Alexandersmap

    Category: Lifestyle

    • First Snow

      I’ve had many snowstorms in my lifetime. Blizzards and lake effect dumpings, heavy wet snows and light and fluffy snow globe snows, white-outs that scare the heck out of you and ever-lasting slow drifts that barely seem to pile up. You tend to grow used to it after awhile, but that first snow of the year is always magical. Having a few mild winters in a row, and snow this year taking forever to reach the part of New Hampshire I reside in, it just began to feel like we’d never get another good storm. So there’s delight when if finally arrives, tinged with calculations about cleanup, road conditions, viability of the power lines and how much bread and milk one might consume before it all spoils.

      This first snow brings with it the perspective of a puppy, just nine months old, experiencing a heavy accumulation for the very first time. Now this in itself is appointment watching, as she steps timidly outside at this new world awaiting her, sniffs and licks at the white blanket and slowly steps ever deeper. My own obligations took a back seat as I watch her figure it all out. Eventually she grew bolder and began walking more quickly, and then in a spark of instinct or insight, began to prance like a deer through the drifts, ever faster. Soon she was running about the yard like it was her best day ever, and who was I to argue?

      The thing about heavy snow days is you learn to time the cleanup, that you aren’t out in it all day long, but you aren’t letting it accumulate so much that it’s difficult to work with. There’s an efficiency to snow cleanup that is learned through experience. Whatever the perfect moment is, it feels like the entire neighborhood decides to go out at the same time. The nods and waves and getting back to the business at hand inevitably follow, like some scripted scene from a pharmaceutical company’s drug du jour commercial. We’re all keeping an eye on each other in a way, even as we mind our own business.

      With all the responsibility of adulthood, sometimes we get caught up in the cleanup and calculations, and forget to just play in the snow. A new puppy, like children, teach us to delight in the wonder of a fresh snowfall. To roll about in it and clop through it and fly across it laughing at the sheer magic of the changed landscape. The cleanup is never the fun part, but we ought to remember the do fun part in our rush to clean up. Life deserves more magic and delight, don’t you think?

    • Revisiting the 20/10 “Stop Doing” Exercise

      “Suppose you woke up tomorrow and received two phone calls. The first phone call tells you that you have inherited $20 million, no strings attached. The second tells you that you have an incurable and terminal disease, and you have no more than 10 years to live. What would you do differently, and, in particular, what would you stop doing?” — Jim Collins

      “If it’s not a hell yes, then it’s a no!” — Derek Sivers

      This idea of contemplating our expiration date (memento mori) combined with the possibility of having the financial freedom to do whatever we want with the time is an essential filtering mechanism for designing our future. It’s almost never about the big ticket money activities, it’s about carving out time for the simple things in life, like being there for the kids or having the lifestyle commitment and personal responsibility to get a puppy. Sure, money helps, but it’s freedom people seek in their lives. The fastest way to freedom is saying no to more things.

      We ought to remember we all have a terminal disease, whatever our timeline, and get busy prioritizing the essential over all the rest. Life is a short game, best fully-optimized. We’ll never fully reach that level of excellence, but we can aspire to close the gap. Instead of resolutions, we may choose instead to define what our “no’s” will be, that we may have the space for those “hell yes’s”

    • The Evening Walk

      “A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
      smells of the world, but you know, watching her,
      that you know
      almost nothing.”
      — Mary Oliver, Her Grave

      Walking the pup the last few nights, I’m reminded of what hides in plain sight from us. Rabbits standing still, waiting out the passersby. Other dog walkers, faces glowing in rapt attention to the phone while their dog cries for attention, if not from her leash mate, then perhaps from us. A phone ruins night vision immediately, but that’s not the only sense ruined. Awareness is a fragile thing, stolen away in an instant.

      Some things still scare the pup, even as she approaches nine months. She’s a teenager now, as dog years go, and most things don’t scare her on the surface. When she grows timid I pay extra attention, wondering what in the night draws her in so. A good flashlight usually reveals nothing but shadows. The pup knows better.

      The walks were what I missed most about having a dog. Dogs force a break from the comfort of the home, and pull us outside to engage with the world. Where we learn to be more aware. To confront our own senses and what we miss when we’re not fully present. Like poetry, sometimes the smallest thing means everything in this lifetime.

    • The Quest for Better

      “Let me start with issuing you a challenge: Be better than you are. Set a goal that seems unattainable, and when you reach that goal, set another one even higher.” — Herb Brooks

      Wishes are nice. When my daughter asks me what my wish is on any given occasion for such things, my answer is always “world peace” because it’s as good a wish as any, and better than most. The short answer is, I don’t wish for things, I plan (too often over-plan) and I take steps towards them. Planning and deliberate action are better than wishes.

      Resolutions are nice. I don’t make them, because I would always break them. Instead I see the person I want to be, identify what that person would be doing every day to reach further than that point and I start adding those routines to my own calendar. As a streak hitter, I know streaks are made to be broken eventually. I try to string together as many days as possible on any desired trait and track it in a journal. Writing has surpassed five years every day and counting. Some other habits aren’t holding up as well. Each informs and I restart every day with the best intentions fueled by a desire for better than I currently am. How about you? What gets you beyond the resolution rut?

      Experiences are the currency now. Doing things I wouldn’t have done a few years ago. Even thinking to do things is a step beyond the more insular world I once inhabited. Each stage of life brings with it a new set of priorities. Prepare better meals. Speak a second or third language better than yesterday. Experience something entirely new each week. Pretty soon that calendar is full of interesting leaps forward. Pretty soon we’ve become that person we thought unattainable. And the quest for better begins anew.

    • On Time

      “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

      We have an extra day added to the calendar this year. Leap Year and all that. What will we do with one more? Each day in the books is one less, if you look at it a certain way, or one more, if you look at it another way. Do we look at the scarcity of time left or the abundance of experiences we’ve accumulated along the way?

      Perhaps the answer is to be aware of the time going by and to be deliberate in our use of it. Wasting less time by utilizing it better. That’s a good reason to make goals and focus on productivity, but the root of each ought to be a resounding answer to the question, “how do I want to use my time?”

    • Some Years

      Forever alive, forever forward,
      Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble, dissatisfied,
      Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
      They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
      But I know that they go toward the best—toward something great.
      — Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road

      Some years feel monumental for the changes that wash over us. Some years feel like nothing happened worth writing home about. For the former, lessons in living life anew. For the latter, a tap on the shoulder that maybe now is the time to shake things up a bit and step outside of the familiar. We only have so many some years to work with.

      Heading into a new year, what are we to make of it? It can’t be more of the same for us, for everything changes all the time. Even what feels familiar and constant is changing, just at a slower rate than the world around that thing. I look around at the house I’ve lived in for what feels like forever and everything but the framing and windows has changed over and over again. Change is indeed a constant, reliable dynamic that we either must surf or be swept away by. We’ve all shown ourselves to be able surfers thus far.

      What makes a life great? Isn’t it the experiences we have with the people we surround ourselves with? Everything in life is an interaction between the inner self and the universe that surrounds us. To have lived well in this shell of a body is to have engaged actively with the world and to draw something from it, that we may grow for as long as we can.

      All years come and go. We advance with the years, forever alive, forever forward. Some years stand out as more memorable than others. Like a puzzle, the full picture doesn’t emerge until we put in the time. As the picture of the year that was is completed, we realize that there’s a larger puzzle still in the works. All our days make a picture—the sum of our lives. We must keep advancing towards something great, even if we can’t quite see it in ourselves. We must decide what to be and go be it.

    • Picked Up Pieces 2023: Insights From Books Read

      2023 was full of both wonder and horror, depending on which direction you were looking in and how immersed you were in your personal corner of the world. The news doesn’t help any of us live a more introspective, insightful life. For that we need to open ourselves to new experiences or dive deeper into the pond we’re swimming in already. We ought to be more aware, more open to change, more engaged and more adventurous in our days. And yes, we ought to read more, for the doors books open for us into worlds we’d never experience otherwise.

      As with every year, there’s only so many books you can fit in, so we ought to make them worthwhile. This is not a “best of 2023” list, but ten of the books I found most enlightening and informative. There are no fictional novels on this list, but rest assured, some of my favorite books of the year were fiction. This was a year of personal growth, and the reading reflects that. Every book we read is a stepping stone to more books. We, in turn, become what we focus on the most. It’s no mystery that that theme comes up a few times in this list.

      Brad Stulberg, The Practice of Groundedness
      We must shake ourselves loose from the frantic pursuit of everything and ground ourselves in the things that matter most in our lives. Steady, focused attention on the essential moves us closer to becoming who we want to be.

      “When we strive to be everywhere and do everything, we tend to feel like we’re not fully experiencing anything. If we’re not careful and protective of our attention, it can seem like we’re losing control of our lives, bouncing from one distraction to the next.”

      “Most breakthroughs rest upon a long-standing foundation of steady and consistent effort. For so many of the meaningful endeavors in our lives, the best way to move fast is to go about it slowly, to proceed with a gentle yet firm persistence.”

      Gary Keller, The One Thing
      We can’t possibly master everything. We must decide who we will become and focus our attention on achieving it.
      “Our purpose sets our priority and our priority determines the productivity our actions produce.”

      “One of our biggest challenges is making sure our life’s purpose doesn’t become a beggar’s bowl, a bottomless pit of desire continually searching for the next thing that will make us happy.”
      “Pick a direction, start marching down that path, and see how you like it. Time brings clarity and if you find you don’t like it, you can always change your mind. It’s your life.”

      “When you can see mastery as a path you go down instead of a destination you arrive at, it starts to feel accessible and attainable. Most assume mastery is an end result, but at its core, mastery is a way of thinking, a way of acting, and a journey you experience.”

      Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength: Finding success, happiness, and deep purpose in the second half of life
      We will all face a decline in our fluid intelligence and physical ability. The good news is we can reinvent ourselves to maximize the talents developed over our lifetime. This is expressed as our crystalized intelligence, optimized for our latest stage of life.

      “Here is the reality: in practically every high-skill profession, decline sets in sometime between one’s late thirties and early fifties. Sorry, I know that stings. And it gets worse: the more accomplished one is at the peak of one’s career, the more pronounced decline seems once it has set in.”

      “If your career relies solely on fluid intelligence, it’s true that you will peak and decline pretty early. But if your career requires crystallized intelligence—or if you can repurpose your professional life to rely more on crystallized intelligence—your peak will come later but your decline will happen much, much later, if ever.”

      “You must be prepared to walk away from these achievements and rewards before you feel ready. The decline in your fluid intelligence is a sign that it is time not to rage, which just doubles down on your unsatisfying attachments and leads to frustration. Rather, it is time to scale up your crystallized intelligence, use your wisdom, and share it with others.”

      Pico Iyer, The Half Known Life : In Search of Paradise
      Human history is a quest a search for that elusive paradise, or heaven on earth. The trouble is we don’t see it when we have it, and we tend to destroy it in our embrace.

      “As soon as I came of age, I posted myself full-time in the New World, and started inhaling the gospel of possibility as it came to me through Emerson and Thoreau. Why look to old Europe and the wisdom of conventions? they reminded me: we are wiser than we know, if only we can awaken to a sense of all that lies beyond our knowledge.”

      “A true paradise has meaning only after one has outgrown all notions of perfection and taken the measure of the fallen world.”

      “Reality is neither an insult nor an aberration, but the partner with whom we have to make our lives.”

      “In Japan a cemetery is known as a “city of tomorrow.”

      Bill Perkins, Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life
      The three currencies in our life are time, money and health. Each stage of life offers an abundance of one or two of the three, but rarely all of them. We must maximize each stage of life based on the currency available to us.

      “Unlike school years and round-trip vacations, the end points of most periods in our lives come and go without much fanfare. The periods may overlap, but sooner or later each one comes to an end. Because of this eventual finality of all of life’s passing phases, you can delay some experiences for only so long before the window of opportunity on these experiences shuts forever.”

      “Being aware that your time is limited can clearly motivate you to make the most of the time you do have.”

      “The more traditional bucket list is usually put together by an older individual who, when confronted with their mortality, begins to scratch out a list of activities and pursuits they not only haven’t done yet but now feel compelled to do quickly, before time runs out. By contrast, by dividing goals into time buckets, you are taking a much more proactive approach to your life. In effect, you’re looking ahead over several coming decades of your life and trying to plan out all the various activities, events, and experiences you’d like to have. Time buckets are proactive and let you plan your life; a bucket list, on the other hand, is a much more reactive effort in a sudden race against time.”

      Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way
      We have a lifetime to develop our character, with each day an opportunity to find something within us that is divine. Life is meant to be a joyful quest for excellence. The ancient Greeks, flawed as they were, rose to develop greatness within themselves and left a template for humanity.

      “We are composite creatures, made up of soul and body, mind and spirit. When men’s attention is fixed upon one to the disregard of the others, human beings result who are only partially developed, their eyes blinded to half of what life offers and the great world holds.”

      “If we had no other knowledge of what the Greeks were like, if nothing were left of Greek art and literature, the fact that they were in love with play and played magnificently would be proof enough of how they lived and how they looked at life. Wretched people, toiling people, do not play.”

      “To rejoice in life, to find the world beautiful and delightful to live in, was a mark of the Greek spirit which distinguished it from all that had gone before. It is a vital distinction. The joy of life is written upon everything the Greeks left behind and they who leave it out of account fail to reckon with something that is of first importance in understanding how the Greek achievement came to pass in the world of antiquity.”

      “Character is a Greek word, but it did not mean to the Greeks what it means to us. To them it stood first for the mark stamped upon the coin, and then for the impress of this or that quality upon a man, as Euripides speaks of the stamp—character—of valor upon Hercules, man the coin, valor the mark imprinted on him. To us a man’s character is that which is peculiarly his own; it distinguishes each one from the rest. To the Greeks it was a man’s share in qualities all men partake of; it united each one to the rest. We are interested in people’s special characteristics, the things in this or that person which are different from the general. The Greeks, on the contrary, thought what was important in a man were precisely the qualities he shared with all mankind. The distinction is a vital one. Our way is to consider each separate thing alone by itself; the Greeks always saw things as parts of a whole, and this habit of mind is stamped upon everything they did.”

      John Stevens, Zen Bow, Zen Arrow: The Life and Teachings of Awa Kenzo, the Archery Master from Zen in the Art of Archery
      Eliminate clutter from the mind and focus on that which is most essential in the moment.

      “If your mind
      Targets your soul,
      You can abandon the ego with no self,
      And make
      Each day anew.”

      “Continue to progress, do not stagnate. Consider a spinning top. It moves around a stable center. It spins and spins until finally falling over, exhausted.”

      Winifred Gallagher, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life
      Focus is the essential ingredient to creativity and effectiveness. Carve out the time necessary to do anything of consequence.

      “Paying attention to positive emotions literally expands your world, while focusing on negative feelings shrinks it—a fact that has important implications for your daily experience.”

      “Attention, from the Latin for “reach toward,” is the most basic ingredient in any relationship, from a casual friendship to a lifelong marriage. Giving and receiving the undivided sort, however briefly, is the least that one person can do for another and sometimes the most.”

      “If most of the time you’re not particularly concerned about whether what you’re doing is work or play, or even whether you’re happy or not, you know you’re living the focused life.”

      “Because your remembering self pays attention to your thoughts about your life, rather than to the thing itself, it can be difficult to evaluate the quality of your own experience accurately.”

      “Of creativity’s many integers, attention is one of the most important. Whether your form of expression involves concocting a sauce, decorating a room, or writing a poem, you need both an active, exploratory focus on the matter at hand and the long-term concentration required to gain the knowledge and skills that support true mastery.”

      Brian P. Moran, The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months
      We can do far more than we think we can by creating a sense of urgency and immediacy to our work.

      “We mistakenly believe that there is a lot of time left in the year, and we act accordingly. We lack a sense of urgency, not realizing that every week is important, every day is important, every moment is important. Ultimately, effective execution happens daily and weekly!”

      “The end of the year represents a line in the sand, a point at which we measure our success or failure. Never mind that it’s an arbitrary deadline; everyone buys into it. It is the deadline that creates the urgency.”

      “Periodization began as an athletic training technique designed to dramatically improve performance. Its principles are focus, concentration, and overload on a specific skill or discipline.”

      “Without a compelling reason to choose otherwise, most people will take comfortable actions over uncomfortable ones. The issue is that the important actions are often the uncomfortable ones.”

      “The one thing that moves the universe is action.”

      Will & Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History
      History repeats, and we must be diligent in learning the lessons of history that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past.

      “The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionists are philosophers and saints.”

      “In England and the United States, in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, in Switzerland and Canada, democracy is today sounder than ever before. It has defended itself with courage and energy against the assaults of foreign dictatorship, and has not yielded to dictatorship at home. But if war continues to absorb and dominate it, or if the itch to rule the world requires a large military establishment and appropriation, the freedoms of democracy may one by one succumb to the discipline of arms and strife. If race or class war divides us into hostile camps, changing political argument into blind hate, one side or the other may overturn the hustings with the rule of the sword. If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all; and a martial government, under whatever charming phrases, will engulf the democratic world.”

    • On Magnanimity

      I left some money on the table yesterday. Money I’d earned a few times over, but which felt unfair to take given the rules of engagement we have in my work. I left it open for magnanimity for the recipients, but the only one being magnanimous was me. Does that make me a schmuck or honorable? What’s a little money when honor is at stake?

      I tell my children jokingly that we’re the donor class. We donate to everything, we pay taxes that billionaires don’t pay, we do the fundraisers to raise money and round up with our own cash to hit the charity’s target. We rise up to meet the moment at hand, and push the scarcity mindset aside. We’re either in this together or we’re a pack of wolves fighting for every scrap for ourselves. How do we want to live in this world?

      And so I aspire to magnanimity. I try to pay more than my share, I quietly support others on their path to greatness, and I generally let my actions do the talking (this blog post a notable exception). Isn’t that the very definition of having a generous spirit?

      magnanimity (n.)
      mid-14c., “loftiness of thought or purpose, greatness of mind or heart, habit of feeling and acting worthily under all circumstances,” from Old French magnanimité “high-mindedness, generosity of spirit,” from Latin magnanimitatem (nominative magnanimitas) “greatness of soul, high-mindedness,” from magnanimus “having a great soul,” from magnus “great” (from PIE root *meg- “great”) + animus “mind, soul, spirit” (see animus).
      Probably a loan-translation of Greek megalopsykhos “high-souled, generous” (Aristotle) or megathymus “great-hearted.” The narrower sense of “superiority to petty resentments or jealousies, generous disregard of injuries” (by 1771).

      To reach excellence (Areté), we must live excellently. That includes generosity of spirit and having a great soul. This isn’t showmanship, it’s a personal standard for living a great life in the time we have. When we rise up and lead by example, then the rest of society sees the way and may just rise up to a higher standard themselves.

      A personal code of conduct based on magnanimity sometimes has a price to pay, but in turn pays dividends with a far higher return. The more we live this way, the more momentum we have in our lives as we’re surrounded by like-minded souls. That truly is reaching excellence.

    • Our Sine Qua Non

      “Taking charge of your own learning is a part of taking charge of your life, which is the sine qua non in becoming an integrated person.” ― Warren Bennis

      Sine qua non (without which, not) is that essential ingredient in the recipe that brings everything else together. It’s not a phrase we’re likely to throw out there when we’re discussing the oil in the engine with our mechanic, but we can see how it could be. When applied to our identity, it’s the essence of who we are. When applied to who we might become, it’s the essential things that we must master within ourselves to close the gap and be that next person.

      Warren Bennis was one of the first business gurus I followed early in my career. I’d fancied myself a leader and his books on leadership were insightful and inspiring. There was a big gap between where I was in my career and where I thought I ought to be, but knowing that gap we begin to make choices that bring us closer to where we want to be. Remove the corporate aspirations, as I eventually did, and we’re left with a credo for personal leadership in any situation. We take charge of our lives when we embrace our own personal growth.

      So what of becoming an integrated person? What exactly does that demand of us? Isn’t it another way of saying we’re fully optimizing ourselves? This requires balance in our fitness, in our relationships, in spirituality and in whatever it is that calls us to greatness in our craft. Everything we become is an output of what we bring in, processed by that great differentiator that is our essential identity, and placed out in the world for the world to try to understand.

      We are each unique actors—we all have our verse, as Whitman put it—and we each grow into ourselves. All while dancing with the world as the character we are in that moment. Our essence remains the same, but we change over time. Some change is deliberate (decide what to be and go be it), some is environmental (we are the average of the five people we surround ourselves with) and some is born within us as natural talent or inclination that we lean into as it speaks to us. The trick is to keep growing in ways that makes us more complete.

      Sine qua non is a useful lens through which to view our growth: Without learning this, I will not become that. Without doing this exercise more consistently, I will never get to a point where I can do that other thing. Without writing every day I’ll never develop the self-understanding and proficiency to both know myself and to grow in the craft I aspire to master. Each “without” points towards the essence of what must be to become what we may be.

      As we close out yet another year on the planet, we begin to think about the possibility of whom we might become in the next year. There’s a place in our lives for the well-timed leap, but we ought to remember that big leaps can be bruising if we don’t land where we anticipated. Leaps are often a sign of impatience with where we are versus where we want to be. Small, incremental improvements seem to be the best way to close gaps. We can then naturally step across that once-daunting chasm towards what we want to become.

    • This Gift

      “Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!”― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

      It seems appropriate to quote Dickens on Christmas day. The theme isn’t new for this blog, but another reminder to use our time well is always appropriate in a world that tries so very hard to distract us from the hourglass. We ought to remember that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused, and more, act upon that knowledge with urgency. It matters not whether it’s Christmas or the 25th of July, mortal life is barreling right along. We must make the most of life’s opportunities in our time.

      Each day is a gift. May this one bring each of us an abundance of joy, peace and love in close proximity to the most important people in our life. Thank you for following along.