Life coach Jack Black: ‘Happiness is not an unrealistic goal’

WISDOM WEEK

It’s January again. The decorations are down, the house looks newly bare, the gifts have all been distributed, and the season of cloistered excess is over. It’s a new calendar year, a time to meditate on clearing out, becoming used to writing a new date and wondering what lies ahead.

We've heard all this before. We hear it every year. The fact is, a new year is deserving of our attention. It's an opportunity to realise that time is passing. As TS Eliot wrote in Burnt Norton, "Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future,/ And time future contained in time past."

One of the first big events of the year in the capital is taking place today, the one-day Pendulum Summit (“conference” seems to have been replaced by “summit” these days) at Dublin Convention Centre. “Why attend?” is one of the rhetorical questions on the summit’s website. “Empower yourself with wisdom from inspirational minds,” is the answer it suggests.

Among the speakers at the Convention Centre will be Deepak Chopra, of the Chopra Foundation; Keith Ferrazzi, author of Who's Got Your Back; Una Fox, the vice-president of enterprise data technology at Disney; and Willie Walsh, chief executive of the International Airlines Group.

Glasgow-born motivational speaker Jack Black took part in last year's event and will make another appearance this year. Black believes that "the quality of your thinking directly impacts your ability to succeed". He maintains that positive thinking is crucial to happiness, success and wisdom in life. "Extraordinary men and women are positive and they don't do negativity. Negativity causes people to talk themselves out of opportunity."

We asked Black 10 questions to try and help us adjust to the relative joylessness of January as a month and to impart some of his wisdom. A full-price ticket to today’s conference costs €425, but the good news is that here you are getting Jack Black’s wisdom for free.

Can you tell us one thing that will help us to adjust to January?

“With January being in mid-winter, everything around us in nature is more or less dormant. So it’s best to go with the flow and do likewise: be still and peaceful while at all times choosing every day to accentuate the positive.”

I’m going to think of January as a time for spring-cleaning my head. What do you recommend I get rid of?

“Make a list of the negative words you tend to use and identify positive alternatives that you can begin to use instead. Also, consider negative scenarios about the future that you tend to run in your mind and decide to imagine them working out positively. I strongly recommend taking the time over the month to clear out drawers, wardrobes, cupboards, garages and garden sheds of all unused and no- longer-needed stuff. The great truth is that it will all fill up again.”

Are new year’s resolutions counterproductive because you feel bad if you break them?

“I believe it’s vital to set out with the intention of being committed to several resolutions or goals. Perhaps the most important thing I can point out here if that if you don’t have goals and resolutions to live by, then, unknown to yourself, you spend your life actually helping others to achieve theirs.”

Why is it often so hard to think positively about things?

“Probably a simple answer is that we live in a relatively challenging climate. It’s easy to be positive if the sun shines every day, and so it’s inevitable that, given our prevailing weather, most people tend towards negativity, but unfortunately one negative thought or conversation leads to another.”

I want to make changes to my life this year. Is it better to try and focus on one thing rather than three or more?

“After 25 years of working in this field, it’s my experience that it’s best to have seven goals spread across the critical areas of our lives. Keep them in mind every day and take action on them whenever you can. While having the intention to work on the seven, people do tend to find one more important or compelling than the others. But it’s funny: even though one gets most of the attention, the others usually move along too.”

We all think we want to be happy, but it’s sometimes hard to know what that is. How do you define happiness?

“It seems to me happiness comes from committing every day to accentuating the positive, while also focusing on working towards achieving the seven goals from the answer above.”

Do you think the quest for happiness has replaced the quest for romantic love as the new unrealistic ideal of modern life?

“I happen to believe that it’s not an unrealistic goal. Usually most people include a loving relationship in the seven goals, and committing to that definitely improves the quality of life.”

When I wake up in the morning, what’s the first couple of things I should try to do to make sure the day starts well?

“Focus immediately on what you want to go well today. Run your mind across the key events of the day in chronological order and rehearse each going the way you specifically want it to turn out.”

What is one thing I can do for free that is pretty much guaranteed to make me feel happier?

“Every morning, before the day begins, list in your mind five things that you are grateful for. Also, each night before sleep, list an additional five things that you are grateful for having occurred over the day just past.”

People talk a lot about the importance of ‘achieving your potential’. This sounds exhausting and overwhelming. Is it really possible to fulfil all of one’s potential?

“It’s certainly better to attempt to do so rather than unknowingly but robotically helping others find theirs. Life genuinely seems to have real purpose when we live it with the drive to be the best we can in all that we do. Life is far too short. And there is something really sad about people with endless regrets as each year flies by seemingly quicker than the previous one. With our efforts around this, we gain experience and find wisdom, especially when we apparently fail and choose to learn from it. I have also observed that those in the third stage of life who are fully engaged in all manner of activities are living increasingly longer and more healthily.”

[ pendulumsummit.com ]