The secret to my happiness started during my high school days (yes, drugs were involved) and continued through hitchhiking across the country, through the suicide of my girlfriend, through bartending in many cities around the country and then a move to Japan. I lived there for nine years, helping start a $500 million business, including a LARKINS (my last name) line of product, finding enlightenment and meditating in Zen temples in the mountains of Hiroshima, meeting Mother Teresa in Calcutta, partying with Bon Jovi, experiencing the death of my business partner and then the loss of my daughter, and all the life lessons that come with the following statement: I Get To do this!
The secret to my happiness started during my high school days (yes, drugs were involved) and continued through hitchhiking across the country, through the suicide of my girlfriend, through bartending in many cities around the country and then a move to Japan. I lived there for nine years, helping start a $500 million business, including a LARKINS (my last name) line of product, finding enlightenment and meditating in Zen temples in the mountains of Hiroshima, meeting Mother Teresa in Calcutta, partying with Bon Jovi, experiencing the death of my business partner and then the loss of my daughter, and all the life lessons that come with the following statement: I Get To do this!
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Overview
The secret to my happiness started during my high school days (yes, drugs were involved) and continued through hitchhiking across the country, through the suicide of my girlfriend, through bartending in many cities around the country and then a move to Japan. I lived there for nine years, helping start a $500 million business, including a LARKINS (my last name) line of product, finding enlightenment and meditating in Zen temples in the mountains of Hiroshima, meeting Mother Teresa in Calcutta, partying with Bon Jovi, experiencing the death of my business partner and then the loss of my daughter, and all the life lessons that come with the following statement: I Get To do this!
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780999514009 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Get to Principle LLC. |
| Publication date: | 11/22/2017 |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.54(d) |
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
GET TO KNOW THE GET TO PRINCIPLE
Change "I gotta do the dishes" to "I Get To do the dishes," and your life transforms.
Applying the Get To Principle to your life is simple: At any given moment, in any given circumstance, facing any given task, you say to yourself (or out loud), "I Get To do this." You smile, then you do what you were going to do. Get To — Smile — Do it! Get To — Smile — Do it! Using this mantra works as a mechanism for shifting your attitude and relating to the world differently.
In almost every situation in my life, I use Get To — Smile — Do it! to settle my mind and change my perspective. The famous psychologist William James wrote: "The greatest discovery of my generation is that man can alter his life simply by altering his attitude of mind." When you say I Get To do something, the mind automatically stops regretting the past or worrying about the future because you move from the victim of "I have to" to the power of "I get to"— and in that moment, your mind becomes still. Next, in that silence, when you smile, your brain reacts positively. In his article "There's Magic in Your Smile," Ronald E. Riggio, PhD, states: "Each time you smile you throw a little feel-good party in your brain. The act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness." The Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh says, "Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy." And then, from that space of stillness where you've created joy, when you do whatever you were going to do, there is a sense of freedom and of being in charge of how you are experiencing what is happening in life.
This practice can produce amazing results — like ease and happiness — in both the short term and the long term, and in both negative and positive situations. In really brutal life transitions, it might not exactly be "happiness," but the Get To Principle frames things with wisdom and calm. It allows you to accept with gratitude what life presents to you in every moment, regardless of the "flavor" of that particular moment.
With the death of my daughter, I got to experience the sorrow and joy that comes with accepting the inevitable coming and going of life.
When I held my dying friend, as he took his last breath, I got to be with grace in a choice to end a painful existence.
During more than 3 million miles of flying in airplanes around the world, when most people I sat next to were complaining about all the traveling, I kept thinking, "I get to hurtle through the sky at 500 miles an hour reading a book, or watching movies, or just — being. How great is this?" The reality is, when you think about it at all, we're on a ball hurling through space at 67,000 miles per hour. Michael Singer, in his book The Untethered Soul, says it best: "You're floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. If you have to be here, at least be happy and enjoy the experience."
Several months ago an executive in the company I work for came in from the head office to chat. He had recently been promoted to oversee the expansion of one of the divisions of the company. There would be several new teams under him, so it was a big deal at our publicly traded company. We were chatting and he was talking about all the challenges facing him. He was worried and concerned at the foreseeable burden — the workload. At some point I said, "But the challenges are what make it so exciting. You get to do this." He paused a moment, and then smiled and said, "Oh my God, you're right. I get to do this. It is exciting, and under all the thoughts about how tough it's going to be, I'm actually very excited!" He said it again, "Wow, I get to do this!" He smiled. I love watching that shift from have to, to get to.
As I said earlier, there are two outcomes of the Get To Principle. First is a feeling of intense appreciation for your life because others can't do or have something that you can; second is a deep understanding that life itself is a miracle. The first one is powerful in itself. Those of us in the industrialized first-world countries have luxuries only dreamed of by many people on the planet. It's a shift in viewpoint that is filled with gratitude for our personal reality, and compassion for others with less than we have.
The second outcome is even more powerful when it's fully experienced. In fact, I think that full understanding of the Get To Principle could be considered a form of enlightenment.
I obviously don't fully understand the Get To Principle myself, because I'm far from enlightened, but sometimes when I use the Get To — Smile — Do it! mantra, I become so giddy with joy for this experience of life that I feel like I'm about to pop over the edge into that vast oneness with everything. (I'll explain that last sentence in a coming chapter about a "spiritual awakening" I had.) Many of us seem to be searching for more and more to occupy our minds, more experiences to bring us joy and happiness.
But you don't need to climb Mt. Everest to have an incredible experience. Simply being fully aware of the present moment can make any "grand experience" pale in comparison and blow your mind.
I can't wait to see what adventures people have with this, where they take it. I would love a few monks to take it on as a mantra, repeating "I get to do this, I get to do this, I get to do this" over and over for a few months, and see if they have an awakening of some sort — maybe have instantaneous levitation sessions? Sitting quietly hour after hour, year after year imagining the sound of one hand clapping is a great exercise, but why not use "I get to do this"?
Practice:
Repeat the Get To — Smile — Do it! exercise at least ten times a day for 30 days. (For perspective, I say Get To — Smile — Do it! at least 50 times a day. It's a habit. At first, I had to catch myself saying "I have to" or "I gotta" and change my attitude to "I get to" instead. Now saying "I get to do this" is a way of life. The smile has become both automatic and genuine.) Decide to change your habit of saying "I have to" and instead say, "I get to!" You can put a rubber band on your wrist and snap it whenever you catch yourself feeling like "you gotta," if that helps. You can track every time you remember to "get to" do things on a notecard, or even keep a journal in which you examine how you felt both before and after using the Get To Principle. In that 30 days, the joy will increase in your life, the Get To Principle will become part of your outlook, and you will become happy and wise — or at least, happier and wiser. Yep, that's a promise.
Get To — Smile — Practice.
CHAPTER 2
GET TO GROW UP
"I'm lucky to know that I'm lucky to be having this experience called life." Think about that until you smile.
I believe we define ourselves slowly by the infinite experiences we have daily and by our responses to them. In addition, most people have several major life-changing experiences that alter their viewpoints dramatically. I, for one, have had my share. So allow me, in the coming chapters, to share a bit of who I am, relaying a few of the various experiences that have made up my life through the Get To way of being.
My life beginnings were pretty mundane. I was born into a middle-class family in Chicago in 1962, and in 1969, when I was seven years old, my family moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up. Yep, nice and mundane.
It was a pretty straightforward childhood. We were a four-kid family, each basically two years apart. Kathy was the oldest, followed by my brother, Rick. I was number three, and then came Julie. Mom, after getting us past diapers, was a schoolteacher, and Dad, after years selling steel in Chicago (yep, selling steel), started a janitorial service, cleaning buildings around Columbus. Mom's dad was a politician, serving as Ohio's secretary of state of for nearly 30 years. Dad's dad was the athletic director of Ohio State University. Mom and Dad were a match made in heaven. Or not. We'll see how that turns out shortly.
I was about as average as they come. I just wanted to be liked by the cool kids, and not get beat up by the bullies. But the cool kids wouldn't have me and I spent a lot of time running away from other kids throwing mud balls at me. One warm spring afternoon walking home from school, when I was eight years old, a group of kids led by a girl named Amy chased me and knocked me down. I had made it to my driveway before they caught me — heck, I'd almost made it to the house. Amy got on top of me, pinning my arms with her knees as she sat on my chest laughing. I don't remember why they were after me but I was crying, which made her, and the four or five other kids standing around her, laugh harder. In that moment, lying there looking up at her, with the smell of the warm blacktop in my nose and the crisp blue sky above, I decided that I would never let that happen again. I vowed to be strong, get a black belt in karate, and come get my revenge. Not. I stuffed it down, cried myself to sleep, and am a wimp to this day. Amy and I would become friends in later years, and when I asked about it one day, she didn't remember that incident, just the times we ate peanut-butter-and-marshmallow sandwiches together.
In 1974, at the ripe old age of 12, I did what many kids did back then — I delivered newspapers, something I continued for many years. My paper route was a big deal and provided spending money for my various activities in life, like buying second-hand minibikes and go-carts (and later, pot — but that's a story for another chapter). Every day after school, on Saturday afternoon and early Sunday morning, I would take the bundle of 100 or so newspapers that a truck dropped in front of my house, sit in the garage, undo the metal wire holding them together, then roll each one up and put a rubber band around it. I dreaded the days when there were inserts — separate pages of ads that I would "insert" into each newspaper before rubber-banding them. If it was raining or snowing (the chances of either were pretty good in Columbus), I got to put them in plastic bags. In the early years I would put the wrapped newspapers in my red wagon, then later in baskets on the sides of my Solex or Moped, and finally, at 15 with my temporary driver's permit, in the open trunk of my car.
I'd park whichever vehicle I had halfway up the street, take a shoulder bag of papers, and walk up one side of the street and back down the other dropping a newspaper on the front porch of all of the houses that had a subscription — most did. Then I'd move the vehicle to the next street and start over. Did I mention that it was often raining or snowing? No matter what, I was out there. Just a Midwestern boy in a Norman Rockwell painting, cheerfully delivering his papers.
One bitter Sunday morning at 7 a.m., sometime just before Christmas 1974 and after a night of heavy snow, I went out to do my route. I had been out for an hour and was exhausted tramping through the snow to each of the porches. My hands, feet, and face were numb. My body was numb. As I returned to my wagon after delivering a paper, I noticed a soft-looking snow bank and I decided to take a rest. I was so cold, and the soft snow looked so inviting, I sat down, leaned over — and fell asleep.
I awoke in my Dad's arms in the kitchen in front of the oven, its door pulled open, the temperature on "high." Apparently, Dad had been awakened by a phone call from a client whose building's water pipes had burst and who needed Dad to get over there. On the way, Dad passed by my wagon. At first, in his rush, he kept driving. But be it luck, fate, or angels, he decided to turn around to see how I was doing — and found me in the snow bank, blue. They say that later in life you can never really thank your parents enough for what they did for you. I'll say. I wonder what Norman Rockwell would have made of my father's expression at that moment, or as I woke up in his arms in front of the open oven? Some people turn their noses up at his accessible compositions, but say what you will, he was a master at capturing expressions.
As a kid I also used to vacuum and mop floors at night and on weekends with Dad for extra money. When I turned 16 I quit my paper route and started to go clean buildings by myself. Scrubbing toilets, emptying ashtrays, and looking at the Playboy magazines in the men's restrooms at night — a 16-year-old boy's dream.
I would also take crews to clean warehouses and do other jobs. Although I didn't realize it, I learned a lot of the Get To Principle during this time. Many of the people cleaning buildings at night were doing a second job to pay for school, or simply to pay rent. Others were on welfare or out on parole, or just were uneducated and couldn't get another job. White, black, women, men — all were in the same position.
At first I was the "rich" white kid, the owner's son who'd show up at the building to inspect their work. I soon figured out that if I wanted their respect I had to get dirty — and I did. We'd power-scrub a floor, clean out smelly trash cans, or wash grimy windows, sometimes outdoors on oppressively hot Columbus summer nights. We'd take a break and I'd order pizza "on the company," and sit and smoke cigarettes and drink Coca-Cola.
I made some great friends and realized that the only difference between me and anyone else was simply what I thought it was. We were all just human beings having our individual experiences, none of us better or worse than any other. We were all just trying to be happy. What great lessons in life.
One of the guys, Melvin, played pool. I was pretty good, so we talked a lot about it. One day he invited me to his local pool hall in downtown Columbus for a billiards tournament. Sure, I thought, why not? So on the following Friday night, my friend David and I drove down to one of the seedier parts of town, did a one-hit of pot in the parking lot, and walked into the bar.
You know those western movies and the scene where a guy walks through the swinging saloon doors, the piano falls silent, and the barkeep stops pouring a drink? Then everyone turns and stares at the stranger through the haze of smoke, and you hear the whistle from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? That was us: 1978, two white boys entering an all-black bar. For a moment I thought, Oh shit, bad move coming in here. My heart was pounding, I couldn't swallow, and just as we were about to leave a voice called out from the back, "Teddy boy, my man, you made it!" and Melvin came up, big white-toothed smile, and gave me a huge hug. The piano started up, the conversations came back alive, and the hustle and bustle at the bar resumed. (There wasn't a piano, I just wrote that for effect. It was probably Kool and the Gang on the juke box.) Melvin introduced us around. Men and women alike looked me up and down and said, "Boy, any friend of Melvin's is a friend of ours!" We drank beer and smoked cigarettes, laughed and shot pool. And I won first place and got a trophy.
Practice:
We all did some crazy things as kids, even if it was just playing hooky from school, or taking a drag from a cigarette, or sneaking a beer in a movie. We passed notes in class behind the teacher's back, or snuck into our parents' or a sibling's room and, heart pounding, looked through their drawers. How about an unapproved joy ride in your parents' car? Remember a time you did some radical thing when you were younger.
Get To — Smile — Relive that moment!
Soooo sweet.
CHAPTER 3
GET TO PARENTS
Our parents were doing the best they could based on what they were taught by their parents, who were doing the best they could based on what they were taught by their parents, and on and on. So give them all a break, and make the change you want in the world starting now.
In 1974, Dad needed a secretary for his office at the house. My ever-generous mom introduced him to her good friend Bekki. Bekki was ten years younger and, to my father, she was hot. In talks with Dad later in life, he said Mom had quit having sex with him (although there's always two sides to that coin), and that Bekki was ... well as I said, hot, and they fell in love. At the time, I didn't know what was going on, and Mom and Dad pretended everything was fine. Even with the hushed conversations in their bedroom, I thought they were the perfect couple, and we, the perfect family. Over the next several years, as Dad started sleeping on the couch "because of his back" or not coming home at night "because of work," I still thought everything was fine.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Get To Be Happy"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Ted Larkins.
Excerpted by permission of The Get To Principle.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword,
Preface,
1. Get To Know the Get To Principle,
2. Get To Grow Up,
3. Get To Parents,
4. Get To High School,
5. Get To Regret (Part 1),
6. Get To Hitchhike Across the Country,
7. Get To Regret (Part 2),
8. Get To Go to Prison,
9. Get To Bartend,
10. Get To Wake Up,
11. Get To San Diego,
12. Get To Pilot's License,
13. Get To Write a Book,
14. Get To Japan,
15. Get To Homestay,
16. Get To Life in Japan,
17. Get To Build an Empire (Part 1),
18. Get To Olympics,
19. Get To Build an Empire (Part 2),
20. Get To Enlightenment,
21. Get To Hang with Bon Jovi,
22. Get To Brother Nick,
23. Get To India (Part 1),
24. Get To Meet Mother Teresa,
25. Get To India (Part 2),
26. Get To Larkins,
27. Get To Visa,
28. Get To Sunamori,
29. Get To Life Partner,
30. Get To Go Home,
31. Get To Cancer,
32. Get To Live and Die with Nick,
33. Get To Be Pregnant,
34. Get To Cole Grace,
35. Get To Have More Kids,
36. Get To Be Happy,
Epilogue,
Acknowledgments,
About the Author,