Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • A Thousand Lives

      “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” — George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

      Having breakfast with an acquaintance the other day, I was asked for recommendations on great books to read. Knowing my audience, I rattled off five books I thought he’d get something out of and briefed him on why I recommended each. He ordered two of them before we left the table, which I’ll take as validation of my judgement on such things.

      Comparison is the death of joy, as we all know, and I don’t compare my habits to anyone else. I may work out more or less than the next person, or write more or less, or pick the habit. The point is to set a personal standard for yourself and work to measure up to that standard, and stretch to exceed our own expectations. My standard for reading is not a random total number of books read, but a minimum of ten pages per day. Some books are 10x or more of that ten pages, and with some it’s all I can do to meet the minimum, but reach it I do. In this way, I read roughly 25-30 books per year.

      How does that compare to the average reader? Pretty well, if you look at the general population. Compared to an avid reader? Not so great. If I devoted myself to page-turners, ditched social media and worked less, I bet I could hit 100. But I’m happy with 25-30 books that move me, change me, educate me or entertain me. To live a thousand lives in this one seems quite expansive to me. How about you?

    • Following Your Own Way

      If you want, then start to laugh
      If you must, then start to cry
      Be yourself, don’t hide
      Just believe in destiny
      Don’t care what people say
      Just follow your own way
      Don’t give up and use the chance
      To return to innocence
      — Enigma, Return to Innocence

      This blog is inching along again. Inching towards what, exactly? Proficiency in writing? Show up and create something every day and see where it takes you. If nothing else, we become better at shipping the work, and there’s a lot to be said for doing what we tell ourselves we’re going to do. Keeping promises to oneself matters a great deal in a world of broken promises and shattered dreams. We may not be able to rely on everyone, but we can learn to rely on ourself. The trick is to up the ante with those promises. What got us here is great, but it won’t get us there—and there is where we’re trying to get to.

      Enigma is on my life soundtrack, and when I hear a song like Return to Innocence, I remember exactly where and who I was at the time. It turns out I’ve come a long way since then. We don’t generally leap from untapped potential to arete, we show up every day and incrementally drag ourselves through the good days and the bad, until one day we look around and realize we’ve done what we’d told ourselves we wanted to do and then some. Suddenly, that song means something completely different than it did then. Or maybe it’s us that’s completely different.

      So have we arrived at the place we aimed for when we started? Are we even aiming for the same thing? More likely, we’re still a work in progress, with different goals now than we had then. We are likely better from where we were but with some work still to do towards where we are going. We humans are always moving the goal posts as we grow.

      Don’t care what people say, just follow your own way. We learn that following our own way is a tough grind. Well-meaning folks and more timid souls everywhere are quick to curb our enthusiasm for what they perceive as reckless behavior. Thank you for your concern; but I call BS. Nothing meaningful ever happens without risk. The lesson is always the same: be bold today to reap tomorrow’s rewards.

    • Delight Is in the Details

      “The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” — William Morris

      Our level of interest in the details of life dictates how much we get out of it, and yes, how much we are delighted in the living of it. Case in point, I am as interested in the proper capitalization of the title of this blog post as I am with the view out the window I find myself next to as I write this near a bay alive with choppy fetch, bouncing boats and hunting birds soaring above.

      Why should we care about every little detail? Because it’s the stuff of life! More precisely, the stuff of our life. This, friend, is it. And making something of it is our purpose. Indeed, the devil is in the details, so draw delight from the lot of them. That is the recipe for an expansive life.

      We are each collectors of days, with a stack of them making up our lifetime. Within each day in turn are a collection of moments and minutia that are the stuff of life. Paying more attention to that stuff allows us to appreciate all that we have or have held as uniquely ours. Gratitude and delight follow closely behind awareness of all that is.

    • We Are What We Do

      “Our dreams betray us” — Anton Myrer, Once An Eagle

      What do our dreams actually say of us, but who we desire to be? For all my talk of productivity and purpose, I dream of boats and faraway places. Polar opposites, I can here the maternal characters in my life say. So which is me, and what is simply talk?

      We dream of being writers or pro athletes or travel lifestyle YouTube influencers. We dream of washboard abs and marathon finishes. None of that is who we are, it’s nothing but what we wish for until we pay the price of greatness; the daily, consistent, habitual work that lifts us up from our dreams and carries us to our destiny. Do or do not, there is no try, as Yoda put it.

      Dreams betray our aspirations and desires. They hint at a possible future, but simply hoping to hit the lottery leads to a life of dashed dreams and lingering regrets. Making the intangible tangible begins with doing the hard things that a dreamlike life demands. So wake up and get on with it.

    • Something

      “I am only one, I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” — Edward Everett Hale

      Absorbing the latest foolishness in the world, I wonder whether I ought to care more. The thing is, I care a great deal about everything, but I can’t control hardly any of it, so I focus on something instead. That, I believe, is the trick to getting through life with the soul intact. The nicks and bruises of everything may sting and surely are unpleasant for the logical mind, but remember that everything cannot get past a hardened mind. Alternatively, we may let something in to nurture and grow.

      Decide what to be and go be it. Just who do we wish to become in future versions of the self? We’re flying along towards the future anyway. What something today will make the biggest difference in who we will be then? If we stop focusing on everything, something more essential becomes easy to focus on.

    • Discovered Deeper

      What is precious
      inside us does not
      care to be known
      by the mind
      in ways that diminish
      its presence.
      — David Whyte, The Winter of Listening

      I ought to write more, I tell myself. But what is this blog, written most every day, but writing? ‘tis not the same, I think. It is through the writing process that deeper discoveries are made.

      What I really mean is that I ought to carve out more time in my days for discovery. Writing does the trick, but so does a long walk amongst the whispering trees, so does listening to the right music, or seeing art that awes. We find something of ourselves when we venture beyond the self.

      We are constantly and forever finding out something about ourselves. Forever changing, evolving, becoming who we are to be. It’s the journey of our lifetime, revealed one day to the next. We ought to revel in the daily discovery, but we’re often too busy living to appreciate the incremental strides forward.

      When will we ever find the time , if not now?

    • The Price of Greatness

      “If you want to be different from everybody else you’ve got to pay the price.” — Anton Myrer

      Paying the price of greatness sounds like a catchy line. It’s easy to dismiss catchy, or to embrace the idea but not follow through on it. Actually paying the price is very difficult, or everybody would be great. Have a look around; the world is chock full of average. Great is evasive, it’s lip service to the concept that is commonplace.

      We ought to aspire to greatness in something. So much of what we do, try as we might, may reach good but not great. Nothing hits the ego harder than our best efforts resulting in something that is just okay. I know I will never be great at some things I truly love doing, but accept being good enough. Accepting good enough is a price paid for attempting to be great at something else.

      We may never reach greatness in anything, but we can reach a level of satisfaction with how far we’ve come. Alternatively, we can pay a steeper price, knowing average effort leads us to average results. The choice is ours, isn’t it? Just what price are we willing to pay?

    • Progression

      “I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.” — Margaret Fuller

      I have a garden and fancy myself above average in gardening. But I’m the first to tell you I haven’t reached mastery in the fine art of horticulture. My vegetable garden is barely holding on. A friend who focuses exclusively on his vegetable garden knows more about tomato varieties than I ever will. I know exactly who to ask for advice when my own tomatoes aren’t thriving or are getting nibbled on by some critter in the night. But in general, my gardening skills progress every season.

      A life of progression is a happy life. The alternative is stagnation or regression, and what fun are either of those? No, we must be advancing in a clear, positive direction to live a fulfilling, joyful life. At risk of an eye roll or two from the friend group, progression requires production. We must produce the results we aspire to achieve.

      We usually progress in one area of life while regressing in another. We can’t focus on everything. Every yes is a no to something else. I choose to be completely ignorant of pickleball and cribbage, that I may aspire to greatness in, say, gardening and writing. That I haven’t reached greatness in either is beside the point. I am happy with progression. The key to a happy life is finding that something to progress towards.

    • Unencumbered

      “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      They say the best professional athletes have the shortest memories. Striking out in your last at bat doesn’t mean you’ll strike out in this one. It simply means you’ve seen this pitcher before and hopefully learned a thing or two in the encounter. And that philosophy carries the day in all things in life. Don’t let yesterday’s nonsense encumber us on as we rise to meet each bright, clear morning. Do what must be done with the clarity of hope and purpose.

      I’ve been carrying this post for twelve hours awaiting this next paragraph. There was a time when I would write a couple of crappy paragraphs just to round it out to something worthy of the post. But I’ve learned that throwing up a post with the primary aim of word count leads to some not very good blog posts. To encumber the reader with fluff words does a disservice to each of us. So let us leave on good terms. Until tomorrow then?

    • Pebbles

      “It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe” — Muhammad Ali

      Inevitably, after doing some workout and feeling the rush of adrenaline that washes over you when you finish, I tell myself I ought to do that more consistently. I mean, a year ago I was working out twice a day for 75 days, so why am I not working out at least once a day now? Maybe working out twice a day was a bit much, but not working out at all was a bit too far in the other direction.

      Habits come and go. I wrote this blog every day for seven years and just stopped one day just to reset myself and stop that creeping feeling that writing was an obligation and not a privilege. I’m writing again with new perspective, and without feeling like I must publish today no matter what. Hopefully the content feels less like an obligation to read too.

      Habits stick when we love doing something. When it becomes so ingrained as part of our identity that we can’t imagine not doing it today and for every tomorrow we have left ahead of us. When it nags at us like a pebble in the shoe, we’re far less likely to follow through with it today. And our actions today are all that matters in all things.

      Today I took my bike out for a 15-mile ride. That’s nothing for a hard-core cyclist, but it’s not a bad use of an hour for a casual cyclist trying to get back in the habit again. It turned out what was nagging at me was how much I missed being out on the bike while stuck in a routine chock full of excuses. Tomorrow will take care of itself, but I’ll celebrate today for all the right reasons.