There would be a lot fewer words spoken if this was everyone’s guide.
I keep coming back to this and marveling at how challenging it is to follow this simple, yet profound instruction.
Consistently speak only what is truthful AND helpful and you will shine.
I was clicking through interesting links last night and tunneled my way through the internet to this great Art of Manliness post: The World Belongs to Those Who Hustle. It’s worth reading if you need a kick in the pants to get going or feel you are lacking in talent. Talent is overrated.
Excellence is yours if you’re willing to put in the effort. In fact, the odds of doing something extraordinary are in your favor because most people are content with ordinary, with safe and secure but not remarkable.
There’s actually more competition for average than there is for awesome, because awesome takes effort and persistence and courage. And only the few will choose that path.
No excuse will suffice if the only thing keeping you from being the person you dream to be is your commitment to hustle.
*The quotation above could very well be misattributed to Lincoln. Not sure if the word “hustle” had this connotation in the mid-19th century. But the sentiment of this thought certainly seems to fit what we know of Lincoln’s character and his rise to prominence from a poor, illiterate family.
All you get by waiting is more waiting. Absolute perfection is here and now, not in some future, near or far. The secret is in action – here and now. It is your behavior that binds you to yourself. Disregard whatever you think yourself to be and act as if you were absolutely perfect – whatever your idea of perfection may be. All you need is courage.
My grace is telling you now: look within. All you need you have. Use it. Behave as best you know, do what you think you should. Don’t be afraid of mistakes; you can always correct them, only intentions matter. The shape things take is not within your power; the motives of your actions are.
–Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I found this in the book 365 Nirvana: Here and Now, which is a profound collection of insight and wisdom I used to keep on my nightstand.
This thought seems stunning: “Absolute perfection is here and now… Act as if you were absolutely perfect.” Acting as if conjures almost magical powers. Action is the key.
Do something! Stop thinking and waiting and hoping and wondering. Have a picture in your mind of who you want to be? Even if you’re not sure or you’re afraid you’ll change your mind later, go ahead and start acting like you are that person you envision.
Wake up each day and intend to be the perfect version of the human you imagine yourself to be. You will screw up, likely before you leave your room. It doesn’t matter. Your intent is what counts. Keep coming back to the actions that you desire.
Don’t judge yourself by some distant goal. Just be perfect in this moment. Act like you are who you want to be.
From Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations:
“The obstacle is the way” is such encouragement when facing adversity. And when aren’t we? Your nature calls for you to embrace difficulty and failure, to turn “obstacles into fuel” to propel yourself further.
Things not going as planned? Unforeseen problems appearing? Failure seems certain? Excellent! Use those obstacles to grow stronger, to reorient, to see previously unimagined possibilities. Seek out a path you know will be difficult if you want to grow and improve and live a life that burns brightly, that shines with the fire of your resolve.
When I’m having a moment in my life that should be pure joy, it rarely ever seems complete, never purely blissful. Even in the most delightful, carefree times, there always seems to be a tiny splinter of pain in my consciousness or a small, indefinable ache of sorrow that tugs at the moment.
What is that? The fleeting nature of the present moment? The awareness that change is the only constant, that everything is ultimately terminal?
Experiencing beauty and joy and authentic moments of connection reminds us that we can never truly possess those moments or freeze things the way we yearn for them to be.
Maybe this is what impels the creative impulse in us. We try to capture the moment of beauty or rapture or even heartbreak as best we can so it can be preserved to summon that feeling again or to understand it better. To immortalize somehow our mortal and ever changing experience of the mystery we all are living.
This Jason Silva video reflects on the dilemma we all face as finite beings searching for meaning and joy:
“This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods.”
–Abraham Maslow
Legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden began the first practice of every preseason with a lesson in how to put on socks.
He carefully demonstrated the proper technique while the new freshmen on the team were watching and likely thinking, “Why is coach doing this? I’ve been putting on socks all my life…”
Wooden went on to explain that if the players aren’t mindful in smoothing out the creases and wrinkles in the socks before they put their shoes on, they will be more prone to blisters as they begin training. And blisters will prevent them from practicing at their best.
Small things matter. Details determine outcomes. Wooden was a master of details, charting each practice session meticulously and knowing each player’s practice stats as well as their game stats. His leadership and his tightly organized system, of course, led to an unprecedented ten national championships.
One of Coach Wooden’s mantras was “Be quick, but never hurry.” Be efficient, but don’t be sloppy. If you hurry or are sloppy putting on your socks or doing other small things, you will be less likely to be awesome in the big things.
If you’re leading others, don’t assume they’ve got the basics down. Revisit them regularly. Be relentless in emphasizing the whys, but don’t skimp on the hows.
Strive to be impeccable in all that you do. Care enough to be awesome in the tiny, routine habits that will affect the quality of each day.
Fill your day well, sleep well.
Fill your life well…
From Alan Watts’s intriguing and challenging The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are:
Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, “Now, I’ve arrived!”
Your life is now. The challenge is to live where your life is and not where you think or hope it’s going to be in the future.
You pay for quality.
If it’s poor quality you’ve purchased, you pay again with annoyance or frustration and regret and possibly lost time and maybe repairing or replacing.
High quality purchases may typically only require the initial payment.
Things are ultimately just things. But great things can add value and beauty and more consistently satisfying moments than things that are merely cheap.
It’s much better to have fewer things that you find useful and beautiful than to have a lot of things that ultimately do not delight you past the purchase price.
Nice Sunday morning thought from Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations:
People try to get away from it all—to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like.
By going within.
Nowhere you can go is more peaceful—more free of interruptions—than your own soul. Especially if you have other things to rely on. An instant’s recollection and there it is: complete tranquillity. And by tranquillity I mean a kind of harmony.
…So keep this refuge in mind: the back roads of your self. Above all, no strain and no stress. Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal. And among the things you turn to, these two:
i. That things have no hold on the soul. They stand there unmoving, outside it. Disturbance comes only from within—from our own perceptions.
ii. That everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’ve already seen.
“The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.”
Head out on “the back roads of your self” when the world seems too distracting, too full. Unplug for a while and be intentional about finding a moment of tranquility. No vacation necessary.
My friend Megan was challenged in a sermon to ask three people she admires to answer this: “Why did God place you on earth, and what is your purpose?” So, she emails me with these questions. Of course, I’m honored that someone as wholehearted and bright as Megan is admires me and thought to ask me this question. I’m actually delighted by the challenge of thinking this through and writing down my thoughts. And I’m so overwhelmed by the question to have put this response off for many weeks. Sorry, Megan.
This is one of THE big questions, if not the biggest. “What’s your purpose?” Anyone who’s confident about their answer probably hasn’t given it enough thought.
At the moment (I’ll probably have a different answer next week) here’s my answer:
I don’t feel I was “placed” on earth. I used to feel I was here on purpose, carefully placed in time and space as part of a grand master plan. I no longer think that. Over time I’ve come to appreciate the overwhelming size of space and the phenomenal length of time, and I’ve realized our tiny, brief little lives don’t amount to much in the context of the universe as we now know it. (Insert existential angst here.)
I don’t imagine reality being a story that I am a character in. Instead, I feel more like a lucky winner of the biological lottery. To be a human born on Earth in the 20th century in a prosperous country to a remarkably happy family… That’s great good fortune.
While I used to find comfort in imagining I was designed for some divine purpose, it also was a burdensome thought. It was on me to figure out that purpose, to search for a calling that I was expected to pursue, to play a set role. And if I didn’t figure it out and play along I would risk mis-living my life.
What if my purpose simply is to fulfill my potential as a human being? What is a bird’s purpose? Or a tree’s? We humans, though, are blessed and cursed with a brain complex enough to ponder this and torment ourselves with too much thinking.
My purpose is to be the best human I can be, to live in harmony with the reality of the universe we find ourselves in. Harmony is the key, I think. Move in sync with the rhythm of life. Go with the flow of the way things are and resist only what is contrary to our nature and to our well-being and the well-being of others.
We are rational creatures – or we’re supposed to be – and we have an affinity for connection with each other and for an appreciation of beauty and meaningful patterns. Reason and rhyme. Truth and beauty.
I’m making it my purpose to live an excellent life, filled with truth and beauty and kindness.
What does that look like every day, though? How do I make my way through the daily dilemmas and mind-numbing monotony and the regular heartbreaks, big and small, of a typical human life?
I don’t know. I get a fresh start every day, though. Some days are just going to suck. Move on and try to make the next one better.
To be awake and aware in such a grand and incomprehensibly vast universe should be delight enough for me. And knowing how small I am in the big picture should ease the angst of worrying that I need to be a big deal and do big things for some higher purpose. Ambition is overrated. Living a good life is aspiration enough for anyone.
“Consider the lilies”, right? Maybe humans should play along with the rest of nature and fulfill our role without so much strain and thinking and worry.
Be happy and kind. Enjoy each day as much as you can. Do work you love, and if you can’t love your work, do it well anyway. Be as authentic a human as you can be, in the ways you move and think and work and play. Align your life with truth and beauty and seek to understand and express those values as well as you can.
The path is the goal. The climb, the quest, the narrative arc is an illusion, or at least a mismatched metaphor. This step, this moment is your life. Make it excellent.
“A man’s job is to make the world a better place to live in, so far as he is able—always remembering the results will be infinitesimal—and to attend to his own soul.”–Leroy Percy
“To live your brief life rightly, isn’t that enough?”–Marcus Aurelius
Kindness is the king of virtues.
Rage can win headlines and whip a crowd into a frenzy. A stadium roars in approval when a coach goes on a rampage against an official. A politician’s poll numbers will rise if she goes off on a sanctimonious rant against an opponent in a debate. “Look how tough I am” is often the message. Ego is at stake.
Anger is loud. Kindness is quiet.
It’s easy to give in to anger. It’s a powerful emotion. That’s why defaulting to kindness and courtesy, especially when righteous anger seems justified, when someone has done you wrong, requires great strength and genuine courage. Whenever I have snapped at someone (which, truly, does not happen often), the regret is immediate and painful.
Next time I feel I’m losing my temper or itching to rant, I need to catch myself in the act and find the strength to observe the emotion rather than venting it.
Reaching a goal can derail you. Accomplish it and then what? New goals, I suppose. But a life built around systems and process and thoughtful routines will bring more excellence and more consistent satisfaction than the ups and downs of goal-setting.
There’s something transcendent about striving, reaching for what you know may actually be unreachable. It keeps you hungry and sharp and makes you open to change and growth.
Success is an ending, and can leave you feeling lost on a regular basis. Mastery, though, is a pursuit. It’s a journey, not a destination.
I enjoyed this brief TED Talk by art historian Sarah Lewis, who champions the merits of the “near win”, of falling short, yet, or consequently, continuing to strive and improve and ending up further along than success would have propelled you.
Seeing this resurrects the desire in me to find some sideline activity that I can pursue in an attempt to achieve mastery. A hobby or craft or physical discipline that has no end other than a path of excellence.
By the way, I appreciated Lewis’s speaking style. Her stage presence is not effusive, not charismatic, and not quite conversational. But she’s quietly solid and impressively clear. It seems like it’s more of a spoken-word essay than a talk, but it works for her. This seems like who she is, and she clearly cares about what she’s saying and what she’s learned.
Seeing her on stage reminds me that there is no one best way for speakers to connect. Well, there is one way, and that is authenticity. That works for every speaker.
Never compare your insides to someone else’s outsides – it’s another way of saying that there’s no upside to envy.
My wife, Shanna, shared this Rob Lowe quote with me recently. (Yes, that Rob Lowe, the “brat pack” actor you remember from the 80s and more recently of The West Wing TV series.)
That quote is a nice bit of wisdom. When she read it to me I responded that it reminded me of a line I had just read in Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations.
And Shanna laughed.
She’s got a great laugh. She thought it was funny that she was quoting a Hollywood celebrity, and I was quoting a second century philosopher-king. She’s amused by my eggheaded eccentricities.
We’re a good match, she and I.
It’s a nice reminder that wisdom doesn’t have to be ancient to be meaningful. Nor does it have to come from a sage. And really, everyone, regardless of education or station in life, has a bit of Yoda or Mr. Miyagi or Marcus Aurelius (or Rob Lowe) in them, a unique insight on life that could only come from living their life, from seeing the world through their eyes.
Be open to insight and wisdom from anyone. And don’t judge yourself or be discouraged in comparison to the person you perceive someone else to be. Trust Rob Lowe on this.
It never ceases to amaze me: we all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.
—
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
–Marcus Aurelius
My first job out of college was on Capitol Hill, working on the staff of a member of Congress. I lived alone on the Hill and walked to work every day. There was no internet in 1987, of course, and no cable TV then, surprisingly, on the Hill. I didn’t have much money and didn’t socialize much. Dinner was often finger food from whatever Congressional reception was on my boss’s schedule for the night. My family was far away. I had friends, but it was a very introspective, often delightfully solitary, relatively distraction-free time in my life.
My primary pastime when I wasn’t working was reading. I spent whatever I could on acquiring books, mostly biographies and history. As I was beginning my adult life with audacious dreams of greatness I wanted to be instructed by the examples of the lives of great men and women. I particularly remember reading Plutarch’s Lives and biographies of U.S. presidents. A fun Friday night for me was browsing the shelves of a bookstore.
It wasn’t exactly a monk-like existence, but I often wondered if I shouldn’t have been more social and had more fun. Looking back on it, though, I realize it was a great way to begin forming my identity and learning to think for myself and being intentional about who I wanted to be. I wasn’t molded by peers or social expectations or distracted by frivolities. That alone time was worthwhile. Much of who I am now and the way I think was formed in those years as a bachelor with books.
I was reminded of this time in my life by a post on Brain Pickings. The author Florence King gives her advice to young people on getting started in their adult lives, and it sounds a lot like what I did:
Put yourself on cruise control and go into limbo for a year. I’m not talking about a neo-grand tour; don’t bop around Europe, you’ll just get in trouble. Nor am I talking about what your parents’ generation called “dropping out.” I mean forget about success for a while, get yourself an ordinary job, an ordinary place to live, and live without worrying about what Americans call, in uppercase, the Future.
Go somewhere different, but stay away from big cities. If you’re from a place you call “godforsaken,” go to a small city in another part of the country…
Get a dead-end job — they’re plentiful now because nobody wants them. Tell your employer the truth: that you’ll be around only a year or so, but promise to work hard. Keep your promise. Little triumphs are the pennies of self-esteem. If you do well in such a job and make yourself indispensable to somebody, you will realize Robert E. Lee’s farewell words to his men after the surrender at Appomattox: “You will take with you the satisfaction that proceeds from a knowledge of duty faithfully performed.”
Live alone, even at a financial sacrifice. If you have a roommate, the whole college uproar will just start all over again…
Read, read, read. When you don’t have to worry about passing exams on them, subjects you studied in school suddenly become interesting…
What I am recommending is traditionally called “finding yourself.” The difference is, there is no bohemian excess here, none of the “experiencing everything” that comprises nostalgia de la boúe. It’s productive, constructive goofing-off.
This was close to my experience of being on my own for the first time. I was in a big city but was not particularly living a big city life. I was alone, far from family and old friends, and I used that time to read and think and start figuring out what was important to me. I didn’t have a “dead-end” job. It was intense, yet fun, and I learned what it meant to do good work and to be part of a team. But it didn’t end up being the field I would devote my career to.
I remember about that time discovering the work of Joseph Campbell, the great expert on mythology and comparative religion. His influence continues to resonate with me. He told of a similar period early in his career during the Great Depression when he couldn’t land an academic job. He ended up living in an isolated place for a few years, and all he did was read. Campbell credits that quiet time in his life for the success he ultimately found in his work life.
I know what it’s like to be 22 and eager to make your mark, to prove you’ve “arrived” and are bound for something big. Our connected and distracting world today only makes this impulse more irresistable and more burdensome. But understanding that it’s the long game that’s more meaningful is so reassuring. Attempt to peak at age 60 rather than, say, 27, and you’ll likely be more awesome at 27 than you would have been playing the short game, trying to succeed fast.
Take the time to ease your way into your adult life, to ponder and reflect and get to know who you are and who you want to be outside of the expectations of your family and the influence of your friends. There’s no hurry, people. The future is arriving fast enough.
I saw this Emerson quotation referenced in an Austin Kleon tweet yesterday:
I will learn from everyone and be no one’s disciple.
I couldn’t find the original source for it, but it seems very Emersonian.
Learn from everyone. Don’t assume you are wiser than anyone you encounter. Every person has experienced things you haven’t. Be open to what others can teach you. Be humble. Assume nothing about anyone.
When inclined to judge, try to understand instead.
This is all easy to say. Not so easy, though, to be the kind of person who truly faces the world so open-heartedly, so teachable and humble. Maybe this means asking more questions of others and genuinely listening to the answers. Listening more than you talk.
Then there’s the “be no one’s disciple” half of the phrase. No matter how together someone seems or how authoritative they are said to be, don’t bow down to their opinions and copy them into your worldview. Accept nothing without reasonable inquiry and solid evidence. Don’t give over your freedom to anyone else. Ever.
Catch yourself locking others up in your expectations, your dogma. And stop it.
Break out of the constraints others place on you. Be authentic. Be real. Be your rowdy, unfiltered self, regardless of what others want you to be and regardless of how imperfect you will be exposed to be.
Your freedom just might liberate someone else. Your vulnerability just might embolden those around you who are only going through the motions, who feel trapped in cages built by someone else.
The wise man accepts the beautiful messiness of life and does not try to fix others. He just wants them to be free.
Stop building cages. Start a jail break.
Take on some project that scares you because of how extraordinary it could be. Even if the project never comes to fruition, just working toward something you imagine to be awesome will amp up your life and spark possibilities that never would have occurred without an audacious pursuit.
After celebrating Independence Day here in the U.S.A. last week, we should remember the goal for those revolutionaries ultimately was a nation that would especially protect the rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness“.
A government cannot grant you happiness. But it’s nice of ours to at least promise to get out of the way and not impede our pursuit of it.
How’s the pursuit going for you? Me? I think I probably have moments of happiness at a slightly above average rate. Happiness, though, is an elusive state. If you notice yourself feeling happy and try to dissect why, you lose the feeling. You can look back on truly happy moments after the fact, but it’s hard to catch happiness in the act. What if the act of pursuing actually prevents you from reaching the desired state?
Can you list distinct, indisputable happy moments in your life? This is a good exercise for your journal. What are the peak happy times from throughout your life, the big falling-in-love and birth-of-your-children moments, and the small, quiet sitting-on-a-covered-porch-during-a-gentle-rain moments?
It’s worthwhile to excavate those memories and try to understand why those moments stand out. You might discover some common elements to help set yourself up for even more happiness, to create the conditions most likely to spark more happy memories. Why not be happy on purpose?
This enlightening TED Talk from Matt Killingsworth highlights his research showing that people are happiest when they are lost in a moment, when their minds do NOT wander.
This seems true for many of my happiest moments. The chatty part of my brain, the happiness-killing part prone to near constant monologuing, disappears when I’m in a zone, whether that’s work or play or reading or watching a movie or riding a roller coaster. Happiness is absorption.
Jason Silva, in a recent interview on the Tim Ferriss Podcast, said that his aim is to build his life around flow states. Excellent idea.
How can I set myself up for more flow states, more moments getting lost in something that quiets that inner monologue, that stops my mind from wandering away from the present moment? What are the conditions that tend to lead to this kind of absorption?
Can I craft my day around creating flow states for work and for play? Set up my work area, tune out distractions, and just begin, whether I feel like it or not. Maybe by creating the climate for happy moments and engaging in activities that require complete absorption, happiness will pursue me rather than the other way around.
More happiness, less pursuit.
It is Independence Day here in the U.S.A. We celebrate our founders’ revolt against tyranny and their fight for freedom to determine their own way, to allow our fellow citizens to live as they choose.
Regardless of our heroically won Constitutional rights, we regularly yield to the tyranny of conformity, of fitting in, of bowing to the imagined opinions of others.
Declare your independence everyday. Fight to follow your own way, to travel the path you choose, to be true to the voice inside you calling you to be the person you imagine you can be. And never stop fighting.
Excellent Journey 