Josh Allred's Blog

We think that the hallmark of a good student is someone who quickly raises their hand cause they know the answer to the question or gets an A on a test.

That’s just saying they memorized the answers to that particular set of questions.

A good student is open to learning. And learning, as we know, is admitting to ourselves that we are incompetent at something, practicing until we become competent.

It is not just with students either. Good employees, good bosses, good citizens…have the title for being good at following directions while focused on short-term results.

We give up too quickly on those around us because they don’t want the same thing you do.

Short-term excuses are easy to find. Every day, we are inundated with interruptions, emergencies, and fires.

The long term, however, is something we can push out. “Someday,” we say, “when I have time.” Long-term goals have this way of becoming a dream because we forget to work the small bits every day that make it come to fruition.

If it’s a project you believe needs to happen, why not start with something small today? Just stack one brick. And then tomorrow, another. Then another. Maybe two on Sunday. Because of our culture of instant gratification, we tend to undervalue the idea of incremental forward motion.

Perhaps, instead of finding the long-term excuse for why something isn’t happening, we can flip the script and say we are building, and it’s taking time.

That’s because we have an expectation on what we think life should look like.

We see the unequal distribution of resources everywhere.

We see people doing things that we call good and bad. The heartbreak and sorrow life brings.

There is no answer to it. But I do know this: The sooner we can accept it, the sooner we can go forward. And life is so much better when it is shared together.

Living with it naturally puts us in a space of wanting more of it. That’s our default: fast, instant gratification. Of course, we notice way more inconvenience than the conveniences we have. The journey to needs in the modern world is shorter for most. Now, the pursuit is wants. And those wants seem to go further and further because there is no end to desire.

Priorities change based on what is urgent. But what often gets lost in the urgent is the long-term. The problem with the modern world is that we have built on this idea of finding out what is scarce and making a market around it. Making it seem like if you are not in the rat race, you are being left behind.

Perhaps then, we have to decide what urgent will fall on the wayside to focus on making the long-term an outcome.

Most pain is self-inflicted.

The reason?

Because we constantly live with ourselves. No breaks. The story lives alive and well 24/7.

When interacting with someone we can assume the worst. That they are trying to take your resources and use it for their own benefit. That they didn’t put in their best effort. That something is wrong with them.

We can also assume the best. That they too have a story and a history. That there is background noise and that we can’t possibly understand what that person is going through in this moment.

The good news is that it is a choice. While our instincts may jump to conclusions that are out there, we can learn to respond in ways that brings humanity to the conversation.

When you get off the plane in Hawaii, you are greeted with a leigh.

Of course, this isn’t mandatory to participate in Hawaii. And sometimes people choose not too. But for many, the reason we do it is to get into the spirit.

It’s a signal. And it is up to us to follow those queues.

The answer is tied back to the questions we ask.

Today’s internet allows us to answer almost any question (minus a few important ones).

Now, AI is here; we can’t stop treating it like Google.

We have struggled even to master the tools we have with social media or Google. And now, we have AI.

Time doesn’t make us better. It makes us complacent. Practice is what makes us better.

It is always subjective what one feels is complete.

So, why can we not help but judge those around us and how they operate there?

I think it’s because, deep down, they are either hurting us (or we think they do) or because we see what we despise in ourselves.