Alexandersmap

    Month: August 2026

    • Rising Through Active Filtering

      “The person who dumps garbage into your mind will do you considerably more harm than the person who dumps garbage on your floor, because each load of mind garbage negatively impacts your possibilities and lowers your expectations.”
      — Zig Ziglar

      I have people in my life who think as I do about the state of the world who are likely chagrined when I grow quiet when they begin complaining about the way things are. I simply don’t want to carry that burden. We know how the world is, we know its unfairness and cruelty and evil. What of it? It also remains beautiful, ripe with possibility and inherently good. Were it all bad the world would be chaos. Were it all good we would have nothing to improve upon. We are latest generation to reconcile human tendency with human potential.

      We will rise or fall depending on what we focus on. What we carry weighs us down. What we strive for stretches us in new, uplifting directions. Expecting more of ourselves isn’t a recipe for dissatisfaction, it’s a compass towards personal excellence. So stop with the garbage accumulation and clear the runway for something far better than what we’ve settled on. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • In Between

      And take your time babe
      It’s not as bad as it seemed
      You’ll be fine babe
      It’s just some rivers and streams
      In between, you and where you want to be
      — Glen Hansard, Song of Good Hope

      Inevitably, when you linger on anything in social media, you’re marked forever as interested in that particular thing you lingered on. The passing of Glen Hansard this week marked me as interested in the man and the legacy he leaves behind. Consider me marked, if you will. I don’t mind so much.

      Life lately seems to be a measure of who has come and gone. That’s life, after all. It sometimes takes us a few decades to figure this out, being so busy as we are with trying to get from where we were to where we want to be. Life is lived in between. Pay attention and feel the moments pass by. Let it tickle the senses; the joy of being alive and well in the here and now.

      So much of life is spent contemplating our destination, when really, life is right here unfolding before us. Hum that tune for awhile. Here we are, making the most of our fleeting days—these days in between.