Allocations

# Chapter 122

There is time, but how you and I allocate it is making us feel like there is never enough. There are so many conflicting messages about how to allocate that time, and no matter which choice you make, there may be some angst about the choice you made. The only way to resolve this is as I have said many times in the past, have Uber clarity about what and how you are choosing to live, which priority’s will gain your attention and get completed while all other things get a no.

I feel that I have gone the other direction, that I have said yes to new things without the real margin to do so, essentially dealing a no to my main core of work, because there are never going to magically be more hours in the day or week. And now I don’t know how to reconcile this largely unreversable decision to take on more and it will and is, catching up with me. I really need some outside input so that I can have clarity about whether this is a one year crunch where this extra will go back into the box it is supposed to be in, or if it will continue to expand and have a life of its own, in order to give the results that I anticipated from the beginning.

Even the going to office piece, which really isn’t necessary to do the extra work, that can all be done remotely, is to show that I am all in, but to show who what? And frankly all the pieces of my life are getting partial attention now. No deep work is possible in the loud noisy environment at the office, so going there each day is super negative. Deep work? I haven’t done that for months.

Nows

# Chapter 121

The time is now. This was driven home both by our morning devotions that Brenda and I had together, and from the text that i got from my neighbor that they all three have a terrible case of coronovirus. They got the super sick version of this illness, the one like Jake had back in April, and we are praying for them and fixing chicken soup for them, even though with this virus you have no working taste buds it seems. But the time is now. And time is always in short supply, there never is enough, and the only moment you truly have at your disposal is now.

So what do you need to be doing now? The Now is the focus. What needs to happen Now? What needs to move to the top of your priority list, the top of your to-do list, the top of your actions and next steps? Who needs to move to the top of your lists? Who needs you right now? Who should be receiving your attention now? Which decisions about your finances should you be making now? Which commitments to your church should you be making now? And of course you have completely run out of Nows, but you understand that in here somewhere, are your nows, and mine lie elsewhere, because I have already done your nows and you have already done mine.

Many will read the above paragraph and continue in their paralysis and not do any of the Nows they need to be doing. Others will be overwhelmed and will choose to watch YouTube videos instead. Others will turn on the TV and turn off their brains, even if it is educational TV. Others will play candy crush and facebook and twitter, and all the Nows will fester and turn rotten, its moment of usefulness is now past. The time is now.

# Chapter 120

The Thanksgiving lunch bash with the whole York crew went surprisingly well. I was so relived that this it did for Brenda’s sake. She put so much work and thought and effort into the day, and the kids were pretty decent in the whole process. But the fact that that they all came and were well behaved and did all the things that she wanted them to do was a big win. Why do we put so much pressure on these social constructs? Why do we expect so much from people in these situations?

Well we want and hope for more and better from them. High expectations aren’t evil in any way. And she got what she wanted! If we had aimed for my low bar of expectations for 5 small children, I am sure we would have received that too, but it would have been much less. Nothing big to shoot for. No stretch for anyone. This was way better and I am properly shamed that I did not ask for more, and thrilled that Brenda did. She accomplished a great deal in their lives and futures yesterday, while I did not.

There are a number of great lessons here. First of all is aim high and live with whatever disappointments that come. Racing to the bottom of lowest expectations isn’t going to help anyone dream and be inspired. Second of all, even Neanderthal’s can be inspired by someone like my wife, as my expectations were more along their Neanderthal natures and general possibilities, but they all surprised me in the end. Three, expect more from yourself.

Gift horses

# Chapter 118

We finally got back home last night and are in quarantine because we haven’t received our COVID-19 test results back from the lab yet. Personally i am thankful for quarantine because I need some down time after our whirlwind trip to the parental. What others see as punishment and restrictions on their “rights” I see as a great opportunity for rest and projects around the house, and my raspberry pi project and my guitar project and my house projects and my kids and grandkids and, well you get it, I have projects and I don’t have time to do them nearly as much as I want.

We can always choose how we see our situations. This is so difficult to remember in the moment, but I really need to and you really need to because it changes everything. We need to more than ever. Life is plenty challenging these days and so we need to see each situation as a positive and be grateful for all that we have. We may not have all that we want, but almost all of us have all that we need and can share and can give and can be generous, and when you take this posture on life and hold on to it, it can be transformational. Doesn’t transformational sound enticing and awesome? You can do this, you can have this. Sometimes a quarantine can be your friend and a great gift. It’s all in how you look at it.

Tasty armadillo?

# Chapter 117

Holiday falls. This is the year of many things, and for me at least, it is the year of Holiday falls. On Father’s Day I turned my back into hamburger with a terrible crash over a dead armadillo. Yesterday, Thanksgiving, my rear tire got caught in the wet railroad rail, and spun my bike around sideways, and although I tried, I couldn’t recover and so I hit the asphalt again. Albeit in slow motion and into a water puddle. So a mostly wet event, although my elbow is chewed up pretty good. What is it with these Holiday falls??

On the grateful side, I continue to be able to ride, even with all these falls, and so I am thankful that Father’s Day crash, did not permanently handicap me. I am very thankful for this. The caliber of injuries I got from Father’s Day Crash were the type that keep people off their bikes after an event like that. While I have lots and lots of new scars, they are in places that few people will ever see. Another thing to be thankful for. And the road rash from yesterday’s misadventure is just going to add to scars and marks I already bear.

On the non-grateful side, if there weren’t so many cars and dogs and roadkill distracting me, I don’t think that either one of these falls would have happened. The world is not going to bow down to my wishes on this one, I understand that, but I can still wish that cars would slow down and move farther away from me, that people would pen their dogs and that the buzzards would work more quickly and clear the roadkill faster and better. But maybe armadillos aren’t very tasty.

Cheers from the far past

# Chapter 116

/"Whatever you are, be a good one." ~ Abraham Lincoln/

Amen to that. People are so much more interested in seems, in the what you are part, rather than the be a good one part. To be a good one, man that is the hard part, the difficult part, the unappreciated part, the unpopular part. And depending on the job, it can be a decades long process to be a good one. Surgeons, dentists, veterinarians, mechanics, and such folks require far more than education, they require experience and practice. But every, be a good one, is more a posture and an attitude in most jobs than experience and practice.

That posture and attitude will serve you well in more ways than just work and jobs too. It is a can-do posture, a forward leaning, an effort toward getting everything moving in the right direction, and to keep it moving. This posture is that this is my responsibility and opportunity and that I will make something happen and that something will be positive. This attitude is that I have to own this, this depends on me and my decisions, that whatever good comes out of this will because I took action and did what needed doing and then some more. This attitude can take you far in life, and far in your relationships and work.

Notice that someone from the far past is the one encouraging you to do this. You won’t hear this much in the modern world unless you are turned into leadership channels and such. President Lincoln said it well. Now dig in.

Your surgeon or mine?

# Chapter 115

I don’t want to do business with people like this. The potential customer called me back, having decided that he wants me to do the job. He wants to be put back on the schedule for next week. He wants us to do the assessment for free. He wants us to do the job more cheaply than the people he has scheduled on Monday. Even though our process is more expensive and lasts much longer, he wants us to be “competitive” and to skip our processes that make sure he will be a happy custom in the end - but he never will be happy.

Don’t get me wrong, he and you and I all should get more than one estimate when we are having a costly job done and we are footing the bill. But expecting one surgeon to use the measurements and assessments of another surgeon before cutting on your intestines, is a very apt metaphor for the situation we are discussing. This is not like getting four estimates for pest control around your home. Those companies will never have to leave their telephone and desk to all give you their programs and costs. This is not pest control, it is instead highly skilled measuring and planning and investigation, specific to each and every job. I can’t use your data, and you can’t use mine.

And this customer, in his drive to save $5, already knows this and doesn’t care. Even if it results in unsatisfactory work in the end. Like I said, I don’t want to do business with people like this, who want to hamstring your processes, to save a few pennies. They will never be happy nor content, and neither will you by working with them.

You know what to do

# Chapter 114

I think most of us know what we need/should/ought to be doing. And here is the gap, we still don’t do it. We have lots of reasons and excuses and constraints, but in the end those won’t matter, you and I will lose if we don’t do what we know we need to be doing, should be doing, ought to be doing.

Back several lifetimes ago, when I was studying to be a pastor, the preaching teacher said we must take out of our sermons the words must, ought, should, because people can’t hear it and it makes them feel external pressure to do something. And he probably gave a lot of other reasons why public speakers should not use those words. But I am not public speaking and I for sure am no longer a preacher, and so I am using these words liberally because no one is saying them to you. You know what you should be doing, what you ought to be doing. Now do it. Be a winner. Be successful! Be accomplished. Complete your dreams, and live out your plans and finish what you started when you were first inspired.

Do it with a singular focus, unwavering and unshaken, regardless of what other people may think or what they may be encouraging you to do - like watch a YouTube video, go to the bar after work, watch TV, listen to this song and that podcast, and generally waste all your time with nothing-producing actions. You know what to do.

/I know what I have to do, and I'm going to do whatever it takes. If I do it, I'll come out a winner, and it doesn't matter what anyone else does." ~ Florence Griffith Joyner/

Get moving! Start living!

# Chapter 113

“You walked all the way up here?” Was the question that the man asked us at the top of the small mountain. What was flabbergasting us most, was how FEW people were walking, and how many people were driving up this lovely 2.78 mile trek. It was beautiful, but it can’t be experienced in a drive-by fashion. This trek was perfect for walking, even though it had some steep parts along the way. A warm Fall day and colors to be seen if you weren’t moving too fast. These can only been enjoyed and experienced on foot. Get moving. Start living!

But walking is not a usual practice in America. It definitely is a usual and typical practice in the rest of the world. We walk everywhere. We walk all the time. Americans walk nowhere. Americans don’t walk even to their mailbox! As I ride my bicycle (another thing Americans don’t do that the rest of the world does regularly) around the county, I see people driving their cars out to the mailbox all the time. My dad gets upset when he hears me voice this discussion, because he believes he can’t walk. But I disagree, he “can’t” walk because he doesn’t. The only thing you can do to hurt your body in one sense, is not use it. The top of the hill we were on yesterday was proof of people not using their bodies.

The worse part of it, was the dust that these cars kicked up for the few walkers/runners/bikers, as they were tearing up and down the mountain. It is bad enough that they won’t take care of their own bodies, but worse yet that they spray those who are, with wild dust storms.

Get moving. Start living!

Only the power you give them

# Chapter 112

Things are tough for many people in the world right now. Tougher than they can ever remember. Coronavirus world is here to stay for the foreseeable future and it has greatly complexified many people’s lives. This feels like a defeat for most people. But defeats, like viruses, are temporary. They will eventually pass and their effects will only be in your memories. Ok those may be strong and powerful memories, but they are still only memories. They only have the influence you give them.

But many people equate defeat with a finality that confuses me, and its almost like the feelings that people have about COVID-19, and the conspiracies they have about it, gives these matters a life that they don’t deserve. This is not the end of your life, nor your opportunities, nor your future, nor your potential, nor your possibilities. These are temporary.

Quitting and giving up, now that can be a permanent action. Those can be final choices. This can be game over when you make these choices. Everything is possible to recover from except these actions. I strongly urge you to never give up, to never quit. These decisions have a finality to them that defeats and viruses don’t. Losing a game is not a losing season. Getting the flu or the coronavirus is not fatal for most people.

Don’t ever give up.

Partial commitments - the ultimate oxymoron

# Chapter 111

Commitment - either you are in or you are out. Nothing is so binary as commitment. There is no middle ground, there is really no scale to speak of, perhaps a little wiggle room on either end, but not much. Either you are all in or you are all out, even if you are making token appearances at being in to fool yourself and others, or as an attempt to actually move to the all in category. Commitment is a unique animal in our experience, it simply either is or it isn’t.

Instead of mentally wrestling about whether I am right or not, why don’t you wrestle with your commitment? Make a decision. No, I mean, make a Decision! Decide! Once you decide, then Do! Do every day! Do all the time, never stop. Now Decide again! And Do some more. Folks this is what commitment looks like. Yes it looks like obsession to the uncommitted. It’s like the ultimate focus experience. Decide and Do - this is commitment. Either you are in or you are out. No middle ground. No sliding scale. No partial commitments, that is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. Stop fooling yourself. Either you are in or you are out. Period.

Limitations

# Chapter 110

We finally made it here. I am far too old to be driving that distance in a single day. There are things that mental will can’t really help you accomplish, and physical limitations are one of those things. On the other hand, if I hadn’t applied mental will to the whole trip for the entire week leading up to the 12 hour drive, then I don’t think I would have made it, so mental will did definitely affect the trip, but it can only go so far. Mental will was yesterday’s chapter, today’s chapter is more about physical limitations and age, so I am straying a bit afar here, but it occurred to me as I started writing this morning that mental will played a significant role in our long long trip on the road yesterday.

This trip between Georgia and Pennsylvania is one we have been making for decades, so the trip hasn’t changed, but we have. We can’t sit as long and be comfortable, we can’t focus as long and be safe, our bodies can’t handle the rigors of long distant road travel, the limited movement that is afforded and the constraints are deadly. We are much more fragile than we once were. These are the inevitable realities of aging. Even though we are actively working toward being younger next year, the steady decline of our physical capacities is real and not simply a mental construct.

But you learn to compensate, you simply have no other choice. So for the last 5-6 years I have been traveling the GA - PA route in a two day trip rather than a one day trip. But this time my wife was with me and she definitely is struggling with accepting the limitations that we are facing, and that she is especially facing. This trip hurt her much more than me, but she has completely forgotten about all that pain, even though it was so very recent.

Compensate people!

Enforcing your intentions

# Chapter 109

/Mental will is a muscle that needs exercise, just like muscles of the body." ~ Lynn Jennings/

Mental will is critical to your overall health. You don’t hear about it very much compared to all the other aspects of health, but those who work it and exercise it and allow it to function at its highest level - live a far better kind of life than those who don’t. Because mental will makes all other parts of your life go way better and way more successfully.

Mental will is the construct inside your imagination that allows you to see the potential future, the construct that lets you be strong and effortless in your project, workout, or relationships. Once exercised and used, making it happen in reality becomes so much easier. Every professional athlete uses this process to see their victory, every other professional who reaches a high level of competence exercises this mental muscle. This is the practice of enforcing your intentions upon reality - mental will.

And like your physical muscles, it needs daily exercise and use. Make a habit of raising your success levels by using and developing your mental will.

Building resilence

# Chapter 108

Flexibility in the face of change is where resilience comes from. - Seth

Well I don’t know that we have very much resilience, or flexibility at the very least. Woke this morning scheduled to drive all day and the Governor of PA has declared that every person who leaves the state, has to have a COVID-19 negative test in the 72 hours prior to returning, or they have to be quarantined for 14 days. This is very very problematic and has thrown our entire trip into question. The wife is panicking thinking this means it is an increase in our chance of catching Coronovirus.

But I am going to Georgia and in fact I am leaving in a few minutes, and I will face the consequences of whatever this means of course, none of us get off the hook for our actions, and the results.

They are free!

# Chapter 107

Gratitude is free. Thankfulness and appreciation and recognition are all free. These well may be the most critical pieces of your life or business or progress and they are FFFFRRREEEE! Free in the sense that they carry no monetary obligation with them. They do however, have a number of requirements that they demand. The biggest one is that you change your whole posture toward the whole world and stop being a self-absorbed human being - this is why they are so valuable, they are so rare in our self-absorbed world.

I have had to legislate gratitude and thankfulness in myself and in our family, because we are so blessed and overwhelmed with people’s goodness, that it can quickly become the normative experience, and then it becomes expected, and when expectations are involved, entitlement is just a whisper away. You say, well I am not overwhelmed with people’s goodness, and then you wonder what I did to have such a perspective, who I bribed, who is laundering money through me, or what is the catch, and don’t tell me you didn’t think something along those lines - I have had this conversation too many times with too many people. This is why I said early on, that the Biggest change would be a whole posture change toward the whole world.

If I only had the time to tell you about the life: of an orphan in Ukraine, of a Burmese refugee in Thailand, of a slave miner in DRC, of a trafficked child in Cambodia, of an outcaste teenager in India, of a Muslim woman under the Taliban, and there are so many other stories to tell. This is not simply an exercise in comparative situations, but it could be a start for you, if you are struggling with being unabashedly grateful for this one wild beautiful life you have been given.

Where you aim matters

# Chapter 106

Aiming low has become a favorite pastime for folks it seems. It is easy to do, it takes the least amount of energy, it can be the default. But this easy path leads to our destruction if we follow it for very long. There is no challenge and development in this path, it is doing what you already know how to do and doing it without engaging all your mind body and soul and energy and capacity. There is no stretch in aiming low. There is no positive stress, (like in lifting weights), there is no learning, there is no excitement, there is nothing to look forward to, no sense of accomplishment, no satisfaction for doing something amazing, no thanks from those who can appreciate the difficult.

This last one really matters. I played on the worship team yesterday at church. Have been practicing for weeks, learning lots of new chords and difficult pieces of music. When worship leader notices that I played a particularly difficult chord in an old hymn, he mentioned it to me, and that made all that work and effort and frustration and repetition worthwhile - in a flash. That moment was tremendous, because a Master musician heard the difference that aiming high had produced. There are no words to describe how that makes you feel. I wanted to come home and practice some more, even though we had been playing for hours and my hands were hurting. Doing something amazing with people who can truly appreciate it, is so energizing!

So stop aiming low. Stop only attempting to accomplish what you already have done in the past, you can do so much more. And interestingly enough, you will benefit the most, even if the extra effort and work is for someone else or some other organization or project. Aiming high will always benefit you the most - a nice side benefit!

Like a champion

# Chapter 105

It is interesting that even a champion like Muhammad Ali hated training. But he did it anyways, because he would rather be a champion than less. Most of us aren’t in training to be a champion, but we do all live with the results of our daily decisions, and those are compounded by the years of our lives. While I started with just simple habits, they have become more and more like training the longer I have utilized them, and the one percent incremental raising of the bar in a steady way over the years, has produced some great results that I am pleased with.

What about you? Are you pleased with your income, your weight, your marriage, your relationships with the rest of your family, your job, your contributions to the world, your eternal relationship with Jesus? What do you want to change? You can you know. You seriously can. Too many seem to have decided that they can’t and so they don’t. Don’t even try most of the time. It seems like most are in training for depression or complaining or whining. These are training habitual choices too. You can make different ones. You actually can.

Why don’t you? Start small and be very patient. Honestly for many many years I exercised so that I could eat more. That is not a very successful way to reach my exercise and weight goals. Weight loss happens in the kitchen, and it took me years to come to believe that. Exercise is a path to fitness and feeling great, but not a real weight management process. It takes about half to a third as much food to be healthy as my average American friends eat. I decided to break food’s hold on my life and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Fantastic results! And it applies to my finances and my relationships too. I can train myself in so many ways. I can be a champion of those things I choose. You can too.

It’s a VUCA world

# Chapter 104

Fascinating day yesterday talking with a 30 year old about politics, love, life and how to be a better human - his words, not mine. There was not a deeply spiritual theme here, he rejects that, or at least apathetic to the idea of a loving savior. He and my son are close in age and spent a lot of time together growing up, and they think similarly about many of these matters. It is also sad to see how fearful they are, how unpredictable they suddenly find the world - for it has been ever so - they are just now discovering how unstable that makes the ground underneath your life feel. They have moved out from under the protective wings of the parentals and now are truly standing on their own two feet completely, and it feels unsafe.

It is a subtle mixture of culture and rights and expectations all swirling around inside of him. He wants to have choices and he wants to have dependable contexts in which to work and expect results and expend effort and resources and have a predictable return on those efforts, a life of small risks and large rewards, the America he thinks his parents grew up in.

What he doesn’t realize, nor do many of us, the world is totally and completely a VUCA world now, and has been for a while. Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Now THAT describes the real world that we have and live in. Navigating that is reality and a good dose is what we all need. And this young man, and my son, feel that VUCA world around them and instinctively know that is a wildly unpredictable world - for good or ill.

What is your toad?

# Chapter 103

“eating the toad for breakfast.”

This is not original with me, I read it somewhere, but forgot to write the author down and give credit. It’s the idea of doing the most difficult part of your day early in the day, then its all easier downhill from there. The toad being the hard thing, and breakfast being your morning of course, and eating it is getting it finished or accomplished or the proper amount of progress completed on that toad. Sorry if you think me anal for explaining an obvious metaphor, but when I shared it with someone else, nothing about the metaphor was clear nor obvious to them. I don’t know where you are at on this sliding scale.

But lets talk about doing hard things first in your day. This is not the only way to do it, but it seems to be the way that helps most of the people most of the time. I spent years crafting systems that allow me to knock out the toads and the MIT’s first thing in the morning. Toads will be most important thing, the MIT’s. For me, it was more MIT’s getting the priority that they needed in my life.

Interestingly enough, right at the moment, I am trashing all those systems and working an outside job in the mornings, and trying to adjust to MIT’s in the afternoons . . . and now things are falling through the cracks, and I will have to try something new, a different system, so that the MIT’s get done and I can accomplish all that needs to be finished. This is my toad.

What is driving you

# Chapter 102

/Your desires,/

/Whether or not you achieve them/

/Will determine who you become./ - Octavia Butler

It’s what will drive you all your days. To get a good look at yourself and what makes you what you are, and how other people see you and experience you, step back and think about what you want. It’s the engine under the hood of your life. It’s taking you where you are going. I know I know, you can’t even articulate what you want in life, how can it be driving you?? Trust me, it is, and it has, and it always will. Articulating it is very helpful, if really difficult, because it will bring it out into the open and help you get a handle on it if you can ever do it.

It is the first thing I force new clients to do in The Leadership Development Group, and then I make them do it again a little further down the road, because if they are successful in stating what they want the first time, it will settle and polish with a little time and that subtle nuance of change can make all the difference in the world. But we digress here into the difficulties of identifying and articulating your wants and desires, rather than discussing how they are driving your life. They will shape you and largely determine who you are and will become, because they are relentless. If you don’t get a handle on them and moderate them and choose them intentionally, they will make all the decisions about where you are going in life.

What do you want? Who do you Love? Who do you follow?