindness, through at least a smile to others, drops a pebble and the ripples spread and spread. The ripples change the world.

I received this letter from my mother. “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” Aesop. The letter calls me “dear one” and goes on to show how spreading kindness is so significant to others, no matter how small we “think” it is. My mother, as usual, backs her stance with not just her opinion but through the Journal of Experimental Psychology and a professor at the University of Texas, Austin.

Great work mom, I agree with all of my heart what we try to do. But, enough writing about it, let’s go live it! See you out there in the arena mom, I know I will meet you there, with both of us smiling.

As humans, we suffer. All too often we are in the pain, guilt, regret of the past or the worry, fear, imagined catastrophe of the future. In the middle is the now, wheee we have control, where the past is gone and the future isn’t here yet. But how?

To be in the now, radically accept reality as it is. “The Power of Now” is a masterful book on the Now -which should be studied by all. Breathing and focusing on what our breath, brings us to the now. What also brings us to the now is to imagine that you are recording1 all that you see. Imagine everything you see is you recording. What you think, see., feel, this is the live footage being recorded that will be used and relied on later.

The time is now, be in now, now? Action!!!

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Why do bad things happen? Why can’t we control things enough to stop the bad things? The pain, regret, guilt, self-condemnation of past mistakes, why didn’t we do better? Why did the bad things happen? I heard a line once, which was “everyone is doing the best they can, with the information they had at the time.” True. But the inexplainable bad things that happen to us, not what we decide, what about them? Well the fact is, it’s out of our control. We don’t control the bad things that happen to us, we can only control how we respond.

Misery is unavoidable, bad things will happen, it is not in our control. Thank God bad things do happen or we wouldn’t be able to feel what good things feel like. What is sunshine without the rain? Miserable things happening to us are not in our control, but staying miserable is. A man lost his child and refused to stay miserable. “I refuse to have her death, the reason be something bad, it must be for something good.” Misery sucks. If it’s not good, then it’s good cause to cause good.

Good cause is a legal term denoting adequate or substantial grounds or reason to take a certain action, or to fail to take an action prescribed by law. So, misery is good cause to cause good in the world. Help another, be kind, smile, laugh, do some good. The worse things get, the more “good cause” you have to cause good. The world is cold, go be warm to someone.