I’ve been a strong proponent of understanding the decisions one makes under stress. During those times, we have to make choices that we wouldn’t make otherwise. And when the emergency is over, there is no announcement that it is over. So the body keeps reacting as if the emergency hasn’t ended. Over time, this can have massive compounding effects. To the point, it can be as simple as changing the thermostat temperature to trigger a strong response. These things don’t make sense on paper. But they are genuine in our lives. It’s worth doing the work to figure out why we do the things we do. And so often it is because we made a decision long ago that made sense at the time, that doesn’t make sense anymore to keep making today.
It takes tremendous courage to choose to be happy in this day and age. Part of the problem is that people don’t believe they deserve happiness. We don’t honestly believe good things can happen, so some of us struggle not to sabotage our lives in ways that create the next emergency. The next emergency will come, but how we treat it is a choice.
I’m not sure if you have to forgive someone or something for the past. To be clear, we have a bad habit of being quick to anger and slow to forgive. At the same time, I do believe there are some things so egregious that you don’t have to forgive. In fact, the pressure to forgive often shifts the responsibility off the one who committed the misdeeds in the first place.
In other words, I think it’s horrible to tell someone, “You’ve got to find a way to forgive.” If you can—please do. If you can’t, however, I think the better step is to learn to accept it and be at peace. Don’t let them hurt you anymore.
What’s more important is learning how to let go of your anger (or grief, or loss, or whatever) before ever finding forgiveness.
As the saying goes, “If you want forgiveness, find a priest.”
What’s interesting to me is how we express someone’s ownership of their body. Along with their time or choices. If you are to sell your time, then you must own your time in the first place. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t own these things. But why, under the flag of property, to begin with? What if it were a sacredness instead?
One of the things no one tells you is that your time is no longer yours. Think about the time used to engage at work, to make a meal, or to do a chore. And if you’re not careful, that slippery slope can be taxing on our psyche. Perhaps the better way to frame it is:
1) the commitments you have made and
2) the time you need to see them through.
My prediction with AI, jobs, income inequality, debt systems, climate change, social media, geopolitics, and so on—things continue to get weirder.
That the conversations will get weirder, the numbers we crunch will be more bizarre. The stock market will do strange things. Policies will be odd. The public’s reaction will be bizarre, too.
But that doesn’t mean we have to be weird too.
You can choose to stay off social media (actually, when you think about it, that’s a weird choice). You can choose to be happy (another).
Scratch that. Be weird too. But not in the usual kind of way.
Nostalgia is a powerful feeling.
Recently, one of the city council members wanted to put a recreation center in the middle of an open-space park. Once the word got out, that person lost their re-election campaign.
A miscalculation. Not because building a recreation center is necessarily a bad idea. It has its pros and cons. It’s because that park hasn’t changed since the 1950s.
And that feeling for those who have been here a long time is a reminder of a time that was. Not every improvement is an improvement. Sometimes the right improvement is not to keep changing things. But to leave things precisely as they are to remind us where we came from.
If you’re struggling with social media, I have found it helpful to delete the app from your phone.
But not everyone is willing to do so.
So, another choice to create friction.
Log out.
Move the app off the home screen.
Require face identification.
Put it in the hidden folder so the temptation isn’t there.
Creating more steps and adding more friction can short-circuit the auto-response to pick up the phone and scroll.
It seems to me the adventure doesn’t begin when you decide to go. It always seems to start when everything begins to go wrong. We live a life of such comfort and security. And we think our trips should go down the same way. This is never the case.
Climbing isn’t just about strength. It certainly is a huge component, but it isn’t the only one that matters. So does your technique and your technical know-how. There’s a head game too. You can be very strong and have the know-how, but if you don’t have the head game, well, you won’t get very far. You can’t ignore all the facets of climbing, and that’s why it is so interesting to do. Life is similar. You can be powerful in a couple of areas, but when you ignore one, it will cap your ceiling of what is possible.
“I don’t know how to code.”
“I struggle seeing the use of Claude.”
“They don’t pay me enough to deal with this.”
Seems like all the same categories when frame them as insecurities or inefficiencies.
Josh Allred's Blog 