RON STUBBS 

Quit what you HAVE to do and Discover what you WANT to do

By Ron Stubbs Cht

The article asked me to walk down a city street and notice people’s faces; were they happy? Then it suggested that I walk through my street after dark and notice how many houses are lit by the illumination of TV sets. The article brought up the fact that many people want jobs other than the ones they currently have. They go to their jobs in order to make money to buy things like new cars and big screen televisions to make their life easier and make them happy. It doesn’t matter what they buy, they aren’t any happier yet they go to their jobs anyway.

If you have kids these days, the article said, it’s much easier to give them things, anything except time with you. It’s much easier to buy them something that will make them happy.

How much of your day is consumed by what you perceive you HAVE to do? The article asks?

So what’s this nonsense about quitting? Quitting what? I can’t “quit” I have bills to pay!

Young children are taught to play games with each other. Author Robert Fulghum taught us in his great book, “Everything I Wanted To Know I Learned In Kindergarten” to play nice, share and take naps everyday. Children play games everyday and are taught that they may win, or they may lose but never, never, EVER QUIT! People grow up learning that they must play, struggle, compete, and finally win or lose. Since there can only be one winner in a game, most of us learn to lose. Learn to do things that we don’t want to do but do anyway, because “it’s the right way to play the game”. But to quit just to quit is unthinkable.

So what happens if we “quit”? If you quit doing something that you perceive you must do, you may just find out that you didn’t have to do IT at all?

When you quit what you perceive you have to do, you begin to discover what you want to do. The quality of work is so much better when people are doing what they want to do rather than have to do. Another great book is called “Do What you Love and the Money will Follow” by Marsha Sinetar. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m NOT suggesting sitting on your butt watching cartoons or sports on TV all day doing nothing. I’m simply suggesting that anything that you perceive you must do stops your life.

I recently taught a class of hypnosis students some new and advanced therapy techniques. I gave them a four part assignment at the beginning of the two month long class. The assignment was to do a research project in a chosen “specific” field of hypnotherapy, write a 2000 word script for audio taping, write a 1000 word article that would be published on my webpage and be prepared to present a 30 minute to one hour “mini” class that would be filmed based on their research to the rest of the class.

Each one of these tasks should have taken no more than a week to complete, four tasks in eight weeks, which seemed reasonable for students wanting to take the next step forward in their respective careers but by the end of the two-month period no one in the class had completed their assignments in full. Some had done bits and pieces but none had completed the full assignment.

Yet when I asked each person individually why they wanted to become a hypnotherapist and do therapy as a career, the responses I received were such things as, “I want to make a difference”, “I want to help people”, “I want to do something important with my life” “I want a new career that fulfills me”.

All my students in this class have full time jobs, some with families, all with important things going on everyday of their lives. All these things need time. All of them wanting to make a change, but all caught up in things they must do. I offered one sentence to them: Anything that you perceive you must do stops your life and what you want to do. So what is it that you want to do with your life? And when are you going to start?

Sometimes we get so caught up in making a living that we forget to live. It’s easy to do. We have bills to pay, mortgages, food for the family, and giant big screen television sets to buy. We want our jobs to be secure, so we can retire and begin to do what we want to do.

A standard rule of the employment game is the boss controls you. Whether by threat of losing your job, your money etc., it’s still control. If you stay within a game, you have to abide by the rules of that game. Games are created to define the lines of control. People thrive in a situation where people are more important than the rules, they can think outside the box, where loving is more important than games and there is never a shortage of anything, particularly attention.

In talking with older people, those that have seen it all, the been there-done that crowd, when asked what was the thing they cherished most in life, it wasn’t the giant big screen TV set, the brand new car or trip to Hawaii they remembered; it was the little things. The walks on the beach, the smiles, doing what they wanted to do with their lives that made them happy.

Look at the things in your life that you perceive or imagine you couldn’t live without. Your cell phone, pager, palm pilot, microwave, new car, fax machine, computer, giant screen TV, remote control, answering machine, double tall skinny lattes; and remember what life was like before those things were invented. They haven’t been here forever you know.

Carnegie once wrote that if you love what you do, you’d never work a day in your life. Maybe there’s something about that after all….

The article I read had a great story I’d like to share with you. It goes like this…

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who loved to sit for hours on the end of his dock and fish. Like any little boy, he sat there with his line in the water, thinking about landing the biggest fish in the lake while catching mostly small to medium sized pan fish.

Once, during a time when his family was entertaining a house full of relatives, the boy went out to fish but discovered that all the relatives were on his dock, blocking his way to the end. Looking around, the boy noticed that there were some gaps in the boards of the dock and began to fish through one of the cracks. He soon realized his mistake when he hooked the biggest bluegill he had ever seen! It was too big to pull through the crack in the dock. During his attempt to get the big fish onto the dock with the line through the crack, his line snapped and he lost his prize bluegill. The next time he dropped his line through the gap in the boards of the dock, he sat there thinking about catching only small fish. He laughed at the idea of wishing to catch small fish; an idea that had never occurred to him before. Funny, sometimes it’s the little things that make the most sense.

I learned to fish early in life from my dad. We spent hours together on lake banks, sitting in boats, sometimes shivering in the early morning light in silence. We drank coffee and hot chocolate, keeping quiet so we didn’t “scare” the fish. Just “being”. My dad taught me the process of fishing “the right way” which involved sitting quietly, observing all that was around us, taking it all in.

It was years later when I discovered how to “catch” fish. That’s when I began to understand that fishing had nothing to do with catching fish. Fishing had nothing to do with catching fish and everything to do with possibility. I learned far more from the process of fishing with my dad than we ever could of by using a full stringer as a marker of success.

It was a time to do what you wanted to do instead of what you had to do. Being with the people that you care about. Not talking, just sharing silence. Thanks Dad.

So what do quitting, games, classroom assignments and fishing have to do with anything?

I guess I’m not sure, maybe I’m just rambling along…. but maybe, just maybe if you look around your life and aren’t completely satisfied with it, you just may want to re-read this article again. Sometimes quitting is the way to winning.

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