Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • Life Change

      “To change one’s life:
      1. Start immediately.
      2. Do it flamboyantly.
      3. No exceptions.”
      ― William James

      Some of us think of radical change but do precious little of it in practice. Instead we opt for incremental change by changing habits or jobs or the way we commute to work. There’s a strong case for incremental change in our lives, for it sets us up for long-term success. Flossing and brushing one’s teeth are good habits that can change your life (and those in close proximity to you) for the better. So is reading and writing every day: The benefits are long-term and tangible and well beyond holding your own at a cocktail party.

      The idea of changing radically and immediately is fascinating when we get stuck in a routine that doesn’t inspire us. When you see people do it, it seems less ridiculous to think you can do it too. I’m more inclined to believe selling everything to sail off to ports unknown is possible because friends have done it. There’s magic in possibility realized, and we all want a bit of magic in our lives.

      William James’ recipe for change is a simple two step approach. Begin now, not someday. And be bold in both your vision and how you communicate it to the world. We shouldn’t go slinking off to some incremental change—we must follow our damned dream to the ends of the earth if that’s what it takes. Changing the bath towels isn’t going to do it.

      Tangible life change is really a combination of bold choices and consistent action. Dreams can be realized in one bold act, but for change to last we have to do the work to make our desired identity stick. Put another way, we can buy a plane ticket to paradise, but if we don’t work a plan for our life when we arrive there it’s nothing but a brief holiday before the world wants us back. Is there anything sadder than returning to something you don’t love after a brief but glorious dance with a dream? Here’s an idea: establish what you love and put yourself in the place where you can best realize it.

      Lately I’ve been talking to people of a certain age about what their exit plan is. What are they going to do when they’re not doing “this”? It turns out most people have a general vision for a future version of themselves, but it isn’t very specific. Playing golf seems to come up a lot. Travel. More time with family. These are all very nice things, but are they bold? Do they stir the fire deep within?

      To be fair, maybe the long-term comfort of a warm hearth was the answer all along. We don’t know what we’ve got ’til it’s gone, as Joni Mitchell reminds us. We ought to ask ourselves why we want change, not just what we want to change. If the why is compelling, the what often seems to take care of itself. Habit formation is easy when the vision is clear. That vision is the person we want to be in this brief dance with light. Being a bit more flamboyant with that vision is the least we can do for ourselves, don’t you think?

    • Another Foray With Writing

      “Mr. Alcott seems to be reading well this winter: Plato, Montaigne, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sir Thomas Browne, etc., etc. ‘I believe I have read them all now, or nearly all,’ — those English authors. He is rallying for another foray with his pen, in his latter years, not discouraged by the past, into that crowd of unexpressed ideas of his, that undisciplined Parthian army, which, as soon as a Roman soldier would face, retreats on all hands, occasionally firing backwards; easily routed, not easily subdued, hovering on the skirts of society.” — Henry David Thoreau, Emerson – Thoreau Letters (VI-X) 1848

      Lately I seem to have drifted away from Thoreau. It’s not a deliberate act, mind you, but a full life. Like close friends, sometimes you drift apart, sometimes closer together. Everything has its time. Like those old friends, when you meet up with Henry again you pick up right where you left off.

      It seems my own creative writing is a lot like Alcott’s was in his day. I revisited some old characters yesterday, rallying for another foray with my own pen. Thoreau’s observation is keen, and as with my rowing friend who inspected my hand to see how much rowing I’d really been doing, the results show far more than a few casual statements about production ever will. We are what we repeatedly do, aren’t we?

      With that in mind, I began again. I’ve always been a streak hitter, and do my best when I have a simple goal of doing something every day without stopping. This blog is as good of an example of that as any, approaching five years of posting every day. It’s a lot like flossing before you brush your teeth—once firmly established as part of your identity you don’t easily let it go. Writing a blog is now easy for me, in a way, in that I simply do it straight away or it nags at me all day until I carve out the time to get it done. You have the right to judge the contribution each day, but not the will to get it out there in the world.

      The thing is, that clever observation Henry made to “Waldo” in that letter stings a bit when you don’t follow through. We’ve got to follow through on the things that are most important to us, or forever be judged undisciplined by that voice in the back of our head. Do the work, every day, until the work is done. The rest is just talk.

    • Letting Go

      To live in this world
      you must be able
      to do three things:
      to love what is mortal;
      to hold it
      against your bones knowing
      your own life depends on it;
      and, when the time comes to let it go,
      to let it go.
      — Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods

      This is the time of year when the leaves release from the trees and drift in the breeze in waves, becoming a force of nature in their return to the earth. It’s easy to see them as alive—characters in their freedom from the branches that once held them. The tree lets them go in their time, and releases their burden that they may survive another winter season.

      Humans hold on to their own things. Homes full of stuff, people who sap our vitality, positions of honor that sap our soul. Why do we hold so tightly to things that, deep down, we know must be released?

      Identity. We begin to believe that we are that person with that job, or the one who raises those children. For awhile we may be the soccer parent or the blogger, the hiker or sailor or the life of the party. Perhaps even that crazy uncle who says the most ridiculous things and prods nieces and nephews out of their shells. Identity is a tricky thing indeed. We are grounded in it, and let it drive our every decision.

      Human beings always cling to things.
      Practice begins when you stop clinging.
      — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      Those trees offer a lesson, don’t they? The tree is rooted in place, reaching for the sky, making the most of whatever season it happens to be in. The leaves are not the tree, but a part of it, nurtured in one season and released in another. Everything has its time. No, the leaves aren’t the tree at all, simply a part of it. It’s the roots that matter far more for the tree to survive.

      What are we rooted in? What do we hold on to far longer than we should? What do we need to let go of to survive another winter and thrive when the season changes in our favor? When the time comes, let go.

    • The Vanishing Act

      “All morning I lay down sentences, erase them, and try new ones. Soon enough when things go well, the world around me dwindles: the sky out the window, the furious calm of the big umbrella pine ten feet away, the smell of dust falling onto the hot bulb of the lamp. That’s the miracle of writing—when the room, your body, and even time itself cooperate in a vanishing act. Gone are the trucks rumbling outside, the sharp edge of the desk beneath my wrists, the unpaid electric bill back in Idaho. It might seem lonesome but it’s not: soon enough characters drift out of the walls, quiet and watchful, some more distinct than others, waiting to see what will happen to them. And writers come, too. Sometimes every fiction writer I’ve ever admired is there, from Flaubert to Melville to Wharton, all the books I’ve loved, all the novels I’ve wished I were talented enough to write.” — Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome

      Doerr wrote this while helping to raise toddler twins in a vibrant and new place completely unlike the place where he normally wrote—Rome as you may infer from the title. I can relate to this, as a restless pup bounces about behind me, chewing on seemingly everything I once held dear. Puppies are a wonder, and fill the room with joyous energy. That doesn’t make them helpful for concentration and immersion into a place where I might meet the work at hand.

      There is a time and a place for everything. A good part of Doerr’s lovely book is about the experience of being lost in an impossible, chaotic world of new parenthood and a new city. A new puppy may feel both impossible and chaotic, but really it’s simply managing our own time in lieu of the commitments made to that outside of ourselves. I simply give the pup an ice cube to work on and meet my writing somewhere closer to where I was before. Temporary relief, to be sure, but relief nonetheless.

      The thing is, the writing is flowing well, despite any distractions I bring in to my world. So well that I feel compelled to open up the spigot and let it flow more freely. The darkness of late October mornings releases this compulsion. Perhaps it’s an underlying fear of missing out when the skies lighten up, but pre-dawn seems to be magic time for the muse in my mad world.

      There are times when the work seems to flow, as every productive person has experienced in their work, and times when I know the muse has thrown up her hands and abandoned me for more dedicated writers. Until we commit to something fully, we’re just skating the line between attention and distraction. The vanishing act is elusive, wished-for but often not earned. It’s on the other side of comfort and distraction, awaiting only the fully-committed. I’ve learned to say a silent plea to myself each morning: may it be me this day.

    • Be the Lion

      “Let nothing bind you. Transcend right and wrong, good and bad. Move on like a solitary lion. Make heaven and earth your dwelling. Renew! Renew!” — Awa Kenzo, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

      I say I don’t pay attention to news, but I’m nonetheless very aware of what’s happening in the world. These things tend to bog us down in anger and grief, frustration and dismay at the folly of others. Sometimes, the world is upside down and it feels like we can’t possibly control anything. When life is throwing hand grenades in one party after the other, we may feel this impossible weight. We must get up anyway. Remembering that darkness is always followed by light.

      When we don’t feel like doing much of anything, the best thing we can do is to just begin. The cobwebs eventually slip away and we find ourselves free again. This is how workout routines begin again, and it serves us equally well in creative work like writing. This is how the world keeps turning despite our best attempts to blow it up. Keep moving. Persevere. Don’t let the bastards drag you down.

      Be the lion.

    • Paying Our Dues

      At a reunion recently an old friend I hadn’t seen in years was talking about the level of rowing she’s been doing. She turned her hands palms up and showed me the evidence in the form of blisters. Elite rowers are a tough lot, and this otherwise sweet and warm person is as mentally tough as they come.

      She asked me if I’d been rowing at all, and of course I mentioned some rowing on the ergometer and some such nonsense. She smiled, turned my palm up to the sky and called BS on me, and we both laughed. You can’t fool an elite athlete, they know when someone is paying their dues. A few turns on the rowing ergometer is not properly paying one’s dues. It’s merely a step in the right direction.

      This is true in all of our work, isn’t it? We do or we do not, as Yoda might say it. The trying is nice but we must ship our work daily for it to matter a lick. Everything else is just talk. So my elite rowing friend reminded me that there’s work to do both on the erg and in other areas of my life. When done earnestly and honestly for the time it takes, the results will show. Until then, we must stop talking and keep paying our dues.

    • Break Up the Habitual

      “We need habit to get through a day, to get to work, to feed our children. But habit is dangerous too. The act of seeing can quickly become unconscious and automatic. The eyes see something—gray-brown bark, say, fissured into broad, vertical plates—and the brain spits out tree trunk and the eye moves on. But did I really take the time to see the tree? I glimpse hazel hair, high cheekbones, a field of freckles and I think Shawna. But did I take the time to see my wife?
      ... The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we’re not careful, pretty soon we’re gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.
      … I open my journal and stare out at the trunk of the umbrella pine and do my best to fight off the atrophy that comes from seeing things too frequently. I try to shape a few sentences around this tiny corner of Rome; I try to force my eye to slow down. A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought to be a love letter to the world.
      Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.”
      — Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome

      A long quote, but honestly I could plug the entire chapter of this delightful book in here and call it a day. This is a song I know well. We are creatures of habit, and a good habit will save us as much as a bad habit may be our ruin, but this often puts us on autopilot with our senses. There’s a fine line between being fully aware and being overwhelmed. A bit of focus on the task at hand is just as essential as being aware of everything around us. Situation awareness can quite literally save the day for us, but awareness of every situation can make us completely useless.

      Still, so many of us miss the details for the routine. How much of a drive do we ever remember? What of the miracle of commercial flight? Most people simply resign themselves to the screen in front of them for the duration, never glancing out the window at the world of wonder just outside. What of home? Do we ever immerse ourselves in something we once gazed at lovingly, like that picture we once cherished and now barely see? How many marriages end in just such a way?

      We know the Latin phrase: “tempus fugit carpe diem” (time flies so seize the day). Seizing isn’t just an action statement to go out and do bold things, though surely that’s a big part of it. It also means being fully aware of the world around us while we’re living this day. Well before the Romans began creating such memorable phrases, that old Greek sage Seneca had his own take on this, saying “As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” Indeed we must.

      Doerr seized his day moving to Rome for a year, grabbing the opportunity of a lifetime just as he and his wife were navigating the challenge of raising newborn twins. That’s quite a one-two punch to anyone’s routine. His call to leave the familiar comes from his own experience in doing just so. But even under such extreme change in his and his wife’s lifestyle, he found routine he had to break through to find full awareness. What of us?

      “Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures.” – Henry David Thoreau

      At a party of the weekend I was introduced to someone as “a blogger” and was asked what I write about. I write about everything, I explained, but didn’t go much deeper out of… habit. We rise to meet our moments or we simply go through them. Writing is a form of heightened awareness of the moment. So is photography, for that matter. I tend to be the unofficial photographer at family events and during travel because I see opportunities either to capture or create the moment. In the end, moments are all we have.

      This blog is a call to arms for myself as much as it is a collection of observations and thoughts. Tempus fugit, sir, so carpe diem. Pay attention to the moment, friend, but do note the days gone by on this journey too. We waste so much of it, don’t we? We must be aware, and be productive with our days while we have them. Make each day new all over again.

    • The Magic of Following Through

      “I can give you a six-word formula for success: Think things through – then follow through.”— Eddie Rickenbacker

      The more time I spend on this planet, the more I feel the fulfillment of deliberate action. You build momentum in your life when you do what you say you’re going to do with enough people. There’s a tipping point where everyone in your life simply identifies you as someone they can count on. Following through is a beacon of hope and light in a world where so many quietly quit on others, and in doing so, on themselves as well.

      It wasn’t always so. I once mastered the art of excuses. Lazy and unfocused as a teenager, I would tell myself that it didn’t matter whether I did what I said I was going to do. It didn’t take long to realize the error of my ways. You hear a enough feedback from people in your life who you let down and you begin to feel the urgency to close the gap between who that person was and the person you aspire to be. Following through is the act of growing up and choosing to be the adult in the room.

      Much later in this lifetime, I tend to take on more than I ought to. Saying no becomes the challenge, not saying yes. But no is part of the commitment to yes. To follow through on anything meaningful, we have to subtract something else that might have been a yes. That might be people, or putting in extra time at work instead of being home with the family, or maybe it’s saying no to that donut with our morning coffee. We are what we repeatedly do, and we are also what we repeatedly choose not to do. Over time, many of us learn to choose wisely. Choice is a commitment to that one really essential thing over all other things.

      The unspoken rule here is that we must follow through on our promises to ourself as well. We must be the person we want to be. We must ship the work, as Seth Godin would say, when we say we’re going to ship it. Putting a blog post out in the world every day is just one of many small commitments I make to myself. Like those other small commitments, it pays dividends in profound and magical ways. For in following through over and over, you begin to believe in possibilities you might not have believed in otherwise. And others begin to believe in you for the consistency you’ve shown. We live the story we tell ourselves: this is evidence of who I am.

      There’s magic in following through on commitments we’ve made. We rise to a place of honor by doing what we said we’d do. This is our uncompromising vow to others, and to ourselves. We are showing respect for those whom we follow through with, and surely for ourselves. This leads directly to a better world for those we interact with, and a better night’s sleep for us. Who said we can’t be magicians? Follow through.

    • Maintaining a Steady State

      We each plot our beginnings in this lifetime, but what of our endings? When do the wheels come off? When will be the last time we do that thing we love to do? We ought to look this expiration date squarely in the eye and be aware that all good things must pass, thus cherishing the time we have with it. I may never again row a 2000 meter race for speed and it won’t break my heart, but I’ll happily row beyond that mark with far less intensity. The goal is no longer to be the fastest, but to sustain a base level of fitness from now until the last.

      When I run out of things to write about, I’ll simply stop writing. The words that resonate will be rephrased into the words of others, ideas will become turned over like compost and feed a new generation of seekers. It’s bold to think so, isn’t it? More likely the blog will quietly fade into the past, as we all must do some day. Each of us has our time to shine.

      Perhaps the point is to build and carry the very best of ourselves to our last days, that we may offer something meaningful for those who follow us on the path. More essential still is to lead by example now, that others have the courage to find their own verse. To be steady in a time of turbulence offers more value to others than being first across any proverbial finish line.

      Some aspire to be on top, and that’s great for them. Most of us aim to maintain a steady state, filled with the highs and lows of a lifetime, but generally predictable progression to something… better. Not dull, mind you, but sustainably predictable growth. As any financial advisor will tell us, there’s a lot to be said for predictable growth. Leave volatility for the young and restless.

      I write this having added a puppy to my life, which tends to turn a well-established routine upside down. This may signal the end of my blogging days, or perhaps a reason to reinvent that steady state with a burst of volatility and restless energy. Whatever the outcome, it won’t be the same old thing. But who says a fresh perspective isn’t welcome in an otherwise steady life?

    • The Choice of Attention

      “If you cannot find it here, you won’t find it anywhere. Don’t chase after your thoughts as a shadow follows its object. Don’t run after your thoughts. Find joy and peace in this very moment. This is your own time. This spot where you sit is your own spot. It is on this very spot and in this very moment that you can become enlightened. You don’t have to sit beneath a special tree in a distant land.” — Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness

      I don’t dabble much in meditation in the classical sense, but lean deeply into awareness. So this very moment means a great deal to this particular time traveler. We dance in the now, or risk having the moment pass us by.

      Yet the time slips by so quickly anyway. This is as it should be, time being the creation of us frenzied humans. Wouldn’t it be better to think in terms of seasons or the natural cycle of a lifetime? Probably, but dinner reservations would be chaotic.

      Awareness of the moment is simply being present and engaged as best we can in this time and place that we live in. I’m quite aware that I have some things to do, and have a mosquito flying annoyingly nearby, and there’s a puppy underfoot restless in her desire to do anything but watch me type. I don’t have to look around to be aware of these things, I just have to be open to receiving them as they roll in like waves, one at a time, and wash across this broad beach of here and now.

      The trade-off, of course, is that awareness of everything around us makes us completely focused on none of them. There is a paradox here, in that we must be fully aware to be fully alive, yet raptly focused on our most important thing in the moment to ensure that thing gets done. We are constantly toeing the line between order and chaos within our brain.

      “Choice of attention—to pay attention to this and ignore that—is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be.” — W. H. Auden

      Chaos is all around us, it’s up to us to make sense of it in our own minds. There’s something to the idea of meditation and quieting your mind to receive enlightenment, I’m just not particularly good at sitting still with my breath. Yet I can sit quietly for hours writing, and can walk or row completely focused on the task at hand, aware only of the next step or stroke. Awareness seems to be more essential than enlightenment. One could make a case that they’re one and the same.

      So another day greets us with the choice of where to place our attention. The difference between a meaningful and fulfilling life and a chaotic, empty life is quite literally in our own head. Awareness, applied focus and a sense of purpose or direction are the recipe for a successful life. We choose what to be and have the opportunity to go be it.