William “Bud” Hart, of Haverhill, shares “Success Principles”—ideas for living a greater, better and more accomplished life, and building habits that stick. He also coaches clients to incorporate strategies for boosting their mental and physical performance during everyday living.
Many times as Sunday night rolls around I sit down at my computer to write an article for Monday morning with a pretty good idea about what I want to write about. At these times the words flow out onto the screen quickly and smoothly. Other times, I’m racking my brain for something I feel is good or worthy to write about. When the latter happens I often look to others for something witty and intelligent, or a current topic that I find in the news that strikes me to write about.
One subject that is nearly impossible to ignore in today’s 24/7 news world is the event that is about to happen this coming Tuesday; the election of the next president of our United States. By all the news accounts I have heard this weekend Tuesday’s election event is confusing, polarizing and extremely close with both candidates having a shot at winning. Politics aside what I am thinking about is not the happening, but the end. When it is over and all is said and done many people are going to be happy and almost the same number of people it seems (if the polls are accurate) are going to be unhappy.
One thing I know for sure. It doesn’t matter what the occasion or subject, we are all fully capable of taking sides. And when we do there is always this feeling that we need to prove and defend our position. It reminds me of the Zen story I read about the wind and the flag.
Two groups of monks are arguing about the temple flag fluttering in the breeze. “It is the flag that moves,” one group argues. “No, it is the wind that moves,” argues the other group. Back and forth they argue, responding to the logic of the other side, coming up with new rationale for their respective positions. But it just came down to, “It is the wind that moves, it is the flag that moves.” After listening for a while, the patriarch monk interrupted them and said, “If you look more closely you will see that it is neither the flag nor the wind that moves, what moves is your mind.”
Steve Jobs said something that goes straight to how we think about so many situations in life. “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards” This is true and what is equally true is looking back and holding on to the past is a waste of good time. As the Zen story suggests no matter who becomes president on Tuesday we each have complete charge of what we think about it and what we think inevitably impacts how the future will unfold for us.
In 2017, a simple fairy tale story. titled “The End,” was written by a man named David La Rochelle. It starts with “And they all lived happily ever after.” It winds backwards past a soggy knight, a frightened dragon, 100 bunny rabbits, an enormous runaway tomato, and a hungry giant who wants lemon cheesecake for dessert (sounds a bit like our election process). Finally, the reader arrives at, “Once upon a time.”
As I see it sitting here writing this article there is no chance to go back and rewrite the story of the 2016 United Stated presidential election that culminates on Tuesday. Hopefully on Wednesday we all begin to look forward to creating and connecting dots to the future with thinking that is positive and constructive and that we all live happily ever after.
William “Bud” Hart is a certified “Mindset” Coach, Accountability Partner and Business Consultant. Visit Hart Group, www.hartgroupma.com for more on coaching.