Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • Showing Up

      The hardest day in a new workout routine is the second day. You’ve hit it hard on day one, felt that sense of accomplishment, and then get up the next morning a bit stiff, with lactic acid buildup and a hundred reasons why you should wait just a little while before you get back to that routine. This is the day when you’ve got to show up and push through it, no matter how it goes. Showing up is where committed identity is established.

      The thing is, the results may be pretty ugly. My day two was humbling and embarrassing to post, but it’s one workout in what should be a steady climb to better. What does it matter if we don’t set a PR on day two? I’m not rowing in the Olympics, and the dog walking team hasn’t called me just yet. All that matters is the streak, and you can’t get to day three without getting through day two.

      We are what we repeatedly do. That’s the only success formula that matters in a lifetime. The reason The Beatles were so prolific in the relatively brief time they were a band was because they showed up and did the work. When they slid into a distracted fog they fractured and broke up. The analogy isn’t any different for us. We must show up and do the work that calls to us, every day.

      I was talking to one of my favorite writers a few days ago and she told me she hadn’t been writing lately. I reminded her then (and now, I suppose), that writers write, every day. It’s the only way to avoid atrophy. It’s why I publish this blog every day, and check a dozen other important boxes every day. We must show up, if only to keep a promise to ourselves. There’s nothing worse than a dysfunctional relationship with our inner voice.

      Easy for me to say, right? I’ve already established the habit. But that’s just one part of a routine that is always a work in progress. We never quite reach excellence (arete), do we? All we can do is try to move closer. The rubber hits the road when we gently put our excuses on the nightstand and rise up to meet the moment.

    • BHAG At It

      “Set goals that are so big, so hairy, they make you gulp. When youre about to fall asleep, your BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) is there by your bed all hairy with glowing eyes. When you wake up its there: ‘Good morning, I am your BHAG. I own your life’. — Jim Collins

      Yesterday I set a goal for myself that was so ridiculous that I laughed. I more than doubled the lofty goal I set for myself a year ago in mileage for the summer, all for a good cause. The thing is, I did it in a calculated way, on a spreadsheet, with a key differentiator from a year ago: I’ve learned what is possible if I simply change the way I arrive.

      The answer to doing more in the same amount of time is to do work with a higher return on time invested. I love a great walk as much as anyone, but they take time. Rowing is far more efficient, and I can cover a lot more mileage in less time. If there’s a red flag in the plan, it’s big blocks of time when I’ll be away from the rowing ergometer for business and personal travel. It’s why I emphasized walking a year ago: because I can do it almost anywhere. By combining the two, but with emphasis on the rowing workouts, I can accomplish 235% more in the same amount of time. That’s what you call a big, hairy, audacious goal.

      The trick is to stop talking about what you’re going to do and get right to doing it. Just because something is possible doesn’t mean it will get done. Just like every other habit in our lives, we must consistently show up and do what we promise ourselves we’re going to do. That’s the only way to make a BHAG our friend. So gulp and get to it already.

    • Beyond the Same Old

      “The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.” — John Foster Dulles

      I first encountered this Dulles quote 25 years ago. I know this because I wrote the date in pencil right next to it. I was a different person then in countless ways, and exactly the same in others. Some positive, transformative growth has happened in that time, and some stubborn habits that hold me back still have a hold of me even now. We all have things that carry us forward or hold us back in our lives, and mostly that’s between our ears.

      If I were to track broken promises to myself over that time, I’d see the same ones appear over and over. We can focus on such things and beat ourselves up, or celebrate the ways in which we’ve grown into a better human. If life has taught me anything, it’s to identify the positive systems, habits and routines that make us incrementally better and do more of those things. There will always be problems and challenges in our lives, the question is whether we’re just repeating ourselves or actually evolving into a person who is more adaptive, resilient and wiser than the person we were before. If so, our problems and challenges will evolve into different ones, indicating progress.

      The alternative to new and greater challenges is having the same ones. That’s as clear an indication of stagnation and being in a rut as any. When we’re in a rut we ought to climb out as soon as possible before it becomes our grave. Countless people go to their graves wishing they’d done something transformative in their lives. We should live our days with Henry David Thoreau’s warning from Walden in mind:

      “Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously course labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.” Which led to his most famous observation, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

      So what occupies us? What are our own factitious and superfluous labors distracting us from moving past the problems that have nagged us over and over again? We must live creative, bold lives that we may break from the rut altogether and transform ourselves for the better. To be successful, deep down in our own minds, is to transcend who we once were to become something greater.

      The thing is, we know all of this, and yet we still stall out here and there. Our epitaph ought to be more than “steady but unremarkable”. Progress towards remarkable is measured in the value and contribution we bring to the world; to be useful to others and ourselves, and to move that investment ever higher. What is our verse? What is our dent in the universe? What ripple will carry well after we’ve checked out? Do more of that to move beyond the same old problems.

    • Productive Motion

      Some of us abhor stasis. I can’t imagine sitting in one place for long without some measure of productivity involved. To lie on a beach towel? Only possible with a great book or conversation happening, otherwise I’m out of there. Give me motion please.

      But often motion is just its own distraction. To “fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way”, as David Gilmore put it, can be thought of as scandalous and wasteful, whether we’re moving or sitting around doing nothing much at all. But that’s being human, isn’t it? We all waste some amount of our time in the course of living a full life. But we ought to lean into things that move us forward.

      We know what’s essential for us, why do we fill our bucket with fluff? Because it kills time? Our habits and routines will carry us to greater places or drag us sideways down the abyss. We may have a say in our fate.

      So it is that I’ve begun weeding the routine to foster growth in the productive and important at the expense of the frivolous habitual. A bit more productive exercise, a bit less watching YouTube videos. A bit more reading, a bit less scrolling. It’s amazing where we find the time when we add a bit of selective bias to our habits.

    • Momentum in the Moments

      “We should tell ourselves, once and for all, that it is the first duty of the soul to become as happy, complete, independent, and great as lies in its power. Herein is no egoism, or pride. To become effectually generous and sincerely humble there must be within us a confident, tranquil, and clear comprehension of all that we owe to ourselves.” ― Maurice Maeterlinck, Wisdom and Destiny

      We must first reach for our own potential, that we might fully lend it to others. Put another way, we must become increasingly necessary to those around us through the value we bring. Value is our accumulated skills, knowledge and presence applied to contribution. To make a greater contribution, we must build up our value.

      When I look at my career, the times when I’ve been happiest are when I’ve been able to contribute something substantial to the overall cause. The times when I’ve been most miserable in my work are almost always when I feel like I’m not contributing my full value and I’ve lost my way. The thing is, these feelings come well after the work that it took to arrive there, for momentum is built in the moments leading to it.

      This is most obvious in how we feel about our fitness level. If we’re feeling fit, it’s generally because of all the work that led us to physical fitness. Working out can be tedious when we view it as something we have to do. When it becomes part of our identity it’s simply part of our days. And this applies to everything else we do in life: reading and learning, writing and artistic expression, connection to the people in our lives, and our continual development in the self.

      Excellence is a habit. But so is laziness, sloth and a bankrupt soul. Both ends of the spectrum are paths built on the moments that precede our arrival there. We must choose how we spend our days accordingly and build momentum in the right things. So it is that nothing is more important in a brief life than our self development, that we may be more valuable to ourselves and others in the moments to come.

    • The Climb of a Lifetime

      “Just remember, once you’re over the hill you begin to pick up speed.” — Charles Schulz

      The trick is to defer rounding that hill into decline for as long as possible. My personal goal is to be a fit and witty centenarian. Whether that’s in the cards is up to fate, but we all ought to have goals in life, shouldn’t we? Prolonging the active, healthy and vibrant years seems as worthy a goal as any.

      Those people who say it’s better to burn out than to fade away forget the third choice: living a fit, balanced life for as long as we can keep the party rolling. Good habits carry us higher up the hill, bad habits make us round the top more quickly than we’d want. Reckless behavior makes us stumble before our time. We know all of this, we just need to look up now and then to see what we’re straying into. When it comes down to it, we are what we repeatedly do, as the saying goes.

      “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” — Martin Luther

      As a gardener, I see the parallels to living a good life: Get out there rain or shine, ensure that the roots are well fed, nurture the good and weed out that which will create problems later, ignore the rest. And most important, keep investing in the future. We are tending to a garden we may never harvest, but there’s magic in the act of tending it anyway.

    • Creative Living

      “Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.” ― Albert Camus

      There are days writing when everything comes slowly, like a chore we didn’t want to do and resented each step until completion, when we felt the surprising satisfaction of having finished it. Today began with distraction and chores and not much thought at all to writing. These are the moments when you just have to begin and see where it takes you. The muse, having felt ignored, eventually concedes that you’re back again.

      I know that some of my best work falls flat when it’s published. What resonates with me doesn’t resonate with most people, just as the things that are popular—pop songs, fashion, celebrity gossip—don’t resonate with me. This is only problematic if I want to linger in such circles, or have my creative work become popular. When we follow our own path sometimes we’re shocked by the solitude, but find the path far more to our liking. We ought to go our own way, if only to see where it leads us.

      Creativity leads to more inspired living, just as more inspired living feeds creativity. There’s nothing new in this idea, but isn’t it good to remind ourselves now and then that this path is ours for a reason? Make it beautiful and share it. Whether others deem it beautiful is beside the point. Creative living is a habit just like anything else. We live and learn and grow and share, then repeat it again tomorrow. Incrementally, something beautiful may indeed emerge from our life’s work.

    • Start Again

      The birds they sang
      At the break of day
      Start again
      I heard them say
      Don’t dwell on what has passed away
      Or what is yet to be
      Ah, the wars they will be fought again
      The holy dove, she will be caught again
      Bought and sold, and bought again
      The dove is never free
      Ring the bells that still can ring
      Forget your perfect offering
      There is a crack, a crack in everything
      That’s how the light gets in
      — Leonard Cohen, Anthem

      For all the madness and imperfection in the world, this is our time in it. We may still let the light in and find our way again. This theme has snuck into my awareness a few times in the last few days, in social media posts, in video clips from commencement speeches, and engraved on a bench overlooking Rockland harbor in Maine. It seems everyone is reaching for something, and whispering to those who follow how to find their way. When we open ourselves to the universe, it will tell us all we need to hear.

      We know the world is imperfect just as we know that we too are imperfect. We ought to stop counting our flaws and focus on the things we’re doing right. Work on the good things, let the rest fall away like bad relationships. And aren’t the imperfections we focus on nothing but a bad relationship that we can’t break away from? Let it go already. Start again with the clean slate of a fresh outlook.

      Imperfections are beliefs about the things we don’t have in our lives. None of us are born whole, we each have something within us that is imperfect. My own list is uncomfortably long—but so what? Focusing on what we don’t have in our lives is the surest path to misery. Discomfort is good when we apply it to changes we can influence, but undermines us when applied to focusing on who we’ll never be. That person doesn’t exist and probably shouldn’t—they’re just a character in the story we tell ourselves about our place in this world.

      “When you cut water, the water doesn’t get hurt; when you cut something solid, it breaks. You’ve got solid attitudes inside you; you’ve got solid illusions inside you; that’s what bumps against nature, that’s where you get hurt, that’s where the pain comes from.” — Anthony de Mello, Awareness

      The trick, it seems, is to be more fluid in our perception of ourselves. Joyfulness is found in awareness and acceptance. Being aware of our imperfections and the gaps between who we are and who we wish to be is healthy and may lead to positive change. So is accepting that sometimes the gap is just there to show us who we aren’t meant to be. Ring the bells that still can ring.

    • The Routine

      You know the old expression, “how you do anything is how you do everything”? Every day I find the truth in it. When we half-ass our way through life, we live a half-ass life. When we put our best into our most important things, we seem to align something with the universe that grants us our best experiences. The lesson is to stop half-assing and do the best we can with every opportunity. Reality is, we’re human and inevitably we’re going to settle into (and for) the routine.

      Lately I’ve been looking at June 1 as a date to begin a new workout routine. This coincides with a fundraiser I’ll be doing this summer, but I’m asking myself, why wait? What’s stopping me from simply starting the routine now and continuing it when the fundraiser starts? And why does my mind need a cause to rise up to instead of simply doing the workout every day without fail?

      We fall into habits just as easily as we fall out of them. The trick is to engrain it into our identity, that we do the things we know we ought to do without mind games. If we’re capable of brushing our teeth and flossing every day, or writing a blog for that matter, then if follows that we’re capable of investing the time to exercise every day or do some other habit that makes us better humans. We’ve already created the proof that we’re capable of following a routine by not doing something we know we ought to do in the first place. So just do it already. Today is even better than tomorrow for the essential things in our lives.

    • Ready Now?

      “It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.” — Hugh Laurie

      It’s a theme woven deeply into the fabric of this blog: do it now. I repeat myself not to bore the reader but to remind myself to keep one foot moving forward even as the other is anchored in the moment we’ll soon leave behind. There is only now… and yet we often wait anyway, deferring to tomorrow what we ought to do today. The timing never feels right for some things, and definitely not right for some other things. The stars rarely align just so.

      One of the reasons I publish this blog every day is to maintain the habit of urgency. Writing first thing in the morning most days, I feel incomplete until it’s done. Depending on the circumstances of the moment, I usually stack another daily habit or two on top of the writing to feel like I’ve really done something with the day. This small blog isn’t going to change the world, but it changes my world every single day.

      We must break the habit of deferring to tomorrow what we may do today. Sure, we must also be fiscally responsible and learn the skills necessary to navigate the world we aspire to enter, but we must stop using such logical things as excuses for not doing anything. Small steps forward are still steps forward. And when we develop this bias towards action, when we grow into our future, we surprise ourselves with the momentum.

      Beliefs are formed through routine. Our future positive or negative outcomes are directly linked to what we do now. So it makes sense to stack today with the actions necessary to turn tomorrow positive. Ready or not, the future is coming. Carpe diem, already.