Category Archives: Quick Thoughts

Mentally Tough and Small Discomforts

It’s easy to get lost. To start swimming with the overwhelming nature of more and more and more to do. More people want our attention. More articles to write. More service to provide. More hours at work…

Stress builds up inside us when we try to control our conquering path of each task with utmost attention. Is this necessary?

Perhaps accepting these small discomforts are out of our control (allowing our subordinates to do something without our hawk eyes constantly honed, for example) is a necessary step to conquer?

This initial discomfort slowly dwindles to a cautious reminder, a check point strategically placed to check in and ensure all is aligned as it should.

How do you remind yourself?

Of Course You Can[‘t] Copy

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The thing is, you can’t copy others. Well, of course you can copy others, but what is the point in wasting your time copying others?

Inspiration, on the other hand, comes directly from others, comes from what you see around you, comes from… well, how do you find inspiration?

Take what you see and massage and meld it into a beast so uniquely yours that every time somebody looks at it they inherently know you as a being from what you’ve created.

By no means does this happen instantaneously. Even the Dalai Lama went through years of schooling to learn how to be a Dalai Lama. After years of being the Dalai Lama he understands what it means for him to be aligned with his true message.

A trick I learned many years ago for getting over that feeling of lost for a place to start, then sure, use the first sentence of a book you adore to use as your first sentence of a book you’re making. Sure, use the same curved line in your masterpiece as you see in your favorite masterpiece. I can guarantee that the true artist looking to express itself will take over very rapidly once that flow has begun.

The choice is up to you how radical you want to be.

Live Your Life

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“So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

~ Chief Tecumseh

Don’t Say You Don’t Have Enough Time

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You have exactly the same number of hours a day as Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Helen Keller, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

I just read this on a website that, in spite the few spelling corrections I made, I have quoted word for word.

Time is something we cannot control. Time is just a scale that has been conveniently used to organize schedules for our industrial world. But time becomes irrelevant when life is at hand, save for the simple fact that at the end of a stretch of time our human existences will expire.

I know very well the feeling of setting time related goals for myself and getting anxious and angry that I haven’t completed them, which overwhelms me and then pushes me to abandon the goal entirely.

Step away from a time frame. Set goals but let them be quests, not burdens.

So, you want to write a book? Then write it, whenever and however you can. Scrap paper, the back of envelopes, a computer at the public library, or your girlfriends second computer. When it’s out, it’s out. That is the time for it to be completed, and not a moment too early or late.

Or, perhaps you enjoy the daunting feeling of looking at a days to-do list and the impossibility of it all?

Timing – Ergo Limiting – Artwork

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Having a time limit – a deadline – to artistic creation is counter intuitive.

Artistic creation has an undefined ending. Limiting it with a time frame leaves very little space for interpretation and improvising, two crucial steps to uniqueness. Unless the time limit is set so far down the road that making the time limit in the first place is a moot exercise.

What is required, however, is a beginning. Inking a spot in the ol’ calendar for creating. Forcing yourself into a creative regiment, rain or shine.

When you create, at the essence of creation, you have an idea of what the end product will look like, but this idea is hardly the exact thing (unless you’re Tesla who used lucid dreaming to test and design all his creations). I’ve found for myself, the more I create the more clearer it becomes that the created product will tell me when it’s done. My job is merely to comply with it.

It is the job of the creator – or the time limiter – to identify the difference between a great product and a perfect product. Sometimes great is enough to ship, unless of course you’re working for NASA where human lives are at stake.

Without the Noise

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What did people do without having the constant buzz in their ears about how to live life? Have you ever thought to think about the constant barrage of how to’s or 25 Habits to… we have in our lives?

Without TV who stole our time? Without bloggers, who told us what we needed? Self help? Rate my teacher? Twitter? Cell phones? How did we know a good picture before Flickr published the 25 greatest photographs? How did we go for runs without our Nike FuelBands?

Without the noise, what are we left with? Can we survive?

Perhaps we’re going backwards in our spiritual connectedness after all.

Reflection and Mapping

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Today is a day for reflection. Today I review my personal goals. I found an old Mission Statement and wrote: “stay sober (except in private)” which I find quite funny. It was under the section titled Keep Healthy. Not to worry, I don’t think I have a problem.

It’s so very interesting to identify how my direction and path have changed. For example, a big chunk of these has always been graduate from university: check.

Now what?

Find what I can learn from people (Why I love them)

To quote from my success factors from early 2009: “I will keep on trying hard, every single day. No matter what it takes, I will not give up. There will be times when I will feel overwhelmed with the tasks at hand, but I will always know that my best is the best I can do, and that I will always put forth my best effort so I will always be doing my best, which is all anybody can expect from me.”

Talking this over with a friend today, the idea of Desire Mapping came up, a slogan Danielle LaPorte uses for motivation. The concept is kind of self explanatory, but so diverse in execution.

How do you map out your desires, or do you just wing it?

To Recognize Distractions

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Is one of the most revelating moments on the path towards clear thought. This is without a doubt necessary to step forward from a clouded mess of motivations [plural] to a aligned thought of motivation [singular].

Removing clutter from a desktop.

Identifying what ‘things’ you haven’t used in years, months, days, and having them begone.

Identifying what toys you use that you divert attention to when the going gets tough.

Habits, after all, are what wake you up in the morning and what tie your shoes as you get going on your day.

It’s not just at what we call critical times in our lives where we should be concerned with distractions, it’s at every moment.

Even now.

Is this a distraction?

Your call.

Breaking the Norm[al] Process

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Sure, breaking the normal can mean taking your coffee with a shot of peanut butter, or wearing your underwear on the outside of your pants, but perhaps it doesn’t have to be this drastic.

What if it’s just a tiny shift in thought?

Perhaps dynamically distributed computing power can teach us something here.

Can you imagine in grade school instead of fearing being the last one to finish, you feared not being able to uniquely contribute as much as you could to the group as a whole? If we were each encouraged to identify and bring forth our unique talents?

I bet this would easily eliminate almost all the High School graduates who say they still don’t know what they’re good at, or what they want to do.

I had a dream last night as I was walking in the night air.

It was a competition, but redefined. All the competitors were arranged into groups. They each had a challenge. The first group that finished then dispersed around the room and integrated into the other groups still working on their projects. This process repeated until everybody was done.

Can you imagine that?

Communication With Passion

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I recently attended an event, a seminar if you will, with five people brainstorming in a room. It was a round table discussion, so the chance to speak came around many times. I noticed a trend.

I noticed certain speakers held my attention much more effectively than others did. The reason became very obvious the second time around. The third time was ridging on unbearable.

You can speak, and say things… Or you can enthusiastically speak with your whole body and mind and verbally visualize things.

It’s not easy to learn this, to get the confidence required for this, and most certainly each situation requires a different level of animation. You wouldn’t cuddle down with a lover and suddenly jump up with animated hand gestures. But if you’re having a group discussion, pitching a project, or presenting a business plan… GET INTO IT!

Now repeat with passion.

Besides, if you do something silly with passion everybody laughs; laughing is good!