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Tag: Analogies

The Ultimate Life Compass

Published on May 31, 2022

Wisdom is knowledge and experience internalized.

…It is the ultimate life compass.

When you think about each of the regretful decisions and cringe-worthy mistakes you’ve made in your life, at their root, they were made because of a lack of wisdom.

With that in mind, it’s important to point out that the less you seek to develop wisdom in your life, the less calibrated your compass will be.

And if there’s one area you should always make time for in your life, it’s the calibrating of your life’s compass.

How to do that? Through careful and deliberate reflection, exploratory writing, and open conversation.

And saying you don’t have time is the same as the lumberjack saying he doesn’t have time to sharpen his ax. When you make time for wisdom, wisdom will make time for you.

The rewards are exponential. Both in time saved and better decisions enjoyed.

Flowering Reality

Published on May 27, 2022

Thinking love is not the same as expressing love.

Thinking kindness is not the same as expressing kindness.

Thinking gratitude is not the same as expressing gratitude.

When you move your most beautiful thoughts into reality, the byproduct is a more beautiful reality.

Beautiful thoughts left unexpressed are quickly buried beneath the forever churning soils of the mind and the result is a forgotten about seed and unchanged reality.

Help flower our shared reality by intentionally nurturing, harvesting, and sharing all of what’s beautiful inside of you. However and whenever you can. Our reality needs it.

Self-Made (Or Not)

Published on May 25, 2022

It’s easy to look at the current state of your life and claim it’s self-made—after the fact and when things fit together nicely.

But, none of us are self-made.

Remember each of the influences who gave you pieces to your life’s puzzle and showed you how they might fit together along the way.

You may have put piece to puzzle; but, you certainly didn’t make every single piece or do all of the thinking alone.

Honor those who helped you piece together your life and pay forward what you’ve pieced together into the lives of others.

Solving massive life puzzles is much easier when you’re not doing it alone.

Juicing Experiences

Published on May 22, 2022

You either win or you lose.

—Eh, we can do better…

You either win or you learn.

—Better. But, not as good as it could be…

You either learn or you don’t learn.

—That feels pretty solid.

Because if you don’t learn when you win you’re doing it wrong.

And learning from failures is talked about so much it’s essentially cliché at this point.

It’s worth remembering that what’s required to maximally squeeze the sweet learning juice from every experience isn’t what’s natural. Reacting emotionally to wins and losses is what’s natural.

Wins lead to celebration parties and losses lead to pity parties—and both tend to distract us from our work (and its improvement).

If maximally learning from every experience is important to us then we need to consistently prioritize a dedicated chunk of time to “juicing” each one.

Time when we can carefully reflect on what went well, what we could’ve done better, and how we can promptly implement our learnings into our lives.

Because the reality is this: experience is not the best teacher—learned from experience is.

If you’re winning and losing and not learning—you’re losing.

If you’re learning and learning and not letting winning and losing discourage or distract you from continuing to try—you’re winning.

Stuck? Or Weighed Down?

Published on May 16, 2022

The more you hold on to, the heavier life feels.

When you get in the habit of clenching tightly on to:

  • People
  • Places
  • Pains
  • Things
  • Thoughts

Your life eventually becomes so heavy that it drags to a halt.

How could this not be the case if day-after-day you continue to hold on to more than you let go of?

The knapsack that’s full of everything you’re trying to control will eventually surpass your ability to carry it forward. And you’ll be presented with a choice:

Either (1) let go of more so you can start moving forward again or (2) stay where you are and keep a tight grasp on all that you have.

And here’s the question you have to ask yourself: is what I’m holding on to serving me or is it just familiar (and comfortable)? Because if what you’re holding on to isn’t serving you…

Maybe it’s time to start letting it go.

Stuck? Or Opportunity?

Published on May 11, 2022

What might feel like “stuck” might actually be cocooning.

Take this time of stillness as a disguised opportunity to accelerate your evolution.

  • Read.
  • Write.
  • Meditate.
  • Build.
  • Sleep.

Eventually, “stuck” will no longer be able to hold you in place.

Become “unstuck” by outgrowing your current situation.

Flirting With Tickets

Published on April 30, 2022

The average pace of today’s world is fast.

Most of us are sprinting to and from and mostly because that’s what everybody else is doing.

It’s like when you’re on the highway and everybody is driving 69.5mph in a 55mph zone—you don’t want to be THAT guy (just me?).

The question is: are we running because we’re enjoying or because we’re trying to quickly get to a different place where the enjoying is supposed to happen?

Which makes me wonder: does enjoying ever sprint? Or does enjoying cruise so as to not miss a moment as life sprints by?