My Riffs

The things that divide are much smaller than what bring us together. The things we have in common are much stronger than the things we allow to divide. But it only takes a small thing to divide a big object. Think of an axe. The relatively small piece of metal can divide and bring down a big, strong tree. The things that divide often turn into hate. Focusing on what we have in common will help us love rather than hate. The reasons we find to hate are small and insignificant in contrast to the reasons to love.

The cost of hope is disappointment. At some point your hope will cost you disappointment. When disappointments come, there be a deficit until you pay with hope. The only way to erase disappointment is to get hope. The cost of hope is disappointment, but the price to erase disappointment is hope. Keep giving hope to keep disappointment at bay. If you feed disappointment with itself you can descend into hopeless, and at that point it becomes almost impossible to pull you from hopelessness. Cultivate hope with every disappointment.

The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. Or failure. You cannot have a big reward without a big risk. The risk means you also may fail. A small risk can have a small reward or a small failure. But a small risk cannot have a large reward. The size of the outcome is determined at the beginning, not the end.

The seeds your planting today will be the crop to sustain you tomorrow. Make sure you're sowing nourishing seeds.

Every measurement requires a standard unit. Generally we choose someone doing better than ourself as a standard unit. Of course being aware of those around you is a good thing. But the danger is when we spend our every resource trying to measure up to others. This often ends up producing the opposite of our attempts. We end up always falling short. The better way to race is to race against ourself. The end result of racing against ourself will put us much further ahead in contrast to racing against others. When we race and push to be better than ourself only, we will achieve much greater results. Racing against others wastes our resources and focus on being something other than ourself. Racing against ourself pushes us to be the best version of ourself, and that's where we can truly win. The more we focus on others, the less we focus on becoming what we need to be.

Our intentions have layers. Sometimes the first thing we feel our intentions are, isn’t correct. Examining our intentions is important too. To do a proper examination we need to peel back the first layer and search for the deeper intention. Here's an example: "I work to make money". That's the surface intention. Peel back that first layer and the deeper intention may be "I work to eat and pay rent". Peel back another layer and the next layer may be "I work to provide a certain quality of life for my family". Then maybe another layer could be something even deeper about creating a legacy, or building something to make a difference in the world. The lesson is, sometimes our first instinct intention isn't the most accurate. If we can't peel back the first layer and find more important intentions, maybe we should pursue something that has more substance.

You could win the lottery, but we all know the odds of that... It's better to just work for what you want. The odds of winning the lottery are not worth taking. The lottery isn't simply a form of gambling, the lottery is success in whatever form you desire. Career, personal goals, influence, etc. You could win the lottery, or you could just work for what you want. One method almost guarantees failure, the other almost guarantees success.

When you ask someone to tell you about themselves, usually the first thing you will hear is their career choice. Because work is important and we spend so much time working every week, we often claim that job or career as our identity. I suggest we need to carefully choose what our identity consists of. If we choose things that can change or could lose, we risk causing ourself unnecessary chaos. For example, if your job is your identity, you risk being torn apart when you lose your job because you allowed it to form your identity. Choose long term and more important things to form your identity. Who you are and what you do are different things. You may be a dentist, but that's not who you are, it's what you do. Who you are as a person is far more important. Things like being a friend, being a mother, son, cousin and etc are far more important than just being a doctor, lawyer, clerk... So be very selective in what you accept as your identity.

(I am borrowing this thought from Seth Godin) Are you a day trader or investor? Day traders want in and out quickly. They want to make a quick profit and divest. Some get good at this and make a living of it. Investors are in for the long term. They don't worry if the investment dips. Investors ride the waves and cash out when the investment is fully mature. Day traders don't really add the value investors do.

As you drive today Google is likely tracking your progress. This is how they provide driving estimates and traffic reports. Apple is likely tracking you as well so they can help predict driving times and driving patterns for you. You can check your phone and trace everywhere you've actually taken your iPhone. It's collecting and storing your location constantly. Apple is also collecting a lot of data (albeit in a relatively safe any anonymous way) from your mobile device to aggregate some big data. ( link to read more here ) All other mobile device companies are doing something similar and likely worse. My phone holds my workouts, heart rates, floors climbed and etc. Your email is being closely monitored for multiple reasons, for sure for advertising and profiling reasons. Every search you do online is being tracked and traced. Any store you walk into today will be video recording you. One of the hottest selling items last holiday season was Amazon's Alexa. A sp...

Many go through life just trying to survive. Others go through life determined to thrive. The beginning of both paths are almost the same but the end vastly different.

They're gonna be upset about this. That person is ______. She/he always______. They're happy/sad/confused. These are just a few assumptions we make. We go about our day constantly making assumptions about regular day to day stuff. That car is going to turn now. That pedestrian is going to be out of my way... The mail will arrive at... I will be getting a call from... They will be getting home at... On and on the list can go. We have to go about life making a ton of assumptions. We just get into trouble when we take our assumptions as immutable facts. Assumptions are just guesses. They may be guesses with varying degrees of education, but they are guesses nonetheless. So taking assumptions as simply assumptions and not facts help us manage reality and disappointments.

How much of our attention to we give a speaker? Even in a one on one conversation, we only give the other speaker a small percentage of our attention. Our minds are usually thinking about a response, or where we need to go next, or something we forgot to do... etc. If we can increase our attention skills, we can increase our understanding. If we can increase our understanding, we can be more effective. If we understand fully what is being said to us, then we can take action on it. Try giving speakers give a few more percentiles of your attention. You will reap rewards for doing so.

Deferring to others is a challenge because it means putting our preferences on the back burner. But it's not big things we need to give up in deferring to others. Giving up our favourite seat, moving our schedule to accommodate their timing, eating at their choice spot, speaking about their interests and etc... Really not big stuff, but it's difficult for us to shelf those preferences. The things about it is, the benefits in deferring to others far outweigh defaulting to your own preferences. In deferring to others we learn things we wouldn't have known, we experience things we never would have experienced and we become stronger as we practice putting ourselves second. Deferring also lets the other person know they're important.

My kids don't seem to have the understanding of the fragility of certain objects and materials. Broken toys are a very common occurrence. Understanding how and when things break is something we have to learn. This knowledge doesn’t seem to come naturally. Adults can fail to learn this lesson properly too though. When adults don’t know limits, we break things and even people some times. We need to know the limits of people. We need to know the limits of our influence. We need to know the limits of our strengths and weaknesses. We need to learn the limits of our given authority and roles. Overstepping limits always breaks something. So kids have to learn when toys break, and adults have to learn when much more precious things break.

Systems need to be updated and changed constantly or else they become outdated. Their original purpose and intent may not change but the implementation needs to be updated or the system will stray from it's original purpose. I've seen people buck up against the system from the outside. And they rarely make a dent. They fight the system from the outside and aren't able to make the changes they attempt. But those who change and update the system do so from the inside. Inside is where they can push, bend and change the system. I'm not referring to undermining something, but pushing to make the system more relevant and better. Pushing to enhance and grow the system. Systems have in place a certain amount of inertia that can be tapped into. Outside the system you won’t find the same inertia to tap into. Creating that inertia from scratch can be slow, cumbersome and almost insurmountable. Tap the system and make it better when possible. Bucking up against it is a a ve...

I’ve learned that wisdom is most often quiet. It’s rarely, if ever, loud.  Those I’ve seen as wise have proven their wisdom in moments of silence, moreso than in their speaking.

You will likely only go so far as your character will take you. Sometimes we're obsessed with the destination rather than what will carry us to the destination. Work on your vehicle (character) and the destination will be no problem.

Wow! Life gets busy and cluttered. It's increasingly getting harder to get everything done in a given day. We have more efficiency than ever, but we're no less busy. How do we regain some time every day? Reduce clutter. Our world is cluttered materially, but also digitally. It may not be spring, but it's a new year. Maybe it's time to review your digital world. I spent the last two weeks reviewing and cleaning up. I hope to gain more free time from this. Here are a couple ways to cleanup your digital world: - Go through your mailbox and unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. (saves time everyday, saves you from wanting things you don't need) I have unsubscribed from over 45 different regular mailings. - Go though your mobile device and turn off as many notifications as possible. On an iPhone you can customize notifications down to turning off individual app badges. Go through your device(s)and get familiar with how notifications work and customize them. - G...

Sometimes we think we're being strong, but really we're exposing weaknesses. Some things we do thinking we're being strong, or mistake as strength: - not crying or showing true feelings/emotions - not accepting blame - not saying sorry - not sharing our weaknesses - not making changes The opposite of these are strengths... It takes strength to share and show our feelings. It takes strength to accept blame and responsibility for something going wrong. It takes strength to say "I'm sorry". It takes strength to admit and share our weaknesses. It takes strength to make changes. (there are obviously times to hold our feelings back and not share our weaknesses and etc)

We know some of the effect fear has on us. Fear has some negative effects, rendering us less able. It can paralyze us. It also causes logical parts of our brain to shut down. Doing something because you're scared it not an acceptable reason. At least not for very long. Examine the things your afraid of, and the behaviours they cause. They're likely unhealthy. If you're doing them of fear, you're doing them in a somewhat paralyzed state, and without full mental capacity. Examine these things and either rid yourself of them, or change your reason. Some of the things we do for fear have much better reasons than fear for doing them. Fear is an unsustainable reason for behaviour that greatly handicaps us. Find a better reason than fear.

In an era of information overload, feedback has basically been reduced to a thumbs up or thumbs down. We need not take either too close to heart. A thumbs down doesn't provide any insight into what was disliked. It only begs more questions... Did they disagree, did something break for them, or were they just having a bad day? Dissproval without feedback isn't much of anything. The feedback to pay attention to is from the ones who are invested in you and what you're doing. Feedback from the ones who have followed your journey and know your story is what's valuable. A random thumbs down from a stranger or someone detached from your situation shouldn't capture your attention any more than what the person ate for breakfast. What people feel and think cannot be condensed to a thumbs up or thumbs down. So don't take either too seriously. And especially the thumbs down. If we allow our self esteem to be tied to the various methods of social approval/disprova...

Ideas are not overly difficult. Some people are definitely better at them than others. And "idea people" are incredibly important in any organization or group. The thing about ideas is, we generally think about the beginnings of things. Our ideas are often about how we start something, but we often neglect to think about the end. Starting something is wonderful, but in starting something, having an end or goal in mind is just as important as the idea itself. Otherwise, the idea becomes a wild goose chase. Ideas to start something are great. Just remember for every idea, consider two parts: 1. Idea start 2. Idea end The ideas end doesn't mean finality, but more the goal of it. Ideas to start something are only as good as the ideas ending.

What's your caffeine? Money, fame, position, bills, fear? We all have a caffeine. The thing that get's us up and motivated every day. The problem with caffeine is you need increasingly higher dosages. Is your caffeine sustainable? What if your caffeine become sustainable things? Significance, purpose, meaning and these types of things are sustainable. In fact, they get better the more you pursue them. Trade your unsustainable caffeine for a sustainable one.

The Smith's are on vacation again... The Jones' have a new car... Sally got a new job... Social media provides us scripted looks into so many other peoples lives. Do we spend the same amount of time pouring over our own lives? Not the feeling sorry for ourselves kind of pouring over it, but the investing and improving kind of time? We can spend the time peering into perfectly constructed windows of peoples lives (or at least highly filtered windows) or we can spend our efforts and energy into improving our own lives and situations. It's hard to do things in our own life when we're preoccupied with peering into the windows of everyone else's lives. Peer if you want, but don't be preoccupied and miss what's going on in your own life.

The gap can often be bridged by some small things. A handshake, a meeting over coffee, a thoughtful card, a text message, and etc. If it doesn't complete the bridge, it can be the first section of the bridge.

Todays problem may be better than tomorrows'. If you're in a hurry to unload todays problem, you are only trading it for another problem. So stressing about today's problem isn't worth a whole lot of effort.

Our differences often lead to exclusion. While exclusion is sometimes right, what if we took a different approach? What if we viewed differences as opportunities instead? Differences can be huge opportunities. Opportunities to grow differently, to think differently or to at least confirm what we're doing. If there's a difference, leverage it as an opportunity. Don't automatically view it as a threat. Viewing differences as a threat wastes an opportunity.

One measurement of maturity may be, when you’re having a bad day, do you make others’ day bad too?

Sometimes we allow the small picture to dictate our views. The small picture at times isn't what we want, but it's important to always keep the big picture in mind. The big picture helps level out the bumps we feel when following the small picture. It helps us ride those bumps out and realize they're just an inconvenience. Forgetting the big picture can make current situations feel worse (or better) than they actually are. So when the small picture is discouraging, look at the big picture, there's likely something positive to grasp onto there.

Happy New Year to everyone. Thank you to everyone who humours themselves by reading my riffs. All the best in 2018 to everyone!