PREACHER VS. TEACHER VS. PARTY-MAKER

May 10th, 2018

A preacher talks at you with good intention and the hope that you will change for the better.

A teacher gives you the reasons and methodology as to why and how you should change.

A party-maker lives the change, makes others envious of the fun, and they join on their own.

(FOMO can be used for good.)

Which is best when you wish to see a loved one make a change in their life?  The Preacher? The Teacher?

or

the Party-Maker?

HOPE GROWS FOOLISH WITH NO DOING

May 9th, 2018

It’s one thing to think about it. Talk about it. Debate about it.

But without action.

You get no real feedback.

Feedback that will tell you what’s wrong with your thinking, talking, debating. 

Taking action is like poking reality.

You’ll get a reaction. (Even no reaction is an important kind of feedback.)

Reality will poke back.

If you’re quiet, and push aside all those bungling emotions for a moment. You might just see what reality is telling you. How the thinking can be tweaked. How one side of the debate maybe had a better point.

Maybe it’ll help you waste less time with all that thinking, talking & wondering, by showing you:

It wasn’t something worth hoping for in the first place.

Or maybe that hope will start taking shape as something real.

Either way.

You’ll save time by cutting out all that extra thinking, talking, hashing-it-out, etc. that would have kept going on endlessly…

had you not acted.

PAUSE

May 8th, 2018

What did you do that last time someone offered a suggestion?

Did you respond immediately?

Or did you pause.

Did you consider?

Did you think.

Or

Did you simply feel. Express that. And then move on to what you were waiting to say.

The ability to pause is like a muscle in the brain. It requires training and vigilant exercise: constant use.

It’s the block of marble that is continuously growing back to the dull boring shape of a block. A masterpiece cannot be chiseled out once and expected to keep forever. It must be continuously chiseled.

A big task.

But once the hard work of moving most of the unneeded stone is done. Every day is just a small bit here and there, like sanding away the fat. Maybe after a lazy week the chisel needs to be used.

This is the ever-giving benefit of good habits.

Once they are formed?

They have their own momentum.

Friends and family might be out of touch with who you are and what you want to become, and therefore unable to give good advice. But anyone who truly listens and cares will have something useful to say.

Next time it happens. Will you have your chisel ready?

Will you pause?

It could spur a habit that changes your life.

Even if the advice is bad.

DID YOU NOTICE A DIFFERENCE?

May 7th, 2018

If we have to ask, the answer is no.

If we ask and the answer is yes?

Then it wasn’t much of a difference. We had to ask someone to apply their attention. Their attention wasn't caught in the first place. And if it was, it’s telling that the difference didn’t spur a comment on it’s own...

Why do we even ask?

Feedback?

Rarely.

We want Reassurance.

Why do we need reassurance? What’s the root of that empty hug?

If our practice is strong enough, if our work is dedicated, if our effort is honest and thorough, if our eye is on the prize, then the question does not even arise in the mind.

If we feel the need to ask. Perhaps we are already losing focus on the project.

Work speaks for itself.

THE MONTAGE IS FALSE

May 6th, 2018

Movies do us a great disservice. We like to classify such movies as entertainment, but could they be functioning beyond such a deceptively innocent category?

It’s just entertainment. Right?

Or maybe…

From an early age we are exposed to stories that occur completely in just a couple hours. And yet extremely few movies are about a two-hour stretch of time.

They skip all the boring parts.

At the very most: the important, slow, methodical, dull work of attaining the skill, trekking the distance, writing the book, building alliances is crammed into a montage.

Of course, no one would watch a movie that faithfully represented these time-consuming activities. There’s good reason for the montage.

But what effect does it have?

How often is the complaint made that we are a people constantly seeking instant gratification?

A people constantly expecting instant gratification watching stories that show only the humble beginnings followed immediately by the long-term results: for the movie-goer these are instant transformations from non-entity to master, from slave to conqueror, from meek 9-to-5’er to savior of humanity.

Oh but we know it’s time compressed. Oh but we understand how much time, how much effort, how much trial-and-error went into all that stuttering success.

But do we? Does every part of our brain get that message loud and clear?

Or do we deceive ourselves? Assuming we are smarter than we actually are.

Here’s a great quote: “If the problem was just a matter of getting the information, we’d all be billionaires with six-packs.”

The point is we don’t have as much control of ourselves as we like to think.

It’s best to assume with caution: I am probably being influenced in ways I don’t even realize. Hey, remember subliminal advertising? We all know about that? What else is functioning in exactly the same way as subliminal advertising, but isn’t necessarily geared toward selling something? Maybe it hasn’t been consciously geared at all. Maybe it’s just a product of culture that is effecting us in ways never intended nor dreamed…

How do great things happen?

With a bang? Nope.

In the same way that the old woman with the walker looks in the mirror and wonders what happened, feeling that young sex-kitten still alive and aglow in her. The same way the 400lb man looking at his bypass scare wonders how he was once a baseball player.

All this happens because of two things:

Time + a trend.

Great achievements require time and lots and lots of slow dull consistent work. Time is the same for all of it. But here the trend is work.

For the man, the trend is unhealthy eating.

And if a woman can have this routine at 91 years old? No one decades younger should have a walker. 

A trend can also be a lack of something. In the case of the old, frail woman: inactivity.

Given enough time, trends result in extreme examples.

Are you trending in the right direction?

Check now and make changes. Because you can be sure as certain:

There’s not going to be a montage to teleport you to some wonderful version of your life.