Solve Problems By Fixating On Goals, Not The Problems

screen-shot-2016-09-29-at-9-11-00-pmWhy do some people seem perpetually overwhelmed by problems while others appear to manage them quite nicely? One reason is that [Tweet theme=”tweet-string-underlined”]people with problems tend to accumulate more problems.[/Tweet] Every doctor knows that minor infections are no big deal to people who are basically healthy. But if you have a problem that compromises your immune system – like HIV – then even minor problems easily become major ones.

As another example, consider the sad biographies of those who’ve lost their lives to serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer. Were these young men regularly employed, forming meaningful bonds with others, earning and saving money while seeking a lasting, monogamous relationship? No: for the most part they were staying out late having sex with strangers like Dahmer in exchange for $50.

Another reason people become overwhelmed by problems is the tendency to allow problems to crowd-out everything else. We treat problems as deer do headlights: fixating not on our goals but on the headlights until eventually the headlights solve us. Like a hurdler training his vision exclusively on a hurdle, we can’t help but collide with it.

None of this is to say that when problems arise, as they inevitably do, they should be ignored. But it’s wise to keep many problems in the periphery of your vision while you keep your eyes on the prize. [Tweet theme=”tweet-string-underlined”]Like a great hurdler, you’re more likely to accomplish your goals by focusing on the finish line, not the hurdles.[/Tweet]

Return to daviDDeeble.com or watch me perform the Flaming Marshmallow Balance of Mystery on the Late Late Show with James Corden.

In Praise Of Checklists

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[Tweet theme=”tweet-string-underlined”]Work out your principles during moments of calm so you can refer to them quickly during times of panic. [/Tweet].

I keep a checklist for everything I require for a full show, which covers everything from plastic grocery bags to a marshmallow. Because I know my checklist is comprehensive – created as it was during a period of reflection – it frees my mind to focus on more important things before the show like the specific needs of my client.

Consider the amateur actor who invests so much time “identifying with the character” and “investing emotionally” in the script only to walk onstage only to realize that he hasn’t memorized his lines.

Recently I got to thinking about Gene Krantz, the legendary vest-clad flight director of NASA’s Apollo space program. What a high-pressure job I thought. Imagine being the sole person responsible for green lighting a launch of human beings into space.

But then I got to thinking: Wait a minute: this guy has numerous others in charge of every conceivable aspect of the mission. Responsibility is broken down into incredible detail. Krantz’ job was basically ensuring that the vote is unanimous. He’s just a straw counter!

There’s the guy in charge of the rocket’s hydraulics. The mainframe computer. Even the lowly flight surgeon is on hand to monitor the astronauts’ heart rate. What does that leave for Krantz? Nothing other than the awesome responsibility of saying “You’re go for launch, Apollo”. Put me in a vest and I could do that job.

“Ah!” I hear you say. “But what about when something goes wrong like on Apollo 13?” Are you kidding me? That’s the easiest press conference in the world: you simply gesture to the guy in charge of that aspect of the mission that went to pot and say “Look – he said we were good to go. Now you’ll excuse me – I’m going to get quietly hammered.”

Return to daviddeeble.com or learn about my laugh-out-loud corporate presentation Winning With A Bad Hand.

Looks Fast, Flies Fast: Motivate Yourself With The Halo Effect

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In the world of aeronautical engineering it’s sometimes said that “If it looks fast, it flies fast”. I know what you’re thinking: “That’s great, Dave. How can this information help me?”

Consider: when it comes to running shoes, my approach has always been to find the best-looking shoes that more-or-less fit. My much more practical running buddy seeks the best-fitting shoes with relative indifference toward how they look. So I wasn’t surprised when he showed up one day wearing clunky, gray things with burgundy trim which looked like something an orthopedic doctor would prescribe.

“I’m not crazy about the look” he shrugged, “but they fit”.

There’s much to be said for my friend’s approach. Running shoes that fit properly, needless to say, are more important than ones that say “I run marathons in under three hours”. But when it comes to motivating ourselves to get our the door each day and actually run, which one of us do you suspect was more likely to be spurred into doing so by merely glancing at our respective shoes in the corner of the room? To ask the question is to answer it.

Another example from the world of fitness: for the longest time I had trouble hydrating sufficiently. “What’s so hard about drinking enough water?” I’d ask myself. No matter how often I reminded myself to drink water throughout the day I’d invariably fail. Then I bought a beautiful, translucent green water bottle. When the sun hits it just right you feel like drinking from it just for the joy of it. Result? I’m one of the best-hydrated people you know.

My love of running is equalled by my aversion to strength training so I’ve started using various 7-minute workout apps to help me get motivated. Too many people are purists when it comes to motivation. Either I motivate myself or I don’t they think, there are no shortcuts.

But there are shortcuts. And very often they’re the only thing separating those who get work done and those who don’t.

Return to daviDDeeble.com or watch me perform the Flaming Marshmallow Balance on the Late Late Show with James Corden.

“The Courage To Start”: It’s Time We Stopped Celebrating The Mundane

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Watching someone en route to victory at a big-city marathon, you’re liable to hear a tv commentator say “He makes it look so easy”. In fact, it shouldn’t be surprising that the winner makes it look easy. What would be surprising is the guy finishing last making it look easy. Surprising would be a marathon won by someone struggling to maintain form while out-classing other runners exhibiting elegant form and efficient biomechanics.

America is a much softer place than a generation ago. In becoming softer, we’ve gone from lionizing marathon winners to lionizing marathon finishers to where we are today: lionizing those who have the “courage” to start.

Instead of celebrating remarkable athleticism, we reserve our highest praise for the ordinary athlete who shows remarkable effort: he with the tortured expression who stumbles across the finishing line hours after the winners’ press conference – preferably long after the course has been closed.

Don’t get me wrong: I, too, admire mediocre athletes (like me) who demonstrate good, old-fashioned grit. I’ve come to admire consistency even more than grit – particularly among ordinary athletes who have less at stake than their elite counterparts. During the decade or so I lived in Boulder, Colorado, though, I was impressed almost exclusively by the sight of elite runners, most often Kenyan, gliding along the Boulder’s trails with seeming little effort. These days I get pumped when driving past the ubiquitous “weekend warriors” jogging on the sidewalk in the morning chill.

But admiration for ordinary people doing difficult things is quite different from the characteristically Baby Boomer tendency to treat the mundane as remarkable. Committing to a fitness regime isn’t admirable: actually lacing up your trainers day in and day out and heading out the door is.

Return to daviDDeeble.com or see how my journey from conventional- to comedic juggler began with a head injury.

If Life Was Fair You Wouldn’t Have It So Good

Screen Shot 2016-01-26 at 9.31.25 AM You’re walking down the street and find a $100 dollar bill on the sidewalk. Do you ask yourself “What did I do to deserve this?” What about when you receive a good diagnosis from your doctor?

I didn’t think so.

Why, then, do you do so when your car gets a flat en route to an important meeting or you wake up with sore throat?

Is misfortune to befall only the unjust? Are good people to go from success to success? Why must so many decent people walk miles for clean drinking water? Why is Donald Trump so successful?

The ability to rise above life’s vagaries – it’s thrills, disappointments, satisfactions and savage unfairnesses – affect every single one of us on a daily basis. A certain degree of calm is required to be effective, not to mention to remain sane. And calm isn’t possible if you don’t appreciate that truth we constantly remind our children: that life isn’t fair. If it was you’d be subsisting on tree bark like North Koreans or have a life expectancy of 46, as in Sierra Leone.

If it was, you wouldn’t have it so good.

Return to daviDDeeble.com or learn how a head injury instigated my transition from a conventional- to comedic juggler.

3 Steps To Defeating Your Inner Defeatist

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Even if you’re fortunate enough to have grown up before the unhappy advent of helicopter parenting you know that when it comes to creating something new and sending it out into the world, most of us have our own internal helicopter parent sitting on our shoulder, telling us to go only so far and no further.

Like its real-life counterpart, your internal voice’s raison d’être seems to be to cage you. Not in a cocoon of physical safety but a cocoon of convention, imagination and self-limiting preconceptions. Failure is The Voice’s kryptonite and it will say anything to prevent you from risking failure.

And it never rests.

These three straightforward steps will go a long way to helping you adopt the mindset required to push back against The Voice and enjoy the ineffable feeling of having winds to your back while you work.

Step 1: Acknowledge It

Given that you’ve made it this far, I assume you’ve already got this step down pat: acknowledging that you have such a voice inside you. As taught in 12-step programs, you can’t lick it until you acknowledge it.

2: Hear It In Order To Ignore It

The first step is acknowledging that you have such a voice manipulating you. The second step is familiarizing yourself with it.

By familiarizing yourself with it you are well on your way to ignoring it and doing remarkable work thereby. For too many people, this voice is so familiar as to be virtually undetectable: they aren’t even aware of it. Such people require that the voice shout in order to hear it. Alas, for these poor souls the voice needn’t ever shout because they immediately cave to its every whim.

Fat, drunk and stupid may be no way to go through life, but neither is being in thrall to a self-limiting, self-defeating demon of which you aren’t even aware.

Step 3: See How Loud And Irrational You Can Make The Voice

When threatened, the voice tends to produce more heat than light. Realizing this enables you to use the voice as a map to help you determine if you’re on the right track. When you begin flirting with leaving your comfort zone, the voice speaks in the well-modulated voice of a true-blue expert who only has your best interests at heart. “What a cadence! How self-assured!” you think. It’s hard not to be impressed.

The more you ignore it and push back against it, however, the more the voice reveals itself to be a poseur – and a cynical, infantile one at that. Over time you’ll learn to plow right ahead while disregarding the voice altogether. But if you’re new following your own lights instead of your inner defeatist, make a game of seeing how much you can exasperate it.

Ignoring The Voice will not inoculate you from failure. On the contrary – when you learn to ignore it you’ll find that you begin failing thick and fast. This often causes The Voice to take on a less paternal and more self-righteous tone: “See what happens when you ignore me?” At this point you’re at a vital crossroads: resume caving to it or seamlessly transition to work on your next project for the world to consider.

The Voice feels threatened by those who start and finish things but it’s terrified by those who serially repeat the process.

Thoughts? Comments? Leave them in the section below.

Return to daviDDeeble.com or learn how my journey from conventional- to comedic juggler began with a head injury.

Simplicity

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One of the ancient Greek philosophers advises keeping your principles few and simple so that you may refer to them quickly in an emergency. This advice was very useful to me when I lost the coordination in my right arm after a head injury. One moment I could juggle five balls behind my back. The next? I’m unable to juggle even two with my right hand without getting big laughs.

But just as rain falls on both the righteous and the wicked, I also had my share of good luck. Good luck to grow up down the street from the Long Beach Mystics clubhouse, for example. Ostensibly a place for magicians to help each other hone their craft, the principles I learned are applicable to all the performing arts.

It was really about KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.

Beginning at around age 8, being in the Mystics inculcated in me the importance of presentation. I learned that those things performed on the stage which most move audiences are ultimately those things which move people in every day life: Generosity. Mastery. Spontaneity.

Most of us are not fortunate to have grown up surrounded by such practical wisdom in the performing arts. But the truth is, most aspiring performers have more to unlearn than to learn. Simplify. Ask yourself: Am I rambling? Is there a more-straightforward way to present this idea or ask for this raise? Is this joke too wordy? Am I beating around the bush?

The other advantage of keeping things simple is that it’s fun. Of course it can be taken too far and one should guard against doing so. Just as a cigar is sometimes just a cigar, sometimes  a painting or sculpture is complete.

Similarly, making something more complex has its allures and naturally is often appropriate. But it’s accompanied by the nagging sensation that you should be streamlining rather than adding, chances are that nagging sensation is right.

Eyes On The Prize vs. Bracing For Impact

You know the brace-for-impact posture. You’re driving on a two-way highway at night with a high-profile vehicle barreling toward you. Are you keeping your eyes on your lane? Or do you succumb to the inexplicable urge to look into the oncoming headlights? If so, you’d better hope the vehicle coming the other way isn’t doing the same thing, thereby greatly increasing the chance of a deadly collision. If the pair of eyes keep their eyes on their respective lanes, the sailing is far more likely to be smooth.

So keep your eyes on the prize in everything you do.

When I first got married I used to feel overwhelmed over the number of women around whom I had to “be careful”. How much more nature it feels to simply focus on my wife.Another example is the survey done of WWII pilots who made emergency landings and lived to talk about them. The pilots were asked, among other things, what they were focused on as they made their life-in-the-balance approach. Pilots who executed poor emergency landings tended to answer many different things: trees, water, power line cables. In other words, they were focused on things they were trying to avoid. The pilots who executed well were all focused on the one and same thing: the landing area.

How many times have you seen an NFL running back run toward his own end zone in order to avoid a tackle only to be tackled for a 7-yard loss? Sometimes all you have to do is run forward until something stops you. Prenups are another example. What better way to prepare for a lasting marriage than by simultaneously preparing for divorce?

Thoughts? Comments? Leave them in the section below.

Return to www.daviDDeeble.com or view my latest YouTube playlist, The Magic Castle Sessions.