Unhappiness.xlsx
I had been working my dream job at Trek Bicycle for six years. My paycheck was more money than I needed and I was loving my job. I traveled but did not spend time away from home more than the big soft cushion of my paycheck provided. My gorgeous wife Andrea and I had been married for six years and we had two healthy and happy young children. Our son Travis was almost three years old and our daughter Lauren was about four months old. We had a great house, in an awesome neighborhood, with lots of friends, and our garage was plentifully stuffed with toys for all ages. It was January 2003, and everything seemed perfect. But the reality was, I was horrifically miserable.
Stretched thinner than thin I would name it, although there was nowhere else to go in my life but down. But that’s weird because I was already so low, there was surely no lower I could go, except to put myself underground and I wasn’t doing that.
I was stuck. I was stuck because getting out of that shitty place and rising above it seemed utterly impossible.
Sound familiar?
This was the first real low period in my life. Sure, I dealt with some shit in my earlier days but this time was different, this time should have been easy, this time should have worked perfectly. All the pieces of a happy life existed, or so I thought. We had more than enough money, we had two operational cars, my wife and I were physically healthy, and our kids were healthy in body and mind. But at a time when I had everything I thought I would ever want, I suffered miserably. Life as I knew it wasn’t working for me.
But why? Why wasn’t I able to rest easy within that “good life” I had constructed for myself? Sure, I was staying busy, just like all working parents. Not that I felt like I had any free time, but most things got done when they needed to. The things in my life rubbing me the wrong way, I thought those things would pass. Possibly I thought, if I worked harder, if I pushed more, I would eventually catch back up to the good things and overcome those negative feelings. But I was wrong.
The busyness was making things worse. There was barely a tiny sliver of space in my head available to think about what was working, what was not, and what could I possibly do to change any of it.
Suicide had not entered my head. I loved my kids, I loved my wife, I loved my job, I loved my friends, but I was stretched thin. I was stretched so thin, if an approaching truck happened to cross the center line, I might welcome the relief as it plopped down upon me, crushing me, my car, and silencing my beating heart. This is a harrowing thought, especially with two small mini-me’s at home, those two who would certainly gain from the experience of growing up with a father, even an overworked and depressed one.
For at least six months I had tried to exercise more, hydrate better, and play more with my kids. I had tried to make my wife happier, to spend more time together, and try to give her more of what she wanted and less of what she did not. I tried to get back to some of my hobbies, getting closer to my true self, my happy self, or so I thought. Nothing worked, my thoughts and feelings got worse. I felt hopeless and I was almost at the end of my rope.
Coasting could be defined as doing the absolute bare minimum in life to survive. I am the opposite of that, I try. I try maybe harder than I should at times.
Back in 2003, I tried everything I could think of to get unstuck but I just couldn’t shift out of first gear.
Then one night, I thought that maybe if I wrote down everything that was weighing heavy on my mind and take inventory of the sum of parts, maybe I could see things another way. There HAS to be a way out of this, I thought, and this listing exercise might be my only hope. There was no way I could continue as-is and nothing else I tried made any positive difference. So that night long after my kids were asleep, and several hours after my wife was I asleep, I sat at my office desk and I opened an Excel spreadsheet. I gave the spreadsheet a title and called it, “Happiness / Unhappiness 2003.xls”.
Trying to type out loud, I started up the clack-clack of my keyboard keys. I just set up a quick and smiple format to list all the shit that was bothering me.
In the first vertical column, Column A, I numbered the rows below, 1, 2, 3…
In the second vertical column, Column B, I labeled it, “ Why or how am I unhappy?”
Column C was, “Solution”.
Column D was, “Problem”.
Column E was, “Solution”.
Column F was, “How”.
Column G was, “Outcome / goal”.
Puking my emotional guts out was what followed. This was not a work project so no one else would see it. I did not filter. There was no ego, no self-pity whining, no attempt to make others feel sorry for me, I just listed shit out. I ended up with 16 items after some slight editing and I also added a secondary section below with some work-specific stuff. I ended up with eight work specific issues for a grand total of 24 clearly identified things that I thought was making my life feel miserable to me.
Here were my 16 life struggles in 2003 with the resulting workout plans:
1. Fat and out of shape. SOLUTION: Get into shape PROBLEM: Not motivated SOLUTION: Get motivated HOW: Find a goal OUTCOME: Agreed with Andrea I will race moto
2. Stressed out- no release. SOLUTION: Find a stress reliever- work out PROBLEM: Little time / not motivated SOLUTION: Make it a priority HOW: Schedule it with Andrea / work OUTCOME: Schedule date nights 1x month
3. No athletic lifestyle. SOLUTION: Might not be possible for a while PROBLEM: Too much happening SOLUTION: Fit it in when I can HOW: Get motivated, make a goal OUTCOME: Found a goal of training to race moto
4. Not feeling productive at work. SOLUTION: Plan better and stick to the plan PROBLEM: Not motivated / unhappy SOLUTION: Get over this bad spell HOW: Identify problems / work it out OUTCOME: Work on this project now
5. The kids are not happy. SOLUTION: Get happy in life and this goes away PROBLEM: Unhappy with rest of life SOLUTION: Get over this bad spell HOW: Identify problems / work it out OUTCOME: Leave other problems at the curb
6. No loving relationship with Andrea. SOLUTION: Might not be possible for a while PROBLEM: No time to ourselves SOLUTION: Make time for us 1x mo. HOW: Babysitter, plan dates, dinner, getting lucky OUTCOME: Schedule date nights 1x month
7. Estranged with Bird family. SOLUTION: More frequent contact PROBLEM: Lazy, not motivated SOLUTION: Get over this bad spell HOW: Identify problems / work it out OUTCOME: Regularly call or write my family
8. Hate my car. SOLUTION: Too bad- make it more comfortable PROBLEM: Lazy, not motivated SOLUTION: Baby steps, finish speakers HOW: Evening projects in the garage OUTCOME: Fix up and maintan car
9. Not easy to go riding- switching cars. SOLUTION: Not realistic to buy another car PROBLEM: Not practical for work drive SOLUTION: Keep infant base installed HOW: x (nothing to do) OUTCOME: Maybe next year get a truck
10. Garage is a mess, floor sucks. SOLUTION: Organize, finish floor PROBLEM: Lazy, need time and money SOLUTION: Baby steps, organize HOW: More bins and schedule floor finishing OUTCOME: Clean garage and plan for floor finishing
11. My office is dirty. SOLUTION: Clean regularly PROBLEM: No supplies SOLUTION: Keep supplies at work HOW: Expense supplies and do it OUTCOME: Get office cleaning supplies
12. Mad at the world. SOLUTION: Figure out how to be the old me PROBLEM: Lots of challenges SOLUTION: Figure out the priorities HOW: What will really balance out my happiness? OUTCOME: Show all this to Andrea and work it out.
13. Feel guilty for thinking of fun stuff. SOLUTION: Lay it all out for Andrea's opinion PROBLEM: She doesn't get to leave SOLUTION: Schedule time for her away HOW: Andrea can schedule shopping time, etc. OUTCOME: Make Andrea take time for herself
14. Outside of house looks dumpy. SOLUTION: Landscaping and cleaning PROBLEM: Time and money SOLUTION: Spring cleaning, landscape help HOW: Find someone talented with landscaping OUTCOME: Plan for exterior work in Spring
15. Travis doesn't accept me in bad times. SOLUTION: Try my best and support Andrea better PROBLEM: He'll grow out of it SOLUTION: I need a better attitude HOW: Work on items above OUTCOME: x (just work the plan)
16. Current and future financials messy. SOLUTION: Learn, look for advice and experiment PROBLEM: Very risky / ignorant SOLUTION: Get educated HOW: Books, online, advice, current accounts OUTCOME: Plan for financial success
Then I developed the smallest action item to just get started. The whole thing took about three hours to complete, the initial spreadsheet. I continued to adjust and fine-tune the list over time but that night, even though it was far past my bedtime, I slept better than I had in a year.
Not that I had yet fixed anything but I did inventory of everything and mapped out a plan. Some of the success here was with some things, there was nothing more to do, it was as it was and I found the clarity that night to accept it. With other things, I had a good list and now it was up to me to get busy working the list. The next day, I felt light on my feet and focused. A week later, I had begun almost all of my tasks on each and every item. A month later I had already completed half of them. OMGosh this was a gamechanger. This exercise saved my ass.
What did I fix in my life by completing a single spreadsheet? I mostly rid myself of the stress, anxiety, and worry that my life was out of control. Was it really out of control? No, but it felt overwhelming to me and the overall weight of all these little things piled up together weighed me down. Only when I took the time to stop, get organized, being brutally honest, and then got busy doing the damn work did things start to turn around. This one tool, Unhappiness.xlsx is a foundational pillar of keeping me on my feet and facing forward. But it ain’t easy and sometimes, I need to open the spreadsheet up and make some updates. I always, always, always feel better after doing at least a little work on the spreadsheet.
Not saying it will work for you. Some people don’t like spreadsheets and some people admit they aren’t honest enough with themselves or disciplined enough to make something like this work. It works very well for me and I am just sharing. Modify it, think out loud and devise your own way, or maybe just try to use it as-is, at least for now. The importance here is to take time, sit alone, and write shit down.
Almost every year since 2003, I have opened a new worksheet within my original Happiness / Unhappiness spreadsheet. There are 17 tabs cataloging the things that have slowed me down or stopped me in my life and the resulting plans to sort through them. Perfection? No way, I haven’t completed everything and there are always changes to the plan. But without a plan I might have never found my way out. Even during the years of my life that are less hard than others, I try to perform this exercise because I have learned in life as well as business that despite everything being shiny on the outside, there is always hard shit below the surface.
Possibly I will do an audio recording or podcast on this same subject to better help round out the instructions or at least my lessons learned. A bunch of people have downloaded the Unhappiness.xlsx life tool in the last couple of days since I removed the costing for CoolShit ToolKit tool 1. CoolShit ToolKit is my collection of life tools I have developed to help me live my life on purpose and live a life with purpose. I will continue to make these tools available to you as long as I can for zero cost, along with instructions and examples of how to use them in your own lives. For anyone who downloaded the tool, I’m planning to have a group Zoom conference and discuss in more detail how this could work. We would all be on the call together and the sharing of those experiences between us might provide additional usefulness. I hope this helps you or at least helps you think of ways to live your life more as you might wish.
Do good shit today.
