Everyone in the world is having trouble feeling safe.

I wrote a song before the pandemic hit. Its message of safety and kindness seems like something we could all use right now, so I asked some people to sing it with me and made this theatrical mini-musical.

Please share the video with someone who may need a lift, and more importantly carry with you the very old idea that kindness is worth spreading, inside and out.

May you feel safe,
May you be happy,
May you be strong and free from suffering,
May you feel kindness for yourself.

A lot of people helped.

LET ME FEEL SAFE
A Theatrical Mini-Musical
by David Delp

ARRANGEMENT
Michael Hatfield

FEATURING (in order of appearance):
Charlie Delp
Lesley Freeman
Brian Sullivan
David Delp
Daryl Henline
Jett Green
Will Woolette
Scott Harris
Sara Williams
Mark Christiansen
Diana Gameros
Rodney Fong
Robin Mayforth
Selena Sun
Lily Ellis

ADDITIONAL VOICES
Anthony Organo
Becky Asher
Camille Sherman
Chuck Gilmore
Dana Bauer
Justin Fraser
Kevin Gino
Lizzie Li
Miles Hatfield
Minette Mangahas
Patrick Maier
Valerie Hatfield

DRUMS Ed McClary

COLOR
Gary Coates
Robert Arnold

MIX
Gary Mankin

SPECIAL THANKS
Adam Shaening-Pokrasso
Beth Sternlieb
Carolyn Joseph
Donald Rothberg
Mariana Gameros
Randy Dunagan
Spencer Critchley
Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center
Stephanie Peters
Sylvia Boorstein
Wendy Pennington
Yulanda Williams
Zoe Ellis

I hope you’re wondering what’s up with that mini-course I’m designing for you. I’m almost finished. It’s just the last parts are taking longer than expected. Last week I started to feel overwhelmed by how much work I still need to do. The Demon of Resistance whispered in my ear, “Why are you doing this, anyway?” I bet you know what that feels like.

I met a man last week who was feeling overwhelmed, too, and at the end of a 50-minute conversation, we both felt calmer, more collected, and clearer about what to do next.

How? We both went small.

It was my first coaching call with Nikola. A father of a small child with another coming next month, he had just entered a full-time job and was trying to hold onto his partnership with a company he and his friends started. He didn’t know how to manage all his responsibilities and was suffering insomnia.

As a coach, empathy gets in my way sometimes. I start to feel what my client is feeling, in this case fatigue and anxiety. Anxiety triggers the idea that big changes need to happen. For Nikola anxiety was pulling us toward big “if only I” solutions. Life would get better …

if only I were better at time management.
if only I worked more efficiently.
if only I had more energy.
if only I quit my partnership.

My experience helped me remember to ignore the voice of anxiety and, instead, to go small and look for clues in the details. After more investigation we discovered that most of Nikola’s anxiety came from changes in his partnership with his friends. We zeroed in on details of a conversation he needs to have with them and worked out what parts of the relationship he wants to keep, what parts to let go, how to adjust the business model, and what he will do to help make the transition.

We found a small, important, specific next step for Nikola to take. The structure and details of the next step relieved the anxiety and gave him a handle on a difficult change to a meaningful relationship. He felt better.

I felt better, too. I remembered why I’m doing this work. Personal interactions around the important details of our lives keep us connected to each other and to meaning. Progress, and sometimes revelation, come inside the details of small steps.

I know my next steps, too. I’m putting this stuff into the mini-course. I’m pretty sure you’ll find it quite useful, and it’s almost ready for you. Almost.

Sign up to be first in line when it is.

Sorry if it’s true. It’s possible you suck at making goals.

Whether you want to find true love, get rich, create an opus, or get in shape, taking the next step and making progress is all about how you define your goals. Before you start on anything, ask yourself what your goal is. And then make sure, for sure, it’s a “good goal”—not a bad goal.

A good goal helps you focus and make progress.

A bad goal does the opposite. It scatters your attention, slows you down, and potentially discourages you completely. It’s like setting up a target and shooting yourself in the foot.

I’ve helped 100’s of people write 1000’s of goals, turning them from bad goals into good goals, and I’ve learned a few things:

Most people suck at making goals; they usually make bad goals that discourage them.

Turning bad goals into good goals makes all the difference in how you focus and make progress.

The practice of making good goals can change your life from kinda crappy to kinda great!

The good news is that basic good goal writing is pretty simple. You can learn how in just a few minutes with the following 4 steps.

Step 1. Write the following words “I want to ____” and complete the sentence. Start with a verb and attach it to an object. As examples, I’ll start with the goals I wrote above: find true love, get rich, create an opus, and get in shape. They are in the right format, verb attached to the object (kind of, “rich” isn’t an object). That’s a good start, but it turns out these are bad goals. They are vague and unmeasurable and set us up for failure. Let’s make them good goals.

Step 2. A good goal is specific. See how the following goals move from vague to specific.

Find true love > Find a travel partner
Get rich > Make more money
Create an opus > Finish my novel
Get in shape > Lose weight

Step 3. A good goal is measurable so you know when you are finished with it. See how these examples make it clear when they are completed.

Find a travel partner > Take a trip with someone I might love
Make more money > Get a raise
Write a novel > Finish the first rough draft of my novel
Lose weight > Lose 15 pounds

Step 4. A good goal is achievable, that you have both the opportunity and the means to complete your goal. If not, then make your goal smaller so you can finish it or change it completely. You need to know yourself, your schedule, your skills, and who will help you. The examples above might be achievable, but if they aren’t, see how making them smaller or changing them still points toward the original vague wish and makes them more achievable.

Take a trip with someone I might love > Ask Carlos to join me in Japan this summer
Get a raise > Ask for a raise after I get my copywriting certificate
Finish the first rough draft of my novel > Clear my November and commit to NaNoWriMo
Lose 15 pounds > Sign up with my brother for the June Tough Mudder

These goals are much better! They are written to help you focus because they are specific, and you’ll know when you’ve crossed the finish line. They help you figure out the next steps and make progress. They are good goals.

Some of you may recognize these steps from my SMART & SEXY Goals Checklist. Becoming ninja in goal writing takes practice. Use the SMART & SEXY Goal Checklist as a guide toward your mastery. Your effort will pay off quickly and for a long time.

To make progress on anything takes the right small steps. If you are already very good at something, it’s because you know how to take those steps, but when you suck at something, the next right small step is missing.

This is so common when it comes to creativity. I’ve heard from many people about the creative projects they’ve put away to make money or raise a family. They don’t know how to get back to them. Or they don’t know how to finish them.

This happened to me.

And there was, and continues to be, a very simple solution that works every time.

I wrote a musical, my first. I’m not a theater guy, but I loved this story, and I didn’t know where it needed to go. I was stuck. And then a theater friend told me to invite some friends over to have a reading so I scheduled it. Boy did that light a fire under my butt so I finished a decent draft. The evening was one of the best moments in my life, not because the musical was great, but because I was surrounded by people I cared about who took my creative endeavor seriously.

Scheduling the reading is what got me to finish.

I put the musical away for six years because it felt like it needed too much work. Then last year I reconsidered my friend’s advice. I wasn’t ready for another reading, but I noticed, with a simple adjustment, his advice could work to unstick almost any creative project by taking a very small step. It goes like this:

Schedule a meeting with someone you respect to review your work.

That’s it!

“Someone you respect” adds a kind of pressure that can be very motivating.

In the last year, my small steps looked like this:

• Schedule a meeting with a theater director to review the old draft. That motivated me to get all my notes together and ask the right questions. He was happy to encourage me because I got organized for him. The next step was to
• Schedule small readings for each scene. This got me to closer to finishing the play, but Act II needed to be completely rewritten so my next step was to
• Schedule a reading in Copenhagen. I was visiting my daughter there in two weeks, and when I actually found a theater group who said they’d read my play, I finished Act II in one weekend!

Every time I made big progress on my musical, it was because someone I respect was counting on me to do it.

And the next step of scheduling those meetings was small and easy.

So what about you? Do you have a project that needs a boost?

If so, is there someone you can show your work to next week?

If so, get that into your calendar, like right now!

If you find these articles helpful, yay! The next one is the last in the Stop Sucking series. Pay attention because I’m putting together something I think you’ll find very helpful in your own efforts to stop sucking.

To get first in line for special offers around this new thing, Sign up for First Alerts

And have a great week.

“If you only had enough willpower, you’d be healthier.”

Now there’s a myth I grew up with that persists today. It’s bullshit. Look it up. Willpower is a limited resource we waste on things like trying not to eat the giant piece of chocolate cake in front of us, getting to the gym when we’re tired, or forcing ourselves to meditate because we know it’s good for us.

We suck at taking care of our Vitality, the energy our body and soul need, when we rely on willpower.

Fill in the blank here: I would feel much better in my body if I only ________ more often.

If there’s a list in that blank, that’s another problem. Lists of stuff you think you need to do kill willpower.

My proposal to you is this: Pick one thing that really matters for your health that you suck at and solve it without relying on willpower.

Eliminate willpower completely.

Remember—to stop sucking, you don’t need to be great at it; you just need to become barely good enough.

This is going to take some problem solving and experimentation, but don’t be tempted to require willpower. Use your willpower to avoid using willpower!

First, make sure you craft your goal so it’s specific, measurable so you can finish it, and small enough to achieve for sure.

For example:
“Reduce stress” is not specific. “Try out one new sleep habit” is specific.
“Meditate every day” is not achievable. “Meditate 10 times this month” is achievable.

If you want help with your goal, send it to me. I’ll check it and let you know how you might make it more specific, more measurable, and more achievable.

Now, eliminate willpower from the equation. In other words, preload the decision so when the time comes to do it, you don’t have to decide anything and use willpower. For example making the decision not to eat the giant piece of chocolate cake sitting in front of you can drain your willpower for the rest of the day. (Believe me, I know this one.) If the dessert isn’t in front of you, you don’t have to make that decision.

This is where you need to do some problem solving and when the next small step might not be intuitive. If you want to meditate more, the next small step isn’t to meditate. The next small step is to figure out how to remove the decision to meditate. Sometimes this is called a trigger. The next step is to set up your trigger. Here are some examples of triggers:

Schedule a friend to come to your house and walk with you to meditation class. That way the decision is already made.

Schedule an appointment with a sleep specialist. That way you’ll show up and take a step toward learning at least one new sleep habit.

Buy healthy snacks to put in your drawer at work so your blood sugar doesn’t plunge. (I used to turn into a prick when I skipped lunch. That really sucked.)

These are first small steps toward not sucking, and you’ll be more successful if they don’t require willpower.

The key to bigger goals that don’t require willpower is changing the context to one where people expect you to behave differently. I’ll leave you to mull that over.

Last time it was about Love, and this time it’s about Money.

There are so many ways to suck at money, and by suck, I mean you are so bad at this particular skill, it regularly gets in the way of everything else.

A friend of mine was looking for work and was so daunted, actually haunted, by the idea of how much she needed to earn, it almost paralyzed her efforts. It felt impossible for her to earn enough. She’d need to be someone else to survive: Superwoman.

It’s common to freeze up about money when it feels out of hand.

It’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Almost everyone panics about money at some point. Sometimes it’s because we don’t have the skills to understand money in concrete terms. We don’t separate the numbers from our emotions. Numbers are facts, but we attach them to anxiety around our self worth, rage at grand injustices, or blissful denial about the future.

First let’s take an inventory. Then, I’ll tell how my friend found great relief with a small effort to stop sucking.

Oh, the many ways one might suck at money. Let’s break it down. Ask yourself, at which of these do I suck at so badly it gets in my way?

• Understanding my expenses
• Paying down debt
• Spending less than I bring in
• Bringing in more than I need
• Getting a raise
• Saving for planned expenses
• Saving ahead for surprise expenses
• Spending money wisely
• Feeling generous
• Planning for future financial needs
• Talking rationally about money

It’s a long list. You probably don’t suck at all of them, but even if you do, taken one at a time, each can be brought up to non-suck status through small steps.

That would be the first small step: pick the one you suck at most, one that also gets in the way. That’s key. It’s okay to suck at something that doesn’t matter. Pick one that matters a lot!

My friend couldn’t imagine a job that would pay enough, because she sucked at the first thing up there—she didn’t understand her expenses. She didn’t know the one number that would help her wrangle her anxiety: her monthly nut. So she didn’t really know what she had to earn to break even with her expenses.

An accurate way to look at your monthly nut can take a day or two of categorizing expenses across all your credit card and bank statements, and it’s a great way to get honest with your spending, especially if you want to make changes.

She took a faster path to sanity. It took less than an hour.

All her spending eventually comes out of one checking account, so to calculate her monthly nut, all she had to do was look at total withdrawals from each bank statement for 6 months, add them up, and divided by 6.

The result? Her monthly nut. A real number, not a vague anxiety ridden idea, and as it turns out a number she could hit without being Superwoman.

Knowing her real expenses, her monthly nut, she was much less anxious.

Just last week she got a job offer, negotiating with the confidence she’d have enough to meet her needs.

Not all skills at not-sucking are as quick to solve, but sometimes we get stuck because we are missing some of the facts.

I’m putting together a step-by-step guide to help you make progress on this stuff, and I need to learn a bit more about what you need. If you want to learn more about it, sign up on my First Alerts list.

Is there something that really matters that you suck at?

Love is the energy we give to help other people, especially people we care about it, and most of us suck at some aspect of it. Conflict especially makes it hard to lean in with love. It’s so tempting to stay angry and righteous. Here’s a story about taking a small step toward love that made a big difference.

When she thought about him, which wasn’t often, she’d wince from embarrassment. She hadn’t talked to him in years, but the old little insults between them and the missing apologies felt fresh. That’s what she told me. It was clear she longed to reconnect with her brother, but she wasn’t sure how.

Her story might be a little like yours.

Is there a relationship in your life that needs some attention? Maybe like her, you long to reconnect to someone important who’s faded from your daily life.

In the process of managing daily tasks and fighting the constant distractions of social media, crappy news, and piled up email, important relationships often take a back seat.

It’s especially hard when you don’t know what to do.

And it might not feel like it’s worth the energy.

But it is.

Because love does give back, sometimes immediately. Plus, the great thing about love is that trying is most of the work. Besides, what if it was simpler than you think it is? What if a small gesture had the possibility of opening a door? And what if through that door is a new connection with someone you care about.

If you try, you might fail, sure, but you might not. One small step in the right direction can make a big difference.

Love comes in many forms and most of them are small.

I asked her what she wanted, realistically, what’s actually possible with her brother.

“It’s been so long, really. I don’t need to be the great friends we were. I just want to know him a little better. I want to move out of this rotten feeling. I want him to know I care.”

That sounds realistic. It sounds real.

“What is the very next thing you could do, the smallest step in that direction?”

“Well. I could just tell him.”

“How?”

“I’ll call him and tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“I’ll call him and tell him—I’ll say, ‘I’d like to get to know you a little better.’”

And she did.

So, I ask you, dear reader: Is there an important relationship in your life that needs a little love?

Think about the next small step you could take.

Then take it.

…

In the next article we’ll look at another very big area where most of us suck, and another success story in which a small step went a long way.

I love paper. As an Artist, paper is my main venue. The feel of a 4B pencil skimming over the silky surface of vellum or whispering against a stiffer rougher bristol is music for my fingers.

But that crap that comes through my mail slot and the receipts I’m supposed to keep for 7 years and checks and packaging and the files that clutter my garage shelves and especially those “online forms” you have to print, sign, and scan, I find super irritating. I really don’t like wasted paper, and worse, I hate keeping it around. I love books. Books are cool.

Except for a growing collection of 3×5 cards which I won’t do without, I thought I was pretty good at keeping extra paper out of my life.

And then I met a master.

Brooks Duncan is the pope of paperless, preaching The Way to a Life Without (my saying, not his) from his pulpit at documentsnap.com. The steps are simple: scan it, tag it so you can find it, back it up, and shred it.

I met Brooks last November at the SimpleREV event in Minneapolis where we both spoke about living simply and intentionally. He’s an outstanding fellow with all the ideas and methods you need to go paperless, and he makes it easy to make big progress.

A File System Based on Roles

Brooks invited me write to his folks about my Filing System that Keeps You Motivated. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this here, but yes, I organize my files by roles, too. Go read it. You’ll find the themes familiar, and you just may also find another way to keep yourself organized and motivated.

Send your comments there please. I want to make sure he feels our attention.

What am I guaranteeing?

If you do this entire process before the end of January 2015, I will give you a free mentorship session to make sure you are set to have a great year.

Tell your friends! Tweet your peeps. Keep me busy! Make us both happy.

Here it is, your path to a great year.

Preamble: Recount the past year, good and bad.

This is a valuable exercise on it’s own. All you need are slips of paper and about 20 minutes of quiet time. You can even break it up into several sessions through the week. For some reason it works better that way. Do the Small Steps to Wrapping up the Year.

Part One: Say goodbye to the past.

Let go of last year by burning away our proud and shameful memories. This is one darn cathartic thing to do and if you have a friend to share it with, even if she’s just a witness, it can be even more powerful, for both of you. Do Part One

Part Two: Connect to your leading roles.

Knowing your roles is a core concept Pilot Fire brings to planning and time management. Even if you’ve thought about it before, this exercise will help you discover parts of you you didn’t even know you had. Part Two

Part Three: Make your plan.

The plan is much simpler than you think. You don’t really know what will happen, but you do know you will forget what’s most important to you most of the time. This plan gives you a place to return to. Call it your home. Do Part Three

One last thing. This takes about 2 hours to do at least. On January 24 I’m offering a day long workshop with remarkable presenters in a beautiful San Francisco venue. Dig in and set yourself up with a great plan that will connect you to your dreams and get you moving right away. The pricing is designed so that anyone can afford it.

That’s right.

Anyone can afford it.

Join the Great Year Workshop.

Note: This is reposted every year. Comments may be dated from previous years.

Being productive is one of the best feelings I know. Sure, it’s not the meaning of life, getting things done, but it sure feels great checking a bunch of tasks off my list, and when the things I get done are lined up with something big and important, that’s the best feeling of all.

Productivity by itself, even without all that life-meaning alignment, is a skill worth developing.

My daughter’s seventh grade algebra teacher use to tell his class outright, “Almost nobody uses algebra after high school, but it’s a great workout for your brain. Think of it like exercise. You run and lift weights so that when you need your body to do something extra, it’s ready. Algebra is like that. Work on learning how to improve your skills, and when your brain needs to do extra work on almost anything else, it’ll be in much better shape.”

Same goes with productivity.

Practice productivity, even with stupid tasks, so when you really need them, the muscles are ready.

Mike Vardy is a Productivityist. He studies productivity tools and habits and is always exploring new processes, new ideas, new ways to get things done. I met him at a the SimpleREV conference, and over a great meal and some strong scotch we discovered our mutual passion for productivity.

Mike is a machine. We had a few followup sessions sharing our roles and goals, and then I watched him make changes in his life and business at a stunning rate. Follow him. He’s onto something.

A few days ago Mike interviewed me about the Pilot Fire Simple System for Everything and my upcoming Great Year Workshop. The result is a compact description of the Pilot Fire method I think you’ll appreciate.

If you are interested in productivity:

… and then sign up for Mike’s podcast.