Category: Happiness

Creating A Low Stress Holiday Season

Post author By Mr. MFI
Post date November 21, 2021
2 Comments on Creating A Low Stress Holiday Season

BLUF: The holidays are full of pressure to do things that can make you spend more, take your time and stress you out. Take control, make changes and turn the holidays into the season that you want for your family.

In the US there’s a commercial machine cranking up in November that’s doing everything in it’s power to separate you from your cash. Tis the season to put you in debt and make you spend money that you otherwise wouldn’t. Marketing goes into overdrive sending nonstop messages that you need to show people you love them by spending money.

Mercedes always has some ad showing that Santa actually drives a Mercedes and you should give one for Christmas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vSv0bAOcK0

If buying a Mercedes is a little out of your price range, how about a GMC? Oh wait, we’ll take that to an absurd level too with the idea that you’ll buy his and hers GMCs without your spouses input. I think Mrs. MFI would be gifting divorce papers if I pulled that crap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqfr-fCyyNc

Yeah, stupid. I thought that SNL perfectly captured the absurdity of these commercials in their own parody.

Under Pressure To Spend

Everywhere you look, there’s pressure to celebrate the holidays a certain way and often the emphasis is on spending. It starts with the infamous black Friday which pre-pandemic had bled into Thursday causing some families to cut Thanksgiving short in the name of shopping. Really?

Photo by Max Fischer on Pexels.com

After that there’s small business Saturday, Cyber Monday and on and on until Christmas. That’s when you return all the gifts you hated, spend the gift cards you received and spend more on the after holiday sales.

How bad are the holidays for people when it comes to money, time and happiness? Well, here are some head shaking stats:

22% of the US population goes into debt from holiday shopping each year.
In 2020, Americans spent $1,000 on average. $650 for gifts. $230 for decorations, food, cards and other holiday goods. $117 in non-gift buying.
On average American women spend 20 hours gift shopping and men 10 hours during the holidays.
62% of Americans expect to get a gift that they don’t like.
Sources: https://capitalcounselor.com/holiday-spending-statistics/

Let’s recap: Every year people spend $1,000 on average and go into debt spending massive amounts of time to buy gifts and some people aren’t going to like. Is this really the most wonderful time of the year for you?

My Holiday Stressors

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

When it came to Christmas as an adult, it always stressed me out. Not from a financial perspective, fortunately, because we weren’t huge spenders. There are a number of things I was started to dislike about how we did Christmas:

It was stressful figuring out gifts for Mrs. MFI . She’s not a very materialistic person so I always struggled with what to get her. She doesn’t buy clothes, jewelry, house decorations or things for herself. We do experiences and trips together and she reads free content a lot.
I hate shopping with every fiber of my being. I’m probably not unique in this as a guy but shopping to me is exhausting. I aim to research, select and buy whatever I need with as little energy spent as possible. You will not find me bargain hunting from store to store. I can run for 9 hours in an ultra marathon but standing around a store for 3 hours feels more tiring. Don’t judge.

Gifts with relatives seemed ridiculous. Let me know if this sounds familiar to a conversation that you’ve had with a relative or friend:
1. Me: “Sis, what do you want for Christmas?”.
2. Sis: “A Target gift card. You?”
3. Me: “An Amazon gift card.”

I mean, come on. We’ve about to go out and spend effort to just exchanged a more restrictive form of money with each other. You’re also trying to figure out the “right” amount to give each other so that someone doesn’t feel like they gave too little.

Or, does the gift exchange turn into the same safe gifts swapped year after year? Candles, wine, food items, pet items. It was all a lot of effort to figure out and shop for something that the other person probably doesn’t really need or care about. It’s all a lot of time, energy and stress to show “love” when there are better ways to do it!

I hated coming up with a Christmas list. I don’t really need a lot and if I want something I really need during the year I buy it. It was always stressful and hard coming up with ideas because it always felt forced in this window of time around Thanksgiving. Sorry, I’m too busy stuffing my face with pie to think about gifts. To come up with a list I need to research exactly what I want and where you can get it. It’s like doing all the parts that I hate about shopping and then not actually getting the item for a month later (maybe)!
Making your house look festive. What do I dislike second most in the fall behind raking leaves? Putting up Christmas lights. I never went overboard but even the thought of putting strings of lights up on a couple of outdoor trees was not appealing. Sorry, there’s football on TV. I don’t want to be Chevy Chase making my house look like Christmas Vacation.

We also used to do an indoor Christmas tree with fancy matching colored bulbs. It looked nice when done but I wasn’t motivated to help because I didn’t enjoy the activity of it much.

Creating Our New, Low Stress, Holiday Season

Sorry if that seemed like a lot of negativity. I don’t hate Christmas. I loved seeing my family and eating many of my favorite foods. What to do about it?

The answer was to start making changes with a focus on the things that you can control.. Specific, thoughtful changes that would let us keep all the things that we loved and improved or eliminated all the things that we didn’t love. I’ll let you in on a secret that should be obvious.

You can do the holidays any way that you want!

No, really. Contrary to popular beliefs, you don’t have to cave to the social pressures of what the holidays should be like. It’s your life and it’s possible to both balance your desires with the desires of others. Here are the changes that we’ve made so far.

Buying Gifts

This one topic has been the largest focus in our holiday changes because it has such a ripple effect. It takes time to: come up with gift lists, research gift locations, shop for gifts, get wrapping paper/bags, wrap the gifts, transport the gifts, spend the gift cards you received, return the gifts that you don’t like and give away the gifts that you can’t return.

We have experimented and changed gift giving over the last 5 or so years in an attempt to reduce those stressors and pain points. In summary, we made the following changes in chronological order:

Normal gift giving, no spending limit – pre-FI thinking and before Mrs. MFI and I were married. Probably spent $200-$500 on each other depending on the year.
Normal gift giving with a total dollar limit – Give whatever gifts you want but stay within a total per person budget of $100. We both selectively ignored this limit which caused problems.
“Stockings only”, lower total dollar limit – Smaller gift giving that is intended to fit into a stocking although not absolutely required. $50 limit.
No presents for each other – No wrapped gifts and no stockings. Just doing things together leading up to and after Christmas. Still exchanged gifts with extended family.
No presents for each other and extended family – Extending our present-free activities to include gift giving that used to occur with select extended family.
No presents for each other and extended family, adding charitable giving – Keeping our plan the same as last year excepting now adding in adopting a child and adult for Christmas (this year). We have an 8 year old boy and their caregiver to shop for. Mrs. MFI is very excited to get them Lego’s and an RC car that’s on their wish list!

Photo by Anthony Shkraba on Pexels.com

As you can imagine this is years worth of changes. The more Mrs. MFI and I started to talk about what we liked and didn’t like, the easier it was to start making meaningful changes to improve our holiday experience.

Getting my extended family to be okay with no gift giving with each other was surprisingly easy. I simply proposed it via e-mail and everyone was pretty onboard. The takeaway from that experience is that others were likely feeling similar to us but didn’t bring it up. You might be surprised to find that others might feel like you do if you just have the courage to talk about it.

One change that you might have noticed was that we added BACK some gift buying at the end. That’s actually a change for this year (2021). Mrs. MFI really enjoys black Friday and the idea of gift giving. I enjoy charitable giving myself and helping others.

As a result this year we’re still not giving gifts to each other but Mrs. MFI has taken the lead on adopting a family and shopping for them. It’s a great compromise to both fill a gift giving desire and help out people in need.

That’s the thing to remember about making changes and trying things. There’s nothing that says that you can’t change something back if it isn’t working for you.

Streamlining Other Holiday “Obligations”

There are a number of other things that we used to do around the holidays that I won’t call fun, but felt obligated to do.

Holiday Cards

Sending holiday cards to friends and family. This is one of those things that costs time and money and can vary widely for either depending on how you do it.

Why send them at all? We still enjoy receiving photo holiday cards from others and don’t keep in touch with everyone via social media so this is one way to stay connected.

We both hate writing things by hand inside cards so we’ve moved from blank cards that we write in to photo cards made by Shutterfly. Mrs. MFI designs them and we order then in early November to get the best discount.

To minimize the work we make a Word document setup in label format with all the names and addresses and then print out the labels at home on a laser printer.

For the return labels I collect the free return label stickers that are sent to us throughout the year by organizations that we’ve previously donated to. I’ve yet to have to buy any of these but I’d definitely spend the $5-$10 on Shutterfly if necessary to avoid the writing.

Simplifying decorations

I love the way holiday lights look. I hate putting them up and taking them down. I used to wrap my outdoor evergreens with lights but that got old. The solution? Buy a couple of sets of these LED spiral trees. They store flat and take about 10 minutes each to setup.

We’ve always had a fake tree which keeps things pretty simple when it comes to setup and teardown. There’s a little work to replace bulbs that burn out or are loose but it’s kept this tree going for 15 years now.

One of the ways that we get happiness dividends is by putting up our Christmas ornaments. You see, everywhere we travel to we buy something that can serve as an ornament. Putting ornaments on the tree serves as a trip down memory lane helping us recall and talk about the great trips that we’ve taken.

One thing we have simplified is our ornaments. Mrs. MFI used to also put up colored bulbs but while it looked nice, it was extra work. So, we don’t do that anymore.

Planning Experiences

The great thing about reducing the gift portion of the holidays is that it frees up time to do all sorts of other activities. We, like many, have a variety of seasonal things that we like to do.

As we get into November we start to map out the different things that we want to do:

Plan a day or two to drive around with hot tea and look at the best light displays at local houses.
Go to a local holiday celebration of lights, music and food.
Go to a Christmas festival put on by local amusement parks.
Make holiday cookies
One new thing that we’ve never done before. This year we made our own glass ornaments by hand!

Rotating Holiday Traditions & Experiences

I love spending money and time on experiences and traditions. However, the more you do something, the less special they become to me. For that reason I like to sometimes skip a year or two of doing something that we’ve always done year after year.

It make me appreciate it that much more when we return to doing it the next year. It also frees up space to try more new things. You never know what new thing that you try will turn into a new favorite!

Making Your Own Holiday Season Happier

I’m not special. All of us have the ability to step back, reflect on what things we’d like to change and take action! It doesn’t matter how small the change, just take action.

Take a step back and think about what you like and don’t like about the holidays.
- What traditions do you look forward to each year? What activities make you light up?
- What things do you hate doing? What stresses you out? What takes up the most time for you?
If the change involves others, have a conversation! Nothing will change unless you let the world know what you want. It starts with being honest about how you feel. You might be surprised that others feel the same way but were afraid to speak up.
- I’d recommend starting with an easier topic if you’re nervous. The “optional” gift exchange at work that you hate but feel pressured to do each year. Exchanging gift cards with extended family members.
- Be clear about what you don’t like and propose an alternative. If you’re open to other ideas then ask the other people what they think.
Nervous? What is the worst thing that can happen by making this change? Often times the worst thing that can happen after making a change is that you aren’t happy with the result and you just go back to the way things were before.
Make a change, even a small one. Reflect on that change.
- Was that change better? Worse? What did you learn? What could you do differently next time?

Like the content? Click here to subscribe to the e-mail list and have the articles delivered to your inbox.

Tags Christmas, Holiday

Happiness Mindset

Happiness Through Hardship: The Rewards In Doing Difficult Things

Post author By Mr. MFI
Post date September 25, 2021

BLUF: I’ve found that overcoming difficult experiences can be a source of both short term and long term happiness. You can do this intentionally by choosing to attempt physically and mentally demanding challenges. Short term it can make normal life feel more extraordinary. Long term, it can build mental toughness and provide experiences that you can reflect on with gratitude and pride.

I participated in my 4th ultramarathon trail race recently. It was 32 miles in mountainous central New York with 7,200 feet of elevation gain over the race. That’s like climbing up a small mountain over the race and going up (and down) inclines that would rival the steepest black diamond downhill skiing trails at times. There were plenty of moments where my legs ached, my stomach hurt and I mentally doubted my desire to keep going on. But go on I did, and I finished my 3rd ultramarathon in around 8.5 hours.

The experience after finishing a race like that is in some ways as unique as the event itself. After something that long and grueling you feel disgustingly dirty from the dust, sweat, water and dirt along the way. You’ve burned close to 6,000 calories so your body feels depleted and is craving food. You’re so tired that aside from eating you just want to rest and sleep.

A funny thing happens for me, though, when you go through something that difficult. Every bite of food tastes that much more flavorful and satisfying. The shower I take post race feels so refreshing and rejuvenating that I often just sit there and let the water run over me. I can’t keep my eyes open and my body is craving the feeling of that soft, glorious bed. In other words, everything feels better and I feel happier.

Often people think about making life happier by seeking out an easier, pleasure filled path with less pain. In reflecting upon this post race I wondered – can doing intentionally hard or grueling things on purpose make us happier? Could there be a path to happiness by persevering through pain? That’s an idea we’ll explore today.

Take A Spin On The Hedonic Treadmill

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

We all have a “base” level of happiness in our lives. The day to day happens in life and we feel some normal or average level of happiness. Studies have shown that for some reason this “base” level of happiness for people is usually around a 7 on a 1 to 10 scale. The hedonic treadmill or hedonic adaptation is the notion that after a positive or negative event things revert fairly quickly back to our base level of happiness. It’s great to adapt and revert to that baseline when something bad happens. Not so great when something good happens.

Here’s a real life example of this in action. You have a cute little starter home in a great neighborhood. Life is good and you’re happy at a base happiness of 7. But, you have big dreams. You always wanted a mansion in the hills and through hard work and luck you make it happen. Your happiness spikes to a 10 when you close on the house and move in.

A funny thing happens though. You get used to coming home to the dream home and each day you live in it it’s normalized. It’s just home to you now just as the starter home was previously. Happiness reverts to a 7 except the baseline 7 level of happiness is now living in a mansion.

You can see how this cycle can be problematic when you’re constantly chasing happiness and expecting that level 10 to stick. When you chase after nice things to make you happy it just raises the bar for what is normal in your life making it harder and harder for something to make you feel good. It’s one of the reasons that buying stuff is all just short term spikes of happiness that then stop feeling good.

However, I’ve found that the same phenomenon seems to work in my favor when I do hard thing.

Doing Hard Things: The Hedonic Treadmill in Reverse?

I’ve noticed that for me, the process of training for and completing something really hard is like making that hedonic treadmill work for me.

My everyday life might feel like that comfortable level 7 of happiness but when I’m attempting something really hard like an ultramarathon, it’s not a 7. When I’m 25+ miles into an ultra it gets pretty rough both physically and mentally.

My feet hurt. My body aches. My stomach is usually upset. I’m likely either overheating or cold depending on the race. I’m on the pain train and there’s no getting off of it unless you quit. Oh, and boy are there times when you want to quit. It’s a mental struggle at time to just put one foot in front of the other and keep going. That 7 level of happiness is long gone and I’m in the 3-4 range if not lower.

When I’m in the worst of things, the everyday life level of happiness seems like a far away dream. When I finish doing the hard thing, though, that happiness returns to 7 and then flips positive. Why? Well there are a number of reasons:

Everything feels better by comparison – When you’ve punished your body in a number of ways, everything by comparison feels good. Every bite of food that I put into my mouth tastes flavorful. Taking a shower after being disgusting for 8+ hours feels luxurious and rejuvenating.
Feeling of accomplishment – There’s really nothing quite like the feeling of overcoming something that is really hard or even something that you though was impossible for you. The sense of personal pride is amazing. It feel great to share your accomplishment with family and friends.

Long Term Positive Effects:

The short term positive effects of doing that hard thing are great. However, you can’t escape the hedonic treadmill and before long your body and mind will revert back to it’s baseline happiness level. Despite that, there are longer term positives to draw from that hard experience:

Memories of the Accomplishment – As I mentioned in Happiness Dividends, our experiences pay us back long after they’re over. Looking at that finishing medal and seeing social media reminders from that race in the future will all me to draw pride and happiness from that event for years to come.
Building Mental Toughness – You just overcame something really hard. How much easier does the hardest work day seem by comparison? When you do hard things, it’s building mental muscle that lets you handle life more easily in the future.
Another Cookie in the Cookie Jar – David Goggins has a concept in the book Can’t Hurt Me called the cookie jar. When you overcome something hard, you have that “win” captured in your mind like putting a cookie into a cookie jar for later. Later in life, when the shit gets tough, you can reach into your mind (cookie jar) and recall that past victory (cookie) and use it as mental motivation. It’s a great way to summon mental and physical strength in the present from past victories.

Photo by Lisa on Pexels.com

Find Your Hard Thing- Incorporating Hard Things Into Your Life

You may be thinking to yourself “that’s great, but I don’t want to run an ultramarathon.” Great, don’t do it! Hard is relative. Endurance sports is where I am now on my journey of hard things but you don’t have to start there. Hard to me is anything that mentally, physically or emotionally pushes you way outside your comfort zone.

Complete something that forces you to overcome a fear that you have: fear of failure, fear of public speaking, fear of flying, fear of heights, fear of small spaces.
Build up to running a 5k
High intensity short exercise – High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) / CrossFit X days a week
Complete an endurance race of some kind.
Complete a 24 hour (or more) fast
Try Skydiving

Action Steps

Think about something hard that would put you outside of your comfort zone.
Make a plan and do the hard thing.
Make sure you hold yourself accountable to doing it. Sign up for a formal event if you can to ensure you have something concrete to work towards.

Like the content? Click here to subscribe to the e-mail list and have the articles delivered to your inbox.

Tags Happiness

Happiness

Happiness Dividends: Making your Experiences Pay you Back

Post author By Mr. MFI
Post date July 11, 2021
5 Comments on Happiness Dividends: Making your Experiences Pay you Back

BLUF: Our experiences, like investments, have the ability to pay us a dividend long after the original experience is over in the form of happiness. These dividends increase our happiness through the recalling of those happy original experiences. Unlike investments, however, we have the ability to force those happiness dividends to be paid on demand through our actions.

Note: The cover photo is from the Albuquerque balloon festival, the largest in the world. The “balloon glow” is when all pilots stand up their balloons at night and illuminate them with the burner. It’s truly stunning to see and hear hundreds of balloons doing this at the same time.

I recently read the book Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. The title comes from the idea that to maximize your happiness in life you should really aim to spend down or give away all your money such that at the end you die with close to $0. A idea in that book that resonated with me was the concept that experiences, like money, can compound and pay dividends to us over the course of our life. The idea was especially intriguing to me since I’ve been changing my spending focus from things to experiences over the last 10 or so years.

My Journey Away From Consumerism

One very substantial change in my life that happened progressively over time was the change from valuing stuff to valuing experiences. I was very fortunate to grow up in an upper middle class family that could afford nice things. I got a TV for my room when I graduated elementary school. In the mid-90’s when computers were very expensive we constantly bought the latest trends whether it be a full desktop computer, a CD burning drive or having Road Runner high speed internet (cable modem).

As a twenty something I wanted to have all of the same cool new gadgets that seemed to be coming out constantly. When DVD players were brand new I was still in college making very little money and I bought one new for $500. I also put together a 5.1 surround sound system with the main driver being to watch this cool new movie that came out called “The Matrix.” As sweet as it was to hear bullets flying past your head for the first time, it was a lot of money to spend for a kid that didn’t really have any.

When my divorce happened at 31 and I was faced with both a tougher financial reality paying for a house and lifestyle alone along with going through the experience of separating “stuff.” I think that started to change my worldview that the pursuit of stuff wasn’t adding a lot to my life and it could of course disappear at any time. I also realized that the concerts, parties and vacations that I had experienced were a lot more enjoyable to me and started to focus a bit more on spending on my money there.

How Experiences Pay Us Back in Happiness Dividends

Photo by Lisa on Pexels.com

I used to think about stuff as more valuable than experiences because I perceived that stuff could keep paying me back with it’s utility. For example, that $500 DVD player is something that I could enjoy for at least two or three years watching movies. By contrast, if I took a $500 vacation for a long weekend then I thought that I would only get 3 days of enjoyment from that experience.

The experience itself was usually much cooler than the “thing” I would otherwise buy but the stuff had the capability to hang around in my life for much longer. To have more enjoyment from experiences meant that I would need to schedule another and another because the happiness derived from the experience only happened while I was living it.

Thinking about Individual Experiences

I could have a really great experience like a Caribbean cruise vacation one year and reap the benefits of that time away. Relaxing on the upper deck sipping a cocktail. Enjoying fancy restaurant meals or gut busting all you can eat buffets. Seeing great onboard entertainment like singers serenating us and comedians making us laugh until our stomach hurts. Taking excursions at port stops to have experiences like feeding the stingrays.

A great week that’s high up on the happiness scale but after a couple weeks back at work you’re thinking about what to do next. Then perhaps the next year you go see a great concert that you’ve always wanted to see. And then the next year you throw a surprise birthday party for a great friend of yours. Each event in itself is wonderful but they are each discreet events that when over, the happiness gained from that event effectively ends.

The Happiness Dividend Concept

This thinking was flawed though, because that’s not how experiences work when it comes to the happiness that we derive from them. There’s actually a cumulative effect to it where old experiences that are truly meaningful to you are stored in your memory banks. When you recall memories of that experience due to some trigger like looking at a picture, that experience pays you a happiness dividend. You are transported back to the time when the picture was taken and derive a sense of gratitude. If it was very memorable you might be able to recall the smell of the ocean from the cruse ship deck or the feel of the stingrays sucking food out of your hands.

Looking at my previous experience timeline example, the timeline actually starts to look at this. That Caribbean cruise was a tremendous experience in the year that it happened. However, in year two on the anniversary of the cruise your Facebook memories pop up with pictures from your cruise that happened one year ago and you are transported back. Maybe you sit down with your partner and open up the pictures from that trip and take a walk down memory lane. You laugh about the things that didn’t go right but turned out to be a great adventure. You enjoy recalling your favorite “remember when…” moments to each other.

The joy, gratitude and happiness that you feel during the recollection of fond memories is the happiness dividend being payed to you from that previous experience. You get paid this happiness dividend from that old experience and it didn’t cost you any money. Then the next year your friend comes to you thinking about taking a similar cruise and asks for your help in planning it since you’ve taken the cruise. You get to once again recall all of the details of the experience all while helping your friend. Another happiness dividend paid on the original experience.

Over time you see that this can cause your level of happiness to build from each successful new experience on top of the dividends paid from old experiences. Just like a financial dividend paid on a stock, the longer you have to remember the experience, the more time you have to be paid dividends. This is a strong motivating factor to really use the energy of your teens, 20’s and 30’s to make some great memories and get those happiness dividends flowing early in life. That maximizes the time in your life that you have for those experience based “investments” to pay you back in happy memories.

Being FI minded, there’s obviously a balance to find between spending all your money on experiences when you’re younger and have less income and saving and investing for the future. The great thing about being young, though, is that you’re typically willing to put up with some much cheaper and less comfortable options that the later in life you wouldn’t dream of doing. Backpacking around to travel, sleeping in hostels, taking long road trips, getting the cheap seats at a concert. The key thing is that you’re trying new things and making memories that you can then start recalling. No great story starts with “I went to bed early.”

Increasing Happiness Dividends

A beautiful thing about experience based happiness dividends is that you can control the size and frequency of that dividend. If only we had the ability to do that with our financial investments…

Increasing the Dividend Amount

Have you ever noticed that not all experiences are created equal? I’m not just talking about the “in the moment” how awesome it feels. I’m talking about how you feel years later when you think about memories of that experience. Why do you remember some more often than others? Why do you remember some very fondly and can be transported back to that place and time? Why are some barely able to be remembered?

To increase the dividend amount we want to have more fulfilling and impactful experiences. Unfortunately, I can’t give you a precise answer to that because it could be different for each of us. My opinion is that it can be one or more components that matter most to us.

Experience Components that May be Important:

Doing something new or novel. Often things I’m recalling are some experience that is very different from anything else in my life. For example, the article feature image are hot air balloons lighting up in the evening when the burners were turned.
It involves people. It could be family, friends or complete strangers. I’ve found that my richest experiences involve people. Often times it’s bonding with others using that experience. Sometimes the experience is really making a deep connection with another person through a meaningful, deep conversation.
It involves multiple senses – Touch, taste, sight, sound and smell.
It involves emotions. If you experienced excitement, anxiety, nervousness, joy, pain as a part of the experience it could very well become something that stands out in your memories.
It involves something that you already love as a hobby or passion. Animals, sports, race cars, painting or gardening just to name a few.
It involves laughter. There’s just something about laughter that not only makes you happy but can turn an average evening into a memorable one.

For me personally the one that seems to be most important is people. There’s something about experiences that involve connecting with people that make that one of the most important ingredients to my memorable experiences.

Increasing the Dividend Frequency

Forget quarterly dividends, when it comes to happiness dividends you actually have the ability to make them pay out on demand. The key is that you aren’t just leaving the recollection of those memories to chance due to a trigger from the environment around you like something on TV. If you take deliberate action then you can enable the recalling of memories when you want to.

One of my favorite ways is to post up pictures of my experience on social media like Facebook (FB) or Instagram (IG). On a daily basis I can pull up the “memories” and see everything that I experienced on that particular day. It transports me back in time reminding me of things that I had forgotten about. Vacations, festivals, concerts and any number of other memorable things. If I happen to be getting together with other people that were also part of that experience then the dividend can grow as we reminisce about that shared experience.

Ideas to Recall Memories more Consistently:

Post on social media and then look at FB memories, IG memories, FB/IG stories archive daily.
Post reviews of experiences on TripAdvisor.
Join travel groups and help share your knowledge which will also make you think back to those trips and look through pictures.
Make the recalling of memories a conversation topic when you get together with family and friends. Ask people to discuss their favorite experience from the past year.
Look at old photo albums / online archives from your experiences more regularly. Pick one or two and review it. I like to organize my photos chronologically by experience which makes this easier.

Connecting Old Memories with New Ones

Photo by Agung Pandit Wiguna on Pexels.com

Do you have fond childhood memories of visiting a certain place or doing a certain activity? If you re-do that experience with other people that you care about like your children, other family or friends then you can create a whole new memory. However, that newer experience based memory has a connection back to the old memory because there’s a common thread of the experience. Now there’s a forever connection between the two and recalling either fond memory will pull forward the memory of the other.

For example, if going to the state fair and riding the Ferris wheel was a fond memory from your childhood then consider repeating that experience with your children and grand children. Repeating that experience will make you recall and tell stories about when you used to ride the Ferris wheel with your parents and how much you loved it. In the future you can then remember the experience both as a child and then as a parent sharing it with your child.

We Aren’t Getting any Younger

It’s also important to start young because some experiences will not be possible or desirable to do after a certain point. Despite what we may tell ourselves, our bodies age and get less capable over time. No matter how good the 50 year old you feels, your body can not handle and recover from physical activity like it could when 20. There are certain physical experiences that if you want to have them, you need to do them by a certain age.

Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com

Eventually they won’t be possible like climbing a high peak or taking an expedition to a remote jungle. Even if you are physically capable of doing it when older, it might be so much less enjoyable because of the increased aches and pains that you might not even want to do it. A hard truth is that one day you won’t be able to do most of these experiences. All that you will have will be your memories of past experiences to pay you happiness dividends. Start investing.

Action Steps:

Making Memorable Experiences:
- Figure out what kinds of experiences bring you the most joy. Is it trying new things? Is it doing things with people? Combining experiences with things that you love? Figure out what you enjoy most and do more of that.
- Consider bucketizing experiences by age range so that you do the most physically demanding ones earlier in life.
- Make a plan to regularly research and seek out new experiences.
- Try to make a backlog of things that you’d like to do and then actively work on planning to do each one.
- Use some form of social media like FaceBook to document your experience.
- Take lots of pictures but don’t miss the whole experience focused on capturing it with your phone.
Getting Happiness Dividends:
- Look back at your Facebook memories on a daily basis. “On this day X years ago.” Don’t wait for the FB algorithm to maybe bring one up. Go to your profile > Memories section and look at all of them for that day.
- Go through travel and experience pictures periodically.
- Think back to a time or place in your life and try to recall every memory that you can. For example, every memory that you have from high school. Write them down as you go and see how much you can remember.
- Join interest groups around your experiences like a Facebook travel group or forum so that you can recall and talk about those experiences.
- Ask friends and family about their favorite experiences lately. In turn, share yours.

Like the content? Click here to subscribe to the e-mail list and have the articles delivered to your inbox.

Tags Happiness, Happiness Dividends

Happiness

Happiness Through Subtraction

Post author By Mr. MFI
Post date May 30, 2021

Photo by S Migaj on Pexels.com

BLUF: I’ve increased my personal happiness by first focusing on the areas of unhappiness in my current life. Subtract known unhappiness from life before searching for happiness by adding new things to your life.

Have you ever heard the phrase “I just want to be happy”? It’s a worthwhile pursuit but like most things in life happiness is not some magical end state that is eventually achieved. You don’t unlock the secret to life one day and after that you never fight with your spouse, your job never sucks, your friends never let you down, your kids don’t disappoint you, you never stress about money and your health is always awesome. Increasing and maintaining happiness is a journey that’s it’s a never ending. It’s also a spectrum and not some binary state where you’re either happy or unhappy.

Usually the focus on increasing happiness is finding new things that will add to your happiness. More recently I’ve taken opposite approach and worked on increasing my happiness by focusing on subtracting out the unhappiness in my life. This article will explore how I identified and improved areas of unhappiness in my life to make me a happier person.

Why focus on unhappiness?

A common phrase is that people are “looking for happiness” or “looking for things that will make them happy”. And boy do we love easy fixes. We want that “one thing” that will flip the script and turn everything crappy in our lives into sunshine and rainbows. A new career, a new partner, a new hobby, a new vacation or a new experience that will somehow provide lasting happiness. To me, searching for that “one thing” is like having a massive pile of keys and having no idea what lock, if any, they’ll open. You have to keep trying keys and hope that one will work and unlock happiness in your life. Good luck.

Photo by Madison Inouye on Pexels.com

Trying new stuff (searching for that key) to try and make you happy can be a very costly, risky and time consuming process. Could switching careers make you happy? Maybe, but changing from an accountant to a nurse is a huge undertaking in both time and money. Could you be happier with a different partner? Possibly, but are you going to suffer through the financial, mental and emotional pain of a divorce in the hope that the grass is actually greener with someone else? There’s usually no going back after that decision. All you know is what you’ve done so far in your life and how it makes you feel. You have no idea how you’ll feel about any change in your life until you’ve made the change.

But there’s another way. Instead of searching for happiness in the new, reflect on the life you currently live and identify the things that are contributing to your unhappiness. This can be ANYTHING, big or small. The work commute that sucks up time in your day. That friend that sometimes makes you feel crappy about yourself by jokingly putting you down. Feeling stressed because you’re always living paycheck to paycheck but you don’t know where the money goes. What things in your life make you feel negative emotions such as fear, stress, anxiety, anger, frustration or sadness?

Attacking my unhappiness

Let me start by saying that I’m a generally positive and happy person. But, it doesn’t really matter where you fall on the happiness scale. All of us have things in our lives that are causing negative feelings and are in our power to change. Something would happen in my day to day life and after it happened I would realize “whoa, that didn’t feel good.” I started making a mental list of the major things that were making me feel negative emotions and then started making changes. Anxiety, anger and stress were the main emotions that would crop up that I wanted to reduce.

The following are some examples of changes that I’ve made in my life to remove and reduce areas of unhappiness. None of these are complicated but be careful to not conflate simple with easy. Many of these have established habits associated with them that had to be broken or changed which is not easy. Some of these actions like removing friends from Facebook had an emotional component to them that I had to come to terms with and accept. Don’t take this as me trying to dissuade you from changing sources of unhappiness as it’s absolutely worth it. I’m just giving you a little warning that sometimes the changes are hard but they’re worth it.

Reduce Reading and Watching the News

Photo by Danya Gutan on Pexels.com

I used to pull up online news sites during my lunch break every single day and read them as I would eat. I thought “I’m an adult, I should know what’s going on in the world.” When I stepped back and thought about the content that I was consuming each day I came to a couple of conclusions:

Most of the news was negative

The classic news phrase was “if it bleeds, it leads” but it seems like that mentality has expanded to anything negative. An event causing people to die like a natural disaster, accident or acts of violence. The latest political situation where one side is “right” and the other side is “wrong.” The economy that’s about to go through dark times. The planet that’s falling apart because of the pollution being caused by people. Yikes! It’s enough to make the happiest person anxious and depressed. Few and far between these days are any “feel good” stories about something positive happening like a hero saving the life of someone else.

Most of the news had zero impact on my daily life

This realization might be the one that was both most embarrassing and most enlightening. None of what I was reading had any impact on my day to day life. Part of the reason for me to consume the news was to be “informed” but for what purpose? Watercooler chat at work? I realized that there was close to zero content on any national news network that told useful information for my day to day life. Even if some law or regulation was going to be passed that would impact me, was I really going to try and do something about it? Nope. If there was something really important or worth knowing then I would likely hear it via other means.

After thinking about these two pieces of information I greatly cut down on reading the news. At lunchtime I switched over to reading a book, a blog or something else more positive. When I do pull up a news site I mostly glance at the headlines and am much more selective with what articles I actually choose to read.

Removing “Friends” from Facebook

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Facebook is a funny place. In the real world, if you met a stranger it would probably take a while before you gave them your phone number or invited them over to hang out in your home. In the world of social media we are very quick to “friend” people that we know very little about and may not have even met in person recently or ever. Being on Facebook for over 10 years I had quite a few FB friends that were acquaintances at best or were once friends but drifted apart. People from high school that weren’t even good friends at that time, let alone now. Friends of a friend that I met once at a party or played kickball with one summer. Even people that I used to be better friends with once but grew apart over time due to changes in interests or life circumstances.

You could make a privacy or security case to unfriend those acquaintances but in my case it was more about what was showing up from them in my newsfeed. During the Donald Trump presidential era everything seemed to become political, divisive and downright mean on the internet. Then sprinkle in the pandemic and there was a nonstop parade of personal stances on Facebook that made me angry, anxious or bewildered on a what seemed to be a daily basis. It just got to be too much. I longed for peoples cat and dog pictures, vacation pictures or even…pictures of their kids. Anything tame and happy would have been a welcome change from the parade of false information memes and “I’m right” about this issue posts.

I started with hiding peoples content from my feed for 30 days. Something far less controversial than unfriending people. I’m not sure what triggered me to change but one day I went full steam ahead and just started unfriending people. I asked myself: would I ever hang out with this “friend” again in real life? If not, what is the purpose of keeping them as a friend? Not the most sophisticated criteria but I rolled with it. I unfriended a lot of people including those still in my hometown. I’m not sure what I was expecting but I was initially nervous about doing it. What if I got nasty messages from people when they realized it? What if they refused to reconnect with me in the future if I did want to see them again?

What happened after the mass unfriending? Nothing. A whole lot of nothing. No nasty messages, no e-mails, no phone calls. My newsfeed got a lot more quiet and I didn’t mind to check Facebook to see the things that were happening with my family and closer friends. Less politics, less memes, less arguing. It made me not mind checking social media now and then again.

Stop Arguing on the Internet

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Social media, text message, e-mail and online forums have one universal thing in common. They are all REALLY horrible mediums for trying to discuss complicated topics, expressing personal points of view and especially bad for trying to convince someone else to change their point of view. In the best of circumstances you can have a very adult exchange of ideas but it takes forever to ping pong back in forth. In the worst of circumstances people are incredibly mean to each other saying things with internet anonymity that they would never say if face to face with the same person. It’s that dehumanizing aspect of the internet that seems to bring out the worst in people. Even if I wasn’t trying to be mean, I found that posting something controversial or negative directed at someone would leave me feeling anxious. I wrote something expecting a response but then I would get anxiety at the thought that I offended them

There is one conclusion that I arrived at after years of internet exchanges: it’s highly unlikely that I’m going to change anyone’s mind with what I say over the internet so stop arguing with people about complex topics. It can take up a tremendous amount of your time. It was also adding to my anxiety when I would respond and things were getting contentious. I found myself not opening up post notifications for a while when I said something contentious and I saw that the person had responded back. What an awful experience having that tension and anxiety building inside of me. And for what? In the hope of trying to convince a strange to change their point of view on something that probably doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things?

So I stopped or at least have cut it down very significantly. When I do comment I try not to attack another person’s point of view but instead try to offer up my opinion on the topic and why I have that opinion. Or, I’ll ask an open ended question to see if they’ve considered some other point of view. If someone is trying to pick a fight I’ll stop posting, the online equivalent of walking away. I have tried to focus my energy on helping others which is why I now mostly blog and hang around FI groups. Less fighting, less anxiety, more people genuinely thankful for the input that I provide.

Turning off Notifications on my Phone

Photo by Torsten Dettlaff on Pexels.com

I have to credit the documentary “The Social Dilemma” for this one. I found myself more and more being a slave to my phone. Not only just using it constantly, but finding it to be a source of constant distraction during my day. Whenever an e-mail, text or some other message would come in it would vibrate in my pocket or on the desk making me pull it out or pick it up. It would create instant anxiety if I DIDN’T look at it to see what just happened. I also would start to feel “phantom” vibrations from my phone in my pocket. I would think that I felt my phone vibrate when it actually didn’t and then would need to check it.

As if the distraction notification wasn’t enough, any notification had the potential to turn a 15 second distractions into many minutes. An email notification could lead you to read something unimportant. A FB notification could lead you into mindless scrolling through of your newsfeed. And once I was actively engaged in using my phone from a notification I’d feel more inclined to check other apps that I might check unprompted anyway. Talk about a massive time suck!

“The Social Dilemma” had a piece in it about how notifications are used by the developers to actively pull you back into using the social media web. They seem like a nice harmless feature on the surface that lets you know when there’s something of interest happening that you might want to know about. But they aren’t harmless as they train you to pick up that phone whenever it notifies you. I immediately thought about how those notifications were in fact becoming a source of distraction and anxiety in my life. Before the documentary had even finished I turned off just about all notifications and saw an immediately improvement in my ability to not be drawn to my phone. Maybe some people have the will power to keep those notifications on and not have it derail their day to day life but I don’t. I find it easier to just remove the distraction altogether.

Action Steps:

Think through all the areas of your life and make a list of the things that make you unhappy. What adds fear, stress, anxiety, anger, frustration or sadness to your life? You need to be brutally honest with yourself here even if the areas are very sensitive like something with your spouse, family or friends. Here are a few areas to think about first:
1. Family
2. Spouse / partner
3. Job
4. Friends
5. Personal time – hobbies / volunteering.
6. Health
Make sure you break the item down to a simple area to focus on. For example, if you aren’t happy with your job make a list of the specific areas of the job causing you unhappiness. For example, your long commute into work.
Select one item to fix – start with something easy!
Make a list of options to fix the area of unhappiness. Focus on things that are 100% or very largely in your control. Start with easiest and go to the hardest. For the example of a long commute to work that might be:
1. Listen to audiobooks / podcasts to make the trip more productive and enjoyable.
2. Ask work to let you work from home 1 day a week.
3. Ask work to let you work from home full time.
4. Move closer to work.
5. Change jobs

Like the content? Click here to subscribe to the e-mail list and have the articles delivered to your inbox.

Tags Happiness

Happiness

Do we allow more compassion for pets than people?

Post author By Mr. MFI
Post date May 2, 2021
2 Comments on Do we allow more compassion for pets than people?

This is not the post that I want to be writing. It’s not personal finance related although it is related to happiness. Not because these are happy stories, but because the options that we have or don’t have at the end of our lives do have an impact on our happiness and that of our families. There is no BLUF and there are no action steps in this article. This one is purely from the heart.

I’ve talked about how focusing on things in my control has helped me be a much happier person. In this instance, unfortunately, I’m going to reflect on my experiences with the one thing in life that’s usually outside our control: when we die.

It’s with great sadness that I write this after losing our beloved dog Oreo of almost 13 years to nasal cancer. Through the pain and struggle of watching him degrade over the last two months my mind couldn’t help but to compare it to the last major loss in my life. The loss of my mom to ovarian cancer in 2014 at 63 years old.

Both, I loved with all my heart.

Both, I lost to cancer.

In both cases all family members wanted them to pass as peacefully and painlessly as possible. But there was one, glaring difference between the two situations that I just can’t shake from my brain.

The loss of our dog, Oreo

Oreo has been my first and only pet. My mom was allergic to pet dander so we never had a dog or a cat growing up. Despite always enjoying animals when I went to the homes of friends and family I never made the connection when I had my own place that I should get one. Fortunately, my ex-wife wanted a dog. In August of 2018 after purchasing our home we adopted this adorable 10 week old lab mix rescue that we named Oreo.

The adorable pup snoozing in his crate.

For the next 12 years Oreo was an integral part of my life and then the life of my now wife Mrs. MFI. Everyday when I came home from work he would be there on the back of the couch like a cat, waiting for us to get home.

In his favorite spot on the back of the couch looking out the window.

He went on vacations to Florida (a 24 hour drive) and Virginia with us. A few years later he was my rock when I was going through my divorce. He brought Mrs. MFI comfort, companionship and security when I was away on business trips. We aren’t having children so he was truly our fur baby.

He was in great health his whole life. He amazingly ran 12 trail miles with me on his 12th birthday while I was training for a race. Unfortunately the thing about cancer is that it comes out of nowhere. In January 2021 at 12 1/2 years old he woke up with some mucus out his nose. I assumed he had a cold or an infection that antibiotics would fix. More testing confirmed the worst diagnosis I could have hoped for: nasal cancer.

Things started getting worse slowly but then his decline accelerated. In February he started bleeding from one nostril and it wouldn’t stop. He had an episode where a blood clot let loose and he started sneezing blood everywhere. We tried many medications over the next month to reduce the bleeding and ensure he wasn’t feeling pain but the bleeding episodes continued. They would just get worse and more frequent. There is no real option for nasal cancer treatment in dogs. It’s in too sensitive of a spot to operate and radiation, if it’s even possible in your part of the world, is very expensive.

As things got worse we had a new nightmare scenario: deciding if and when to euthanize Oreo. It’s such a bizarre and tough situation. I have the ability to take away his pain, but I also am trying to let him live as long as I think he has a good quality of life. On one hand I’m grateful for the means to painlessly take away his pain by ending his life. On another hand, it saddled us with the hardest decision that you’ll ever have to make for your pet. People said “you’ll know when it’s time”, but I never felt like I did. I second guessed the decision right until the end when he peacefully was euthanized by our sides on March 19th, 2021.

The loss of my mom to cancer

I feel like if there is a stereotypical mom, my mom was it. She wasn’t a celebrity, a professional at anything or a financial success. She came from a middle class family in NY and was raised very religiously which influenced her personality a great deal. Her profession was either homemaker or religious education teacher during her life after marrying my dad. She took care of our family and was the model of a loving and supportive person. She just had a quiet poise about her with an uncanny ability to stay calm and composed no matter what the situation. I can’t recall any instance where she would gossip about others or when she lost her temper.

My dad had a very successful career allowing my parents to save and invest well during their lives. They were fortunate to retire in their late 50’s and moved 9 hours away to Virginia when I was in my late 20’s. We loved each other but I didn’t make the effort to see them more than once or twice a year at most.

At 62 years old my mom started having strange health issues which was unusual. She didn’t smoke her whole life and only had alcohol during holidays. She wasn’t big on exercise but through her diet maintained a slender figure her whole life. These issues were eventually diagnosed as ovarian cancer. Over the following year she would try a variety of treatments to battle the cancer and the ancillary complications that it caused. She never could beat it though.

In June of 2014 she was hospitalized and I flew down to see her. I thought I was going to see her and hear about the next treatment decision. I was blindsided when at her hospital bedside she told me she was done. She was tired of fighting and was ready to die.

I’m not sure how she was able to be so calm about it. So matter of fact in accepting her own now near term mortality. Maybe she was just holding it together because she saw it hit me like a truck. From her bedside I sobbed hysterically as I buried my head into her stomach. “No, no, no…this can’t be” or something to that effect came out of my mouth.

Our whole lives we never know exactly when we’re going to die. Usually we don’t even have a ballpark idea. The moment you know with certainly that death is on a near term timeline everything changes. Time stopped for me at first, then it accelerated very quickly know that every second was closer to her near term last breath. Her wish was to die at home so arrangements were made for a bed to be setup in the living room at home.

I remember the next week feeling like a blur although I can’t tell you exactly how long it took for her to die. I think it was about a week, but I can’t be sure. She had an IV for hydration and morphine to keep her comfortable. She could play cards, speak and had mental capacity at first. She could drink and maybe she could eat a little?

Until this experience I no idea exactly how someone dies when cancer is in them and is left unchecked. She stopped being able to drink. Eventually she couldn’t talk or really communicate. We wet her lips with a sponge to keep them moist because she couldn’t lick them and her mouth was dry. She’s not in pain but she’s essentially dehydrating and starving to death in front of my eyes. I remember being shocked by how thin and boney her hand had become when I went to hold it.

Surrounded by family she passed away in June of 2014.

Reflecting on the two events

It wasn’t until Oreo was dying and we had to decide on euthanizing that I began reflecting on the parallels of these situations. Something immediately hit me that started to make me well up with anger inside.

When my mom died of cancer she essentially had two options: 1. Continuing fighting with other treatments 2. Die “naturally” by starvation in a location of her choosing. I suppose she could have attempted suicide but she would never even consider an option not provided by a doctor. There was no option to be euthanized pain free available to her. It was pain through fighting or pain through dying.

How frustrating to live your whole life in freedom only to denied the ability to make a decision about your death. I know this topic is controversial because many religions would consider this suicide. Is a “natural” death really better? Is it better to force a person to choose between options of pain and pain? Or worse yet, attempt non-medical suicide that brings a whole host of potential bad outcomes including risking failure or the trauma of your family finding you?

I previously wrote that my superpower was focusing on things that I could control in my life. When my mom died in 2014 only 2 states had a physician assisted suicide option. That’s grown to 9 which is encouraging and also shows that this is something that people want. I hope that some beliefs are set aside and we recognize that some people want the option to avoid pain when their death is certain. I know I want that option. Why do our pets get more options than people?

Like the content? Click here to subscribe to the e-mail list and have the articles delivered to your inbox.

General FI Happiness

Focusing on what you can Control: My New Life Superpower

Post author By Mr. MFI
Post date February 7, 2021
4 Comments on Focusing on what you can Control: My New Life Superpower

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

BLUF: Focusing on the things in your life that you can control to energize yourself into taking action. When you know all actions taken are achievable you stay motivated and in problem solving mode. Not worrying about the things that you can’t control will make you happier by freeing your mind of anxiety and doubt.

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”
Epictetus, Discourses

2020 was a tough year for most people. The pandemic turned our world upside down and we were restricted from living our lives in a variety of ways. There were many feelings of helplessness and anxiety over these world events that all felt outside of our control. One positive of that year was more time to read and by sheer luck I came across a concept called the trichotomy of control that would change my whole outlook on life.

Trichotomy of Control

The trichotomy of control is a concept that comes from an ancient Greek school of philosophy called Stoicism. I have Mr. Money Mustache and this post to thank for introducing the concept. I know, it sounds like some academic concept that doesn’t apply to real life but it actually does. The idea is that all things in life can be put in three different buckets:

Things that we have no control over
Things that we have complete control over
Things that we have some control over

Things we have no control over

There are a lot of things that we actually have no control over and many are related to our external world.

Other people – unless you have some special puppet master abilities. As much we’d like to control the actions of others sometimes, we can’t.
Nature – a pandemic, earth quake, hurricane, asteroid heading at earth.
Genetics – no control over what you were born with, however feel free to blame your parents if it makes you feel better.
The Past – as much as sometimes we want to, the past has happened, never to be changed. The Stoics argue that you can’t change the present either as it’s instantly happening and then becoming the past.
External events – probably either nature, the actions or others or a combination. This is really anything around us in the world that is just happening.

Things we have complete control over

“Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing.”
Epictetus, Enchiridion

In the end what we think and what we physically do are what we have complete control over. Said another way, our thoughts and actions. Don’t get me wrong, just because thoughts and actions are in our control doesn’t mean controlling them is easy. You have complete control over how you react when someone insults you but it doesn’t make it easy to walk away if they hurt your pride.

Things we have some control over

Many complex events and life situations end up falling into the bucket of some control. The key here is to recognize that and break down a complex concept into its actionable pieces that can be put into the bucket of full control. You may find it helpful to think through items in the “no control” bucket but I haven’t found that to be of much value to me.

I think it’s most helpful to explore this concept with some real world examples.

Putting the idea into practice

Example: I want a promotion at work

I brought up this example in my goal setting post. I didn’t explicitly talk about Stoicism or the trichotomy of control there but that’s the tool that I was using. Most people want to advance in their career but it’s important to focus on the things that are within our control. Being a manager at a large company myself I’ve been through this process many times.

Let’s break down a goal of getting promoted at work into the components that you can and cannot control.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Things you can control:

How hard you work and how well you perform – If it’s a true performance based work environment then how you perform is critical to having any shot of a promotion. As Steve Martin once said “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”
Making your manager aware of everything you do (sell yourself) – To get promoted a manager usually has to submit paperwork with justification for a promotion. Getting promoted is really convincing two or more people that you deserve it. Selling your manager (1) that you deserve it with evidence to prove it. Your manager selling his manager (2) or a promotion review board (2+ people) that you deserve it. Your manager risks a personal reputation hit if they put forth a weakly justified promotion request.
Acquiring the skills and experience needed for the position – The best candidate for a position is the one that has the highest probability of being successful if chosen. Work on the skills and gain the experience needed in advance to make you the best option on paper.
Making others aware of what you want – Do other people know that you’re looking to take on greater responsibility? Change jobs? It may seem obvious but you need to let people know what your aspirations are or you may never be considered.
Looking for other positions that come with a promotion – If there are no open positions above you to fill, look in other parts of the company where the position comes with a promotion. Maybe this means looking at other companies because there are no internal opportunities.

Things you can’t control:

If the job you want is available – Sometimes the job you want is not a “promotion in place” job. Someone else might be performing the higher responsibility role that you need to be promoted. You can’t control when someone will leave so you would need to wait for the position to open.
The selection process for an open position – Someone less qualified could be chosen for the position just by their networked connections. The best friend of the CEO or your managers work buddy, for example.
If a promotion is currently possible – Maybe the company is in financially rough shape and promotions have been frozen. Maybe there are too many promotions this quarter or year. Maybe there’s a promotion limit and your case wasn’t strong enough to make the cut this time. There can be a multitude of reasons why a promotion is roadblocked at the moment.

At this point start taking action on all the things that you can control. If you do all the things possible in your control in your current position and nothing happens then you need to decide if you’re willing to look elsewhere. Again, focus on what you can do.

Example: I’m afraid of being fired… and not having the money to live.

Many people have the fear of being fired. That’s really not the root the fear though as the wealthy aren’t worried about this happening. As much as you may love your coffee break gossip or Monday morning quarterbacking, most aren’t worried about being fired because of losing at work friends. It’s a financial concern.

Most people live paycheck to paycheck. A poll done by Charles Schwab in 2019 showed that 59% of adults live paycheck to paycheck. Yikes. It should be no wonder then why people stress about a potential job loss. They don’t have the savings to pay all life expenses until they can find a new job.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Things you can control:

Create an emergency fund – A buffer of either available cash or credit that you can tap to pay for all life expenses until you find a new job. Many sources recommend a 3-6 month fund but how much is situational and depends on how many earners you have, how long you think it will take to be rehired, your mobility/flexibility and your risk tolerance. Future post alert, I’ll dive deep on this topic soon.
Your job performance at work – Unless your entire company collapses in an unexpected ball of flame (Enron style), layoffs happen progressively and somewhat predictably. The best performers with skills most helpful to the future success of the company are usually the last ones to be let go.
Be likable – Research discussed in this article states that: “Likeable people are more likely to be hired, to be listened to, to have colleagues offer help and to be promoted. Research by Northwestern’s Lauren Rivera found that where backgrounds and skills of job candidates are similar, the person seen as more likeable gets hired almost 90 per cent of the time. And a study at the University of Massachusetts found that when likeable managers present plausible arguments, even colleagues who disagree tend to buy into their recommendations.” Wow! It pays to be likeable. Sounds like something to add to that to-do list for people that want to be promoted too.
Not committing a fire-able offense at work – No matter how good you are at your job, most companies have certain policies that will get you fired if broken. Learn what they are and don’t do them. Stealing in any form is usually a no-brainer. I don’t just mean stealing money, Office Space style for example. I mean stealing anything. Lying on your timecard, lying on your expense report, physically taking company property…the list goes on.

Things you can’t control:

Your company falls on tough times and they go bankrupt – The 2020 pandemic bankrupted many companies at no fault of the employees.
Your company merges with another resulting in layoffs – In 2020 Schwab and TD Ameritrade merged and 1,000 were let go.
Your company changes strategic direction resulting in layoffs – Sometimes a company decides that a product or project that you are working on isn’t the best strategy for the company long term and cuts the whole team associated with it. You could be the best performer on the team and it may not matter.

Unexpected benefits

An interesting realization that I’ve made since adopting this mentality is that the focus on things that I can control has made my mind not even think about the things that aren’t in my control. I don’t have to think “I can’t make my boss give me a promotion so don’t worry about that”, it just doesn’t even enter my mind. My brain stays in problem solving and taking action mode freeing it from mental stress and anxiety.

One of the worst feelings is the feeling of being helpless. Seeing a situation in front you that you want to change but you don’t feel like you can do anything about it. Using the trichotomy of control has been a way to escape from stuck feelings of helplessness. I never get stuck because I only focus on the actions that I’m capable of controlling and therefore achieving. I know I have the power to be successful in those actions which energizes me to keep pursuing them.

Action Items:

Practice taking problems and situations that are complex and thinking about them in terms of what you can and can’t control. Start by making a list of things that you can control that can either solve or work to solve the problem.
Prioritize the things that you can control and take action on them.
Re-evaluation the current situation. If your action didn’t resolve the situation then repeat the process.

Like the content? Click here to subscribe to the e-mail list and have the articles delivered to your inbox.

What problem or situation will you try to use this method on first? Add a comment below.

Tags Happiness, Stoicism