Creating Your Best Life

Jumping on the Bed, Concussions and David Ortiz

Caroline Adams Miller — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 22:50:16 +0000

The New York Times recently ran an article about Red Sox slugger, David Ortiz, who entered a prolonged slump earlier this year, and reduced his spectacular hitting numbers to just one home run during a two-month spring stand.

Extra batting practice didn't help. The advice of friends and coaches didn't, either. Dissecting his swing and stance was a bust. And then Ortiz woke up one morning and decided to attack his game with the spirit of a happy, 12-year-old Little Leaguer who was playing for the sheer fun of it.

What Ortiz learned from his slump was that clearing your mind and having fun was the surefire recipe for relaxing, eliminating shoulder stiffness resulting from anxiety, and recapturing his love of the game.
Although researchers have cited play as one of the most critical characteristics in developing a youngster's brain, problem-solving abilities, executive functioning and imagination, we often forget as adults how important it is to play. I always ask my clients to take the VIA Signature Strengths test when we first start to work together because I want to see where the quality of "zest" lines up among the other 23 strengths, and when it's very low, I know I have a client who needs more play in his or her life.

I had this lesson reinforced unexpectedly when my 14-year-old son, Bayard, suffered a concussion in football practice in the weeks preceding the start of high school. Almost immediately he experienced swings of nausea, sensitivity to light and sound, an inability to read, and extreme sleepiness. He fretted about the fact that all of his peers were starting high school without him while he lay at home in a darkened room, trying to listen to books on tape and adjust to the "new normal" of his life.

He tried to conjugate French verbs. His head screamed in pain. He wrote a short paper for English class. The headaches were fierce. He went to talk to a therapist about how to deal with the varied fallout from the concussion and what it might mean for school, sports and other activities. He grabbed his head and pleaded with the therapist to stop talking because the questions were so thought-provoking that he couldn't tolerate what his brain was doing in response.

The concussion clinic doctors examined his regression on the baseline tests and ordered him to go home and "not think," so that's what he did. He watched sappy movies, sometimes the same one over and over. He organized his bookshelf and precious National Geographic magazines. He refused to indulge any thoughts that might make him sad or anxious.

The following week his concussion assessment scores catapulted forward, all because he had decided to substitute fun and play for serious effort and concern. Although my son isn't out of the woods yet, he's back in school, just like Ortiz is hitting again.

Creating your best life sometimes means returning to a state of childlike innocence, and seeing the world as a fun and happy place, and not a place where we have to drag our depression and tension from activity to activity, stressing our brains in ways that we may not even be aware of.

In a similar vein, positive psychologists are trying to learn how to teach adults to raise their zest scores because of the high correlation between success, happiness and zest. A happy person is often a flourishing person, and if childlike enthusiasm is one of the tickets to get there, it behooves all of us to learn how to play better and more frequently.

One easy way to do this is to be around other zestful people, and to have a role model in having more fun. My grandmother was my primary "fun" role model. She skipped down the street in her sixties, wore ridiculous fluffy pink bathing caps in her seventies, and delighted in the silly games she played with me, challenging me to a round of golf in her eighties (she won) . As a direct result of her influence and her role-modeling not to take life so seriously, I sport multi-colored fingernails, drive an impractical canary-yellow car with a smiley face on the spare tire, and jump on the bed of every hotel I stay in.

I guess it's no surprise that zest is my number-three VIA trait, but I'm angling to get it up to number-one this year because my son's injury has shown me in vivid clarity how valuable it is to not take life so seriously, and why it's more important than I ever could have thought to live out the Sesame Street mantra: "Come and play, everything's A-okay!"

The Commencement Address I Will Not Give - Yet

Caroline Adams Miller — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:45:47 +0000

Oprah Winfrey has taken heat for her recent college Commencement address in which she said that having a private plane is an essential that everyone ought to enjoy in order to obtain the good and meaningful life. I agree that a private plane is convenient, and that it opens up lots of free time for busy people to do good works for others, but I can think of a few other pieces of advice I would want to impart to young adults as they ponder how to approach their futures.

I've been working for over twenty years on issues around excellence, happiness and goals. Through coaching hundreds of people, and receiving tens of thousands of letters from readers of my books, I've decided that there are a few non-negotiable pieces of wisdom that everyone ought to know and embody to maximize chances of success and happiness.

Ideally, this would be done in a commencement address or a "last lecture" of sorts, but I have not earned the status in life that would generate this invitation, so this is my opportunity to sketch out what I'll call, "The Caroline Doctrine," for lack of a wittier title.

Imagine that I have already given an opening set of pithy remarks -- some funny -- that have lubricated the audience and prepared them for the following advice. So with that imaginary opening, I now go head-on into life advice for a bunch of high school or college graduates who are looking for some direction:

1. Smile as much as you can. Since research has demonstrated that happy people are the most successful across all domains of life, you might want to up your chances of being happy by initiating a smile, even when you don't feel like it. Not only will smiling create the right chemistry in your body to feel good, you will probably cause other people to smile, too, as they "catch" your look.

2. Create a roadmap, but be prepared for detours. Research shows that the happiest people wake up every day to clear-cut goals, but that happy people also know when a goal has become unworkable due to changed circumstances, and they change direction to accommodate that new reality. Goals create a roadmap, and without that guide, you will run the risk of being reactive to life, as opposed to proactive. This is the difference between being on the stage of life versus handing out the program for others.

3. Work hard and don't quit just because something is hard. No matter which high achiever you study, there is a consistent theme around the time that they put into achieving their goals. Calvin Borel, the jockey who rode Mine That Bird to the unlikeliest of victories at the 2009 Kentucky Derby, is renowned for his work ethic, detailed in this profile: http://tiny.cc/g2DkW Along the same lines, don't walk away from a meaningful goal unless you've given it everything you've got. Research has found that authentic self-esteem comes from doing hard things outside your comfort zone, and not picking the low-hanging fruit in your life.

4. Have four friends and nurture those friendships. Friends are the coin of the realm in a flourishing and happy life, and four seems to be the tipping point. As we've become more preoccupied with our own lives, and less likely to join in-person groups, isolation has become the norm and depression has skyrocketed. Put birthday reminders in your calendar and send a card. Say yes to parties. Attend that wedding that is hard to get to, and smooth out difficulties as they arise. Your reward will be better health, more resilience in hard times, and more joy in the good times.

5. Identify the plus-minus factor of the people around you. A statistic commonly used to evaluate basketball players is called the "plus-minus factor." What this means is that when a certain player is on the court, he either plays better or worse when another player is also on the court. I find that the happiest people systematically strip out, or neutralize, the people who drain them of energy and rob them of their best shots, leaving only the people with the highest plus-minus score on their home court.

6. Play every day. Children do this naturally, but adults rarely do it any longer by their fifties, which is why zest is so low as a character trait at that point for most people. Play helps with executive functioning, builds relationships, and enhances curiosity. Curiosity is a sign of happiness and security, because curious people approach the world with a sense of "What is out here for me to learn and explore?" So find a way to play, whether it's by doing an April Fool's Joke on someone or wearing something goofy. When you take yourself so seriously that you cannot crack a spontaneous smile, you have begun to die.

7. Say thank you early and often. Gratitude is closely associated with happiness, but people also like to be around and work with those who recognize what others bring to the situation. If you thank people, and notice and comment when good things happen to you, you will not only incentivize people to help you again, you will probably be more likely to have their support when you most need it.

8. Build your willpower muscle every day. Generation Y spends an inordinate amount of time being interrupted and responding to non-urgent items that arrive via cell phone, text message, Twitter, Facebook and all manner of technology. Avid Facebook users average a full academic grade lower than peers who don't use Facebook, for example, and researchers report that small children can't even hold a pose in freeze tag as long as previous generations. This all boils down to a simple fact -- today's young adults cannot say no to themselves or delay gratification in a way that will allow them to succeed at goal accomplishment, which doesn't bode well for a future that will involve focus and hard work. So say no to yourself every day when you want to say yes. The domino effect of building your willpower will be impressive in its depth and breadth in your life.

9. Respect and fear the power of alcohol. I know this isn't a popular statement, and that many will find it unrealistic, but alcohol is the one substance that has been found to impede all goal accomplishment. Alcohol lowers inhibitions around food, sex, drugs, anger, words and even more alcohol. Know your limits, respect them, and get help with this if you need it. You'll never regret cutting down on alcohol, but you'll always regret being unable to control it.

10. R.S.V.P. and do what you say. Good old-fashioned manners will grease the wheels of life with everyone you meet, although common courtesy appears to be dead. Respond to invitations. Return phone calls. Answer questions posed to you. If you say you'll be somewhere, be there. If you offer to help someone, follow through. Your word ought to be the most important thing you give away, so treat it with respect, and you will be respected back.

Now go out and live your life, but do it mindfully, gracefully and with friends at your side. For the most part, life will take care of itself if the building blocks are in place, but make sure that the building blocks are similar to the ones above, and that lead you to make the world a better place.

Am I A Twit for Not Twittering?

Caroline Adams Miller — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:16:44 +0000

A story on the front of the Washington Post recently stopped me dead in my tracks. A mom lamented that her teen daughter was so addicted to text messaging on her cell phone that she'd counted 6,473 texts that her daughter had sent and received in just one month, which boiled down 200 messages a day, or ten per waking hour. So every six minutes or so, this young woman stopped whatever she was doing to type "LOL" or "OK" or "GTG" to a friend instead of finishing homework, talking to her family members, practicing her instrument or reading a book without interruption.

As a goal accomplishment coach, I'm staggered by the number of times we often find ourselves being pulled off course to text someone, "tweet" on twitter, answer a phone call, update our relationship status, attend to a Blackberry, or get beeped off course. Add that to the time we spend attending to requests from friends on Facebook to join new causes, take tests, write on their walls or "poke" them. My husband looked up in shock from Facebook recently to say that his entire high school football team was now on Facebook and that films from games in the 1970s were being uploaded, and messages were flying fast and furious that he felt compelled to respond to every few hours. "I can't get off this site!" he wailed.

I understand that technology is something that can be very helpful in getting a message out, branding ourselves, gathering followers or staying connected, but I also see the dark side of all of these advances. So I caution my clients about mistaking this type of technological activity for productivity if they have goals to accomplish that require sustained focus and grit. Procrastination experts agree, saying that technological distractions are partly responsible for the rising levels of anxiety and depression among college students, who end up so distracted by bids for their attention that they procrastinate about work deadlines, fueling anxiety and depression in the process.

This is exactly why I'm staying away from Twitter, which one of my colleagues likened to falling into a big, black hole that prevents her from being productive. If you "tweet" on Twitter, you are either commenting about what other people are doing, or you are commenting about something you are going to do, but you are not actually doing it yet. What good is an endless stream of commentary about intentions to do something, or comments about other people's actions if you're not actually staying focused on your own tasks, if you even have any? How can there be any forward progress when you have to stop and announce yourself over and over? The simple answer is that there can't be.

One of the enemies of goal accomplishment is the ability to delay gratification, and experts say that the yelp of technology is continuously undermining our ability to do this. If we don't have the patience to listen to a phone message and must see a text message right away, or we can't wait to hear how a concert was and we need to be "tweeted" during the performance, instead, how will we ever develop and nurture willpower, which self-regulation experts cite as the key muscle in goal accomplishment? If everything is NOW and not LATER, why would anyone wait for anything good? Whatever happened to the virtue of patience?

For all of these reasons, I will only check Facebook every few weeks and I refuse to update my status every hour on the site. I will write my columns, books and newsletters instead of constantly "tweeting" about my intentions to do so. I will turn off my Blackberry during meals and car rides and avoid the "absent present" phenomenon that means you are present in body, but absent to those around you because you are preoccupied with cutting-edge technology. And chances are I'm going to get a little bit more done than if I constantly announced that I was going to get something done, and then replied to people who had thoughts about that, too.

Am I a twit for not twittering? I think not, but am open to arguments otherwise.

Listing Towards Success

Caroline Adams Miller — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:54:00 +0000

Although I'm not necessarily a Pittsburgh Steelers football fan, as a goal accomplishment coach, I was loudly rooting for the team to win the Super Bowl for one reason: to help prove the importance of setting goals and using list-making as a tool to get there.

Mike Tomlin, the 36-year-old head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the youngest coach in Super Bowl history, is an inveterate list-maker and goal-setter, and always has been. In fact, he still has notes about goals he set decades earlier for his personal life and sports career, all meticulously tracked and organized in binders. "I'm a big dreamer," Tomlin said about his penchant for creating lists of goals he intends to accomplish. Sometimes Tomlin can't believe how far he's come himself, and will flip through old stacks of Franklin Covey planners to remind himself of how his audacious dreams, backed up by small goals, led him to where he is today.

In my newest book, "Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide" (Sterling 2009), I write about the fact that most successful people have life lists and are goal-setters. Edwin Locke, the co founder of goal setting theory, wrote in the book, "The Prime Movers," that the most successful wealth creators are characterized by a few traits, including "vision" and "action." He goes on to add that these prime movers have two types of goals they set: "difficult" and "impossible."

I encourage all of my clients to have short-term and long-term goals that they track in lists. These lists can be on goal-setting internet sites, spiral notebooks, scrapbooks, or daily paper organizers. It doesn't really matter what form these lists take; the only thing that matters is that we have goals at all. In one of the only studies of its kind, 3,500 people from around the world were followed to determine what brought them joy. The happiest people, the study found, were guided by the daily pursuit of "clear-cut" goals.

From my vantage point, I find that most people don't know how to set the "right" goals and they need coaching to understand the intricacies of how to break these goals down into meaningful chunks so that they have steady feedback along the way to accomplishment. If you haven't yet created a set of your own goals, this is a terrific opportunity to start. New Year's resolutions have passed, but use the impetus of spring cleaning to clear the clutter from your life and start afresh. Where do you want to be in one year? Five years? Ten years? What do you need to do to change direction now? You may not win a Super Bowl by doing this today, but by having goals for yourself, you'll certainly get back into the game of life.

The First Role Model

Caroline Adams Miller — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:47:28 +0000

If you've ever been a skeptic of the power of a role model, read on.

In a new study that was made public this week, a small team of researchers has reported what they are calling the "Obama effect" when African Americans take a twenty-question test. For years, a gap in performance has been seen between whites and blacks when taking standardized tests, but in the wake of President Obama's election and his inauguration speech last week, the gap has all but disappeared.

The study, which has been submitted to the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, has been called "provocative" by Ronald F. Ferguson, a Harvard professor who studies the factors that have historically contributed to the achievement gap between white and black students on testing. "There is certainly a theoretical foundation and some empirical support for the proposition that Obama's election could increase the sense of competence among African-Americans, and it could reduce the anxiety associated with taking difficult test questions," he noted.

As a coach who specializes in helping clients identify and achieve the goals that are important to them, this new finding doesn't come as a surprise. Self-efficacy theory states that we help to create a belief in ourselves when we have a role model who has accomplished a goal we have for ourselves. This is why I always encourage clients to find a role model, preferably close to them, who has accomplished what they are also seeking to do. If you can't find someone in your immediate environment, you can use a character from a film or book as inspiration; this has been found to work effectively, as well.

If the role modeling provided by Barack Obama for African Americans in test-taking situations gives them more confidence around answering hard questions, and it extends to pursuit of other goals, such as holding public office, going to Harvard Law School, or becoming President of the United States, then Obama has given the world a gift of massive proportions - being a role model for striving and excellence.

Do you have role models for your goals? Clearly, knowing someone, or knowing of someone, who is where you want to be in life will help you get closer, so start your search for this person or persons immediately if you haven't already.

Blue Monday and Hope!

Caroline Adams Miller — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:46:44 +0000

As I post this entry, my first one of this blog, my husband and my two youngest children have just ridden their bikes home from watching Barack Obama get sworn in as our 44th president down on the National Mall.

As a lifelong Washingtonian, and fifth generation resident of this city, I have a special love for my hometown. Today, the city is bristling with hope and jubilation, and the mood is so contagious that my family wanted to ride down and feel the vibes themselves. Their happy faces as they walked back into our house told me that they had witnessed something they'll never forget.

Today is a special day, and it comes one day after what has been called "Blue Monday," the so-called saddest day of the year. Typically, the third Monday of January is thought to be the saddest day of the year because it is the day that credit card statements roll in reflecting holiday overspending, New Year's resolutions have been broken, and the weather is still gloomy.

As the primary author of "Creating Your Best Life: The Ultimate Life List Guide" (Sterling 2009), I write about Blue Monday and how we can offset its effects in a few ways.

1. Catch the mood of hope and happiness. Happiness is contagious, and people who are happier are more likely to accomplish their goals. Being in Washington, D.C. today, or anywhere that people are celebrating, is bound to do the trick.

2. Make sure that your New Year's Resolutions only have one willpower-related goal at a time if you'd like to maximize your chances of success. Willpower is a resource that we deplete throughout the day, and if we deplete it too often with too many willpower goals, we make it harder for ourselves to succeed.

I cover these and many more topics in "Creating Your Best Life," the first book to connect the science of goal-setting with the science of goal accomplishment. So if you want to always go after your very best life, be sure to have this book as your trusty guide so that Blue Monday never strikes you!