Jim McCarthy's Blog

[image error]Photo courtesy of Guy Stevens on UNSPLASH

To honor LGBTQ+ Pride Month and the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, I’d like to share with you this excerpt from my new book, Live Each Day: A Surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness.

In early 1992, my biggest goal was to get accepted into a top business school. But it was going to be very hard. I had good grades as an undergrad, but the University of Iowa was not considered an elite school. My work experience could be labelled as “adventuresome,” “bohemian,” or just plain “weird”: English teacher in Germany. Business journalist in Madrid. Struggling phone sales guy in the Bay Area. For me to have any chance at all of getting into a top MBA program, I had to play my hand as well as I could.

Zane, a friend of mine, told me that business school admissions offices looked favorably on people who had a record of community or volunteer work. Maybe this shows you’re a nice person. Or it’s a great way to develop your leadership skills. Or, perhaps, you even learn how to be around people less fortunate or privileged than you.

After considerable searching, I chose to volunteer Sundays on the hotline of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. The HIV/AIDS crisis was raging at the time and had decimated a horrifically large part of the gay community worldwide. Gay, straight, or whatever, millions of people had died from the disease. And millions more were going to.

Although I’m straight, I had some very close friends who were gay, and I was doing this out of solidarity with them. At least one, Gary, had already died of the disease.

I may have volunteered with very self-serving intentions, but I was soon caught up in the importance of the work. Because I spoke Spanish, I was trained in Spanish with the Latino volunteers. But when I showed up for my first shift on a Sunday morning, there were really no calls into the Spanish language hotline. Instead, I soon started taking the calls in English, which came in at a steady pace.

“How does a person get AIDS?”

“Where can I get tested for HIV?”

“I just had sex with someone last night. I’m not sure if what I did was risky or not. Can I ask you?”

“I’m a heroin addict. Can I get AIDS from sharing syringes?”

“How can I practice safe sex?”

“My boyfriend just died of AIDS. I feel like killing myself.”

This was a very different way to spend Sundays than watching pro football. Fortunately, the S.F. AIDS Foundation’s training was excellent. It helped me develop my skills in listening nonjudgmentally. I got quite used to talking with strangers about semen, blood, condoms, dental dams, penetration, death, hospitals, T-cell counts, Kaposi’s sarcoma … and love.

I was forced to be in the moment, trying to help callers in whatever way they needed. Meeting them wherever they were intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually. Some calls took 45 seconds. My longest call lasted 3 hours, as one heartbroken man recounted the romance, illness, and loss of his loved one. We were crying together.

But the hotline was not all tears, either. I quickly learned that if you gave yourself permission to cry, you could also give yourself permission to laugh.

And laugh we did. I met amazing people through my volunteer work on the 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Sunday shift: Richard, a retired high school teacher who was part of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in the 1960s. He was gay and had been fighting for equal rights his entire life. There was Ray, a middle-aged executive at Wells Fargo Bank. There was Sangeeta, a young India-born engineer who happened to be a lesbian. There was Russell, who was sweet and feminine, enjoying his life in the big city. There was our hotline shift leader, James, who died of AIDS during the course of my time at the hotline.

Oddly, I don’t really recall the specific reasons why any of them volunteered. We didn’t really talk about it. In a way, it was so obvious that lives were on the line and this work needed to be done. It’s sort of like asking, “Why are you pouring water on that burning building?”

When it came time to write my applications to Stanford and Northwestern, I was not shy about describing my experience at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. And yet, perhaps appropriately, my volunteer experience did make me a better leader: I did have a better understanding of people — especially those I would not have come into contact with otherwise. I did sense others’ suffering more acutely. And I learned that in some small way, I could make a positive difference in a community.

[image error]This is an excerpt from my new bestselling book, Live Each Day: A Surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness.

Wisdom@Work author Chip Conley calls it “an ambitious achievement.”
Project Happiness founder Randy Taran says it’s “a wake-up call to living your life to the absolute fullest. This book shows you how.”
And venture capitalist Heidi Roizen writes “Live Each Day is an action-provoking, life-changing vehicle.”

Get copies for yourself, your clients, or your organization here, now. 
[image error]

The post What the AIDS Hotline Taught Me about Leadership appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

It was a fun and very enlightening talk about Neurodiversity with my friend, Ronan McGovern. Ronan is an Executive in AIB Bank where he is Head of Strategy for Workplace Transformation. He was diagnosed with Aspergers in 2018 and previously with ADHD. As of mid-2019, Ronan is a scholar with the Stanford Neurodiversity Project for 6 months to promote awareness of Neurodiversity.

If you have never heard of “Neurodiversity,” you owe it to yourself to give this a listen.

For more videos on how to create your happiness and live each day to the fullest, just check out my YouTube channel! 

The post Neurodiversity at Stanford: Jim McCarthy Interviews Ronan McGovern appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

I was delighted that the amazing Reena Jadhav chose to interview me for her podcast, entitled Healthier! She’s smart, charismatic, and asked insightful questions about my new book, Live Each Day: A Surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness. Get copies for yourself, your organization, or your clients today.

Listen to the interview on iTunes.

Listen on Soundcloud.

Reena is on a mission to uncover the latest breakthroughs and products to help you live a longer, healthier, and happier life. She is a very successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and survivor of two life-threatening illnesses.

“New Health Pyramid” and Healthbootcamps.com are her small contribution to solving our very big health crisis. The podcast’s mission is to help you and millions more unleash better health, naturally!

For more videos on how to create your happiness and live each day to the fullest, just check out my YouTube channel! 

The post Interview with Healthier Podcast’s Reena Jadhav appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

[image error] Photo courtesy of Jill Wellington on Pixabay

Do you have a “bucket list”? A lot of people maintain lists of things they want to do, be, or experience before they die. Many people have unwritten “bucket lists” in the back of their minds: “I’d like to start my own company.” “I’d like to do a triathlon.” “I’d like to see Venice someday.” I’m lucky to have traveled the world, and have had a varied career, so I’ve enjoyed a lot of fun, fulfilling experiences, long before I heard the term “bucket list.”

I have mixed feelings about these lists. On the one hand, I like the idea of setting goals for things that are important to you, and then figuring out how to accomplish those goals. A goal can be purposeful, such as volunteering for a political campaign to help someone you admire get elected. Or the goal can be for something pleasurable, such as swimming with dolphins in Mexico.

On the other hand, I detest when people do things so superficially that the activity hardly “counts” at all. For example, I once made great efforts to help someone see a European cathedral, just to have him walk out after two minutes because he only needed 120 seconds to “do” the cathedral.

My belief is that your life will be richer and more meaningful if you slow down enough to pay attention and savor your experience. In fact, many of us are so busy multitasking and racing around experiencing things that we really shortchange ourselves of the beauty of the present moment.

For instance, have you ever hiked a long distance to get to the top of a mountain, and once you’re at the top, you immediately start thinking about your ride back home? Or you’re on vacation in Montreal, but you’re already talking about your next trip to New Orleans? Or you’re watching an expensive Broadway musical but worrying about the next day’s trip to the Statue of Liberty?

(To learn “What Cancer Taught Me About Happiness”, check out my TEDx Talk, here.)

These are problems that arise when we are not being “mindful” or aware of the present moment.

I’m reminded of the saying, “The purpose is not to fit more years into your life, but to fit more life into your years.” At first glance, I can interpret this quote to mean, “Go ahead! Do more stuff! Don’t just do the same thing! Live life intensely.”

OK, that’s a great approach. But then, you can imagine that, taken to an extreme, a person following this suggestion is just running around, striving to “do” their bucket list, while not really slowing down to enjoy any of it. The rise of social media has made this insanity even worse, as people experience life more as an efficient photo shoot than as … well … life!

As an alternative, you can interpret the quote to mean, “Stop racing and start living! No matter how long you live, you’ll be a lot happier and more successful if you savor each hour of each day — whether you’re visiting a city on your bucket list, sitting at home listening to music, or just reading a good book.”

If you can’t learn how to enjoy the simplest of daily pleasures, then extraordinary experiences probably won’t have much positive impact on you either. Instead, why not create a bucket list of the day — “a bucket list du jour,” if you will. A daily bucket list for mindfulness. That list might look like this:

• I notice many variations of smells and savor the ones I like.

• I smell and taste the food I eat while consciously putting words to the flavors and textures.

• I smell and taste the liquids that I drink, giving them the same attention I would if I were at a luxurious wine-tasting event.

• I recognize the beauty of colors, shapes, and patterns throughout the day — orange and turquoise, curved and straight, plaid and polka dot, leopard skin and lavender.

• I appreciate my sense of touch of things warm, cool, cold, hot, rough, smooth, soft, fuzzy, prickly, squishy, shallow, or deep.

• I notice all the varieties of sounds — espresso machines, barking dogs, rustling leaves, pounding drums, TV commercials, and the voices of people talking to me.

• I marvel at my bodily sensations and my ability to move and feel gravity.

• I notice the eye color of those who are speaking with me.

• I pay attention to whether someone I see looks happy, sad, or any other emotion. I attempt to put their emotion into words.

• I seek opportunities to be compassionate to others — by word, or action, or thought.

• I laugh.

Writing Activity:

What is your bucket list for mindfulness, just for today? Feel free to share your thoughts in the Comments section, below!

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

Go ahead and create your “racing all over the world” bucket list, if you insist. But make sure you practice your daily mindfulness bucket list as well — so that you can live each day.

[image error]This is an excerpt from my new bestselling book, Live Each Day: A Surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness.

Wisdom@Work author Chip Conley calls it “an ambitious achievement.”
Project Happiness founder Randy Taran says it’s “a wake-up call to living your life to the absolute fullest. This book shows you how.”
And venture capitalist Heidi Roizen writes “Live Each Day is an action-provoking, life-changing vehicle.”

Get copies for yourself, your clients, or your organization here, now. 
[image error]

The post Why Not a Bucket List for Mindfulness? appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

[image error] Photo courtesy of Jill Wellington on Pixabay

Do you have a “bucket list”? A lot of people maintain lists of things they want to do, be, or experience before they die. Many people have unwritten “bucket lists” in the back of their minds: “I’d like to start my own company.” “I’d like to do a triathlon.” “I’d like to see Venice someday.” I’m lucky to have traveled the world, and have had a varied career, so I’ve enjoyed a lot of fun, fulfilling experiences, long before I heard the term “bucket list.”

I have mixed feelings about these lists. On the one hand, I like the idea of setting goals for things that are important to you, and then figuring out how to accomplish those goals. A goal can be purposeful, such as volunteering for a political campaign to help someone you admire get elected. Or the goal can be for something pleasurable, such as swimming with dolphins in Mexico.

On the other hand, I detest when people do things so superficially that the activity hardly “counts” at all. For example, I once made great efforts to help someone see a European cathedral, just to have him walk out after two minutes because he only needed 120 seconds to “do” the cathedral.

My belief is that your life will be richer and more meaningful if you slow down enough to pay attention and savor your experience. In fact, many of us are so busy multitasking and racing around experiencing things that we really shortchange ourselves of the beauty of the present moment.

For instance, have you ever hiked a long distance to get to the top of a mountain, and once you’re at the top, you immediately start thinking about your ride back home? Or you’re on vacation in Montreal, but you’re already talking about your next trip to New Orleans? Or you’re watching an expensive Broadway musical but worrying about the next day’s trip to the Statue of Liberty?

(To learn “What Cancer Taught Me About Happiness”, check out my TEDx Talk, here.)

These are problems that arise when we are not being “mindful” or aware of the present moment.

I’m reminded of the saying, “The purpose is not to fit more years into your life, but to fit more life into your years.” At first glance, I can interpret this quote to mean, “Go ahead! Do more stuff! Don’t just do the same thing! Live life intensely.”

OK, that’s a great approach. But then, you can imagine that, taken to an extreme, a person following this suggestion is just running around, striving to “do” their bucket list, while not really slowing down to enjoy any of it. The rise of social media has made this insanity even worse, as people experience life more as an efficient photo shoot than as … well … life!

As an alternative, you can interpret the quote to mean, “Stop racing and start living! No matter how long you live, you’ll be a lot happier and more successful if you savor each hour of each day — whether you’re visiting a city on your bucket list, sitting at home listening to music, or just reading a good book.”

If you can’t learn how to enjoy the simplest of daily pleasures, then extraordinary experiences probably won’t have much positive impact on you either. Instead, why not create a bucket list of the day — “a bucket list du jour,” if you will. A daily bucket list for mindfulness. That list might look like this:

• I notice many variations of smells and savor the ones I like.

• I smell and taste the food I eat while consciously putting words to the flavors and textures.

• I smell and taste the liquids that I drink, giving them the same attention I would if I were at a luxurious wine-tasting event.

• I recognize the beauty of colors, shapes, and patterns throughout the day — orange and turquoise, curved and straight, plaid and polka dot, leopard skin and lavender.

• I appreciate my sense of touch of things warm, cool, cold, hot, rough, smooth, soft, fuzzy, prickly, squishy, shallow, or deep.

• I notice all the varieties of sounds — espresso machines, barking dogs, rustling leaves, pounding drums, TV commercials, and the voices of people talking to me.

• I marvel at my bodily sensations and my ability to move and feel gravity.

• I notice the eye color of those who are speaking with me.

• I pay attention to whether someone I see looks happy, sad, or any other emotion. I attempt to put their emotion into words.

• I seek opportunities to be compassionate to others — by word, or action, or thought.

• I laugh.

Writing Activity:

What is your bucket list for mindfulness, just for today? Feel free to share your thoughts in the Comments section, below!

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

Go ahead and create your “racing all over the world” bucket list, if you insist. But make sure you practice your daily mindfulness bucket list as well — so that you can live each day.

[image error]This is an excerpt from my new bestselling book, Live Each Day: A Surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness.

Wisdom@Work author Chip Conley calls it “an ambitious achievement.”
Project Happiness founder Randy Taran says it’s “a wake-up call to living your life to the absolute fullest. This book shows you how.”
And venture capitalist Heidi Roizen writes “Live Each Day is an action-provoking, life-changing vehicle.”

Get copies for yourself, your clients, or your organization here, now. 
[image error]

The post A Bucket List for Mindfulness appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

[image error]Photo courtesy of Connor Limbocker on Unsplash

I remember working very hard for a Silicon Valley start-up. One day I heard the founder/CEO say in exasperation, “I’ll be happy only when we go public!” That was clearly the goal for everyone in the company — having an initial public offering, or IPO, would be a major achievement — and all of us early employees would stand to make millions of dollars.

There’s nothing wrong with having goals and working hard to accomplish them. In fact, engaging with something that gives you purpose is a key element of happiness. But problems begin when we lead our lives under the never-ending assumption that “success,” “happiness,” or “peace” are states of being that can be reached only once we overcome all our current obstacles, after which life is suddenly perfect. Along the way, we act as if this state of contentment cannot be here and now, but rather sometime in the future.

You can call this the “I’ll Be Happy Only When” Syndrome. Here’s what it might look like at various stages in a person’s career:

I’ll be happy only when I get out of high school.

I’ll be happy only when I get good grades on my college admissions exams.

I’ll be happy only when I get into a top university.

I’ll be happy only when I graduate from that top university.

I’ll be happy only when I get a fantastic job after college.

I’ll be happy only when I pay off my student loans.

I’ll be happy only when I get promoted to manager at that great job.

I’ll be happy only when I earn $100,000 per year.

I’ll be happy only when I get promoted to director at that job.

I’ll be happy only when I switch companies and leave that job I hate.

I’ll be happy only when I earn $200,000 per year.

I’ll be happy only when I save $1,000,000 for my retirement.

I’ll be happy only when I retire.

I’ll be happy only when I figure out what hobbies I should have in my retirement.

( To learn “What Cancer Taught Me About Happiness”, check out my TEDx Talk, here.)

In parallel, this syndrome can take many forms in someone’s personal life:

I’ll be happy only when I have a boyfriend/girlfriend in high school.

I’ll be happy only when I have a boyfriend/girlfriend in college.

I’ll be happy only when I lose my virginity. (This could happen at many different stages in one’s life … but only once, as far as I can tell!)

I’ll be happy only when I get engaged.

I’ll be happy only when I get married.

I’ll be happy only when we have our first child.

I’ll be happy only when we have our second child.

I’ll be happy only when our kids get into an outstanding kindergarten/ grade school/high school/college/graduate school/postdoctoral program in astrophysics at Princeton.

I’ll be happy only when all of the kids are out of the house.

I’ll be happy only when I get a divorce.

I’ll be happy only when the child custody issue is resolved. I’ll be happy only when I get remarried.

I’ll be happy only when I get a divorce again.

I’ll be happy only when I undergo my gender transition.

Those are examples of major life events. But this syndrome can plague our daily lives as well:

I’ll be happy only when tax season is over.

I’ll be happy only when the Golden State Warriors win the NBA championship again.

I’ll be happy only when this out-of-town visitor is gone.

I’ll be happy only when we finalize plans for our upcoming vacation.

I’ll be happy only when we get better marketing materials for our product.

I’ll be happy only when that stupid colleague of mine switches departments.

I’ll be happy only when the stock market goes up.

I’ll be happy only when it stops raining.

You may be waiting a long time.

Instead, you might prefer to think about life this way:

You’ve had challenges before.

You have challenges now.

You will always have challenges.

So what ever happened to the start-up CEO who exclaimed that they would only be happy “once we go public”? This executive sent the message to everyone in the company that happiness would not be experienced until the IPO. At the time of this writing, that company is still not public. I don’t know whether the CEO has enjoyed the journey during the many years since, but I suspect the answer is “no.”

Don’t be that way.

Enjoy your life journey.

Live each day.

YOUR TURN: 

Do you suffer from the “I’ll Be Happy Only When …” Syndrome? Where do you get stuck? And how do you overcome this normal tendency? Feel free to share your thoughts in the Comments. Thanks!

[image error]This is an excerpt from my new bestselling book, Live Each Day: A Surprisingly Simple Guide to Happiness.

Wisdom@Work author Chip Conley calls it “an ambitious achievement.”
Project Happiness founder Randy Taran says it’s “a wake-up call to living your life to the absolute fullest. This book shows you how.”
And venture capitalist Heidi Roizen writes “Live Each Day is an action-provoking, life-changing vehicle.”

Get copies for yourself, your clients, or your organization here, now. 
[image error]

The post How to Avoid the “I’ll Be Happy Only When …” Syndrome appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

[image error]

Think for a second about the older people you know – whether they’re your parents, neighbors, colleagues or friends. Are they happy?  The evidence suggests that we can learn a lot about happiness from the older members of our communities.
Economics professors Dr. Andrew Oswald from Warwick Business School and Dr. David Blanchflower from Dartmouth College studied a wealth of data from 72 countries. They noted a “U-bend” in happiness – people started life very happy, bottomed out in midlife, then reported increasing happiness until they died. By age 70 they were happier than when they were 18. For those who lived to 80, they were considerably happier than those at age 70. The findings were that “in the great majority of countries people are at their unhappiest in their 40s and early 50s. The global average is 46.”

Other fascinating research confirms these findings, and gets more specific on age and emotion: “Enjoyment and happiness dip in middle age, then pick up; stress rises during the early 20s, then falls sharply; worry peaks in middle age, and falls sharply thereafter; anger declines throughout life; sadness rises slightly in middle age, and falls thereafter.”

Even when researchers control for factors such as having children, wealth, or what your life experience might have been in your particular country, the U-bend remains.

What can the most experienced humans in our society teach us about happiness?

Older people really do become wiser. The Economist notes that older people are better at resolving conflict, controlling their emotions, accepting misfortune, and keeping their calm. According to Stanford psychology professor Dr. Laura Carstensen, “the old know they are closer to death…they grow better at living for the present. They come to focus on things that matter now—such as feelings—and less on long-term goals.”

This makes sense to me. I’ll be 55 years old in a few months. I still have many exciting hopes, dreams, and plans for the rest of my life. But I no longer expect that some day I’ll be a journalist on TV’s 60 Minutes, the U.S. ambassador to France, or a U.S. Supreme Court justice. Even though I have a coveted MBA degree from Stanford, I will never be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, a founder of a cutting edge Silicon Valley startup, or a billionaire. Believe it or not, I once considered all of these accomplishments as possible goals for myself.

Instead, after I got my cancer diagnosis at age 49, and hit rock bottom in various aspects of my life, I decided that I would focus much more on family, friends, and community, as well as do work which was really purposeful for me. This meant giving up on a few of the dreams of my earlier life, and embracing the beautiful possibilities of the now. (You can learn more by asking “What Does the World Need from You?”)

Or, as American novelist Edna Ferber writes, “Being an old maid is like death by drowning – a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling.”

According to research, others feel this way, too. A 2013 study by the National Council of Aging reported “When asked what is most important to maintaining a high quality of life in their senior years, staying connected to friends and family was the top choice of 4 in 10 seniors, ahead of having financial means (30 percent).”

So if you happen to be in your 20s or 30s, you can anticipate that life might continue to get more challenging for the foreseeable future. (But you should still Enjoy the Journey!) If you’re in your late 40s or older, then chances are good that you’ll be happier and happier with each passing year – until you have no more years at all! (It’s OK. It happens to all of us…; – )

What do you think? In the comments section, let me know if your life experiences confirm what this research has found. Also, this is a draft of a sub-chapter from my upcoming book, which I’m writing right now. Contact me if you’d like to learn more about it.


Thanks,
Jim

P.S. You might like this short video from Alvina Antar, CIO of Zuora, about my Happiness Workshop:

Photo above courtesy of Lisa Fotios from Pexels

The post Life might suck now. But it should get better… appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

[image error]Photo by Pete Johnson from Pexels

“If a man knows the ‘why’ of his existence, he will be able to bear almost any ‘how’,” wrote Dr. Viktor Frankl in his seminal work Man’s Search for Meaning.

Frankl spoke with the authority of intense personal agony and courage. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1905, Frankl later became a psychiatrist. The Nazis murdered his father, mother, brother, and wife in concentration camps – just four of the 6,000,000 Jewish people and millions of others killed in the Holocaust.

Frankl wrote “the prisoner who lost faith in the future – his future – was doomed.” (Man’s Search for Meaning, p. 95). While Frankl was himself imprisoned in the death camps, he sought to help his fellow captives. He tells the story of two other inmates who were suicidal, given the horrific loss and suffering which surrounded them.

When Frankl sought to save them, he did not ask “How can I help you?”

He did not ask “What do you need to keep living?”

Instead, he asked “WHAT DOES THE WORLD STILL NEED FROM YOU?”  

[image error]Dr. Viktor Frankl

One man responded by saying he wanted to survive the death camps, so that he could be reunited with his beloved child, who was waiting for him in a foreign country. Another prisoner replied that he wanted to keep living so that he could finish and publish a series of scientific books (pp. 100-101).

Despite the horrible circumstances, these people found a way to define new meaning in their existences, keep hope alive, and survive.

What does this have to do with your work? I certainly don’t want to compare your workplace to a Nazi death camp. But it’s extremely helpful to be aware of Frankl’s advice: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” In my prior blog post, entitled “Screw Your ‘Job’. Define Your ‘Calling’. “ , I described how you can determine your own “work orientation”, and how you can bring meaning to your work – independent of the work that you do!

Similarly, I encourage you to think “big picture” about the work you do — whatever that may be — so you appreciate the special impact that you already have in this world.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had work that I just could not stand, and I urgently sought to leave and get better work. “Better” usually meant more compensation, but always meant more meaning for me, as well.

For example, I have the fondest memories of either doing impactful work which was helping others (teaching English to bankers in Frankfurt in the late 1980s), learning a lot of new skills and sharing my discoveries (working as a business journalist in Madrid in 1990), or doing very challenging, high profile work in creating a product which was being used by millions globally (rolling out Yahoo! Auctions in 18 countries and trying to beat eBay in international markets in 1999.)

No matter how different these roles were, I felt like they all tapped into a collection of passions, strengths and experiences which were uniquely mine. I found all of them “meaningful.” (For more on this, check out my 58 second video here):

Whether your work is “meaningful” or not depends on your perspective. For instance, in one of my Happiness Workshops,  a middle-aged man said “I have not been thrilled with the work I’ve done, but I’ve earned a good income, which made it possible for my family and me to live in a good neighborhood, and I was able to send my kids to a good college.”  On the other hand, some people will only find meaning in their work if they’re at a non-profit organization which is directly sheltering the homeless, fighting HIV / AIDS, or bringing clean drinking water to Africa.

It’s certainly not up to me to define for you what’s meaningful in your work. You need to figure it out for yourself. Here’s one way how:  Without changing your work at all, how can you bring more purpose or meaning to it? How can you think about it differently? What is the most positive way to think about it?  

Ask yourself “How does my work or my organization help people?”

Then “how does that help people?”

Then “how does THAT help people?”

If you keep asking, you’ll usually find an answer which excites you. And then, I hope, you’ll be able to view your work less as a job just for the paycheck, and more as a calling which contributes to the greater good.

After going through this exercise, if you still can’t bring meaning to your work — even for the short term — then what sort of role can you find, which would be more meaningful to you? What sort of trade-offs could you make, in order to make your dream a reality? Don’t ask yourself “Can I do this?” Instead, ask yourself “WHAT WOULD IT TAKE to do this?”

For instance, maybe you’re working as an account manager at an internet startup in New York City. You’d really rather be a high school math teacher. But you can’t afford to live in New York on a teacher’s salary. You could simply ask “Can I be a high school math teacher?” and answer “No, I can’t.” Or you could ask “WHAT WOULD IT TAKE to work as a high school math teacher?”

Then you could revisit all your non-negotiables in life and conclude that it WOULD be possible, if you moved to a lower cost city, perhaps shared an apartment with someone, used public transportation, wasted less money on clothing, and took on an extra job as a tutor in the summers. Then you can imagine what that life would be like – especially if you’re going to do work which is much more meaningful for you.

You might still decide to stay at your job in New York City – with newfound gratitude and commitment.

Or you might make that move to Colorado to teach calculus — and end up being a lot happier.

If you can truly, honestly, realistically say that another role would be your calling, then you owe it to yourself to figure out how to do that work. The sooner, the better – for your sake. After all – WHAT DOES THE WORLD NEED FROM YOU?

OK, let me ask you this: What do you find meaningful in your work? Do you have a clear idea of what the world needs from you? Are you able to give the world your special gifts and talents? I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments section, below. Thanks, and be well!

The post What Does the World Need from You? appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

[image error]Photo courtesy of Rehan Syed for UNSPLASH

My wife and I recently had to spend an extra night near the airport in Newark, New Jersey. I had led a couple of my workshops in New York City, and we were trying to fly back to our home in San Francisco. Unfortunately, intense rains in the Northeast forced the cancellation of many flights.

At first, we were disappointed that we could not get home. But I turned to my wife and said “You know, many times my best travel experiences come from when things go wrong. I end up meeting people I wouldn’t have met, and do things I wouldn’t normally do.”

We found a budget hotel on Staten Island, relatively affordable and close to the airport. To get to the hotel, we took Lyft. Our driver was named Angel, and I chatted with him during our 40-minute ride through heavy rain and even heavier traffic. It turns out he was born in Columbia, and came to the U.S. as a child, growing up in Queens, New York. A friend of his died in the terrorist attacks of 9-11, which inspired him to join the United States Marine Corps. He served two years in the Iraq War, and was involved in horrible battles such as Ramadi. He told of his heartbreak in seeing his friends and fellow Marines die, and trying to console their family members afterwards.

These days, he has a wife and three children, and is looking forward to starting a career with his new finance degree. Although I have pretty much always been opposed to how the U.S government started and carried out the Iraq War, I thanked Angel for his military service to the U.S., and said “You’re living the true American Dream. You’re a true patriot to our country.”

You see, I believe you can oppose a war, and still respect the warrior and their families. 

Then my wife and I checked into our little budget hotel. The man behind the counter who checked us in was probably born in India or Pakistan, based on how he looked, and his slight accent. The cleaning women in the motel were probably from Puerto Rico, based on my understanding of various accents in Spanish. That night, my wife and I went to a nearby Italian restaurant, where the wait staff all had some sort of accent, and were probably not born in the U.S. The next morning, our Lyft driver was named Lev, and most likely was an immigrant from Russia or eastern Europe. The man at the Southwest Airlines curbside bag check station spoke with a Caribbean accent, though I don’t know if his accent was from Spanish, or French, or Creole, or something else. (I happen to speak in a Midwestern American English accent – which some people would incorrectly describe as “no accent.” We ALL have accents… somewhere.)

Can you go one day in America without encountering an immigrant? They might be invisible to some, but  their work and dreams are as real as the Statue of Liberty.

None of these people were born in the United States. Like all of my Catholic Irish, German, and Lithuanian ancestors, they came to the U.S. seeking better opportunities for themselves and their spouses and children. Many of them were fleeing poverty, disease, intolerance, political and religious oppression, violence, and war. All of them were doing whatever work they could, to build a new life for themselves In the United States.

I don’t know what their citizenship status is, but all of them are living the American Dream.

All of them are continuing to build the American Dream, imperfect and mythical and bogus as it is, sometimes.

They are re-writing the story of who makes up the American Dream. It may no longer be an Irish streetcar conductor in Sioux City, Iowa.  (That was my dad’s dad’s dad.) Instead, it might be a Columbian-born United States Marine’s daughter, who is now studying to be a pediatrician in northern New Jersey. Or a gay Indian software engineer, working 18-hour days in Silicon Valley to create a new technology which will delight you some day.

As our flight from Newark took off and headed west to sunny California, I turned and gave my wife a kiss.

She herself is an immigrant. When Vietnam fell in 1975, her family escaped by boat. She watched her mother die during the ordeal. She arrived in America as a motherless child refugee.

These people are why I love the United States.  

These immigrants will continue to make American great…again.

Are you an immigrant? Are you married to one? Are your parents or grandparents immigrants? What has your experience been — whether you’ve come to the United States, or to another country?

Thanks for sharing your experiences in the comments section below. I’d love to hear your story, and I’m sure other readers would, too. 

The post The Immigrants Making America Great Again appeared first on Jim McCarthy.

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Do you need a boost of happiness?

I’d like to share with you some of the best research and articles I’ve been coming across, as I continue to write my book on how to create happy, peak performance teams. (You can learn more about my talks and workshops here.)

I hope you can apply these insights to your life, starting now.

This article has so much important, relevant, practical advice about happiness. 

Just one quote: “Our research simply says that whether it’s the thing that matters or the thing that doesn’t, both of them matter less than you think they will.” Learn lots more from Harvard psychology professor Dan Gilbert: “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness”

Are you spending your money on stuff? Or experiences?

How you answer this question makes a big difference in your happiness, according to researchers at Harvard. “Happy Money, The Science of Smarter Spending”

Do you have a happy marriage? A good social life? Are you divorced?

This research puts a monetary value on all of these events, and more. We can argue about what the exact numbers really are, but the concepts are profound! Read “This is What Your Relationships Are Worth in Dollars.”

Stop and think about the men in your life – whether it’s a father, brother, husband, colleague, or friend. If you care about them, you might want to listen to “The Lonely American Man”  from the NPR podcast Hidden Brain. Plenty of research and stories about happiness and sadness.

One of my daily affirmations:

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Learn more about how to boost your confidence here!

Take care,

Jim

The post Harvard research on money and happiness appeared first on Jim McCarthy.