Self-negotiation

Chapter 299

The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth to flossing.  Kevin Kelly

I would say that the purpose of makingcreatingstarting a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. Habits in and of themselves have no purposes except those assign to them by you or me. And I could go deeper here, because I am a huge fan of habits, more and more so as I get older and see the value they bring me over time. Unfortunately I have less and less time to enjoy those benefits, but I digress.

The beauty of what Kelly wrote is the “remove from self-negotiation” part. No more arguing with yourself about whether or not you are going to do A or B, you just do it. Less decisions to be made today. You might say a habit is a decision made in the past that continues until today. But no negotiation today, its a habit and I darn well will do it. Heck I even find myself structuring my day around them there habits! (Not to be confused with hobbits). But Kelly got it right, no more self-negotiation means no energy burn, no decision fatigue, no wavering.

But there is a more subtle piece to habits that I am missing here. Are flossing and telling the truth even habits in my mind?? I am not sure. I think of working out as a habit, but then again. I guess a “habit” can be defined as any systemic practice of any action day after day. If we use this definition then flossing and the truth are in.

Grateful

Chapter 298

One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment — so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. Popova

Today is Memorial Day here in the USA, a holiday that celebrates the sacrifices that our military soldiers have made over the decades, to give us the country that we have. Its a Federal holiday, so pretty much everyone gets the day off from work, and its also considered the generally the first day of the summer season here in the states. The funny thing is that almost no one does any celebrating of our soldiers any more. When I was a kid, we had parades and interviews with older soldiers, and those who had served in WW1 and WW2. Now I see little of that.

Instead it has become more about going to the lake in your camper and kicking off your summer. Now please let it be said that I am not against going to the lake and spending the weekend in your camper. I often do this with friends once a year myself. But you can’t celebrate the beginning of your summer and celebrate the sacrifices of war at the same time. Or can you?

Well honestly I think you can, which isn’t to say that I think many people actually do, but you could. The bridge between the two is gratefulness and remembering. While you are at your beautiful spot on the lake enjoying the beginning of your summer, STOP! Remember the wars and the soldiers who fought those wars, so that you could sit on this peaceful lake and just be. It is a great gift that you are enjoying, whether you realize it or not.

Now be grateful.

Moves in the game of life

Chapter 297

We can, therefore, see how the question as to the meaning of life is posed too simply, unless it is posed with complete specificity, in the concreteness of the here and now. To ask about “the meaning of life” in this way seems just as naive to us as the question of a reporter interviewing a world chess champion and asking, “And now, Master, please tell me: which chess move do you think is the best?” Is there a move, a particular move, that could be good, or even the best, beyond a very specific, concrete game situation, a specific configuration of the pieces? Maria Popova

Nuance. Chess and life and nuance. Popova has it right here, but I never saw it until she said it. There are no best moves in chess nor life, there are only moves. And whether or not it is the best move or not is tied tightly to the moment when the move is made, in relationship to all the other moves that have been made, plus the strategy of future moves, and most importantly what moves your game/life throw at you. This makes perfect sense once someone said the metaphor. In this sense, in chess and in life decisions, this is a great metaphor.

I am not nearly as confident that this is a great metaphor for the meaning of life questions as Popova proposes in the quote. Meaning of life questions are more philosophical. They are more about motivations and intent than action decisions. They are less strategic and more foundational than the next-step questions you need answers to in life. Meaning of life question will likely have a great deal of influence on those action-step decisions of which direction to choose in life, but they aren’t those questions.

Meaning of life questions aren’t situationally specific like chess moves.

Mortal couch slugs

Chapter 296

The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Popova

The constraints are what give it definition. You can’t do everything, you can’t experience everything you have to make trade offs and in the end, those choices, those boundaries, those decisions will give your finite life meaning. At least I hope they do, and they will if you employ them well. If you stay in front of the TV all day vegetating then your life will have no meaning at all other than you being a consumer of someone else’s thoughts wants and wishes.

But even couch slugs are mortal, so I am hoping that your coming death will give you a compulsion to get the heck up off that couch! But couch slugs aren’t likely to be reading this blog, so I will save that rant for my next TV appearance, and then they might catch it. Just don’t you ever become a couch slug, unless its temporary with a great book in your hands! 

Exploit a possibility to change the world. Make it happen. Distance is not an obstacle in the Coronavirus world, your reach has never been longer! Now may your dreams catch up to your possibilities and may the whole world benefit from your change you bring to the world. Make it matter!

Cosmic meaning

Chapter 295

The question life asks us, and in answering which we can realize the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual. Maria Popova

The meaning of the present moment. The Now. Today is all any of us have and what it means for each of us, is powerfully individualistic. And powerfully temporary. That is the very definition of this moment isn’t it? This can be deeply philosophical material for someone to carry around in their heads, and I doubt that most of us can manage the profound nature of our moments. I think I am doing good to occasionally to stop and smell the roses, much less contemplate the meaning of the present moment.

This does not make me any less thankful for the moments I have, but I confess that I am usually too busy living them to wrestle with their cosmic meaning while having them. But I do think most of us look back and think about our moments and have “ah ha” epiphanies about which one’s were really important. This in turns creates a little sadness in us, as we grapple with the importance of what we experienced, and that we did not value it or treasure it in that moment in a manner worth of its importance. But honestly we couldn’t have understood in that moment how important that moment was, because we were too busy living it!

And I think that is the question that life asks us. - are you living it? Or just thinking about it?

Figuring out life

Chapter 294

"In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed." ~ Sid Caesar

Life is popping in so many directions right now, I am feeling overwhelmed, and this reminder has a nice ring to it. It calls us to slow down and savor things a bit. Not to be so results or goal focused that we lose the perspective and reasons for why we are doing these things. That overwhelm feeling is not a pleasant one and I need to dial things back some, that seems clear, but the time constraints are killing me, and even they aren’t certain! Have to keep on reminding myself that you can only get one thing at a time done and when its done its done. Steady wins the day, not fast and furious.

So yes the days are passing and cannot be retrieved, and how you live your life is how you live your life Anne Dillard said. There is a whole lot of truth in that statement. There is a part of me that wants to argue that reaching all these goals and results is living a thing called life too, but I am not sure how to express it in a manner that won’t make the haters howl. I get Caesar’s point, that if goals and results are the only life you are living, then you are not going to be very pleased with the end results of life that primarily focuses on goals or results. I have read those same books and reports and I am still skeptical.

And isn’t all the life work balance and productivity writings today, more or less channeled down the same path of merging the Life and Work bits of our lives into the foundationally same bag of meaning and significance? 

I don’t think this conversation has even started, much less finished.

The life of the party?

Chapter 293

“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.”

—  Pablo Picasso 

This is very problematic for most everyone in the world. I guess that is why there are so few Picasso-level artists in the world. But more to the point, this is why there is so little Picasso-level effort and accomplishment in the modern world. Oh why not just say it, this is why there is so minuscule Picasso-level effort and accomplishment in my own life.

We don’t treasure or measure our great solitude, we measure how many friends we have, how social we are, how much we have gone in debt to purchase stuff, and other innocuous things, but we rarely ever strive and reach for “serious work”. Work that will change the world, work that will scale and affect everyone in a positive way, a life that is full and meaningful and significant. If you turn this statement around and look at it from the other direction, it becomes clear that few of us are interested in paying the price for either serious work or solitude. This is the critical point, we don’t want to pay the cost of a great solitude, and most would not know what to do with it if they had it.

Our current Coronavirus isolation complaints of boredom, everyday feels the same, watching eight hours of netflix a day, doing anything and everything we can to avoid solitude at all! Never will you find a great solitude with this approach. And most of us are more than ok with that. We want entertainment, amusements and fun. What is serious work anyways? Too often we want to be the serious life of the party, rather than producing something magnificent.

Perfect timing

Chapter 292

Don't wait. The time will never be just right." ~ Napoleon Hill

Don’t wait. Don’t rush, but don’t wait. Waiting for the perfect time is an exercise in utter frustration, whether that is waiting to have kids, waiting to buy stocks, waiting to sell stocks, waiting to start retirement, waiting to start saving for retirement, waiting to lose weight, waiting to get healthy, waiting to exercise, waiting to take that class or get that degree, waiting to go visit your grandkids, etc etc, you get the picture. There is no such thing as a perfect time, there is just now, Just do it, Start. Don’t wait.

Getting started always takes the most energy. Objects at rest tend/will stay at rest, and objects in motion will stay in motion, or something along those lines of relativity. So getting a nonmoving object moving is where all the energy is required in most scenarios in life and physics. Once moving, it still takes energy, but not nearly as much.

Of course getting an education or businesses or an organization moving is a whole different scale and can take months or years, but still, getting the process moving takes a burst of energy compared to the regular ongoing energy needs to keep it going. This is the number one reason I hear from people about why they haven’t started, why they are waiting. 

Its still going to take just as much energy to start moving this mountain tomorrow as it does today. And if you are waiting for more energy tomorrow, well good luck with that one, the vast majority of us have the most energy today that we will have for the rest of our lives. We are getting weaker as we get older, not stronger.

Don’t wait.

Perfect timing barely exists.

The cat, the dog, the fight, the spigot

Chapter 291

The cat, the dog, the fight, the spigot

The garage (carport in southern-speak) and house have about 18 inches in between them. Its an unintended breezeway between the two, too small for anything useful, just an entrance to under the house and an outdoor facet is located there. My bedroom is located precisely in the middle of this L shaped breezeway between the house and the garage.

This morning, at 4:23 am, a cat and a dog met there in the breezeway, whether on purpose or not, I have no idea, but meet they did. It was an explosive violent and noisy meeting. I am certain people all across the entire county heard this ruckus. They may still be fighting for all I know. They were banging all over the place out there, first against the garage and then against the house, barking and screeching, impossible to tell which had the upper hand, and eventually after what seemed like an hour, and was likely 15 seconds or less, the fight and battle moved on out of building’s harm way.

I flopped over in hopes of getting some more sleep, but soon my dad was up and out of bed, and turning on every light in the house, so my hope for sleep wasn’t very hopeful. I thought he was up because of the mouse traps we had been setting this week (this is another story for another day) and he had caught one the night before at about this time of morning and had woken us all up disposing of the mouse. So I figured that why he was stomping around the house. But I was wrong. He heard water running somewhere. And that was driving him crazy, but he doesn’t hear well enough to figure out where is was coming from.

So he eventually knocked on my door and asked me to help him locate where the water was running. Long story short, it was the outside spigot where the dog and cat met and had a disagreement. So violent was their disagreement, that in the middle of their fight, they hit the facet so hard, that it turned the water on, and eventually my dad heard it.

I never did get back to sleep.

Easier and harder than you think

Chapter 290

Mental wealth is the power to choose how to spend your attention. - James Clear

This is the greatest wealth of all four that we have covered these last four days, in my opinion. Attention is the most pivotal factor in our lives. It determines more results in our life than anything other than Persistence. But you can save on Persistence, if you are laser focused with your Attention. Then you can use your Persistence on the MIT (most important thing). 

But most of our Attention is demanded by others for their agendas, whether at work or at home or church or in the shop. This is how we earn our money, keep our relationships, build our networks and get stuff done. Attention leads the effort in all accomplishments. It is the power to analyze, develop, change, understand, invent, encourage, bless and share love. Attention is quiet and internal, you need to sensitize your Attention gage, so that you always know when you are spending this most precious asset. 

So you get to the wealthy part when you get to decide where you lavish your attention, rather than others deciding where you spend your attention. This is easier and harder than you think.

The easiest way to make major progress in gaining mental wealth is by saying no and creating boundaries. Say no to everything that you don’t want to capture your Attention. This requires boundaries and constraints around who have access to you, which in the modern world actually means, staying off social media and the internet. And I haven’t watched the “news” in 13 years and viola and gasp I am still alive!

Get rich.

Guard your Attention.

The power of choice

Chapter 289

Time wealth is the power to choose how to spend your day. - James Clear

This is what children think adults have, and what adults think children have, and what they both envy in the other. But the reality is that few people in the world have unprescribed and unstructured days, even though children think adults can do whatever they want and adults think that children have no responsibilities. This is not about responsibilities though, its about the power to say no, and it depends, at least in part, on financial wealth.

Its about the freedom to say no to all the things that you don’t want to do, so that you can say yes to all that you do want to do. Its the luxury of unprescribing and unstructuring your days if that is your choice. My choice is to have much of my day be the same over and over, so that I am not decision fatigued and weary, and unable to choose how I spend the core of my day when that time comes. I get up at the same time, eat the same breakfast, eat the same lunch, exercise the same route on my bike, lift the same weights, even wear the same jeans for days on end, and around the place I am currently staying, even have the same nonversations. 

But all that sameness is a gift for the most part, because then the core of my day is alive with my choices. Yes there are still structure pieces that I have to get done each month, expectations that I have to deliver on just like you. But the primary reason I stay in this job is because of the Time Wealth it affords me.

Paycheck to paycheck?

Chapter 288

Financial wealth is the power to choose how to spend money. - James Clear

There some a point in your life, where you move from living with your parents and they supplying much of what you need in life, to living on your own more or less, and supplying yourself what you you need. You need money. So you get a job, or jobs. Invariably, you have more month than money because you wouldn’t have needed to get a job otherwise. And so starts the decades long process of making more money and reducing your expenses as you can, . . . and you can. These people will eventually find the power to choose how to spend their money. They will eventually make more than they spend. They will discover financial wealth as they save and invest more and more of the money that they are making from their jobs.

There are other paths that people take as well. Many end in bankruptcy, some from businesses gone belly up, many more from fiscal irresponsibility. I am surprised at how many people I know who have done this. Others wade through life paycheck to paycheck for their whole life and come to retirement with nothing, and live on the ragged edge of existence on whatever Social Security covers, which is not nearly enough. These people never achieve financial wealth. They will never have the choice of how to spend their money. The only choice this person can ever have, is how much they choose to be content with not choosing. 

These are not the only two paths to take, there are hundreds of other ones, in between these two. But most folks follow one or the other of these for the most part.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life, start choosing!

I struck gold!

Chapter 287

Social wealth is the power to choose who to hang out with. - James Clear

Few people ever get to experience this in a way they enjoy. And no social hierarchy is more layered and sensitive than high school. And as I think back on that hellish four years, few people were hanging out with who they wanted, or who they thought they wanted to hang out with. I strongly suspect that they would not have actually enjoyed hanging out with who they thought they wanted to hang out with. Isn’t that the one thing teen books truthfully get right ? College was somewhat better, or I should actually say, got better as you got older.

But adult life happens in a different way. Work and the organization you are employed by largely determines your social possibilities. Social possibilities at work don’t force you to stay only in those circles, but there are lots of pressures and time and structures that will keep you with those people a great deal of the hours of your day. Then there are the outside of working hours social expectations, birthday celebrations, anniversaries, promotions, child births, graduations, etc etc. Again more pressure to be with work peeps. And if you really truly like these people, this is a win win! I don’t know many people who choose to hang out with work peeps, when they aren’t obligated to do so.

I left the company that I had worked with for 23 years, and the change in my social wealth continues to be one of the greatest benefits from having moved on to my own company - I get to choose who I hang out with. Or better said, I almost never am required to spend time with people I don’t like.

Gold!

The easy stuff can’t move you

Chapter 286

“Don’t wish things were easier. Wish you were better.”

Not sure where I read this, but I think it has a great deal of value as a concept. We spend far too much of our time wishing wanting desiring easier. In fact some of my acquaintances are driven by simply the idea and hope for things to be easier. Let’s admit it, ease and comfort are two big driving factors in our Western culture. Combine that with the third big culture driver - avoid suffering at all costs - and then you have the Western make-a-wish foundational piece of wanting life to be easier.

But difficulties and resistance and constraints and effort and challenging situations are what make us better and stronger and smarter and wiser. So the moral of this story at the very least is that you and I need to be better, rather than things to be easier. When you think of it like this, things being easier is just like cheating. You are cheating yourself out of all kinds of blessings - that look and feel like difficulties. You are cheating yourself out of all kinds of wisdom and strength. You can’t get stronger and wiser when everything is effortless. I am heading to the gym here when I finish writing this chapter, and I am gonna load it up! I am going to load that bar with all the weight I can move, all I can handle, because that is the only way to get stronger!

Or you can go all philosophical here, and just look back on your life. If yours has followed a trajectory like mine, then all the key moments, all the key decisions, all the key directional changes and orientation changes in my life happen at the most difficult moments. None of the easy parts moved me in the great directions I needed in life.

Asumptions

Chapter 285

Sitting here staring at a blank screen will not get this moving. You have to put words on the page. You have to give shape to the story. Like the stories my dad is telling as I try to write this, all of those stories have one ending, based on my dad’s assumptions about both the husbands and the wives in those stories. My dad assumes that the wives who made sandwiches and fetched iced tea for their husbands were weak and foolish, and that strong women will tell their husbands to get up and make or fetch their own! But this is not the only possibility here in these stories. The women my dad is making these assumptions about, could be like my own wife, who actually finds it so delightful if I will actually ask for a sandwich or glass of something to drink, so that she can get it for me! Took me way too long to figure out that for my wife, this was way fun and something she has a blast doing for me. That does not make her weak nor foolish, it makes her at the very least, generous and thoughtful, among other things.

My dad’s stories assume that the men in his story are helpless at taking care of themselves. That they can’t cook or make a sandwich or pour themselves a glass of tea. Of course anyone who cooks, knows that anyone can cook. Men or women can do all domestic tasks period. They are not gender specific, no matter what they believe in the Slavic world.

And lets be honest here, I have made assumptions about my dad’s assumptions. They could have been, and maybe are, otherwise.

But don’t lock yourself into one story ending or meaning. There are lots of possibilities.

His little red corvette

Chapter 284

Today is the four year anniversary of my brother’s death. Time only moves in one direction and that is forward. There is no going backwards to what was in the past. So thankful for the 51 years that we had him in our lives. So sad for the fact that he is gone. Even though he still surrounds me/us everyday. 

I am still riding his motorcycle every week. When he passed away, my dad had the wild hair of purchasing his motorcycle from his estate, as a memory token. So it sat mostly, in the garage here gathering dust, while we remembered. Then my dad sorta woke up and realized that the bike was rotting, sitting there, never being ridden, and so suddenly my brother’s bike became my responsibility. I already had a bike! His bike was too short for me! Its not my kind of bike! But it is growing on me, I like it better now than before. Its still too small, but otherwise, a great little motorcycle. But I don’t like the emotional weight that comes with it.

I still see the place where we spread his ashes, almost every day. Its a constant reminder of his absence. That geographical marker isn’t going anywhere. I could change the way I travel each day I imagine, but that would not spare me the sight of his resting place either, because his instructions were to place his ashes on the highest point in the county. We did, and now he can watch us all the time, no matter where we are in the county. We can see him too.

Mostly we are just sad that he isn’t here with us, to laugh and enjoy life together. 

A mother’s day

Chapter 283

Mother’s Day 2020

Three and a half years and it still sucks. Sitting at the graveyard thinking about all that was, and can never be again. I can’t help but think that I wish I were as brave as you were, solid as you were, giving as you were. If only thinking about it would make me so. 

On the other hand, only a selfish fool would want you to have that life back, that it was at the end. So hard to let you go, but that is the only choice we had, if we really love you, and we do.

Obviously there are many others struggling in the same way today, as I have never seen this “memorial gardens” as filled with visitors as it is today. Then again, I have never been here on Mother Day before. Usually I have the place to myself so to speak, but there are  dozens of people all around me on this hillside where we laid you to rest so recently, so long ago.

I don’t like the changes we have had to make since you left us. The new normals that have come to be without you. Daddy speaks without ceasing and I say very little. Probably not good for either one of us. But we are making some headway in figuring out what life without you and brother looks like. How we can make a form of peace within the torn in fabric of our lives. I will be honest with you, I don’t like this new life many days. But you would tell me to stand up and change what I don’t like, if you were here. 

 I will try.

Bitten!

Chapter 282

I got a powerfully negative reaction from something I wrote recently. I reminded me that need to write because I believe what I am writing, not because people agree with me. I need to write because I am polishing my thoughts and my writing skills not because it will make everyone happy. You do not need anyone’s approval, you need to write to express yourself and force yourself to think.

Of course this would not even be an issue, that someone disagreed with me, if they had not done it in such an ugly manner. Interestingly enough, her reaction to my post, actually proved the point of the post, but of course that is bittersweet, because the ranter and raver never got the point obviously. They just slung injurious words left and right, lashing out recklessly. That shows the level of pain I caused them, or that they think I caused them.

Actually they inflicted this pain on themselves, by not being willing to consider another view, by reacting rather than thoughtfully responding, by choosing anger over thinking, by writing something they can’t take back in haste instead of waiting a day and mulling over their letter, by flinging hate rather than reconciliation. All of these actions are on them. The original post is on me.

I apologized. Not because I was wrong, but because that is what adults do when they have offended someone. No defense of my words, no backing up, but sincere apology because my words have hurt someone. I am even more deeply sad that this has broken our relationship, even though that was their choice as well.

Sometimes, no matter what you do, you are gonna get bit.

Far afield

Chapter 281

There is more to human life than comfort, entertainment, and the avoidance of suffering. Or there ought to be.” - From the introduction to  Faith in the Future  by Jonathan Sacks

There is an elegance to how Sasks states this. This could be an indictment against the West in General. I realized and experienced this in such a shocking way when we moved to Russia in 1994 for work. The contrasts were stark. Everything was smaller, darker, and less. Few comforts to be found. No entertainment to be had. And suffering was considered the norm. We moved into a tiny one bedroom apartment with three small children in tow and were flummoxed. We had lived in what was considered a small and modest 3/1 split level house in Pennsylvania prior to moving to Russia. The change was shocking.

The most basic things went from being the most basic things, to the all day everyday majority-focused part of the day. Shopping for food became a constant part of each day. And there was no telephone that could call my parents in America, And there were a million other inconveniences especially when the utilities would go off without warning for weeks at the time, no water, or no gas, or no electricity. In short it was like camping with no stores to buy supplies. I hate camping.

But there is where the differences come to the forefront, once you can get past the lack of conveniences. It is the one of the reasons that relationships are so deep and rich in Russia. It is one of the reasons that friendships are so durable and satisfying in Russia. There is more to life than comfort, entertainment and the avoidance of suffering. But you might have to go far afield to find it.

The shorter future

Chapter 280

"The longer you wait for the future the shorter it will be." ~ Loesje

What are you waiting for? The World Wide Shutdown has thrown many into the lake of stay-at-home-isolation, and it seems that many are finding that experience difficult. I have a hard time understanding that since I have worked out of my home for the last 26 years. But as I read threads in the blogosphere, it seems apparent that many have extra time on their hands and no way to burn it off in traditional ways, since sports has also gone the way of the dodo.

Let me say up front and transparent here, that I am a hockey whore, I could easily watch six hours of hockey each and every day 365 days a year. I keep waiting to get weary of watching hockey, but it hasn’t happen yet and I have been waiting 30 years. The reason I mention this, is because watching sports is just a way to waste time. Enjoyably I will grant you, but a waste nevertheless. And currently, unless you are an esport fan, you are out of luck. This compounds the “problem” of extra time on your hands.

A smart person would reread the quote above at this point. You have time to reinvent yourself, learn a new skill, learn a new language, learn a new job, get a different job, open a business, landscape your yard, restore an antique automobile, rebuild an engine, paint your bathroom, whatever time consuming task or project or desire you have been putting off because of not enough time.

Your future is getting shorter.

Get started today.