Category: Defining Success

We catch opportunities in life much like how a spider catches dinner.

We don’t wait for opportunities to fly into our mouth… we create a web to catch them.

Try to make your web too big and you’ll have but a single strand of webbing circumferenced over an excessive space with a big hole in the middle… and your opportunities will fly right through. This is what happens when we try to make a difference or create a connection that involves too big of a jump from where we are.

This seems to be the default in a world that has the world at their fingertips. We see it, the full scale of it, and are constantly getting fed the image of the .01% who are impacting it, at that scale, and we want to do the same… so we try and skip the whole growing, building, developing process and try to just web a strand from where we are to the other side of the world in hopes of catching the opportunity easily.

But, of course, this doesn’t pan out.

Focus more on what’s in closer proximity… on building connections with people, places, and things in your local community and utilize resources in your own backyard… and what you might find is an appropriately sized web that catches an appropriate amount of opportunity.

…And slowly, you’ll grow into a bigger spider, capable of creating larger webs with thicker strands that’ll catch more opportunities (dinners) which will only perpetuate the process further and further from there.

This is the formula to impact. Not one long piece of webbing… but an appropriately sized, complex web that no bug can get past.

When you think about goals as finish lines… you line up on a start line and prepare to race.

…Because that’s what we’re wired to do when there are finish lines involved.

But when you think about your goals as the construction of masterpieces… suddenly racing gets removed from the equation altogether.

…Because taking our time, pouring from our soul, and demanding from its construction our best is what we’re wired to do when “masterpiece” is involved.

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P.s. Just lay the next brick.

If the holidays wasn’t everything you hoped it would be… rather than place blame on those who didn’t deliver on your expectations… ask yourself: how can I take more of a role in making it into what I’d love it to be?

Maybe that involves doing the hosting yourself? Or introducing fun games to encourage more spontaneous connection? Or coming up with fresh and creative traditions that’ll get everybody talking… like wearing matching pajamas, or playing a game of spoons, or gifting an incredibly random gag gift…

The point is to take control over what you can control. And if you’re not willing to do that… then maybe don’t place blame on those who are willing and are trying… maybe it’s worth meditating on how you can drop expectations all together and uncover new ways within yourself to have a good time regardless of the setting…

Some counter culture gift ideas for the holiday season.

• A friend and his girlfriend decided they were going to skip town during the holidays altogether and have themselves an experiential weekend in a city they’ve never visited before capped off with an NBA game as the cherry on top.

• Another friend was telling me about a new tradition he and his wife started with Gold Belly. Apparently, you can live in Alaska and have Chicago style deep dish pizza for dinner—without ever leaving your home. Or Philly Cheesesteaks from Philadelphia or lobster from Maine for that matter… Each year, it’s a new dinner dish from somewhere different across the USA and Canada. And it’s a gift that’s totally unique, authentic, and shared.

• And yet another friend was telling me how he and his wife have given up gift giving altogether and decided to write each other a love letter each year instead.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the commercial brainwashing of the holiday season that we forget we have control over how we want our holiday to actually unfold.

Ask yourself what your ideal holiday schedule would look like… what experiences you truly want to put on a pedestal (getting an expensive gift?)… and then start reverse engineering your way towards that vision.

As is the case with most things in life… this holiday season is what you make it.

…Not what it’s been made out to be.

I read a great line by James Clear today that said, “If we consider each moment a ‘repetition,’ what are most people training for all day?”

Some, I’d say, are training to become angry keyboard warriors.

Others, I’d say, are training to become professional self-sabotagers.

And there are plenty who it’d appear are training to become full-time spectators.

…This is an excellent question to integrate into your mindfulness practice.

Maybe add a random alarm on your phone or do a daily check-in at a specific time and ask yourself, “What am I training for—what am I getting repetitions in for—in this moment?”

…Are you reinforcing a message of self-doubt or a message of confidence and courage?

…Are you reinforcing a behavior of knee-jerk anger or calm removal from anger-inducing situations?

Are you casting votes for being a life spectator or a life participant?

…Because one thing is for sure, our life is built on moments. One moment at a time, one building block at a time, we choose how we construct the building that is our life. The question is… what kind of quality are you getting from each of those moments?

Last night, while watching the Buffalo Bills Football game, quarterback Josh Allen commented on how the team has been able to come together and play as well as they have—despite having lost as many experienced leaders as they had.

He said, “Coach McDermott talks about ‘Be you, with us,’ and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

He elaborated by saying he likes to joke around and be funny—that he enjoys doing things that’ll get the coaches and players to lighten up and laugh. But he also said, “…there’s times where there doesn’t need to be joking around. Time to get serious. Over the years, I’ve found when that is the most critical.”

What’s working well, it would seem, is an aligned energy with players and coaches where, between jokes and seriousness, one compliments the other and the other compliments the one. The jokes aren’t hindering the team energy or targeting/ostracizing anybody on it and the seriousness isn’t making the process miserable or becoming an unbearable weight on any one player’s shoulders.

Ultimately, those four words seem to capture the ideal recipe for engaging as an individual when you’re a part of a team. Be you—yes. To ask you to be anybody else would not only be cruel, but counterproductive. It wouldn’t be long before the person not allowed to be themself would start resenting the people around them. But also, and just as important, do so: with us. To be cruel, ostracize people, be overly critical, spread hate, or otherwise demean people around you—even jokingly—dismantles a team. Which, in effect, dismantles you—because you’re a part of it.

In reply to my post on one lesson from 35 years, my uncle replied with the following:

“It’s funny, most of the educated, ‘smart people’ I know told me not to retire early… ‘you’ll be sorry.’ Funny that they text me to see if it’s actually working… why??? Because they don’t get job satisfaction anymore and want to jump. It’s not about getting rich, it’s not about all the zeros in that account… it’s about having enough, having health, and being able to savor the flavor of life. I, we, take things slow, and my old way of looking at life is/has changed. Money can’t buy health or time.”

Pair this with a nugget of wisdom from my great grandmother (that my mom shared at my birthday party this past weekend): “If your problems can be solved with money… you don’t really have problems” and two thoughts come to mind.

(1) Damn, I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such incredible role models in my life. It makes such an impact (probably one of the biggest impacts) on a person’s life… and if you’re not surrounded by good role models… do everything in your power to change that.

(2) Get rich, quick! is the current of modern day society—swim against it. Which isn’t to say you should disregard money. There’s no doubting the fact that money is a powerful tool. But, that’s just it… it’s a tool. Don’t become so obsessed with hoarding the tool that you forget to use the damn thing to do amazing things!

The handyman who merely collects and stores tools is no handyman at all.

Ask yourself… Is the person who merely collects and hoards money really living at all?