Alexandersmap

    Category: Habits

    • To Do Bold Things

      “All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

      Risking all that we’ve built for some uncertain future is a fool’s game—at least that’s what we’ve been taught by our mothers and other well-meaning influencers in our lives. But tell me, without risk when exactly will we leap? We must develop our leaping ability through a series of calculated risks. This, friend, is our hero’s journey personified.

      “Do or do not. There is no try.” — Yoda

      Culturally, we celebrate the risk-takers because we know deep down that the leap they’ve taken is available to all of us in some form or fashion, but the leaper is unique for having done it. We may be inspired to take risks having witnessed theirs, or we may recoil back into habits of safety and assurance. We learn something about ourselves in either case.

      We all take calculated risks at some point in our lives—even our mothers risked it all to deliver our sorry ass into this world. It’s okay to be careful, and it’s good to play it safe in certain circumstances, but there are many times when we ought to let it ride. To go for it when the leap is worthy of a bold measure of risk honors those who risked it all to make our lives possible, and ultimately it honors our future potential and eventual legacy. We become the type of person who does things like this.

      Boldness is developed. But so is suffering. Decide what to be and go be it.

    • And So On

      The Lorax: Which way does a tree fall?
      The Once-ler: Uh, down?
      The Lorax: A tree falls the way it leans. Be careful which way you lean.
      ― Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

      I saw a bumper sticker on a car at a red light that was meant to goad the left. Something along the lines of: Straight. Conservative. Christian. Gun Owner. Is there anything else I can piss you off with? I looked at her in the mirror as she smoked a cigarette like she had to beat the light, then threw it on the pavement to burn out and roll around in the traffic. I thought to myself, maybe a few more things. If I ever wanted to concern myself with that level of self-celebratory misery anyway.

      We are each leaning the way we lean, however things may fall. I don’t put bumper stickers on my own vehicle, but if I did, it would be in the form of a question. Perhaps borrowing from old friend Mary Oliver, who asked the ultimate question we all ought to ask ourselves today and every day in The Summer Day:

      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?

      Plans have a way of changing, because life changes and so do the living. When I was younger I was a master planner in all the things I would do one day. I’ve learned to stop planning so much and simply do. Do something right now that tilts that future possibility in our favor. Want to write that novel? Write. Want to lose 20 pounds? Move and make better choices in what goes in your mouth. And so on.

      And there’s the thing: And so on. And so each of our days is filled with habits and ritual, on and on to wherever they will take us. Be sure to lean in to the right habits and rituals. We are what we repeatedly do, as Aristotle once said and this blog has repeated, well, repeatedly. Aristotle quotes would make great bumper stickers too (tell that to the spent cigarette litterer).

      November is already a week old, and candidly, it’s not slowing down anytime soon. Life leaps forward even as the soul asks us to slow down and take it all in. To do a lot of things in a lifetime requires us to lean towards positive habits and productivity. But all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. When we lean into any one thing too much we tend to lose our balance. Don’t forget to fold something precious into each day.

    • Paper Tigers

      “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.” ― Amelia Earhart

      What are we afraid of anyway? Decide what to be and go be it. The alternative is to never try anything. What kind of a life is that? When we make a habit of making the bold choice something stirs within. We learn that we can do things beyond the ordinary.

      And so it is that we make our way towards the person we wish to become. Some days we leap forward, some days we slog along hoping for progress but finding we slid backwards. Looking around, we wonder if we made the right choice.

      Who we once were seems more attractive when things get especially challenging. But deep down we know better. Keep moving forward, towards the dream. Ordinary was nice, but extraordinary offers a better view.

      Be bold today—if only so that when we reach the end of the day we feel like we’ve really done something with the time. Which paper tiger do we need to tackle first? They tend to scatter once we’ve knocked off one or two of the big ones. There is no time like now to show them who’s boss.

    • Out of the Wordless

      This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
      Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
      Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou
      lovest best.
      Night, sleep, death and the stars.
      — Walt Whitman, A Clear Midnight

      Sleep comes easily on one end of the day, but retreats just as quickly on the other side. Call it the curse of the early bird in a nest full of night owls. As with any bird’s nest, a cat will create unrest. Nocturnal hunter, angry by nature—don’t you dare try to sleep any longer! And so sleep score be damned, I rise when it’s time to get up. The cat seems smugly satisfied, but her indignation is stirred when I don’t reward her wakeup call by immediately filling her bowl. That would result in an even earlier wakeup call tomorrow.

      Every morning, dark and cold though it may be, I step outside and look up at the sky to see what I’ve been missing. Maybe I’m tracking infinity through ritual, or maybe I’m simply checking in on the universe to let it know I’ve made it to another day, but the ritual feels natural, even if the night owls in my life believe it’s unnatural to rise before the sun. In my rush to slow down and take it all in, I wonder what I missed. At the moment, I’m missing sleep. Maybe tonight then?

      The cat isn’t the only restless soul stirring before 5 AM. Waking up restless is a sign that we dozed off with unfinished business on the mind. Just what quiet desperation is haunting me? I feel the urge to write until I find the words. Yes, there’s just so much to do and be and say. If only the words will come on this cold November morning.

    • Measured in Inches

      “Question yourself every day. Ask yourself: Who am I? What have I learned? What have I created? What forward progress have I made? Who have I helped? What am I doing to improve myself—today? To get better, faster, stronger, healthier, smarter?”
      ― Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual

      Nothing like a bit of Jocko to smack us back into focus now and then. But really, we ought to be accountable to ourselves every day without the assist. We are our own creation, like it or not, and who we are is based on how we react to the world when we wake up each day. Get up and get to work or stay under those comfy covers—the choice is ours.

      We’re two days from Halloween, and the sheer ubiquity of chocolate is testing my willpower. I’m a little too casual with the carbs lately too. As the weather gets cooler and the nights get longer, it’s easy to eat a bit more, sleep more, ride the couch with a snack and something to wash it down with. We are what we repeatedly do.

      Excellence, then, is a habit. It’s discipline and doing what we promised we’d do, again and again until we’ve done that thing. Sneaking Socrates quotes in is an old trick, and I know you’ve seen that one before. The point is, we can’t let up now when there’s so much more to be done. Shake it off and get to work already.

      “Nothing is going to change, unless someone does something soon.” — Dr. Seuss

      So do something. Now. Today anyway. Something that moves the chains towards the goal. Something that takes this inclination for comfort and ease and turns it into sweat equity. Discipline equals freedom from those pesky inclinations. Personal excellence, our old friend Arete, is not for the undisciplined excuse-makers. We inch towards our potential through self-accountability, rigid routines and hard work. Does that sound fun? No? That’s why it’s hard.

      The world already has plenty of people who don’t want to do much of anything. To have the audacity to dream of excellence requires more than big talk, we have to navigate the excuses that will inevitably get in the way with every step. But we know that, don’t we? So get to it already! Today is well underway, and tomorrow is too late. Progress is measured in inches, and so is comfort. The choice is ours.

    • If We Choose To

      Do you want to know the truth about yourself? Hold a forearm plank for as long as you can and your abdominal muscles will offer you all the truth you can handle. The truth is right in front of us when we dare to notice it. Getting fit is harder than staying fit, but staying fit is a matter of making harder choices over easier options.

      For what it’s worth, I’m far more fit than I was on my last birthday. I hope when I arrive at my next birthday to be far more fit than I currently am. Call it a birthday gift to myself. Fitness is itself worthy of pursuit, if only to improve the quality and perhaps duration of our time while we’re alive. When we’re fit we become more alert, with more energy, and we feel better about ourselves when the favorite jeans slide on easily. Doesn’t that just brighten up a day?

      There’s another key benefit to consistently choosing harder over easier. When we do what we say we’re going to do, we learn to trust ourselves. Our promises aren’t empty. It counts for a lot in a world increasingly jaded and skeptical when we can look in the mirror and trust the character looking back at us.

      It’s evident that consistent and challenging workouts will move us to a healthier body. We could apply this knowledge to other pursuits like reading, writing or learning about something that will open doors for us in our career. Imagine the shine on that kitchen floor if we’d simply take the harder path and mop it regularly.

      We ought to do hard things, because hard things move us to a meaningfully better place. Easy things feel comfortable but aren’t moving us in the direction we want to go in. Pay the piper now or surely we’ll pay later. We learn that personal excellence is forever evasive, but always within our power to strive towards. If we choose to, anyway.

    • Applied Focus

      “Is it interesting or important?” — Mike Vrabel, New England Patriots Head Coach

      After a couple of days away from home, the cat is especially expressive, meowing relentlessly for attention. Attention given, she is quiet for a few seconds, then begins again. There’s no creative space for writing with a cat meowing for your full attention. But that doesn’t matter, does it? This is the time to write, and so the writing happens anyway.

      The world doesn’t care if we want to focus.

      Is it interesting that the Louvre was just robbed in 7 minutes? Yes, because the robbers changed the game by shortening the time between detection and response, which will impact security globally. When you think about things like security for a living, that fact is more than interesting, but important. It’s too soon for all the answers, but finding more effective ways to detect, delay and respond to future threats is what security professionals will focus on next, even as others search for the robbers from this event. It’s a tragic development for art lovers either way, both for the loss and for the potential restrictions to access it may create in an attempt to mitigate the impact of future threats.

      Interesting will distract us all day if we let it.

      Applying focus is how we take charge of our days. After giving attention, and food to the cat, she’s still inclined to meow into my creative space. Noise-cancelling headphones playing Mark Knopfler’s Wild Theme on repeat will allow me to finish this blog post, and then pay attention to the cat again. What’s important to her is not necessarily important to me in this moment. The dog, bless her, gives me precious presence but also space to think.

      We become what we focus on the most.

      How do we win the day? One small win at a time. The pets deserve some attention first thing in the morning, but after that, our priorities deserve a little attention too. What are the important tasks that must be focused on to make today successful? What can we do to enhance our ability to accomplish these tasks? Interesting steals from important every day. It’s up to us to focus on the right thing, right now.

      So focus on the important at the expense of interesting.

    • Rise Like the Sun

      The day
      will be what
      you make it,
      so rise,
      like the sun,
      and burn.
      — William C. Hannan

      I know that on days like today, when this blog post is published a little later in the day than normal, some people in my life begin to wonder about my well-being. Such is the power of routine that we become highly predictable. I prefer to write early and publish immediately after editing, rather than have a stash of posts ready to schedule with a future publication date. Life sometimes has other plans, and here we are.

      Days have a way of getting away from us. All the more important to get up and get to work on the essential stuff before our time is swept away forever. I may not do anything else noteworthy today, but I published something I wrote, and I shared a lovely spark of poetry that may ignite something in someone else the way it did for me.

      There are some in my orbit who believe productive creativity is best performed late into the night. I say we each know when our optimal time is for getting things done. Ultimately what matters is that we end our day having done something worthy of it.

    • Cordwood Sacrifices

      Out of the night that covers me,
      Black as the pit from pole to pole,
      I thank whatever gods may be
      For my unconquerable soul.

      In the fell clutch of circumstance
      I have not winced nor cried aloud.
      Under the bludgeonings of chance
      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

      Beyond this place of wrath and tears
      Looms but the Horror of the shade,
      And yet the menace of the years
      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

      It matters not how strait the gate,
      How charged with punishments the scroll,
      I am the master of my fate,
      I am the captain of my soul.
      — William Ernest Henley, Invictus

      We see where our choices have brought us over time. Or rather, we see if we are aware of our agency. So many learn helplessness as their primary lesson, and not agency. Not mastery of themselves. Mastery of self is a lifetime course. We are all students to the very end. To believe we have already reached mastery is to miss the lesson entirely.

      Everyone knows the final stanza of Invictus, even if they don’t know the poet. Even if they cannot recite the lines exactly. This idea of being the master of our fate and captain of our soul latches on to us like burrs to cloth. We like to think it so, this level of agency.

      Mastery requires choice. Mostly, it’s all that we will say no to that we may say yes to some primary purpose. A yes to what should be a no may be just the thing we desire most after a long day of grinding away towards our primary goal, but that which leads us astray leads us to mediocrity.

      Too harsh? We know the truth of where we are when measured against where we might have been. Choices matter a great deal on our course to personal excellence. I hear the curses mumbled for bringing up arete again. What are we here for but to do our best towards something larger than ourselves? Something godlike in its audacity? We may aspire to greatness while remaining humble servants of this moment we were made for.

      To favor no is to be mentally tough. It’s to decide what our yes will be and get used to stacking no’s one after the other like cordwood sacrifices to our yes. Decide what to be and go be it. Arete is ours to define, and ours to navigate towards through our decisions today.

    • Moving Through Us

      “Greatness is a transitory experience. It is never consistent. It depends in part upon the myth-making imagination of humankind. The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in. He must reflect what is projected upon him. And he must have a strong sense of the sardonic. This is what uncouples him from belief in his own pretensions. The sardonic is all that permits him to move within himself. Without this quality, even occasional greatness will destroy a man.”
      — Frank Herbert, Dune

      You know when you’re in the midst of greatness. You can see it with your own eyes, feel it in your nervous system. There are so few who reach that level, and fewer still who can stay there for any amount of time, that it’s memorable when it washes over a moment. Tom Brady had a long dance with greatness. So did Michael Phelps. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is currently in the midst of greatness in the 400 meter hurdles and dash. Greatness is myth-like because it’s just so far beyond merely being good.

      To be sardonic is to be cynical, highly skeptical, and maybe a little sarcastic. Tom Brady had the perfect foil in Bill Belichick. We all need someone that keeps our ego in check and knock us down a notch when we begin to believe the hype. The alternative is to get too big for one’s britches. How many rise to greatness only to stumble back down to average when they succumb to the myth?

      People love the hero’s journey, but they learn to hate the person who is on top for too long. Maybe that’s because they keep the next hero from rising all the way to the top. It’s the rare few who are loved for their greatness because they exude something beyond the norm. Usain Bolt ran with a brash joyfulness that thrilled even the most casual observer.

      We may aspire to greatness but still be humble. Like a writer or artist who view themselves as a vehicle for the muse to bring art to the world, each of us are similarly bringing something beyond ourselves to whatever it is that we do. We ought to do it exceptionally well, that we may earn the right to do it again tomorrow. And maybe even better. We just can’t get so full of ourselves that the greatness has no room to move through us.