Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • Every Morning, So Far, I’m Alive

      “Every morning I walk like this around
      the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
      ever close, I am as good as dead

      Every morning, so far, I’m alive.  And now
      the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
      and burst up into the sky – as though

      all night they had thought of what they would like
      their lives to be, and imagined
      their strong, thick wings.”
       – Mary Oliver, Landscape

      I’m doing Mary Oliver an injustice not putting the entire poem here, for the full meaning of a poem comes from reading the entirety, but then again I’m pointing emphatically towards all of her work, imploring you to read more.  When I first read this poem, Landscape, it was a gut punch for me.  I’ve returned to it a few times and these lines still grab me, for they perfectly capture the frame of mind I’m in in my own life.  It’s not lost on me that Mary Oliver passed away in 2019, and somewhere along the way that may have been how I found and keep returning to her work.

      2019 has been a profound year of growth and change for me, from stoicism to spirituality to poetry, immersive trips to some places close to home and some bucket list travel to places further away.  There’s friction in me that the writing has revealed, whether that’s mid-life nonsense or creeping unfinished business that gnaws at me, disrupting my day-to-day thoughts.  I’ve become a better person this year, but know there’s a long way to go still.  For as much as there is to be grateful for, Memento mori whispers in the wind, and I can hear it more than ever.  Remember, we all must die…  but every morning, so far, I’m alive.  What shall you do with this gift?  More, I say to myself, and this De Mello challenge comes to mind:

      “People don’t live, most of you, you don’t live, you’re just keeping the body alive.  That’s not life.” – Anthony De Mello

      This isn’t a call to leave all that you’ve built, but instead to be fully alive and aware of the world around you.  Break off from the rest of the darkness and be fully alive.  Thoreau didn’t leave Concord, he immersed himself in the world at Walden Pond but still maintained contact with the people in his life.  But his awareness grew in the stillness.

      “Be it life or death, we crave only reality.  If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business…  Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.  Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      So I’m doing better at this awareness thing, and this making the most of the time you have thing, and I keep flapping the wings and fly when I can.  Life isn’t just stacking one adventure upon another one, real living is immersion and awareness.  Mary Oliver joined De Mello and Thoreau on the other side of life this year, this very year that I’ve made a few leaps forward in being more alive.  Maybe adding her voice to the chorus of whispers from those who have left us was the tipping point, or maybe I was already there.  But I’m grateful for her contribution nonetheless.

    • All The Mind’s Ghosts

      “The intelligent and the brave
      Open every closet in the future and evict
      All the mind’s ghosts who have the bad habit
      Of barfing everywhere.”
      – Hafiz, The Warrior

      “You’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      A month ago I had one of those head colds that just gums up the works, making it hard to focus on anything.  I caught it in London, carried it in Scotland and then back to New Hampshire with me.  You carry on in circumstances like that, but you know you’re not playing your A game.  Perceptions, mistakes, past glories, biases and self-limiting beliefs are like that head cold; holding you back and keeping you from doing things for too long or forever.

      I’ll confess I’d never heard of Anthony De Mello until this book was mentioned on a podcast, but it’s one of the most profound books I read this year, and I keep pulling quotes out of it.  They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear, and this year I’ve been heavily invested in my education.  And I think it comes back to the writing.  You commit to writing daily, and sometimes you’re writing about some woman in a kimono or a battle that took place where you stood that day, but other times you mine the mind, clearing away years of crap and dig deep for the good stuff.  Maybe it comes across in the writing, or maybe I’m not there yet, but I feel the improvement and the refinement that comes with daily discipline.

      The rest of that Hafiz poem is worth reading, and I thought of posting the entire thing, but instead added a link to it.  Hafiz put a spotlight on my own ghosts, barfing away in the mind, needing to be evicted.  We all need to clean out the past, stop planning for a future we may not see and live in the now.  Easier said than done of course.  And it doesn’t mean to ignore the past and not learn from it.  Nor does it mean to ignore the future.  To live in the moment is to eliminate the concerns of the past and the worries of the future.  We’re all going to the grave one day, but if we’re lucky maybe not today.  So given the blessing of being alive in this moment, why not make the most of it?

    • Chess Boards and Calendars

      The chess board and the calendar are one and the same.  

      For each demands strategy and each is a game,

      of reaction and discipline and boldness in kind.

      I marvel at masters, 

      while struggling to keep more than two moves in mind

      I marvel at poets as well, for my words betray me as a clydesdale and my words as poetry on the fly.  So be it – not every dance is a tango.  Back to the topic at hand, the similarities between the chess board and the calendar.  I win my share of chess matches, but I find my vision of the board betrays me at times.  I focus so much on my own moves that I don’t always see the threat lurking on the other side.  But I know sometimes I can overcome a threat, while strategically making a noble sacrifice, with action towards my objective.  Chess and the calendar do demand reaction and discipline and boldness, and I try to play both with equal grace, but still struggle with each.  We never master the game of chess, just as we never master the calendar.

      I look at the moves I’ve made with time over the last twelve months, and know that I’ve made some moves I regret, but also many that I’m quite pleased with.  2019 is a year of brilliant highlights mixed with some real duds, which makes it like just about every year I’ve been on the planet.  We build the calendar and hope for the best.  I can stand back and see myself in the beginning of a pivot, but the direction I’m pivoting isn’t entirely clear yet.  So I press on, filling the calendar with necessary meetings and positive habits that offer incremental growth.  A few have paid off, a few have been complete failures, and a few are just in the embryonic stage and need a bit of nurturing to grow.  Such is life; we never look like what we once were when we grow.

      Playing chess last night against the computer instead of a human, I felt bored and was going through the motions.  Passing the time.  That’s a great time to walk away from something when that something doesn’t move you towards a place you need to be, and I finished the game and turned off the computer.  Life is too short to play boring games, and chess had lost its luster for me for the moment.  In some ways the calendar has too, and it’s a wake-up call to see where the calendar is taking me and start filling it with more things that get me where I’m going.  Wherever that may be. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it, as the saying goes.  As in chess, stop being distracted by reactionary moves and be more bold.  Better still, weave a little more magic into the calendar.  Ready?

       

    • Telling Stories

      “No story lives unless someone wants to listen.” – J.K. Rowling

      There are two ways to look at this Rowling quote. There’s the story we try to sell to the audience – read my blog or my book, buy my product or service, hire me for the job, let’s do lunch… whatever. The story we tell others to persuade them to invest time, attention or money into what we’re offering. But there’s also the story we tell ourselves, “I am a writer”, “I am here to help others”, “I am a rainmaker”, that ultimately has to come first. If you don’t believe your own story how can you expect others to buy into it?

      I was thinking about a George Mack Twitter thread on high agency that’s stuck with me for since I read it a year ago. Here are the key points from that thread:

      “High Agency is a sense that the story given to you by other people about what you can/cannot do is just that – a story.
      And that you have control over the story.
      High Agency person looks to bend reality to their will.
      They either find a way, or they make a way.

      Low agency person accepts the story that is given to them.
      They never question it.
      They are passive.
      They outsource all of their decision making to other people.

      If in doubt, ask yourself, what would Wetzler do?
      1. Question everything
      2. Bend reality
      3. Never outsource your decision making”

      (Alfred Wetzler was a prisoner who escaped Auschwitz and helped bring awareness to what was happening there).

      Pushing myself to become more high agency, less low agency has been a mission ever since.  What story am I telling myself?  That I’m someone that gets things done, or someone who falls in line and does what is expected of me?  In general I’m proactive in reaching out to others, tackling projects (high agency) but tend to stall when I hit roadblocks (low agency).  In general I follow the rules of the game (low agency), but what if the rules aren’t really there in the first place?  Everything in social life is a construct, so why not construct my own life?  That’s high agency, and a better story than passively going through life as a cog in someone else’s story line.

      And so I’m pushing myself more in my career (which requires high agency thinking), and I’m writing more out of my comfort zone, and questioning other things in my life that I might have let slide before.  This bending reality to my will thing seems arrogant on the surface, but that’s passive thinking, isn’t it?  I have plenty of examples of people in my life bending reality to their will who I wouldn’t call arrogant, but instead adventurous and bold.  And who doesn’t want their main character to be adventurous and bold?

      The thing about high agency living is that it builds on itself.  You start with one bold question, push back a little and go in a different direction and it changes you.  Do it again and you change a little more.  Pretty soon you have momentum on your side and step-by-step eventually you’re living audaciously.  And that’s a story I’d like to see more of.

       

    • My Holy Trinity of Habits

      Walking 10,000 steps a day doesn’t make the scale move much, but the walking offers benefits beyond incremental movement of the scale. Writing a blog every day doesn’t move the needle much on reader count or followers, but the writing has changed me in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Reading books every day seems elementary on the surface, but it’s amazing how quickly distractions conspire against you. As we near the end of the year and decade, I’m thinking about current streaks I’m on, and recommitting for as long as I can control the future.

      10,000 steps is my oldest and most current objective. I’ve been a walker since I was a kid, well before people thought about how many steps you walked in a day. Actually tracking it came late in life, right about when we got a dog. I’d tracked rowing and how many reps I did, but walking? Not until I started sitting for long periods of time for work. My current streak is only six days, but I’ve doubled down on my commitment to 10K per day. This week I’ve done that walking in three states, on rail trails, on the beach, in the neighborhood at night and, gulp, on the treadmill. Last night I walked 90 minutes while reading just to check a box. Today I hope to get there without using electricity.

      I committed to reading every day last year, and have managed to do so even when social media, long drives and work commitments made it challenging. How? By reading first thing in the morning before I do anything else. I used to exercise first, but my body needs a little time to wake up beforehand, and the reading and writing filled right in. To keep the reading streak alive I’ve got to read at least a couple of pages to “count”, but almost always ready many more. As we approach the end of the year it’s spiked even higher.

      No streak has meant more than the writing streak, which began over a year ago. I’ve written and posted on this blog every day this year and plan to keep this streak going. You might fancy yourself a writer but if you aren’t doing it then you’re a dreamer. I’m tired of telling myself stories. Blogging has brought me to places I’d never have been, as I look for interesting things to write about. Reading obviously compliments this, and so too does walking. While 10K hasn’t always been achieved I do walk every day. It’s the Holy Trinity for me, reading, writing and walking. Each reinforces the other, and I grow as a result. Other habits come and go, but these three offer a lifetime of service. So as I post this I’m 2/3 through my daily habits. I’d better getting moving on number three…

    • Getting There

      “What got you here won’t get you there.” – Marshall Goldsmith

      Indeed.  But knowing where there is is an essential part of making the shift in the what.  December is a great time to think about then and there stuff, but really every morning you should reflect a bit on where you’ve been and where you’re going.  What went well, what went badly, what can change, what must change…  and how do we begin right now, today?

      Personally, I function better with Bullet Journal type lists.  Check things off, move things forward that you didn’t do, etc.  Lists of tasks are easy.  Lists of life goals are a little harder.  The Warren Buffett/Mike Flint 25/5 exercise is harder still, but time marches on and if you don’t reflect on where you’re going you’re going to end up somewhere else with the things you wanted to do undone.  I did this 25/5 exercise a year ago, and I’m going to do it again this week.  Essentially, you write down 25 things you want to accomplish – start a business, write a book, run a marathon…. whatever.  You then circle the 5 most important goals and avoid the other 20 at all costs until you’ve accomplished the circled 5.  It forces you to focus on what your real priorities are, and what the real distractions are to getting there.  It’s challenging because we all want to be good at everything, but in being generalists we fail to achieve our biggest goals.  Hell yes or no.  Essentialism…  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People story of putting the big rocks in the jar before filling the rest with pebbles, then sand and then water…  Whatever you want to call it it’s the act of saying no to many things to enable you to achieve the few big things.  And the few big things are the “there“.

       

       

    • Merge Left

      Accelerating to the end of the year, and the stack of books to read has grown even before I finish other books in the stack.  And so it goes.  There’s a lot to be said for focus, and reading one book to the end before beginning another.  It’s like being on the highway alone, zipping along with nothing to distract you until you reach your destination.  Lovely.  And some books do that for me – I’m so captured by them that I drop everything else to devour it to the last page, getting there and wishing the journey had been a bit longer.  But other books, even compelling reads, take a different path.  My current stack of books is like rush hour traffic on that highway, moving a bit more slowly and with a lot of company.  Worse, there’s a merge coming up as a lane is dropped.  Such is the reality of reading during the holidays.  So much to do, and you want to finish reading these books too?  Ha!

      This isn’t an endorsement of multi-tasking.  In fact, I love nothing more than being completely focused on a given task at hand, whether that’s reading, writing, a project for work or anything really.  The trouble starts when you say yes to too many things at once. With reading, sometimes a book reaches a challenging place in the plot or tackles subject matter you’d rather not read about at that moment.  You glance at a book you’ve been putting off, flip to the place marker and resume reading something else.  Or you just received that book you ordered that you’ve been excited about and crack it open to read the introduction…  and now you’ve got another car on the highway.  Active participation in the Great Conversation makes us all better people, but if too many people are talking at once what can you really listen to?

      I did a survey of the stack today, and I’m within sniffing distance of finishing five books. I silently promised myself that I’d finish two of them this weekend, and all of them this year.  That stack of books waiting to merge onto the highway?  They’ll have to wait their turn.  Indulge in new fiction?  Not until I get through this non-fiction that’s been lumbering along for a couple of months.  It’s all just habits and routine and prioritization.  Chip away at this for a bit, switch to that when you need to, but keep moving forward.  The rules of the road prevent chaos; a bit of discipline goes a long way.

      It’s not just adding books of course, but all the other things we pile on.  Writing, exercise, work, gardening, sports, family and travel all act as lane closures on the reading highway.  So be it: Life is more than reading the work of others.  Sure, the highway might be a little slower, but we should still get there.

    • Merely Tenacity

      This morning I’m a bit foggy.  Up early and moving, but not clear on what I wanted to write about.  So I picked up pieces of my past, shook off the dust and mined for gold.  To be more specific, I collect quotes that stir me at the time, write down random thoughts that pull it together.  What I see immediately when I look back is that I haven’t changed much, I just press on trying to climb the mountain.  Some years are better than others, but in general I’ve climbed higher than I’ve fallen.  So with that in mind, here are six quotes plucked from the collection that pushed and prodded me along the way.  A good reminder to keep moving, for there’s so much still to do.

      “The most difficult thing is the decision, to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart

      “There is no passion to be found in playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one that you are capable of living.” – Nelson Mandela

      “The best way out is through.” – Robert Frost

      “Knowing is not enough; we must apply.  Willing is not enough; we must do.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

      “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily.” – John Maxwell

      “Talent is cheaper than table salt.  What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” – Stephen King

      I have Mandela and Earhart whispering in my ear, conspiring to get me back on track.  Such is the power of words lumped together in just the right way.  No, not really; It’s the stories of the lives behind the words that remind you of what’s possible… if you’ll only listen and act.

    • Too Much Vienna, Not Enough Do

      “Where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about?
      You better cool it off before you burn it out
      You got so much to do and only
      So many hours in a day 
      But you know that when the truth is told
      That you can get what you want or you get old
      You’re gonna kick off before you even
      Get halfway through
      When will you realize, Vienna waits for you” – Billy Joel, Vienna

      I figured this one out some time ago, but lately I feel the pendulum swung a bit too far to Vienna, a little too far away from the do.  Vacation and holidays will do that to you.  So with a month left in 2019, it’s time to revisit the habits I’ve set for myself, revise and replace a few where needed.  Writing is consistent, exercise is not.  Too bad, I had a great run with burpees and rowing, but one injury blew up the streak, and before you know it a month went by.  But there’s plenty of time to reset, with exercise that doesn’t injure me this time.

      The system?  Make a list, prioritize, schedule, measure results, review and course correct.  Nothing mysterious in any of that, I’ve just gotten lazy about using the Bullet Journal this fall, which has a trickle down effect as I stop structuring my day and wing it, and things slip through the cracks.  Too much Vienna, not enough do.  Great time to course correct.  Set the alarm early, work out and tackle the list.  It’s grown too long lately.  So Vienna… will have to wait.

    • Self-Steering and Control

      I’ve been trying to get an answer from a customer for a week. Business marches on, but he’s been impossible to connect with. And I’ve grown frustrated by his lack of responsiveness. And then I realized it’s hunting season and he’s almost certainly out in the woods somewhere and completely disconnected from the world. My frustration melted away to acceptance of the reality of the situation. There’s some things you simply can’t control in this world. The time to communicate was before hunting season.

      “What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you.” – Anthony De Bello

      I drove back from the train station and had two choices as I pulled out of the garage; turn one way and go around the city, or turn the other way and go through the city. I opted to go around the city. In normal circumstances the drive would be equidistant, but the city offers more opportunities for delays, even at 10 PM. It turns out I chose the wrong way and sat in standstill traffic as four lanes shrunk down to two. If I’d turned on Waze prior to leaving the station I’d have been aware of the state of the roads and might have chosen the city route. The tools were there to inform, and I chose to proceed unaware anyway. It was on me, so instead of getting angry about it I turned up the music and waited it out with everyone else.

      I had dinner in Manhattan with a man who’s grandparents had been at Auschwitz and survived. I’ve been thinking about the fate of the Polish Jews since visiting a museum in London. They were caught in the trap of history, with limited control over their situation once the Germans and Russians made their first moves. There are forces bigger than us that control our lives, and no matter how good a person you are, how much you eat the right foods or how big your nest egg is you get swept aside by these forces like an anthill being kicked in the playground. That’s fate, and largely out of our control.

      My good friends on Fayaway have left their safe harbor in Bermuda bound for Antigua. Unlike my trip home from the train station they’ve diligently tracked weather variables, added a redundant self-steering system and re-stocked critical supplies for the long journey. They’re aware of the risks on the open ocean and have prepared accordingly. Larger forces may sweep you up in unforeseen circumstances anyway, but you control what you can and mitigate risk.

      De Mello’s quote was directed at our own self-awareness of how we react to things, who we instinctively like or don’t like and how that plays on how we interact with them, and how we might change that interaction with better awareness. It’s no secret the world has become more antagonistic and divided. But there are plenty of examples of people doing the right thing, treating others with kindness and respect, self-aware and in control of their emotions. Being in control requires a level of diligence in our self-awareness akin to preparing for a long voyage in a small boat on a big ocean. Larger forces will do what they will, but we can mitigate their impact on our lives. It’s the self-steering that ultimately means more in most circumstances.