A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full? They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two cans of beer from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things–your family, your health, your children, your friends, your favorite passions–things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full. “The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car.

The sand is everything else–the small stuff. If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.

The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your partner out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house, and fix the disposal. “Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of beers.

The moral of this parable is a clear one. First fill your life with the important stuff, the golf balls. Then add stuff that supports the golf balls, the pebbles. You’re allowed to add more filling, and finish it off with a beer. The problem is that in life we don’t start with an empty jar.

Identifying your balls

In the search for a purposeful and passionate life you start to look for the important things. You take a good look at your life (the jar) and identify a couple of them. Some are real clear, some are only barely visible. There are all kinds of pebbles blocking your view. And then there’s that strange mud that smells of beer…

Then with some introspection you (re)discover some things that are definitely not in the jar. Forgotten passions, denied passions and such. You get yourself some golf balls and write those things on there. Proud of the new finds you look at the jar, only to find that there’s no room for those new balls.

There you are, looking at a jar filled to the rim and three golf balls in your hand that you want to put in there too. Energized by the find, discouraged by the result.

Clearing away the mud

To get more space for those balls, we need to clear some mud first. Now that sounds pretty easy from a jar perspective, but how do you go about that in real life?

Actually there’s a lot that’s been written about it already. Leo Babauta of Zen Habits wrote about it a lot, browse his articles on simplicity and you’ll find many tips on clearing away the sand and maybe some pebbles. Clay Collins of The Growing Life wrote a great post about clearing away pebbles and clearing away the sand. You’ll find many tips on these excellent blogs, there’s no need for me to repeat them here.

The only thing I’ll repeat here is the concept of baselining Clay Collins talks about:

The process of baselining involves writing down everything you don’t have to have, be, or do, to live a happy and fulfilled life.

This is the quintessence of simplifying. Eliminating everything that does not serve you to be happy or fulfilled. Away with the clutter, away with bullshit, away with the wants and needs instigated in you by marketers. This is similar to taking out the pebbles in our parable.

Take some time to sit down and write a list of things that are in your life, but are not necessary for a happy and fulfilling life. You might get a handful straight away, and then go blank. Just contemplate on ti for some more time, and things will come up. Put the list up on the wall of the toilet, the mirror in the bathroom, or any place you get to see it often. Over the course of days, you will encounter situations that can go on the list too. This exercise alone is already changing your mindset, and you will get inspired to actually start eliminating stuff from your life.

This is the approach I have taken (and I’m far from done). There’s so much stuff left, so much things to eliminate. And the beautiful result is that there’s so much more time to spend on the important things. And as a bonus you might just discover one of the hidden golf balls in the middle of the jar.

Fear of the empty jar

Don’t worry about this one. There will never be an empty jar, there will always be a nice set of golf balls in there. Being conscious on this one will lead to a clear jar with the golf balls you choose, supported by the pebbles you need to support those golf balls.

In the parable the professor said: “The golf balls are the important things–your family, your health, your children, your friends, your favorite passions–things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.”

If you add a handful of pebbles, that’s full enough for me. Scratch the rest (I’ll have the beer though). How about you?

Photos by memekode, Sroown and frumbert

Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it’s dark.
~Zen Proverb

Limitations that are set onto you by others, invoke rebellion. In me it does anyway. Who do they think they are to restrict my freedom? To restrict my ability to choose what to do and what not? If you want to see me getting all wound up, you should do just that.

Now I may react a lot stronger than most people, because freedom is right up there on top of my list of most important personal core values. Don’t touch my freedom! There’s only one person who really is able to limit me in my freedom, without invoking massive rebellious action.

Me.

That’s right. Only me.

Self-Imposed Restraints

It’s me who is my enemy
Me who beats me up
Me who makes the monsters
Me who strips my confidence.
~Paula Cole 

I’ve found that the strongest chains are the ones you use to restrain yourself. It’s unbelievable how creative I can get in restraining myself and limiting my freedom to express myself, to do what I want to do and to be who I want to be. Worst of all, I do it without my own consent and often even not conscious at all. Where’s that inner rebel when you need him?

But I know the answer to that question already: The inner rebel is hurting when I choose to rob myself from my freedom. He’s there inside of me standing by to support me and encourage me every time I need to defend my valued freedom. And then all of a sudden I, the one he tries to defend, turn around and stab him in the back by doing it to myself.

He shuts up, puzzled and hurting.

I know, I can feel his pain. It’s down there in my stomach.

I don’t always recognize it, but sure enough it’s a signal. And one I’m learning to recognize earlier than before, now I came to realize that I truly am my greatest enemy. About as much as I am my greatest asset.

Hidden Powers

I am convinced all of humanity is born with more gifts than we know. Most are born geniuses and just get de-geniused rapidly.
~Buckminster Fuller

Inside of me is a big set of hidden powers, a box of assets, waiting to be tapped into. This belief is relevant to dealing with my self-imposed restraints, because it’s telling me that there’s a hidden power in that behavior as well. I just need to learn to recognize it and to harness its power in a constructive way.

You see, the self-limiting behavior is not bad in itself. I realize it has a positive intention for me too, it’s trying to protect me. It does so by limiting the chance of me getting hurt or feeling bad, because it prevents me from entering into situation that might result in that. And I think that strategy sucks. It’s hardly empowering, and in the end it doesn’t get me anywhere.

Four Steps To New Behavior

The question is how to unleash the power of me, empowered by harnessing that limiting power in a positive way, while being encouraged by my inner rebel. That would result in super powers! (Don’t worry, I’m not going to levitate away right now).

1. First is to acknowledge that my habit of limiting myself is not bad. It’s just a not-so-smart-way of expressing a positive intention. It’s an asset when used in the right way.
2. Second is to understand the benefits you get from that behavior. In my case the intention was to ease my self doubts. By learning the lessons of others and applying them to myself, I got a feeling of certainty. It didn’t last though, but that’s usually the case with bad strategies in behavior.
3. Third is to find a solution that will satisfy both conflicting parts in me. The part that rebels on one hand and the part that restricts on the other hand. Look for alternative behavior or an alternative belief that might satisfy both of them.
4. Fourth is to apply that behavior. It’ll be easier than you think it will be, although it might feel awkward at first. But because both forces are aligned now, there’s less chance of falling back in “bad” behavior.

It’s a simple four step process, that might take a while to really get into my system. Finding new behavior that satisfies both parts however, is more powerful than the old behavior and gives more results. Of course things will happen that will throw me back into old behavior, it’s what I’m accustomed to do after all. But I’ll be quicker at recognizing it, and at adapting my behavior to the most empowering form again.

The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.
~Sonya Friedman

Think about this. Others will notice it when you allow yourself to bully yourself around. And if you allow yourself to do that, what would keep others from doing the same? After all you just set the standard…

Photo by myself 

I’ll admit it, I’m a stats junkie. I like to track progress, see numbers, have charts on whatever it is I’m trying to accomplish. I share my blog stats with you on a weekly basis in the weekly reviews.

I track my goals and habits on a daily basis too. For this I use Joe’s Goals, a simple web app designed to do just that. In this post I’m going to share with you how I use Joe’s Goals.

Setting up an account

This is a breeze! No annoying questions, just an email address, a nickname and a password and you’re all setup.

Configuring your goals and habits

Once you setup your account, you can start configuring your goals and habits. There are two types of entries that you can make, Goal or Logbook. Goals have scores, Logbooks are meant for comments.

I use both types. Goals are meant for checking off on habits I have completed successfully for the day or for checking of on activities that lead me closer to accomplishing my goals. The Logbook-type I use for planning purposes and for making notes on things I have done. And I use them in combination too, more on that later.

As you can see in the images, the setup screens for an entries are pretty straightforward. They have a nice set of options, but nothing too fancy.

• Goal name
  Like it says, this is where the name goes. Choose any name you like, you don’t have to worry about sorting, because you can change the sort order later.
• Tags
  You can put tags in here. I don’t use this feature.
• Weight - goal only
  You can give a score to the checks you put in this goal. Values range from 1 to 10. This is something I use to give relative weight to my goals and habits.
• Type - goal only
  You can choose whether you want the goal to be positive and earning you points, or negative making you lose points. All my goals are positive, because I want to reward myself for doing something I like, not punish myself.
• Target Days
  Use this feature to mark on what days you want the goal to be active. My weekly review habit for instance is only active on Sundays.
• Display Stats - goal only
  Here you can select what stats you want to see in the overview screen.
• Notes
  And finally, this is where you put whatever it is you feel you need to write down. This does not show in the overview screen.

Sorting your goals

Goals and habits are initially ordered in the order you create them. But fear not as it’s easy to sort them later on, when you discover one you forgot. Just click in the upper right hand corner on the link to “sort goals”. There you can sort them by Alphabetically, by Goal Type or Weight.

If you’re like me, you want neither of those orders. For people like us, you can create a custom sorting order by simply rearranging the goals in the list. Scroll down and click on the “Save Custom Sort Order” button in the bottom.

The overview screen

When you trusted all your goals, habits and other thoughts to the program, you get a nice overview of all your entries in a table. The entries are listed on the left, and you get a week’s worth of spaces to mark your progress.

The default view places the current date as the last date in the table. But using the arrow in the top right hand corner, you scroll forward into the near future. By clicking the calender icon, you can choose a date further away.

Some of my tricks

• Injecting Planning: This feature, combined with the Logbook item, is a great way to inject some planning into the table. I use this for my renovation project as you can see. There’s not an awful lot of room for text, so you can’t be too verbose. By putting the Logbook for actuals (a) right below the planning (p) I can see instantly how much of my plan got executed (and consequently whether I need to adjust my planning).
• Divide into sections: Another trick I use is to divide my table into sections, by inserting a Logbook item with no active days. This results in a blue bar across the table. Make sure to give it a clickable title though (like the dashes I used). I have one goal dangling on the bottom of the table, where I brilliantly used the spacebar to give it an unclickable name. I still need to send a mail to ‘Joe’ to get that one removed from the database.
• Declining points for ‘old’ habit changes: As you can see I used the weight function a lot. For the habits section, I more or less have a system for that. The habits that I have been doing for quite a while now get a lower score than the ones that I just started. But some of them are multi-clickable, like the “Drink water” habit. Every glass of water results in a checkmark.
• Extra credit for perfect days: When I have a perfect day with all my habits, I allow myself to check the main habits goal as well, scoring me an additional 10 points. This is one I came up with fairly recently, so I have yet to get the pleasure of putting in a checkmark there!

Now get started!

There are more features to be discovered in Joe’s Goals, and I could write a lot more about it. The truth is that I don’t use the rest of the features, so I’m not going to elaborate on them.

The biggest benefit of using Joe’s Goals is the fact that you’re inclined to check in daily, to score your progress. Doing this on a daily basis will help you build your goals and habit changes into your daily routine, increasing the likelihood of success.

The important thing is to get started. So surf on over to Joe’s Goals and start tracking your progress. Use my tips if they suit you, or come up with your own hacks. But ultimately it’s not about the hacks or the tracking software, it’s about getting serious about change and progress. But this sure is a nifty tool to enable you to succeed.

Oh…and in case you’re worried about forgetting to check-in on a regular basis: you will get an e-mail reminder (after a configurable number of days) to get your butt back to the site and hold yourself accountable!

Disclaimer:
There’s a large group of people out there, that firmly believes that there is a secret to success. If you are a hardcore believer of this theory, you will regard this article as an attempt to dodge the question or a blunt evasion of letting you in on the secret. You’re probably right too. The secret can’t be freely available, because that would forfeit the status of secret and you wouldn’t believe me anyway.

The secret of success, it’s a mysterious concept that appeals to the imagination of a lot of people. If it’s a secret it must be something really valuable, otherwise it wouldn’t be kept a secret. If only “they” would let me in on it, then I can be successful too. If only someone would tell me…

It’s the lazy man’s conviction: “Successful people make it look so easy, they must know something I don’t. If only they would tell me, I would be successful too.”

Why do people insist on believing that there are such things as secrets, or magic or tricks that successful people use to be successful? Wake up people! There is no secret, there is no magic and it’s not a trick! Face it: there is no secret!

…but there is an ingredient

The ‘secret’ ingredient of success is a liquid. It’s prepared with a fair amount of dihydrogen monoxide, some parts sodium chloride, a pinch of 2-methylphenol and one part 4-methylphenol. The bad news is that it can’t be bought. The good news is that you can make your own home brew.

One of the most common ways of preparing a dose is by standing up, placing your right foot about two feet in front of your left foot. Now place your left foot about two feet in front of your right foot. Alternate this while increasing speed for about 10 minutes and the secret ingredient will appear in a thin film evenly distributed over your body.

That’s right, the secret ingredient is sweat! Edison has been telling us that for over 150 years now:

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. - Thomas A. Edison

Edison does leave an opening though, there can’t be a secret in the perspiration (yuck, gross!), so it must be in the inspiration! If only I knew what was in the 1%… if only, because then… Yeah right! BS!

The 8 secrets to success (most of which are pretty sweaty)

Richard St John defined his version of 8 secrets of success. He has a short 3 minute, funny and inspiring talk about them at TED that’s definitely worth a look. In the talk he answers the question a teenager once asked him: “What’s the secret of success?”. Unable to give a swift answer to that question, he talked to a lot of successful people and defined 8 common factors that they had in common. These 8 factors are:

Passion and Ideas could be labeled as the Inspiration traits, although Ideas arguably is a Perspiration trait. Richard says: “There’s no magic to Ideas, anyone can be creative.” Ideas are generated by listening, observing, being curious, asking questions, solving problems, making connections… Yep, that’s definitely a Perspiration trait as well.

So 7 out of 8 are Perspiration, and only one is Inspiration. That’s still almost 90% sweat, and that still is the main ingredient of success.

So success is all work and no play?

No.
Definitely not!

Work, or putting in sweat, is the largest factor in being successful. You could be successful in almost anything if you just put in the 90+% perspiration, but to keep it fun and sustainable over the long run, it’s important to find something your passionate about.

Now that’s not easy to do, and a lot of people don’t know what exactly they’re passionate about. I struggle with this on regular basis myself. It’s just important to realize that finding your passion is an activity; you have to look for it actively to find your passion. It won’t pop up in your head someday, while you were waiting for your passion to find you.

And the best way to look for it, is to start working on stuff that you like. If you like to do something, feel satisfied about, have fun doing, feel proud about, look forward to something, that’s when you’re touching on your potential passion.

If you put in the 90+% perspiration on those subjects, it still will feel like a lot of work to be successful, but at least you’ll have fun doing it.

I hate going to the dentist. Ever since I was about 14 years old, a visit to the dentist never came without a follow-up appointment for a treatment. I tried my best to prevent it, but to no avail. I also tried not doing my best … that obviously didn’t work either.

The torture treatment sessions were a story apart. I don’t respond very well to anesthetics, they work kind of slow on me. So one of my dentists (I’ve had several) simply didn’t believe me when I said I felt pain after getting a shot, only to get numb for hours after the torture treatment was over. The next one didn’t believe in anesthetics (which was fine by me, because it didn’t make a difference anyway), but he kept on passing guilt on me for needing treatment (I grew to dislike this guy very much).

Now the father of one of my friends is my dentist. At least I can laugh with this guy, because I like him a lot. The treatment and the anesthetics still are no fun and even at 31 years old, I’m procrastinating big time when it comes to making that dreaded regular check-up appointment.

So what’s with the dentist story?
So imagine what my first associations were, when I got to preview a book titled “What can a dentist teach you about business, life and success?”. Insert sounds of high pitched screaming dentist drills, and feelings of nerve pain down your jaw. Not pretty.

After shrugging those associations off, I really got curious about what the answer to that question was going to be and started reading. And I was pleasantly surprised.

Dr Joe Capista is the dentist we’re talking about here, and he’s also the author of the book. In the book he tells his life story, about how an average Joe with a vision of becoming a dentist grew to a successful businessman leading a multi-million dollar dentist operation.

The concepts in his book, like the circle of balance and the success triangle are not really groundbreaking if you’re an avid reader of personal development and business literature (like myself). They contain value and if you’re new to the matter they can be very useful to both areas.

What I liked about his book is the story. Joe Capista realized early in his childhood that he wanted to be a dentist (that was beyond my powers of imagination by the way). He set out to realize that dream, only to get massive amounts of obstacles presented by life. For one he was simply told he wasn’t smart enough and that he was never going to make it. Take that when you’re a child!

But Joe pushed on, and eventually made it to a dentist school, graduated and started his career. Joe is very successful, and not only on the financial measuring stick as he will point out in the book. But what’s interesting to read is that he isn’t a self-made man. Joe accepted mentorship, he listened, he learned and grew along the way.

Joe isn’t talking about how great he is, or how brilliant he has done stuff or how extremely talented he is. In fact he does the opposite, he tells the story of an average guy with a clear vision, determination and the guts to accept help. Kind of like the story that would apply to most of us.

“What can a dentist teach you about business. life and success?” by Dr. Joe Capista is launched this week with a massive Amazon promotion. Ordering this book makes you eligible for over $2000 of other products. If you want to learn more about the guy, check out his blog.