Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • Task Tackling

      “Where your fear is, there is your task.” — Carl Jung

      There are a millions ways to avoid doing things. I’ve managed to skip my hardest workouts for two weeks now, not because I didn’t have the time, but because I got very creative in finding ways to use that time for other things. It’s not the easy workouts that I’m talking about (the walks with the dog continue uninterrupted), it’s those zone 4-5 workouts that I practice active-avoidance with.

      The answer is to do the hard work first, before the day gets away from us. Whether it’s a hard workout or a conversation we know we have to have with someone or sitting down to a blank screen and attempting to fill it with something timeless, the task is apparent. Feel the fear and do it anyway, as Susan Jeffers once recommended. The only way to is through (funny how these old affirmations just roll right off the tongue like classic song lyrics).

      The thing is, the mind favors comfort. We know this to be true because it’s been our worst enemy for years. We may anticipate the excuses and reinforce the habits we aspire to do through disciplined action. Or we can let our reluctance to do uncomfortable things dictate what we actually do in our lives.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits

      To be very fit and healthy isn’t a mystery, it’s a discipline with a clear outcome. The same can be said for writing a novel or acing an exam or keeping a marriage thriving after a few decades. Discipline equals freedom (there’s another one—thanks Jocko) and the choice is ours to make. Just who do we want to become anyway? Tackle that task already. Tomorrow will be easier for having done the work today.

    • Expanding Possible

      “History enters when the space of the possible is vastly larger than the space of the actual.”

      “History itself arises out of the adjacent possible.”
      ― Stuart A. Kauffman, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion

      What is success to you? Isn’t success something that stirs emotion within at the very idea of achieving it? Or of having achieved it? Success isn’t a thing at all, but a belief. People chase the idea of success, but often don’t have an idea of what would satiate that drive. So they keep on driving, on and on, to the end—whatever that is. Death, decline, or hopefully, enlightenment and a level of satisfaction with the place achieved during the climb.

      We each woke up this morning, beginning a string of successful moments and achievement of ever-expanding possibilities. Never forget the small victories on the march to summits beyond our present ascent. Writing and publishing this blog post is another small win in a series of possibilities (the streak continues for one more day). Is that success? If we believe it to be. The thing is, we can’t have success always in front of us like a carrot, we’ve got to recognize what we’ve actualized as a big part of what makes us successful.

      I heard the phrase “expanding the adjacent possible” in a Rory Sutherland Knowledge Project interview, as he called it his definition of success. As with any phrase or quote that captures my attention, I naturally look for the original source. Sutherland pointed towards Kauffman, and here we are with another book added to my must-read list. How can we believe ourselves to be well-read when there’s always another book to read?

      As someone who delights in well-spun words and phrases, I found Sutherland’s definition simply breathtaking. What is possible in our life? Not the life we’ve lived thus far, but looking ahead—what possibility are we inclined to expand? What are we willing to trade our life for, as we surely do, chasing our dreams and distractions the way we do?

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      — Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

      The year is almost to an end, and with it the closing of any possibility for this particular year in our lives. So many dwell on bucket lists or to-do lists. This focuses us on what we haven’t yet done, which leaves us feeling that there’s a void in our lives. I’ve recently taken a hint from Oliver Burkeman and started listing the things that I’ve done in a day or for the year as a way to expand my idea of possibilities achieved. Mindset is everything in life, and when we grow a list as we accomplish things we begin to realize that we’ve had a very successful time indeed.

      Naturally, there will always be more things to do and be. We may celebrate abundance of that we’ve achieved while delighting in executing on future plans. What is possible now, having done all this? We may grow and be, built on our expanding foundation of accomplishment.

      “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anaïs Nin

      We may agree that life is expansive based on all that we’ve become and done so far in our lives. Were we courageous enough? Might we be more so in the future? Success lies in what we believe the answer to be. Chasing success is folly, akin to chasing happiness. Choosing to expand adjacent possibilities is a life of discovery and action, realized one expansive moment at a time. So as we move beyond the actual that is this day and indeed, this year rapidly drawing to a close—just what is possible next?

    • True Nobility

      “Remember that there is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.” — W. L. Sheldon, What to Believe: An Ethical Creed

      The quote above is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but like most things on the Internet, a little digging reveals that the truth is somewhere else entirely. Perhaps some more digging would reveal that Sheldon wasn’t the original source either, but really, nothing is original, is it? We are all consciously or unconsciously influenced by everything that brought us here. The trick is to play the greatest hits and bury the unfortunate mistakes as the life lessons they were meant to be for us. Put another way: Learn from the best, forget the rest.

      Sheldon’s Ethical Creed has some real gems in the mix, worthy of a read if you have the time (and our time is what we make of it). Broken into sections, Think, Believe, Remember, Never and Don’t, each offers a bit of timeless advice worthy of consideration and action. I won’t re-write the entirety of it here, but another gem related to the famous quote above reinforces the message:

      “Don’t suppose that success comes by talent. It comes by plodding. Talent makes the best showing in early life. But the ability to plod makes the showing later on.” — W. L. Sheldon, What to Believe: An Ethical Creed

      So what brought me to Sheldon today? Let’s just say that nobility has been on my mind lately. To be noble and honorable is a lifestyle choice. We either live by it or we pretend to, and pretending isn’t very noble, is it? Every day offers us the opportunity to become a better version of who we were yesterday. Incremental, steady improvement is the path to personal excellence. We never reach perfection, but we won’t get very far at all if we keep taking two steps back. Choose accordingly today. It may feel like plodding at times, but the noble path is a worthy path.

    • Stop Fluttering About

      Never regret thy fall
      O Icarus of the fearless flight,
      For the greatest tragedy of them all,
      Is never to feel the burning light.
      — Oscar Wilde, Icarus

      Some days we soar, and on some we stumble. The trick is to keep getting up and trying to win the next day. The alternative is to sink into the abyss, and what kind of life is that?

      Life is unfair and challenging. Life is beautiful and ripe with potential. Where is the truth but in the eye of the beholder? We may experience the life we manifest, but we can acknowledge that there is an element of luck too. Most of us reading this were born at the right time and right place. Some were dealt a lousy hand. We may celebrate or blame the circumstances that brought us to where we are, but we ought to recognize that here and now is only the beginning of this odyssey. The next step is up to us.

      This idea of having agency in our life is revelatory or ridiculous if we aren’t conditioned to take matters into our own hands. We may choose to learn and grow, to rise early and stay with something until we’ve reached mastery. Or simply concede that we never really wanted to soar anyway and simply give up our agency to someone with loftier goals. The choice was always ours to make.

      The thing is, this is nothing but words until we take action. We all have dreams that will go to our graves with us. But we also have our daily rituals and habits that are leading us to realize something tangible in our lives. Just where are our habits taking us? Maybe we ought to up our game, and soar just a little higher than where we’ve been fluttering about. While there’s still time.

    • Things That Got Away

      “Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.” — James Joyce, Ulysses

      Back in 2018, when this blog was a young pup and its writer was blessedly naive about all that would happen in the next seven years, we stepped into the every day. We can all agree that a lot can happen in seven years. Good Lord, can a lot happen. We’ve all been on this ride together, in so many ways. Yet each of us rides through life in their own way. Some with eyes wide open, some with blinders on, and so many simply staring at a screen for an entirely different user experience. The only thing we all may agree on is that time flies. Tempus fugit.

      I happened upon a blog post I’d written back then about the ten books I meant to read that year. I read eight of those books, and one of them, Meditations, I’ve read three times since. But one in particular still eludes me. Ulysses. I’ve begun it many times over the years, and many times I’ve moved on to other books. Perhaps I’ll tackle the yellowing pages of this classic next, or perhaps it will forever be the one that got away. Time will tell, as it always does.

      If I’ve learned anything in these last seven years, let alone all that preceded them, I’ve learned to talk less about what I’m going to do and more about what I’ve done. We are either dreamers or doers in this world. Less talk and more action, thank you. If that inspires a laugh when I refer to reading a book, well, I shrug in your general direction. I may believe myself to be well-read, while noting how incomplete it feels when some notables evade me for years. When I think about all the YouTube videos or tweets I’ve read in the last seven years, not having read a classic novel feels wasteful of the opportunity.

      We all must choose what we say yes to in this brief go at living. Where do we want to go? Who do we want to be? Just what is that verse we’re writing going to say anyway? We all have agency over what we do in the now. As the future plunges into the past, how will we take stock of the time spent? Some part of us will feel incomplete for having used that time elsewhere. What matters most now? Choose accordingly. We may celebrate all that we’ve done while acknowledging the things that got away from us.

    • Blame It On the Poets

      Man with wooden leg escapes prison. He’s caught.
      They take his wooden leg away from him. Each day
      he must cross a large hill and swim a wide river
      to get to the field where he must work all day on
      one leg. This goes on for a year. At the Christmas
      Party they give him back his leg. Now he doesn’t
      want it. His escape is all planned. It requires
      only one leg.
      — James Tate, Man with Wooden Leg Escapes Prison

      I hope you laughed when you read that poem. I know I did. It reads like a standup routine, like many James Tate poems, I suppose. Maybe that’s why I’ve strayed into his work a little, just because a smile is better than a frown, and certainly better than a scowl. We all scowl too much nowadays.

      I was reading the news just this morning. I make a point of not reading the news before I write (because of that scowl thing), but I found myself awake thinking about to-do list items. Instead of getting up to do these things, instead of rolling over and reaching for some REM, instead of doing a workout or brushing my teeth or attempting to steal the covers back from my bride—instead of anything really, I opened up the BBC app to see what was happening in the world. And of course I scowled.

      When one starts one’s day in such a way, one ought to quickly find a way out of it. Social media is nothing but random clickbait video clips now. I surely could have gone there for hours of screen time. But I sought out the council of a poet to set me straight. And that road less travelled has made all the difference.

      This ritual of writing before any other thing continues to serve me well. The world can go to hell in a mindless spiral of dancing stars, home renovation transformations and fantasy football trades, but I may ignore it all and simply write what comes to me. This clunky, impossible to navigate blog, my running collection of deep thoughts and discoveries, goes on for at least one more day. Blame it on the poets if you like. More likely it was me all along.

    • Begin Something

      “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” ― Willie Nelson

      As an early bird, it should be easy to get a head start on the day. But the day floods in anyway. Even as I awaken, work to-do minutia floods my brain—a clear sign that I didn’t write it all down to release its hold on me before my day was done. The bullet journal method only works if you keep up with it. Lately, I haven’t kept up with it.

      If we are truly on a quest for personal excellence, why do we clutter up our days with minutia at all? Mastery requires singular focus, if we indeed wish to reach closer to it. Just who do we want to be on this one go at things anyway? The work that matters ought to get done, the rest ought to slip away and not impact our sleep score.

      I used to glory in the hustle of outworking the competition. I have other priorities now. When I wake up, my attention doesn’t go right to work, it goes right to attending to the needs of the pets, and then to writing this blog. Does writing deserve a place of honor ahead of income-generating activity? Doesn’t the answer depend on where we want to go today? The answer has always been there, waiting for us to listen and act upon it.

      Why get up early at all, but to heed the call to begin something? To rise and chase the dreams of others for profit is nothing but a trap from which we will never escape. We must always prioritize ourselves first, and then address the needs of others. They tell us this on every flight. It’s on us to pay attention to the flight attendants as we hustle through life.

      To make something of this day seems a modest objective. Why go through the motions or succumb to distraction? Create something of consequence today and see what might build from it. Joie de vivre is derived from doing something meaningful with our days, not from hustling through it. So what is that something?

    • Of More and Enough

      “Our love of our neighbor—is it not a lust for new possessions? And likewise our love of knowledge, of truth, and altogether any lust for what is new? Gradually we become tired of the old, of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again. Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some more distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by possession.” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: The Joyful Wisdom of Life, Love, and Art

      I’m currently managing the chaos that comes with some home improvement work. Every change has a price to be paid, and temporary chaos is our toll. The constant desire for improvement demands payment in one form or another. Today’s toll is tomorrow’s pleasure. At least that’s what we tell ourselves.

      There’s a reason why those house hunter and renovation programs are so popular. It’s the same reason some of us have an urge to travel to new places all the time, to try the latest trendy restaurant, to buy a bigger boat, to hike to new summits, or to day trade looking for that perfect stock to fall in love with. Divorce lawyers specialize in the consequences of unchecked avarice. Because we humans tend to lust for something beyond what we have. Even the pursuit of personal excellence (arete) is a pursuit of something more than what we possess now.

      As Nietzsche put it: to become tired of some possession means tiring of ourselves. Unchecked avarice is a weakness. To temper the unrelenting desire for more and realize that one has enough is a path to happiness. Good luck with that. Our consumer-driven world fuels a constant desire for more, different and better. It takes conscious willpower to unplug from that and appreciate exactly who we are, with what we have, right here and now.

      I’ve written about my wanderlust before. I’m chagrined by the single passport stamp I’ve gotten this year, compared to last year when I visited seven countries. I forget sometimes that I’ve traveled from coast-to-coast this year, seeing places and doing things that I’d once said I’d get to someday. Add in a few significant home improvement projects and the picture becomes clearer. It’s been a good year in more ways than it hasn’t.

      Comparison is the death of joy, as the saying goes. Simply enjoying the abundance of all that one has and have experienced ought to be enough. When we compare we turn our attention from all we have to what we don’t have. The math will never work in our favor when we compare, because what we don’t possess will always outnumber what we do have.

      Still, there’s so much more to see and do and be. And time is ticking away so very quickly. Is it any wonder that we have this urge for more, now, before it’s too late? We are growing beings, living a brief life before we slip into infinity. We ought to seek growth for growth’s sake. To learn and experience and build is how our species has made it this far. But we’ve also made it this far by eventually settling down and growing roots. A sense of place is uniquely gifted to those who stick around for awhile. The hunger for more is our blessing and our curse, depending on how much we control it.

      That quiet desperation Thoreau spoke of is as real as any possession we have. Desperation comes from not feeling control over one’s destiny. Not following one’s dream to it’s natural conclusion. We grow frustrated and seek relief in the fresh and new, buying impulsively, renovating relentlessly, comparing even when we know it’s a fool’s game. We each deal with the same old avarice within, while trying to be grateful for all that we have in our lives.

      As with everything, balance is the key to a joyful life. We must necessarily seek growth, knowledge and experience to fulfill our potential before the music stops, but we must also learn when we’ve been satiated. To keep consuming after we’ve had enough is gluttonous. To keep wanting bigger and better and different is avarice, unchecked. The gods don’t seek arete, they already have it. It’s we humans who are always seeking more. What is enough in this lifetime? Finding our way to that place may lead us to what we’ve been searching for all along.

    • To Do Bold Things

      “All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

      Risking all that we’ve built for some uncertain future is a fool’s game—at least that’s what we’ve been taught by our mothers and other well-meaning influencers in our lives. But tell me, without risk when exactly will we leap? We must develop our leaping ability through a series of calculated risks. This, friend, is our hero’s journey personified.

      “Do or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

      Culturally, we celebrate the risk-takers because we know deep down that the leap they’ve taken is available to all of us in some form or fashion, but the leaper is unique for having done it. We may be inspired to take risks having witnessed theirs, or we may recoil back into habits of safety and assurance. We learn something about ourselves in either case.

      We all take calculated risks at some point in our lives—even our mothers risked it all to deliver our sorry ass into this world. It’s okay to be careful, and it’s good to play it safe in certain circumstances, but there are many times when we ought to let it ride. To go for it when the leap is worthy of a bold measure of risk honors those who risked it all to make our lives possible, and ultimately it honors our future potential and eventual legacy. We become the type of person who does things like this.

      Boldness is developed. But so is suffering. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • And So On

      The Lorax: Which way does a tree fall?
      The Once-ler: Uh, down?
      The Lorax: A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.
      ― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

      I saw a bumper sticker on a car at a red light that was meant to goad the left. Something along the lines of: Straight. Conservative. Christian. Gun Owner. Is there anything else I can piss you off with? I looked at her in the mirror as she smoked a cigarette like she had to beat the light, then threw it on the pavement to burn out and roll around in the traffic. I thought to myself, maybe a few more things. If I ever wanted to concern myself with that level of self-celebratory misery anyway.

      We are each leaning the way we lean, however things may fall. I don’t put bumper stickers on my own vehicle, but if I did, it would be in the form of a question. Perhaps borrowing from old friend Mary Oliver, who asked the ultimate question we all ought to ask ourselves today and every day in The Summer Day:

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?

      Plans have a way of changing, because life changes and so do the living. When I was younger I was a master planner in all the things I would do one day. I’ve learned to stop planning so much and simply do. Do something right now that tilts that future possibility in our favor. Want to write that novel? Write. Want to lose 20 pounds? Move and make better choices in what goes in your mouth. And so on.

      And there’s the thing: And so on. And so each of our days is filled with habits and ritual, on and on to wherever they will take us. Be sure to lean in to the right habits and rituals. We are what we repeatedly do, as Aristotle once said and this blog has repeated, well, repeatedly. Aristotle quotes would make great bumper stickers too (tell that to the spent cigarette litterer).

      November is already a week old, and candidly, it’s not slowing down anytime soon. Life leaps forward even as the soul asks us to slow down and take it all in. To do a lot of things in a lifetime requires us to lean towards positive habits and productivity. But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. When we lean into any one thing too much we tend to lose our balance. Don’t forget to fold something precious into each day.