As the father of a very talented 13 year old boy, I’ve spent a great deal of
time thinking about if it was possible to give him a gift that he will value
for his entire lifetime. After a lot of self-reflection, I finally decided on
exactly what that gift should be: I want him to have a healthy fear of
death. Wait, what? Yeah, I said it. In reality, we should all fear
death, but not in the way that you may think. What I’m referring to is dying before
we’re dead. Sadly, many people die thousands of tiny little deaths before they
finally make it official, and that is not the life that I want for my son. I’ve
experienced those tiny little deaths far too often in my own life, and not only was it
excruciatingly painful each time that a piece of me died, but I know that each
of those tiny little deaths also has the power to send my son to the grave much sooner
than necessary too. That’s why I am sharing this gift with him now. I’m not naive, I understand that many of the
lessons below may be ignored by my son until he’s much older, and that he’ll
need to experience the pain of these silent killers in order for the message to
truly stick. But hey, it won’t stop a loving dad from trying anyway. My hope is
that when Jonathan is old enough to fully understand the importance of this
blog post, he’ll use these lessons to fully claim the best life possible. You on the other hand, you can learn from these lessons now, so below
are the five ways how we die way before we reach the grave.
Death #1, Keeping Toxic People in Your Life “The
first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.” - Maya
Angelou
This silent killer is listed first because it can wreak havoc in so many
areas of our lives if we don’t handle it quickly and with ruthless precision.
Toxic people are the ones who are hopelessly negative, consistently draining
your energy, intimidating and manipulating of others, emotionally abusive, and
they have little regard for the feelings of anyone else besides their own. This
might sound harsh (and I hope it does), but I want my son to think of toxic
people like a disease. My hope for Jonathan is that he views toxic people in
the exact same way. Just like cancer, the best solution and hope for recovery
with toxic people is complete removal. Sure, this is a lesson
that may have to wait until he is old enough to date (shudder), but
once he has determined that a person in his life is toxic and deeply harming
his life, then I hope that he will have the strength and wisdom to walk away
and never look back. It doesn’t matter who it is either—it could be
future girlfriends, a long-time school buddy, or anyone else. They need to be
removed from his life without apologies or hesitation, and it needs to be removed from your life as well. Simply put, some people
need to be loved from a distance.
Death #2, Believing the Naysayers “Someone’s
opinion of you does not have to be your reality.” - Les Brown
Haters, dream stealers, naysayers, it doesn’t matter what we choose to call
them, their deadly effect is still the same. Dealing with these people is
a fairly simple process, but it’s important that my son is aware of how much
harder it can be if the naysayers are “well-meaning” people who he actually
likes or loves. My goal is for Jonathan to think of this “well-meaning” stuff
a little deeper than most people normally do. What if as an adult, he could have become an astronaut,
a professional baseball player, or a physician, but he didn’t fully go after
his dreams because he believed the “well-meaning” experts
who advised him to dream more “realistic”
dreams? Once he gets older, what if he could have left a dysfunctional relationship
and found true love, but he believed his “well-meaning” friends
who told him that all of the good women are already taken? I hope that he won’t be too far into adulthood before he realizes this
life-affirming truth: Advice from anyone that would drive him in the opposite direction of his dreams isn’t “well-meaning”, it’s dangerous. I
want him to know that dreams are in his head for a reason, they are his
life blood at 13. They don’t belong to his future significant other, his friends, his
teachers, or even to his mom and dad—his dreams belong to him! I
will urge him not to try to silence that persistent voice inside of him (and
inside of all of us too) that is nudging him to go after his best life, because
it will not work. It will never work.
Death #3, Being Happy Later. “Happiness is not
something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the
present.” - Jim Rohn
Too many people (myself included) have spent too many years of their lives
with the happiness formula backward. They wait until they leave their loveless
relationship and find true love before they give themselves permission to be
happy. They wait until their bathroom scale, bank account, or amount of Twitter
followers displays a certain number before they give themselves permission to
be happy. They wait until their bully boss either gets fired or quits before
they give themselves permission to be happy. Sadly, that is not how happiness
works. It’s not even close actually. That is what I want my son
to know. The truth is, chasing happiness outside of ourselves is like eating
cotton candy for energy. Sure, as a kid it might make him feel energized or happy temporarily,
but it will never nourish as deeply or for as long as he wishes it would. So, if you keep chasing happiness, it will be just like stuffing your face
with cotton candy for a temporary high, and predictably, it’ll keep slowing you
down while dying in the process. There is a much better way. As
Jonathan progresses in his journey, I desperately want him (and you) to fully
reject the delusion of “I’ll be happy when…” and make the life-affirming choice
to be happy now. True long-lasting happiness doesn’t have to wait for
anything, and more importantly, it will never be found outside of ourselves.
That’s because real happiness is, and always will be, an inside job. And I
want my son to know that for this job, he will always be the
boss.
Death #4, Chronically Complaining. “You don’t
make progress by standing on the sidelines whimpering and complaining. You make
progress by implementing ideas.” - Shirley Chisholm
There is no habit in the world that is more useless and destructive to our
overall health and well-being than the soul-destroying act of chronically
complaining. As a former chronic complainer myself, I’ll do anything that
I can to help my son avoid traveling down the same dark dead-end road that I
did. Not only is it a habit that is bad for anyone’s health (mental and
otherwise), it will negatively affect your ability to creatively solve the
problems in your life, it will make you dumber, and maybe worst of all, it is
also damaging to the health and sanity of the people who are stuck listening to
your whining on a daily basis. In the case Jonathan becomes addicted to the
life-stealing habit of chronically complaining like his dad once did, the best
gift that I can give him to break the addiction is the gift of “Complaining
Detoxification”. It’s a life-changing exercise and I hope that he (and we) will try it
often. All that it requires is the willingness to go 24-hours, a full weekend,
or even an entire week without complaining, and I hope that Jonathan would be up
for the challenge. Speaking from experience, I can say with confidence that not
only can a “Complaining Detox” positively change your life quicker than you
ever thought possible, but it could even save your life too.
Death #5, Failing to Take Personal Responsibility. “The
best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No
apologies or excuses. The gift of life is yours. It’s an amazing journey, and
you alone are responsible for the quality of it.” - Dan Zadra
The most important point of all for my son, and quite possibly the hardest
one to master for any of us, has been left for last. There is little to no hope
of avoiding a slow death at the hands of the previous four points above if he (or
we) fail to master this one. Most people would agree that no one besides Beyonce lives a
flawless life, right? I’m confident that in less than five minutes, most people
could list at least 20 issues that they would like to improve, change, or
remove from their daily lives. I know that I could. Truthfully that’s okay, but
what’s not okay is choosing to make excuses or blame others
for why those issues are in our lives in the first place. Doing so is
basically stating that those things and/or other people have the power over the
quality of our lives. This is the most powerful life-stealing force that I want
my son (and all of us) to avoid. Throughout our lives, we will either choose to give our power away by
making excuses, or we will keep our power by stating confidently that we are in
full control of our lives. One option is life-affirming, however the other option
will kill our lives and our dreams faster than we could’ve ever imagined.
Accepting 100% responsibility for the awesomeness (or lack of it) in our lives
is what true heroes do every day. After years of doing the opposite, it’s now
what Jonathan’s dad has committed to do every day. That commitment comes from
remembering that we may not be able to control the events in our lives, but we
can always choose our responses to them.
As always, the choice will always be ours. Luckily in this case, the
choice is a very simple one and it’s the message that I want to give to
you and to Jonathan more than anything...
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