If I’m stuck and I’m putting a huge amount of effort into once place, the answer is not to put more effort there.
Take away effort there. Put attention somewhere else.
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Author: Reality Laughs
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Get fewer things done
But done.
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The universe delivers your dreams
Or at least let’s your dreams drift past you, tantalizingly close. The tantalizingly close just happened to me in a phone conversation.
Tantalizingly close or on another planet? It’s the same thing. Zero expectations is the only way to life peacefully with dreams and possibilities.
It’s what they keep telling me: it’s the journey, not the destination. Maybe I will really internalize it someday. Until then, faith.
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Practice, perfection, personality
Practice makes perfect.
No, perfect practice makes perfect.
Perfect practice, until it becomes a part of your personality.
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Better means different
You want a better (for any definition you choose) outcome? You need different thoughts, actions, outcomes.
It’s foolhardy to assume you can take the old you with you into a better outcome. Better (hah) to insist on “different” from yourself in all ways as a first step.
Gratitude list, just for drill:
- Wife and kids
- Home
- Health
- Continued accomplishment of X (you know what it is) for so many decades
That last bullet point shows the limits of writing in this way. In fact the whole list is vague because of the medium I am using.
But the feeling of gratitude is real in spite of the vagueness.
If you took it all away tomorrow I would be sad (unlike a stoic) but I believe I could start over from nothing, like a stoic, and continue to live a good life.
Keeping that last bullet point would be a necessary ingredient to a good life in those circumstances, but that is within my control.
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Boredom, I have one
Noise of a movie on TV, sitting in the kitchen watching a frozen pizza cook. Let’s do nothing for the next 10 minutes or so while the pizza is in the oven.
Edit: I made it to 7 minutes then reflexively grabbed the phone.
When I am ignorant and I ask a question, usually there is a deeper question there. Don’t be satisfied at the surface.
And when people ask me a question, be sensitive that there is a deeper question there.
It might be technical. Or it might be emotional. There is always something beneath the surface. Look for that something, in myself when I search for an answer. And try to answer that something beneath the surface for the other person, if I am asked for an answer.
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Get bored on purpose
I’m going to try this.
As usual, it’s ancient wisdom. “Be still, and know I am God.”
No, that doesn’t mean meditation (necessarily).
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Change quickly when wrong
If anyone can refute me—show me I’m making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective—I’ll gladly change. It’s the truth I’m after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 6.21. Gregory Hays translation.
The theme song for what I’m doing here, what I aspire to be.
Scott Adams frequently said on his daily Periscopes that he changes his mind instantly and without ego when shown to be wrong. (Not his words but that’s the idea).
I did that, starting today. I am doing something that (to me) is helpful, encouraging to people I know well and want to help. Not so, I was informed. What I’m doing is pushy and not helpful.
Stopped. I didn’t take even a little offense. I’m just glad I found out my beliefs about how to make things better was wrong.
And my relationship with the targets of my “advice” seemed to improve immediately.
I want more of that.