Reality Laughs

“Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.”

People create their worlds with the tools they have directly at hand. Faulty tools produce faulty results. Repeated use of the same faulty tools produces the same faulty results. It is in this manner that those who fail to learn from the past doom themselves to repeat it.

12 Rules for Life, page 75.

Implications?

Assume you are in the “unwilling” category of people. (We are either unable or unwilling, and the only person with hope of a better life is the unwilling one who becomes willing.) This is the only reasonable perspective to have. The other perspective (that you are physically unable to make a change due to lack of intelligence, etc.) is black pill thinking that leads to unhappiness and cynicism.

In other words, are you a “cannot” or are you a “will not?” Don’t take the fatalist’s “cannot” path.

Assume your life tools are faulty until proven otherwise. It’s a reasonable assumption. Someone else is always smarter, faster, etc. Even masters seek to hone their skills.

Test that assumption by embarking on a never-ending effort to learn. Learning reveals gaps in your prior knowledge. By acquiring new knowledge and skills you will reveal the limits of your old knowledge.

In short:

• Willingness. Believe (despite evidence to the contrary you may believe exists at the moment) that it is possible to change.
• Openmindedness. Believe that it is possible to know and do different stuff than you know and do now.
• Action. Learn and do.

[E]very good example is a fateful challenge, and every hero, a judge. Michelangelo’s great perfect marble David cries out to the observer: “You could be more than you are.” When you dare aspire upward, you reveal the inadequacy of the present and the promise of the future.”

12 Rules for Life, page 83.

This chapter of the books is about choosing better friends and companions. “Make friends with people who want the best for you” is how the chapter ends.

Important! But first, let’s make and keep that inner resolution to aspire upwards and . . . keep trudging.

In my clinical practice I encourage people to credit themselves and those around them for acting productively and with care, as well as for the genuine concern and thoughtfulness they manifest toward others.

12 Rules for Life, page 61.

Ouch. I have nothing good to say to myself about my day-to-day performance, in the inner monologue. Ever. I’m self-critical to the extreme.

Time to change this. Recognize that I kept going when things were bleak, and raised three happy, productive, healthy children. That’s no insignificant task. Good marriage. I was right long ago when I mused “I could go the distance with her.” (Where did that thought come from? It was those exact words.) I showed up this week when my dad needed me. Things are ok. I’m ok.

Right now I’m sitting on the back patio, reading. It’s early morning. I have a cup of coffee. Gentle traffic noise and the intermittent interruption of a crow’s call.

My life is good. I’m ok.

Edgy and discontented right now. Irritated, not with anything in particular — just everything in general.

Watching my dad’s household goods being loaded into the moving truck. Thinking I have so many things to do for work. Not wanting to do them at all, ever. Feeling in limbo.

In a few minutes, take my dad to the airport. Come back to the house for the movers and the final packing and walkthrough. Then hit the road myself. I have a long drive home.

I want to get going.

Do one thing at a time. Right now the thing to do is sit.

I found the word “grindset” on one of my rare visits to Twitter.

It’s mine now.

I didn’t see the value of grindset quite the way I do now, mid-75 Hard.

I’ve learned a lesson from David Goggins that serves me well.

1. Rest days are important.
2. My brain will sometimes tell me I deserve a day off, or some such shit. (In the little video I watched he used the word “poopypants” to describe that mental conversation. Bang. That bookmarked the concept in my head forever.)
3. Never take the day off that Mr. Poopypants tells you to take off. “I deserve it” is poison.
4. Instead, schedule rest days and take those days off.

I don’t schedule rest days often enough. I need to. That way I won’t fall prey to the poopypants mentality.

We manufacture ourselves from our thoughts. Our moods, our physical being. Our future condition. Our present.

Memories are just thoughts. We can have different thoughts. Even about the same thing.

Don’t be a slave to the past. The past is gone, and you chose thoughts to cling to about the past. Let those thoughts go, and have different thoughts. Or keep a thought for a while, and polish and buff it to make it shine. then let it go when it’s time for that thought to go.

Just know that thoughts have expiration dates. A reason, a season, a lifetime. Cooperate with the expiration date.

You can change the past. Today, you are not that person, and that environment is not your current environment. You are free.

Helping my father move.

Packing up a home — this goes to storage, that goes to the new place — can be a psychic chore. Packing up someone else is hard enough. I can’t imagine what it’s like for him, packing up his own life.

This is for the second time. The first time he downsized from a 3,000 square foot two-story house to a two-bedroom mobile home. Now it’s a 900 square foot one-bedroom apartment in a retirement facility.

How do you go from fully autonomous to living in a place you know might be your last home? Oof. Heavy thought. How do you continue to shed possessions, simply because you must?

At least he will be living just a few blocks from me.

Many of these things are familiar to me from my childhood. Others are familiar to me for less time, but still identifies with him. To the extent I look at the thing and create an opinion, an attachment . . . it’s hard. To the extent that I show up for duty, purely to be helpful . . . it’s easy.

Lessons exist everywhere we choose to find them.

• Nothing is good or bad except that thinking makes it so. (Or whatever Billy S. wrote 400 years ago.)
• Do you know what feels good? Just show up and help, for fun and for free (as the old timers would tell me long ago when I was a noob).
• And a more practical one: throw shit away, with glee and gratitude. Why do you think they call them possessions? Because they possess you. (Why put a secondhand toaster into paid storage? What possible value is there in keeping it?)

That last one is a son of a bitch to get past. I look at things that I own. Maybe I bought them, maybe someone gave them to me. They are of no value to me today. Yet I can’t bring myself to throw it away. It has some psychic value to me, just because it’s mine. It’s useless (maybe even detrimental), but it’s mine.

Give it away. Throw it away. Don’t even think of selling it. The value is in the “gone.”

This is a lesson I need to apply in my own life.

Edit everything out of your life that takes you away from achieving your goals.

There is so much buried in that idea.

First, you have a goal.

Second, the goal matters so much that you’re willing to be clear-eyed and remove any obstacle between you and that goal.

I did this in a small way today in the way I set up my work day. Anything inconsistent with my immediate goal today has been eliminated. It’s not hard to do, once you know what you want to do. Metaphorically chisel away all of the marble that isn’t shaped like David, and there you are. Simple, really. (Heh.)

I’m feeling great. Exercise continues. Physical. Focus continues to improve. Ruthless pruning continues. Mental. Reading and writing. Spiritual. Interaction with others. Social.

One millimeter at a time, I move forward.

They have authors who profess to be experts—because they did research and wrote up a book and published it.

Give me the practitioners, not the preachers. Or as Dan and Ian say for the Tropical MBA podcast (a glorious exception to my complaint), someone who is a practitioner-preacher. 50/50. Someone who has the experience and knows how to express it.

Someone who can communicate, like a preacher, and communicates actual, personal experience and lessons learned. That’s who I want to hear from.

I love Chris Williamson’s Modern Wisdom podcast. But he has too many preachers and too few practitioner-preachers. I’m listening to an episode now and as soon as I finish typing this rant I’m deleting the episode.

. . . unless you change.

Yes I’ve probably posted this before.

It’s doubly true right now, this moment. For me, for family members. For you.

Start now. Do something. Do something different.

Fucking right fucking now. Now now.

Move. Move tiny, but move.