The Resilient Manifestation: Eight Basic Lessons For a Better Life

For all the corporate training I could do to help people become far more productive, the lever I wished I could pull that would make a massive difference would be that of culture. 

Culture erodes productivity in a way that is chronic, pervasive and invisible, yet here’s one way you will be able to see it if you want to after I point it out.

It’s happened to me, and I’ve seen it happen to others.  We go through rigorous hiring processes, only to arrive on board and immediately be told what to do and how to do it.  Who wants that? Those afraid of accountability. That’s not you. You know how to manifest, and that is the definition of accountability.

The accountable dreamers look at their dreams as completely as they can. What would a full day look like, what would “normal” feel like, what new people are there, and who has disappeared? What would be the next goal for a person like you, who doesn’t just stop? There’s always the next. What comes next? Is this a direction that feels right to you?

Don’t just feel it, and don’t just think it.

When I bought my first house, it was a purely emotional decision, though much logic led up to it being the last and only right choice in a long sequence of choices. Finally, a job opening made living on a lake within a reasonable commute possible. With a boyfriend in construction, an in-progress build was within my price range and our skill level. Enthusiasm and blind confidence had me sold before we’d opened the door.

The Expensive and Hard Way

In learning the eight basic lessons for a better life, I learned the hard and expensive way that there were many things I should have done. I didn’t make those mistakes the second time.

The second time, I learned that you have no control over your neighbors: know when to move, and get out before it becomes obvious to any prospective buyer. Make all homeownership decisions with a view to the reality that one day, you will be selling. Make bold decisions, but make them easily reversible.

Back in school, when I was old enough to know that some careers paid well and others didn’t, I gravitated toward the one that paid better. I had friends who didn’t have a clue about income, others who were certain of their continued affluence without needing any of their personal intervention, and so on. I knew enough to aim as high as I could.

That meant that while I felt pulled toward interior design as a career, as the career diagnostic tool suggested, I was pulled rather toward engineering.

Now that I am out of that career, one of the eight basic lessons for a better life is to dream of becoming an interior designer, if only in my own home.

I have also dreamed of becoming an author since I was a child. I wanted my words and my voice to matter in a way that can only say that it didn’t matter, and I wanted to change that. If my words already did matter, if I already thought I had a voice, then the idea of being an author would have been like water to a fish – a natural thing, and not a strident thing.

Insight into the hurt is one of the basic lessons for a better life.

Caging the Dragon

Whether it’s buying a house or feeling emotions, if you’ve done it once, you’ll do it again. When I am weakened, triggering unleashes a dragon of a reaction, a dragon who is trying to protect a little girl, because no one else seems to be doing the job.

Did you learn eight basic lessons for a better life from the last time to make the next one as smooth and uplifting as possible?

When you sit through it, feel the surges and the twists and all the things in your body that it does, it fades, and you are left with the insight of what this moment was here to teach you. It goes like this, “Never again will I…”

While you might be inclined to say something like, “Trust that person again,” what does that look like? Is it something concrete, like lending money, providing a key, or giving access? If you can’t observe it with your actions, then it’s something that is capable of slipping past your consciousness. If you are in a good mood, feeling wonderful, and they ask again, you might be inclined to say, “Sure, why not,” only to kick yourself afterwards. But you can’t walk around grumpy and hostile just so that no one will ask you for favors.

Another of the eight basic lessons for a better life is to set clear boundaries on what you will and will not tolerate, allow, or permit.

A frog can jump out of the water before it boils, but doesn’t. Don’t let life keep turning the heat up on you. You always could, and you always can, especially if you make a plan.

I know what it’s like to end up in a situation you thought was love, but it turns out, no.

Confusing the Information

I confused envy for love. Envious of a solid family unit and the attention and nurturing of a firstborn, but envy is an evil emotion that will consume you. Slowly, you will realize there was nothing to be envious of, just a different flaming frying pan.

I confused survival for bravery and experience for courage. Living through doing what you had to do makes you resilient. You’ve tested yourself and know yourself better, even if you are now aware of weaknesses to which you were previously blind. Now, you can do something about it, but when you don’t know, you are an accident waiting to happen. Sure, it was an accident. Now, let’s think about why it was inevitable and how to actively avoid it in the future. You deserve to be able to do your best, your optimal best.

You deserve an education, but to what level? It is essential to communicate and navigate society so you understand the choices and their consequences. At some point, the objective of education is to produce a citizen capable of contributing to GDP and with the means and morals to pay taxes.

Education enables regulation because it provides a framework of action and consequences, with a check for understanding. If you demand an education, what is the consequence of having one that you expect? What is the deal as you understand it?

Perhaps the deal is an illusion, and the education system is simply another business functioning under the laws of profit. In Finland, it is to learn to use your brain, but that is revolutionary.

Another one of the eight lessons for a better life is to use your brain to the fullest.

I love science. I love that it’s capable of confronting the greyness of ambiguity and sorting it into the black-and-white of facts. Black represents the undeniable truths that cannot be overturned or disproven, and white represents the area where we have no idea, with no shred of evidence upon which to base a theory.

Slowly, the vast space where we had no idea was pixelated by concrete facts, randomly and rarely. Over time, there were more and more, until there was nothing but a fog of greyness, unsafe to navigate. Science helps you predict how things will behave, but there are no rules here, nothing yet formed.

Another lesson for a better life is that experimentation ensues. Rules are postulated and tested, and slowly the white space recedes like melting glaciers.

While we still can, I love playing in the white space. I’ll take the facts, but I might make up the story that connects them in the way that serves me best. This is not ego, and serving up history in ways that flatter. This is creativity in narrating and explaining a few life stories, in applying principles of experimentation and science to arrive at a more empowering way to explain how the world works.

I simply had to – my vision depended on it.

Decades ago, I was steadily losing my vision. One diopter a month, for three months, until I went to a different eye doctor. This new one told me that I would be handing him my driver’s license as his Christmas present unless I discovered what I was so stressed about, because this condition only affected Type A personalities who were pressuring themselves in some way.

As I drove home, I realized all I would lose if I could no longer drive myself.

The Terrible Master

I had worked hard and sacrificed much to be where I was. With a job in a remote northern town, as I’d wanted, yet with my career and degree, it wasn’t easy to find.

I had purchased a home on a lake, as was my dream, and here I was about to lose it all. I would have to move back to the city and suffer the rest of my days surrounded by people, pollution, noise, and, worst of all, dependence.

It wasn’t the next morning, but one morning very soon after, I heard myself say to myself, “I wish I didn’t have to see that.”

My body was merely carrying out my wishes, like a dutiful servant. I was the terrible master.

The vista I didn’t want to see was the gravel that was my backyard. I’d purchased my home in the winter, and the agents showed me pictures of green grass and wildflowers. They’d mentioned that the driveway had washed out, but that it had been repaired.

What they didn’t say was that the backyard hadn’t been repaired. As the snow melted and the gravel came to light, so did the realization that I’d been duped. My ego took a huge blow, and my vision was the price I paid.

Immediately, I ordered a load of dirt and spent mornings before work spreading soil and laying grass seed.

As grey became green, my vision stopped eroding. Today, I wear the same prescription that the insightful and helpful optometrist gave me.

And today, one of the eight basic lessons for a better life is to be extremely suspicious of the easy solutions that the unconscious is happy to provide. The terrible master has become hyper-vigilant and super-careful with their commands.

An Empowered Accountability

Without believing in the possibility that I could do something, I wouldn’t have tried. If I’d believed the prognosis and given in to it, I would have lived a different life.

If I hadn’t tuned into my thinking, I wouldn’t have identified the problem. And, if I weren’t willing to lift a finger, then I wouldn’t have stopped the wreckage in its tracks.

Not everyone would be so willing to play in the possibility that doctors are people too, and sometimes they are wrong. Another of the eight basic lessons for a better life is to be open to possibility: to the future working out in your favor, according to your whims, rather than any other way it might be designed.

The prognosis for anything is based on the past, and the past never met you. You are far more in control of your current circumstances than you would want to believe, because if you did believe, then you’d have to do something about it.

Doing something about it might be expensive, exhausting, and daunting. You might have no time for it.

Saving yourself takes effort, but sometimes, no one else can do it. Who else would get out of bed to spread and rake dirt with you at 5 am?

The ability to not make a decision until I am done my analysis, that is my power. If you are going to ask all those questions later, why not do it now, when the answers might improve the outcome? In reality, that was the core of my career. It was why I could get through engineering problems, management strategy, and toxic cultures.

With Every Confidence

Whether you start with what you see and trace back how it might have come to be, or you look at every variable now and predict what they are going to do, you can make decisions that might not ever be perfectly correct, nor unfold as you planned, but if you had the chance to do them again, you’d do them.

The eight basic lessons for a better life are to do it, but with more compassion, charm, grace, patience, or other sensible skills I’ve learned along the way, but don’t delay.

Sometimes you don’t need much analysis, because it’s such a strong feeling in your heart or your gut. Wonderful! Now sit down, close your eyes, and see what your left brain has to say about it. Is it the voice of the hopeful child who believes in Tooth Fairies, or the matronly naysayer who is scolding your impetuousness? Under, between, and around, weaves your own voice. Sit there until you sort them out and know the truth.

I know how to analyze and how to find the time to do it. I have witnessed other people who have engineered their lives to have zero time to do it. Use whatever system you find best, but always know your own vote.

I want to make my own decisions, rather than have the government do it for me, because I have every confidence I can do it better than they can. At a lower cost than they can. At a faster speed than they can. This is true in my own personal life, and for what affects me but isn’t personal, I yield to the best leader for the best of all.