There’s an art to getting the most out of a buffet.

First, you assess the size of your plate. Sometimes you get a big, generous plate; some even have edges that curve upward for extra filling capacity. Other times you get a dinky little plate, barely enough to hold a couple of meatballs and a cocktail shrimp.

Once you know the size of your plate, you cruise the offerings and see
what you’d like to fill your plate with, and what you can skip. If you
just start scooping up from start to finish, even with the smallest
portions you’ll run out of room, and possibly missing out on your
favorite foods.

You also want to know how often you can go back through the line. Is it a
one-time, all-you-can-eat, pile-it-high kind of affair, or a bountiful
feast you can return to again and again?

The Buffet Line of Your Life
I’m probably not telling you anything new (unless you’ve never been to
a buffet). But you may not have realized that you can follow these same
principles with your time and energy to create a joyful, satisfying life.
Instead, so many of us do the opposite. We don’t assess the size of our
“plate” and take on more than we can chew. We load up on whatever comes
our way, with no room left for the things we really love. We gorge
ourselves on a plate that’s overflowing with mediocrity — resulting in
stress, frustration, and tummy aches.

So what to do? Let’s go back to the front of our proverbial buffet line,
and reassess what you have available and what you have to work with.

What Size is Your Plate?
Look carefully at your plate. You can think of its diameter as the total
amount of time you have at your disposal. This amount will vary depending
on your particular business or career, family life, financial state, social
commitments, etc. Whether small or large, the absolute limits of your free
time are critical to know before “filling your plate.”

Another dimension to your plate’s capacity is its depth. Is it shallow
and flat, or deep and curved? This is comparable to the amount of energy
you have. Your energy level is affected by many factors as well, such as
your genetic makeup, your age, your health, your outlook on life, to name a
few.

Note that there’s a relationship between your plate’s diameter and its
depth. You may have a lot of things competing for your time (small plate),
but you are strong and healthy and energetic (deep dish), so you may be
able to put a lot on your plate. Conversely, while you may not have many
commitments taking up your time, you may have physical or other challenges
that decrease how much you can realistically pile on.

Pick Out Your Favorite Items
Now that you understand your capacity, let’s move to what’s available
to you. Cruise through the buffet line of your life. What would you ideally
like to be spending more time on? What’s most important to you? Here’s
an enlightening exercise:

1. Take a piece of paper and make three separate columns.

2. In column A, list all the things you spend time and energy on in your
life. Be thorough. Don’t leave anything out.

3. In column B, rate how important each commitment is to you, on a scale
from one to ten.

4. In column C, rate how much of your time or energy you spend on that
item.

Pay attention to discrepancies between what you want to be doing and
what you are doing. These are clues to how you load yourself up and where
you might need to readjust.

One Time Through?
Once you’ve perused all the items on your life’s buffet, think about
which are routine or mundane, and which are “once-in-a-lifetime”
experiences. Are you missing your child’s milestone events to work late
yet again on an unsatisfying project? Or are you passing up a critical
promotion opportunity because you’d rather get together with your
friends? Ultimately, we only get so many trips through the “buffet
line,” so if you want to feel more content with your life overall,
deliberately choose those morsels that are most satisfying to you, both
during the meal and after it’s over.

Strategies for Success
This all sounds easy enough on paper or even in a buffet line, but what if
you’ve already overloaded your very small plate? The key is awareness,
commitment, and patience.

- Be aware of what you are saying yes to, all the time. Evaluate it
against your list of what you really want on your plate and see how well it
aligns. Say ‘no’ where you can. Even once.

- Be willing to commit to doing one thing each day (or week or month) that
shifts your plate from what you feel you have to be doing to what you want
to be doing. Delegate, automate, ask for help, remember to say no.

- Be patient with yourself. You might have a lifelong habit of rushing
through your buffet line, piling your plate high, and feeling obligated to
consume everything long after you have desire (or room) left.The wonderful
thing about a buffet is that, really, you’re in control. You may not be
able to command the size of your plate, but you can always choose what goes
on it.

So what will go on your plate today?

How do you handle life’s roadblocks? Do you say, “Oh boy! What a great challenge! I can’t wait to work my way through this particular problem…”? I’m guessing probably not. More likely your reaction is something along the lines of, “Oh *%&#!”

If so, don’t feel bad; you’re in good company.

I’ve known a few amazing people in my life who meet challenges in a naturally positive way. But I think most of us approach our troubles with a fight or flight mentality. Nevertheless, I truly believe that the ability to face and overcome obstacles is one of humankind’s greatest characteristics, and one that can be cultivated.

What it takes is the willingness to shift our relationship with our obstacles. To do this, I recommend a “Triple-A” approach:

1. Awareness
2. Attitude
3. Action

Awareness

This may sound obvious, but to change a behavior you first have to be aware of it. So much of our behavior is ingrained and unconscious, and we often defeat ourselves before we ever get started and not even realize it.

Once you’ve identified a problem in your life, it’s easy to get swept up in the strong emotions it triggers. This often just intensifies the problem and makes it harder to come up with solutions. To distance yourself from these emotions, try writing your problem out on paper in three steps. First list the facts; then list what the situation means to you; then list your feelings about it. For example:

1. One of your co-workers just got promoted. (FACT)
2. You wanted that job and believe you should have gotten it. It must be that your manager thinks you’re not good enough. (MEANING)
3. You’re angry, hurt, bewildered, resentful, envious. (FEELINGS)

In this case, it’s possible you don’t know all the reasons why the co-worker got the promotion, nor why you might have been passed over. Often we leap to conclusions without having enough information. Using these three steps helps us distinguish what’s really happening from what we might be making up. Ask yourself if your meaning is the truth, or if there’s something you’re missing, distorting, or just wishing were true.

If you are still overwhelmed, try writing down the problem:

• as if it happened five years ago. You may find that by framing your problem as a story, the ending (solution) naturally follows. “I didn’t get this promotion I wanted, so what I ended up doing was…”
• as though it were happening to someone else. “I know this person who was passed over for a promotion …” Also describe how they’re reacting to the situation. “They were really bent out of shape…”
• from the perspective of a wise guru, offering compassion and advice to someone else in this situation. “I know this feels awful now, but this is what you might do to turn this around…”

Attitude

Once you’ve put some emotional distance between you and your problem, you can gain more control over your attitude towards the situation, and begin to explore alternate interpretations or meanings. Here are some helpful questions to ask yourself:

What does this problem mean to me?

What’s the payoff for staying overwhelmed about this problem?

What frame of mind would help me get through this more easily?

What lessons might I learn from this situation?

What’s good about this?

As you come up with answers, you may find yourself looking at your problem in a completely different way, and naturally gravitating towards finding a solution.

Action

When you’ve shifted from problem mode to solution mode, you can now decide how to take action. Ask yourself:

What strengths do I bring to this situation?

What information do I need to resolve this problem?

When have I faced something like this before? What did I do in the past?

Where in this do I have control or influence?

What do I need to let go of?

Who can help me?

What’s my first step?

And know that you don’t have to (nor is it advisable to) do this all by yourself. In general the most resilient people are those who have a strong network of people to rely on when things get difficult. And when you enlist others to help you with problems, you are in effect saying, “You matter enough to me that I’m willing to be vulnerable with you.” This is a precious gift that strengthens relationships. So find people you trust-friends, family, colleagues, community members, or professionals-and ask them if they’d be willing to walk through these steps with you and be a compassionate sounding board as you face your problem.

So obstacles aren’t really obstacles; they’re what we make them to be. They can be brick walls that stop us in our tracks, or they can be isometric exercises that make us stronger, increase our stamina, and help us grow into our very best selves.

Think of a problem you’re currently facing. Apply the “Triple-A” approach, and see how your relationship with that problem changes. Embrace the illusion!

As I write this, little trick-or-treaters all over are dressing up as witches, ghosts, cowboys, and princesses, eager to impress their neighbors and ask for treats. It’s fun to dress up, try on a different personality, and show up as somebody else once a year.

But sadly, many of us go “trick-or-treating” every day. We cover up our true selves with a mask, become what we think others might want or need from us, and hope that what we’ve come up with is acceptable, likeable, and worthy of praise.

Pretty good trick if you can pull it off. And most of us can, at least for a while. Some do what others tell them to do, others act happy when they’re really not, still others pretend to enjoy activities that others do in order to fit in.

Obviously all these things are necessary from time to time: they help us stay married, keep our jobs, and maintain our friendships. But the danger lies in consistently compromising what we think, say, or do because we’re afraid people won’t understand, like, or approve of us. We don’t often realize the price we pay for not being authentically ourselves:

• Trying to be someone or do something that goes against our real nature generates physical and mental stress
• We wind up “relating” to people who seem like us, and miss out on meaningful connections with those who are like us
• Other people are in control of our happiness and self-respect
• We start to believe the façade we’ve put on, and lose out on the joy of expressing our unique talents and personality.

Sometimes being someone we’re not becomes a lifelong habit. It takes awareness, courage, and diligence to doff the mask and show the world who we really are. But how do we know who we really are? What do we look like without the mask on? Here are a few indicators:

1. We tell the truth about what we think, feel, and believe–while still respecting others’ thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.
2. We set clear boundaries for ourselves defining what we are willing and not willing to do for (or with) others, and communicate those boundaries.
3. We take ownership of our own feelings, without laying blame on someone else for making us feel that way.
4. We recognize what’s special about being us, and find ways to express that as often as possible.
5. We seek out and nurture the company of people who make us feel good about ourselves, who encourage us, who bring out our best.
6. We learn to recognize what makes us feel alive and full of passion, and bring more of those things into our life.

Conversely, if we listen carefully, our bodies and emotions tell us when things are out of alignment. It might be an uncomfortable feeling in our stomach, a hesitation in our voice, an unexplained sadness, or a sense of detachment from our own lives.

The good news is, if we consciously focus on feeling alive and tapping into our genuine selves, we attract more people like us, and create more meaningful and joyful experiences. That doesn’t mean that life gets any easier or that all stress suddenly evaporates. What it does mean is that some unnecessary stress goes away when we show up in our own life without pretending to be or have or do something we’re not.

So, take a first step. Get up tomorrow morning and consciously notice those times when your thoughts, words, or actions don’t exactly align with what you feel inside. Also notice when you’re really enjoying yourself, being productive, and “in the flow,” seemingly without effort. The latter points to the genuine you, and with time and practice you’ll find that the only way you’ll want to be is without a mask.

Except once a year. On Halloween.