Alexandersmap

    Tag: Arete

    • To Be, Well

      “Ambition means tying your well-being to what other people say or do.
      Self-indulgence means tying it to the things that happen to you.
      Sanity means tying it to your own actions.”
      —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      With respect to the folks who are spun up about the latest offensive thing happening in the world, the thing that matters most to our well-being is what we can control ourselves. And what we can control is our actions. So it follows that we must be bold in facing the day!

      Our choices may not seem like the thing that moves the world, but our choices move our world. We have the agency to choose how we react, and we have the agency to act. Reaction and action are change agents. We change and grow based on how well we leverage these agents in our lives.

      Our well-being is largely a lagging indicator of the choices we’ve made to this point. Make better choices and life improves. Make no decisions and we may expect that things will remain as they always have been, but this is folly. Everything changes and we must be decisive in steering our lives where we want it to go. Ignore the call to action and opportunity slips away. Fortune, after all, favors the bold.

      Our climb to personal excellence is full of choices. Each day we may choose to worry about what others think or feel about us. Every day we may think of nothing but ourselves, and one day wonder where everybody went. Or we can look around, see the changes that need to happen to build a life of excellence. We may choose each day to do what must be done to be, well. In the end, isn’t that the only logical choice?

    • Life and Love and Wings

      i thank You God for most this amazing
      day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
      and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
      which is natural which is infinite which is yes

      (i who have died am alive again today,
      and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
      day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
      great happening illimitably earth)

      how should tasting touching hearing seeing
      breathing any—lifted from the no
      of all nothing—human merely being
      doubt unimaginable You?

      (now the ears of my ears awake and
      now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

      — E. E. Cummings, i thank You God for this amazing

      We dwell so often on our limitations; Limited time, limited capacity for learning new things or for being patient with the things in our life that overstay their welcome. We are bound by commitments, with reasons, with a lack of imagination for breaking free from all of that and living an expansive life. We are locked into routine and measure our days incrementally. How are we to grow when we are forever held captive by a lack of audace créatrice (creative audacity)?

      To be unbounded and unlimited is of course a fantasy. We all will die one day (memento mori). Infinite growth is not for mere mortals. And yet we may live a far more expansive life than we mortals usually attempt. We are no more and no less than what we do with our time.

      Why worry about all that today when we can simply do what must be done and defer hopes and dreams indefinitely? Because now is all we have. Growing into our possibility begins now. It always has and always will be so. But thinking in terms like “always” is its own trap. Because it lets us off the hook of immediacy. We must steer clear of such traps and simply think of now. For this is the birth day of life and of love and wings. So do begin.

    • Emerging Possibilities

      How long did all those possibilities sleep
      during the years
      before this emerging
      — Michael Ondaatje, The Then

      There are hints of our future together all around us. We may see some version of ourselves emerge from the habits that we develop, or those that hold on to us (try as we might to break from them). We are what we repeatedly do, and so it is that we become what we surround ourselves with. There will always be a gap between who we are and what we want to be. Is that gap closing or becoming a chasm?

      We see in the world possibilities emerging that we never imagined. We may share mutual disgust and dismay. But I’m here to tell you that there are other possibilities hiding right in plain sight, possibilities that we can control, should we become aware of them. Life is what we make of it—it has always been this way and always will be. Fight the good fight, but for the love of God start within.

      What we tend to see is that which demands our attention, be it a heart attack or an autocrat or the waiter asking us what we want to drink. Immediacy demands focus. Do we remember the Eisenhower Matrix? Right next to that “urgent and important” quadrant lies the “not urgent but important” quadrant where the real work of becoming resides. Our future lies in seeing what might be, not forever reacting to what is thrown on our shoulders to somehow carry.

      Everything begins with awareness. When we are self-absorbed we don’t see the soulmate standing right in front of us. When we are distracted by the despair machine, we don’t see the pendulum swinging towards decency. When we are wrapped in the comfort of easy, we don’t see the path to personal excellence available when we become inclined towards harder. Possibilities are all around us, simply waiting for opportunities to emerge. Feed them the attention they need.

    • Proof of Identity

      “I think motivation is complete garbage. It’s never there when you need it. And that’s the paradox of it. [It’s] that we’re all sitting there waiting to be motivated and it’s not coming. Because basic wiring of the brain is that you will always default to what’s easy. And you always push against what’s hard. And if motivation were available on demand we’d all have a million dollars and six-pack abs. And so sitting around and waiting for motivation is the kiss of death. Because it’s in the action that you dissipate the emotion, and it’s in the action that you actually prove to yourself through the action, ’cause you see yourself operating differently, that you are a different person, that you are not defined by your emotions.” — Mel Robbins, from A Bit of Optimism Episode 157 interview

      Two days ago I took all the comfortable habits acquired during the holidays and I threw them in the dumpster. For me, New Year’s resolutions are an artificial timeline that hits too abruptly after the holidays. The decorations are still up, how can we possibly mentally declare we’re on to something new yet? But wait a week or a month, see where we are and where we want to get to and simply begin. Decide what to be and go be it.

      The trick is in that waiting. We must act at some point if we’re going to do anything in this life. I waited because of business travel that would have made everything I expected to do to realize my plan impossible. I began because I saw the runway ahead and knew I was clear for takeoff. The implications are clear; we must be committed to the decisions we make and back them up with action immediately to reinforce the new identity we aspire to reach.

      There is a person in my life who doesn’t like when I use the word must in this blog—as if I’m commanding them to do what I write. I would suggest that we each have agency over ourselves or we don’t, and my use of a word does not translate into a demand for someone else’s action. Simply a demand for my own. Initiative begins within. So what is that voice within telling us? Act on that.

      Where do we want to be tomorrow? Where do we want to be in three months or at the end of this calendar year? Begin with the end in mind, establish and commit to a plan and do the work necessary to execute on that plan. If that sounds too business-like a sentence, so be it. We are in the business of life-optimization, and we must (there’s that word again) not wait, we must act now!

      Realize that the year will fly by like all the rest (Tempus fugit). Realize that there will always be something or someone that will pull us away from what we aspire to be. Action is the only proof of identity. Just what will we realize this year? Go be it.

    • Between Mediocrity and Excellence

      “But why diminish your soul being run-of-the-mill at something? Mediocrity: now there is ugliness for you. Mediocrity’s a hairball coughed up on the Persian carpet of Creation.”
      ― Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

      Holy Crap (with a capital C), is the year already over?! In a year packed with experiences, did we experience enough? Is the bucket list half full or half empty? Did we reach the promised land of life satisfaction or will we once again carry over unfulfilled dreams to tomorrow?

      To live an average life is fine. Fine could surely be worse. Fine is better than many people wake up to. We should offer our due respect and gratitude to fine, appreciate it for getting us here and acknowledge it for all that is. But we know there’s another side to fine, because when someone offers that response when we ask them how they’re doing we know we have a problem. An ignore it at your peril problem. Fine is fine for linen, but not for people. We ought to elevate our game beyond fine.

      The trick, I think, is to return our focus to our routine. Now, we know the very word routine infers something akin to average. And average may be a notch below fine on the scale of how the heck are you? But our routine is what we make of it. And a few strategic, small changes to our daily routine bumps the average up just enough to offer dividends over time. This is the basis of James Clear’s Atomic Habits, which is a good book to return to when we’re thinking about making changes in our life.

      “Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. Success is the product of daily habits—not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.” — James Clear, Atomic Habits

      As we approach the New Year, we can focus on big, hairy audacious goals, because BHAG‘s are fun to imagine, and delightful to achieve. So schedule the trip, sign up for that marathon, write the first page of that novel today, or file for that Limited Liability Corporation you’ve dreamed up. But when that’s done, return to the little things we can do today to make the experience of living right now far better than average. What will we say yes to today? Often that begins with what we’ll say no to. Incremental progress is the name of the game, and it begins with discipline and the smallest of wins.

      We know the expression, what gets measured gets managed (usually attributed to Peter Drucker). So what are we focused on and what are we tracking in our daily lives? To step on the scale every morning won’t trigger weight loss, but it’s a lagging indicator of whatever we did yesterday. Maybe that pound we gained (or lost) is enough to trigger a different decision today. Maybe our lousy sleep score this morning leads us to look at what we ate and drank yesterday and serves as the prompt to make meaningful change today. Measuring isn’t necessarily going to lead to effectively managing, but it does serve to keep us from straying too far off the path to progress.

      We all have different goals for our lives at different stages of it. What do we want to be exceptional at now? To be a good spouse or parent? To rise to the C-suite? What stage of life are we in anyway? What is really meaningful right now that didn’t mean a thing to us in that last stage (or won’t mean much in the next)? To live a fully-optimized life we ought to know where we are now and what will make now resonate as one of the very best stages of our life sometime then, should we be lucky enough to arrive there one day.

      Some things apply to all stages of life, and ought to be part of our core daily ritual. We ought to build and maintain a healthy, vibrant body, mind and soul, that we may thrive now and grow later. Health ought be our foundation and not quicksand pulling us to our demise. If health is our primary goal, what other goals rise to meet that level of urgency? Knowing we can’t do everything, what are our two or possibly three most important things?

      A change in the calendar is nothing but a reminder that the future is calling, and asking what the heck we want to be next. Don’t we owe it to ourselves for that to be something beyond the average we’ve lived with up to now? We may only focus on goals once a year (I hope not), but the entire process is about lifestyle design. Decide what to be and go be it, but know that we can’t be everything.

      What does personal excellence (arete) mean to us now? Choose to rise towards excellence in the few things that will make the greatest difference in our lives, and learning to accept mediocrity in all the rest. We may hate the idea of being mediocre at anything, but we can’t be excellent at everything. So what is worthy of the climb? What is worthy of our precious time? Finding the answer offers a clear path between mediocrity and excellence.

    • Task Tackling

      “Where your fear is, there is your task.” — Carl Jung

      There are a millions ways to avoid doing things. I’ve managed to skip my hardest workouts for two weeks now, not because I didn’t have the time, but because I got very creative in finding ways to use that time for other things. It’s not the easy workouts that I’m talking about (the walks with the dog continue uninterrupted), it’s those zone 4-5 workouts that I practice active-avoidance with.

      The answer is to do the hard work first, before the day gets away from us. Whether it’s a hard workout or a conversation we know we have to have with someone or sitting down to a blank screen and attempting to fill it with something timeless, the task is apparent. Feel the fear and do it anyway, as Susan Jeffers once recommended. The only way to is through (funny how these old affirmations just roll right off the tongue like classic song lyrics).

      The thing is, the mind favors comfort. We know this to be true because it’s been our worst enemy for years. We may anticipate the excuses and reinforce the habits we aspire to do through disciplined action. Or we can let our reluctance to do uncomfortable things dictate what we actually do in our lives.

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

      To be very fit and healthy isn’t a mystery, it’s a discipline with a clear outcome. The same can be said for writing a novel or acing an exam or keeping a marriage thriving after a few decades. Discipline equals freedom (there’s another one—thanks Jocko) and the choice is ours to make. Just who do we want to become anyway? Tackle that task already. Tomorrow will be easier for having done the work today.

    • True Nobility

      “Remember that there is nothing noble in being superior to some other man. The true nobility is in being superior to your previous self.” — W. L. Sheldon, What to Believe: An Ethical Creed

      The quote above is often attributed to Ernest Hemingway, but like most things on the Internet, a little digging reveals that the truth is somewhere else entirely. Perhaps some more digging would reveal that Sheldon wasn’t the original source either, but really, nothing is original, is it? We are all consciously or unconsciously influenced by everything that brought us here. The trick is to play the greatest hits and bury the unfortunate mistakes as the life lessons they were meant to be for us. Put another way: Learn from the best, forget the rest.

      Sheldon’s Ethical Creed has some real gems in the mix, worthy of a read if you have the time (and our time is what we make of it). Broken into sections, Think, Believe, Remember, Never and Don’t, each offers a bit of timeless advice worthy of consideration and action. I won’t re-write the entirety of it here, but another gem related to the famous quote above reinforces the message:

      “Don’t suppose that success comes by talent. It comes by plodding. Talent makes the best showing in early life. But the ability to plod makes the showing later on.” — W. L. Sheldon, What to Believe: An Ethical Creed

      So what brought me to Sheldon today? Let’s just say that nobility has been on my mind lately. To be noble and honorable is a lifestyle choice. We either live by it or we pretend to, and pretending isn’t very noble, is it? Every day offers us the opportunity to become a better version of who we were yesterday. Incremental, steady improvement is the path to personal excellence. We never reach perfection, but we won’t get very far at all if we keep taking two steps back. Choose accordingly today. It may feel like plodding at times, but the noble path is a worthy path.

    • Like Glowing Coals

      “You cannot quench understanding unless you put out the insights that compose it. But you can rekindle those at will, like glowing coals. I can control my thoughts as necessary, then how can I be troubled? What is outside my mind means nothing to it. Absorb that lesson and your feet stand firm.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

      This week I found myself in a string of conversations about books. It began with a copy of The Devil in the White City sitting on the desk of a customer. Having read it and many other books by Erik Larson, we got into an enthusiastic conversation about what we were reading in historical non-fiction. When he and I finished our conversation, someone else jumped in, listing the fiction he reads, mostly Harlan Coben books. I’ve read a few, my bride has read them all, we compared recommendations and then it was on to the next conversation. The third one was most interesting of all.

      A co-worker whom I’d just met, technical and quiet, was tapping away on a keyboard programming a proof of concept sequence (the entire reason we were all there to begin with) and said he’d overhead the two other conversations about reading that had just taken place. He reads philosophy, had just finished Friedrich Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil and was beginning The Discourses by Epictetus. I opened my Kindle app and showed him Nietzshe’s The Gay Science, which I’ve been reading in between physical books (’tis far better to read a book standing in line at the supermarket than to doom scroll social media). And we ran through a list of recommendations as any fellow students of philosophy would do.

      If all of this sounds particularly geeky, well, so be it. Reading isn’t for everyone, though it ought to be. If you’re reading this blog post and have reached this point, you’re clearly an avid reader yourself and understand. We are all self-taught beyond a K-12 education and the opportunities a university might offer. I say might because plenty go through the motions there too. We know the game and we choose how to play it. A lifetime education begins outside the structure of a classroom—it begins within the mind.

      Each book read, each conversation with a fellow reader that points us towards some new insight, is a step along the path to personal excellence (arete). What we consume stokes our inner fire and shines brightly in the eyes of an avid student of living. And living is the whole point, even as so many continue to go through the motions. But that’s not us! So what are you reading right now? I hope it’s compelling and insightful. If it is I’d love to hear about it. We are all climbing to greater heights, one great book at a time.

    • Improving the View

      Do not stay in the field!
      Nor climb out of sight.
      The best view of the world
      Is from a medium height
      — Friedrich Nietzsche, “Worldly Wisdom“, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs

      I find myself returning to Nietzsche’s Prelude in Rhymes again, because it was so remarkable of an encounter initially. What a delight to discover his poetic tendencies hidden in plain sight. Surely he would be on my list of people I’d try to meet with a time machine, were such an invention possible. But isn’t that what reading is? A time machine that brings us directly to the mind of the writer, wherever and whenever they put thought to paper. Isn’t that what a blog is, sans paper? A time machine to the future, well beyond this character we are as we click publish.

      We write about the things we experience, with the level of knowledge and understanding we’ve reached to this point in our development. I’d like to believe that I’ve climbed beyond the field to medium height, with a nod upwards towards the climb ahead. The view is fine right here, but incomplete—as incomplete as we are in this moment. The thing to do is learn and grow and climb some more just to see where it takes us. Readers of this blog know that the goal is arete, or personal excellence. That lies far beyond this climber’s lifetime.

      The thing to do is to improve the view. One blessed day at a time, with all its thoughts and ideas either captured or evading me. We must be ready for each lesson in a lifetime in order to understand where we are and what we’ve reached. We are forever growing into the type of person who might understand the place we’ve arrived at, but for an open mind and a bit of a reach. So how’s the view? Ready for the next step? For time flies and we have so far to go.

    • Begin Something

      “The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.” ― Willie Nelson

      As an early bird, it should be easy to get a head start on the day. But the day floods in anyway. Even as I awaken, work to-do minutia floods my brain—a clear sign that I didn’t write it all down to release its hold on me before my day was done. The bullet journal method only works if you keep up with it. Lately, I haven’t kept up with it.

      If we are truly on a quest for personal excellence, why do we clutter up our days with minutia at all? Mastery requires singular focus, if we indeed wish to reach closer to it. Just who do we want to be on this one go at things anyway? The work that matters ought to get done, the rest ought to slip away and not impact our sleep score.

      I used to glory in the hustle of outworking the competition. I have other priorities now. When I wake up, my attention doesn’t go right to work, it goes right to attending to the needs of the pets, and then to writing this blog. Does writing deserve a place of honor ahead of income-generating activity? Doesn’t the answer depend on where we want to go today? The answer has always been there, waiting for us to listen and act upon it.

      Why get up early at all, but to heed the call to begin something? To rise and chase the dreams of others for profit is nothing but a trap from which we will never escape. We must always prioritize ourselves first, and then address the needs of others. They tell us this on every flight. It’s on us to pay attention to the flight attendants as we hustle through life.

      To make something of this day seems a modest objective. Why go through the motions or succumb to distraction? Create something of consequence today and see what might build from it. Joie de vivre is derived from doing something meaningful with our days, not from hustling through it. So what is that something?