Month: October 2020

Putting it all on the line is really cool. For a while, at least.

Then there comes a point amongst all the chaos, you forget the basics. The fundamentals that got you where you are at.

I’m not just talking about the practice of shooting free throws alone in the gym either. I’m also talking about self care.

Sleeping eight hours per day.

Praying and meditating.

Attitude of gratitude.

Eating nutritious, healthy meals.

Living in the moment.

Putting down the phone and email.

Exercising.

Reading.

Writing.

Looking someone in the eye and have a conversation.

There is no cleaner fuel to burn than the fundamentals. But it does take daily discipline. Many, many seemingly inauspicious choices that leave a major impact.

A tip: Once a week or month dedicate a whole day to the basics and see what happens. Watch how it improves your focus.

“Just this once” are the three most damaging words we use.

But what if for “just this once” we skipped it?

See what happens.

Guilt can motivate change. Shame digs us deeper into despair.

Illegal aliens is a terms that is quickly going out of style because we are dehumanizing a segment of the population.

China Flu was never in fashion.

We are realizing even terms like convict have damage.

We can go on.

All labels are a human invention. If one is not working, we can drop it and pick up a new one.

There is a reason why the first person to break the four-minute mile took a century and the second person only a month.

It turns out, that people live to the expectations others have of them–the labels they are given. Because of the story we tell ourselves. Labels set the limits and can also break the impossible.

The type of language we use to build the culture, it matters. More than we realize.

We are not living in a PC culture, we are just realizing that we can be better about the words we choose, how we lump groups of people together.

This is something we have a difficult time doing.

Its easy to blame that the whole system for our slue of problems. After all, a few bad apples rot the lot.

Free public education in theory is a good system because we don’t want to live in a world where the people around us can’t read. And in a lot of ways, it works.

Of course, there are bad teachers within the system. Ones who got their tenure and just there for the paycheck. Of course, knowing what we know now, we don’t need to maximize productivity over creativity.

All teachers aren’t bad either. We know this. Just like police officers or even politicians.

So is this a bad player or a system that allows this type of behavior to go unchecked? Are we simply using the wrong metrics? Are we optimizing and prioritizing the right things?

Two different approaches and mindsets here. Do you believe that the institutions in place are sacred, good enough as is or do you think it is time for a restart? If we switched the players out, would we see a different result?

Make no mistake, just about every major area in our culture needs radical reform. Healthcare, gun control, how elections are held, equality, taxes, the environment…we can’t continue in the direction we are going without suffering the consequences of unsustainable behavior.

The people that serve in these areas are not going away either. Bad players will always exist in a collection of people. The system makes it more difficult to blame for our problems because they don’t have a face to it. It’s just this thing floating in space. Nothing tangible to grab a hold of.

If enough people care, you can change things. It’s worth reminding that it is all invented. Money, government, everything we are so used to seeing. We become anchored to a world we are used to seeing and fail to imagine a world that doesn’t exist yet.

At the end, you can’t hold institutions accountable for their actions because they are not real living organisms. Accountability exists between person to person. Holding people accountable is a way to change behavior.

Behaviors change systems. Systems change behaviors.

You don’t drive down the road staring in the rearview mirror.

No, you drive ahead looking further down the road, while on occasion glancing back to see what is behind us.

If we are dwelling in the past, it might be time to change our focus.

How people treat the natural environment is a reflection of how they treat their environment at home.

It’s a mentality really: How is this resource useful to me?

Which for many centuries was fine. The world was a dangerous place and we needed the resources to survive. But the question now is, Is this sustainable?

That’s a new idea that was only introduced in the last 200 years. Still so new, we haven’t got used to thinking about how this will effect the others.

What did you eat last Wednesday for lunch?

What did you talk about at that important Monday morning meeting three weeks ago?

What we think is important is what is pressing. And it turns out, what’s pressing is what we are doing in the now.

We are terribly forgetful creatures. We don’t really care about what we ate in the past, just that we did. (The same goes for meetings or appointments or to-do lists.)

Pressing is not the same as important.

The only way to change people is to connect with them.

In order to connect, you must make something worth remarking on.

Remarkable work that doesn’t see the light of day, well, isn’t that remarkable. It has to be worth making a remark about. And you can keep making your art on a regular basis to show those you seek to change that you care.

Decide what that looks like and publish. Again and again.

No one goes to the gym expecting to get results by taking it easy. Nope, you go to the gym to fail.

Again and again and again.

You push and pull until you can’t anymore. Yet, it is difficult to take this mentality outside the gym.

We write one book or start a business or audition for the lead role, pour our heart and soul into it…and if it doesn’t work, we say, “What gives?”

Here’s the thing:

An amateur quits when they fail. The artist, the linchpin, the person we can’t live without fails until they succeed.

Sure it is nice to stand on top of a mountain. But if standing on top of the mountain is the only goal, it will change your decision making.

The mountains are a big place but have little room for your ego. Frankly, because the mountains don’t care about your feelings.

If the only way to feel success is by standing on top, change your attitude.