Alexandersmap

    Tag: The Avett Brothers

    • All the Delightful Conditions

      “Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all the delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built. To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve.” — James Allen, As a Man Thinketh

      James Allen published As a Man Thinketh in 1903, 120 years ago as I publish this today, so forgive the flowery language in his prose. Blame it on the Victorian era. But it remains a book that packs a punch. We’re all humans trying to figure out this life, aren’t we? That remains timeless even as styles change. The Avett Brothers, by contrast, get right to the point:

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

      The pages on my copy of Allen’s book are yellowed and largely forgotten, as I’d first read his book maybe 25-30 years ago. It sat on the shelf, patiently awaiting my return, since then. Well, here I am: different in almost every way from the person I was then, transformed by time and habit and environment to this character you’re lingering with now. People change. What directs that change is the vision we have for ourself.

      Looking back on this time since I first read the book, it’s easy to see the dead ends and detours, mistakes and inertia that took over at times. In this way our desires can be distractions from our aspirations. It’s easy to dwell on what didn’t go right, but we ought to celebrate what we’ve accomplished too. Transformation is a heavy lift, after all. What becomes apparent in looking back is the progress we make from who we once were to who we’ve become.

      With this in mind, we ought to look at the obstacles and frustrations we have today through the lens of who we will become by following through on our aspirations. Decide what to be and go be it, for as we thinketh, so shall we become. Set the compass, do the work, and the rest will follow. All the delightful conditions await, but they’ve also been here all along.

    • Active Influence

      “You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.” — Jim Rohn

      If we operate with a high level of agency, we are active influencers in our days. When we operate with low agency, conversely, we feel we have no control over what happens to us. Extraordinary events aside, we each have more control than we might believe. We each have a say in how our lives go. But it always begins with reflection and a clear idea of who we want to be. Decide what to be and go be it, as the song goes. This is a high agency attitude, and must be followed with an action chaser. For if not now, then when?

      We must choose to be active participants. We must choose high agency. To relinquish control of our lives to others would be an individual tragedy. The world doesn’t need another person with no direction, no purpose, no zest for life. The world needs active influencers building positive outcomes.

    • Looking Back and Filling Forward

      “When I look back on resolutions of improvement and amendment which have year after year been made and broken, either by negligence, forgetfulness, vicious idleness, casual interruption, or morbid infirmity; when I find that so much of my life has been stolen unprofitably away, and that I can descry by retrospection scarcely a few single days properly and vigorously employed, why do I yet try to resolve again? I try because reformation is necessary and despair is criminal.” — Samuel Johnson, via Daily Stoic

      It’s that time of year again. We hustle through the year and arrive at the end forever changed. We’ve gained insight, lost people from our lives, picked up habits, and either raised or lowered our expectations for what’s next. We aren’t just what we repeatedly do, we’re also what the world does to us and how we react to these things. We are, each of us, works in progress. We ought to take a moment to take stock of where we are, and what we might do with ourselves in this next chapter.

      What went exceedingly well this year? What fell apart despite our best intentions? What’s missing? What is overly present? What can we do to influence a better result in the New Year? These are the usual questions, worthy of our consideration, that generally lead to resolutions and writer’s cramp.

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

      The biggest moments tend to be scheduled. We book events and trips and seek our milestone moments. Occasionally we participate in a wonderful moment of serendipity, but the big stuff in life generally happens when we put it on the calendar. Knowing this, we ought to schedule a few big moments for ourselves in 2023. Just as we must make a reservation at a great restaurant if we hope to have an epic meal there on a Saturday night, so it follows that we must book our bucket list moments when, and while, we can.

      The thing is, we don’t just live one epic moment to the next. Our lives are the things that happen in between such highlight moments. So it follows that the quality of our life is directly related to how we fill in the rest of the calendar around those milestone moments. Each day is our lifetime. So we ought to fill each with people and habits that sustain and energize us. We ought to do work that does more than pay the bills. Careers and lives are built on purpose.

      “There’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it,’ said my mother. ‘Put yourself in the way of beauty.” — Cheryl Strayed

      Life is more than paying bills and making it to the meeting on time. If the world is filled with beautiful moments, why aren’t we seeking them out more? One of the best habits I ever established was using a one line per day journal and make it a mission to write down something amazing each day. Not every day is amazing, of course, but when we work towards it that stack of days can be a string of magic.

      “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” ― Jim Rohn

      Our best intentions can be derailed by that which surrounds us. Does our circle of friends and family lift us up or hold us down? How about our habits? For these are related, aren’t they? Our circle of influencers and our daily habits will either make us better people or they eventually pull us over the cliff. If we’re surrounded by people with bad habits and a horrible outlook on life, we tend to pick these things up ourselves. Conversely, when we’re around creative people with productive habits, we tend to lift ourselves up to meet them. So what will it be for you and me?

      No matter how old or experienced we are, we each must reconcile our time in our own way, each day. If we want a better life filled with nuggets of joy and moments of adventure we’ve got to put ourselves out there and try many things to find our thing. This all begins with looking back at what our days were filled with and deciding what was fulfilling and what we’ve had our fill of. Taking stock in such a way, we can now gaze ahead deliberately and fill that blank calendar with purpose and hope.

      We are indeed works in progress. Reformation is necessary. But we can find joy in the creative process. What better project is there to work on than our own life?

    • Colors Out of Reach

      Well, I see the end of the rainbow
      But what more is a rainbow
      Than colors out of reach?
      — The Avett Brothers, Swept Away

      There’s a fine line between being satisfied with what you’ve got and yearning for what you haven’t got. I follow, and thus am constantly teased by, Aurora Borealis updates. I happen to live in a place with a very slight chance of seeing the Northern Lights, but sure, I’m saying there’s a chance. The hardy souls who stay up all night on mountain tops for the ten minutes with the Aurora post their photos immediately, making me grumble when I rise early the next morning and see what I’ve missed. But I know that that show wasn’t meant for me.

      We are in our moment, in our place, with or without the things we yearn for. There’s nothing to do about that which we’ve missed out on. For the things we seek, we must either go to them or let them fly away unencumbered by our attempt to grasp them.

      When you go to a place you’ve dreamed of going to, be it a tropical paradise or Paris or (just maybe) Iceland for volcanos and waterfalls and the dance of the Northern Lights, you close the book on dreaming and capture its memory, like a flower folded into a book. The thing is, memories are rainbows out of reach too. But with memories, bits of the color embed themselves in us that live on through us. You can see it in your eyes when you look at yourself in the mirror, and others see it in you too. Each encounter brings more color to our lives.

      Ultimately we can’t have it all, and we ought to focus on the things that are most important to us. Yet there’s something to be said for a recurring dream of light and color dancing in the sky. It will always remain just out of reach, yet so very close to our heart.

      So what do we chase, and what do we let fly away? Don’t we already know? For our answer appears when we stop chasing every rainbow and really think about what’s important now.

      Edinburgh Rainbow

    • Holding the Love I’ve Known

      When my body won’t hold me anymore
      And it finally lets me free
      Where will I go?
      Will the trade winds take me south through Georgia grain?
      Or tropical rain?
      Or snow from the heavens?
      Will I join with the ocean blue?
      Or run into a savior true?
      And shake hands laughing
      And walk through the night, straight to the light
      Holding the love I’ve known in my life
      And no hard feelings
      — The Avett Brothers, No Hard Feelings

      I’m watching four people in my family waste away before my eyes. We all have our time, but it still comes as a shock when that time is in such close proximity to now. When you’re the one holding it together for them and others you learn a few things about yourself. Mostly you learn to stop deferring and just say and do the things that need saying and doing.

      I’ve noticed some doubt and regret overwhelm those facing rapidly receding time on this earth. Life is unfair, we all see that and reconcile with it as best we can, but it’s particularly unfair for those who have the rug pulled out from under them in the prime of life. You mean to have that conversation, experience that moment, see that place for the first time or maybe for one last time, and realize that you’ll never reach it.

      What are we to do, knowing we haven’t done all we want to do, but celebrate what we did have the chance to do? To hold on to the love we have known? For that’s all that matters in the end. We make the ripple we make, and hope that the world might feel the urge to surf it. Life isn’t the accumulation of stuff or places or rungs on the career ladder, it’s the people you love in this world.

      We all have our time, sometimes far sooner than we ever imagined. We either hold a grudge with the universe or dance in the time we have left. No hard feelings—only love.

    • 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.