Finding or creating?

Chapter 39

There are at least two lines of thought about finding yourself or creating yourself. There they are. Some think you go through life searching and looking and discovering and uncovering and exploring and finding you. That you will expose those things that resonate and align with who you are as you go on this journey, these pieces will fall into place in your life like puzzle pieces once you unearth them or discover them. This search and miss method sounds pretty erratic and irrational and iffy when written down on paper, and perhaps I have done this POV a disservice in my descriptions. But I think this is the method that most people use and experience in their life, more responsive than directive, I think that most people get stuck in this method and place.

Others think you need to create yourself, and of course George Bernard Shaw is the most famous person who said this, and he is a creative. Surely he would say this! Creating is what he is all about. While most people try, at least for a short period of time, both creating their lives and finding their lives, this one takes far more energy and effort and responsibility. That is why fewer people stay in this space and posture in life. And hey lets face it, its a lot less spontaneous and fun, and more adult and pressure-filled, than “finding yourself”. But I would argue that it is also much more certain and gratifying and predictable. Just depends on which adjectives light you up I guess. What you really want in life . . . and honestly, isn’t that finding yourself and creating yourself too?

The best and the worst of days

Chapter 38

The loveliest of days are September and May days. Spent with great friends on a shaded terrace eating great food, have fantastic conversations. There has been a huge deficit of those kinds of days in everyone’s lives since Coronavirus showed up. And that was about six months ago. Things have never been worse nor better. Yep that’s right, that’s what I said. My friends that I had lunch with have basically had an excellent business startup, and the restrictions of Coronavirus has only helped them do this. I have had six months of basically no travel and I am much healthier for it. But there has been a huge deficit of great friends on terraces enjoying great food with super views. The best and the worst of days.

But how is this any different than any other time in our lives? It just is. And what we make of it always determines the outcomes. Coronavirus made some of us more entrepreneurial. Coronavirus made some of our jobs so difficult that we are changing jobs as soon as possible. Coronavirus gave great gifts to some of us, and cost others a great deal. Coronavirus made easy things hard and hard things easy. It limited us in some ways and set us free in others. It cost us more in some ways, and gave us great gifts in other ways. It bound us in a certain fashion and it released us in others. It created stress for extroverts and peace for introverts. It destroyed some systems and patterns, and forced the creation of other systems and patterns. Most of all it has changed and impacted how we communicate and spend time with people. Everyone handles that well, with a different degree of finesse. The point is, you control the finesse.

The trifecta

Chapter 36

Decide. Commit. Execute.

These are the two or three elements to getting things done, to finishing what you started, to moving those goals over into the completed category. The reason I said two or three, is that some people would consider Decide and Commit as the same action, while others see them as unique steps. I personally think they all have overlapping qualities yet are separate pieces of the complete whole.

For me, Decide is when enough thinking and evidence and need, coalesce into a breaking point. Deciding is essentially a change, a change in perspective, understanding, passion, insight or something like that. The evidence gathers that action needs to take place, and then Commit and Execute are soon coming down the pipeline. Once your understanding comes to the Decision point, once you are convinced by insight to move in a certain direction, then come Commit and Execute.

Commit is where most of us fall apart or fail. If Decide is the emotion, then Commit is the structure. Putting structure in place, building structure, binding yourself to a course or a cause or a movement, is involved and messy and costly in time and energy. And it generally takes the bulk of the time compared to Decide and Execute. Its the long haul piece. This is the pledging of yourself to a course of actions.

And that is when you shift to Execute. When you do it. When you put that plan and structure and emotion into action to complete an intention. Execute can also be a long haul process, but many times is more the culmination of years of commitment. Or like with my Real Estate investment company, it could be a series of small executions over years to finish the over all execution of retirement resources. 

The path to more

Chapter 35

Yesterday I was encouraging you and me to do harder stuff, to stretch and reach for better goals, to think hard about complex problems, to build more muscles, to build more capacity by making your body work harder. All in all, some of you might have thought I was trying to make your life miserable, and in general to simply make it more difficult, but this is the path to more in your life. More vitality, more excitement, more strength, more capacity, more of life.

I recall when I went to California a few years ago on a business trip and I stayed with some friends. Mike is at least 10 years older than I am and far more fit and filled with vitality than I am and he is pushing 70 years old in the way that I am pushing 60 years old. So he invited me along to go with him to cut some additional wood for the coming winter. I grew up cutting and splitting wood, and I am very familiar with this task and process. So I said yes. Well doing it with Mike versus doing this with my family, are very very different events. Mike cuts the logs bigger on purpose, so that they are heavier, on purpose. He loads them faster, on purpose, to make his body work harder, on purpose. He is increasing his capacities as he gets older, rather than letting them slid into obesity, diabetes, stroke, heart disease, and mental dementia’s. Mike has plenty of money, he could have hired anyone to do the job for him, but he saw it for what it was - an opportunity to work himself hard and raised the bar.

This is the path to more. Get moving you couch potatoes!

How to grow

Chapter 34

There is only one way to get better at harder and more difficult stuff - do more of it. You have to push things along a little bit more every day. You have to put heavier weights on the bar if you want to build more muscle. You have to think hard about difficult matters if you want to grow new brain cells. You have to try more complex maneuvers if you want to build your flexibility. “To get better at hard things, you need to do more hard things.” - Polson

This is a completely polar opposite approach from how I see most people wanting to live. The first question I hear coming out of people’s mouths is about how to make it easier and be more comfortable. Its that comfort that is killing us and making us weak. Your life and my life is already 1000 times more easy and comfortable than our not so distant relatives of 80-90 years ago. In fact their lives were so difficult that their average life spans were far shorter than ours are projected to be. Medical advances have impacted that life span in a huge way, but we also don’t wear ourselves to a frazzle physically each day just to survive anymore. Nor am I suggesting that we need to do that once again.

But there are practically no physical challenges in our lives any longer, and far too few mental challenges as well. These we have to put back in our lives in order to expand and grow and improve and get better at hard more difficult tasks.

All things magical and special

Chapter 33

The two things I find in life that are most difficult to maintain are focus and consistency. This is why I let my life be run by habits mostly. With the non-stop nonversation around here, focus is a near impossibility. Focus requires a proper environment. I know I know, there are people and writers out there who insist that focus can be done regardless of the noise, ambience and commotion around you, but I haven’t gotten there yet, and have my doubts that this mythical focus even exists. I need a high level of quiet and no other people, unless they can completely keep their mouths shut and I don’t have any of those people in my life. Some people would rather talk than breath.

Focus is necessary to all things magical and special. I miss it terribly (big sigh). At least consistency is easier to produce, by surrounding yourself with habits and patterns that you follow each day, a great deal of stuff can still get done. It is my only and last strategy to get the bulk of required actions completed each day. None of those completed actions are inspiring or magical though, because there is so little focus. Even as I write this each morning, the nonversation rolls on in the background. The practice of constant partial attention is killing me. Competition for my attention, and your attention, is intense in the world. Where you give it will determine the line of your life, where you go, what you do, what you are known for, and what you accomplish. Focus is a topic we have barely started here.

Refusing to despair

Chapter 32

Churchill said to never never never give up. That is easier said than done. We all feel like giving up sometimes. And occasionally feel like giving up regularly. This is in the normal range I am pretty sure. What separates the winners from those who give up is a tenacity, a persistence, an unwillingness to quit or capitulate that keeps them moving forward no matter the odds. You can develop this trait within yourself, albeit slowly. I don’t find this one grows very rapidly, but it can grow.

It starts in your mind, with your thinking, as you work through what you want to continue, and why. The why is so critical. When things got tough in the past, I would eat. Eating was my to-go stress management. Well that resulted in a 300 pound 5’ 9’ man who eventually had an aneurysm in his 30’s. I had to make a decision to never use food as a solution for anything in my life. Fast forward 25 years, and this same man weights an appropriate 145 pounds. But I don’t use food as a solution. And the why is critical. The why is, that food was killing me. It is a poison when consumed the way that I was using it. I have to know my why, or food can take over my life again.

It finishes in your actions. You have to take the necessary steps to keep making progress. Many times that can be one simple step. This could be just showing up mentally and physically for what needs to be accomplished, instead of procrastinating. Refusing to procrastinate is a huge step toward never giving up. Refusing to despair is another. You can do this. You got this!

Stung

Chapter 31

The last two days found me getting stung by two different wasps. The first one was not too bad, just a large mosquito size mark remains and it itches a bit. That one happened on the bicycle. The one yesterday though was a high speed connection while riding the motorcycle, that left the stinger in place and hurt like a mother. Still hurting like a mother! And all night the itching and burning was driving me crazy! Swelling is all the way back to my wrist and functionality is gonna be highly impaired at least for today.

Bee and wasps stings are a normal part of life, or at least a regular part of life in the deep South. When I was a kid, there were countless stings, and encounters with huge wasp nests, some terrifying runs across the farm as we tried to run away from the swarms. Today it is rare to run into really large nests, too many people and more aggressive nest destruction, than when I was a kid. Back then, if the nest wasn’t in a high traffic area, most people just ignored them and let them be until the winter came and you could remove the nest without fear of getting stung.

Getting stung is inevitable it seems, and treatment is debatable. When I was a kid, chewed tobacco was the favorite remedy to put on a sting. Benadryl probably is the favorite remedy today. Not sure one works any better than the other does. Mostly this is just a grin and bear it point in life. We all have them.

“Better than TV!”

Chapter 30

Beautiful day yesterday. A 40 mile bike ride, and a six mile walk, outside most of the day, just lovely. And my niece is here and she joined me on the hike, and we had a great sweaty wonderful time up and down the mountain. And the view was not bad either. Only negative was that there were far too many people up there, a bit noisy and plenty dusty as most Americans drive it instead of walking it. You just miss so much in life from the inside of a car. You lose all that tactile feel of the breeze blowing over your skin, the sun sharing its warmth, the rain on my face yesterday morning. A car takes away all those pieces and “protects” you from them.

Its the same way that TV “protects” you from life. Instead of digging in deep and living your own life, the vast majority would much prefer to watch it on TV, rather than live it. Or maybe its the other way around, that people do so little living, that TV dramas are far superior to our actual lives. That is a shame, and does not have to be. We can choose to lives that are much better than anything on TV. It makes me chuckle when I remember one Sunday morning after I spoke in church, that these three college aged girls came up to me and gushing about how my life “was better than TV.” I know they think they were paying me a compliment, but in reality they were telling me of the emptiness of their lives. 

Turn off the TV. Get moving. Start living.

Take the power!

Chapter 29

The hurricane is flowing East, and so I need to go West, at least that is what I thinking this morning. You always need to strategize an exit plan. It won’t happen if you don’t. Making no decision is still a decision within itself. No action is still a choice of direction and has consequences like any other decision.  Far better to own this and than to mentally punt it. Punting will not relieve the pressure, not really, because the ball is still in play and you have to participate.

This goes against our grain as adults, we long for the childhood days where we actually could get out from under the consequences of our actions or inactions. But those days are in the far distant past and this is once again, only a delay tactic, thinking about how it used to be. Wishing for it again. Its not and won’t and can’t and will not be. Today is today and its a very different today than yesterday was. Adult up! Own it. Put your skin into it. Don’t let inertia and laziness and weakness put you in a worse position. Go for it instead. Shape and change your situation to benefit you and your objectives. While you may not have enough power and influence to shape it perfectly, you generally can always influence what is happening around you and the situation of the moment. 

Take that power and use it. Build more of it. Stay engaged. Turn off the TV.

You gotta be you

Chapter 28

This is an upside down day. I don’t allow many of these in my life, because they are a train wreck to productivity, but sometimes you have to flex, and so here I am writing this at 5:30 in the afternoon instead of 5:30 in the morning. It may be more cogent or then again it may not. The last 48 hours has been a mad scrabbling halfway across the country and back, four flights, lots of people and lots of conversations. It felt like my old life again. I liked some of it, but mostly don’t miss it at all to tell you truth. I like the enforced isolation of the Covid-19 world. I know I know that makes me crazy to most of you, but heck I am just here telling the truth.

What that means for the future of my work is still unclear, and I do need to spend some time thinking this through. The potential implications are huge. But not in the ways that most people experience it. For me, distance work, remote work has been the norm for decades. Covid-19 has just made it more the norm. And now after traveling for the first time in six months, I am thinking that I need to do it more remotely, more distance work, more virtual, less in person.

But we all need in person connections as well to be healthy normal social people. I need less of this than most others as a solid introvert, yet I still like to spend time with certain types and groups of people. Like the co-workers that I spent the night with last night, and had breakfast with this morning, conversations flow and ebb so naturally and it is invigorating. It costs me practically nothing emotionally and gives much much in return. These kinds of interactions I would gladly have more of, but most people interactions are not that way for me. You gotta be who you are!

Moving fast in a slow world

Chapter 27

I have been living a the flight/hotel life for a very long time, but it still never fails to fascinate me and astonish me that I can do a 30 mile bicycle ride workout in the morning in Georgia and spend the evening in Pennsylvania with my daughter and her husband. And after four or fine hours of work here, I will spend this evening with clients and friends in South Carolina. I wrote one of the best pieces of work yesterday while on the flight from Charlotte to Harrisburg. It was great to have some space to think. And then apply that thinking to a client in Africa that is in a jam. First time in a while that I got to do what I do best just because I can, without having to juggle my two biggest people responsibilities.

So I get to sit here quiet and alone and with coffee, to think, be grateful, appreciate, write, contemplate, and then think some more. Life gives me far too few of these opportunities in my current situation. I am cherishing this one! And then I will get back on the plane and head back out to MooCow GA later, but still, this is an oasis. Everyone needs those. And those who are caretakers need them even more, and this includes mom’s of small children who are the ultimate caretakers. Why don’t you step up and give one of them a break today? You will benefit more than you can measure, but they will benefit even more. Its a win win. Plus the child or adult in question that is being cared for will get to wrestle and match wits with a new opponent. You.

Inspiring the RN’s

Chapter 26

Do, dream, learn and become. Those are the actions I want to see in those I choose to spend my time with each day. How to inspire the people you and I spend our time with, that we work with, that you are related to, that fill our circles of relationships, with do dream learn and become? Well first of all we have to be those kinds of people ourselves. Ah ha, that gets you where you live, doesn’t it? Trying to inspire people to be and do stuff that we don’t do ourselves is like rolling a large stone up an endless hill. You and me gotta be at the front of the line. We have to show it more than talk it. Don’t ever expect people to follow where you haven’t been.

Secondly what you are doing dreaming and learning and becoming has to be, . . . well, inspiring to those in your circles. My circles are primarily in the non-profit world, with a small sliver of the red-neck race car world types. What inspires my red-neck race car driving relatives, does not inspire my non-profit world peeps one bit. And trust me, I can’t even talk about my non-profit world with the RN’s (red-necks) the vocabulary is beyond them. But I digress - what inspires them is completely different! So I can do dream learn and become both in the human trafficking world and in the racing cam/horsepower worlds. Disclaimer here, I am much more everything in the non-profit world.

So first do it yourself, then be inspiring, and model it along the way. Like, I have a whole new field of learning that I am beginning just next month! Exciting!

All the pieces you need

Chapter 25

Today is my oldest child’s 32nd birthday. However I am taking care of my 79 year old dad. When I remarked that it was Heidi’s 32nd birthday today, he said, “I can’t even remember what life was like when I was 32.” I can though and it was a tough space to be in, but exciting too. I wonder what it is like for Heidi? And for the record I think my dad is full of bullshit when he says he can’t remember being 32, his memory is fine. But we all have different memories of 32, and where it is/was in our timeline is different for all of us.

I like what George Eliot said,  "It is never too late to be who you might have been." which isn’t strictly true, but it is largely true. Not strictly true in the sense that my cousin wanted to be an NBA star and he is telling me this when he is 50 years old, and that clock can’t be rewound. But for the most part, we can reach all of our potential, that we had at 32. It’s still hard work, but the potential in you should have only grown with the years, not diminished. Your capacity and skills and understanding and wisdom all should have grown and become more. Your networks should be larger. Your framework for understanding the world should be larger. Your perspective should be broader.

In other words, all the pieces you need to be what you were at 32, and more, should be in place. If they are not, then that is on you. Today is the time to start building.

In the dark

Chapter 24

Spraying the wasps in the dark. What a great metaphor in life. To me personally it sounds like a perfectly good way to get stung a million times. I think I prefer seeing my wasps coming for me, over not being able to see them at all. But according to my dad, that is when the nest is most full and you can kill the majority. I have not fact checked this, nor do I care if it is true or false. MY point is that wrestling with wasps is always risky business, but far far more so in the dark. Dangers signals are useless if you can’t see them coming.

As we get older we are generally more thoughtful, and avoid more dangerous situations. Evidently that maxim failed this morning as my dad went cheerily out the door in the full dark. Ok ok, you have to take some risks, it is better to deal with the wasps rather than just hope against hope that you aren’t going to get stung if you leave them alone. In fact we did just that, and I got stung. So deal with it ok! But not in the dark.

Address what is coming or what needs to be done in the full light so that you are best equip to stay or run or whatever needs to be done in the situation. Give yourself the best chance of a positive outcome. Don’t believe old wives tales. Don’t try to impress anyone. See clearly the situation and think with great clarity. Use your brain. You can do this.

On the inside

Chapter 22

Its time to slow down. On the inside. The external world operates on its own axis and factors, you have few levers to control or contain that world, other than the power of “no” and limiting your exposure of the external to non-toxic levels. But your internal world, this is where you have power, this is where you can shape things to maximize what happens inside of you, so that you can maximize how you shape and respond to the external world.

But there are forces, powerful forces at play inside of us as well. This is a lifelong journey of self-discipline and tempering those beasts that reside inside us. The sooner you do this in life, the more advantages you will enjoy. Unsurprisingly this can get easier as you get older and more experienced. And the hormones settle down, and you can think more than you feel your decisions, and consequently you make better decisions. Those hormones, and those social pressures are huge factors in your youth, not so much in your later adulthood. Though later you have the pressures of health and resources-depletion. So the point is that there are always pressures, no matter your age, but your capacity to manage those pressures generally gets better with age.

And slowing down on purpose is a great strategy. Especially on the inside, so you can be ferociously in the present moment and all here right now. This just gets better and better as you practice it, but it requires you to slow down inside. Smile. Realize that this situation has positives, and it likely has negatives, and you can choose which to focus on. 

Exactly exactly what you want

Chapter 21

Exactly what you want; the hardest thing ever to pin down, and the most important. There are so many competing pieces to your life, none of the most important will get the priority that they deserve if you fail to define exactly what you want. Not mostly what you want, and generally what you want, but exactly what you want. Give it body and definition and handles and measurements and substance. Give it life.

This is the most difficult kind of work, knowing exactly what you want. This seemed much simpler back when I was in college and the world was small and apparent options limited. I remember thinking a house on the hill above my parents, with the girl I was planning to marry at that time, would have been all anyone could have ever dreamed or hoped for, so big was this dream at that moment, that it consumed me and I thought I would pop from the pressure and size of it. Exactly what I wanted!

But I did not marry that girl, and I did not build that house on top of the hill. I married a different gal, and thank God that I did! However life with her has far larger involvements and moves around the world, and living in multiple countries, learning multiple languages, traveling the world, biking and skiing in exotic locations, taking risks I could not have even considered when I was in college, doing things and trying things and getting to work with amazing people these too would have been far beyond my imagination when 22 years old. The point is this, exactly what you want is a moving target, not a fast moving target, but at least a decade at a time different moving target.

You got work to do.

High control illusions

Chapter 20

There are few feelings more satisfying than when you get a big stack of stuff accomplished and it is no longer pecking at you mentally, distracting you with its constant pressure of not having been completed. Wow, it feels good to get that off my mental plate! Now I am free to enjoy other things, accomplish other things and generally change directions. After the big event was finally completed yesterday, I was able to do two important things, 1. Complete a long avoided outside project, and 2. Watch some hockey and relax. Wow, those two actions together were icing on the cake of completing the big stack!

It made for a great day, and we all need all the great days we can get right now, especially in the Covid-19 world wide shutdown. If you don’t feel this way, then you are likely dead and surely not reading this post. I need more and more of these kinds of days and I am aiming for just that - intentionally living in the present as ferociously as I can. That alone is another win, because the future is less predictable than ever before, and less stable and more frightening to think about. That makes it feel like we have less control over the trajectory of our lives.

In all honesty though, it more likely just shows that real small amount of control we had over our trajectories before . . . but the highly predictable cycles of the near future, in pre-Covid-19 times, made us feel like we had high control over how things would work out. All those illusions are gone.

Live ferociously in the present, while planning what you can for the future.

Beaver good, beaver not enough

Chapter 19

Well I guess my mind enlarged the way I was advocating for in yesterday’s chapter, because I pressed through and got things done from Georgia to Pennsylvania to Macedonia to Italy. Not bad for a rough start. And that was the whole point of the enlarge our minds chapter, because we can do it. We can get the important pieces done, we have to dig in and work it and eventually it will get done. The story of my life. I am the beaver in life, consistently gnawing away until the tree falls down. Mission accomplished.

So while I think you can accomplish anything you set your mind to, with consistent effort, there are other factors at play on the efficiency side. The huge one I discovered yesterday while working through mounds of work and tasks, is that my organizational skills cannot be accomplished in a healthful way, through gnawing on the tree, so to speak. The same effort that produces such good consistent work on the task side, does nothing to produce a good accomplishment on the organizational side. I clearly need more and different on the organizational side. The point being that more and different is needed for cerebral actions, than just your to-do list. It is a different kind of energy and action. I guess we can say that this needs to be a part of the enlargement of our minds as well? Definitely!

To give a little context, some of the confusion and disorganization comes from living in three places on different continents all at the same time. I don’t keep paper trails very often, because it is pointless, and that bites you in the butt when we are filling out technical details of taxes paid and you have no proof, and that kind of stuff. Guess we have to keep enlarging the mind.

Enlarge your mind

Chapter 18

My mind needs to enlarge, to handle all the changes happening in the world and in my life right now. I am sure you are feeling the same. I need an enlarged mind to take on this new mortgage I am signing up for. I need an enlarged mind to think about being here in the states for another year! I need an enlarged mind to grasp what is going on in every country in the world with Coronavirus. In fact all of these changes are related in some fashion to the virus and how it has affected all the systems in the world, and one change leads to another change which has led us to all these changes and far more than I could or would write down here.

In fact even as I write these words down on virtual paper, other thoughts are fighting to make their way to the forefront of my mental conversation and to-do list. I can’t finish one task, before the next is crowding in to take its place. This is why Ben Franklin said that you should never put off until tomorrow what can be done today. A task done is often one less thing on that list. One less item fighting for your mental space and room. One more accomplishment. And sometimes you just need to review the day carefully and remind yourself that you got more done than it feels like you did.

Because percentage wise, the more you have to do, the less each task registers on your DONE list. But that does not mean you didn’t get quite a few things accomplished. Enlarge your mind. Engage the present.