Tag Archives: Rafael Nadal

How Many Great Years Do You Need To Call It A Great Life?

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” –Mae West

“May you live every day of your life.” –Jonathan Swift

Hello friend,

I remember so clearly the high I felt upon publishing my first Journal of You letter to you more than six years ago.  The adrenaline rush, the ecstasy, the peace and satisfaction of doing what feels exactly right and true.  It was like falling in love.   I had always tried in different ways—teaching, coaching, managing–to help other people to be their best, but this time it was like I was finally tapping into my best stuff.  It was fulfilling in a way nothing else had ever been, making me believe I had truly and finally locked into my purpose.  It was heavenly.  I figured if I could just stay dialed into that energy for the rest of my life—just keep doing the meaningful work—when all was said and done, I could lay claim to a truly great life.  That’s all I wanted.  That all I have ever wanted.

For the first months after beginning my letters, I was going like a madman: working a lot, spending every possible minute with my young children, and then staying up into the wee hours to pour out my heart and soul into the keyboard to keep your inbox full of new thoughts from me.  I hardly slept at all, fueled almost entirely by my passion for the work and that inimitable high I mentioned above.

Before long, it became clear that I could not sustain the wild pace, and I settled on a deadline of one letter per week.  It would still be a stiff challenge for time and sleep, but it seemed to strike the right blend of reasonably demanding to my mind and deeply fulfilling to my soul.  Writing was in me, I knew that, and committing to producing constantly made it feel professional, like I wasn’t merely dabbling but instead was giving it the effort and attention that it deserved.  I was being a “real” writer, which felt like what I was called to do.

That hectic pace kept going right up until the time when I realized I could not edit and assemble my upcoming book if I was preoccupied every week with producing a new letter to you.  Even though the answer was obvious, it was still heart-wrenching for me to put the blog on hold until the book was ready for release.  It was a grinding process but richly rewarding to the soul in the end.  All of that blood, sweat, and tears had left some small mark upon the world; it would live beyond me.  I was proud of myself.  And I was sure it was just the beginning.

I have always had a very wide variety of interests and don’t like to limit my areas of study or work.  I could imagine being deeply fulfilled by years filled with writing in all sorts of formats—books, articles, blogs, personal correspondence—but I know that other things could fulfill me also.  Coaching, counseling, public speaking, working to make the world a more peaceful, sustainable, and equitable place to live—all of these things are meaningful to me.  So, although I think of myself as a writer and saw the publishing of my first book as a harbinger of things to come, I knew that writing wasn’t the only way I would measure “success” along my journey and certainly wouldn’t be the only consideration when I got to the end of it all and gave myself a final grade.

And not that work or career are the only ways I want to gauge my progress as a person and the quality of my existence.  As I go along, and definitely in my final measure, I will be looking hard at my relationships and the amount of love given and received in them.  My role as Dad will be especially under the microscope, followed by husband.  Son, brother, and friend, too.

I will also take into consideration how much fun I have had and the quality and quantity of my adventures.  I hope that, in the end, I will not be disappointed by the number cross-country roadtrips I have taken, how many new languages I have been lucky enough to try, and how many nights I have spent under the stars.  I will want to recall how many times I laughed myself into a bellyache, played my fingertips raw, and sung myself hoarse.  I will consider all the times I have played my muscles to exhaustion.  I will delight in replaying the moments when I have been moved to tears by live music, a poetry reading, an interpretive dance, or live theatre.  And of course, I will ache to recount the times (hopefully many) I have allowed myself to be moved to pure creation by The Muse.

I have no doubt that part of the equation will also be the quality of my actions and how they affected the greater world around me.  Did I show enough empathy for those who have not been as lucky as I have?  Did my writing do enough to raise awareness of the importance of living our best lives, including being better to the people around us?  Did I make visible the people too often ignored?  Did I raise my voice enough to help the voiceless?  Basically, is the world a better place because I was here?

The other thing I will really want to establish is if I was happy.  Really, truly happy.  I have read books and articles that suggested being happy is the meaning of Life.   I don’t know if that is true, but it certainly is important and a necessary consideration when assessing the quality of one’s full life.  After all, what good are adventures, ideals, and good deeds if they don’t make you happy?  Answer (I think): some good, no doubt, but not good enough.  So, I will measure my joy and satisfaction, my degree of fulfillment, and the delight at being me.

These subjective assessments should matter—just because they are difficult to measure does not mean they don’t have a significant impact—because they are the truth behind what we see in the mirror every day.  They cover over us and ooze out of us in our most quiet moments alone.  That’s why I will take them seriously in my final judgment.

But I know myself too well; I am sure that much of my grade will be based on “production.”  I will want a clear calculation of how many Journal of You letters I have published, and how many years I published them.  I will want to know how many books I have written (and it better be more than one!).  The same for podcasts, articles, TED talks, or anything else I put out into the world.  I will want specific examples of the people I have made a positive impact on: my students, clients, readers, listeners, and anyone else I somehow touched along the way with my endeavors.  I’ll need names!  There will be a list.   I’ll want proof of a great life.

That proof is exactly why my lifestyle since publishing my book has been gnawing at me lately.  You see, after I exhaled that giant sigh of relief two years ago when the book went out, I decided I needed some time to be without the strict deadlines I had kept for myself the previous five years.  I wanted a break from that pressure to produce writing all the time.  Instead of a weekly deadline for these letters to you, I gave myself an extra week in between.  So, instead of stressing every week, I let myself relax for a week, then stress the next week until I hit the “Publish” button.  It was a delightful ease that I had forgotten all about since I wrote that first Journal of You post years earlier.  I felt a little guilty—like I was cheating on my commitment to professionalism—but the ease was so nice.  I actually let myself do some other things, from home repairs to extra time reading, even an occasional movie.  I felt more well-rounded.  It seemed like self-care, which I have heard is a good thing.

But then, if something came up and I couldn’t quite squeeze in a post that second week, I gave myself a pass.  I wasn’t as hard on myself about meeting deadlines.  I let myself be okay with not having a new book idea to pursue.  I let myself stay in work that doesn’t deliver a high enough level of impact on others.  My standard for disappointment in myself loosened.  I justified more self-care.  Pass, pass, pass.  Slide, slide, slide.  And I have been happy.  I am enjoying myself and my time.  I notice the lack of tension and appreciate the absence of the weight on my shoulders, the need to constantly rise to my high standards.  I Iike doing the other things, too.  Life is good.

And yet, just below the surface, there is always the gnawing…

I can’t help thinking that I will wake up one of these days in a full-blown panic with the realization at how much time has passed since I was in fifth gear, churning out evidence of how I want to be in the world and the impact I want my life to leave.  I will remember vividly how, only two short years ago, I was on fire with productions of my purpose and my passions.  And I will be devastated by regret.

I am a lifelong student of Tennis, and I think often about the three guys that are at the absolute pinnacle of the sport: Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic.  They only got there by doing everything right all along the way.  Nutrition, fitness, stroke production, mental strength, attitude, work ethic.  Everything.  All of that has to be done consistently to have the best career possible, to be Federer, Nadal, or Djokovic rather than Kyrgios or Safin.  If you are asking who those last two are, my answer is, “EXACTLY!”  You have proven my point.  (Answer: They are players who shared the era with the three giants and had at least as much talent but nowhere near the results, victims of their own inconsistent efforts.)

Is Life the same way?  Do we get to coast for any extended periods—mindlessly going through the motions without putting our noses to the grindstone of our dreams and ideals and pointedly attempting to do our best—without ultimately being unsatisfied with our run?  That is the question that gnaws at me.

I will turn 48 soon.  It’s not ancient, but believe me, that proximity to 50 has made me aware that my clock is ticking.  There is more sand in the bottom of the hourglass than the top.  I hate that!  I love this life and want it to go on and on.  I have thought that all along, but now there is that ticking in the ambience, supplying the years with an urgency that didn’t exist before.

I want my lifetime, when all the dust settles, to have been a great one.  Not just a good one.  Not just one with a smattering of good memories and sweet loves, or a handful of milestones that I was once proud to hit.  I want it to have been great.  Roger Federer great.  I want to know that I made good use of my gifts, that I lived up to my potential.  That’s really what it is, now that I write the word: potential. When I go, I want to have wrung out every last bit of goodness from my soul and left it here on the Earth.

When I think about that standard, the regret begins to pour over me.  It just seems like the people who have lived the very best of lives probably didn’t do a lot of sliding.  You know, like Mother Teresa, she probably didn’t knock off her work with the poor in India for a few years to recharge her battery, kicking back to read and do coffees with friends.  Martin Luther King probably didn’t do a lot of retreats or take sabbaticals from injustice (My goodness, the man did all he did and was killed before he even reached age 40; that is humbling to any aspiring change-maker.) .

And while I understand that Life requires balance, and while I accept that self-care, downtime, hobbies, and even perhaps some mindless television or social media are part of that balance that makes for a healthy existence, I also can see how easy it is to fall into the trap of overindulgence.  “Self-care” can be a drug, too, an opiate that allows me to piddle away my time on what genuinely appear to be pleasant activities and personal growth but are, after a while anyway, simply justifications for not doing better for the world around me.  That translates into a life that is enjoyed but not fulfilled.  I want both.  I demand both.

So, given that I know I haven’t done it all right to this point, my main question is: How much slide time do I have left, if any, before I no longer have a chance to make mine a truly great life?  Has my relative slide these past two years been too much to overcome?  How “productive” do I have to be every year going forward to negate this slow patch?  More generally, I just want to know what percentage of a person’s life gets to be unambitious in the direction of her ideals and goals compared to the percentage that she spends fully engaged in the good stuff.  Because, like I said, I do enjoy my sliding activities, but I think they would be all the more enjoyable if there wasn’t that perpetual gnawing that accompanies them.  It would be nice if present guilt and future regret didn’t accompany every period of ease and contentment.  I would champion and embody the whole Balance and Self-Care movement if I knew just what the acceptable balance was.  Acceptable for Greatness, that is.  I don’t want to be just generally satisfied at the end of this ride.  I want to be completely fulfilled.  I want to have made an impact.  I want to be able to call my life great.

How about you?  Are you using your time in a way that you will not have regrets later about squandering the potential you had to build a great life?  Open up your journal and explore your goals and ideals in juxtaposition with the way you have passed the years.  Are you on your way to living the life you have imagined for yourself, or are you mostly coasting through to wherever?  Perhaps it is best to begin by envisioning your best life.  What does that look like for you?  What kind of work would you be doing?  What positive impact on the world would you be making?  Whose lives would you be touching?  Which ideals would you be advancing?  How fulfilled would you be?  Does that vision feel like a great life?  Let’s keep that vision as your standard.  Now, how are you doing at living up to it?  Over the last decade, in how many of the years do you feel like you have made significant strides in the direction of these goals and ideals?  How many of the years have you coasted through?  What about this year?  Are you in a Progress Mode at the moment, or are you sliding by?  How much does it bother you when you realize you are in a coasting period?  Do you feel guilt about your slides?  How much do you think you will regret them later?  How do you feel in your most “productive” periods, when you are advancing your dreams and doing good work in the world?  Does the satisfaction give you fuel to do more, even as the work is taxing?  How long do your ideal stretches tend to last, these times when you are really in the flow and knowing you are making a difference?  How long do your more passive, coasting stretches tend to last?  Is your ebb and flow of ambition fairly consistent?  Do you need the down times to refuel your tank for more of the good stuff, or do you just get sidetracked?  How aware are you of the phase you are in at any given time?  Do you know when you are in Self-Care Mode versus Hard Driving Mode?  Do you plan it?  What do you think is the right balance for you?  What percentage of your adult years will have to have been good ones for you to proclaim, in the end, that you have had a truly great life?  Do you think your standard is pretty similar to most people’s?  Do you feel driven to have a great life, or is a good or okay one acceptable for you?  At the end of it all, how closely will you have come to reaching your potential?  Are you on track for that now, or do you have some catching up to do?  Do you believe it is still possible?  What will you regret coasting by?  What is one thing you can do today to advance your cause?  I hope that you will take advantage of the opportunity.  Leave me a reply and let me know: How much of your life needs to be great to have lived a truly great life?

Seize the day,

William

P.S. If today’s letter resonated with you, please share it with your community.  We rise together!

P.P.S. If this method of self-inquiry and storytelling appeals to you, consider buying my book, Journal of YOU: Uncovering The Beauty That Is Your Truth, at your favorite online retailers.

Embracing Your Weirdness: The Quirks That Make You YOU

“I think what people call ‘weird’ comes part and parcel with people who are brilliant in some way. So embrace your weird. Embrace your eccentricity.” –Eileen Anglin

Hello friend,

As a sports fan, I am no stranger to the unique tics and superstitious rituals of the athletes. Michael Jordan spun the ball in his hands, dribbled, and spun it again before every free throw. Rafael Nadal tugs on his shirt, tucks his hair behind his ears, and picks his undies out of his rear end before every point. Every. Single. One. Athletes are taught that. It helps them to calm and focus their minds. In my own tennis-playing days, I had my pattern of ball-bouncing before serves. It was intentional, and I left it on the court. Outside of that, I spent my youth like everyone else: just trying to seem normal. It’s amazing how much time and energy is wasted on that awful endeavor! Normal!!!

I really thought I was, too. I couldn’t think of a single thing that made me seem unusual or interesting in any way, good or bad. No weird habits. No superstitions. No irrational thoughts I was hiding. Nothing for anyone to look sideways at me about. No unusual demands to make of the people in my life. No hang-ups. I was easy. I blended in. Vanilla. I guess I thought that was a good thing.

I suppose I look at the “characters” of the world as a lot of work to be around, always requiring some special conditions to be created by the rest of us just for their needs. High maintenance.

My parents have become increasingly obsessed with neatness as they have aged, my old man occasionally going so far as to follow his kids and grandkids around his kitchen with a Swiffer when we visit for Christmas (interestingly, one of my cousins told me that my Dad’s brother has become the same way). On a fascinating parallel, when visiting my parents recently, I feared for my germaphobic wife’s sanity when she saw my mother defrosting a chicken by holding it in the middle of her spotless sink and spraying it with water, drops of Salmonella flying all over the countertops and floor (amazingly, my wife swallowed her tongue until my Mom left the room, then quickly sanitized the area—whew!). I have always laughed at the memory of my great-uncle insisting that there be cookies available after supper, and how he could not believe the gall of some restaurants not having cookies on the dessert menu. Speaking of menus, my sister never orders anything the way a restaurant offers it, always making multiple changes to each item.

Weird people, right? You know, Them.  

Not me. Never me.

Well…maybe there are just a few things I’ve added over the years since my youthful blandness…..

I can’t sleep without several pillows placed strategically around me. Currently I have six—two of them king-sized—each filling a role I consider vital to a good night’s rest.

Speaking of rest, do NOT touch me when I am sleeping or attempting to sleep! I will come to full alertness immediately. If you have snuggling to do, get it done before it is time to think about sleep.

I also need to go to bed clean. Very clean. If I have perspired even a drop since my last one, I must shower again. I will not be stinky!

Okay, just one more about sleeping. I cannot wear clothes to bed. Too constricting.

That one speaks to a lot of my physical and mental preferences, actually. I cannot be contained. I get anxious when I feel restricted. So, I sleep naked. When I wear clothing, I like it to be loose and comfortable. Yes to sweatpants, no to neckties. It’s also why I don’t like to work for other people or to have a lot of rules around me. I repeat: I cannot be contained!

I think that is also why I only like to sit in certain seats at a table or be in certain areas of a room. Some spots—usually in a corner and with no one behind me—just feel better to me. I don’t like to feel surrounded.

I need silence during movies. TOTAL silence.

I am very particular about the pens and pencils I will write with. I ask for certain pens every year for Christmas, and dull wooden pencils make me cringe. Mechanical, 0.5mm lead, thick shaft with rubber grip. Thank you.

I strongly dislike tattoos. But then, I was the kid in school who would never allow you to even write a note on my palm. I do not like things on my skin. I don’t even like it when my kids put stickers on my clothes.

Maybe that is why I don’t like outward displays of group membership or position. I hated the idea of wearing a letterman’s jacket in school, I will not buy a jersey to show support for my favorite team, and I don’t like political signs in the yard (though I am softening on that last one as the times become more troubling).

Frankly, I am not much for group joining at all. I don’t know. Maybe it is my innate aversion to small-talk—it makes me feel gross—but I have become terrible about entering larger social settings as I have aged. I love an intimate, revealing conversation and would probably appreciate making more friends, but I otherwise don’t feel much inclination to socialize in groups.

Maybe the small-talk thing is related to one of my other quirks: I resent anything—anything—that feels like a waste of my time. I have become super-sensitive to this, and the alarm bells go off immediately when something is keeping me from a bigger priority. I get tense. Tense and resentful.

I’m a grammar/verbiage snob. I won’t necessarily correct you, but I will badly want to.

Did I say “just a few”? Well, look at that!

It’s funny, I think most of these eccentricities have intensified as I have aged. I don’t know that it is about getting older, though. My sense is that it is more about having a better understanding—thanks to my journal–of what works for me and what doesn’t. I have more of an opinion about myself and am not as willing to compromise that as I was when I was young and just trying to be “normal”.   I think that comes from being more in tune with my intuition, trusting my gut to know which situations make my heart sing and which don’t serve me at all.

So, I am weirder now than I was before. Higher maintenance, too. I have those idiosyncrasies that make people look sideways at me or whisper behind my back.

But you know what? My heart sings a lot more now, too. I am happier. I know who I am. And I like that guy. Quirks and all.

How about you? What are your idiosyncrasies? Open up your journal and your interesting soul. What personality quirks and habits make you question your normalcy? How unusual are they? How much effort do you put into hiding your eccentricities or minimizing them in order to appear “normal”? Which are you most self-conscious about? Are there any that you find particularly destructive to your relationships? Are any dangerous? Which ones could you not control even if you tried? Which ones are awesome, even if a little weird? How have your quirks changed over the years? Are there more of them now? Are they more pronounced? Harder to control or hide? How much of a pass do you give your loved ones for their idiosyncrasies? Do you give yourself that same leeway? Is it a waste of your time and effort to hide these quirks? How different would it be if you embraced them completely? What step can you take today to be more unapologetically authentic? I dare you! Leave me a reply and let me know, How will you stake a claim to your weirdness?

All of you is beautiful,

William

P.S. If this helped you see yourself differently or helped to give yourself a break today, please share it. Encourage authenticity!