My Riffs

The more your goals align with those around you, the more likely they will happen. Of course you need to guard against Group Think type goals. But try and find those who your goals align with. It will accelerate their actualization.

Learning looks a lot like frustration. It looks a lot like not understanding things. It looks like a lot of work. But as you emerge from the frustration, lack of understanding and work, you come out with learning. Learning often isn't easily gained.

You rarely arrive somewhere by skipping. We want shortcuts and helicopter rides to places. But life doesn’t come with those options. Life works one step at a time. To get somewhere you just go through the steps. Shortcuts are actually rabbit trails. So take steps, one, two, three...

The odd time luck finds people. And many people wait for luck to come find them. But most successful people aren't lucky. They're just the ones who didn't wait for luck. They went and created what they wanted.  Waiting for good things to happen for you is like waiting for your ship to come in in the middle of a desert.

Were shaped more by decisions than circumstances. Because circumstances happen to everyone. But not everyone reacts the same. So it’s actually our decisions in reaction to circumstances that truly shape us.

There's a social trend to normalize exceptions. But the dangers of it haven't been thought through. Tearing apart norms is sometimes appropriate, but tearing apart norms to normalize exceptions has consequences. It's possible those wanting to normalize exceptions sometimes have good intentions. But exceptions are the outlier alternatives. When we normalize them, many dangers occur. Society has more or less arranged itself to do the best for the greatest amount of people. It's not a perfect system by any means, but it's roughly doing the greatest good for the greatest amount of people. Reorganizing around exceptions is a departure and likely will backfire on us.

Many times we want a way out. More often than not the way out is... the way through it. The way out doesn't usually lead where we need to get. The way through usually does though.

Every experience has some value to glean from it. Going through things too swiftly doesn't allow us to glean the experience. I don't think life was meant to be experienced at a breakneck speed. Slowing down offers more.

We aren’t given to in order to receive. Were given to in order to give again.

I've been tired from doing nothing and I've been tired from being busy. One is WAY better than the other.

When you oppose or fight against something, there is a danger to become exactly what you’re fighting. If you’re fighting hatred, it’s easy to become hateful. If you’re fighting anger, it’s easy to become angry. If you’re fighting impatience, it’s easy to become impatient. If you’re fighting racism, you could become racist. If you’re fighting corruption, you could become corrupt. On and on the list goes. Fight the urge to become what you’re fighting against.

Communication comes with its risks. You risk being misunderstood. You risk over selling or over communicating. You risk under selling or under communicating. You risk confusing. Effective communicators walk the fine line making sure enough is said but not too much is.

Success doesn't automatically produce success. It's repeating the same work that created the success that continues success. Success on it's own does little. It's what created it that must repeat. Coasting doesn't last long, unless you're going downhill. And coasting downhill can be dangerous.

Clutter is like glue. The more clutter, the slower your gonna do. It's like adding a piece of plywood standing up on the top of your car or a plane. Reduce clutter and reduce drag. There's visual clutter, physical clutter and mental clutter. It all is a drag.

How much do we miss on simply cause we don’t ask? There’s information to be had. If we ask. There’s discounts to be had. If we ask. There’s life hacks to discover. If we ask. There’s new friendships to be had. If we ask. So much can happen if we ask. Maybe timidity (or pride) hold us back as much as anything else.

As a human race we have done some absolutely amazing things. Think about the pyramids. We still have figured out how they constructed them. But somehow with much more crude construction tools they constructed something absolutely amazing. We have more recently built some amazing structures like skyscrapers and dams. But nobody has tried to boil the ocean. Because it's a waste of time and impossible. What is your ocean to not boil? Know what you shouldn't be doing is equally as important as knowing what you should be building. Make pyramids and let the ocean boil itself.

The best definition of failure would be quitting. Not making a mistake. Not missing the mark. Not messing something up. Failure is quitting when those things have happened.

Learning isn't a straight line. It looks like a lot of setbacks, divergences and drop-offs. But if you plot the overall course, it moves forwards and upwards. The key is not being discouraged by the setbacks. The key is to push harder in the direction of forward and upward.

Its easier to be complicit in a situation than we may think. You don’t have to scheme, plot and be overly active. Many times our silence complicity.

Gather your facts first and do the research. Don’t make the thesis then find your facts. Because you can find facts to backup almost any thesis. Research then determine the thesis. Otherwise it could become confirmation of a bias.

Don't be afraid to let something die. It's a principal deeply ingrained into life and nature, something has to die in order for something else to come to life. So if something needs to die, look towards what can be born. When something dies, look for the upcoming opportunity. (this obviously isn't referring to human life :)

To achieve maximums, you need to keep minimums. To reach maximum efficiency, you need minimum overhead. Te reach maximum growth, you need minimum interference. To reach maximum speed, you need minimum drag. But you need minimums too. Without some basic minimums, you can't reach maximum. You need some order that minimums bring in order to maximize. So keep minimums minimal. The more minimal they are, they greater the ability to maximize.

It is real easy to equate activity with productivity. When we're busy, we often feel like we're accomplishing a lot. But activity doesn't mean productivity. Busyness does not equal purpose. Examine your activities. Don't allow the busyness to make you feel like you've found purpose. Sometimes less activity means more purpose.

What makes your ceiling? Is it made of your abilities, or your talent? Or maybe it's made by your resources? What would it take to remove that ceiling? What if you could tap into others' abilities, additional resources, others' ideas? Our ceiling doesn't need to be limited by us. It can expand as much as our creativity can.

Things in our life are closely connected. And in many ways we don’t know how everything is connected and what is exactly tied to each other. When we make a change in life it effects other things that sometimes we weren’t even aware of. Things are sometimes only learned as being tied together after they come unravelled. What’s the point here? Being cautious of life changes. Because when we make changes (especially drastic ones) more things ar effected than we may at first realized. Everything is connected, we just may not know how. So we must tread carefully when making changes.

A life of giving is a life well spent. A life of accumulation is wasted.

Patience is getting harder. Microwaves, Google, Mobile Devices, Drive-Thru's, Text Messages, Streaming Music, Podcasts, Amazon Prime, Swiping to find a mate, etc. We increasingly don't have to wait for things. We have on-demand almost everything. And when it's not on demand, we have lost the art of patience. But patience leads to good things. A well prepared meal. A careful study into a subject we need to know about. A well written letter. Listening to an old record. Visiting a boutique and finding something unique. Investing in and cultivating relationships. As everything gets faster, we tend to have a lower tolerance for slow moving objects and goals. But life is a long term game. Breakneck speeds travelling through life increase the chances of major accidents. Travelling at lower speeds may not cover as much ground, but it allows you to enjoy and soak in and learn as you go. Quality is almost always better than quantity.

But to be honest, it’s the only policy. Without honesty there can be no foundation for trust. Without trust you can’t build.

What's the value of knowing what you don't know? Not knowing all the information per se, but just being aware of the areas you don't know much about. More like knowing your weaknesses. Cause that could be almost as valuable a tool as knowing your strengths.

Everything broken requires healing. But healing takes different lengths of time, and many times we don't know how long that will take. I had "skier's thumb" once and it took about two years to heal! Concussions can take weeks, months or maybe years to heal. We need to be patient with ourself and others as we all are in different types and stages of healing. Everyone has been broken and everyone is healing in some form. Some may heal quicker and some slower. But support and love and the most important tools in helping healing.