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Brain-Based Transformational Solutions

J Is for Juicy

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orange-juicy

You probably know that juicy means full of juice or succulent. But it’s the second meaning of the word, richly interesting, that I want to focus on. Synonyms for interesting include: engrossing, fascinating, riveting, gripping, compelling, captivating, engaging, and enthralling. Synonyms for richly include: vividly, deeply, intensely, vibrantly, elaborately, lavishly, elegantly, splendidly, and exquisitely. You can put together your own combination of words to define juicy for yourself.

I’m hungry for a juicy life. I lean out my window at night and I can taste it out there, just waiting for me. ―Brigid Lowry, Guitar Highway Rose

What are the things that make your life richly interesting or deeply engrossing or intensely engaging? Maybe you can recite a list off the top of your head. But maybe you haven’t really given much thought to it. There are so many things you’re required to do, so many things you should do, and so many things you just do automatically that asking yourself how juicy any of them are might seem sort of silly or indulgent.

Here’s the thing, though: if you want to change any aspect of your status quo, you’ll have to contend with the unconscious part of your brain which wants no part of change. Change is potentially dangerous and definitely disruptive. So the unconscious part of your brain (System 1) prefers to play it safe by keeping everything just as it is right now. Because System 1 is much faster than the conscious part of your brain (System 2), it wins most contests that involve change.

So when you set out to change an existing habit or start a new one, or to pursue a goal, the habit or goal—or at least your desired outcome—needs to be more compelling to you than System 1’s agenda of maintaining the status quo is to it. Juiciness is highly motivating. If what you want is juicy enough, you’ll continue pursuing it in spite of both the obstacles you may encounter and the resistance your brain will put up.

Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks. —Yo-Yo Ma

Get to Why

You may have a strong desire to do something without being clear about why you want to do it or what outcome you’re hoping for. This isn’t an uncommon situation. It seemed like a good idea at the time. If that’s the case, however, before you start trying to make the change, ask yourself why you want to do it. It’s worth expending some effort evaluating what you’re really up to: creating a juicier life or heading down a dead-end road.

alphabet-changeThe trick is to ask why forward rather than backward. Usually we ask why in an effort to come up with an explanation about something that already happened or to discover the past source of a current problem. Since we’ll never have access to all the information we need to get an accurate answer, asking why backward generally amounts to a lot of wheel spinning.

But asking why forward is actually useful and can even be revelatory.

  • Is there something you want to do or someplace you want to go? Why?
  • Is there a decision you’re trying to make? Why are you considering it?
  • Is there a goal you’re working toward? Why?
  • Is there a habit you’re trying to start? Why?
  • Is there a change you’re thinking about making? Why?
  • Is there something you want to get or have? Why?

Don’t stop with asking why once. If you keep asking the question, you’ll eventually get to the bedrock answer, at least for now. You’ll get closer to the heart of what’s at stake. You’ll be in a better position to decide what to do. If your why is juicy enough, you’ll be more motivated to go after it. If you can’t find the juiciness, you’re better off letting it go rather than setting yourself up for a slog you probably won’t make it through.

Juicy and Passionate

If your why is juicy enough, you’ll be passionate about doing whatever it takes to get there: the doing, the learning, the creating, and the problem-solving. Working toward your goal won’t feel like work no matter how effortful it might be. Passion keeps you engaged and helps you through the rough or confusing spots, so you’re more likely to keep going instead of getting bored or giving up. Obsession isn’t always a bad thing.

So why aren’t we all engaged in living, or aiming to live, the juiciest life possible? Why aren’t we going all in with passion and intensity? Since passion and juiciness are so important, essential even, when it comes to changing our behavior, why haven’t we fully embraced them? I suspect what gets in the way is us, specifically the things we tell ourselves, our considerations, our expectations, the preconditions we demand of life, or fear of feeling fear. Or maybe it’s embarrassment. It’s not cool to be too excited about something.

I like to just think of myself as a normal person who just has a passion, has a goal and a dream and goes out and does it. And that’s really how I’ve always lived my life. —Michael Phelps

We’re afraid of stepping up, taking a risk, facing uncertainty, getting hurt or burned, failing, caring too much, or exceeding our reach. The unconscious part of our brain is wired for survival, not for juiciness and passion.

What gets in the way of living passionately isn’t our circumstances; it’s our own self-talk that keeps passion at arm’s length. If we want to live a juicy life, we can start doing it any time. There’s nothing to search for or to find, either within or without. There’s nothing stopping us from going after what’s succulent, what richly interests us, but ourselves.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

G Is for Goals

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goal-map

“Goal,” I once wrote, isn’t one of those four-letter words. Nevertheless, it’s often treated as if it is, which is unfortunate. Becoming proficient at identifying, setting, and achieving goals is essential to mastering the art and science of change. So what exactly is a goal? The definition I use (not coined by me) is this one:

A goal is a specific state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behavior intended to achieve it.

That means you are now here; you want to be over there; you figure out how to get from here to there; you take the steps to get from here to there; and when you arrive you stop taking steps because now you are over there.

Goals:

  • are concrete, time-bound, and involve planning or multiple steps to complete
  • require ongoing conscious attention
  • may be short-, medium-, or long-term, but always have an end point; once you arrive, you stop trying to get there
  • when achieved, result in a change in the status quo

It turns out that people who set low goals or no goals tend not to accomplish much. On the other hand, people who do set goals not only get more done, they also tend to be happier and more satisfied with their lives. In addition, people who set and achieve challenging goals increase their self-confidence and self-esteem.

Two factors that will greatly increase the likelihood of achieving a goal are:

  1. Knowing why you’re doing it.
  2. Making a commitment to doing it.
Knowing Why You’re Doing It

Knowing why you’re doing it means identifying how the goal relates to what’s most important to you. What are the things in life that really matter to you? Your goals should not be ends in themselves, but rather the means of having more of what you really want. If you know what you want, you can either hope those things will come your way or you can identify goals and take the necessary steps to help you get them.

Knowing why you’re doing it also means identifying your desired outcome. What is the change in your status quo that you expect to have as a result of achieving your goal? You need to identify your desired outcome so you’ll know what you’re aiming for and will be able to tell when you’ve arrived. Once you’ve done that, however, focus your attention on the steps it will take to get there—on the process. Focusing exclusively on the outcome will actually decrease the likelihood you’ll achieve your goal.

Making a Commitment to Doing It

There’s no point in putting time, effort, and energy into doing something half-heartedly or half-way. If you aren’t sure why you’re setting or working toward a goal, you’ll have a harder time making a commitment to achieving it.

Of course, making a commitment doesn’t mean you can see into the future and know what the outcome will be. There are no guarantees. But if you build escape clauses and wiggle room into your goals right from the start, you’re probably wasting your time. Once you know why you want to achieve a goal and have made a commitment to doing what it takes, these three steps can increase your chances of success:

  1. Write it down. Writing out your goal can help you clarify it and solidify your commitment.
  2. Make it SMART. That means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Rousing, and Time-Bound.
  3. Develop a plan. A plan consists of the action steps you need to take in order to achieve that specific state of affairs you are now committed to creating in your life.

A goal without a plan is just a wish. –Seth Adam Smith

Just Do It

If you know what you want and have an idea about how to create more of that in your life, you’re likely to find working toward your goals exciting rather than tedious. Of course you won’t be excited about every single step and you won’t be excited every minute of every day. No one is. That’s where having a plan—and a system of rewards—comes in handy. But if you discover you’re not passionate about your desired outcome, let go of the goal and find something else to work toward.

The best way to approach a goal is by breaking it down into manageable baby steps and rewarding yourself for each step you complete. Your brain is wired to work toward obtaining rewards, so you might as well take advantage of that. It’s also important to pay attention to feedback and adjust course as needed. There’s nothing in the definition of a goal that prevents you from being flexible or responding to new information or insights. After all, it’s your goal.

To summarize: if you want to change your status quo, which is what a goal is intended to do, you need to focus your conscious attention on completing the steps you’ve outlined until you’ve achieved it. Maintaining focus is not easy. It helps to have a plan that includes a means of measuring your results and rewarding yourself for your accomplishments. If you don’t get your brain to go along with your plan, your brain will get you to go along with its agenda. The unconscious part of your brain is much more interested in immediate gratification than it is in long-term satisfaction—which is why doing whatever you feel like doing in the moment is so appealing. Your brain is generally at the ready to divert your attention to any nearby bright, shiny objects. In the majority of cases, going with the flow is less a philosophical choice and more the path of least resistance of the unconscious part of your brain.

A knock against goals is that they limit you, which is true, but not having goals also limits you. You face limits no matter what you do because when you’re doing one thing, you can’t be doing something else at the same time. Trying to keep all your options open doesn’t enhance your life; it keeps you from living it.

Part of the series A-Z: An Alphabet of Change.

5 Characteristics of Innovative Thinkers

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innovative thinking

Innovative thinking doesn’t require an innate talent or special technique. It isn’t limited to artists or inventors or any other group of people. If you want to develop your innovative thinking skills, focus on these five characteristics.

1. Be Curious

Curiosity prepares your brain for learning and long-term memory. It also activates the brain’s reward system. When you’re curious about something, you anticipate discovering more about it. And your brain treats the answer or the new knowledge the same way it treats any kind of reward—by releasing hits of dopamine.

Curiosity increases activity in the hippocampus, which involves the creation of memories. When there is a higher level of interactivity between the reward system and the hippocampus, your brain is more likely to remember the new information—as well as incidental information you encountered along the way.

Curiosity may put the brain in a state that allows it to learn and retain any kind of information, like a vortex that sucks in what you are motivated to learn, and also everything around it. –Dr. Matthias Gruber, UC Davis

2. Be Passionate

When you’re passionate about learning something, creating something, or solving a particular problem, working on it doesn’t feel like work no matter how effortful it might be. Passion is motivating. It keeps you engaged and helps you through the rough or confusing spots, so you’re more likely to keep going instead of getting bored or giving up. Obsession isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When you’re passionate about something, you spend more time working with or thinking about it, which expands your capacity for innovation and creativity within that area.

The more different kinds of experiences you have and the more you learn, in general, the more opportunities you give yourself to discover what you’re passionate about. This isn’t the same thing as “finding your passion.” You can be passionate about several things at the same time or about different things over the course of your life.

Passion is one great force that unleashes creativity, because if you’re passionate about something, then you’re more willing to take risks. –Yo-Yo Ma

3. Be Willing to Fail

The unconscious part of the brain is risk averse, but while avoiding risks can get you incremental gains, it won’t really get you innovation or invention. It’s true that just because you can imagine something, that doesn’t mean it’s possible or viable. On the other hand, you won’t know until you try.

The occurrence of failure is less important than how you respond to it. If you treat it as feedback (information), there is always something you can learn from it to help you decide what to do next. If you treat it as evidence that there’s something wrong with you or your idea or course of action, you’re unlikely to get anything out of it.

And the failure to solve a problem can actually be the key to its eventual solution:

Failure to solve a problem stimulates your brain to store a special, easily retrieved memory of the problem. This memory energizes all of your associations to the information in the problem, sensitizing you to anything in your environment that might be relevant. —John Kounios and Mark Beeman, The Eureka Factor

There are no guarantees in life. If you can learn to live with uncertainty and recognize failure as feedback, you’re actually more likely to succeed.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. –Thomas A. Edison

4. Take Action

I’ll let Tim Ferris take this one: “Not yet!” one might say (and I have said often). More research, more preparation, more interviews, more… procrastination. Let’s call it what it often is: a forgiving term for a terrible habit. To create anything remarkable, it takes not one giant leap after perfect prep, but many baby steps in the right direction once you have barely enough to get started. To start something big, you have to first start something small.

The keywords here are “start something.” When you take action, you get more information in the form of feedback and you learn things you wouldn’t have learned if you simply continued thinking about your project. Taking any action can have unexpected results and undesired consequences. Although you can anticipate that such things might occur, you can’t plan for them because you won’t know what they are until after they happen.

An excellent motto to adopt is create and adjust. Until you begin actively creating, you have nothing to adjust.

5. Use Both Parts of Your Brain

Creativity and innovative thinking involve both parts of the brain—the conscious and the unconscious. Sometimes you need to apply focused (System 2) attention, which is linear, logical, effortful, and slow. But attempting to sustain System 2 attention is counterproductive. Sometimes you need unfocused (System 1) attention, which is associative, non-logical, runs in the background, and is fast.

Too much logical, linear thinking is as bad as too little. After framing the problem or situation and considering possible solutions, turn it over to your unconscious for a while and see what it comes up with. Let your mind wander instead of keeping it on a tight leash.  Research indicates that if you take a break from a problem and come back to it later, you’re more likely to be able to solve the problem than you would be if you continued working on it without the interruption.

Should You Try
Living Without Goals?

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winning

No. Just no.

Yes, there are some folks out there who are quite insistent that instead of setting goals, you should put all your attention on your habits. It’s like advising a writer that instead of using nouns, she should put all her attention on verbs. We need both nouns and verbs. And we need both goals and good habits.

I’ve also come across more than a couple of people in the behavior-change field who seem to confuse goals with habits.

A goal is the state of affairs that a plan is intended to achieve and that (when achieved) terminates behavior intended to achieve it.

A goal requires ongoing conscious (System 2) attention. You decide what your desired outcome is (the new state of affairs), and then you create a plan to achieve it. Once you’ve achieved your goal, you don’t keep working toward it. You’re done. A goal has an end point.

A habit, on the other hand, is a recurring, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.

Habits are created with or without your participation. If you want to start a new habit or change an existing one, you need to use conscious (System 2) attention initially. But once something becomes a habit, the unconscious (System 1) takes care of it. Habits are ongoing.

I don’t know why or how this either/or, black/white approach to goals and habits came about, but I first heard of doing away with goals in the 1990s when someone gave me a copy of Living Without a Goal by James Ogilvy. I recall reading a bit of it, attempting to give it a fair shake, but even back then I rejected the premise. Subsequently I’ve come across numerous spokespersons for the Zen-like attractiveness of the goalless life, which is especially prominent in the blogosphere.

What’s Wrong with Goals?

One of knocks against goals is that (horrors!) they limit you. Of course they do, but living without goals also limits you. You face limits no matter what you do because when you’re doing one thing, you can’t be doing four other things at the same time. If you board a plane for London, that’s where you’re likely to land even if you change your mind mid-flight and decide you’d rather land in Adelaide, Australia. Trying to keep all your options open doesn’t enhance your life, it keeps you from living it.

In addition to limiting you, another knock against goals is that they eliminate the element of surprise from your life. The idea that if you set and pursue goals life is going to stop surprising you is absurd.

In fact, you’re much more likely to be surprised (both happily and unhappily) once you set your plan into motion because you’ll be actively engaged in accomplishing something challenging. You may be uncomfortable, you’ll get feedback, you’ll learn new things, you’ll have successes and failures, you’ll have to make course adjustments, and you may even decide to change direction. So you may end up exactly where you hoped you would or you may end up someplace quite different. In either case, you’ll have had a chance to appreciate some new scenery and you’ll know much more about yourself than you would if you’d arrived there randomly.

Furthermore, you’re less likely to be surprised by life if you don’t challenge yourself because the unconscious part of your brain doesn’t like surprises. It wants you to be safe and secure, so it will attempt to keep you in your comfort zone, blissfully unaware of what you’re missing.

What’s Wrong with Giving Up Goals?

After considering their case, I’ve concluded the anti-goals folks get it wrong in four ways.

(1) They are unwilling to make a commitment.

When you commit yourself to one thing—especially to following through on a long-term goal—you agree to forego other things and to sometimes do things you don’t particularly feel like doing in the moment. If you want to change your status quo, you can’t just snap your fingers. You need to take action, you need to be persistent, and you need to figure out how to overcome obstacles. You don’t know ahead of time what your experience will be or how things are going to turn out. Doing something you don’t feel like doing now in order to have something you want in the future may not make you happy, but it’s more likely to enhance the satisfaction and meaning in your life.

Something else that comes across from many in the anti-goal camp is an almost pathological fear of measuring results. I’m sure that measuring results can be carried to an extreme, and when coupled with poorly thought-out goals (or goals determined by someone else), not particularly rewarding or even healthy. But measuring results is how you know when you’re getting closer to or farther away from what really matters to you. Why wouldn’t you want to keep track of that?

(2) They have a poor understanding of what goals really are.

What are the things in life that really matter to you? Your goals should not be ends in themselves, but rather the means of having more of what you really want. If you know what you want, you can either hope that doing whatever you feel like doing in the moment will get you there. Or you can identify goals that can get you more of what you want and then take steps to achieve them.

Many of the arguments for giving up goals seem to imply that once you create one, you’re somehow imprisoned by it. It’s true that a goal without a plan is just wishful thinking, but plans are only rigid if you treat them that way. The best way to approach a goal is by paying attention to feedback and adjusting course as needed. There’s nothing in the definition of a goal that prevents you from being flexible or responding to new information or insights.

Yet another misunderstanding about how to make setting goals more effective is the focus on the outcome rather than on the process. You need to identify your desired outcome so you’ll know what you’re aiming for and will be able to tell when you’ve arrived. But then you need to focus your attention on the steps it will take to get there: on the process. Focusing on the outcome will actually decrease the likelihood of achieving your goal.

(3) They have an inability to identify juicy, enlivening, and expansive goals.

Maybe the real problem is a lack imagination. If the idea of setting goals seems dry and boring to the anti-goal folks, they’re probably not setting the right goals.  Maybe they haven’t yet determined what they really want and are still searching. They don’t understand that by undertaking challenges they can stretch their limits and expand their possibilities. They can learn just as much—if not more—than they can learn by meandering moment to moment.

If you do know what you want and have an idea about how to create more of that in your life, you’re likely to find working toward your goals exciting rather than tedious. Of course you won’t be excited about every single step and you won’t be excited every minute of every day. No one is. That’s where having a plan comes in handy. But if you’re not passionate about your desired outcome, let it go and find something else to work toward. Don’t throw out the entire concept of goals.

(4) They lack awareness about how the brain actually works.

Your brain is primed to create habits, but it is not primed to achieve goals. If you do the same thing, under the same circumstances, over and over again, it will become a habit. You will no longer need to focus conscious attention on it because your basal ganglia will have taken it over. Your brain loves repetition and routine. And the unconscious part of your brain actively resists change.

So if you want to change your status quo, which is what a goal is intended to do, you need to focus your conscious attention on completing the steps you’ve outlined until you’ve achieved it. Maintaining focus is not easy. It helps to have a plan that includes a means of measuring your results and rewarding yourself for your accomplishments. If you don’t get your brain to go along with your plan, your brain will get you to go along with its agenda. The unconscious part of your brain is much more interested in immediate gratification than it is in long-term satisfaction—which is why doing whatever you feel like doing in the moment is so appealing. Your brain is generally at the ready to divert your attention to any nearby bright, shiny objects. That means going with the flow is less a philosophical choice and more the path of least resistance of the unconscious part of your brain.

Don’t buy into the anti-goals rhetoric, even if you’ve had negative experiences with goals. Making effective use of goal-setting starts with knowing what you really want and making a commitment to go after it.

My Heart: The Practical Value of Knowing What You Want

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vitality

I teach a course called What Do You Want? that’s based on a process I developed to help me create a more consistently satisfying and meaningful life. It didn’t become part of my program curriculum until I recognized that without knowing what they really want my clients can’t make effective use of the tools I teach them.

The purpose of the course is to identify what I call Big Picture Wants. There’s a psychological term for this, higher order wants, but the concept seems to be a well-kept secret. I do a lot of reading and researching in this area, and I didn’t come across a reference to higher order wants until after I started teaching the What Do You Want? course.

There’s a belief out there in the world that it’s OK—even necessary—to get your needs met, but getting what you want is optional. (Do you really need it or is it just something you want?) It may seem as if trying to get a need met or satisfied is less self-centered or narcissistic than pursuing something you want, but that isn’t the case. It’s simply more underhanded, and it actually keeps your attention focused on you.

There aren’t that many things we need from a survival standpoint: food, water, shelter, and social connections cover most of them. Nearly everything else is optional.

But, as David DiSalvo says, “We have a big brain capable of greatness,” so we’re not satisfied with merely surviving. We want more. We’re actually wired to want more. But we can go either way with that. System 1, the unconscious part of the brain that runs us most of the time, is focused on the short-term, on immediate gratification, on feeling good. System 2, the conscious part of the brain is focused on the long-term, on the bigger picture, on plans, goals, and dreams.

If we don’t know what we really want—meaning what leads to a satisfying and meaningful life as we define it—we’re likely to succumb to what feels good or what’s easiest in the moment. What we’re chasing over the long-term has to be compelling enough to keep us focused and not susceptible to immediate gratification.

I’ve never been clearer about how important this is than I am right now.

Roadwork Ahead

This past December I developed a process for reassessing and prioritizing my own Big Picture Wants for 2016. As I went through the exercises, I realized that one of them—vitality—was a keystone for the others. I want vitality for its own sake, but vitality also positively impacts every one of my other BPWs. Being aware of how important vitality is to me allows me to focus more attention on it, which has a cascade effect on the rest of them.

Armed with this awareness, I set out in January to increase my level of physical exercise and pay more attention to what I eat. And through the first six weeks of the year, I felt fantastic—full of vitality and very productive, focused, and energetic. Then came the crash.

I had an incident while I was using the treadmill one day in February that was somewhat alarming but didn’t stop me from completing my workout. I had a similar, though milder, incident the following day. But the next time I used the treadmill, everything felt normal. About a week after that, I started having chest congestion and trouble breathing. I’d been having some sinus congestion on and off, so I thought the chest congestion was related. I kept up most of my scheduled activities, but it became more and more difficult to do that. I facilitated a four-hour workshop the last Saturday in February and had to have someone else carry my materials from my car into the building.

The following Monday, a friend took me to the ER, where over the course of the day and numerous tests, it was determined that I was in heart failure as a result of undiagnosed mitral valve stenosis and atrial fibrillation and/or flutter. I was transferred to another hospital where I remained for the next seven days.

Three cardiologists are convinced I had rheumatic fever as a child, which is the usual cause of mitral valve stenosis. My general cardiologist claims it is “remarkable” I had no symptoms prior to February because the stenosis is moderately severe.

Lost and Found

This was definitely a life-changing experience, but primarily because I was quite aware I had lost—at least temporarily and possibly permanently—the thing that mattered most to me. Shortly after leaving the hospital, I resumed walking every day, but it was a slog and I wasn’t clear why. I kept up most of my activities but I tired much more easily and although I enjoyed facilitating my classes as much as ever, life was not nearly as invigorating as it had been before.

Then my general cardiologist decided that all of my EKG results indicated I had an atrial flutter, not fibrillation. He referred me to a heart rhythm specialist to be evaluated for a catheter ablation, a procedure that had the potential for eliminating the atrial flutter by destroying the parts of the heart that are causing it. The rhythm specialist explained that my heart was beating 240 times per minute, but due to a conversion (2:1) within the electrical circuit, my pulse measured 120. It was 120 when I was sleeping and 120 when I was exerting myself. It never changed, which was why I was having so much difficulty walking and why I was so tired.

The day the procedure was supposed to happen, it was discovered that my flutter is on the left side (atypical) rather than the right side, so I didn’t get the ablation. Instead they did cardioversion to shock my heart into a normal rhythm. That almost always works but it’s temporary (5 minutes, 5 weeks, 5 years…you never know). So I was put on a medication to maintain the normal rhythm.

It took a few days after this procedure for me to notice the difference. My pulse rate was back to increasing and decreasing the way it’s supposed to. Walking suddenly became much easier and much more enjoyable. Within a few more days I was back to walking at my usual pace for the usual amount of time. And I had energy. I had focus. I had enthusiasm. My vitality was back!

Having had it, lost it, and regained it confirmed its value and importance to me. It’s what I want. It’s what I really want. I now have numerous inconvenient dietary restrictions, which means I have to spend more time preparing my own meals, but if I do that I’m more likely to maintain vitality. I’ve recently been cleared for any and all forms of exercise, which I enjoy doing anyway, but if I do them regularly I’m more likely to maintain vitality. I have way too many medical appointments (11 this month) that eat up a lot of time. But being monitored is something that can help me keep on the right track and maintain vitality.

So I don’t have any internal dialogue about whether or not I’m going to do any of these things because I’m very clear what doing them gets me. I don’t do them because I’m “supposed to” or “have to.” And no will power is involved. I’m not remotely tempted to slack off because vitality is much more compelling to me than any short-term gratification. That simplifies decision-making and makes doing what I need to do easy. (I wrote this post before the major disruption, so there’s some irony in what followed. But my attitude hasn’t changed.)

That’s really the point of identifying Big Picture Wants. When you know what you really want—and you know what it takes to get it—the path ahead is clear. You don’t need to motivate yourself or talk yourself into doing those things because why wouldn’t you do them?

~

At the moment, my heart is in a normal rhythm and my heart failure is “well under control.” At some point there will need to be an intervention in regard to the mitral valve, but I don’t have another appointment with the valve specialist for six months. And I’m now down from three cardiologists to two. As Dr. S said the last time I saw him, “Who needs three cardiologists? You’re not that sick.” Cue the theme from “Rocky.”

Contact Me

joycelyn@farthertogo.com
505-332-8677