Alexandersmap

    Category: Personal Growth

    • Better Decisions

      “In most of our decisions, we are not betting against another person. Rather, we are betting against all the future versions of ourselves that we are not choosing.” – Annie Duke, Thinking In Bets

      As we enter the first full work week of the New Year, I’m focused on this concept of Second Order Thinking and working to apply it better in my life.  In short, asking what will be the consequences of doing this versus that in the first order, the second order and the third order?  If I eat this donut because it looks delicious (first order), then I’ll add more empty calories and gain weight (second order), which will make me more stressed out in the future when my pants are getting too snug (third order).  Second and third order thinking is a way of fast-forwarding into the future as you decide on whether or not to do something in the present.  It gets you out of the self-centered immediate gratification of now and looking at the ultimate satisfaction of then.  Ray Dalio describes it as the lower-level you winning out over the higher-level you.  I haven’t been consistent with this in my lifetime, particularly when it comes to snacking.  I’d say it’s time to look up from the proverbial candy dish and think beyond the moment.

      “Decide what to be and go be it.” – The Avett Brothers, Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise

      I didn’t believe I’d like the book Thinking In Bets.  I’m not a poker player and have no desire to immerse myself in the world of poker. They wear sunglasses indoors and pull their hats down low to cover expressions on their faces.  I mean, who wants to hang out with people doing that?  But this isn’t a book about poker, it’s a book about decision-making.  And making better decisions is something I’ve been working on in myself for some time.  It started with this idea of Second Order Thinking, where you weigh the consequences of your decision now and into the future.  I’ve made plenty of decisions in my lifetime that made sense in the immediacy of the moment that turned out to be bad decisions down the road.  And a few that I thought weren’t great early on that turned out to be brilliant (and lucky) decisions with hindsight.

      We’re the average of the five people we hang around with the most, as Jim Rohn would put it.  Applied to what I’m reading, I’m currently hanging around with stoics, poets and experts in creating and sustaining better habits.  And now I’ve invited decision-making experts to the party.  I’m okay with that mix, and will enhance it over time.  But reading about something isn’t doing something.  That’s a trap that you realize as you read book after book without applying the knowledge you pick up from all that reading.  No, the rubber meets the road when you take action.  Applied knowledge, repeated daily, leads to exponential improvement over time.  I’ve seen that working in all things over the course of my life.  The focus now is to improve the decision-making process so I spend that time on better, more productive activity.  Dance a bit more in the higher-level self.  Now is as good a time as any to get to it.

    • Rising to the Occasion

      “It might be possible to do something that’s not ordinary.” – Tom Petty

      I’ve heard this Tom Petty quote in my head since I heard him say it in an interview, released well after his death.  Do something that’s not ordinary.  Don’t just read about the accomplishments of others, take some action yourself.  And this blog is a step towards that.  You’re witnessing a bit of the doing something part, and eventually maybe it will be well beyond ordinary.  But not ordinary takes time.  10,000 hours kind of time, and likely much more than that.  Action repeated over and over until it becomes… something.  I keep reminding myself of that during these moments of grinding it out.  A blog is by nature a public-facing announcement to the world (hello, by the way – thanks for stopping by) that you’re doing something.  It’s a daily cadence of record, sometimes better than other times, but documented publicly that you’re putting in the time so that maybe you’ll get a little better over time.

      “Desire is the difference between where you are now and where you want to be in the future.” – James Clear

      More writing behind the blog offers an opportunity to accelerate, to pour gas on the fire and go beyond the ordinary.  I ask myself often, blogging is great and you’re showing progress, now what more have you got in you?  How will you rise to the occasion and do something…. more?

      “Writers should realize that the novels that are remembered, that become monuments, would in fact be those which err on the side of audacious prose.” – Chigozie Obioma

      Now that’s a challenge, isn’t it?  I’ll concede there isn’t much audacious prose in this blog, but then again the intent of alexandersmap was never audaciousness, only consistency of effort and a challenge to myself to make it consistently more interesting with fewer typos.  To use writing to master the habit of showing up, to borrow James Clear’s phrase.  In 2018, when I started this blog, I was inconsistent and unsure of the direction I wanted to take my writing.  In 2019 I became very consistent (writing every day, posting sometimes twice a day).  In 2020 the goal is to keep that consistency and take the writing to another level, something not ordinary, if you will.  I’m well aware that I’ve strayed from the original focus of the blog (local history and regional travel), but it’s a journey and the thing about journeys is you change course now and then.  I still love the original focus of this blog and will return to it often, hopefully in new and compelling ways.  But I know I’m on the journey too and the writing takes me wherever the muse wants to go.  Where will it take us next?  Time will tell.  The trick is to rise to meet it.

    • Attention to Detail

      The funny thing about the first few days of a New Year is that I catch myself looking forward quite often.  There’s nothing wrong with looking forward, just as there’s nothing wrong with looking back towards where you’ve been, as long as you’re grounded in the present.  One of the things I love about Mary Oliver poems is her focus on the things in daily life that you might miss if you’re not paying attention.  Shell fragments on the beach become a story in a poem that makes me think of a walk on the beach in a different way.  The poet, teaching us how to see:

      “I go down to the edge of the sea.
      How everything shines in the morning light!
      The cusp of the whelk,
      the broken cupboard of the clam,
      the opened, blue mussels,
      moon snails, pale pink and barnacle scarred—
      and nothing at all whole or shut, but tattered, split,
      dropped by the gulls onto the gray rocks and all the
       moisture gone.
      It’s like a schoolhouse
      of little words,
      thousands of words.
      First you figure out what each one means by itself,
      the jingle, the periwinkle, the scallop
      full of moonlight.

      Then you begin, slowly, to read the whole story.”
      – Mary Oliver, Breakage

      The other day while leaving Cape Cod I was so caught up in getting things packed up to get to work that I missed an opportunity to go to the dump.  Now don’t get me wrong, going to the dump in and of itself is not my favorite activity.  But going to the dump with my favorite Navy pilot, well, that’s a different story.  But I was so focused on checking boxes and getting tasks done that I let him go off to bring the trash to the transfer station on his own, missing the chance to spend 30 minutes talking about nothing and everything.  Moments like that are available if you pay attention, and slip away when you don’t.  I’ll regret the lost opportunity, and have already forgotten what was so important for me to get done that I passed it up.

      We’re all a work in progress, sometimes things just fall into place and we’re focused on the things that matter most, and sometimes we’re looking the wrong way when the magic moment happens.  All we can do is keep chipping away at it, one small bit at a time.  I know I’m a much better human than I was ten years ago, and better still than I was twenty years ago.  Incremental progress isn’t as stunning as immediate transformation, but the Ebenezer Scrooge kind of overnight transformation isn’t the way most change happens.

      “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” – James Clear

      So I keep taking action, one step forward and sometimes two steps back.  But in general I see incremental improvement.  Learn from the mistakes, change our action next time if lucky enough to be offered a similar opportunity in the future.  Do those things now that matter most.  That starts with getting out of your own head and paying attention.  Begin, slowly, to read the whole story.

    • Playing Parts

      “All the world’s a stage,
      And all the men and women merely players;
      They have their exits and their entrances;
      And one man in his time plays many parts”
      – William Shakespeare, from As You Like It

      If New Year’s Day is the day of hope and dreams and resolutions for the future, then January 2nd is the day when the rubber hits the road.  It’s the day after that first day at the gym, that first day of not eating carbs or that first day of writing in earnest.  On the journey of becoming more, it’s when you feel the pull of gravity from the pile of distractions.  And sure enough here I am on the day after the New Day, working through my morning routine, slightly modified for location, with a look at the clock and the tasks ahead.  The sky is dark and the glow from the laptop shines a spotlight on the actor, still unsure of his lines but chipping away at it nonetheless.

      This morning I am still on Cape Cod, with the sky brightening and the jetty calling.  The writing incomplete, the day job tapping me on the shoulder saying “get going” but that jetty calling, so I bundled up and went out anyway, task list be damned.  It was one of those mornings where the cold breeze cuts deep through your layers, mocking your attempts to control Mother Nature.  I walked all the way out and watched the clouds turn from gray to blue to pink.  The pink is viral, starting in the east and spreading across the sky, deepening to a rose as it moves, and then almost as quickly it begins to fade as the light grows.  Such are the sunrises.  You have to embrace the moment at hand before it all fades away to the waking world.

      There’s always something to distract you here.  But I’m grateful that this visit has shaken me loose from the cobwebs of routine.  Really, that’s why I come here.  Today is a back-to-work day, and I confess I’ve already checked the numbers, scanned the email and taken note of people to call.  The day job waits impatiently for the actor to return to the stage to read his lines.  As with all of us, I’m one man in his time playing many parts, and it’s time to turn into that other character for the next act.  Now what was that first line again?

    • Get To It

      Standing out on the jetty thirty feet out in Buzzards Bay earlier this morning looking for that familiar glimmer of sunrise, I realized that the show was going to be too far into the trees over land. It seems Earth’s obliquity, or axial tilt, is so far along that the sunrise is 30 degrees past where I’m used to seeing it. According to timeanddate.com, we’re at 23.43668° or 23°26’12.0″ today. Numbers really, until you see how far over the sunrise is or how short the days are. And let’s face it, the days are short in the Northern Hemisphere on January 1.

      All of this axial tilt stuff aside, it’s a new day, a new year, and a new decade. What will we make of it? Improvement seems to be the objective. Better choices in how we spend our time. What we eat, how much we move, where we go and what we produce. In short, who we become. That makes this morning like every other morning in the question that comes to mind, the question Mary Oliver asked so eloquently:

      “Tell me, what is it you plan to do

      With your one wild and precious life?”

      We think of New Year’s Day as a beginning, but it’s really a continuation of our journey. A bit like that crest on the trail where you pause for a rest and some water, to take a look around and a glance at the map to see where you are and where you’re going next. So where are you? Where are you going next? There’s no telling the future, really, but we can get back up and start climbing again. And that’s my plan. To get back at it working on the person I want to become, one step at a time on this journey; this one wild and precious life. So let’s get to it.

    • Our Cosmic Dance Together

      “Move on to the next moment, uninfluenced by the previous one… eternal life is now, in the timeless now.” – Anthony De Mello

      It’s that time of year again, when you start thinking about time passing.  It’s not just the end of a year, it’s the end of a decade.  Whoa. Another decade passed by?   So it goes.  Ten spins through space around the sun; our cosmic dance together.  The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older…  Ain’t that the truth.  But so what?  What’s timeless anyway?  Granite?  The ocean?  Khakis? We’re all just spinning around on the same planet as it moves around the sun, and doing the best we can in our moment.

      “All you really need to do is accept this moment fully. You are then at ease in the here and now and at ease with yourself.” – Eckhart Tolle

      The more trips you take around the sun the more at ease you become with yourself.  At least for many of us.  There are plenty of people who grow more insecure with age, as if their entire identity is wrapped up in youthful beauty or athletic talent or the hustle of burning the candle at both ends.  There’s a Twitter debate going on right now about how successful people work 80+ hours per week.  That’s not my definition of success, that’s my definition of serfdom.  I’ve worked in toxic cultures before, and anyone telling you to sacrifice your life for work is toxic. Time is the ultimate currency, why give yours to a con artist with big promises? Better to dance to your own beat, I think. Eventually we all have to leave the dance floor, so why not enjoy it while we’re on it?

      So our odds of seeing 2020 improve by the hour, but if you aren’t learning and growing all you get is a better pair of New Year’s Eve glasses than 2019 offered. I’ve grown a lot this year, and I’m optimistic about the future too. Hopefully we all arrive back at this point on our next trip around the sun better for the journey. Whatever that time brings, I plan on appreciating each moment.

       

       

    • Restlessness Met Sadness And They Both Smiled In Recognition

      Life is like the 55 meter indoor hurdles run by klutzes for its briefness and the lack of elegance with which we all get through it.  Family gatherings during the holidays offer the opportunity to take stock.  How have you been and what are you dancing with now?  Jamming multiple family events into one day means not spending enough time with any one person, but instead getting quick downloads between eating too much and taking pictures for posterity and InstaGram.  The latter offers immediate notification of what you’ve been up to for your followers (some of whom are in the picture), the former is the path highlighted for you years later when everything has changed.

      In the last family event of the night, after all the caloric intake and the unwrapping of gifts and the catching up on what you’ve been up to, I realized I was way too warm and needed a walk outside in the cool air.  Looking at my watch I calculated how realistic it was to hit 10,000 steps and weighed it against the limited time I have with these people in my life.  I settled on a quick walk around the block and resigned myself to getting the rest done in the shrinking time left in the evening.  I’d get over the mark eventually, with an hour to spare in the day.  Should’ve knocked it off first thing in the morning but such are the holidays.

      When I have a goal in mind I get restless, and sitting in a chair for hours isn’t going to cut it for me, so it wasn’t long before I needed to walk around the house a bit.  So I left the crowded room to walk around the kitchen and into the formal living room, built for showing furniture that people don’t sit on.  There standing by the door was the oldest aunt of my wife, waiting for a ride home that wouldn’t come for awhile as my father-in-law chatted in the other room with my kids.  In that moment she looked like a teenager, though she is dancing with 90, waiting by the door to go.  We talked about sports she used to play, for she was a very active in tennis and skiing for much of her life, and her eyes welled up as she talked about not doing those things anymore.  We smiled and talked and eventually it was time to go and we opted to bring her back to her apartment and chatted more with her as we drove.

      My restlessness met her sadness and they recognized each other.  The sadness was rooted in her own frustrated restlessness, doomed to an older body and an aging mind battling dementia.  She missed Thanksgiving on a bad day, but on Christmas she was lucid and sharp, seeking out conversation and connection.  And we connected and smiled at stories of past glories, recent small victories and setbacks overcome.  And I thought about my own restlessness and wondered when it would meet sadness again.  We all look in the mirror and see our story.  If I’m lucky enough to get there I want the sadness in my old age to be for the things I can no longer do, not the things I never did.

    • Every Morning, So Far, I’m Alive

      “Every morning I walk like this around
      the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
      ever close, I am as good as dead

      Every morning, so far, I’m alive.  And now
      the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
      and burst up into the sky – as though

      all night they had thought of what they would like
      their lives to be, and imagined
      their strong, thick wings.”
       – Mary Oliver, Landscape

      I’m doing Mary Oliver an injustice not putting the entire poem here, for the full meaning of a poem comes from reading the entirety, but then again I’m pointing emphatically towards all of her work, imploring you to read more.  When I first read this poem, Landscape, it was a gut punch for me.  I’ve returned to it a few times and these lines still grab me, for they perfectly capture the frame of mind I’m in in my own life.  It’s not lost on me that Mary Oliver passed away in 2019, and somewhere along the way that may have been how I found and keep returning to her work.

      2019 has been a profound year of growth and change for me, from stoicism to spirituality to poetry, immersive trips to some places close to home and some bucket list travel to places further away.  There’s friction in me that the writing has revealed, whether that’s mid-life nonsense or creeping unfinished business that gnaws at me, disrupting my day-to-day thoughts.  I’ve become a better person this year, but know there’s a long way to go still.  For as much as there is to be grateful for, Memento mori whispers in the wind, and I can hear it more than ever.  Remember, we all must die…  but every morning, so far, I’m alive.  What shall you do with this gift?  More, I say to myself, and this De Mello challenge comes to mind:

      “People don’t live, most of you, you don’t live, you’re just keeping the body alive.  That’s not life.” – Anthony De Mello

      This isn’t a call to leave all that you’ve built, but instead to be fully alive and aware of the world around you.  Break off from the rest of the darkness and be fully alive.  Thoreau didn’t leave Concord, he immersed himself in the world at Walden Pond but still maintained contact with the people in his life.  But his awareness grew in the stillness.

      “Be it life or death, we crave only reality.  If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business…  Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.  I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is.  Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

      So I’m doing better at this awareness thing, and this making the most of the time you have thing, and I keep flapping the wings and fly when I can.  Life isn’t just stacking one adventure upon another one, real living is immersion and awareness.  Mary Oliver joined De Mello and Thoreau on the other side of life this year, this very year that I’ve made a few leaps forward in being more alive.  Maybe adding her voice to the chorus of whispers from those who have left us was the tipping point, or maybe I was already there.  But I’m grateful for her contribution nonetheless.

    • All The Mind’s Ghosts

      “The intelligent and the brave
      Open every closet in the future and evict
      All the mind’s ghosts who have the bad habit
      Of barfing everywhere.”
      – Hafiz, The Warrior

      “You’ll see the miracles that happen to you when your senses come unclogged.” – Anthony De Mello, Awareness

      A month ago I had one of those head colds that just gums up the works, making it hard to focus on anything.  I caught it in London, carried it in Scotland and then back to New Hampshire with me.  You carry on in circumstances like that, but you know you’re not playing your A game.  Perceptions, mistakes, past glories, biases and self-limiting beliefs are like that head cold; holding you back and keeping you from doing things for too long or forever.

      I’ll confess I’d never heard of Anthony De Mello until this book was mentioned on a podcast, but it’s one of the most profound books I read this year, and I keep pulling quotes out of it.  They say when the student is ready the teacher will appear, and this year I’ve been heavily invested in my education.  And I think it comes back to the writing.  You commit to writing daily, and sometimes you’re writing about some woman in a kimono or a battle that took place where you stood that day, but other times you mine the mind, clearing away years of crap and dig deep for the good stuff.  Maybe it comes across in the writing, or maybe I’m not there yet, but I feel the improvement and the refinement that comes with daily discipline.

      The rest of that Hafiz poem is worth reading, and I thought of posting the entire thing, but instead added a link to it.  Hafiz put a spotlight on my own ghosts, barfing away in the mind, needing to be evicted.  We all need to clean out the past, stop planning for a future we may not see and live in the now.  Easier said than done of course.  And it doesn’t mean to ignore the past and not learn from it.  Nor does it mean to ignore the future.  To live in the moment is to eliminate the concerns of the past and the worries of the future.  We’re all going to the grave one day, but if we’re lucky maybe not today.  So given the blessing of being alive in this moment, why not make the most of it?

    • Chess Boards and Calendars

      The chess board and the calendar are one and the same.  

      For each demands strategy and each is a game,

      of reaction and discipline and boldness in kind.

      I marvel at masters, 

      while struggling to keep more than two moves in mind

      I marvel at poets as well, for my words betray me as a clydesdale and my words as poetry on the fly.  So be it – not every dance is a tango.  Back to the topic at hand, the similarities between the chess board and the calendar.  I win my share of chess matches, but I find my vision of the board betrays me at times.  I focus so much on my own moves that I don’t always see the threat lurking on the other side.  But I know sometimes I can overcome a threat, while strategically making a noble sacrifice, with action towards my objective.  Chess and the calendar do demand reaction and discipline and boldness, and I try to play both with equal grace, but still struggle with each.  We never master the game of chess, just as we never master the calendar.

      I look at the moves I’ve made with time over the last twelve months, and know that I’ve made some moves I regret, but also many that I’m quite pleased with.  2019 is a year of brilliant highlights mixed with some real duds, which makes it like just about every year I’ve been on the planet.  We build the calendar and hope for the best.  I can stand back and see myself in the beginning of a pivot, but the direction I’m pivoting isn’t entirely clear yet.  So I press on, filling the calendar with necessary meetings and positive habits that offer incremental growth.  A few have paid off, a few have been complete failures, and a few are just in the embryonic stage and need a bit of nurturing to grow.  Such is life; we never look like what we once were when we grow.

      Playing chess last night against the computer instead of a human, I felt bored and was going through the motions.  Passing the time.  That’s a great time to walk away from something when that something doesn’t move you towards a place you need to be, and I finished the game and turned off the computer.  Life is too short to play boring games, and chess had lost its luster for me for the moment.  In some ways the calendar has too, and it’s a wake-up call to see where the calendar is taking me and start filling it with more things that get me where I’m going.  Wherever that may be. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it, as the saying goes.  As in chess, stop being distracted by reactionary moves and be more bold.  Better still, weave a little more magic into the calendar.  Ready?