A guy I used to know was legendary for telling the truth and inspiring others to do the same. He was fond of suggesting people preface more of their statements with, “The truth is…”

“It’s bizarre what will come out of your mouth when you do that,” he says. “The truth is, I don’t exercise because it’s boring.” Or: “The truth is, I don’t exercise because I did it once and I got hurt, and it cost me four hundred dollars in doctor bills.”

Saying you “can’t” do something is usually a lie. You can’t jump off the Empire State Building and survive without a parachute, granted -- or hold your breath under water forever. But aside from the obvious exceptions, “can’t” is almost always inaccurate.

How about this: “I don’t want to. As a matter of fact, I wish you had never asked. That’s the truth.”

The beauty of my friend’s approach is that you don’t have to tell the truth out loud. I mean, you could -- he does. But you might find, as I have, that telling yourself the truth makes it easier to say “no” gracefully. More on that magic word in my next post.

People fight career changes once they reach a certain age, a friend told me, because they don’t like making mistakes. It’s likely taken them a long time to build a successful career. To start over and be a beginner? No, thanks.

Which reminds me what one consultant would’ve said to that: “You’re failing all the time anyway. Why not fail at something that counts? There’s a concept.”

The more mistakes you make the further you’ll get, because at least you’ve set out. Mistakes are just information. Directions. Go that way. No, too far. Back the other way a little bit.

Mistakes are not a sign you’re defective, your dreams are stupid, and that you should give up on all of life.

“Grownups forget that,” the consultant says. “When you’re a kid you accept that messing up is just part of the deal. Think of a toddler learning to walk. He doesn’t take a couple of spills and then decide he can’t do it. He doesn’t say, ‘I can’t walk. I might have to crawl until I’m twenty. The kid next door, he’s walking at eleven months. I mean, look at me.’”

The wisest people in your house are likely years away from kindergarten. I still say that’s the reason we have kids, to help us grow up.

When Katie was little we used to do A Report on the Day. I wanted to show her how much more fun life is when you mark your lessons and savor the silly. She wanted to delay bedtime, so this was an easy sell.

If I had that little kid back for a day -- oh, how I wish -- I would’ve included a question about mistakes. I would’ve compared notes with her about the mistakes we’d made in the past twenty-four hours, and how much we learned from those.

Katie understood at a younger age than I did, though, that mistakes are a nonnegotiable part of a life that doesn’t bore you to death. That’s one reason I love this post so much -- and I hope you do, too.

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photo courtesy of Katie Anderson

“People who pull against you can leave a mark. Don’t let that define you.”

That’s how I ended a post recently. But if you subscribe to the blog -- as opposed to reading it on my site -- you saw a different version of the ending. I’d said the people who’ve pulled against me have obviously left a mark, and it was my job to not let that define me.

The difference is important. One ending’s about me. The revised ending is about you.

Sometimes I get so caught up on speaking only from my own experience -- versus pretending to be an expert on your life -- I don’t catch things like this until after I’ve sent out the newsletter. I hate that.

It’s the same with the talk show. I’ve had entire hours of radio where Darrell, in postproduction, had almost zero to fix on my side of the conversation. But not many! I hate that. Shouldn’t I be a bit closer to perfection after this long in the game?

Then I remember it’s the gap between the person I am and the professional I aspire to be that keeps me interested in my career. Ash Ambirge suggests you chase impostor syndrome like the sun. Do everything that makes you second-guess yourself.

I can’t remember the last time I didn’t spend an entire day second-guessing myself, and I’ve started to measure the success of a day by whether I added something else to second-guess to the list.

When Darrell and I got married it took me a while to realize just how bored he was by the “Why do you think that person did this?” game. I couldn’t get over that. How could you not be fascinated by what motivates people to act the way they do? In an expression of confidence I couldn’t relate to at the time, there might have been a suggestion I was an overthinker -- which, I probably teased him, sounded like something an underthinker might say.

In the movie Field of Dreams, the main character Ray Kinsella asked a simple question of writer Terence Mann. The voice that told Kinsella to build a baseball diamond in a cornfield has instructed him to go to Boston’s Fenway Park with Mann. As they walked to their seats in the ballpark, Kinsella turned to Mann and asked, “What do you want?” The sixties activist launched into a diatribe: “I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. And I want my privacy.”

Kinsella looked at the concession stand. “No,” he said. “I mean, what do you want?”

Mann came to. “Oh,” he said. “Dog and a beer.”

For those of you playing along at home, Darrell’s Ray Kinsella in this scenario and I’m Terence Mann. I might spend my whole life in the clouds were it not for Darrell bringing me back to earth occasionally. That’s what friends are for, isn’t it? They keep you grounded.

Maybe you don’t need a prescription drug for your anxiety. Maybe you need a better way to express yourself with your work.

What Color Is Your Parachute? author Dick Bolles says your gifts have a kind of energy, and if you don’t let that out you’ll go crazy. He thinks of a cat who came to their house for the first time. It was an adult cat and they wanted to train it, so for a week they kept it in the house before they’d let it out in the yard. They didn’t want it to run away or run back to where it had come from. And during that week the cat was going nuts, because it would go up to the windows and see all the birds out there. It wanted to be outside, it couldn’t be outside, and it was driving them nuts along with it.

“Finally,” Dick says, “the day of freedom came for this cat. He was able to go out into the garden, and you have never seen such happiness.”

“Your gifts are like that,” Dick adds. “They don’t like to be caged up inside of you. They like to get out there in the world and be used.”

Have you noticed what I have, that the people who most love their work are the most fun to be around? It isn’t selfish to attend to your needs. It’s one of the most life-affirming things you can do. Your kids will learn how to be happy by watching you be happy, and the ripples will keep on spreading.

“If you need anything,” the nurse attending my (very routine) outpatient procedure said, “just use this call button.” I was forty-five minutes away from the proceedings, and after about thirty minutes I did need something. It was trivial and important.

So I pushed the call button. I waited about a minute. I pushed it again. This time I waited two minutes. I pushed it twice, and waited two more minutes. Then I gave up. What I needed could wait. But I was mighty curious about the supposed “call” in “call button.”

When the gal reappeared I told her what had happened. She laughed when she realized the apparatus wasn’t plugged in. She plugged it in. And that was it. She went about her (I mean, our) business.

“What if this had been an actual emergency?” I kept wondering. For as nice as the woman was she didn’t seem the least bit concerned. I have no way of knowing, of course. But had it been me I would’ve apologized, I would’ve guessed why it happened, and I would’ve explained how I planned to keep it from happening again. I wouldn’t have given anyone the impression I was as unplugged as that button!

Isn’t that what we most want when things don’t go well? Something along the lines of, “Oh, no.” And, “Sorry.” And, “Let me fix that.” It can be life or death.

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photo courtesy of Katie Anderson

It isn’t difficult to keep promises to children. That’s because they’ll badger you so relentlessly you may (1) wish you’d been more careful about the promise, and (2) decide that keeping your word is easier than the alternative.

If only we treated promises to ourselves that way. I once heard the suggestion that if you want something to be different, you’d best do something different…and keep at it.

That’s why I’ve made the decision to do the most important work first. The first task each weekday is advancing the cause I’ve decided is mission critical. Period. No excuses.

If you don’t take yourself seriously, why would anyone else?