Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • A New Day

      “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

      Emerson wrote a version of this quote as advice to his daughter in a letter. Over time it evolved into this bite-sized quote that makes the rounds in our sound bite world. It’s a lesson for the writer, for our long form thoughts will eventually be boiled down to their very essence by the reader (if we’re bold enough to assume we’ll be referenced at all). Life is short: get to the point.

      The older I get, the less I worry about blunders and absurdities. We’re simply humans doing our best in a complex, hurried and harried world. Try as I may, I still post blogs that are incomplete, with typos or words that clearly don’t belong in the sentence. If I catch it the same day I’ll fix it, but plenty of older posts have mistakes that will linger for as long as this platform exists. So it goes.

      Today is a new day, full of possible adventure and meaningful leaps forward on our quest to become what’s next. It’s possible there might be a blunder or two along the way. Most every one of them can be an opportunity to laugh at the situation and get right back to living a bold life. The only real choice is to get out in the world and see what’s possible. We must be zealous when we’re writing our own history. Someday when we’re gone we’ll be summarized in a few concise words as well. What are we writing for those who will remember us? Carpe diem, friend.

    • The Different Angles of Experience

      “Our state of mind is never precisely the same. Every thought we have of a given fact is, strictly speaking, unique, and only bears a resemblance of kind with our other thoughts of the same fact. When the identical fact recurs, we must think of it in a fresh manner, see it under a somewhat different angle, apprehend it in different relations from those in which it last appeared…
      Experience is remoulding us every moment, and our mental reaction on every given thing is really a resultant of our experience of the whole world up to that date.” — William James

      The experience of being on a full domestic flight down the coast is different every time I take it. This is obvious as the people, service and weather conditions make every flight different. What we sometimes forget is that we too have changed, and with these changes our reaction to the next flight changes in kind.

      Some flights, like some days, are better than others. Some planes and seats and expectations of service are better than others. We too are either more prepared to roll with the changes or worse. Developing a keen sense of awareness is helpful, but not nearly as essential as having a fully developed sense of self awareness.

      I used to travel for business far more frequently. Flights all over the continent honed my travel acumen. Each flight offered both opportunity and a cost, but in all cases a new entry in the chronicles of life experience. The hope is to learn and adapt to each, that we may be better for the next day.

      Travel is just living in a different way than we live when we aren’t traveling. Life will throw its curveballs at you in either case. Experience teaches us to anticipate some of those curveballs, but more often than not something new will upset the apple cart. Such is life. Change happens and will happen again. Appreciate the journey is the most important thing we can ever realize.

    • Being Helpful

      “We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know’” — John Foster Hall

      There are people in this world less inclined to help others. We tend to identify them rather quickly by their presence in our lives. Presence is a blessing or a curse, depending on the willingness of the helper to let the helped learn to fly on their own. We’ve all seen helicopter parents who stunt the development of a child in their eagerness to help make everything perfect in the lives of their children. We’ve all had micromanagers as bosses, who won’t let a single detail slip in their quest to control the situation. Presence isn’t always welcome, but in the right dosage it becomes the gift of a lifetime.

      Most of us want to be helpful in some capacity. What’s really helpful is awareness. When we are truly aware of the world around us, we form situational awareness. Situational awareness is seeing the big picture and the critical details all at once. First responders must develop acute situational awareness to truly understand what they’re charging into. Teachers must develop situational awareness to truly understand the struggles their students are having, that they may address the hurdles that impede a student from rising to meet the lesson.

      Helpfulness is a skill developed through living. When we learn how to cook or clean up and bandage a cut we’re developing helpful skills. When we learn to listen to understand we develop the skill of getting the the root of the problem, that it may be addressed head-on. We find purpose in our lives when we discover where we may be most helpful in this world.

      The best teams, and the best partnerships, are made up of people who bring different skills to the table. Great teams, partnerships and marriages last because each party is present and aware of the needs of others, and steps in to fill gaps each individual is best equipped to fill. Whole societies are built on the shoulders of people willing to set aside their differences and work to a common good. When we choose to be helpful the world is a far better place.

      Knowing that helpfulness is a skill, and knowing that the world is full of people in need of help, we may find a path to purpose. There’s no doubt the world needs more people willing to roll up their sleeves to lend a hand. Being helpful is the glue that holds this whole thing together. There’s joy in helping others. Why else would we be here anyway?

    • Countdown Days

      I dabble in spreadsheets. It began (and continues) as a necessary skill in my career, but really I love the story that numbers tell you. Not too long ago I mapped out the next five years on a spreadsheet, just to see what I was working with. Using a specific date of relevance as a target date for zero, I created a countdown to that date. It turned out to be a nice round number: 1900. That became my five year plan number, and so a countdown began.

      A countdown to what? Why, the person I want to be at that number. What I want to be doing and where I want to be doing it. All sorts of things come into play then: fitness level, financial goals, career accomplishments, places to be visited, books to be read or written, and yes: daily blog posts (who’s up for 1900 more?!).

      You can fit a lot into 1900 lines on a spreadsheet if you try hard enough. I have many goals in my life, and I started plugging in events and trips and milestones onto that spreadsheet. It turns out there’s a lot to do in 1900 days, and one can’t very well waste them. But 1900 is a big number, best broken down into bite-sized bits. 90 days is something many of us can relate to. It’s a quarter of a year, three months, one trimester. 90 days is a number we can grasp and work with. Divide 1900 by 90 and you get 21 and change. It turns out 1900 wasn’t optimal after all, but it’s the number and loose change be damned. That loose change is full of days of ripe experience, or at least they ought to be, and who’s going to complain about a few extra days as a buffer against the curveballs of life?

      90 days offer countdowns within countdowns. We can break it down to 30 days and weeks and single days, and do what we can with them in their time. Life is a countdown, and we all know the score. The end game isn’t the zero we reach on our expiration but the blank spaces we fill up along the way. Putting things in black and white offers a clear imperative. Do something with today lest it slip away. Tempus fugit.

      Upcoming events become countdowns within a countdown too. Some trips I’m looking forward to are counting down as I write this, and I calculate the things that must happen between now and then, adding to-do items to a growing list and get to it. There’s growing excitement in a countdown, and I feel the stir of faraway places and future goals and tasks accomplished in each entry on the spreadsheet.

      The key to a blank spreadsheet is filling in what we’re measuring. We aren’t just counting down to nothing after all: we’re creating a lifetime of memories, filled with all the things that make up our days. A countdown merely brings focus to an otherwise ambiguous stack. Like any great salesperson, we must sell the vision. In this case, we’re selling ourselves on the vision, that we might take the necessary steps to get from here to there. When we finish, we can see all the things we did to get there, and celebrate the journey all the more.

      But why five years and change? Haven’t we got so much more left in the tank than that? We must set a fixed date in our future that we might strive for more in that timeframe. Sure, we all anticipate many more days. If we’re lucky enough we can add a few more countdowns after this one is done. But that’s a much longer spreadsheet, isn’t it? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

    • Maps

      “A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.” — Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity

      “A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.” – Gilbert Grosvenor

      I was having a conversation with a friend the other day. I’d asked him when was the last time someone had pulled up asking for directions? It just doesn’t happen now—there’s a phone app for that. That same app takes us to parties and work appointments and the Grand Canyon. Maps are relegated to the wall or the imagination. GPS rules the road now.

      Grosvenor, the founder of National Geographic, had it right when he compared a map to poetry. It stirs the imagination similarly. When you look at a great map of a place, how can you not be stirred to explore that place? Maps whisper to me like Sean O’Connell beckoned to Walter Mitty: Go!

      The name of this blog is Alexander’s map for a reason, it’s based on William Alexander’s pamphlet Encouragement to Colonies and my own wanderings around the northeast corner of North America. I saw a replica of the map Alexander commissioned in a conference room in Newfoundland and it sparked my imagination, which is exactly why he had it commissioned in the first place. I just came into the picture a bit later than he’d planned. That one map completely changed the person who viewed it that day.

      If maps are no longer needed for everyday use, they still have a place in our lives. Maps give us the big picture, while a GPS just tells you where to go. We must always reference the big picture when determining where we want to go in our lives, while remembering always that the map is not the territory. The world is more complicated than that.

      What sparks our imagination? Where do we want to go in our lives, and what tools are we using to get there? The answers to these questions are more important than we might believe.

    • Past and Present

      “It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. And so it is with a city, a country, a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it. It is the present, not the past, that dies; this present moment, to which we give so much attention, is forever flitting from our eyes and fingers into that pedestal and matrix of our lives which we call the past. It is only the past that lives.” — Will Durant, Fallen Leaves

      Super Bowl Sunday was a fun day for many, a crushing day for a few, and a collective memory for all who paid it any attention. Life marches on, no matter which team won or which celebrity did what at the game. It’s all a game in the end. The fact that I woke feeling pretty good overall is far more important to me than who won the game (particularly since “my team” hadn’t even made the playoffs).

      We are each a collection of our past living on within us. We do what we must with the present trying to make it great and to set up a better version of us tomorrow, but our identity is always built on what we’ve done in the past that brought us here. We are all writing our life’s story, our greatest hits, and our obituary. We ought to make it shine.

      A few years ago I started logging what I did every day in a line per day journal. It’s a great way to focus on making something memorable of every day, but it’s also a great way to look back at the breadcrumbs of a life that brought us from there to here. The blank pages to come are full of optimism, but the pages that have been filled are who we really are.

      My recent past has involved looking at several paths forward, weighing each, dismissing some and leaning in to others. Humans must look to the future, even as we live a present built on our past. Our question is always, “What’s next?” and we spend our lives trying to find the answer. Our present, on the other hand, forever answers a different question: “How have you been?” We ought to like the answer. Yesterday is gone, but it lives on within us.

    • Earning Deserving

      “To get what you want, you have to deserve what you want. The world is not yet a crazy enough place to reward a whole bunch of undeserving people.” ― Charles Munger

      “Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.” — Jim Rohn

      We are all trying to reach someplace better than we began. Some of us began in a pretty decent position, some are well behind the 8 ball. It would be irresponsible to not acknowledge that starting position isn’t important in our lives. Head-starts do matter, but we ought to remember that where we start doesn’t guarantee where we finish. Most people in a free society have agency over their lives. Many simply choose to relinquish it.

      We all know examples of people who waste their potential. The mirror is particularly handy when we think of those what-might-have-beens. There’s an old saying about mirrors being much smaller than windshields for a reason: we must look forward not back to get where we want to go. Put another way, if we aren’t moving forward we’re in danger of being dragged backwards by the past.

      But forward is daunting. It’s changing the very things that make us who we are, and becoming someone else. The same is comfortable, while change seems like a lot of work. Crossing that chasm seems impossible at times. This is where that small mirror can help offer perspective. Think of the things that we once thought were impossibilities in our lives that are now core parts of our identity. The future doesn’t look so daunting when viewed from the lens of possibility.

      Sure, excellence is a habit. Who doesn’t want to reach their level of personal excellence? It turns out plenty of people would rather be comfortable than try to leap across chasms. More often than not, I’d rather be comfortable than working out or hiking up a mountain or doing the work that leads to uncommon results in my career. The struggle is real, and the only way forward is to take those incremental steps necessary to move onward and upward. When we keep checking boxes we close gaps between who we were and who we want to become. Deep down, we know that deserving is earned one step at a time. It turns out that all that really matters is what we do next.

    • A Lifetime Routine

      “The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time.” — Abraham Lincoln

      We are forever building our foundation for the future in the action we take today. Surely it arrives, one day closer than yesterday. We arrived at today just the same way, with the skills and habits and temperament built on a lifetime of routine. Routine can have a negative connotation, but it can also be positive. Routine can make us fit and fluent and financially sound, or deliver us to a less desirable state. Routine is everything and nothing at all. A routine is the chosen path we take from here to there.

      Knowing this, we have today to make something better tomorrow. Habits change on a dime, for the better or the worse. What is routine will thus be who we are and who we will be. Sure, every now and then something unexpected changes the game, but for most of us, we are what we repeatedly do and always will be, just older.

      Yet the game can change. And we can always change our own game. We must remember this, and have the agency to take that first step, and the tenacity to keep going from here to tomorrow. It’s fair to ask what our routine is adding up to and change the equation to favor our future outcome. For we are indeed the sum of our days.

    • Truth and Stories

      “Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.” ― Elizabeth Cady Stanton

      Truth is not found in the media or popular opinion or in the best of intentions. It’s seen in the boxes checked (or unchecked) day-after-day, cold indicators of what we have done or not done with the promises we make to ourselves. Truth is the scale and the waistline and the recycling bin. We know the truth when we encounter it staring right back at us. Maybe that’s why so many prefer to focus on other people’s stories instead of their own truth.

      Stories are what we tell ourselves about the world and our place in it. Stories scare us into submission or make us feel better about unchecked boxes. Stories are watercolors of hopefulness or fear, the promise of better somedays, and reasons for why we didn’t act then. Stories are lovely things or scary things, and sometimes confused with truth, until truth knocks a story down to size. Some people live their whole lives in a story, never finding the truth. What a sad story indeed.

      Change may be built on the truth or a compelling story. We ought to know what is driving us, that we may arrive at a place better than the one we departed from. What are we tracking in our lives? Properly tracked, metrics tell the story of who we might become, while telling the truth about what we’ve done thus far. We are what we repeatedly do—that’s truth, but we may decide what to be and go be it—that’s a story. Both are necessary for us to reach another place in our lives.

      It’s fair to ask ourselves where we stand, and what we stand for. What do we find acceptable in our lives? What do we settle for? Just where are our stories taking us? When we encounter the truth in these questions, we may change the chapters to come in our lives. For tomorrow is a story to be written, the only truth is today. Which begs another question: what will we do with it?

    • To Live For

      “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

      You may have heard this before here, but time flies (tempus fugit). The more we put behind us, the more we might see just how essential purpose is to our identity. We produce what we might in our lifetimes, we nurture a character that grows through the seasons, systems, habits and trends we put it through, and always, we are that average of the people we associate with the most. To live for others is to carry ourselves in such a way that we make a ripple that rolls outward beyond us.

      A friend was recently trying to lure me to another company with tales of a great culture, fancy resume-friendly titles and high earnings potential. A different version of me would have jumped at the chance to make a big splash. Imagine the splash on LinkedIn when I posted that change? But this version of me sees the folly in that plunge. I’ll take the quiet ripple, thank you. To be present and engaged in this place and time with those who mean the most is everything.

      Purpose seems such a lofty word for the average person. We conjure up heroic images—characters who transcend the routine and lead to us to salvation. The idea of a purpose can be a trap disguised as a compass heading. The trap is in forever looking elsewhere for true north, when it’s usually whispering in our ear all along.

      What’s it all about, Alfie?
      Is it just for the moment we live?
      — Burt Bacharach, Alfie

      The right it transforms us. The wrong it has us running around in circles. Life is short and yes, time flies. We have no time to waste chasing the wrong cause when the essential is right there waiting for us.

      We spend far too much time trying to find a higher purpose and not nearly enough embracing the essential truth we encounter along the way. It’s all about being there for those who mean the most to us in our time. As infuriating as it might feel for those who haven’t yet found it, trust in the process: we know what to live for when we find it. When we give of ourselves to the right people that love is reflected back to us.