Live Each Day

by Jim McCarthy

  You might think that others are smarter than you. Or harder working. Or more creative. Or more dedicated. Or simply better qualified. But as I discuss in the chapter on the “Comparing Mind,” ultimately you just need to ask yourself if you’re doing your best, according to your own unique gifts.

  Women especially may benefit from this approach. In Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg urges women to take a more proactive role in their careers. But even then, she writes, “Trying to do it all and expecting that it all can be done exactly right is a recipe for disappointment. Perfection is the enemy. Gloria Steinem said it best: ‘You can’t do it all. No one can have two full-time jobs, have perfect children and cook three meals and be multi-orgasmic ’til dawn … Superwoman is the adversary of the women’s movement.’”11

  If you actually can “do it all,” and you’re happy while doing it, then I’m happy for you. Otherwise, you can make more conscious decisions about your priorities. Your approach can be that described by business author Stephen R. Covey and others in the book First Things First: “Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things.”12

  Live today fully. Tomorrow, too. Who you were 10 years ago is different from who you are today, or who you will be 10 years from now. Show respect and compassion for the greatness that you are, each day.

  Live each day.

  When you do that, you can feel better about yourself, even if you’re not a superhero. (Though you might play one on social media.)

  Looking Backwards and Forwards

  The challenges of life are never fully resolved. No doubt, you have met many challenges so far. And you will have to encounter, address, and struggle with many more — “successfully” or “unsuccessfully.” The outcomes will be good, bad, or mixed. (For more on that, make sure to read the Chapter on Equanimity.) Sometimes you will solve one problem, which directly leads to another. Other times, you have challenges that are particular to your age and stage in life.

  This writing activity helps you evaluate how certain challenges arrive at different seasons in your journey:

  Writing Activity 23:

  Thinking back upon your life, what challenges did you face when you were 15? When you were 20? 25? 30? (Keep going in five-year increments until you get to your current age.)

  In my master classes, I love to ask this question. When I ask people to think back to when they were 15 years old, they might think back with nostalgia and fondness for that time. But if someone had asked you back then whether you were loving your high school years, most likely you would have said something like, “I’ll be happy only when I graduate.”

  Age 20 is not exactly perfect either. Yes, you’ve survived high school. But if you’re in college, your academic performance is way more important than it was in high school. If you’re already working full time, then that is a huge adjustment. Either way, you may also be in your first serious romantic relationship — which usually ends for one reason or another. Once again, if I ask you today to think back to when you were age 20, you might be filled with longing for those years. But at the time, you were probably quite worried, and looking forward to the great life you were going to have “once I graduate and get a job.”

  Age 25 can be hard. And amazing, too. Same with 30. Same with 40.

  If you notice this pattern, then it’s easier to look at your current age — whatever it is — and see the beauty of your here and now.

  Now let’s try to look into the future.

  Writing Activity 24:

  What major challenges do you think you’ll have in your life five years from now? Ten years from now? 20? 30? 50? 70? 90?

  The purpose of this activity is to help you understand that you will certainly have challenges in the future.

  I recall doing my Happiness Workshop for the Stanford Graduate School of Business Alumni Chapter in beautiful La Jolla, California. We were meeting in the offices of a respected law firm. The founder of the firm attended. He was 83 years old and considered to be hugely successful and influential. Let’s call him Mr. Jones.

  As I discussed the topic of life’s constant challenges, I asked Mr. Jones, “Do you still have challenges in your life?”

  “Hell, yes!” he said. Maybe he did not worry about money anymore. Or his career. Or where he was going to live. But he easily could have had health challenges. Or family concerns. Or something that no one would guess based on surface impressions. The problems of an 83-year-old are very different from the problems of a 25-year-old.

  As you imagine your challenges in the future, you can anticipate that some are the same ones you have right now. And others you can easily predict, such as the loss of friends and family, or declining health. For example, I rejoice that I have excellent health and mobility, but if I live long enough, both will dissipate.

  This is a wonderful question to share with your parents, aunts, uncles, or older friends. You can simply ask them, “What’s the hardest thing about being 82?” The next time I talk to my mom, I’m going to ask her. Right now, I really don’t know what she would answer. But I’d like to know.

  You see, you will always have challenges in your life. No matter how hard you plan, there will be situations that cause you heartache. But with awareness, you can recognize and accept when they happen, and realize that difficulties are an unavoidable part of life. This is something that the Buddha came to understand through his own journey, and his teachings inform a great deal of mindfulness practice, even outside of Buddhism. The Buddha’s First Noble Truth states that “suffering is characteristic of existence.”13 In other words, “To live is to suffer.”

  Unhappy Ending

  We started this chapter with my account of the 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 was 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 journey.

  It may not seem so at first, but forgiveness is another way to cultivate enjoyment along the way.

  Chapter Ten:

  Forgive

  The Two Prisoners

  I like to tell a version of a story I first heard from the wonderful Jack Kornfield, an American Buddhist monk who had worked in the Peace Corps in Southeast Asia before getting his Ph.D. in clinical psychology.1 In this tale, there are two prisoners of war, who survived their internment and met at a reunion 20 years later.2

  The one turned to the other and asked, “Have you forgiven our captors?”

  The other replied, “What? Forgiven our captors? After they tortured us? Starved us? Killed our friends? I will never forgive them! NEVER!”

  “Well,” said the first man sadly, “then I guess they still have you in prison, don’t they?”

  The second man was no longer physically in prison. But he was still psychologically in prison. He was still suffering every day from the tragic and no doubt horrible events that had taken place 20 years earlier.

  What Forgiveness Is and Isn’t

  Do you find it hard to forgive? Although forgiveness is an important part of my Catholic upbringing, I find it very hard to forgive. But it’s much easier to forgive with a proper understanding of what forgiveness is — and isn’t.

  Laurence Sterne, the Anglo-Irish novelist and clergyman, stated, “Only the brave know how to forgive … A coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.”3

  Forgiveness is not something you give another. Forgiveness is something you lovingly give yourself, so you can reduce your own suffering.

  Or, as one student noted in one of my happiness workshops, “My forgiving you does not mean that you’re right and I’m wrong.
It just means that I value our relationship more than I value my ego.”

  Forgiveness starts by accepting what already is. It’s the Serenity Prayer’s “accepting the things I cannot change.” Or as many others have said, “Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.”

  Forgiveness is for your sake, not for the sake of the person you’re angry at. It’s so you can be happy, right here and now. Because when you refuse to forgive and accept, who is it hurting? Is it hurting them or you? They might be enjoying fine dining at a fancy restaurant in Houston, while you’re at home, still upset about an event that happened three weeks ago — or 30 years ago! All because you have not found a way to let go of your anger.

  Let me be clear — forgiveness does not mean you have to be friends with that person, see that person again, or condone their action.

  It does not mean “forgive and forget.”

  It’s completely appropriate to seek justice for what happened and to make sure this injustice does not happen again to anybody. It might make sense that you never meet this person again. Your healing may be a long, slow process that can take years. But eventually, forgiveness will get you to a place where you can be happier, here and now. So you’re not suffering today for what happened in the past.

  There are many inspirational examples of what I’m calling “forgiveness.”

  The Dalai Lama, for example, has been exiled from his native Tibet for decades because of political repression. Yet his message about forgiveness stays consistent. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the Dalai Lama noted, “Hatred, jealousy, and fear hinder peace of mind. When you’re angry or unforgiving, for example, your mental suffering is constant. It is better to forgive than to spoil your peace of mind with ill feelings.”4

  Forgiveness also occurs in less sweeping yet still profound circumstances. The remarkable TED Talk, “Our Story of Rape and Reconciliation,” tells of Tom Stranger, who, as an 18-year-old, raped his 16-year-old girlfriend, Thordis Elva. Nine years after the event, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Elva reached for her journal and began spontaneously writing a letter, addressed to Stranger. As she recounts in their TED Talk, “Along with an account of the violence that he subjected me to, the words, ‘I want to find forgiveness’ stared back at me, surprising nobody more than myself. But deep down I realized that this was my way out of my suffering, because regardless of whether or not he deserved my forgiveness, I deserved peace. My era of shame was over.”5 Over the course of years, the two began an email correspondence, eventually met face-to-face, reconciled what had happened, and co-authored the book, South of Forgiveness: A True Story of Rape and Responsibility.

  Forgiveness can help you if you’ve survived horrible betrayal from someone you loved and trusted.

  Forgiveness can help you if your country has been overrun and your culture systematically destroyed.

  And forgiveness is essential for dealing with even the simplest of your daily challenges.

  “Forgiveness is … making peace when you didn’t get what you want,” says Dr. Fred Luskin, founder and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects, who has worked around the globe to help people heal from the effects of violence. He also offers this definition: “No matter what has happened in any of our lives, at this moment we can be at peace … Forgiveness is the experience of being at peace right now, no matter what story, no matter what drama, no matter what has occurred, five minutes ago or five years ago.”6

  Forgiveness at Work

  Although I’ve been extremely lucky in my career, there have been many challenging times along the journey. In 1995, between my first and second years in business school, I had a summer internship at McKinsey and Company, in Germany. In many ways, landing this prestigious and well-paid summer job was the culmination of everything I’d been working for up to that point.

  But I really did not like management consulting very much. I was not thrilled with the project. And I did not enjoy living again in Germany as much as I thought I would, after having spent the prior four years in gorgeous Northern California.

  At the end of the internship, McKinsey did not give me an offer to work with them once I completed my MBA, which is part of the expectation for such an internship. This was bad. This was failure. This was going to be embarrassing to explain to all of my fellow Stanford MBA classmates, who were going to soon be asking me, “So, how was McKinsey in Germany? Are you going back? Did you get an offer?”

  Never mind that I did not like the work. Or that I really didn’t give 100 percent effort during the summer. Or that I was having an affair with the wife of one of the firm’s partners. (The day I met her, she said she was in the process of divorcing him. I’m not sure he knew that, though.)

  Never mind all that. In any case, I felt humiliated by McKinsey. For months thereafter, I was bitter and frustrated and blamed them. I ranted about them to anybody who would listen. Finally, my girlfriend (who by this time had moved from Germany to California) said, “Get over it, Jim! All you do is complain! You didn’t work that hard last summer. You didn’t really want the job anyway!”

  She was right. I decided to start living more in the present. Soon afterwards, in December 1995, I went to a presentation at school where an internet start-up cofounder spoke softly about his rapidly growing company. His name was David Filo, and his company was Yahoo! Nineteen months later, I became employee #258.

  So Jim lives happily ever after, right?

  Well …

  Many things were wonderful in the early days of Yahoo, but as the company grew exponentially, the pressure mounted. Yahoo was the hottest company in the world by 1999, but we were facing threats from eBay and others. I was the company’s first international product manager dedicated to e-commerce, which meant I was the person at headquarters in California who was supposed to help our international offices launch online classified ads, auctions, and shopping.

  Up until this point, the international Yahoos had had a lot of freedom to build their businesses as they wanted. Now, as my direct supervisor told me, my job was to “show them how we do it here in the U.S.” I took his advice literally. I was working my butt off, but my heavy-handed and probably arrogant approach alienated our fellow Yahoos in Europe. I was not savvy about how to navigate the tricky politics of the situation. And I did not ask for help from the executive leadership, who could have provided “air cover” for me when dealing with delicate international fiefdoms.

  By late June 1999, I was put on a 30-day performance improvement plan. This is the first and last step that many companies take when they are about to fire you. It did not matter that I had been working 60 to 80 hours per week for the previous two years. It did not matter that I had been taking on high-profile, risky projects while many of my colleagues chose to “vest in peace,” as their stock options made them millionaires, little by little, month by month. Yes, I had also become a dot-com millionaire — but if I got fired, then that money train would come to a premature, screeching halt.

  The day I was put on the performance improvement plan was one of the worst in my life. I immediately left the office and went for a swim at the nearby health club, just to try to clear the turmoil in my mind. It took a few days for the shock to turn into anger. My previous manager was very hands-off — other than telling me to force the Europeans to follow headquarters’ orders. And my new, internationally focused manager felt like his job was to implement law and order amongst the fun, funky, groovy people who came to Yahoo in 1996 or 1997 because they loved the internet, not because they were obsessed with getting rich.

  Somewhat miraculously, during my 30-day plan I got a wonderful new manager from Australia, who partnered with me and made sure I did not get fired. I was able to hang on at Yahoo until August 2001, by which time all of my initial four years of stock options had vested. I made a lot more money in that time, although the Yahoo stock had started crashing as part of t
he Dot-Com Meltdown.

  So, did making all that money ease Jim’s pain?

  Not really.

  I still felt horrible about almost being fired. I still felt angry about the managers who chose to make me their scapegoat. I still suffered from knowing that my career advancement at Yahoo ended on that day in June 1999. I carried this anger and self-doubt with me for years.

  I wish I had known more about forgiveness at that time. If I had, I could have perhaps gotten over this heartbreak in a matter of months, not years. I could have taken ownership for my own mistakes, and learned my lessons sooner.

  As Dr. Luskin explains, “We are the ones who created the lack of peace, so we’re the only ones who can remedy the situation. Life happened, and then we objected to life. And … our objecting to our own life causes emotional and physical and spiritual turmoil. Forgiveness is the resolution of our objection.”7 He cites research finding that forgiveness reduces anger, hurt, depression, and stress, and leads to greater feelings of optimism, hope, compassion, and self-confidence.8