Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • The Routine

      You know the old expression, “how you do anything is how you do everything”? Every day I find the truth in it. When we half-ass our way through life, we live a half-ass life. When we put our best into our most important things, we seem to align something with the universe that grants us our best experiences. The lesson is to stop half-assing and do the best we can with every opportunity. Reality is, we’re human and inevitably we’re going to settle into (and for) the routine.

      Lately I’ve been looking at June 1 as a date to begin a new workout routine. This coincides with a fundraiser I’ll be doing this summer, but I’m asking myself, why wait? What’s stopping me from simply starting the routine now and continuing it when the fundraiser starts? And why does my mind need a cause to rise up to instead of simply doing the workout every day without fail?

      We fall into habits just as easily as we fall out of them. The trick is to engrain it into our identity, that we do the things we know we ought to do without mind games. If we’re capable of brushing our teeth and flossing every day, or writing a blog for that matter, then if follows that we’re capable of investing the time to exercise every day or do some other habit that makes us better humans. We’ve already created the proof that we’re capable of following a routine by not doing something we know we ought to do in the first place. So just do it already. Today is even better than tomorrow for the essential things in our lives.

    • Ideas, Dogma and Individuality

      “All leadership takes place through the communication of ideas to the minds of others.” — Charles Cooley

      “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” ― Steve Jobs

      If there’s one thing that will define this time in our collective history, it’s the division of people into one camp or another. It’s all dogma and posturing, with little basis in actual reality. Stories are powerful, and “people like us” is compelling precisely because we don’t want to be perceived as “people like them”. It’s all just stories, amplified and accelerated by technology perhaps, but still just stories. We believe what we believe, and choose to follow those who make us feel like we belong to something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes the results are extraordinary, and sometimes they’re a tragic stain on human history.

      The key for you and me is to know that we’re always being sold on a story, and to separate ourselves from the passion of the moment to find the truth within ourselves. That’s easier said than done, especially when the people we surround ourselves with start singing the same song as the lead singer. Who doesn’t love a good singalong? It’s only when we sober up that we realize how foolish the whole thing was. That’s what the passion of the crowd will do, and it’s challenging to remove ourselves from that mosh pit once we’ve been swept into it.

      There’s no doubt that individuals get swept up in the events of their time. Sometimes self-determination isn’t in the cards. But sometimes it is. Logic and reasoning may not be as fun as chanting and clapping and doing tomahawk chops seems to be, but it removes us just enough from the zealotry of the moment to think more clearly about who we want to be. This applies equally to any group-think activity: political, religious, regional, familial and cultural. When we become part of the tribe we may identify with certain beliefs and behaviors as normal and acceptable, while we quickly judge or dismiss rival beliefs and behaviors as naive at best or abhorrent in more extreme circumstances. Wars have been carried out for less.

      The story we tell ourselves about who we are defines us and our place both in the group we find ourselves in and in history. Decide what to be and go be it, but know the risks from making the choice of the individual: ostracized, berated and occasionally burned at the stake. That’s exactly why most people simply go with the flow. But we ought to remember that there’s a price for every decision.

      The thing is, individualism aside, we all want to be part of something larger than ourselves. Being a contributor to a meaningful organization or cause feeds our purpose for being here in the first place. When we separate ourselves from dogma and popular opinion and find that we align with the mission we’re joining, extraordinary things may happen. There’s power in teamwork and shared objectives, after all. We just need to be in it for all the right reasons.

    • Ready Now?

      “It’s a terrible thing, I think, in life to wait until you’re ready. I have this feeling now that actually no one is ever ready to do anything. There is almost no such thing as ready. There is only now. And you may as well do it now. Generally speaking, now is as good a time as any.” — Hugh Laurie

      It’s a theme woven deeply into the fabric of this blog: do it now. I repeat myself not to bore the reader but to remind myself to keep one foot moving forward even as the other is anchored in the moment we’ll soon leave behind. There is only now… and yet we often wait anyway, deferring to tomorrow what we ought to do today. The timing never feels right for some things, and definitely not right for some other things. The stars rarely align just so.

      One of the reasons I publish this blog every day is to maintain the habit of urgency. Writing first thing in the morning most days, I feel incomplete until it’s done. Depending on the circumstances of the moment, I usually stack another daily habit or two on top of the writing to feel like I’ve really done something with the day. This small blog isn’t going to change the world, but it changes my world every single day.

      We must break the habit of deferring to tomorrow what we may do today. Sure, we must also be fiscally responsible and learn the skills necessary to navigate the world we aspire to enter, but we must stop using such logical things as excuses for not doing anything. Small steps forward are still steps forward. And when we develop this bias towards action, when we grow into our future, we surprise ourselves with the momentum.

      Beliefs are formed through routine. Our future positive or negative outcomes are directly linked to what we do now. So it makes sense to stack today with the actions necessary to turn tomorrow positive. Ready or not, the future is coming. Carpe diem, already.

    • About Time

      ‘In headaches and in worry
      Vaguely life leaks away,
      And Time will have his fancy
      To-morrow or to-day.
      — W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening

      I tend to track time differently than I once did. Now I measure time by the length of my hair or fingernails (weeks versus days since my last trim). I don’t generally look at the clock before calling it a night, for what does time have to do with how tired we feel? Nor do I set an alarm to awaken, I simply wake up. In many ways, I woke up years ago to the folly of time, even if I still follow the rules and show up early (as any civilized adult ought to aspire to). In this way, you might say my relationship with time is complicated.

      When we see time for what it is, something inside us shifts. We become collectors of experiences and embracers of moments rather than maximizers of minutes on the schedule. For all my focus on productivity, at the end of the day I only care that I’ve done the essential few things that move the chains forward for me in the direction I wish to go. The rest float away like all the other past initiatives.

      Writing every day forced me to become an efficient writer. There’s no time to waste on things like writer’s block when you must ship the work and get on to other things. Similarly, other things I do every day become automatic for me, that I may check the box and move on to other things. If that sounds transactional, well, so be it, but it doesn’t mean it’s not the most important thing for me in those moments doing it. When we give something our complete attention for the time necessary to complete it, we may surprise ourselves at just how quickly we can do the work.

      One of the people who works for me was stuck on a presentation he had to deliver to the team, simply overwhelmed by how to structure a slide deck and what to talk about. After being his sounding board for all the built-up stress and despair over the unfairness of having to do this in the first place, I made the deck for him in 30 minutes and quietly sent it to him to personalize in his own way, that he might focus on more important things than a peer presentation. When we get wrapped around the pole on the details of things that aren’t all that important in the end, we waste our time. If experience has taught me anything, it’s to quickly create solutions to problems that I may go back to spending time on more important things. Spending time on my employee wasn’t a waste of my own time, it was an investment in his. I’ll take that trade-off.

      The thing is, I recognize the place that he’s in now in his life. Ten years younger than me, with family obligations that can overwhelm you when you’re just trying to get through the day—I’ve been there, done that. My doing his homework for him wasn’t meant to take him off the hook so much as to show him a clearer future. My priority is to develop an employee who can assess the nature of a commitment and allocate the appropriate amount of focus on it, that he may move on to more essential things. Looking back, I’m sure someone did the same for me once upon a time.

      Life always comes back to our operating system. When we ground ourselves in stoicism, we know that time flies (tempus fugit) and we must therefore seize the day (carpe diem). There’s no time to waste on how we feel about the matter. In the end, the quality of our life is measured in how effective we are at navigating the small things that we may accomplish the big things. What’s bigger for us than using our brief time on this earth on things that matter most?

    • Finding So Good

      “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” — Steve Martin

      We’re into graduation season once again, so Steve Martin’s advice seems to come up more frequently now than at other times of the year. It’s great advice: get exceptionally good at anything and people will naturally be drawn to you to do the thing you’re really good at. Be average and swim in the pool of mediocrity hoping to stay afloat. The choice seems obvious!

      The trick is to get really good at something that enough people want. If you make the world’s best grilled cheese sandwich, people will line up to try it and post pictures to prove they were there to savor it. If you’re the best in the world at selling wooden pencils, you may scrape out a modest living but every day is a struggle to make the pencil relevant again to people who long ago moved on to typing and signing with a pen. We must surf the edge of relevancy in our choice for so good.

      I post this on a Monday—how many of us are excited about that thing we’re really good at? Does it move the chains forward in a world that is increasingly bickering about what the rules are? When we one day retire from the career we’ve built for ourselves, will our peers say there will never be another quite like us, or will the next person up quietly slip into our role and adjust our old chair to fit? Seen in that light, have we chosen the right thing to be so good at?

      The thing is, there’s still today to be exceptional and to try a different path. We may choose to be an exceptional parent or soccer coach or gardener or blogger first. We may choose to write our own rules about what so good means to us and those most important to us in our lives. That may not make us famous for our grilled cheese sandwiches, but perhaps locally famous within the circle of souls who complete our world. Fame and money can’t buy you the love of your family and friends, only transactional attention. Transactions are the opposite of engagement. Who get’s ignored in this world when the transaction is complete? Our aim ought to be more staying power than a family photo for the Christmas card.

      We are average at most things we do in life, and if we choose wisely and invest enough skill and attention to it, really good at a very short number of things. A guy like Steve Martin chose to be really good at comedy, acting, playing the banjo and writing. I’d bet that he’s got a great family life too. That requires a lot of focused energy on one thing at a time, but he’s done it. We can look at people in history with a similar track—Benjamin Franklin and Leonardo de Vinci both come to mind—who pull this off. These are exceptional lives that rise above the average.

      So what of us? We may not be graduating this month and posting pictures with proud parents, but we are beginning again in whatever path we’ve chosen. We ought to listen to the call to greatness and choose what will define this next stage of our own lives. To ignore it would be a waste.

    • The Splendid and Meaningful

      “This is a brief life, but in its brevity it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.” — Rudyard Kipling, Kim

      “As each day arises, welcome it as the very best day of all, and make it your own possession. We must seize what flees.” — Seneca

      Lately I’ve had a good run of splendid days. Not every day, mind you, but surely enough to make the year memorable when you reflect upon the sum. These are days we’ll remember—and so we must remember to live with this in mind. Be bold while we have the currency of health, wealth or time to do something about it. Most of us will never have all three at the same time, but chances are we’ll have one or two in abundance at any singular moment in our lives. We must use this currency wisely.

      I’ve been known to post a lot of pictures of whatever adventure I happen to be on on my social media timeline. Perhaps there’s too much of a good thing, but for me it’s about capturing the essence of the moment at hand in the best way available to me at the time. Images and words are the best way for me. If I overshare I do it with two people in mind: the one who can’t do the adventure I’m doing for lack of available currency (again, not always financial) and the one who chooses not to spend the currency they have in the moment. For the former I’m bringing them along on the adventure, but for the latter I’m hoping to shake them loose from their frugality before their currency is gone forever.

      I’ve had the opportunity to travel with people who have lost the currency of health and it always makes an impression on me. Did they simply wait too long or are they giving it their best shot with the currency they have left? The answer means a great deal to the outcome. We must know our limitations but be unafraid to stretch beyond our comfort zone. The people I shake my head in disbelief at are those who defer their lives beyond the limits of their available currency. Do it now! There is no tomorrow when the well runs dry.

      The last couple of days I’ve been sequestered with a book, my bride and our dog for a soggy weekend. The currency being spent is time, and I’ve delighted in the long walks and chapters of reading completed simply because I had the time available to do them. Splendid moments don’t have to be expensive or exclusive, but they ought to be meaningful to be worthy of the currency spent on them. We must remember to seize what flees.

      Just another sunset, or blessed with another sunset? Attitude is everything.

    • Haven’t Found Right Yet

      “Being right is based upon knowledge and experience and is often provable. Knowledge comes from the past, so it’s safe. It is also out of date. It’s the opposite of originality… Experience is the opposite of being creative. If you can prove you’re right you’re set in concrete. You cannot move with the times or with other people. Being right is also boring. Your mind is closed. You are not open to new ideas. You are rooted in your own rightness, which is arrogant… it’s wrong to be right, because people who are right are rooted in the past, rigid-minded, dull and smug. There’s no talking to them.” — Paul Arden, It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be

      It takes an advertising person to call it like it is, and Arden is certainly that. I read all sorts of books just to get a different perspective than my own. Arden sold me on his book with the subtitle: “The world’s best-selling book by Paul Arden”, which is pretty clever (for who can argue the point?) and likely sold a few extra copies to people like me who appreciate a good spin of words. It’s not a heavy lift by any means, but there are a few insights like the one above that make it worth the quick read.

      The takeaway here is that holding on to our rightness is suffocating our potential to become something more than who we are now. If we aren’t currently masters of our craft, whatever that is, then we likely haven’t found right just yet (believing we have is simply keeping us from ever reaching it). Looking at the crafts we desire to master with a clear eye, which have we come closest to reaching mastery in? Put another way, if good is the enemy of great, what have we simply settled into good enough at? We owe it to ourselves to stop posturing right all the time and make more mistakes. Good enough is a trap.

      The truth of the matter is, we never quite master anything in our lifetimes, even as we aspire to excellence (Arete). Good enough is often all most people want for themselves, me included. But arete whispers in the quiet moments, challenging the status quo. We must stop dwelling on how right we believe we are to have arrived here and dare to make mistakes more often. Otherwise, we’ll remain in a rut that feels attractive for its familiarity but is simply a destination with no end. We’ll never find excellence in a rut, we must climb up to reach it.

      Carpe diem already.

    • A Sequence of Everything Wanted

      “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

      Slow down you’re doing fine
      You can’t be everything you want to be before your time
      — Billy Joel, Vienna

      In a dizzying turn of events, last night capped a sequence of things wanted for some time delightfully happening one after the other, from Rome to Athens to Sicily to Florence to… New Hampshire. Life is sometimes simply great timing, realized. To visit the Colosseum and the Sistine Chapel and the Acropolis and Mount Etna, to see Michelangelo’s La Pietà and David to bookend an epic trip and then return home to find the elusive Aurora Borealis dancing in my own backyard hours later is a sequence I’ll be processing for some time, thank you. This isn’t meant to be a brag about how lucky the last couple of weeks have been, rather a realization that patiently working towards something combined with a bit of good luck goes a long way in a lifetime. Amor fati.

      The thing is, I wear my impatience on my sleeve (and blog about it more often than I ought to). Some of us simply want to get right to everything as quickly as possible, knowing that time flies and we aren’t getting any younger. Sure, tempus fugit, but slow down—you’re doing fine… Vienna waits for you. Simply plot the steps, do the work, follow through and hope fortune smiles on you.

      Hope is a tricky word, and that’s where impatience comes in. Perhaps the better word is trust. We must trust the process when we build our systems. Work, marriage, fitness level, artistic contribution, social interactions, and yes, bucket list items are all lifestyle choices built on faith that doing this will lead to that. When it doesn’t arrive promptly we restless types get a bit impatient, so a reminder of all that’s come to pass helps now and then. Gratitude goes a long way.

      Life lessons are all around us, if we simply stop rushing about so much and focus on the journey. The biggest lesson is that the journey continues, and each milestone is simply a marker for where we’ve been and what we’ve seen and who we were at the time. What’s next matters too, doesn’t it? Our past is our foundation for the growth to come. We shall get there some day. For haven’t we thus far?

      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Aurora Borealis, New Hampshire 10 May 2024
      Michelangelo’s La Madonna della Pietà
      Michelangelo’s David

    • The Traveler Resets

      We shouldn’t simply travel to places to keep up with the Joneses or to gather likes on our Instagram feed, but to reach a more informed and enlightened place, from which we may cross the chasm into the next unknown. It’s readily apparent in going to the bucket list places that there are plenty of tourists already. We must be the traveler instead.

      The traveler is the ambassador, the diplomat, the pilgrim, the student. The traveler is forever curious and wondering what’s around the next corner. It’s in learning the proper inflection to “thank you” in a language that isn’t yours but is most definitely theirs. To travel is to learn to see what we might not have imagined. It’s rare to be surprised by anything in this fully-connected world, but life is more than an Instagram photo or Google street view. The traveler uses all senses and tries to see around the corner from those famous pictures everyone else is taking. I was as impressed with the strikingly sad face of a gypsy beggar working the line to see David as I was with Michelangelo’s masterpiece itself. Both were masterful; the expectations of the encounter set the lasting impression. We know mastery when we see it.

      The challenge with taking a trip full of bucket list experiences is figuring out what to do with ourself when we return. Sure, the laundry and a good sleep in one’s own bed are quite necessary. A general assessment of the home and garden situation upon return reassures. Those work emails must mean something quite essential too (or what are we there for?) if only to see who ignored the out of office message. This is all the reset in action.

      We know we’ve had a great holiday when we face a large reset: time zones, empty refrigerator, thirsty plants and remembering passwords we thought we’d memorized (do get the app for those). When we travel enough we learn to master the reset. It’s not our first rodeo, it’s just the next bend in the road to some higher plain. I’ve experienced far more than I can summarize in a few paragraphs. Silence may be the best measure of an experience.

      Ah, but what of the blog? It’s shockingly obvious that the content the last two weeks has been a bit rushed, a bit unedited, and published at odd times of the day for those used to a certain routine. Travel writing is fun. The trick is to carve out the time to write as you’re maximizing your days. But done well, isn’t that how it’s supposed to be anyway? We aren’t here solely to document our experiences in the world, but to fully live in the time we have, wherever that may be. The best writing isn’t done on the trip itself, it’s after we’ve reflected on all that we’ve experienced in our time. In the end, it’s perspective on the entire journey that resonates.

    • The Slopes of Vesuvious

      “For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors as long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you seekers of knowledge! Soon the age will be past when you could be content to live hidden in forests like shy deer! At long last the search for knowledge will reach out for its due: — it will want to rule and possess, and you with it!” — Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

      Living dangerously isn’t so much about reckless acts of defiance against Darwinism. To live dangerously is to risk who we once were for who we might become. Once you’ve experienced the world you can’t put the genie back in the bottle, we expand into something more. Travel opens the mind to new possibilities, just as reading Nietzsche does.

      Visiting places for the first time that you’ve heard about all of your life is an education. The problem with those places is everyone else is joining you there to complete something in themselves too. I’d like to think that we all visit a place with the same objectives, but you know some just want to check a box while the enlightened few try to bring context and meaning to the visit. But let’s face it, we’re all a combination of both, it’s simply the ratio that separates the Instagram model from the student of history.

      The thing is, one person’s fruitfulness is another’s waste of time. We’re all on our own path through this lifetime. The trick is to get more comfortable with risk, for the fruit is often out on a limb awaiting the courageous.

      Pompeii with Mount Vesuvius looming large