Today I will be talking about my latest scientific theory as it relates to life. It is entitled, “The Theory of Reason Standing.” I’ve been practicing it for a few weeks and it seems to be working for me. Perhaps it can work for you.

Now, before you think I’m about to spout off some sort of psychobabble, new agey, spiritual crap based on the hum of the Earth, I want to quell your fears. This is none of that. It is simply my perspective on life for the periods between 10/1 and 10/31. Next month it could be the “Theory of Relative Crap.” Which, since Christmas is coming up is a likely topic, as it’s the time of year relatives give you useless crap.

My theory is bourn out of my current reading. I’ve been devouring the works of Richard P. Feynman, a brilliant physicist and all around goofball. It’s not his scientific theories that are striking me (though they are quite interesting in and of themselves) but, rather, it is his view on life that is most impacting the way I think.

Feynman had a brilliant mind, there is no doubt. But how his brilliance manifested went well beyond quantumelectrodynamics. He played drums; he picked locks and sniffed people’s hands at parties. He flouted rules just to prove how they didn’t work and he took on a governmental commission to help uncover the truth behind the Challenger accident. He was funny, could tell an amazing story and had a booming New York voice that gave rise to many debates, accolades and much disdain.

What I see in Feynman is something I see in myself, minus the brilliance. Feynman loved to joke, he loved to tell stories and he often accidentally offended people. I do that too. But, more to the point, people could rarely tell when he was joking and when he was serious. A problem that I often have as well.

Feynman looked at life in an amazingly simple way, considering the man could visualize subatomic particles. He broke down life into what was important and what wasn’t. And, by golly, he was going to have a good time no matter what. He could waste his time feeling sorry for himself or he could recognize his situation as an accident of life.

Feynman realized that sometimes the Universe was a wonderful playmate, full of wonders and mysteries that were there for him to discover. He loved the pursuit and sharing of knowledge. But he also understood that the Universe sometimes plays ugly, dirty tricks on you. You could choose to wallow or you can move forward to your next discovery.

What his life tells me is that I can use the basic scientific yearn for understanding to help me understand and deal with my own life. I won’t ignore my emotions. Hardly. Rather, I will better understand and direct my emotions towards the correct end result.

Imagine life as an experiment. You set up all the components and you mix together a solution and add it to your Bunsen burner. BOOM. It explodes and you are left at a crossroads. Naturally, you’re angry. You want to smash all the rest of your work because it took you four hours just to get to this point. But you don’t. Rather you step back and review what you did. In the end, you realize that you are not angry at your experiment as a whole, but you’re angry that 10ppm of Barium was too high a percentage. You redo your work and this time the experiment succeeds.

The lesson learned is that you focused on what the heart of the situation was. You didn’t trash your bottles, flasks and graduated cylinders because your experiment failed. You rather took those emotions and put them toward discovering and correcting the error.

This can easily be applied to life. I know because I’ve been doing it. I’m in better harmony with my own emotions not because I’m ignoring them, but because I better understand their focus.

Life, in this case, is the experiment. I remember the variables; I remember the environment and seek to find the proper steps to avoid that in the future. Or, better yet, I devise a formula that I think will not only avoid explosion, but also succeed and allow me to move on to another set of experiments.

So, let me apply the Theory of Reason Standing to a basic situation:

You come home on Friday upset at your boss. You’ve been working all week long on a report for him. A report in which you’ve invested a great deal of time, work and passion. You are very proud of your work. You submit the report to your boss and he dismisses the ideas, conclusions and work that was done. When you get home you are livid. You are upset that your boss is so mean and has no regard for other people’s feelings.

However, if you apply the Theory of Reason Standing, you’ll discover that you’re not upset at all about your boss’s disregard for your feelings.

Take a look at the entire situation. What are the variables? 1. You were given a task. 2. You worked hard on that task. 3. Your work was ultimately dismissed and negated.

This has nothing to do with your boss’s handling of the situation. Rather, you feel that your work was invalidated. It doesn’t matter whether or not your boss was nice or cruel about the delivery of the news. He could have attached $1000 to your rejection and your feeling wouldn’t have changed. Your work, your time, your efforts and ideas were negated and pushed aside.

So, you come up with a plan of action. You sit down with your boss and discuss your report. It may turn out that your work was highly appreciated, but missed the mark. It’s possible that the instructions you were given were wrong and there was no way to succeed from the start. If you find out WHAT you need to be upset about, you can better figure out what needs to be fixed.

Your boss’s ability to be nice is meaningless in the experiment. Therefore it STANDS TO REASON that if you understand your emotions and focus them in the right direction, the results of your experiment will be more successful.

Life, in the end, is a series of experiments. We know the variables going in, but the end result is a discovery. Sometimes our experiment blow up in our faces. Other times we make great strides and discoveries.

The key here is allowing everything to stand to reason. Distill the situation for what it is. Get angry at the brick that fell on your head, not the entire wall.

And, slowly but surely, you will find that life is much simpler than you imagined. The better you understand your situations the better you can respond.

When the Universe plays a trick on you sit down and figure out how that trick worked. Then you will find that the next time the Universe plays that trick you will be prepared.