It doesn’t matter what chapter we’re on, it’s most important to know what type of story we’re in. Although we can’t control much of what happens, we do get to determine the genre of the story of our lives, because we get to choose how we live through what happens.
Category: self-reflection
Did > Will Do
Although the use of “will” admittedly adds confidence to a statement, making it sound more likely to occur than using a word like “might,” it’s still reliant on a future action. We can “will” ourselves to death by continually putting off until tomorrow what we failed to accomplish today. When it comes to right action, what happened is better than what hasn’t happened…yet. When we’ve done what we set out to do, we are better for it. The future will always know what we’ve done today, but will never know what we will do tomorrow.
Dodge Avoidance
We learn from failing. In order to fail, we have to embrace the idea of bracing for impact. For that’s what affords us the opportunity to get back up and try again. If we choose to spend our time dodging obstacles or avoiding what we fear, we are really choosing to allow our minds and experiences to be stunted. We’ll grow old and gray while our minds remain adolescent and inexperienced. Avoidance is no fountain of youth, it simply creates mountains of ignorance that obstruct an enlightened view.
Ready Player 1
Growing up with old video game systems provided lessons that newer gaming with expansive and seemingly endless worlds and environments to explore don’t afford. If we wanted to get to Level 2, we had to first beat Level 1. They had a linear, point A to point B, design that forced players to figure out how to succeed past where they were getting stuck before moving forward. Getting stuck in life is no different. Continue anew until we get through the obstacle. There are no cheat codes to circumvent our own stucks.
True Gist
To get the gist of something colloquially means to get the basic idea of it. However, gist is defined as “the substance or essence of a speech or text,” or “the real point of an action.” Synonyms include: essence, substance, quintessence, crux, nucleus and marrow. A far cry from having a basic understanding! We tend to feel that knowing a little about a lot of things somehow makes us cultured or well-rounded. But look to experts in any field and the opposite is true; they tend to know a great deal about very specific things.
Experts spend time gaining a deep understanding of the fundamentals through trial and error in form of practice, experimentation, inquiry, study, discipline, passion, curiosity, and/or experience. There’s a lesson here. Before we pride ourselves on our intellectual breadth, let’s first be sure we understand the gist of our intentions.
Positive Suffocation
At rest, we breathe about 16 times – 20 times per minute. That’s between 960 – 1,200 breaths per hour, 23,040 – 28,800 breaths per day, 691,200 – 864,000 per month, 8,409,600 – 10,368,000 per yer. The average life expectancy worldwide is currently 71.5 years or around 741,312,000 breaths. Every breath we take matters. How many non-renewable breaths have we wasted on worry, fear or doubt? None of those breaths changed any outcomes. Worry, fear and doubt can’t survive without the air that we provide!
Cupidity
We’ve all been told not to covet what others have, and we all know that feeling of desire. However, have we ever stopped to consider if our past selves would be covetous of the lives of our present selves? If the answer is “no,” then it’s likely that we don’t actually feel covetous because we truly know the difficulty of the work that went into our current lives. Hard work tends not to get envied as much as its fruits. If the answer is “yes,” then we are probably motivated by the wrong things.
