My Riffs

A plant will eventually show. It will eventually show the soil quality. The type of care that’s been given to it. How much it’s been watered. How much sunlights it’s had. It will eventually show what it’s made of and now healthy it is. We’re no different. We’re eventually gonna show what what we’re feeding ourselves. What we’re feeding our thought, what we’re talking about, what we’re looking at, what we’re listening to will eventually be shown.

The smart and resourceful ask how they can leverage the negative they're facing. Quitters stop. Negative events can be leveraged for good though. Instead of asking questions like "this isn't fair, why me"... Start asking questions like "how do I make the best of this situation?".

The lies we tell ourselves are possibly the worst. What’s worse is when we believe the lies we tell ourselves. And it becomes a difficult trap to get out of. Being honest with yourself precedes being honest with others.

Apparently Einstein said that if you can’t explain it to a six year old you don’t understand it well enough yourself. My six year old is asking me some really good questions and causing me to make sure I understand many different things :) I’ve heard it said that you don’t know something until you can teach it. Test your knowledge by how well you can explain what you know to other people.

If you don't have a plan, you can plan to fail. So the saying goes. And I believe it. 1. You need a plan. You don't end up somewhere good by accident. 2. You need to be ready to change that plan. Rarely does plan A go without a hitch.

There's danger in the extremes. I would say we're seeing a huge divide widen even further in the United States. Someone who used to be liberal would most likely be considered a conservative now. But the extreme liberals and extreme conservatives are getting even further apart and there's little difference between the two extremes. There's usually wisdom and safety in being moderate in most things. There's a few areas of life to be liberal in and a few areas of life to be conservative in. But in that you can still be moderate and avoid extremes.

One decent maturity indicator is how you handle a peer's success. Can you celebrate with them, or does it make you jealous? If you can truly celebrate other peoples wins, you've achieved a level of maturity.

Go ahead, celebrate the small! If you can't win the small battles you'll never win the big ones. And if you can't celebrate the small ones, you may never move onto the large ones. There's nothing wrong with winning something small. You never win big until you've won small. Often winning big is bought by many small wins. This doesn't mean to settle on small accomplishments, but rather celebrate them and use them as a step upwards.

Fairness is a very difficult thing to get precise clarity on. You can waste a whole lot of your life trying to push back against perceived unfairness. Or worse you can waste a whole lot of time complaining about unfairness against yourself. True and absolute fairness is an impossible target. At some point you have to give up on it. It’s good some people work hard at trying to resolve unfairness, but it’s something that is unresolvable. It doesn’t mean we should ignore blatant unfairness, but it’s a waste looking for slights and offences. As an individual, time is better spent making yourself better.

Is it holding me peace or holding my piece? I think holding my piece makes more sense. I don’t need to say everything I can say. Or want to say. It’s amazing how often I should hold my piece. The tongue causes more problems than any other part of the body. Maybe we could argue the mind causes problems too. But the tongue would be up there with the mind for causing us problems.

I like good things. I think we all do :) But too much of a good thing no longer becomes good. Best to not over-consume good things. Hoarding good things isn’t a great plan either. Be wise with good things. Share them. That’s one of the most fulfilling ways of using good things.

Light easily over powers dark. Forces of good will always overcome forces of bad. You will accomplish much more by being a person of light and good. Don't allow ugliness and darkness to invade.

Here's a good tip on fighting back against anything... Don't use the same weapon your aggressor is using. If your aggressor is using violence. Don't respond in violence. If your aggressor is using hate. Don't respond in hate. If your aggressor is using intimidation. Don't respond with intimidation. The saying goes that you can't fight fire with fire. Want to overcome your aggressor, make sure your tactic is different from theirs.

The majority generally always wins. But that doesn’t make the majority right. There’s something called group think. And it can cause lots of wrong things to become “right” or seem to be a majority decision. So if you find yourself in the minority you may be in the right camp. We can’t always assume the majority is the right place to be. This isn’t applicable to every single issue of course. But it’s interesting to think about how many issues where the majority is wrong.

I saw someone suggest that as a society we’re getting pettier. And after a bit of thought I think it’s true. Our goals used to be lofty. Fly to the moon. Build roads. Build large infrastructure things that benefit a country. But now our politicians and the general public seems to be obsessed with “not offending people”. And that can take many different forms. We’ve gone from moon landing to catering to the smallest pettiest things. As long as we look so low and small we will never reach the great heights that are available to us.

Tonight I watched my six year old daughter roller skate for the first time. It looked a lot like life. She started out falling lots, but started to get the hang of things and began to fall less. She began to get more confident and started having more fun. And this is how we learn in life. We often struggle doing something new, but if we stick it at, learn from our mistakes and don’t give up we end up succeeding and enjoying what we’ve done. It’s not the fall that matters, it’s the getting up again that matters.

I’m convinced that by in large society would be better if people focused on competing only against themselves. Trying to compete with, keep up with and one up other people probably results in a net loss in progress. Instead if we asked ourselves, “am I being the best I can be?”, we collectively would accomplish more.

This is just a good reminder that if you’ve been hurt by someone you can pretty much know either: 1. They didn’t mean to hurt you or 2. Hurt people, hurt people. And knowing those things, makes it much easier to forgive.

There’s a big difference between resting and being lazy.  Rest is a need. Laziness is a weakness. Lying to yourself about this hurts yourself mostly. And it’s a a dangerous habit to get into. (Both the lying to yourself and the laziness) Rest is good and enables you to do more. Laziness hinders your from doing what you should be doing. 

I’ve never seen a quiet person be thought a fool.

When opportunities present themselves you have to take them. Sometimes you only have once chance to grasp that opportunity. Opportunity often leads to work though. If you’re not willing to work, there’s no point taking the opportunity even.

I posted a quote on my Instagram today that said, “You earn respect with your ears and lose it with your mouth”. That’s obviously not categorically true, but there is a whole lot of truth to it. The tongue can do much harm. It can undo a lot of hard work. It can undo a lifetime of building a good reputation. You can gain respect by simply being a good listener. You don’t have to do anything fancy. You don’t have to impress. You only need to be present.

Starting something is half the battle. It could be a walk a run, and New Years resolution. But keeping that in motion once the natural tendency to die off is much more difficult. Keeping momentum when you want to let down, let go or slow down is the hardest part. It's at these points when many quit. It's at these points when you need to dig in. If you leave something alone, it will slowly degrade. So to just stay the same,  you have work harder. The forces of nature are against you. But you can push through those forces.

It’ so easy in our technological world to get tangled in things that don’t really matter. And you can get snared by them so easily. News, gossip and rumours, activism, trends, hashtags, followers, and on and on the list could go. These things can tangled you into a position where it’s hard to even think straight. Practice the art of letting things roll off and roll on by you. You don’t have to take up every cause you come across. You don’t have to worry about every single problem you hear about. Be wise with your recourses.

Every human has at least one super power. That super power is honesty. Honesty to both yourself and to others. When done right honesty is such a powerful force it can be classified as a super power.

So many people fall apart simply because they aren’t doing what they know to do. And I think that’s a good question to ask oneself. Are we using what we currently have and know to it’s fullest. For many of us, I think the answer would probably be that there is room for improvement. Do we eat as healthy as we know we should? Do we spend as much time working on ourselves as we should (mentally, physically, spiritually)? Do we help others as much as we have the ability to? If we don’t use what we currently have, we likely won’t get more.

On my run today, my Nike run coach (Nike Run Club, Apple Watch App) said there isn’t just one start lines. There’s many start lines. If you’re not running good, restart right there. You can always restart. So thank you Nike run Coach for the reminder/lesson. Anytime is a good time to get up and try again.  And on the other side of that, we must always allow others to get up and restart. Give others as many start lines as we ourselves take.

You’re never going to find our what your capabilities if you’re unwilling to “fail”. And true failure should be defined as not trying. So try some things that interest you and see if you’re capable. Worst case you learn some of your limits. Don’t be stupid, but push yourself to try things are figure out what you’re capable of.

This post is similar thought to yesterday’s. When you accept something it’s usually very difficult to get rid of it. So be super super careful in what you accept. This means what thoughts you accept, what actions you accept, what words you accept, what behaviour you accept... Once accepted it’s very difficult to reverse.

I'm an IT geek. So this post's analogy is a technology analogy that makes sense to me :) Almost every business/home has a device that gives it internet. The device is usually used as a firewall. The firewall blocks traffic that shouldn't be allowed onto the private network, and it allows most traffic to flow out from the private network. If you examine traffic wanting to get from the outside world into the firewall, most of it is junk. Most of it is hackers and malicious traffic. But the firewall generally blocks it and it never gets onto the private network. There are a few ways how junk can get into us. And make no mistake, we are constantly bombarded by junk. Our eyes can allow junk. Our ears can allow junk. We need to have "firewall" that rejects all the malicious traffic wanting to get into us. If it's not going to build you, reject it.

Being a better all the time is a great goal. Measuring back against who you were is an inferior way of measuring what you should be though.  The most meaningful way to measure is to measure forward to what you’re becoming, to what you can be, to what you’re challenged to be.  There’s little merit in going over what you did or what you were. But there’s huge merit in measuring forward to what you can be and where you are on that path.