Net worth

Chapter 81

We always need to be calculating our net worth. Our net worth to the world, our net worth to our job, our net worth to our families. It will help us see what we are doing and the effect that it has on these pieces of our lives. We all do good things to move thing forward in the world, in our work and in our families. We show up! We are engaged! We are creative and insightful and helpful! We are giving and caring and sacrificial. We are generous and ready to share. We are committed and in this for the long run. We help solve gnarly problems and bottlenecks in the flow of life. We offer solutions to the most difficult situations.

These are the great contributions we make to our world and jobs and families. Those are additions we bring. But we all bring subtractions as well. Negatives. Bad habits that tear down these parts of our lives. Some of the ones that I see in me and those around me are pretty bad. The worst one is making fun of or disparaging other employees. In my office, your weaknesses are discussed in an open forum of the office workers, and everyone takes shots. Super negative. Complaining about the work. The work is the work. It pays the bills. Complaining about it is super negative. Your negative outlook. Earl says that he could have the only ticket in a raffle and still lose. This is poisonous in your life. And there are more.

But back to net worth. Once you subtract the bad from the good, that is the net worth.

Discombobulation

Chapter 80

A difficult beautiful wreck of a day. First of all, I needed to have this day, to see how rigid or flexible my daily routines can be, and frankly they aren’t very flexible, or my resistance to forcing them to flex is high. Too many things fall through the cracks and don’t get done when I wreck my routines or so I tell myself. Because of how the wrecked day ended up, I was able to get almost all accomplished. So why do I still feel so discombobulated?

I think I just crave order and structure, and I feel naked when that order and structure is disrupted. That is a transparent as I know how to be. So a solution might be to create a new structure and order? Ok, I am agreeable that this is a possible solution, but then it hits me, this is not just about order and structure, its also about energy and attention.

The mornings are the best energy and attention part of my day and if I restructure, then I am giving some other part of my life the best of me, rather than the habits that have produced a lifetime of results. My energy flows, become ever more important as I get older and I have less energy to share. And each and every one of us share the same attention challenge - because the world is clamoring for our attention more and more loudly.

Careful how you unpack and test your routines and habits that are producing for you...

Potentials

Chapter 79

The potential yet unrealized. This is so difficult to measure. I mean both of the other people on the team are convinced that this is a real money maker. They are the ones with the experience. They have the best understanding of the process and the product. Yet it doesn’t add up, or at least is not apparent yet to me. There is no way to measure potential, until it becomes some sort of reality and fully reveals itself to be . . . whatever its going to be. And that reality is something no one can know for certain until it happens.

I don’t like the unknowns, when I am depending on them to produce some sort of specific result. The unknowns are inspiring when the outcome is open ended and wherever it leads will be good. But when you are depending on the potential, that changes the entire tenor of the potential. This kind of potential is like a pendulum and can swing either direction. 

We face things like this all the time in our lives. Where we are taking action but don’t know how it will work out, and that unrealized potential has the capacity to harm us or help us. And often the capacity to harm others or help others. If you figure out a way to measure it up front, please let me know. Otherwise I will keep swing in hopes of a high potential good result.

Perfect

Chapter 78

Yesterday was an outside day. Can’t get enough of those. Church was outside bright and early and cold yesterday morning. The temps are going to force a change on that venue soon, but we dressed for it and it wasn’t too chilly, except for my feet. They were pretty much numb by the time we left. But our hearts were warm and the ambience could not be beaten. Church in the creation - winner!

Then a long wonderful wicked ride on the bike in the afternoon. Over 3000 foot of climb and beautiful colors and bright sunshine on my back and leaves of every color and little car traffic. The wind in my face, the views, the heat of working my muscles, the beauty of south central Pennsylvania on a Fall day -  magical.

Then at home at last, and all these upsides to Fall mean that the not only the weather is Fall but the leaves Fall too. And we have four big beautiful trees with lots of leaves to share. And share they have. So raking for hours, well past sunset thanks to the night lights outside, but we got them all done for the day. Lots more will Fall tomorrow and we will get to do it again and again. Pretty much awesome, raking up the leaves, then seeing and enjoying the green carpet of grass underneath, and the stars above. - perfect day.

It’s a perspective

Chapter 77

An old pickup truck, a lovely Fall day, beautiful foliage turning every color imaginable, a bright blue cloudless sky, a winding mountain road, going to see my niece and her husband. Sounds like a perfect day, and it was. It was also a terrible day.

The traffic was horrible, beyond imagination. It took me 45 minutes to travel the last 17 miles, my load came apart and I had to stop over and over and re-tie and and re-nail it and generally bite my fingernails the entire 3 hour trip back home because of that load, and my back was hurting and I was worried about so many things, and I am behind schedule and trying to arrive before dark so that we could unload.

The very same day. Descriptions of the very same trip. Both are completely true and accurate. The only difference is perspective. And attitude. Attitude is a skill Seth said and oh is he ever right. You and I can choose which kind of day we are having and what kind of day we are giving and what kind of day we are sharing. Does that remove the bad stuff? Of course not, but it puts it in its proper place.

It’s a skill

Chapter 76

It’s your decisions, not your situation that determines your life. Too many of us are convinced otherwise. And that is the wrongiest way of thinking possible. It makes you the victim every time. Life is just one big lottery and you lose every time. You have no power if you think that your situation determines your life. You have no power to choose and change and develop and grow and blossom and thrive.

I understand that our situations create the environment that we find ourselves in, and that every environment has boundaries and limits and that this can make you feel like you have no choices, no decisions to make. But folks, as Seth says, “attitude is a skill” and that can change everything! You and I can make 1% changes in each and every single aspect of our lives, and those 1% changes over time, make a huge cumulative impact.

Suddenly you will realize that your “situation” looks nothing like it did before! While in reality you changed, and your posture changed and your attitude and actions changed. The “situation” cannot remain static in the face of those forces.

American Dreams

Chapter 75

I came to realize yesterday that the American dream is no longer a reality for many people. I know I know, I have read about it over and over, and I honestly thought it just media hype, because I live on a fraction of what most Americans think of as a normal wage, and so perhaps that has weighted my viewpoint far to the right about this subject.

But yesterday I heard grown men, age 30-60, asking for their paychecks with urgency. Not the urgency of an emergency, but the urgency of chronic living paycheck to paycheck. The problem that this reveals is that either these people are making too little or are spending too much, and since I know how much these men from yesterday make, I am leaning heavily on the “spending too much” side of this situation. These men make good money, have great benefits, are getting overtime hours every week, (and some of them are even my age!), and yet they are paycheck to paycheck dependent.

I feel badly for them. Wanting less is a crucial skill and attitude to develop as you grow older, and they are clearly struggling with that. They haven’t saved an emergency fund, they haven’t built some margin in their financial planning and more importantly in their checking accounts. They haven’t found the discipline to live with less and be content. These are not milestones you pass at some point in your life and never struggle with them again. They are skills and attitudes that you develop and reinforce your entire life.

All we are left with . . .

Chapter 74

You have to live life in the now. Sure you are smart enough to learn from the past, but you can not change anything about the past. You have no power to affect the past. You can plan for the future, and you can wish and dream and put plans into action, but that too is beyond your reach today, because it is the future. The yet-to-arrive. It isn’t here yet. So all we are left with is the present, the now, today. You have to make this day count, because it is the only one you have. You have to live this day because there are no others to be had, at least until tomorrow if tomorrow comes.

I am not trying to be poetical here, I am trying to reign in my tendency to live anywhere but in this present moment. I don’t really know why I do this, or if others do it. I only know that it doesn’t make any sense and I need to stop forever. I have missed too much already by staying focused on either the past or the future, and missing all the Now. In effect I missed a lot of the real and actual substance and opportunities of my life by being so future-focused all the time.

Live today’s life today. It’s all any of us can affect and manage and chose and live.

A man-vegetable

Chapter 73

All out of sync, I need a new system. Yesterday I went to work and work in this context work meant 8 hours in the same location, focusing on someone else’s agenda. I guess that is the nature of work for most people, but I can’t live that way. I need their agenda to become my agenda, I need to own it completely or walk away from it. The unanswered questions are how much can I shape this work environment so that it works with my other two full time jobs? If I fail to do that eventually, then I will have some major structural changes that will have to take place in my life.

Notice that the first thing I do when confronted with these kinds of challenges (and many other kinds as well) is to find a new system or create a new system. Systems, or habits or patterns are the key to successful accomplishment in my world. Pretty much nothing important gets done without a system or habit in my life. I am just a squash or a zucchini otherwise. A man-vegetable and not much more. So put a system in place, but stay flexible. If you new system is too ridged right off the bat, it will prevent you from adding important pieces as you go along and learn more about your new situation and all that it demands from you.

And when you find yourself all out of sync, don’t panic. Relax and find a new place of peace and accomplishment within the new context. This will take a while, so be patient and forgiving and gracious to yourself along the way. 

Results and excuses

Chapter 72

"You can have results or you can have your excuses. You cannot have both." ~ Unknown

As I sit here making mental excuses for the situation I find myself in, this statement really bites hard. I have to own the changes and results that I want, or all I am going to have are excuses in the end. And I don’t know about you, but I can’t afford excuses. I need results, and to get results I will clearly have to make some changes. This is really hard to swallow because my morning routine has been carefully honed for decades and I have a super high resistance to throwing that baby out with the bath water, but I might have to do just that.

Perhaps I need to experiment with doing my morning routine in the evenings? Like right at this moment I am going in to have to walk away from this blog and continue later or on a different device because I have got to get a shower and get all my stuff together and be at work in less than an hour. ...

So I made it to “work” and of course the job is not ready to start. So back to redeeming the time that I have, this is how your produce results and not excuses. 

The shortest distance

Chapter 71

We can’t move forward if we aren’t facing the facts. As I have written recently here, the facts are the constraints of reality, that form your working situation. If you don’t factor in the realities that you are facing, then your dreams don’t have any soil in which to grow and take root and transform into something else. Be very certain here, that I don’t want to douse your dreams, I actually want to make them possible and water them and feed them until they become inevitable. But that starts with wrestling with the facts, the solid constraints of your current reality.

Some may think that I am talking about money or your budget, and while you need one, this is a flexible fact because you can move several of these pieces around, by spending less or making more money or both. Flexible facts are like wet cement, they could be a fact of your reality . . . but anything that can be impacted that significantly that quickly, is not what I am a referring to as the facts of your life. The fact of your life and my life are the relationships we have, the responsibilities that we have, and the limits to our imagination and willingness to grow and change and develop. For the majority of the people I know in the world, that last one is as solid a wall of fact, as is their mother and father.

Few people can hear this and take appropriate action - self-development is your number one factor in changing your life. The shortest distance between where you are and where you want to be is the truth. Michael Hyatt Sitting in front of TV is not going to move you forward. Sitting period is not generally going to move you forward. The action required to be and build the best version of you is mostly internal, not an external change of circumstances.

what’s possible?

Chapter 70

“What does this make possible?” Micheal Hyatt asked? And this is a great nuanced question. First of all and most importantly, it asks what is possible, rather than asking “what does this prevent” focusing you and me on the positive rather than the negative. It is surprising how often the only question we are asking in a new situation, is what is this negating for me? Now we can see that there is a positive way to frame the situation.

Second of all, it demands that we look around and see the situation in a new light. We can’t stop or change change itself, but we can decide how we wish to respond to the changes that come to us. This is the growth set mentality instead doomscrolling throughout our lives. It is that whole attitude and posture than makes lemonade out of the lemons life hands you.

So lets move this out of the theoretical and into the moment of real life. Think about the new context you find yourself in, the changes that have recently taken place, and see if you can find three new possibilities that would not have been possible before, or that you simply could not have seen before. Now which of those three are the most possible, the most doable, the most accomplishable? It may not, perhaps most likely will not, be the one you prefer, but you have to decide which one is the real new possibility.

Apply some of your time, talent and treasure to this new possibility. Let’s see what grows out from it.

Getting around the trade offs?

Chapter 69

There are always trade offs. If you go to the wedding in Georgia, you will miss the one in Florida. If we live in America, we aren’t living in Macedonia. If we are close to the grandkids, then we are far away from the parental. If we purchase this widget, then we can’t afford that one. If we attend this church, then we never see folks at that church. If we sing those songs at the meeting, that won’t leave us enough time to sing these other ones.

There are always trade offs and you can decide which one’s you want to make or choose. There is actually no way around trade offs because we are limited people living in a limited world, and this is where lots of folks get bogged down, because they spend all their energy and time trying to have it all, to get around the trade offs. To have their cake and eat it too. Sure there are occasional times when this occurs, but those are rare and the exceptions, not the norms. The norms are that there are always trade offs in case you didn’t hear me.

But this is actually a good thing, because I think trade offs can focus you and give you parameters and keep you from wasting all your effort and time and energy on trying to have it all - if you are smart enough to realize that there are always trade offs. These can help you decide where to invest your primary resources, time and treasure. It can help you know what you are making or what precise you are doing, and what you are not making and what you are not doing. That’s powerful. Which trade offs are you going to make today?

Owning your relational environment

Chapter 68

Stop blaming others for the relational environment you create. Rockwell 

This one bites pretty hard, because absolutely everyone of us is guilty of this at some level. I mean your every reaction and decision and body posture and look on your face, creates a relational environment. Notice that I said creates. You have to own this, at least some of this. People like me have to own a great deal of this. Unfortunately, I think I have to own about 85% of this. In other words, I create about 85% of the relational environment I find myself in. My responses are so poor, and so reactive, and I’m so focused on what I want to happen in my schedule, that I blow many of the opportunities that I have to contribute positively to my relational environment.

So I am trying to slow down. I think if I slow down. And if I think before I speak, think before I react, think before I shoot off my mouth, it seems to me that I will have a much shorter chain reaction that makes my relational environment suck sometimes. Because my reaction, creates a response in the other person, And their reaction to my reaction, creates in effect, my relational environment that I experience every day. If it sucks, then change it!

Much easier said than done. I’ve been trying to do this for 35 years, and I am only fractionally better at it now than I was 35 years ago. That may be the saddest part of this tale in every way. Own your responsibility to the relationship environment you find yourself in.

Retiring my thinking

Chapter 66

Retiring my thinking. My old thinking that is, because new thinking is required in the new coronavirusworld. This event has changed our lives, our work, our futures and definitely our present. If I hold on to the way I thought before, I will doom myself to being a mental cripple in this new world. Time to retire my thinking. Time to retire your thinking.

Retire your thinking about work. This whole remote working model isn’t going away. Get use to it. I have been doing for the last 10 years and it is mostly the best thing ever. To me the one major drawback is that it is nearly impossible to turn off work once you are fully engaged in the remote work world. I recommend an annual ocean cruise without WiFi for at least one week. Super excellent . And no one can find you!

Retire your thinking about hanging out with people. I was trying to remodel this prior to COVID 19, with limited success. I am trying to hang with people without food being the center piece around which we do this. I don’t eat after lunch is over so I can only do food at breakfast or lunch. As a mostly introverted person I don’t want to see another person before 10 am and certainly don’t want to be or feel social at breakfast. I am still struggling with how to do this one successfully. I have made the jump but others haven’t.

Retire your thinking about the present and future. They are never gonna be what you once expected. Retire and realign.

All in?

Chapter 65

All in or not? When you believe in something, how deeply do you believe it and commit to it? My commitments and my beliefs can be terribly shallow and superficial. I am owning up to this, in an effort to dig in deeper and be all in. I am not even sure what that means any longer, but I am trying to find out. I want to see if it can resolve these blistering dilemmas in my life, especially the commitments to my dad and my wife. These are the two most important people in my life and the ones that I am most responsible to and for.

I am more than ok with this part because I love them both and they are both easy to love. I enjoy spending time with both of them and making both of them happy and content. I love helping them accomplish their goals and wishes in life. I love seeing them both getting all the life that they want and more. I want them both to be healthy and whole. I want to be a key part of both of their lives.

But they are rarely on the same part of the planet at the same time. Currently they are only 675 miles apart, rather than their standard 5012 miles miles apart. And I am talking literal miles here, not metaphorical distance. They genuinely like one another and enjoy spending time together, but neither have the slightest interest in living where the other person wants to live. 

And I am caught in the middle, literally.

Can being “all in” change this too?

Good constraints

-Chapter 64

Constraints are good, when you follow them. 

What I mean is that I found myself driving an antique pickup truck on the interstate at night. This is so wrong for me to be doing that in so many ways. First of all the truck has 55 year old lights which don't work very well when they work at all. Second is my eyesight, because I haven't driven at night intentionally in years, maybe a decade. And add the speed and manner of other drivers and this became a disaster waiting to happen. This is the situation you find yourself in when you don't follow the constraints in your life. 

Boundaries and constraints can be your best friends. They can keep you focused and safe and on the road that you need to be on, rather than the road you think you should be on. Constraints and boundaries often define what and how you are doing what you are doing.

Sometimes, the constraints and boundaries will even define what you're doing. There are so many different ways to look at constraints and boundaries. But the older I get the more I find that they actually protect me, and keep me within the realms of my possibilities, rather than restraining me from doing something astonishing.

Just progress

Chapter 63

Persistence and patience are the keys to mega-productivity and few of us seem to have enough of either. I have persistence down pat pretty good, but I could always use extra doses of patience. Having said that, my patience mechanism varies depending on what we are working on. Like I have NO patience when I am hungry. I mean when I need to eat I need to eat! But if we are talking about selling a piece of real estate or buying one (as long as I am not going to be living in it) I seem to have endless patience. My last house sale took over an entire year to bring the deal together and get a check. Zero to one year is a very wide variance and I am still looking for the pieces that makes me patient in selling a property or fishing, but are absent when it comes to eating or making a change in my schedule?

Persistence on the other hand is much easier to use and to manage than is patience, in my opinion. The easiest way to let persistence float to the top all the time, is to remove all those time-wasting practices that would inhibit persistence, like watching TV or movies, or doomscrolling social media or the internet in general. If most people removed those from their lives, they would find that they have tons of space for persistence to rise to the top. When you are not distracted you will find that you can sit and be bored, or get all those persistent tasks that are always on your to-do list, done or at least make some progress on them. And that is the beautiful thing about persistence, it doesn’t require completion, just progress. 

New and different

Chapter 62

What life are you building in the new COVID world? I bought a house, got my wife back from our coronavirus enforced separation, moved to a different state, starting a new job, slept great on a new (different) bed, driving new and different roads, new scenery, new possibilities, new friends and neighbors, and new risks, new problems, new challenges, new things to resolve with different people and so much more. It would take a book to write down all the changes that could and are happening. 

Is it stressful? Oh heck yes! Am I handling it poorly? Often! Are we frustrated? Very much! Is this for everyone? Absolutely! The alternative is for you to stay in your historical circle and complain that things are not the way that they were before, assuming you liked that better than the way things are now. Of course you don’t have to move and buy another or different house in order to decide to build a better life in the new COVID world. You can do this right where you are, although the scale will be different than what I took on with a new house and a different job.

But you can try new foods out at home while you experiment with cooking new dishes. You can try different routes to work. You can choose to talk to different people while at work. You can listen to different stories than you did in the past. You can stop watching the “news”. You can read instead. Read widely and make sure it is non-political stuff. You can stop doomscollling on the internet. There are a thousand more decisions you can make to have and make a different life for yourself in the new COVID world. You don’t have to move to Pennsylvania to do it.

The committed

Chapter 61

John Assaraf: “If you’re interested, you’ll do what’s convenient. If you’re committed, you’ll do whatever it takes.”

This is a fine way to word-smith the difference between convenience and commitment. Mere interest in an activity or subject or cause is rarely enough for anyone to take the time and make the effort to dig in deep, to sweat, to sacrifice, to give everything or to show up every time. Mere interest is firmly entrenched in convenience and ease. As long as it is easy, they (or we) might keep coming back. Barriers are real, but they are not all created equal. I understand trying to remove the barriers that prevent people from making deeper commitments to a cause or an event. 

You will have to bring the barriers down to the convenience level of the most averagely interested person. Those are fairly low barriers and few important things in life have such low barriers. Notice that I said important things in life. And that is where this whole issue pivots. If you are only “interested” in the subject at hand, and you are only going to do what is convenient, then it is not a very important thing . . . to you at least. Now that does not mean that it is not an important issue, I work on many things that are super important to me and others, human trafficking and conflict mining to name two, but I promise you that they are not important to most other people. I can’t get them involved at any level. There is no convenience level of engagement when you are dealing with threatening and difficult situations like human trafficking and conflict mining.

I choose to spend my time with the committed.