Tim Lineaweaver shares his views on how to replace the desperation of an unfulfilled life with joy.
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“Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”
— Henry David Thoreau
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Several years ago, on a walk with my wife I became overwhelmed with a deep and incessant exhaustion. Through clenched teeth and at the point of bursting, I told her my job was killing me.
I was directing behavioral health at a large agency and was in the cross fire between my staff of about fifteen dedicated workers and the CEO. The CEO was demanding increased productivity. He constantly barked out to me: “Numbers, numbers, numbers!” I pushed the staff to increase revenue, they felt pressed and pushed back at me, and my boss pushed me harder to push them.
At first I managed it well, the pay was good and the work was important to the community. I had helped develop and professionalize the division and felt personally invested. But soon my relationship with my boss disintegrated, he became imperious and vaguely threatening. I started losing sleep. As I lost sleep I became increasingly anxious and depressed. Sleep deprivation led to irritability, which led to my snapping at people at home and at work. I became remorseful and depressed. On the weekends I collapsed, too exhausted to enjoy my free time.
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What is the Desperation?
Our walk was on a warm, windless spring day. The kind of day where the sun is a warm full-lipped kiss on winter-cinched muscles. We were strolling down a bucolic dirt road by the glistening, glass-smooth ocean.
All this and I was miserable. I thought I was either going to have a heart attack or lose my mind altogether. My chest was constantly knotted and I wanted to cry but as is almost always the case for me, the tears wouldn’t come. The pressure continued to build into a Gordian knot. My breath was permanently unavailable to me, and my heart skittered rather than beat. Desperation personified.
I was bitterly unhappy, and a bit beyond middle age. If I couldn’t be happy now, then when? At some imagined future point when things would just magically align properly for me?
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As we walked, my fantasies didn’t involve sex or riches, but a long expanse of time off. Looking back at my life, it was one of the most fervent wishes I’d ever had. Time to do what I wanted and needed to do instead of what I must. I realized I was “living to work, instead of working to live.” Time off and rest could be the deep draft of cool water to my parched, cracked lips.
My body was a carcass I dragged into and out of work every day and apart from that, life was bleak. Not because life was all-bad, but because I had put myself into a box that I was too scared to break out of. All I did was work and when not working, I was recovering from work. The wound was in many respects self-inflicted.
I was bitterly unhappy, and a bit beyond middle age. If I couldn’t be happy now, then when? At some imagined future point when things would just magically align properly for me? Even if I lived to a very ripe old age, I had more yesterdays behind me than tomorrows to come. I felt “desperate” and the “song”, as it were, was buried inside me.
A client of mine introduced me to a wonderful concept: e described it as The Seventy-Five/Twenty-Five Rule.
He said that in most human endeavors there is a certain percentage of negative. A job can be emotionally rewarding, well paying and challenging but also carry with it aspects you don’t like. In my job as a therapist, seeing clients successfully overcome their problems is hugely gratifying. I dislike the necessary documentation and wrangling with insurance companies. Fortunately, these negatives only constitute about fifteen percent of the job. It is an acceptable percentage.
The trouble comes when we feel stuck in a job that is eighty percent negative and only twenty percent positive. Some jobs begin with a high degree of satisfaction but along comes the new boss, worse than the old one and the balance tips to the negative. Applying this rule to jobs, friendships and marriages is helpful for strategizing for happiness. If things dip down to the negative and stay there, I believe we have a responsibility to ourselves to mitigate our “desperation” and find more “song!”
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What is the Song?
Using the word ‘spirit” or spiritual can be loaded for some people as it conjures expectations of beliefs. I think of it differently:
What are the spirits/experiences/pastimes that fill you with joy?
The song is whatever makes YOU happy. Take other people’s notions out of the equation. Forget about accepted notions of it.
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For me, listening to music is singularly joyful. So is writing and athletics: hockey, boxing and running. It occurs to me that these are modes of self-expression; yes-even athletics is a way of making a statement of who you are and who you are meant to be.
So because I engage in these things I guess self-expression is important to me. “I do, therefore I am,” put simply.
I derive a pure joy spending time with my family, my sons, my daughter my wife and my grandchildren.
I like to laugh and highly value humor and comedy.
Art in various forms fills my eye and my soul.
The song is whatever makes YOU happy. Take other people’s notions out of the equation. Your happiness is unique to you.
Forget about accepted notions of it. Forget about “what it takes to be a man.” Forget about media portrayed ideals of happiness.
Think about what makes you glad and how often you feel that way. If you are mostly unhappy it’s time to analyze why and to begin strategize ways to find your joy.
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How Do I Get the Song Out?
It’s important to remember that all we have is this moment. The past is gone, we can’t get it back and we can’t change it.
As Satchel Paige said, “Look back but don’t stare.”
The future is really a fiction. We can predict parts of it but it is unknowable mostly. Make now the best now it can be.
How to do it? I leave you with these ten suggestions:
- Take responsibility for your end of the negative aspects of your life. Other people cause us pain, true, but we are better served by looking at ourselves and making improvements.
- Relationships need to be on the table for analysis. They should add value to, rather than detract from our lives. If they don’t, time for changes!
- Desperation is the negative of life, the angst, the problem. It is the fault we see in ourselves and in others. This negative feels intractable. It’s not constructive criticism and it’s bled dry of possibility. It’s a sense of I can’t, rather than I will or I will try. It is the death of our dreams and the lack of possibility. How much desperation are you feeling these days?
- Desperation is speaking to you. Listen to it enough to let it lead you to the song but don’t let it overwhelm you.
- Happiness requires an understanding of what you need and then providing it for yourself. This requires a reckoning with your unhappiness and a strategy and plan for moving forward.
- How do you spend your free time? Time is the real currency of life; much more valuable than money. How do you spend it? Spend it wisely for a happier life.
- I made a my favorite New Year’s resolution a few years ago and I repeat it every year: Have more fun! If I have the opportunity to do something enjoyable, I take it. If there isn’t I look for it and find it. Taking responsibility for you joy is way to make sure you have it.
- I make the assumption that I have one life to live. Perhaps there is a hereafter but I’m not waiting for another life. Get busy with making your life happier now.
- You aren’t your job; it is an extension of you but only part of who you are. If there is no you apart from work, you’ll burn out. Find a balance between work and recreation.
- Take care of your body. Exercise, sleep and eat sufficiently. Your mental and physical health are intertwined. Neglect one, lose both. If you don’t care for yourself, you won’t be happy and your body will betray you.
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Not long after that walk with my wife, I left my job realizing no amount of money is worth my health and my happiness. I trimmed back my expenses and took the summer off as a gift to myself. I rested and thought about what I wanted my life to be. I started to laugh again and my energy returned.
I made a decision that I would never again put my happiness and security into someone else’s hands. I opened my own business and it has worked out well. I committed to my health and happiness and the people who love me are glad I did. Desperation still visits some days but mostly the song fills me and I am happy to belt it out!
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Photo: Flickr/Psoup216
Edie: Wow! I’m so glad you were able to adjust post-heart attack! The jobs I had in the field were mostly unmerciful in pay and benefits not mention hours and the complexity of the patients. I too have worked both inpatient and outpatient. I don’t think I’ll go back. I still have to see lots of clients but I can do so on my own terms. Enjoy your freedom!
I am glad that you made the best decision for your own wellbeing. As someone in the field for three decades, I have held jobs that felt like they were sucking the life out of me as well. I have worked in inpatient and outpatient settings and now work from home, as a writer. I see a few clients, but it is low pressure. It took a heart attack last June to have me reset my priorities and create a whole life makeover.