My Riffs

Skill alone won’t take you places. Attitude can take you further than skill can. Obviously you need some skill but if your attitude is wrong, you won’t go far. Developing a good attitude is one of the most important things you can do in being successful.

You have to learn when to take a loss. Learn when to "hold em and to fold em". Some things aren't worth fighting for. Energy wasted on the wrong things is paid for by the right things. So learn when to take an l (loss). Just make sure it's a lesson learned, not a complete loss.

Perhaps the worst sin in life is knowing right and not doing it. - Martin Luther King  Sitting idle while wrong is being done makes you complicit.  Do right, no matter what it may seem to cost you. 

We all want things to go well. Nobody truly likes hardship and adversity. But when we're smooth sailing, there's surpassingly little to gain. We don't grow much in those moments and we don't learn much either. It may be a time to catch our breath, but we can't handle smooth sailing too long. Our guard goes down and we become vulnerable. Embracing the chaos and challenges in life happens to be one of the best things we can do. Facing it head on and not shying away from it. Remember when things are going smooth, you had better be preparing for a storm.

Things can get off to rocky starts. And it can impede overall progress. But if you finish well, the bad start won't even matter. It matters much more how you finish than how you start.

For almost everyone who has the ability to read this, your basic needs are already met. There rest are just wants. There is real satisfaction in having your needs met. But there isn't any meaningful type of satisfaction to be found in having your wants met. Wants tend to be a whole lot more shallow than needs. Wants temporarily satisfy, but needs have longer lasting satisfaction. But if we're honest, a lot of our chasing is chasing down wants, not needs. Recognizing our needs and them being met brings more satisfaction than a whole lot of wants being met.

Convenience almost always wins. Better doesn’t always win. Convenience more often wins over quality. Think about the success of McDonalds. It’s hard to make something super convenient yet high quality. There’s trade offs between the two. Do you want to appeal to masses or a small group with more refined tastes?

There seems to be a growing trend of outrage bringing people together. And often the result is destructive and violence. Outrage doesn’t seem to be a good unifying factor. It would seem there are betters ways to handle the greviance. Things that bring together should be a common love or positive goal. Otherwise the results are mayhem. Which is never a better result than the greviance itself.

I love hearing those categorizations you like "there's only two types of people in the world...". There's truth to them but they maybe are often over simplifications of real life. But that's what I am gonna do here. Everything we consume or create will either take us up or bring us down. The more things we are involved in that bring us down, the more we will be down. The more things we are involved in that bring us up will cause us to be up. Our destination or our location often is determined by what we've been consuming and creating.

I couldn't complete a task today, simply because I wasn't given information. Information enables. Lack of information immobilizes. Leaders need to spread information in order to mobilize their team. Incomplete or lack of information immobilizes and harms team functionility. One way to check if the information is spreading is to watch team members most furthest from the source of information. Are they performing in line with the vision?

The more you’re looking down, the more you miss. Both literally and figuratively. Keep your head up. Stay alert. Again both literally and figuratively. You learn more. You gain more confidence. You see more opportunities. You come across to others better and change perceptions of yourself in a very good and important way. Looking down brings us further down. Where you’re looking sets your aim. So keep your head up, no matter what. It determines your destination.

You can skim over the top and get the job done. And it feels okay. You can also take care of the details and that feels great. And people can tell when the details are attended to and when they’re skimmed over. People appreciate the details, even when they don’t realize it. They will gravitate to the places where the details are attended to.

In most of our habitual activities, we should be able to find some joy in it. Work becomes tedious, but we should still be able to find some joy in our work. In various other roles in life, parent, friend, spouse, we need to at time still make sure we're finding the joy in it. When things become a drag, there is something wrong. If you really cannot find joy in something you're doing, you may be doing the wrong thing.

Work is a trade of time and money. Relationships are a trade of wants and needs. Purchases are a trade of your money for a good or service. Charity is a trade of your money or other resource for some good self realization. In life we’re negotiating all the time, many times we don’t even realize it. Just remember when you’re gaining something, you’re giving something up too. Make sure the bargain is actually good, examine when you’re giving up as much as what you’re gaining.

Sometimes we don’t know what our purpose is at that moment. One thing we can always do in those times is to help others find their purpose. There’s a lot of purpose to be found in helping others find their purpose.

We gain nothing by making others pay for what we deem as a wrongdoing. It only leaves a deficit for both parties. The only way to come up without a net loss is to forgive. You may have lost something important, maybe even tangible, but the only way to start recovering it is to forgive. A LOT harder to do than say though.

In our complex world, there is great danger in oversimplifying something. This is why labelling people is so dangerous. To mark somebody is "one thing" is dangerous because they are more than that one thing, and cannot be defined by even one legitimate characteristic. They may be that "one thing" but they're also so much more than that. Oversimplifying any issue, situation or person is inherently danger, because in doing so, we remove some truths when we reduce it to a singular simplicity.

Failure is defined by not trying. Otherwise it’s just a setback.

Every day is a gift. How you livin?

The key to riding life is to never get too high or too low. When things aren’t going well, don’t allow yourself to get too low. When thing are going well, don’t allow yourself to get too high. Both extremes have their danger. That doesn’t mean be stoic, but it means be balanced to matter what end of the spectrum you happen to be in.

One of the most pertinent questions someone who has reasonably sorted themselves out should be asking themselves is, "what am I doing with my talents/skills?". Unrealized skills and talents is a painful thing to watch. We're given talents and skills to use and share with the world, to make it a better place. When we don't use them, we're robbing ourself and others.

Sometimes when we don't know what to do, we start forcing things. We start solutioning things when we haven't even diagnosed the problem. Sometimes when we don't know what to do, it's best to do nothing at all. We can make matters worse by forcing things. Especially when we haven't understood what's the issue first.

Love isn't what society tells us. It's a whole lot more. Love is something that grows. It's something that needs to be cultivated. Love is something that you decide to stay in. Love is commitment. Love is selfless. We have to be careful to not allow society to define such an important term. Love is a cumulation of many traits and characteristics. It cannot be reduced down to something as simple as infatuation.

Good intentions unfortunately don't do much. They're important, but good intentions don't accomplish anything. They're just an aim or goal, and they're important. But many people with good intentions haven't done anything, and good intentions have even done much harm. So don't assume your good intentions are enough, or that they will even produce the right results. Good intentions have to be followed up by good planning and wisdom.

The best ideas are the ones which help the maximum amount of people. That’s what makes it a good idea. Bad ideas conversely impact the largest amount of people too. Okay ideas benefit mostly us.

Unless you’re in a court of law, stop wasting time proving your right. You can give all needed proof and the receiver may not understand or receive it. Proof isn’t enough to cure ignorance. Let your actions do the talking and do less talking.

There is this strange tendency in humans to want what is forbidden. At the dawn of humanity we weren't able to stay away from the one forbidden thing. Forbidding something can often backfire on us as it plays into this tendency. Forbidding something may have opposite of the intended effect and cause more desire than before. Sometimes (not always of course) allowing something but informing about the risk has a better result.

Culture trumps vision. The greatest visions can be thwarted by culture. The vision has to be compatible with the culture. Culture will win. The need to change a culture does occur, however culture never changes overnight and it's never certain you can change a given culture. So making certain the vision works with a given culture is critical.

I just read a great quote from Dan Rockwell, “Relationships are the foundation for remarkable results”. The underlying principle is that two can accomplish more than twice as much as what one person can. There are increasing returns in teams. Create good relationships and you will accomplish far more than you would on your own.

Pettiness is like having a pebble in your shoe. It's annoying, but you can walk with it a for a little while... But eventually, you'll be stopped by it until it's removed. And so, it's best to just remove the pettiness as soon as you feel it. At best, it will slow you down.