Yesterday afternoon after promising myself and my wife that I really would get out to the backyard to remove the cobwebs over our patio, I found myself running a hot bath and finishing a book that had 15 pages left. As I eased myself down, I thought about the amount of water that I was displacing and tried to calculate the percent of water that I didn't have to run because of the enormity of my body. I also thought about the percentage of the 600 page book I had already read and how long that had taken.
This of course led to my ongoing fascination with using percentages as mental and visual markers to help us better understand the significance of situations.
Take as an example your age.
If I believe that based upon my sex, body type, lifestyle, family history, and other variables, that I will live to be 90, then every 9 years represents 10% of my life. Being 54, I therefore have lived 60% of my life ((54/9) x .10). More significantly, I have 40% of my life left and a smaller percent of my work life left. WOW. That's a pretty eye opening percentage.
About 20 years ago (22.22% of my life ago) I found myself feeling unfulfilled, dissatisfied with what I was doing at work, and in general, out of sorts with the world. I started looking about for causes of this malaise and in the process starting thinking about those things in my life that had previously brought me joy. At first I looked at things in my recent past that brought a smile. The birth of my son, my wife, my accomplishments, time spent with friends. These were all in OK shape but then again, when you're feeling not quite right, everything is just OK.
I decided to dig deeper and go back as far as I could remember, posing the question: "As you look back, what comes up as something that made you happy?" One of my first "happy making" memories was making Batman for Governor buttons. In actuality, did I love "making" the buttons? NO. I made them with something called a Mattel VacuForm. I used to burn myself, cut my fingers, and I hated how long each one took to make.
But I loved selling them. I loved the excitement of kids running around the playground wanting them and buying them for $.25 each. I even enjoyed getting in trouble with the Principal who told me I couldn't sell them anymore because of all of the commotion. (He did end up buying the remainder of my inventory at retail and used them as incentives for "good" students).
I also had very happy memories of public speaking, acting, and performing in different bands. I even had a great memory of being asked to leave the elementary school orchestra (I played drums) because I chose to blow my nose at a somewhat inopportune moment with great volume.
When I looked at the list, I realized that there were a fair number of things that weren't part of my life at that time. I wasn't acting, I wasn't doing anything entrepreneurial, I wasn't doing very much public speaking, and I hadn't been performing musically, or even playing any music. As I kept looking at the things I wasn't doing, I realized that I could be doing a number of them at work.
My job at UCLA afforded me the flexibility of presenting workshops as often as I liked. And if the topic was of value to the community, I could write my own script and perform it. And if an idea took hold of my interest, I could develop it, find the resources for it, and turn it into something of value. I learned of the value of Intrepreneurship (operating like an entrepreneur inside of an organization instead of on your own). I also learned that by integrating some of the things that used to make me happy into my current life, I would find greater joy in what I was currently doing.
What percentage of your life is filled with things that make you happy? Wouldn't it make sense that if you knew what contributed to your happiness, and you were able to integrate that into your work life, you would like what you were doing for living.... or perhaps you might even think that it contributed to your life?
The next time you're feeling a bit out of sorts with the world and have enough energy left to look for the reasons why, look backwards instead of fantasizing about the future, and find those things that used to put a smile on your face. You may discover that they are simply missing from your current life and you need to find a way to get them back. To quote a great Beatles title, "Got to get you into my life" would be a pretty good directive for those things that used to make you happy.
