Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • Possibility

      “Wanting things to be simple can become a kind of prison, it really can, because you end up staying trapped inside how you want things to be rather than embracing how they could be. You end up closed. You end up shutting doors to so many possibilities.”
      — Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

      There is a tendency to move towards simplicity as we get older and more settled in our ways. The young think in possibilities, the old embrace safety (let’s not age before our time, eh?). What is certain feels safe. Yet nothing in life is certain—certainly not our position in it. The only certainty is the end, and we shroud that in mystery and superstition too.

      Our path through uncertainty, I believe, lies in awareness and receptivity. When we are fully aware of where we are, of who we are and where we’re going, we begin to see everything as perfectly imperfect. We know that this little dance with life has its share of stubbed toes and slips. One answer is to get back up and start dancing again. Another answer is to find a new dance floor, or dance partner, a new soundtrack to dance to, or maybe a new dance altogether. Being receptive to change opens us up to possibility.

      What is possible for our lives is rarely aligned with what is probable. We must become pattern-breakers to reach possibilities. To explore the world we must leave that which we’ve grown comfortable with, if only for a little while. Having left, we won’t come back the same person. If we come back at all. So why complicate life by leaving at all? Keep it simple, the prison warden in our heads tells us. Simplicity is safe. But it makes everything beyond impossible. At least until we break free of that mind trap.

      This is not an inditement of simplicity (I’m rather fond of it myself), but an encouragement to finding more possibility in each day. Our routines save us by keeping us on track towards our goals, which are themselves possibilities. On that road to find out, it’s always worthwhile to ask ourselves if this is the path we want to be on in the first place. Often, the very next question tends to be, what else is possible? We reaffirm our direction or we refute our belief and move on to something else. Possibility is forever an open question leading us towards a more complete answer to our why.

    • Being the Meteor

      “I wondered if I was starting a new era or if I was taking too much with me. This is the challenge of life, isn’t it? Moving forward without annihilating what has gone before. Knowing what to clasp onto and what to release without destroying yourself. Trying not to be the meteor and the dinosaur at once.” — Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

      There is a Latin phrase, “Vince Aut Morire” that translates to “Conquer or Die”. Forget the militaristic, testosterone-filled connotations in the phrase. We aren’t conquering others here, we are mastering ourselves. Mastery is reached through successfully navigating the obstacle course we call our lives.

      “Sure, in each moment we have never been so old, but we are of course also the youngest we will ever be.” — Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

      We are not getting any younger, friend. But we will never be as young as we are right now. So we ought to use this youthful vigor to do bold things with the time. This is our opportunity. That older version of us tomorrow will wish we’d used today better.

      Wishing for change won’t do the trick—we must be the meteor. Annihilating all that must go in hopes of a better tomorrow. In construction we must demo the old to make room for the new. We are no different. This is today’s mission, always and forever.

    • The Doorway

      It doesn’t have to be
      the blue iris, it could be
      weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
      small stones; just
      pay attention, then patch

      a few words together and don’t try
      to make them elaborate, this isn’t
      a contest but a doorway

      into thanks, and a silence in which
      another voice may speak.
      —Mary Oliver, Praying

      I had lunch with a friend earlier this week. She asked me about my writing, wondering when I’d get back to publishing. I mentioned that I’ve been publishing every morning for years now. The blog hides in plain sight. It’s a marketing person’s nightmare I know. Yet here it is, as it always has been, if one should wish to find it. A quiet voice in the storm.

      I don’t write for views and likes—I write to enter that doorway Mary Oliver describes above. I share it because it’s not a journal, but my idea of creative output. The jury may be out on just how creative the output is, and I’m okay with that, simply because I don’t seek them even as I appreciate them. And appreciation is surely one reason to get up every morning to begin filling our blank page.

      There is also attention and awareness. I believe we are all aware as children but grow out of it through formal education, narrowing viewpoints and the hectic lives we embrace in the quest for success (whatever that is). Some never reach that state of wonder again, while some of us spend the rest of our lives working to grow back into it. May we all reach back into wonder before we reach the end.

      I aspire to write as efficiently, as beautifully, as a poet. To convey with brevity and emotional weight all that is encountered in this brief go at things. As this is published, it will be post number 2,850. Is that enough to say, or should I keep entering new doorways? The answer lies in how far we have left to go.

    • Pattern Breaking

      “If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.”
      — Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do

      Breaking from routine creates space through disruption. I write this out of ritual, and yet I am transformed by change simply by being somewhere else than I normally am. Perspective changes because there is change all around us. We can’t help but change as a result.

      That is the power of travel, or job change, or simply deciding that the routine that so firmly established our identity is simply not what we want anymore and forcefully inserting a new routine in place of the old. Pattern breaking begins when we lift our head out of the fog of routine and see where we’d rather go.

      Routine, and the rituals of habit that make up our days, deserves scrutiny. Is this who we have become? Is this where we want to be? What has a greater hold on us than our habits and routine? What leads us to something greater than awareness and the willingness to change?

      Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not insisting that you change, or even that I change. The ask here is simply to be aware of where autopilot is carrying each of us. Beyond that, the choice is ours whether the pattern suits us or not.

    • Facing Cliffs

      “If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
      — Ray Bradbury

      We know when we are facing a cliff. And surely we know when we’ve fallen off the edge of one. Cliffs are big, life-changing moments. We know there’s no going back to the way things used to be. We simply have to navigate the cliff as best we can and try to survive the encounter. We know the alternative outcome is eternal.

      We face cliffs all the time. I’m currently watching a couple of people in my life dealing with the massive cliff of growing frail. They felt it was sudden, we saw it coming for years. We don’t always see the cliff we’re moving towards until there’s no getting around it. We reach a point of no return in life. Deal with the cliff.

      There’s another kind of cliff, isn’t there? It’s the cliff that we choose to leap off on our own. It’s quitting a job to chase a dream. It’s sailing off for unfamiliar waters. It’s doing something so audacious that all of our friends think we’re crazy, even as they quietly envy us for trying.

      Intellect has a way of holding us back. We think too much sometimes. Sure, it may keep us alive in times of trouble, but we ought to ask, are we really living? Or simply going through the motions until we reach some cliff we somehow never saw coming, despite all the signs?

      Developing the courage and strength to leap begins with smaller cliffs successfully navigated. Be bold more often, and see where it leads us. Ratchet up the size of the cliff and leap into a few chasms now and then, just to see how it goes. That’s not being ridiculous—keep the limbs, reputation and healthy marriage intact, but step beyond some of those expectations previously established for ourselves and see where it leads.

      The point is, the cliffs are coming for us one way or the other. Why not choose the cliffs we’d love to leap off, just to see how the view is? Maybe we’ll soar, or maybe we’ll crash to the bottom and have to climb back up again. At least we’ll have learned a thing or two about ourselves in the face of cliffs.

    • Gathering Towards

      “Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.”
      — John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

      If all that we’ve experienced has brought us to here and now, and we are the sum of each of these days, it follows that whatever days we have left ahead of us are destined to be gathered as well. So why not raise the bar with heightened experience, greater expectations of ourselves, and a healthier approach to living? Awareness is seeing all that is, but also all that could be.

      Thinking in possibilities is optimistic. It’s the dreamer within, imagining best possible outcomes. We all need to follow a dream, but we also need to root ourselves in reality. The better approach may be to also think in probabilities. Probabilities are calculated. They’re pragmatic. They’re based on facts. Now I know facts are funny things nowadays, but it turns out they still work in the real world of moving ourselves from here to there.

      To design a life, we ought to begin with the end in mind. Not the very end, but the desired outcome of this particular phase of our lives. We may think of our lives as a series of projects that we bring to conclusion. These projects define us and build our CV (Curriculum Vitae), qualifying us for even more ambitious projects. A career, a soul, our physical fitness, education and relationships with others and ourselves are built from all that we gather in each phase of our life. Drift too much in any one area and we see that area suffer.

      This is where awareness comes in handy. We learn to see the gaps forming in our lives, and to formulate plans to fill them. If one plan doesn’t work, try another, and another still. What is the probable outcome of establishing a better fitness and nutrition routine today and every day? What is the probable outcome of reading at least ten pages of a great book every day? What is the probable outcome of putting the damned phone down and being fully present with that person we’re talking to?

      We are each either climbing towards personal excellence (arete) or sliding away from it. Yes, we are the sum of our days, but that one step forward or those two steps back don’t define us, it’s simply where we are starting from as we begin our next day’s climb. Every act gathers us towards some outcome. What shall it be?

    • Next Steps

      “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” — Seneca (and also Semisonic, Closing Time)

      We often think of starting something new. Yet we’re reluctant to bring the party we’re currently at to an end. We get comfortable in places we ought to be more uncomfortable being. Comfort is a cage.

      It helps to ask ourselves, why am I doing this? If we like the answer, we ought to double down on action to make the most of our opportunity. If we don’t, we ought to leave the party and find someplace else to dance, while we can still dance. The only wrong answer is to plod along wishing for something else without doing a damned thing about it.

      Have you seen what time it is? This party won’t last forever, and neither will we. What is that new beginning—or to borrow from the business world, what does success look like? What is the first step towards that? Defining a series of next steps is the proper way to end any productive meeting. It applies equally well to each stage of our lives. Being a little uncomfortable with a plan is a sure sign that we’re on to something more interesting.

    • Inconceivably Done

      “We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.” — Vince Lombardi

      Catching up with old friends we don’t see so much anymore, we talked about life and its lessons. We’ve learned some things in the years since we were kids figuring things out as we went. Mostly we’ve learned that we’re always going to be figuring things out. That was the lesson all along.

      One of our party has just completed what many would consider inconceivable or maybe insane. She noted the level of indifference she’s experienced by many who simply don’t understand just how hard it’s been to reach her goal or the why behind it. That’s what happens when people do things that are far beyond the imagination of everyone else. Indifference. And there’s a lesson there too.

      Our life goals are our own and nobody else’s. When we attach expectations about how others will react to our life story, we become dependent on those indifferent others for joy. The thing is, when we accomplish something beyond average, it becomes part of our identity forever. Nobody else’s. Those who know, know. And in the end that’s more than enough.

      Writing this blog post every day feels necessary most mornings, but the ritual is mine alone. Whether anyone reads it, or bothers to navigate the archives to see what else I might have to say, is not something I can control. If I start writing blog posts with titles like, “The seven must-see hidden gems in New England” or “10 Proven Shortcuts to the Top” then you’ll know I’ve succumbed to some burning desire for clicks and views. Otherwise it’s simply one day at a time, doing my thing while you do yours. Thanks for reading this far.

      There’s another lesson that comes with experience, whether large or small. We learn what’s possible. If we can do this, just imagine what else we might do next? For life is always built on the previous step. Leaps forward are rare. We mostly just build on who we were towards who we become next. It’s not inconceivable, it’s simply taking one step at a time towards our goals.

      [Congratulations Sue: Doing the inconceivable is truly amazing.]

    • Break It Down

      “If you repeated what you did today 365 more times, will you be where you want to be next year?” — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      This week I experienced something called Instrument-Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM), which is a fancy way of saying a highly-trained physical therapist used a chunk of metal to scrape my leg to what felt like a bloody pulp. It turned out there was no blood, just the breaking up of scar tissue accumulated over many stubborn years of telling myself that my ankle would just get better on its own. This procedure helps undo what’s been done through micro-trauma to the scarred areas. It turns out those micro-traumas create a bit of state change in the recipient. Ouch. But also, revelation.

      It’s no secret that small habits, done consistently, change us over time. If the scar tissue in my leg reminded me of anything, its that those bad habits accumulate and develop into things we aren’t even aware of until something jolts us into awareness. For me it was a gimpy ankle. For others it’s far more serious. Like the alien spores in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, bad habits sneak into our lives and change our identity. Don’t let the bastards drag you down! Break down that scar tissue.

      “Looking ahead, focus on direction rather than destinations. Maintain the right direction and you’ll arrive at where you want to go.” — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      Dropping two quotes from Kevin Kelly today, but this little book is a gem. It reads like a series of bite-sized tweets, which makes it a natural read for people who stare at a screen more than they should. That’s another habit akin to an alien invasion, creating outrage and depression in people who we used to know. We’re collectively undergoing scarification, and we must find a way to scrape it away from our lives if we hope to hold on to the best of who we are and will become.

      Scar tissue hides within. Awareness of where we are is important, and so too is knowing where we’re going. What small habit, done daily, changes our course from a lesser version of us to a greater? The days will fly by either way, we might as well tune up the body, mind and soul in positive and productive ways. Decide what to be and go be it. Just accept the discomfort of change for what it is—the breaking down of the bad to make room for the good.

    • But Not Today

      “When you feel like quitting,
      just do five more:
      5 more minutes, 5 more pages,
      5 more steps. Then repeat. Sometimes
      you can break through and keep going,
      but even if you can’t, you ended five ahead.
      Tell yourself that you will quit tomorrow,
      but not today.”
      — Kevin Kelly, Excellent Advice for Living

      This blog continues because I subscribe to the theory of quitting tomorrow, but not today. I’ll write just one more post, and one more again, and soon there’s a streak worthy of consideration when I really don’t feel like it anymore. Those moments are rare, but they happen. Simply kick to tomorrow what ought to be kicked. Today be alive with the task at hand.

      Kelly’s book is a collection of tweetable nuggets like the one above, if one were still to tweet. More to the point, it’s shared wisdom from one cat to the rest of us. We all ought to learn a thing or two and then share it with those who are rising to take our place on the line. We all ought to be aware of our place as a linchpin in the lives of so many who quietly go on with their lives, meaning to tell us one day what we mean to them, but not today. The trick is to not be the one who puts off the important stuff to tomorrow. No regrets—simply do it now.

      We each have work to do. I know I ought to work on being more fluent in French before I go to France. Perhaps today I’ll resume those lessons. I ought to do all of the exercises in my physical therapy program if I hope to see improvement on my gimpy ankle. We know what has to be done. We just put off the wrong thing. Instead of doom-scrolling or binge-watching, do something that we may repeat again tomorrow. Then do it again. It’s simple really. So why hasn’t it caught on more?