My wife and I recently watched the movie To Walk Invisible about the Brontë sisters. These amazing sisters created some of the most enduring works of English literature.

The eldest sister Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre (Penguin Classics). The youngest sister Anne wrote Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics). The middle sister Emily wrote Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics).

Their decision to write and publish under male pseudonyms is an amazing story of strategy and perseverance. Charlotte was “Currer Bell,” Anne was “Acton Bell,” and Emily was “Ellis Bell.”

As with all writers in their day, their work was conducted often by candlelight and always by hand with ink and quill on paper. I am writing this post in an online editor with cut and paste, auto-spell check, and the ability to publish to the world with one click of the “publish” button. It is hard to even envision the painstaking effort they expended to bring these works to readers.

There are many aspects to their story that I find amazing, but perhaps the thing that strikes me most is the fact that Emily Brontë lived only 30 years. In fact, her youngest sister Anne lived only 29 years. Charlotte lived only to the age of 38.

I do not measure myself against women who were among the most gifted writers in the English language, but I do draw two lessons from their lives:

1. Youth should be no barrier. If anyone told them they were too young, the Brontës did not listen. Some of us seem to be waiting until some magic future date when we are of sufficient age to do something important. Go ahead and do it now. Will you get better at it as you get older? Probably. Maybe. Maybe not. In the case of the Brontës, there was no getting older. Life is uncertain and short. That leads to the second lesson…
2. What are you waiting for? Go ahead and get started doing something you really want to do and need to do. Don’t wait for later and older. Do it now. Get it started. Do not let resistance paralyze you. If you plan to do creative work (writing, music, art, entrepreneurship), get a copy of The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles and let it motivate you. The main thing is to act. Now.

I have to confess that while we have had copies of both Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights in our library for years, I have read neither. I am going to correct that soon. I think that as I read them knowing just how young these authors were when they wrote them, it will really reinforce the two lessons above.

Hopefully it will motivate me to act.

How old are you at present? If older than 30, take encouragement from what these young women did at a younger age than you. If you are younger than 30, follow the Bronte’s lead. Make it happen.

The definition of the word “cynic” I have in mind is this from Dictionary.com:

a person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view

I think the reason it is so easy for me to become a cynic is because I am often myself “motivated by selfishness.” I often myself doubt “selfless acts and disinterested points of view.” In other words, I am probably a cynic because I see those undesirable traits in myself and often ascribe those same motivations to others.

Cynicism can become so pervasive that you can come to disbelieve and doubt nearly everything. Most of us listen to political speeches this way. Everything Obama/Trump said/says is ascribed the worst possible motivations and intents. This is regardless of which side you are on. You may, in fact, become so cynical that you feel that way about all sides of an issue and about all representatives of those perspectives.

It is not confined to politics. It reaches into personal relationships where we simply do not trust that anyone is coming from a place of true sincerity or altruism.

Frankly, I am getting tired of cynicism. It is always easier to tear something down than it is to build it. The tools of the trade for the cynic include snide remarks, biting sarcasm, and derisive laughter. It is rather easy to be against.

Which is easier, constructing a high rise building or knocking it down with a wrecking ball?

At some point the onus must be on me not just to sit back, criticize, and tear down. Once I have knocked everything down there will be no more buildings. At some point I need to start building something. It is not enough to just be against everything. I need to actually be for something.

Of course, when I begin building, the cynics will be there to knock down. Perhaps that is the real barrier to positive action? Perhaps the cynic believes that he or she can avoid being a target by always being the wrecking ball. That is convenient. It is also lazy and timid.

This is not an argument in favor of naivete. I realize that human beings ARE often motivated by selfishness and insincerity. It is the human condition. I have already acknowledged it in my own life. This is simply me recognizing the limitations of my cynicism and stating a desire to stop being so cynical. I have a responsibility to actually do something.

Don’t just stand there – do something.

The real danger of cynicism is that it can devolve into pessimism. Pessimism unchecked can turn into depression and ultimately despair. What I need in my life is less pessimism and more optimism. I do not need unrealistic optimism, but I will take an extra helping of optimism nonetheless. Most of us are not anywhere near overdosing on optimism or hope.

Note: I thought of linking to Teddy Roosevelt’s speech delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910 where he derides the critic and the cynic. However, I can envision someone reading this that will be cynical about his motivations for delivering the speech. If you want to read it, it is only a web search away. Search the phrase:

teddy roosevelt the man in the arena

Or, let’s say you are fifteen and want to become a doctor.

Perhaps you are fifty-three with a strong desire to be a beekeeper.

Or, let’s say you are seventy years old and want to help relieve hunger in the third world.

Whatever your goals are, you need to identify the gaps between where you are now and what it will take to achieve those goals. What stands in your way? Before you can actually achieve your goal to become a ukelele player, a doctor, a beekeeper, or an aid worker, you have to be honest about what it is going to take to make that happen. If you allow your gaps to go undefined, your goal is just a dream that will likely go unrealized.

What do we do when we encounter a gap or chasm that we need to cross? We build a bridge.

Since some gaps are small and some are huge, there are bridges of all sizes. Some chasms are so large that a bridge is not possible. Have you noticed that there is no bridge from the United States to Ireland? That gap is just too large. We navigate that space in different ways.

Step 1 – Identify the Gap

These are the things missing in your life right now that must be bridged before you can reach the other side. Again, honesty is vital here. You will do yourself no favors by minimizing the task ahead or by lying to yourself about what it is going to take. Be brutally honest in defining the gap. What do you need to learn? Who do you need to meet? What certification do you need to achieve? How much do you need to pay? How long will this take?

Step 2 – Design Your Bridge

Break the bridge down into smaller steps. No one builds a bridge, or a house, or a nation without a plan. Use what you know about the gap you defined in Step 1 to create your plan for bridging the gap. Design it well so that you have confidence it will get the job done.

Step 3 – Start Building

Your bridge will be built by actions. Just as no bridge ever designed itself, no bridge ever built itself, either. The best bridge design in the world will bridge no gap if it is not actually built. Actions taken in the proper sequence will lead you to build the proper bridge and reach your goal. Establishing and following great habits is a key to making these actions effective.

Step 4 – Glance Behind You and Take Heart

Once you have built your bridge and crossed the gap, you will have achieved your goal. Now is a good time to look back over your shoulder at the bridge. See that bridge for what it really is. It is a testimony of the power you possess to envision a Forward Story, to design the practices necessary to achieve it, and to follow through on that design to realize your goal. You should now realize that you can do that over and over again. None of us truly arrive at a point where we have no ambition left. The sense of accomplishment you get from crossing the bridge and achieving a goal provides a powerful shot of confidence that you can use on bridging your next gap.

My gaps are currently gaps in taking my business to the next level and in my health goals. In other words, I am currently working on bridging more than just one gap. I have a couple of bridge-building projects going on right now. As Step 4 explains, I have bridged enough gaps in the past to have confidence that these current bridges that are under construction will take me where I want to go.

What gaps are you trying to bridge at the moment? How is it going?

If you keep a journal or write a blog — anything with dated entries — you are aware of the fact that time marches on. Even if you do not write with dated entries, you perceive the constant march. As I look back at the posts on this blog, I see large gaps of time where I did not post anything. It’s not that I was not busy or that life was not happening. In fact, the opposite is true. I have allowed the activity that springs from my many commitments to prevent me from writing for this site.

Among the many things I have been doing is completing the book Forward Story: Write the Future You Desire. I fully expected to have the printed books in hand by now, but I am learning the challenges of publishing. It is making me even more appreciative of the blessing of books and what goes into their creation. My already lofty view of books has increased considerably. (Update: the book was finally published in 2015).

How do we develop the perspective that since time marches on, we should be about things that really matter? At war with this obvious truth are the daily requirements of life like work, paying bills, buying groceries, changing the oil, and cooking dinner.

I believe the solution is what my good friend David calls “mindfulness.” This is making a conscious decision to be mindful about your life, your future, your past, and your day today.

If we live mindfully, we engage life as an adventure and remain active in bathing our experiences with substance and meaning.

How do you handle the march of time?

I have been watering, feeding, and tending those jalapeno plants over the winter months. The first day that my wife saw our first pepper was surprisingly exciting. The cycle from seed to first fruit is one of the most common processes in nature, but I hope I never lose the wonder of it all.

I have given away one of the jalapeno plants to a neighbor and still have five. Now that spring has arrived, I am almost to the reaping stage. Those five plants currently have 24 peppers growing and are nearing harvest time. Here is a photo I snapped this morning of two of the peppers on one of the plants:

This experience has energized me to plant more. I now also have growing two varieties of tomatoes and the herbs cilantro, parsley, basil, mint, oregano, and thyme.

A few quick takeaways:

• If you want something good to happen in the future, you must take the steps today to get it started.
• You have to stick with it through periods of time when it appears little to nothing is happening.
• Waiting can be boring.
• You must continue tending, watering, feeding, and weeding your dream.
• If you consistently do these things, you will likely have the good thing you desire.

Any experiences you want to share about dreams you have worked to achieve or your experiences along the way? Was your vision and hard work rewarded?

My operating assumption is that stress is the normal default condition of life. Consider this:

 Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters. The Road Less Traveled, Timeless Edition: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth by M. Scott Peck

This dream of a stress-free life can take many forms. One example is a young man I know whose dream is to move into a modest cabin on a ranch and to live off the land. This is an idealized vision of leisure that is not based in reality. Anyone who has grown up on a farm or ranch can destroy this myth quickly. The realities of that kind of life intrude upon the idealized dream. Before I detail some of these realities, I must say that living on a ranch in a cabin and living off the land is a perfectly fine ambition. If that is what you want to do, you can do it. I am just pointing out the reality that it will be full of responsibility. Life always is. To live on a ranch or farm is to trade your current stresses for a new set. This is true because, as Peck says above, life is difficult. This is the default human condition.

My grandparents lived on a farm, and I have recordings of them discussing the hardships they faced. Among the difficulties of life on the farm are:

• Food. You still have to eat. Perhaps you will hunt your food, fish for your food, or grow your food. All of these require work, and there are deadlines built in.
• Money. Just because you live on a ranch does not mean you need no cash. You will need to buy equipment, seeds, tools, clothes, gasoline, and any food you cannot catch, hunt, or grow. You will have to pay for your electricity and heating gas or oil. You will have to pay for water or at least drill a well and maintain your pump operation. Also, the government will still require you to pay property taxes on any land you own. Any buildings you own must be maintained and repaired. This all requires money.
• Natural deadlines. Careful attention has to be paid to the seasons. No boss may tell you when to plant the corn, but if you do not do it at the right time you will not be pleased with the result. Once the corn is grown you must harvest it in a narrow window. That sounds like a deadline to me. In addition, the animals must be fed, and the cows must be milked. Those fish are neither catching themselves nor cleaning themselves once caught. The deer are not shooting themselves nor dressing and processing themselves.
• Natural challenges. Farmers and ranchers face lack of rain (drought), too much rain (flood), hail, high winds, insects, and weeds, just to name a few challenges.

If you really turn the clock back and envision a time when nomadic hunter-gatherers lived a care-free life, you would find that their lives were not actually care-free at all. If your own well-being is dependent on successfully hunting wild game, your own hunger becomes the stress in your life. If you do  not leave the cave or the tee-pee you will starve regardless of whether or not you have “Leave Cave” in your day planner.

 So What?

Given that there is no such thing as a stress-free life, part of becoming an adult is accepting this fact and crafting a Forward Story that embraces this reality. Avoiding stress is not a realistic strategy. I encourage you to embrace the idea that stress and responsibility are inherent in life. With this baseline realization you can then get around to a future worth living. The Myth of the Stress-Free Life is one end of the spectrum. In our next article we will explore the dangers of too much stress.

What are the stresses in your life, and how do you handle them?

The fumble happened.

We lost by 3 points.

Into this bitter disappointment our head coach, Richard Bethell, taught one of those lessons that athletics seems especially suited to teach. He said, “Men, when you face defeat, failure, and disappointment you have three choices.” He laid out our choices:

1. You can quit

2. You can make excuses or blame others, or

3. You can go to work

Often the profound is simple. Sitting on that bus all I could think about was football. Many times since then, however, the wisdom of these three choices has fit my life.

I am capable of each choice from time to time. I prefer #3. I try to avoid #2 at all costs. I consider #1 only if the situation makes it clear that I have been pursuing something that is not worth my effort or is bad for me — but I am constitutionally not a quitter.

After my senior year Coach Bethell sent a letter to all of us seniors who played offensive line for him that season. As we went out into our adult lives he reiterated this lesson we had learned two years earlier. He spoke of adversity we had overcome in both our freshman and senior years. Here is an excerpt from the letter he wrote us:

Earlier in the letter he called that loss our sophomore year his “greatest loss as a coach.” He had felt that sting as deeply as we had.

So the lesson remains with me in life to this day. I hope you will make it your lesson as well. When you face defeat in your life you have a decision to make about your future — your Forward Story.

You have three choices. Which will it be?

So I decided to try to grow something. I wanted to start small and pick a fairly easy plant to grow for our climate. I chose jalapeno peppers. Following my regular approach to any new subject, I read a lot of information about how to grow plants in containers. I bought some organic seeds, two containers, organic potting soil, organic fertilizer, and organic compost. On May 7, 2013 for the first time in my life I planted seeds. I put five seeds in each container at about 1/4″ depth and then watered. It felt good to get my hands dirty. These hands are normally on a keyboard, so this was a different sensation. I haven’t played in the dirt much since I was a kid. Here is what my plants look like three days after planting.

Potential Jalapeno Plants

Not much to see right? According to the seed packet, these seeds should germinate in 10-25 days.

So now I wait.

Actually, now I water and wait. If I fail to water I will be waiting for a long time. However, even if I water diligently there is nothing I can do right now to speed up the process. Nature dictates that these seeds take 10-25 days to germinate in the proper conditions.

It is hard to wait.

I remember my Grandfather Adcox making us wait on Christmas Eve (which was our family’s big gift exchange). The brightly wrapped boxes piled up under the tree were adorned with seductive bows and paper snowmen. We were bursting at the seams wanting to get at those boxes — but PawPaw had his rules. With a twinkle in his eyes, he explained that those rules had something to do with the sun setting or a certain time on the clock. Whatever it was, it was excruciating. As we waited, those packages taunted us.

We don’t like to wait.

And yet, waiting is required for most good things. We have many aphorisms and proverbs about patience and waiting:

• A watched pot never boils.
• Good things come to those who wait.
• “Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Rome wasn’t built in a day.

So, I am not waiting for Godot, but rather for the first green sprouts from my new pepper plants. It is hard to wait, but at least I have planted and watered. If you never plant, you will not reap. My Grandfather, who was a master gardener, would be proud of these first small steps I have taken.

Sowing and reaping is a powerful metaphor. It is a law of nature. You cannot reap if you have not planted. Even if  you have planted you will likely not reap if you do not continue watering, weeding, and providing the proper nutrition. It takes work. You have to nurse and tend the process.

What is it in your life that you want to reap? What steps should you be taking to get your seed in the ground and to help it grow? It will take patience and hope while you water and work, but in the end you should have a reward for your labors.

I will provide an update on my project in time. All I have to do now is work.

And wait.

UPDATE 5/17/2013

Today was day 10 since I planted my seeds. Today began like every other day, with me checking the containers carefully at around 7 AM for any signs of life.

Nothing.

But then I checked again after lunch, and lo and behold I saw something, ever so slight, that is green. I surprised myself by how excited I got. Take a look:

Ten Days After Planting Seeds

So now, I wait again.

Don’t forget the update on 3/25/2014.

http://www.stockfreeimages.com/

I made a commitment several years ago to revise and update my personal Forward Story at the beginning of each year. Experience teaches me that in order for my Forward Story to be a powerful tool for living and action, I need to regularly update it. This is why each of my Forward Stories has an “as of” date:

Mark’s Forward Story as of January 1, 2013

These two little words remind me that the story contained in the following pages represents my vision for the future as it existed at a set point in time. To me a new year, even though it is just a function of human calendars, is like standing on a mountain and looking out over a long view. It is a great place and time from which to do some visionary work.

Given that we are in the first month of a new year, I am putting the finishing touches on my revised Forward Story. I wanted to take a brief break from the revision to answer the question:

Why does my Forward Story need to be updated regularly?

• My plans for the future change as I grow older. I no longer see the world or my future the same way I did when I was younger — even one year younger. To be honest about the future I now envision as a more mature person, I have to take a fresh look at what I hope for now given where I am. I sometimes look at my older Forward Stories from years ago and marvel that that young man valued different things than this older man now values.

• My circumstances change from time-to-time requiring a fresh look. One of my previous revisions in the area of health expressed the desire to reach a certain weight by this point in time and to maintain that weight into the future. The truth is that I have now lost below that original target weight. Now that my vantage point has changed with regard to that goal, I am now revising my goal lower because I am convinced I can get even healthier. The same is true for family and career domains as well as health. Sometimes the revision goes the other way. Perhaps I have not reached a goal, and I revise my desire with regard to that goal. I may restate it, eliminate it, or attack it a different way.

An amazing exercise is to go back and review previous Forward Stories. Over time they tell quite a “back story” about my life. As I read the hopes, dreams, and plans of my younger self, I see what authors and storytellers call a “character arc.” I can see the way my life has changed from inside of my thinking in those earlier timeframes. I highly recommend it.

I will admit that doing the annual revision can be a bit of a tedious task, but I have developed some helpful tools that make the task a bit more fun and effective. I will be sharing those tools in future posts.