Nothing Changes Until You Do: A Guide to Self-Compassion and Getting Out of Your Own Way by Mike Robbins Page B
Authors: Mike Robbins
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mind one of my favorite Ben Franklin quotes: “Joy doesn’t exist in the world, it exists in us.”
The wisdom in Franklin’s quote seems simple on the surface, but it’s quite profound and a complete paradigm shift from how we tend to relate to the circumstances of our lives. Feeling like a victim of the things that happen to us is how we’re taught to live. It’s often encouraged by our culture, the people around us, and our own thoughts.
The circumstances of our lives, especially when they seem stressful or intense, do have an impact on us, for sure. However, all too often we give away our power—acting as though it’s a foregone conclusion that we will feel a certain way based on specific circumstances or situations (e.g., the economy, our health, the weather, our family background, and so on). But our experience of life in any given moment is much more of a reflection of what’s going on within us; it’s not simply a reaction to what’s going on around us.
A poignant and powerful example of this was Randy Pausch. Randy was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In September of 2007, he gave a lecture entitled “How to Achieve Your Childhood Dreams.” It was part of a tradition at Carnegie Mellon called the “Last Lecture.” The idea behind this was that as a professor, if you had one last lecture to give to your students before you died, what would you say? The “elephant in the room,” as Randy talked about in his lecture, was the fact that it wasn’t hypothetical for him because he was actually dying of pancreatic cancer and had been told that he had just months to live.
Randy, a 46-year-old father of three young children, gave his heartfelt, passionate, and inspiring lecture to about 400 people at Carnegie Mellon. Given the circumstances and the power of the lecture, it had a significant impact on everyone in the room. Because some people were not able to attend, the lecture was recorded and posted online internally at the university. Someone then posted it on YouTube, and it went viral. Ten million people watched the video in those first few weeks, and Randy was then invited on The Oprah Winfrey Show to reprise a portion of his lecture, which is where I first heard of him. He went on to write a best-selling book called The Last Lecture and inspired millions of people around the world before he ultimately lost his battle with cancer in July of 2008.
Like so many others, I was deeply touched and moved by Randy, his story, his lecture, his book, and his simple but profound wisdom. Most inspiring of all was how he approached his life, even in the face of difficult circumstances. At one point in the lecture, Randy says, “It’s important to have fun; I’m dying and I’m still choosing to have fun.”
Randy had justifiable reasons to feel sorry for himself, to be angry and depressed, and to feel victimized by his circumstances. However, he chose to approach his life and his death in a very different and inspiring way.
Most of us have had times in our lives when things were going great on the surface or we accomplished or experienced some wonderful external success, only to feel a sense of disappointment or sadness underneath because we didn’t feel satisfied on a deeper level. And, on the other hand, many of us have had moments of incredible joy that weren’t directly connected to anything “worthy” of these feelings externally. My girls have been teaching me about this from the time each of them started walking and talking. Pay attention to young children; it’s amazing how the simple things bring them joy—like the wrapping paper or the box that a gift comes in when they’re too young to even understand the present or holiday being celebrated.
Even though we know this dynamic to be true, we still seem to get caught in the hypnotic, erroneous notion that if we just got rid of some issues, altered some circumstances, manifested some increased success, or
The wisdom in Franklin’s quote seems simple on the surface, but it’s quite profound and a complete paradigm shift from how we tend to relate to the circumstances of our lives. Feeling like a victim of the things that happen to us is how we’re taught to live. It’s often encouraged by our culture, the people around us, and our own thoughts.
The circumstances of our lives, especially when they seem stressful or intense, do have an impact on us, for sure. However, all too often we give away our power—acting as though it’s a foregone conclusion that we will feel a certain way based on specific circumstances or situations (e.g., the economy, our health, the weather, our family background, and so on). But our experience of life in any given moment is much more of a reflection of what’s going on within us; it’s not simply a reaction to what’s going on around us.
A poignant and powerful example of this was Randy Pausch. Randy was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In September of 2007, he gave a lecture entitled “How to Achieve Your Childhood Dreams.” It was part of a tradition at Carnegie Mellon called the “Last Lecture.” The idea behind this was that as a professor, if you had one last lecture to give to your students before you died, what would you say? The “elephant in the room,” as Randy talked about in his lecture, was the fact that it wasn’t hypothetical for him because he was actually dying of pancreatic cancer and had been told that he had just months to live.
Randy, a 46-year-old father of three young children, gave his heartfelt, passionate, and inspiring lecture to about 400 people at Carnegie Mellon. Given the circumstances and the power of the lecture, it had a significant impact on everyone in the room. Because some people were not able to attend, the lecture was recorded and posted online internally at the university. Someone then posted it on YouTube, and it went viral. Ten million people watched the video in those first few weeks, and Randy was then invited on The Oprah Winfrey Show to reprise a portion of his lecture, which is where I first heard of him. He went on to write a best-selling book called The Last Lecture and inspired millions of people around the world before he ultimately lost his battle with cancer in July of 2008.
Like so many others, I was deeply touched and moved by Randy, his story, his lecture, his book, and his simple but profound wisdom. Most inspiring of all was how he approached his life, even in the face of difficult circumstances. At one point in the lecture, Randy says, “It’s important to have fun; I’m dying and I’m still choosing to have fun.”
Randy had justifiable reasons to feel sorry for himself, to be angry and depressed, and to feel victimized by his circumstances. However, he chose to approach his life and his death in a very different and inspiring way.
Most of us have had times in our lives when things were going great on the surface or we accomplished or experienced some wonderful external success, only to feel a sense of disappointment or sadness underneath because we didn’t feel satisfied on a deeper level. And, on the other hand, many of us have had moments of incredible joy that weren’t directly connected to anything “worthy” of these feelings externally. My girls have been teaching me about this from the time each of them started walking and talking. Pay attention to young children; it’s amazing how the simple things bring them joy—like the wrapping paper or the box that a gift comes in when they’re too young to even understand the present or holiday being celebrated.
Even though we know this dynamic to be true, we still seem to get caught in the hypnotic, erroneous notion that if we just got rid of some issues, altered some circumstances, manifested some increased success, or
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