Month: June 2022

A two-record set had two sides to it. Side 1 and Side 4 were on one record. Then Side 2 and Side 3 on another record. You could play them all in a changer without having to stand up and change them.

But each side could only hold 23 minutes of music on it.

That’s a lot of interruptions to get into a flow.

I know for me, I can get really irritated if I manage a flow state only to be interrupted. So much so, it can ruin the great experience I just had.

Don’t.

Instead, treat interruptions like a record player. Just wait for the record to change and keep listening.

If you want to start a band, you can. Simple as that. No lawyers or permits or permission are needed.

However…

There is no guarantee that it will make you a living. You are not entitled to have people come and listen. You probably will get booed.

That is what being in a band is.

Learning to deal with rejection. Practicing. Getting feedback and getting better.

No promises but you do get to start.

There actually isn’t the worst flavor. It’s just jelly beans. Some flavors are obviously more popular than others.

It turns out there’s even a market for like black pepper, sausage, earwax, or soap jelly beans.

Your idea isn’t bad just cause it isn’t popular. It’s just different.

Phantom fear gets in the way of real learning. We worry about the unknown. The loon noises. The things that get in the way of us fully experiencing something. We often hesitate and don’t fully commit. Paradoxically, in the process, increasing our chances of failure.

You are not entitled to your desired outcome. No matter how much effort you put in. Even if it was stolen.

The question I have is, what makes you think you know which outcome is best for you in the long run?

And if you got every outcome you desired, how would you learn anything?

Death is the ultimate teacher. The lows allow us to appreciate the highs. Some much more to take away from a failure than a success. How high do you know to fly if you never push a limit? How do you know where the limit is if you don’t go for it?

The ceilings we often imagine are made of glass, not an iron curtain.

A hundred years ago, it was predicted that automation would be so advanced that we would not have to work today.

Of course, we were wrong but it doesn’t seem to be out of the question in the next 100 years (or sooner) that AI will be so advanced that most jobs will become obsolete.

However, this opportunity terrifies many. For good reason. We say we want free time. Yet, we want something to do, a reason to get up every morning, to feel validated and important. We often trade security and reliability to be told what to do next.

Working less is indeed a sales pitch.

What we say we want doesn’t match the opportunities we take.

Everyone remembers what they were doing the morning of September 11, 2001.

But do we remember what we were doing on September 10, 2001?

It is the highs and lows we remember. Not the routine and the banal.

It took Anne Sulivan ten weeks to teach Hellen Keller the word water.

Keller said, “I knew then that ‘w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free.” 

That night, Keller ended up learning 30 more words. The rest is history.

Finding words where words were absent can truly enlighten and heal us.

Humans by nature are exceptional in our ability to give. No other creature is so destructive and generous at the same time. Quite remarkable actually.

How do we tap into our more generous side?

It’s much easier when we are rich. I am not talking about dollar amounts here. But rich in mindset. When we are thinking in terms of a growth mindset, infinite in possibility, when we are not focused on outcomes but instead focused on the experience, when we are being seekers and throwing ourselves fully into learning–we are rich. And when we are rich and abundant, we are more willing to give. With that attention, giving ourselves fully to the experience, we are now in a generous state.

Giving has nothing to do with writing a check.

We often create distractions to avoid the existential crisis we are in.

On one hand, we say, “I want to be free.”

On the other, we create work rules to insulate us so we don’t mess up a job and get fired. We expect students to memorize when the War of 1812 is rather than focus on the process of how to learn and solve interesting problems. We enforce laws like wearing seatbelts (for good reason) because we need someone to tell us what to do rather than accept responsibility for our own actions.

When we are free, we experience groundlessness. The feeling of free-falling. That feeling is uncomfortable, it creates tension in our lives. So much so, that we create systems that cause distractions to avoid this uneasiness.

These anchors in our lives hold us down to what we think is reality. It is the moments of clarity, prajna, trauma, and flow that shake us. These moments of awakening help us break habitual habits and routine thought patterns.

Life is precious. And it is precisely the finite nature of our beings that makes it so special to seize the moments we have. When we are mindful, we are alive. The rest of the time is just procedural.

We want freedom but we are also scared of it too.

More difficult to do than we think. When we set the intention, we are not just focused on doing the task at hand. We are also silencing the loon noises. The track that plays in our head over and over again that we are insufficient. When this tape plays, the action word is to say, “Stop.” Out loud if we must. With any old habitual habits, we are asleep. When we try something new, are present, we are awake and alive.