“I’d rather be happy than . . .?”  Than what?  Healthy?  Wealthy?  Wise?

Personally, I’d rather be happy than . . . anything.  And my top three tips to help you achieve happiness are:

1. Let go.
2. Hold tight.
3. Prune.

LET GO.  Let go of anything you can’t do something about right now and anything else that isn’t important.

HOLD TIGHT.  Hold tight to people and activities you enjoy.

PRUNE.  Cut completely out of your life people and activities that bring you grief.

I’m always happy when I bring happiness to others through my writing, so let me be more specific.

LET GO.  Many years ago when I was starting my law practice I’d often wake up in the wee hours of the morning and begin to worry. I’d worry about the cases I was handling, and whether I would have enough business to cover my office overhead or pay my mortgage payments.  But lying in bed worrying didn’t solve a thing.  I just started every day by being upset.

After months of picking on my wife every morning and coming into my office angry I discovered a better attitude.  Instead of just worrying about a problem, I would either take action to solve it or I would temporarily forget about it.  One morning a client called to leave a message. He was shocked when I answered my phone at 4:30 am. That morning I had driven into my office at 4:00 am to finish a legal brief that I was concerned about.

But if I couldn’t do something immediately to solve a problem, I simply stopped thinking about it.

“Yeah, yeah,” I hear you say.  “Easier said than done.”

That’s true.  It takes practice.  But within a few years I reduced my “worry time” to practically zero, and today I seldom worry about much of anything

HOLD TIGHT.  I like to write, and I find myself spending more and more time at my computer doing exactly that.

There are many people in my life, both family and friends, who I enjoy spending time with.  So I do.

I’m always happiest spending time on activities I like or with people I enjoy.

PRUNE.  In the backyard of my home there was a huge tree which needed pruning every year so that new branches and leaves could grow.  One year I didn’t get around to the pruning, and for an entire year that tree was a mess.

Isn’t your life the same?  Don’t you have some, or many, activities which you don’t now enjoy, even if you did earlier in your life?  Have you accumulated too many friends, some of whom have worn out your patience?

Our time on this earth is limited, and you simply can’t do everything or help everyone.  So why not read more books, if that’s what you enjoy, or go back and read some of my earlier blogs or one of my People Tools books.  Or enjoy a beer while you watch the USC football team pulverize their opponent next Saturday.

I’m not being completely serious, but I’m sure you get the idea.  Prune from your life both people and activities that do not bring you happiness.

‘Nuff said.  I’m off to dinner at the home of one of my daughters who is a great cook.  And it will be fun for us to catch up on each other’s lives.

I wouldn’t want to give up good food or a little gossip once in a while.

Alan.

Two captains of ocean-going tankers recently retired.  Each had enjoyed a career of more than thirty years.  Each loved the sea and had worked his way up from deck-hand to captain of ships that were more than one thousand feet long – so big they could not fit through the original Panama Canal.

One significant difference between their careers is that the more senior, Brig, always followed orders. Twice during his career he had saved his ship after he sailed into the heart of a storm.

The slightly less senior captain, Freedom, had, on three different occasions, refused to sail into a storm that had been forecast because he feared it might imperil his ship and crew.  In one of those storms a slightly smaller ship sank.

One year before they retired, each captain was nominated for the British “Captain of the Year” award.

My questions to you are:  First, should either captain win the award?  Second, if so, which one?

Since Brig and Freedom were both nominated, I’ll assume that each captain was fully qualified for the award and that one of them should win.

But I would vote for Captain Freedom because he refused to sail into three storms.  I find him to be the better role model. He followed one of my most important principles in business:  Avoid disasters.  One disaster can sink a ship, a business, or a career.  Following the rules, and following instructions, is a good idea but not foolproof.

Perhaps my vote is colored by my extremely brief career as a boat captain.  More than twenty-five years ago I bought a twenty-six foot power boat with all of the proverbial bells and whistles.  Fortunately, one was a GPS system that had just become available.

One fine Sunday morning in 1992 I set out with eight or nine passengers for a one-hour cruise from Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands for a day in Victoria, British Columbia.  One of our passengers was a foreign national who could not, by law, stay overnight in Canada.

After a beautiful day together we boarded my boat in the inner harbor of Victoria for our return.  The weather was foul. Our ship-to-shore radio was broadcasting gale warnings.  Totally inexperienced, I had no idea what a “gale warning” really meant.  I revved up our dual diesel engines, and off we sped.

Twenty minutes later I began to realize what a “gale warning” implied, as six-foot waves began to smash over the stern of my boat.  Ultimately one of my two engines sputtered to a stop.

When you have two engines and one fails, you get scared.  At least I did.  But I didn’t want my Greek passenger to face an immigration problem if we returned to Victoria, so I powered on.

Our GPS faithfully guided us back to Friday Harbor, though the two hour trip was one of the most harrowing of my life.  All of us finally stepped safely off the boat, and I never stepped back on.  I put it up for sale the next day when I learned that a power boat about the same size as ours sank in the gale and its three passengers were lost.

Captains Brig and Freedom, I would be happy to sail with either of you.  But I’ll never again sail with Captain Alan at the helm.

As I have often said, and now in capital letters, BETTER SAFE THAN SORRY.

Alan

This is a photo of me at age nine or ten pretending to play the French Horn.  Even though it was almost seventy years ago I can tell that I’m not really playing the instrument because I’m smiling, and also because I’m looking directly at the camera.  When you’re really playing the French Horn you can’t smile (because you have to purse your lips) and your eyes would be focused either on the music in front of you or on the conductor, not the camera off to your upper right.

Why is this important?

My father was a professional French Horn player. Though I didn’t realize it when I was young, he was also the best brass instrument teacher in the world. Musicians traveled from all over to study with him. The principles he shared with his students, and that I learned from him as a child, still apply directly to many aspects of my life and serve me well to this day.

Dad is now 103 years old, and is at home recovering from a recent major surgery. Even so, he remains the consummate teacher. Last week he reminded me of an important concept that he always imparts to his students.

“If you are on a desert island with no hope of rescue, and no other human being exists within a thousand miles, when you practice playing your instrument you must always focus on what you’re doing, and always do your very best.  Always.  That’s the habit you must cultivate to play your very best when you really need to.  You are a professional.  A professional never settles for less than his or her very best.  Nothing else is acceptable.”

It has taken me many years to apply this lesson to my writing.  I’m very quick, and discovered in school that ninety percent of my best was usually good enough for an “A”.  Why bother trudging that difficult trail from ninety percent toward one hundred percent?  It was always easier for me to just take a mental nap.

For the past four or five years I’ve become more serious, and more professional, about my writing.  I don’t settle any more for a “good” first draft.  As Robert Graves wrote years ago, “There is no such thing as good writing. Only good rewriting.”  I have to admit that, like a diamond, my best work never reveals itself in a blinding flash of insight.  It must be thought out, then cut, then polished.  That process takes time and energy. But I’m not looking for “A’s” on my report card anymore.  Now I’m aiming for the top of the mountain, and by that I mean the very best I can do.

I’m sure you have already thought of other applications for this “desert island” principal.  At work?  Do your very best even when no one is looking.  In a relationship?  Do your very best even when no one may notice or appreciate it.  With a hobby?  Do your very best to satisfy yourself.

From now on whenever you contemplate whether or not your performance is good enough, I invite you to use my father’s secret code and ask yourself:

“Desert Island?”

Thanks, Dad.

Alan