Author: Smile in the Arena

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My stepfather, Chet Fox, has a brilliant view of embracing failure as a natural byproduct of effort: “to get into the baseball hall of fame you need a batting average of .300. That means they had to fail 70% of the time and failing 70% of the time is good enough to get you in the hall of fame!” 

Trying and failing are the ingredients of success, the steps to victory, the path to winning. Don’t fear effort and failure, SEEK IT. It means you are on the path to victory!

Connor & Gemma: This is what I studied in my over a year long PTSD meltdown. Happiness and the study of it. In line with the hedonic treadmill, we think buying a Lamborghini will make us happy. So either we get a Lamborghini or we can never be happy? That cant be right. But let’s say it was true and we did. How many days in a row could we buy a brand new Lamborghini before it turned into a chore we complained about having to do? 3? 7? 17? Idk but guaranteed there is a number and it’s not a big one.

One of the ways getting what we want isn’t how to achieve happiness. It’s not hiding being a bigger paycheck, a promotion, or anything else. No matter what we want, whether we get it or not, it will just be something else. That’s the treadmill.

This is why “if x THEN I’ll be happy” is wrong. there is no X. If we get x, we aren’t satisfied for long, there is just another x, THEN I’ll be happy. Which is why one of my favorite quotes is “your conditions for happiness are the chains of your suffering.” We are slaves to thinking getting what we want will make us happy when getting what we want will be forever and will constantly be changing whether we get it or not.

So, if getting something isn’t what makes us happy, what’s the answer? How do you stay from that regret of the past and the fear of the future?

Right in line with the power of now – gratitude. Conscious appreciation. In order to become happy, be happy. Be happy by gratitude.

In line with this, The stoics say don’t hope for anything to be a certain way, ever. We will be wrong or just want something else. We are to hope things will be exactly as they will, exactly as they are supposed to then there is no disappointment. Acceptance. This is also “letting go” ending the resistance to what is. Ending the animal thrashing in a cage for what we want which we just proved won’t ever make us happy.

A remix of an old saying I made is this – a man went to the Buddha and said “I want to be happy.” The Buddha said “do not add, take away. take away the I, that’s the ego, remove the ego. Now remove the “want.” Want is craving , it is the body, it is what we think we desire which will always change, remove the want. Remove “to be” to be is the future. Remove the fear of the future and the pain and regret of the past, be in the now. What are we left with? Happy. So be happy. To be happy, remove everything stopping it and be happy. To find happiness, be it, not later, now.”

Be happy. Now, not later. How? Gratefulness and appreciation. If you can’t be happy now, what makes you think you will be able to be happy later? With more stuff you will get bored of?

Smile my children, laugh. Both, always. Smile most when you most don’t want to, smiling is a high jack to gratefulness. It can ALWAYS be worse – that’s how you can be grateful in any moment.

I saw this on the internet and it’s a visual of one of my favorite quotes: “Be kind to everyone, for everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

Aim your goals at the stars, if you miss, you’ll at least land on the moon. Or as James Cameron says, “If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success.”

if you only want to achieve mediocrity, don’t set goals and go after them. You will achieve nothing if you take no risks, experience no failure, and stay in your comfort zone. Aim your goals so high that no matter how close you get to your goal, you will have achieved so much more than if you aimed low and achieved it.

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.