Reinventing Myself

An Unexpected Job Offer

2009-04-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

We design our lives through the power of choices.
--Richard Bach

Sixteen days ago, I answered a Craigslist ad for SEIU union organizer trainees. It requested that applicants submit a resume. I didn't, because I didn't have any work experience even tangentially related to union organizing. But what I did do is apply for the job by writing a very candid letter explaining why I was interested in the job and why I believed that my lack of experience needn't be an issue. When I didn't hear back from anyone after two weeks, I believed that that was the end of it.

So when I answered the phone two days ago, I was very surprised to be speaking to the woman to whom I'd submitted my application and to be subjected to an on-the-spot job interview over the phone. I wasn't nearly as well prepared as I would have been for a face-to-face interview, but I apparently did well enough between the interview and my letter to be asked if I was interested in taking the job. I replied that I would need to discuss it with my wife and that I would get back to her the next day.

I ended up declining the offer partly because, after hearing what the interviewer said and reflecting on it, I decided that I wasn't cut out for the kind of work a union organizer does. That job would have required me to go to places of employment where employers didn't want me, to try to talk to people who who didn't want to be seen talking with me, to attempt to reassure people who were afraid to start or join a union that they and their families would be safe from vindictive employers, and to comfort and help people who'd lost their jobs because of union involvement.

Furthermore, I was told that SEIU organizers average twelve to fifteen hour work days six days a week and often travel away from home for days at a time. Neither I nor my wife liked the sound of that.

It sounds to me as though the union is the focal point of the union organizer's existence. Family comes second, and there's virtually no time left for outside interests. I wasn't up for that. I love my wife and cats, and I have outside interests, such as my reading, writing, bowling, and friends. I'll have more to say about my writing in my next post.

Part of my reinvention process is to make wise decisions and follow through with them. I believe that I made the right decision in this case. I also believe that my best chance of landing the right job is not to try to snow people with BS resumes or answers to interview questions but to turn my weaknesses in job experience into a strength by being uncommonly open and honest in a positive way about what I haven't done in my life but what I nevertheless believe that I can do with the aptitudes I have and with the skills I either have or am capable of developing.

Overcoming Perfectionism

2009-04-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.
--Leonard Cohen from "Anthem"

In my previous lifetime or, at least, my previous blog, I posted an entry about how challenging it is for me to interpret most poetry or song lyrics. But I think I may understand the meaning of Cohen's words above. I don't understand the entire song, but I interpret the words above to mean that we should say and do the best we can and not worry about being perfect. Nobody's perfect. We all make mistakes, and it's from those mistakes that we learn valuable lessons and grow wiser.

This is something I need to take to heart. I don't know how many times I've given up in discouragement after the most trivial mistakes. If I couldn't be perfect, I'd just stop trying to be the best that I could.

I've sometimes felt this way in my efforts to reinvent myself. And I've been feeling it even more over the past couple of days since accepting a writing job offer for a local online publication. I look around at the qualifications other writers for that publication have that I don't have and I read the superb articles some of them have written, and I want to be so perfect that I find it challenging to even get started. My friend Tom says to just jump right in, but I think the equivalent of, "What if I can't swim like Michael Phelps?"

Well, Leonard Cohen is right. Tom is right. My bell may be a little cracked, but I can still ring it. I may not be Michael Phelps, but I can still make it across the pool, and the more often I do it, the better swimmer I'll become.

Oops!

2009-04-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

Expect the unexpected.

A funny thing happened at the dentist's yesterday. Funny as in unusual. At least, I hope it's unusual.

I went to have a temporary crown removed and a permanent gold crown put in. John, the dental assistant, had removed the temporary and was working to make the permanent crown fit. He had taken it out it several times and made adjustments to it, but it still felt a little tight, so he placed a thread of floss between the crowned and an adjacent tooth and pushed down. Suddenly, the crown flew off and backwards into and down my throat.

My first thought was, "Uh oh." My second thought was, "Oh, God, I hope it didn't go down my trachea! If it did and I can't cough it up, I hope the dentist knows what to do!"

At that point, I told John what happened, and his face took on that "I can't believe what just happened" look. Before either of us said or did anything else, I reflexively swallowed and felt a lump pass down my throat and knew that it was in my esophagus on its way to my stomach and not my lung. Huge relief!

John went to tell the dentist what had happened. He came to make sure that I was okay and then advised me to see my doctor, even though he said the crown would probably just pass through me without causing any problems. John said that was the first time this had ever happened to him in his nine years of dental assisting. My dentist said it was the first time it had happened in his ten years of practice. Certainly, nothing like this had ever happened to me before or to anyone I knew, even though I'd thought about the possibility before. In retrospect, I'm surprised it doesn't happen a lot more often. I smiled and replied, "I guess there's a first time for just about everything."

I don't know how much this incident has to do with reinventing myself, but I think it's a tale worth telling nonetheless. I guess you could say that I'm pretty happy with the way I handled the incident. I was the one who ended up trying to make John feel better more than it being the other way around. And keeping my cool and good cheer in that situation felt so good that I'm now more determined than ever to stay calm and be comforting no matter what's happening around me or to me.

Taking a Career Chance

2009-04-08T19:30:00.000-07:00

The biggest chance you can take is not taking a chance at all.
--Unknown

Part of what it means to reinvent myself is to find gainful employment in a meaningful career. I've long assumed that it would have to be in some kind of clerical capacity. But today I saw an online ad seeking union organizer trainees, and I felt compelled to respond.

I know that some unions have acted irresponsibly over the years, but I also believe that unions have been a godsend to countless workers (and their families) who would have been exploited or abused had they not been protected by unions.

Do I have what it takes to do what a union organizer does? What exactly does a union organizer do? I don't know. But something in me said, "Take a chance and go for it," and so I did, and now I'll see what happens and let you know if anything does.

Reinventing Empathy and Compassion

2009-04-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

Our culture seems to say that if you don’t feel sadness at another person’s distress, you must be indifferent or lacking in emotion. Sadness is falsely equated with compassion. If I were suffering from an illness, and a friend came to me in tears, saying how sorry she felt, it would not do me one bit of good. But if instead she offered me some remedy, I’d be very interested. The sadness by itself is just not useful.

--B. Alan Wallace from The Four Immeasurables

I think highly of B. Alan Wallace, but I'm not sure I agree with the passage above. It seems to me that when we feel empathic sadness over another person's suffering, this is the very definition of compassion. What's more, it can help the other person in two ways. First, it's comforting when we're in distress to know that someone else cares enough about us to experience our suffering along with us and to openly express this to us. Second, feeling another's physical or emotional pain and feeling the sadness that grows out of this empathy may move us to look for ways to help ease the other person's suffering.

The power of empathy and compassion is a premise behind Morgan Spurlock's fascinating series 30 Days. Spurlock was inspired to do this series by the success of his documentary film Super Size Me that had him subsisting on nothing but McDonald's meals three times a day for thirty days. By the end of his experiment, he had gained almost 25 pounds and deteriorated dangerously in his fitness and health. His subsequent TV series 30 Days, about which I posted an entry to my other blog, was on the FX channel and featured people making radical lifestyle changes over the course of thirty days, often living with others whose lifestyles or beliefs diametrically opposed their own. Among the more provocative episodes I saw were a fundamentalist, almost Islamophobic Christian living and worshipping Allah with a Muslim family; a computer software engineer whose job had been outsourced to India going to live with a family in India where individuals from that family held jobs outsourced from America; an adamantly straight person living and frequenting gay bars with a gay roommate; and an atheistic abortion rights activist living with a "pro-life" family.

And then, over the weekend, I saw an episode in which a man who legally immigrated with his family to America from Cuba in the 1950's and who now so strongly opposed illegal immigration that he served with the Minutemen to deter uncocumented aliens from crossing over into this country from Mexico went to live with an undocumented family of seven in a claustrophobic 500 square foot apartment in a rundown area of LA and work as an undocumented day laborer. Toward the end of his stay, he visited the family's relatives in Mexico and saw firsthand the crushing poverty that they and others like them endured and from which his host family had escaped by immigrating to this country illegally, and he was virtually moved to tears by what he witnessed. By the end of his thirty days, his empathy for the plights of illegal immigrants had gr0wn profoundly and the almost violent stridency of his opposition to illegal immigration had softened dramatically.

I was very moved by this episode, and I found my own powerful antipathy to illegal immigration weakening considerably. I still believe that illegal immigration should be stopped or, at least, discouraged, and I still take exception to the militant refusal of illegal immigrants and their supporters to acknowledge that they don't have a "right" to break our nation's immigration laws to come and stay here, but I feel markedly more empathy toward the human beings who are so desperate to escape their dire circumstances in Mexico and Central America that they take the terrible risks and endure the painful sacrifices they do to come and live here the only way they can.

I mention this on my blog about reinventing myself because I believe that opening my mind and heart more to other human beings and their difficulties and suffering is part of my self-reinvention in that it helps me to become the more compassionate and fulfilled person that I long to be. Watching shows such as 30 Days is a modest but important step in this direction.

One Part Lifts the Others

2009-04-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

I am as bad as the worst, but, thank God, I am as good as the best.
--Walt Whitman

Someone wrote to me in private that the problem with efforts to reinvent oneself is that the person who's trying to do the reinventing is the same person who's to be reinvented. Alan Watts used to make a similar argument about trying to enlighten oneself. He said it was the spiritual equivalent of "trying to life yourself up off the ground by tugging at your own bootstraps."

I understand the point, but I disagree with it. I believe that it's based on the false assumption that a human being is a monolithic entity, a unified self. But, in fact, we are a multitude of parts or sub-selves, and some of these parts or sub-selves are wiser and "higher" than others.

In my case, there has always been a part of me that knew I needed to change my life, and it had ideas about how to do it. But it didn't follow through with its ends and means. Today, it is beginning to follow through with its goals and its plans for achieving those goals.

I can't say that my progress has been unbroken and remarkably swift. I take two steps forward and then fall a step back. But then I move forward again. I don't give up the way I used to. I don't tell myself it's a hopeless cause, because I don't know that it is.

I am not trying to lift myself up by my own bootstraps, but, rather, part of me is lifting the rest of me. It's a strenuous, long pull, but there is progress, and I believe that there will continue to be progress.

Physical Reinvention

2009-04-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

Reinvention is noteworthy movement from point A in your life to point B, for whatever point A and point B represent for you.
--Jeff Davidson from The Complete Idiot's Guide To Reinventing Yourself

Personal reinvention can take many forms. It can be as extensive as a complete personal makeover or as partial as taking up crossword puzzles. I've undertaken something pretty extensive, and I realized from the outset that remaking myself includes helping others to remake themselves. I began this blog to further both ends--to inspire myself and others to create positive changes in our lives.

This is why I was delighted to read my Internet friend Mary Lois' blog entry yesterday. Mary Lois undertook a pretty large reinvention of her own when, single and in her later 60's, she moved from Fairhope Alabama to Hoboken New Jersey in late November, 2007. I didn't realize until now just how long ago it was; it had seemed like only a few months ago. In any case, Mary Lois' move has required her to make numerous changes from the life she led for years in Alabama. I encourage you to read all about it in the beautiful prose of her blogs and books.

But now Mary Lois has decided to make yet another big change in her life. She's going on the CRON or longevity diet to lose weight, become more fit, and to live a longer, healthier life. And she says reading my blog has encouraged her not only to do this, but to put it out there on her blog so that knowing that other people know about it will encourage her to stick with it through the hunger pangs long enough to see just how well it can work for her.

Before she went public with this yesterday, she told me what she was planning to do and implicitly encouraged me to go on this diet too. I thought I had enough on my plate, figuratively speaking, and wasn't ready to take on such a radical change in my diet. I'm still not. But I believe that we human beings are comprised of a biological, psychological, and spiritual dimension--body, mind, and spirit--and that if I'm going to transform myself as thoroughly as I wish to, I need to make substantive changes in all three dimensions of my being. So, while I'm not going to take up the CRON diet at this time, I am going to stop eating as much fat and sugar as I have been, and I'm going to significantly increase the amount and variety of my physical exercise. I still need to plan this out in more detail, and when I do, I'll have more to say about it and my progress here.

In the meantime, I want to thank Mary Lois for all the encouragement she's given me over the past few years, to tell her how happy I am to have been able to return the favor in some small way, and to credit her for inspiring me now with her example to take better care of myself physically.

It's my hope that more and more people will discover this blog (and Mary Lois') and that we can become a community inspired to help ourselves and each other along the path to personal reinvention.

Bowling Update

2009-04-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

Money grows on the tree of persistence.
--Japanese proverb

My wife and I went bowling last night. True to what I wrote previously, I worked on throwing the ball two-handed, like Jason Belmonte, and, true to what I wrote before that, I worked on my accuracy and consistently with my regular, one-handed game. And I think I did a pretty a good job with both.

I have a long way to go to get to where I want to be bowling with two hands, but I think I can get there. And I'm very encouraged by the progress I've made with my one-handed game just by paying attention to where I stand on the approach, what board I want to roll the ball over, and how close I get to my target each time.

At one point last night, I rolled twenty balls and got strikes with eighteen of them. Yes, the lanes were easy, as they usually are at Fireside Lanes, but I felt like I executed quite well, and I believe that that had something to do with my striking success.

The more I reinvent my bowling game, the more progress I make toward reiventing myself.

Being Like Belmo

2009-03-30T18:13:00.000-07:00

A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
--Unknown

I'm still pumped from yesterday. For not only did Tiger Woods showcase his extraordinary excellence by winning yet another golf tournament on just his third attempt after coming back from knee surgery and an extended recuperative absence from the game, but, more importantly, Australian Jason Belmonte made March 29, 2009 perhaps the most momentous day in the history of bowling by winning a nationally televised PBA tournament.

Why is this such a big deal? Because Belmonte did it by using two hands and no thumb to roll the ball, and he beat some of the finest professional bowlers on some very challenging lane conditions to accomplish his feat. In other words, he didn't just think "outside the box," he bowled outside it to accomplish what he did, and I predict that the sport will never be the same as a result.

Just as Dick Fosbury revolutionized high jumping by jumping over the bar backwards instead of forwards, I believe that "The Thunder From Down Under" has revolutionized bowling by proving that it's possible to beat the best bowlers in the world on some of the most difficult lane conditions in the world by throwing a bowling ball with two hands instead of just one and taking advantage of the ridiculous power that this release generates when the ball hits the pins.

Some bowlers were already pretty successful with this technique, including some national collegiate bowlers; a Bolivian national junior team ; Finland's Osku Palerma , who appeared on a PBA telecast two years ago; and Belmonte himself, who has done very well in international competition, even winning the World Tenpen Masters tournament in 2007 and finishing high in several PBA tournaments this year.

But receiving the tremendous worldwide media exposure he has recently for his unorthodox style and then capping it off yesterday with his televised PBA tournament championship is something very, very special and is bound to send countless young people scurrying to their local bowling centers not to "be like Mike" but to "be like Belmo." In October of 2007 , the head coach of Junior Team USA said, "This is a style to be reckoned with. It's here to stay." I believe that Jason Belmonte's victory yesterday sealed the deal.

So what does that have to do with me and this blog about reinventing myself? As I wrote previously, I love bowling and want to improve my game as a part of my personal reinvention. Well, what better way to improve my game than to reinvent it by mastering the two-handed style and harnessing its tremendous power to give me an edge against other bowlers my age?

I can see a lot of young people taking up this style, but I don't envision too many 56-year-olds doing it. Good bowlers my age are likely to be set in their ways, but I don't have to be. I'm already a pretty unusual older bowler in that I've done fairly well over the past few years bowling with and without my thumb in the ball. But what if I were to take that a step further by learning to throw the ball well with both hands? Might that give me more control over the thumbless delivery and enable me to unleash a more powerful ball than ever before and let me control the extra power better than before?

Moreover, what if I could skillfully revert to using my thumb and a much less powerful release when lane conditions favored accuracy and finesse over power? Then I would have an unusually versatile game that affords me a much better chance of success on a wide variety of lane conditions.

I think it 's worth a try. More to the point, I believe that if we really want to reinvent ourselves, we must be open to radical changes in the way we think and do things. This doesn't mean changing just for change's sake, and there's no guarantee that radical change will bring success. But if there's tangible reason to think that it might, we shouldn't be afraid to go for it, and we shouldn't let conventional "wisdom" stand in our way.

Groundhog Day Inspiration

2009-03-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

In a training temple, the wake-up bell rings the same time every day. You go to the same place, wear the same clothes, and follow the same routine, and yet each moment is unique. Not distracted by your desire for changed conditions, you can live each moment not knowing what it will bring, seeing the familiar landscape with new eyes.
--Dairyu Michael Wenger Sensei

When Groundhog Day came out in 1993, I had no interest in seeing it. I thought it was just another silly comedy, and I didn't care much for Bill Murray's comedy or acting. But I later heard that this film is much beloved by Buddhists and is highly regarded by people of many religious faiths. It took me a long time to get around to checking it out for myself, but last night I finally sat down and watched it.

Groundhog Day stars Bill Murray as a sarcastic, self-centered weatherman who thinks he's better than his job and the people he works with and who resents being assigned to cover the annual Groundhog Day event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. But he's in for a huge surprise when bad weather strands him overnight in town after the event, and when he wakes up in the morning, it's Groundhog Day all over again and everything goes the same way except for subtle changes resulting from small differences in the way he behaves toward others and his circumstances. The same thing happens the next morning and for countless mornings after that. Yet, he is the only one who seems to realize that the day is repeating, and gradually he progresses from surprise to effort aimed at exploiting what he's learned from previous times to boredom to suicidal depression to resignation to gradual transformation into joyful selflessness and personal fulfillment.

Buddhists have written about how the film symbolizes liberation from samsara , and people from other religions have seen other religious meanings in it. I think they all make sense. Speaking for myself and my preoccupation with personal reinvention, I simply see the film as symbolizing how someone who tires of going through day after day in the same stagnating way and realizes that he ultimately has nothing to lose and everything to gain by changing the way he thinks and behaves can rise above his predicament by becoming a better, more selfless human being. And I believe that watching films such as Groundhog Day may help inspire and instruct me and others to do in real life what the protagonist does in the film.

I'm glad I finally saw Groundhog Day. Can you recommend other similarly inspiring films about self-transformation?

Back to the Dentist

2009-03-26T09:56:00.000-07:00

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Don't give up too easily; persistence pays off in the end.
--Thomas H. Palmer

I returned to the dentist yesterday. I underwent a procedure considerably more involved than the teeth cleaning I received Monday. So, I'm sorry to say that I wasn't able to relax myself as well yesterday as I did Monday. But I'm not too sorry, because I tried my best to remain relaxed, and I succeeded far better than I might have, and certainly far better than I would have had I not tried or had I stopped trying.

It seems to me that a lot of what's required to reinvent oneself is simply effort...effort...and more effort. One has to keep plugging away until his persistence "pays off in the end." And that, unlike how I've conducted myself in the past, is what I'm determined to do.

Reinventing Myself Into a True Lover of God

2009-03-25T12:38:00.000-07:00

If you wish to draw near to God,
seek him in the hearts of those around you.
Speak well of all, present or absent.
If you would be a light for others, be like the sun; show the same face to all
To bring joy to a single heart
is better than setting a thousand free.
This is the true lover of God,
who lives with others,
rises, eats, and sleeps like others,
gives and takes in the bazaar,
yet never forgets God for even a moment.
--Abusa'id Abolkhayr

I have renewed my practice of what Eknath Easwaran calls passage meditation. It consists of sitting in a chair, closing my eyes, and silently reciting a spiritual passage slowly and repeatedly over the course of thirty minutes once a day. As Easwaran explains, the ultimate purpose of this form of meditation is to slowly but surely transform the meditator into a living embodiment of the recited passage.

When I performed this meditation previously and then resumed it over the past two days, I followed Easwaran's advice of starting out using the famous prayer of Saint Francis as my passage. Not ever being Catholic, I didn't know that this prayer was associated with the Christian saint I admired for his legendary transformation from dissolute hedonist to God's troubador and servant of the poor. Mother Teresa was the first person I heard recite it, and I thought she had composed it herself. In any case, I was tremendously moved by it.

Yet, I've heard and recited this prayer so many times since then that it's lost some of its luster. So, I've decided to follow Easwaran's advice and learn new passages he recommends so that I can use them too in my meditation and keep things fresh. I plan to begin using the Sufi mystic Abusa'id's passage above within the next few days because it speaks clearly and directly to my heart with a wonderful description of the ideal human being--a "true lover of God."

Wearing My Birthday Spurs

2009-03-24T10:30:00.001-07:00

The ancient mathematician and philosopher Archimedes once said, "Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the earth." In your own life, obtaining the right lever at the right time may be the spur that leads to great and wondrous personal reinvention.
--Jeff Davidson from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Reinventing Yourself

Today's my birthday, and I want to do something special with it. I want to start meditating again. And this time, I want to stick with it. Why didn't I stick with it before? Because I didn't feel as though I was getting enough out of it. Yet, I didn't stay with it long enough to give it a decent chance. Nor did I practice the other disciplines well or long enough to reinforce the meditation.

What kind of meditation and complementary disciplines am I talking about? I'm referring to the eight disciplines or elements comprising Eknath Easwaran's path of spiritual transformation. He calls them meditation on a passage, repetition of a mantram , one-pointed attention , training the senses , slowing down , putting others first , spiritual fellowship , and spiritual reading.

I have different names for three of them. I call "one-pointed attention" "mindfulness," "training the senses" "moderation," and putting others first" "selflessness," but a discipline by any other name can be as sweet in its results. Or so I'm hoping. And so I plan to find out with a concerted and enduring effort, beginning today, to not only start meditating again but also to practice the other seven disciplines every day for a long time. I want to use the special occasion and leverage of my birthday to move myself out of my inertia.

I see a parallel between my birthday and Barack Obama's recent inauguration. Before his inauguration, Mr. Obama was already preparing for the presidency, just as I've been preparing for my personal reinvention by reading, blogging, and planning. But after his inauguration, it was time for President Obama to get down to business, and so this is my time to do the same.

Of course, some say that President Obama has tried, from Day 1, to do too much too fast, and I suppose the same could be said of what I'm undertaking now. But just as President Obama says that time is too short and our nation's needs are too many and too great to take them on one at a time, so it can equally be said that my time is too short and my needs too numerous and pressing to do anything but take on the entirety of Easwaran's path at once and trust that he's right when he says that only by practicing all eight elements together can any of them work well enough to help them all work together as an effective team and produce genuine, positive self-transformation.

Reinventing the Dental Experience

2009-03-23T19:17:00.000-07:00

Relaxation means releasing all concern and tension and letting the natural order of life flow through one's being.
--Donald Curtis

I don't know about you, but when I go to the dentist and have people poking, jabbing, scraping, and drilling away inside my mouth, I'm as nervous as a cat, and the muscles throughout my body are so rigid with tension that you could probably break a thick board across them. But the person I want to reinvent myself into remains relaxed and calm in virtually all circumstances, including the dentist's chair.

And so I went to the dentist today determined to do my best to remain relaxed and calm as the hygienist scraped away at my teeth. And you know what? It worked! No, I didn't banish every minuscule trace of anxiety and tension from my mind and body. But I came remarkably close.

And you know what else? The procedure didn't hurt nearly as much as it always has before. Here I've spent untold hours in the dentist's chair trying to ward off pain by nervously tensing my muscles like a Mr. Olympia contestant in a pose-off when all I was actually doing was inviting pain to come torture me every second of the way. How foolish I was! How much wiser today has made me!

Or has it? I guess I'll know Wednesday evening when I need to return for a crown replacement and some other fun stuff that should take about two hours to complete, and where there'll be novocaine injections and whirring drills and God knows what else brought into play inside my gaping mouth.

Stay tuned for further developments.

What Would Master Po Do?

2009-03-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

Next time you're stressed, ask yourself, What would my IDEAL self do right now? And then ACT AS IF you were that ideal self. You don't need to do that for too long until YOU ARE that ideal.
--Brian Johnson

I believe that one of many techniques I can use to reinvent myself is to face life's challenges while imagining that I'm already the person I wish to become. Of course, it helps to have a very clear idea of that person, and I can't say that I do yet, but I'm working on it. For the time being, I'll just say that my ideal is something of a cross between the playful sagacity and self-mastery of the fictional character Master Po in the original Kung Fu television series, and the luminous benevolence, erudition, and eloquence of the very real scholar and philosopher of comparative religion, Huston Smith .

When I face an actual challenge, I can try to imagine that I'm facing it as my ideal person would. Not only that, but I can face the challenges I experience vicariously through other people's actual experiences or through the plots of books, TV, and movies the same way. I can imagine myself facing them with the personality and character of my ideal person, and I can imagine myself responding as I vizualize him or her responding, just as a Christian might respond to a real or vicarious challenge while asking himself, "What would Jesus do?"

For instance, last night I watched the movie Lakeview Terrace. It's about an interracial married couple (white man, black woman) who move into a house in an upscale Southern California neighborhood next to a black neighbor who happens to be a cop and who also happens not to want them living next to him and takes increasingly extreme measures to drive them away. How would I, acting as my ideal person, handle the challenges posed by such a neighbor. I think that by carrying out what I suggest here, I'd do a better job than I did with a real neighbor sometime back.

Have you tried this technique when facing real or imaginary challenges of your own?

Following My Bowling Bliss

2009-03-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die tomorrow.
--Maria Mitchell

Excellence can be obtained if you:
care more about others than is wise;
risk more than others think is safe;
dream more than others think is practical;
expect more than others think is possible.
--Unknown

Natasha Richardson's untimely death yesterday demonstrates that the precariousness of life is more than just a cliche. It's an ever-present reality that we should all heed. I'm ten years older than she was. I could die today or tomorrow from any one of countless unexpected causes. What do I want to do with my life in the uncertain time that remains?

Well, this blog makes clear that I wish to reinvent myself. But what exactly does that mean? "Reinvent myself" how? Go from being what to becoming what? One purpose of this blog is to clarify over time for myself and for you precisely what I wish to accomplish and how I plan to do it, and I can start today by stating that one of the things I want to accomplish is the successful pursuit of excellence in activities that I love.

Throughout most of my life, there have been few activities that I've loved more than bowling. I bowled in my first league 44 years ago, and I've bowled in leagues and tournaments almost every year since then until I began working swing shift at the job from which I was recently laid off . For the past two years or so, I had not only stopped bowling leagues and tournaments but also stopped practicing except three or four times with friends. But last night, I went to my favorite bowling center and practiced by myself. And this time, I did it with more determination than I've ever felt to lift my game to a higher level.

You see, my bowling, as well as much of the rest of my life, has been a case study in underachievement. Many people over the years, including bowling legend and my childhood idol Ed Bourdase, have told me that I have the potential to excel at the game. But, for whatever reasons, I hadn't done what I needed to in order to fulfill that potential.

One thing I never did was work hard to develop a systematic way of aligning my feel on the approach and my target on the lanes to strike and spare consistently and adjust to ever-changing lane conditions. Instead of paying close attention to where I lined up on the approach and trying to hit a specific one inch board on the lane, I just stood in a general area on the approach, aimed at a general area on the lane, and made haphazard adjustments to changes in oil patterns on the lanes, relying on my raw ability and modest skill to carry me. It carried me to well over a 200 average on typical "house" conditions and to 300 games, 800 series', league championships, and cashings in some pretty good touranments, but I could never compete consistently well against the best bowlers in the area even though I and others believed that I had the physical potential to do so.

Well, now I plan to develop that potential as best I can and to focus primarily on executing as well as I can on each and every shot instead of worrying about whether I strike or spare or beat my opponent or carry a high average or win the league or tournament. But I also want to see if I can, as a secondary consideration, consistently cash in tournaments at the senior (age 50+) level against the best professional and amateur bowlers in the area. I believe that I have the potential to do that, and part of my self-reinvention is to do my reasonable best to fulfill it.

There are several things that I can do to accomplish this. First, there's a vast amount of information available in books , magazines , and on the Web about the technical aspects of bowling and how to master them, and I can study this information and do my best to learn it intellectually and then put it into practice on the lanes. Second, I can continue watching and learning from the best professional bowlers on television and from the best amateur and professional bowlers in the area and take inspiration from their games and accomplishments.

For instance, before I bowled last night, I watched one of the best bowling leagues in the country, the Steve Cook Classic , and saw one of its best bowlers tie the house record for three game series and, in all probability, set a new house record for four-game series. He bowled games of 300-279-279-279 for an incredible 1137 series for four games. That's a 284 average! I found that watching him and other outstanding bowlers in the league made me want to get out there afterwards and practice with enthusiasm and determination to improve.

I also enjoyed my long conversation with my old teammate Debbie Haggerty. She's been hailed by a panel of bowling experts as one of the top 100 bowling coaches in the country and was recently chosen the nation's youth bowling coach of the year. Debbie loves to bowl and to coach young people and adults alike to bowling excellence, and her talented son PJ is now on the PBA tour after a stellar collegiate record as three-time National Collegiate Bowler of the Year. The third thing I can do to improve my game is to seek instruction from superbly qualified bowling instructors such as Debbie Haggerty.

It may seem that a guy with no job and few job skills could be doing better things with his limited time and dwindling money reserves than bowling. But I believe that reinventing myself partly means obeying Joseph Campbell's famous exhortation to "Follow your bliss" while I still have life and opportunity to do so, and bowling is definitely part of my bliss. I also believe that following my bliss in a joyfully disciplined and systematic manner can be a gateway to fulfillment in every area of my life and constitutes part of the seamless whole of my self-transformation. Rather than undermine my efforts to succeed in my career, my writing, and other aspects of my life, it can synergistically contribute to my success in all of them. Part of my effort to reinvent myself will be to test this belief in the crucible of life experience and to share with you the outcome.

I hope you'll stay tuned and share here your own "bliss" and how you follow or plan to follow it.

Reinventing My Romanticism

2009-03-18T09:37:00.001-07:00

Little things I should have said and done,
I just never took the time.
--from Always on My Mind

Last night's American Idol was devoted to country music. One of the contestants sang the classic Always on My Mind. My wife was very taken with the song. She said, "Women want to feel that from a man." And I thought of how much I've taken my beautiful wife for granted, and how I've just assumed that she knows how much I love her and that I'll be here for her for "as long as we both shall live."

But what I realized last night from the look in my wife's eyes and the sound of her voice was that she and, I suspect, most women want to be reassured of their man's love and devotion in ways that many of us men, myself included, fall shorter than we should. And I further realized that if I'm truly going to reinvent myself, a vital aspect of that process must be to do better at telling and showing my wife how much I love her. It won't always come easily to guys like myself who didn't grow up seeing men treat women this way and who aren't the most naturally romantic guys around. But I can still improve, and one of the blueprints I can use in this aspect of my self-reinvention is the striking song below by Bryan Adams.

Now please excuse me as I go vacuum the carpets while my wife is at work.

Help In Facing Down Fear

2009-03-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

To have courage for whatever comes in life--everything lies in that.
--Saint Teresa of Avila

As I mentioned in yesterday's introductory post, I welcome your input regarding what I write here. I would love to read about your experience and knowledge of self-transformation as they relate to my posts. For the fact of the matter is, I can't reinvent myself all by myself. Sure, I need to do the heavy lifting of making the actual changes in my life. I can't have someone else make them for me. But I need people to guide and encourage me. You can do that. So can the great saints and sages throughout history with their wise and inspiring words and feats. They, especially, are my mentors.

If you've spent much time reading my previous blog, you know that the late Eknath Easwaran is one of my mentors. I believe that he was a very wise man who lived an exemplary life and had a wonderful gift for speaking and writing about self-transformation with exceptional clarity and eloquence. One of the ways in which he shared this gift was in his thoughts for the day. That is, for each day of the year, he turned a famous quote by a great saint or sage into an inspiring rumination on our capacity for positive self-transformation.

For this date, March 17, he uses the quote from Saint Teresa above to counsel us that we can find the courage to face life's challenges and do what we need to do by saying and knowing deep within our hearts: "Whatever comes, we will not be afraid because the divine Self is within us."

Frankly, I don't know if we have a "divine Self" within us. I don't know if there IS a God or that, if there is one, it's inside OR outside, BOTH inside and outside, or NEITHER inside and/or outside us. I haven't worked all that out yet, although part of my effort at self-reinvention will be to clarify my understanding of this over time and to record it here.

Yet, I feel all but intellectually certain even now that I am either so much more, so much less, or so much more AND less than what convention says I am that I have nothing to fear as I set out on the path of self-reinvention. The trick is to turn this intellectual conviction into a heartfelt one that empowers me to face down my fears when I contemplate change so that I can go ahead and try and keep trying until I do change.

Who are the mentors in YOUR life? Who, by the benevolent force of their words and deeds, helps YOU to find the strength to face down your fears and surmount the challenges in your life?

Welcome

2009-03-16T13:18:00.000-07:00

Reinventing the wheel is sometimes the right thing, when the result is the radial tire.
--Jonathan Gilbert

I'm not satisfied with who I've been or with what I've done up till now. I believe that I can be and do better. So, I'm setting out on a systematic quest to do just that--to become a better person by doing my best to fulfill my human and personal potential. In a sense, I'm seeking to reinvent myself--to make myself into the person I want to be by doing the things I need to do to accomplish this.

Who do I want to be, and what do I need to do to become that person? It's often been said that the more clearly we understand what we're trying to accomplish and how to accomplish it, the better our chances of success. I confess that I need to develop a clearer understanding of my end and means to that end than I have so far. Nevertheless, I believe that I have enough of a sense of both to begin the journey, and that, with a little help from my friends and mentors, I can and will clarify and refine my goals and methods as I go along.

One thing I know already is that I need to change my thinking. I need to go from having a "glass is half empty" mentality to one that says the glass is half full. Semantically, both expressions say the same thing, but emotionally their meanings are worlds apart. I believe that seeing the glass as half full and life's obstacles as challenges to joyfully overcome rather than as defeats to which I must sadly succumb can be the pilot light that keeps the rocket flame of motivated effort burning in me as it propels me to greater heights of fulfillment.

I created this blog to record my efforts and results, to inspire myself and you to reach for the sky of self-actualization and transcendence, and to invite your counsel and encouragement along the way. For I believe that I can't fully be who I want to be without helping others to fully be who they want to be, and this blog is a way to do both. Or so I hope. And I now dare to hope rather than continue to wallow in hopelessness.