Alexandersmap

    Category: Learning

    • The Next Circle

      As we become whatever it is we’ve decided to become, we naturally grow into who we’ll be next. Like a tree, the easiest analogy to reference, we might have some years where we grow a lot, and some years where we grow very little. But each season we grow nonetheless, building the next circle that will be part of our identity.

      It occurred to me that all this restlessness is just me pushing on into the next circle. We’re well into the new growth season now, not with trees and such, but within ourselves. What will this next season bring for us? The answer lies within. And friends: we have work to do.

    • Become the Maker

      “Applauding yourself for the small successes, and taking the small bow, are good ways of learning to experience life each moment that you live it. And that’s part of inventing yourself, of creating your own destiny. To become a leader, then, you must become yourself, become the maker of your own life.” — Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

      There was a moment while driving when it came to me. I must do more. I must rise to meet the moment and determine what happens for the balance of my days. I’ve been too lenient with myself in my writing, in my work, and in my lifestyle. I must become the maker of what’s next.

      Now these words weren’t exactly what I said to myself, but they were suggested to me by old friend Warren Bennis, in another one of those books that sits ready for me on the shelf for moments like this one. We each draw inspiration from something, don’t we? I generally find mine in ghost whispers. Those who have come before us have seen this all before. We ought to listen to them more. We all know that when the student is ready the teacher shall appear. The teachers who endure leave their advice in writing.

      Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in the business of becoming what’s next for some time. But the root of my impatience with myself was the belief that I’m settling into a steady state instead of pushing harder—living more, and doing more. And so it is that I’ll take a small bow at the incremental progress I’ve managed to make towards the goal, while reminding myself that there’s so much more left to do. And this is the root of all major progress in this world, isn’t it? Isn’t our life a progression?

      Bennis suggests celebrating the small wins, embracing the joy in each moment, but to then press on. Action is what carries us forward to what we aspire for ourselves. To become this version of ourselves, we must become the maker.

    • Where Is This Going?

      “A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.” ― Carlos Castaneda

      It’s fair to ask ourselves, “where is this going?” now and then. We already know, deep down, where things are going. The question merely raises to the surface things we bury in busy.

      If we only seek answers about the path we’re on, are we giving the path itself time to reveal itself to us? Yesterday, we considered the fact that the road doesn’t move, we do. Thus, the path is merely a path. We’re the ones who change. When we ask, “where is this going?” we’re really asking, “where am I going with this?”

      When Castaneda asks, “Does this path have a heart?”, he’s really asking, “Do I have the heart for this path?” The question is the same for all of us, whether we’re building a career, stacking words together just so in a blog or novel, hiking a seemingly infinite list of trails or sailing around the world. When we put everything of ourselves onto the path, we figure out just where we’re going. And whether it’s right for us.

    • When I Reach It

      “I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say, ‘Okay, you’re not that good. You just reached the level here.’ I don’t ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.” — Quentin Tarantino

      As we climb towards our potential, it often feels as if we’re meeting our limitations head-on. The choice in these moments is to either fight through them or retreat towards something less than our best. We’ve all done both, remembering moments of truth where we rose to meet it and moments when we feel we fell short. Each offers a lesson, don’t you think?

      The past being the past, the only thing we can do with it is to learn how to meet the next moment. Will we lean into it or stumble backwards? Developing a bias towards action only occurs through action. Sometimes that action is a baby step, sometimes it’s a leap. The trick is to seek consistent improvement and find our limits.

      I’m no Tarantino, but I’ve seen progress in my own life through confronting my limitations and pushing on anyway. Perhaps someday I’ll reach excellence and mastery, but more likely than not I’ll just be better than I was yesterday. And maybe that will be enough for that day. I’ll let you know when I reach it.

    • The Book Stack

      “A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

      “The buying of more books than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching toward infinity…” — A. Edward Newton

      I wrestle with books. I love reading, and stack more books than I ought to into my life. Settling down with a great book is one of my favorite activities, so why do I pile on more than I can possibly get to? The stack of books taunt me. Even as I write this I can see them in the periphery, mocking my use of time when it doesn’t involve them.

      We live in a time where we’re blessed with abundance in everything around us, and cursed with the same scarcity of time. We must be prudent in what we add to the pile, and what we edit out. Reading is just another experience in a brief life that contributes to its richness and meaning. The rules of good nutrition apply. Beyond the required reading of a formal education, we get to choose our information diet. But we also then live with the consequences. When we use our reading time wisely we enhance living substantially.

      Imagine my delight when my Twitter feed offered up the two quotes above within a few days of one another to perfectly summarize my… situation. We live an impossibly short life for the sheer number of books available for us to read, and then pile on the distractions of life (like Twitter), and how are we ever to get to everything we want to read? The very act of writing this blog is stealing time from reading, even as writing fuels my hunger to read more. Which experience is more valuable in the moment? Isn’t life a quest to find balance between what we do and what we consume?

      And therein lies the answer; reading is just another form of collecting experiences that build a life. As with other experiences, we are what we prioritize. We can’t do everything, but we can certainly do the most important things. So it is with reading. It’s not just a stack of books and an infinite jumble of words, it’s the building blocks carrying us higher and higher towards a richer perspective and broader potential. It’s ours to realize, or to leave on the shelf.

    • Offering Value

      “You don’t get paid for the hour. You get paid for the value you bring to the hour.” — Jim Rohn

      Until we feel and believe the urgency of time, we can’t possibly know the tragedy of wasting it. So it follows that if we trade our time for a paycheck or a pursuit, we ought to be applying the urgency of the hour to the task. Herein lies value. We don’t settle for things we value in ourselves, we rise to meet it. That rise requires grit and growth, persistent effort and the humility to learn and adapt over time.

      Maximizing our potential isn’t a trivial pursuit, it’s a calling. When we think of our best work, of productivity and effectiveness and execution, we ought to think of it in an aspirational sense. The never-ending pursuit of mastery. It’s never been about status or titles (those are things our parents want of us), it’s about making the most of the opportunity in whatever calls to us to meet it. It’s about bringing value to our calling. Those who do it best transcend space and time, but we may all contribute a verse.

      So what is our value? It’s a riddle we spend our lifetime answering. Uniquely ours, yet hard to define. Carried, yet willingly given to others. In fact, the more we share of ourselves, the more we are valued. Offering value is knowing the urgency of time and contributing it anyway, to the best of our ability, to meet the moment.

    • Give It Wings

      “Days are expensive. When you spend a day you have one less day to spend. So make sure you spend each one wisely.” — Jim Rohn

      “Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.” — Jim Rohn

      When we think of life as brief, we realize the expense of each day. How we use them in turn matters more. In fact, we come to realize that everything matters. Each day, each decision, stacked together makes up our life, however big or small it may be. Over time we might see that we have agency over our days, and in that realization everything changes.

      That word, agency, is usually greeted with a blank stare. Most people don’t think in terms of agency, of believing to the core that we have a say in how we react to our environment and the actors working for and against us. Thankfully, in the modern world slavery largely doesn’t exist as a legal construct. Yet how many settle for subservient lives?

      “A slave is he who cannot speak his thought.” — Euripides

      We each grow into our potential. We each decide what to be and, within reason, have the opportunity to go be it. Living a larger life doesn’t come simply from the decision, for we must build habits and systems that carry us across the gap between desire and achievement, but it begins there. We plant our seed and nurture it until it is fully realized, selectively watering that which will become our future identity.

      We each develop a working philosophy for our lives, shaped over time. If we’re lucky it’s derived from a place of high agency and boldness. We know, deep down, what we wish to become. Each day offers an opportunity to bridge the gap: To rise up to meet our potential, uniquely ours, represented in the hopes and dreams we shelter from the harshness of the world. Like any fragile dream, we must set it free to fly or flounder on its own. The way to realize a fuller life is simply to give it wings.

    • No Other Way

      when it is truly time,
      and if you have been chosen,
      it will do it by
      itself and it will keep on doing it
      until you die or it dies in you.

      there is no other way.

      and there never was.
      — Charles Bukowski, so you want to be a writer?

      Keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. The writing continues for another day. Who it finds is anyone’s guess. But like a spouse bored of life with you it must find a way out. Nothing boring, nothing pretentious, nothing that doesn’t scream to leave you and meet the world.

      A high bar to clear. We’ve all slogged through countless boring books, tedious slogs through the waist-deep piles of words that mean nothing but a thesaurus referred to. And, if we’re honest, we’ve written our share of boring too. All to tempt the muse. All to find the magic and make ourselves a part of it. Join the Great Conversation once and for all, and maybe, if we might be so bold, find a place at the table one day.

      But not today. Not just yet. Today we work through the process. Truly, there’s no other way.

    • To Be Ignorant Is to Be Afraid

      “To be ignorant is to be afraid, and in the dark mystery of the unknown a man cannot find his way alone. He must have guides to speak to him with authority.” — Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way

      And, truly, what of good
      ever have prophets
      brought to men?
      Craft of many words,
      only through
      evil your message speaks.
      Seers bring aye
      terror, so to keep
      men afraid.
      — Æschylus      , Agamemnon

      Both of these quotes were drawn from Hamilton’s extraordinary book. The Gutenberg Project offers the entire English translation of Agamemnon, which the link above will take you to. Hamilton’s life story is itself fascinating and worth a deeper dive another time. For today, let’s focus on the urgency of climbing the steep hill of the informed. History ebbs and flows and, as Mark Twain said, rhymes.

      Much of the world runs on fear and ignorance. Those in the know shake their heads in disbelief at the things the ignorant regurgitate from the talking heads trying to hold power at any costs. That they’re largely successful speaks to the effectiveness of the platforms designed to stoke the fire. We must put out the fires being stoked or eventually be consumed by them.

      We dare not be ignorant. Look around at the world and feel the obligation of the informed, carrying the weight of the ignorant. We must look squarely into the eyes of those who would destroy democracy and rise up to meet them. Many will walk through life with blinders on, lest they witness anything contrary to what they’re told. There’s no nuance in the fears they express, no dance with life, merely a cycle of fear of what others are coming to take from them. They don’t see that they’ve already had everything taken from them by their messenger of choice.

      The thing is, we can’t change the extremists on either end of the spectrum, we can only shine a light on, and be open to, the truth. Life is a dance with either ignorance or knowledge. We must choose our dance partner with the utmost care, and in turn teach others to dance. Feel the rhythm in the rhyming of history and step towards truth. The alternative is wretchedness and fear. What kind of life is that?

    • The Next and Most Necessary Thing

      “Routine will take you further than willpower.” — @ShaneAParrish

      The “next and most necessary thing” is all that any of us can ever aspire to do in any moment. And we must do it despite not having any objective way to be sure what the right course of action even is. — Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

      I ran into an old friend a while back, someone I hadn’t seen in a long time. We passed the usual compliments to each other about surviving to this point relatively intact, exchanged phone numbers and went our separate ways. We might never see each other again, or maybe we’ll be best friends someday. The only certainty is the next step.

      All we ever have is now and the next most necessary thing. We fall into the groove of routines, and it’s hard sometimes to slip out of that groove and introduce new things. It’s our attractive rut, carrying us to the grave or to salvation, whichever comes first. We remind ourselves over and over again that we are what we repeatedly do. The hidden message in Aristotle’s statement is that sometimes we have to break free of habits and find a new groove. And once in a blue moon we find the right groove and ought to stick with it.

      There are days when it all feels right, and days when nothing does. Routine saves the day more often than not, if we choose wisely. We tell ourselves to move more, eat better, read and write and floss. Each is a habit, a ritual, embedded into the groove of routine. If some part of that routine feels unfulfilling, who says we can’t find a new one? We have the agency to make the most necessary next move.

      Whatever will be will be, surely it will, but we may alter the course a degree or two in our favor. The two or three things that make the most positive difference in our lives ought to be part of our ritual. The things that slide us sideways off the track ought to be replaced with better routines. The question we might ask ourselves in our next chance encounter, with an old friend or perhaps the mirror, is whether time has treated us well or not. We can influence the answer with our routine established now and next. Given that, it doesn’t seem so routine at all.