If Not Now, When?: Making the Most of Your Life, Your Relationships and Your Work

By Ronald P. Culberson

The simple question about becoming a better person is If Not Now, When?

In his previous book, Do it Well. Make it Fun, author Ron Culberson introduced us to the idea that excellence coupled with fun and humor can help us achieve both success and contentment in all areas of life and work. Culberson draws on his experience as a hospice social worker and his expertise in the benefits of humor and laughter to further this work in his new book, a collection of blog posts, articles, and essays. 

In If Not Now, When? Making the Most of Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your Work, Ron offers surprising wisdom into these three areas of life, couched in entertaining anecdotes and self-effacing humor. 

Ron tackles every aspect of life, from how to make your job more enjoyable to some of our most difficult challenges, like parenting, aging, and death. Readers will learn how to be present in the moment, embrace a commitment to empathy, and truly notice the world around them in ways that they may never have. And all along the way, they will enjoy the journey through the author’s amusing perspective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
• Release date: Jan 10, 2017
• ISBN: 9781626342965

Book preview

Author

AN INTRODUCTION TO SIMPLE PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT

As I’ve mentioned before, I love personal development books— partly because it’s what I do. I’m an author, speaker, and humorist whose goal is to help people have a better existence. Now, just to be clear, I don’t consider myself a self-help guru, a leading expert, or America’s best at anything, but I am a guy with a few ideas that I believe can help. The other reason I love personal development books is that, as humans, we’re never really quite done. There is a lot of life to live, at least for most of us, and if we can live a little better, even for just one day, then I think that’s pretty cool.

One of the problems with personal development books, however, is that it’s embarrassing to purchase one. Who really wants to walk into a bookstore and buy Low Self-Esteem and the Reasons You’re No Good or An Idiot’s Guide to, well, anything? It can be a little intimidating.

And then, if you can get past the embarrassment and actually buy one of those books, you have to implement all the steps. Honestly, I’ve found that some books can be way too complicated. Even seven steps (e.g., The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) is a stretch for me. I don’t generally trust anything that promises easy steps when there are more than one or two. Just look at the result of any piece of Ikea furniture I’ve built, and you’ll see that multiple steps tend to cause me problems. In fact, that’s why I have a remote control for my television, a calculator for multiplying numbers, and a car. Those devices save me steps. I don’t need more steps.

But, if you’ve noticed the self-help section of any bookstore, you’ll see that putting big numbers in the titles seems to sell these kinds of books. There are 101 Ways to this, Twelve Steps to avoid that, and Fifty Shades of what might be called interpersonal development. By adding numbers, these books seem to promise an easy, tangible path to success, wealth, and younger-looking skin. But it’s all too overwhelming. I’m much more of a One, Two, Buckle My Shoe kinda guy.

I believe most of us prefer simple rather than complicated. We don’t watch our diet if it requires keeping track of every single calorie. We don’t exercise if we have to track the time we spend on each muscle group. And we don’t improve our relationships if we have to count the times we’ve offered positive rather than negative feedback. There are just too many steps.

So, in my last book, I chose to keep it simple with only two steps: Do it well. Make it fun. The concept is really easy. First, seek excellence in everything you do. That’s the doing it well part. Second, make the process of life and work more fun. That’s the making it fun part.

See how simple that is? By the way, if you didn’t buy that book, I’ll wait here while you order it now.

You’re back? Good.

I suspect that we would all pursue improvement if it were easy. My job is to help make it as easy as possible. So, if you want to improve—and I suggest that you should—try to eliminate the extra steps and then see if you can find a way to make the remaining steps fun. That way, you’ll not only want to improve, but it will also be simple.

This book is a collection of essays, previously published in newspapers, my online blog, or simply in my head, that reinforce the idea that self-improvement doesn’t have to be hard. I’ve picked essays that will hopefully give you a new perspective on life and work and a few just to make you laugh. The bottom line is this: Life is short. If you don’t work on improvement now, then when?

But before we move on, you need to check your expectations at the door—or at the cover, as it were. This next section will explain what I mean.

Expecting the Unexpected

Recently, I traveled from Redmond, Oregon, to Denver, Colorado. Three hours before I departed, I was notified that my first flight was delayed and that I would arrive in Denver twenty-five minutes late. However, I only had forty-five minutes to make my next flight to DC. If everything went according to this revised schedule, I would be left with twenty minutes to sprint forty gates and weave in and out of all the people who would be in no particular rush to get to their flight and thus would be moving slower than snails on medicinal marijuana. Plus, my carry-on bag was too big for the fun-size plane in Redmond, so I had to gate-check it. That meant I would have to wait patiently for the ground crew to offload it before I could hustle to my second flight. The itinerary looked much less complicated when I booked the flight a month earlier.

But such is the world of the frequent flyer. I’m very accustomed to these nuances as part of my regular travel routine. And honestly, I don’t typically get stressed out, because it’s the nature of the beast. If every little mishap bothered me, I would probably lose my cool on every trip. And as a humorist who teaches stress management, it just ain’t cool to lose my cool.

But I did notice something interesting about my thought processes during the Redmond trip. I discovered that my thinking began to negatively influence my preflight experience. Let me explain.

Knowing that I was now going to be late to Denver, that I might miss my connection to DC, and that the flight to DC was the last one that night, the likely outcome would be staying overnight in Denver. So, I began to expect the ramifications of this potential predicament.

I thought, I’ll have to get a hotel in Denver. Dang it. Not another night away from home. The airline better pay for it. But wait, they only pay if it’s a mechanical problem. They don’t pay for weather delays. I wonder what kind of delay this is. Maybe I can go online and find out.

I spend fifteen minutes online, and I can’t find out.

Then I wonder, OK, if I stay in Denver, I’ll have to cancel my hotel in DC. Luckily, I used points to stay there. But wait, I’ve passed the cancellation deadline, so they may not refund my points. Dang it. They better refund my points. I wonder what the policy is. Maybe I can find out online.

I spend fifteen minutes online, and I can’t find out.

Then I wonder, I have a presentation in DC tomorrow night. If I can’t get an early morning flight out of Denver, I’ll be late getting there and will get stuck in rush-hour traffic. But wait, I left my suit for the presentation in my car at the airport. What if I don’t have time to change between the time I land and my presentation? I’ll have to wear the jeans and shirt I have on now. But my shirt is starting to stink. I don’t want to wear a stinky shirt to a presentation. I wonder if I’ll have time to change. I think I’ll eat a candy bar; that will make me feel better.

Do you see my point?

My rambling thoughts began to consume both my brain and my time as I imagined all of the possible outcomes—even though there was nothing I could do about any of it until I found out if I would actually miss my flight.

Well, as it turns out, our pilot, in true Captain James T. Kirk fashion, took us to Warp Factor 2, and we landed in Denver early. What a waste of some perfectly good worrying. Our minds can be very noisy, and much of that noise is focused on the anticipation of problems. Yet, as with my flight, these problems often don’t materialize. If we don’t quiet our minds, we spend a lot of time living in the stress of the chatter.

But what’s an intelligent calm-craving person to do? How do we shut off the chatter? Well, two of my favorite experts on this topic are Eckhart Tolle (author of The Power of Now) and Michael Singer (author of The Untethered Soul ). Both have written extensively about the problems we encounter when we live in our minds rather than in the reality of the moment. We have the ability to change our focus. We just need to, well, focus.

Remember when you learned to read? At first, you didn’t recognize the words and had to sound out every syllable. Then, as you developed a feel for the patterns of the words and the sentences, your pace improved. Now, even if you’re a slow reader, you go through words much more proficiently than when you first started. The same is true with calming the chatter in our minds. The more we practice, the better we get. Here are two things you can try.

First, pay attention to what you’re thinking. Have you ever realized that you are actually thinking about thinking? For instance, let’s say someone is rude to you. Rather than just reacting, have you ever noticed yourself watching your reaction, as if you were an observer to your own emotions? If so, then you are attending to what you’re thinking. And if we can attend to what we’re thinking, then we have the ability to adjust what we’re thinking. This is internal awareness and is the first step in calming the chatter.

A second suggestion is to consider practicing regular mindfulness-focused activities, such as meditation or yoga. These activities are designed to help us integrate our spiritual and physical selves to find a more peaceful existence.

When I first learned about these practices, they seemed a bit like voodoo. I was skeptical, because I didn’t understand how they worked. I even suspected that they may have been propaganda perpetuated by LSD-induced thinking. But, in truth, they are based on principles that have been used effectively for hundreds of years and have been validated in current brain research. They can be very effective if you practice them regularly.

Last week, I had a flight from New Orleans through Charlotte to DC. At the same time, the Southeast was getting hammered with rain and the effects of an offshore hurricane. Based on experience, I knew there was no way my flights would be on time. But I decided to practice calming that particular chatter, and I focused on a good book instead (on mindfulness, coincidentally).

I arrived in Charlotte and mentioned to the gate agent that I was surprised my flight was on time. She said, We haven’t had a delay all day.

So there you go.

My mind wanted to create a problem. But no problem existed. We can spend so much of our available cognitive energy expecting problems when, as an alternative, we could seek clarity instead.

As you read through the essays in this book, your expectations will influence how the material affects you. Rather than expecting more or less, try to be open to whatever each essay may say to you. That way, you will not be disappointed, but instead may find some hidden gem to improve your own journey of personal development.

Chapter 1

SHARPENING THE SKILL SAW

A common question I’m asked after I speak is, Were you always funny, or did you learn how to be funny? You may be thinking to yourself, I don’t think you’re that funny at all.

And you would be right. I’m much funnier in person than on the printed page. In fact, the humor is almost deafening in my head but turns into a murmur when it’s written. I’m not sure what causes that, but it probably has something to do with quantum physics and Einstein’s Theory of Relative Punchlines. I’m not a physicist, so I can’t explain that phenomenon.

Nonetheless, I do believe I was born with a natural tendency to see humor. Perhaps it was not well developed when I was young, but there was something there. Then, as I got older and used humor in front