Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Live & Learn

      “There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” – Will Rogers

      Don’t look now, but we’re approaching the last month of the year. What has this year taught us? That we’re more resilient than we thought? Or more fragile? It’s both, isn’t it? And while we’re at it, we’re capable of more than we thought and far too distracted to maximize our potential. Global issues seem too complex to solve so we focus on rich people flying into space instead.

      We humans get a lot wrong on our quick dash across time, but we usually get just enough right to keep ourselves on track. That is the promise the new day brings, this sense of optimism that comes with not screwing up too much so far, and believing it will be so again today. The lot of us are collectively peeing on the electric fence and learning some shocking lessons. So far the voltage on that electric fence has only been set to stun.

      Instead of kicking the can down the road into next year, what if we rolled up our sleeves and tackled our biggest challenges now? Spin up a bit of positive momentum towards our collective future with applied effort now. Imagine the lessons we might learn about ourselves if we focused on doing what desperately needs to get done?

    • The Trick In the Compass

      “It is a fault to wish to be understood before we have made ourselves clear to ourselves.” — Simone Weil

      The quote above is making the rounds on Twitter again, stirred up first by Maria Popova and recently by Tim Ferriss. When the student is ready the teacher will appear, it is said, and whatever brought the quote back to my attention, I was ready to receive it. Maybe you are too.

      The last time I consulted my compass, I was sitting in a parking lot in front of a sporting goods store, hearing the truth. He told me to stop writing about death so much, but accepted my answer that stoicism isn’t a preoccupation with death, it’s a reminder to live with urgency. It would be the last conversation we’d ever have, and I wonder at the exchange even now.

      The trick in the compass is that it doesn’t show true north, it shows magnetic north. The difference between the two is called the magnetic inclination. Magnetic north, simplified, changes with the molten core of the Earth. Its more fluid, if you will. We change in just such a way. Just like the compass, we must adjust our heading based on how far from true north our core has shifted our magnetic north. No wonder so many find themselves off course.

      Making ourselves clear to ourselves is a journey. It requires walking many miles, the consumption of vast amounts of poetry and prose, a good friend or mentor alongside, and certainly, a whole lot of writing. But mostly it requires stumbling over hard truths, picking yourself up and setting yourself back on the path.

    • Where Are You Parking Yourself?

      “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking spaces.” – Will Rogers

      “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

      A great humorist will kick you in the ass while they make you laugh. You could fill a blog with Will Rogers quotes, and really, I just might someday. But not today. Today I’m thinking about these two quotes of his that pair well together. For who doesn’t contemplate their path to success, and ponder whether they might have stopped a few steps short of a higher peak?

      Last year, wanting to see the starry dome and catch the first glimpse of sunrise from the east coast of the United States, my daughter and I drove to the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park in Maine. It was 3 AM, and there were already people up there watching the celestial show above, but there was plenty of elbow room and more than enough time to find a spot to park ourselves for the big event. We chose a spot next to a large boulder about 200 feet down from the summit parking lot. Over the next two hours a couple of hundred people walked past us to spots further away. When the sun finally rose, I could see that they’d chosen a place more spectacular than the one we’d chosen. And we regretted not going further when we could have.

      No matter where we are currently parked, it’s just a pause along the way unless we choose to make it our grave. As we dance with the extraordinary that inspires greatness within us, we’ll be tempted along the way to live with good enough. Shake it off and push on. There’s so much more to experience in life just beyond where we currently find ourselves.

    • Up to the Nostrils

      “I think you should always do shit that scares you. You just always have to do stuff that scares you. Just wander right off into the water right up to where just your nostrils are out of it. And then just try and live there.” – Brandi Carlile, on The Howard Stern Show

      How deep are you in the body of water you presently find yourself? How can you wade in deeper? How can you challenge yourself more than you are right now? Are you afraid of drowning? Or simply afraid of getting a little wet?

      Stern is a brilliant interviewer, and when he has someone as extraordinary as Brandi Carlile on his show, someone who rises to the occasion because she’s not afraid to wade in up to the nostrils, the conversation is compelling. Because there’s something drawn out of that conversation that transcends the people talking, they draw something out of you too. You find yourself questioning just how deeply you’ve been willing to wade into that water yourself. In that question is the answer for what you’ve got to do next, should you have the courage to do so.

      What comes next? Where do we go from here? What do you have to give up within yourself to get try to live in that place where you’re just on the edge of drowning? For that is the place where you transcend the ordinary.

      We forget, in our fear of wading in so deeply, that we don’t have to drown. We might just learn to swim in deeper waters. We might just thrive when we find that scary stuff isn’t all that scary after all. Go deeper.

    • Killing Our Previous Self

      Sacrifice the things you used to believe, and the ways you used to be.
      Learning leaves a trail of little deaths.
      – Derek Sivers, How To Live

      The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it. – John Ruskin

      We all transform into something different. This is the only way, for no matter how much we might embrace the comfort of our current self, it must ultimately die and be cast aside for the person we become by our actions. The question isn’t whether who we once were dies, but rather, who does the killing. Do we move ourselves towards that which we aspire to be, or does the world leave us behind, a shell of our previous self? Don’t let this happen to you friend!

      The pandemic killed more than the people who succumbed to COVID-19. It killed what was comfortable and routine for the masses, changing us in profound ways that we might not fully understand. But that death of our former self was going to happen anyway, it only accelerated in the pandemic. Mourn what has passed if you will, but then dust yourself off and ask yourself, what comes next for me?

      I mourn the passing of old friendships. People I was once close with who have disappeared down the path of their own lives. But then again, I’ve changed too. Learned new things, built new habits, formed new alliances. Our paths were once parallel and then diverged. Old friends might still gather and celebrate what once was, or look towards a place where we cross paths once again, but ultimately we must keep walking our own path, just as they do. Whatever will be will be. Should we meet again, wouldn’t it be better if we built a great story of how our lives grew in the time we were apart?

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

      I celebrate the journey others are on, even as I continue on my own path. We’ll have so much to talk about, should we meet again. Stories about those long-dead former selves transformed into something different. Don’t we owe it to ourselves to make that story greater than what it once was? To learn and grow and follow the path that brings us the most meaning in our lives, and share this greater self with others? That, it seems to me, is what success really is.

    • Add a Question Mark

      Don’t accept the false stories people tell.
      Things are neither good nor bad — they’re as neutral as a rock.
      When people give opinions, add a question mark.
      If they say, “Immigration is bad,” change it to, “Immigration is bad?”
      Let the questions drift away, unanswered.
      – Derek Sivers, How To Live

      There’s a hidden message in this Sivers book that comes to you as you read it. Don’t take it all at face value. Question everything. Especially the very things you’re reading in his book. The advice feels both right on point and at other times the completely opposite of what you believe in your core. And that’s the point of it all. There’s no set way to live your life, question all advice and find what works for you.

      I wish more people would add a question mark instead of just blindly believing what they hear from people with accumulated connections, titles and degrees. They may be absolutely correct about a position they take, but it’s just a story until we validate it ourselves. The old expression, “Trust, but verify” comes to mind. Add the question mark to those statements and watch them transform:

      Vaccinations are meant to control people?

      Government serves people?

      There is only one true god?

      You must stick with one company to grow your career?

      You aren’t “qualified”?

      Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time?

      See? Most people throw their beliefs at us to try to make it stick in our own mind. Adding the question mark is like spraying teflon on our skull, making us immune to questionable stories, and making us assess the validity of the feasible. Every statement above could be true, or complete bullshit, but we don’t really know which at face value. We must add the question mark, and in doing so, pause and assess the original statement. Or, for the truly outlandish, let it drift away.

      But Brady is definitely the GOAT. Right?

    • The Hidden Giant

      “A fox looked at his shadow at sunrise and said, “I will have a camel for lunch today.” And all morning he went about looking for camels. But at noon he saw his shadow again—and he said, “A mouse will do.” – Kahlil Gibran, The Fox

      Walking on a beach at sunset earlier this week, shadow revealing the giant hidden within me, reminded me of this fable by Gibran. The beginning of the day is an opportunity to dream big dreams, with the freshness of the morning suggesting we might just be capable of anything. The long day might temper this enthusiasm, full as it is with ebbs and flows, accomplishments and setbacks, but the end of the day offers a chance once again to look at ourselves differently. To see what we’ve achieved and what we might yet do.

      There’s something about seeing yourself from a new perspective that reminds you that you’re not done just yet. You’ve still got that potential for bigger and better things; for greatness. The world is bigger than this day, and that long shadow is a reminder that you can be too.

    • Live It Properly

      “Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now take what’s left and live it properly.”
      — Marcus Aurelius

      There’s something about an extended vacation that makes you hyper-aware of the world you return to. You gain new perspective on the world, you break free of the stories you’ve been telling yourself, the routines you’ve established, and you come back a different person than the one who left. At moments like this the quote above reverberates in my head. Take what’s left and live it properly.

      We have once vibrant people all around us falling by the wayside as their own time comes to an end, but we don’t embrace this truth enough in ourselves. Be it 50 years or 50 more minutes, shouldn’t we make the most of it? Or do we go right back to our previous life of falling in line and doing what’s expected of us? There’s only now, friends.

      What we once were was wonderful, or maybe it wasn’t all that great at all, but it’s gone now. Roll up your sleeves and get to work on who you are now. Who you’ll become, based on what you do next. It’s always been about this next step on the path. For what does “properly” mean to you anyway? Get to it already.

    • Sympathy With Intelligence

      “A man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful—while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with—he who knows nothing about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he knows all? My desire for knowledge is intermittent, but my desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      We arrive at a deeper understanding and empathy with the world by getting out into it. If there’s been a curse to the pandemic, it’s the distinct lack of getting out there to encounter a different perspective on things than you might have sheltered in place with your favorite sound bites and tweets.

      If the last 6-7 years were defined by anything, it’s this growing assurance that your side is right and any other is wrong. The world seemingly spiraled down into an antagonistic cesspool of us versus them. What’s missing is empathy: the putting ourselves in their shoes part. Seek first to understand and then to be understood, as Stephen Covey would have put it. He’d be shaking his head at the world we find ourselves in today.

      Getting out to meet the world is the solution to this problem. Seeing things the way they look from the other side offers perspective unavailable to those who don’t venture past the mailbox. The idea of getting out to see the world seems to be the most logical thing in the world to many of us, but fills others with dread. Would you live your life forever in a shell or break out of your limited view of the universe and see what’s really out there?

      This week I’m getting back out in the world, not for work, but for pleasure. To see things from a different vantage point, to seek the truth about how things are in a place other than here. To bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet and return with a new perspective on this world. And then, boldly, to do it again.

    • I Will Show Another Me

      When illusion spin her net
      I’m never where I want to be
      And liberty she pirouette
      When I think that I am free
      Watched by empty silhouettes
      Who close their eyes but still can see
      No one taught them etiquette
      I will show another me
      Today I don’t need a replacement
      I’ll tell them what the smile on my face meant
      My heart going boom boom boom
      “Hey” I said “You can keep my things,
      They’ve come to take me home.”
      – Peter Gabriel, Solisbury Hill

      Where were you when you really heard this song for the first time? Not tapping your fingers on the steering wheel while you drive hearing it, but listening to the lyrics and absorbing the weight of what Peter Gabriel was saying to the world? We all confront tough choices, and the toughest choice of all is when everything is going well and we follow the call to change anyway.

      This decision, I will show another me, is the root of change. It’s what Henry David Thoreau was saying in Walden:

      Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate… The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

      I think a person ought to read Walden every year, to gauge the changes happening within themselves. You might say the same about Solisbury Hill; you hear it differently depending on where you are in your life. Closing in on two years since the beginning of the pandemic, I hear it differently than I did a few years ago. Maybe you do too.

      The theme mirrors Bob Seger’s Roll Me Away, right down to the bird of prey weighing in on the decision the protagonist is about to make. But Solisbury Hill sneaks up on you differently. Maybe it’s the English versus the American take on life-changing moments. Roll Me Away was always a driving song, pulling you relentlessly to the freedom of the road. Solisbury Hill is about a very distinct moment in Peter Gabriel’s career, when he decided to leave Genesis and begin a solo career. And in writing it he blazed a trail for everyone following him in making their own choices in life.

      Should you listen to that voice, trust imagination, and take the leap.