My Riffs

Perform for yourself as you would for 10,000 people. Do your best work even if you're gonna be the only one to see. If you learn to only perform for others, you won't put in the work and quality necessary to succeed.

Chaos? Opportunity? Stars? Bars? What you see right depends on what you're looking at. There's a lot of noise happening. A lot of voices talking. A lot of distractions. What are you gonna look at? Because that will determine what you see. Keep your eyes up out of the mud.

Today I faced some problems, but it wasn’t within my ability to fix them.  So I just worked on myself.

Creativity is the ability to capture a possibly for a particular time and convert it into reality.

It's the uncomfortable things where you derive the most value from. The tasks you don't want to get to. The calls you don't feel like making. The workout you want to skip. Those are the very things you need to do. In them you will gain the most value.

Things can change fast. The last six months of history has changed a lot and done so at light speed. This means don't even take things for granted. Things could get worse, and they could get worse fast. Gratefulness in every season and situation is one of the keys to health and happiness.

Tearing things apart and dismantling things is in vogue right now. The problem with this as a mode of operation is, you should provide a better alternative to what you're tearing down. Something exists for a purpose, and maybe the purpose has changed. But providing something better or an alternate to learning things apart is far superior to just tearing things down.

I'm hearing a lot about problems recently, but very few solutions. I haven't heard anyone start talking about people taking responsibility for their own selves in fixing these issues. The heart of each individual is where we truly need to fix issues. Instead of placing blame we should all look inward and fix ourselves.

If you're heading somewhere good, make room for someone to come with you. Even someone you completely disagree with. Don't close the door and burn the bridge to them. Or else they will never come your way. Leave the bridge there and the door open so they can go with you where you're headed. Saying nasty things can easily destroy that bridge. Even if they're seemingly wrong, you don't have to burn the bridge and close the door. You can walk towards something better and invite them along. Make room for them to join you.

Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers out there.  Recent times have shown the importance of having a father or father figure in your life. Many of our current problems are in part related to fatherless homes.  Fathers, be present, be a leader, be an example, love your family. 

Everything fun eventually becomes work. Once the honeymoon is over, it becomes work. Yes, I’m talking about marriage but I’m also talking about almost anything fun.  I’ve done three days at Disneyland, it’s a lot of fun. But you start getting tired and your legs get sore and it becomes work. The first day you’re so excited and would hardly notice any fatigue. But by day three, it looks closer to work than day one did.  Vacations are of course fun. But by the time you’re ready to go home, packing, flights, trains, etc, it becomes work.  You like cooking? Eventually if you do it often enough it becomes work.  You enjoy playing an instrument? If you play enough it becomes work.  This isn’t a bad thing though. You can have fun once things turn to work. Work doesn’t mean no fun. When things become work though is when you separate the dedicated or passionate from the casual. 

The news has been something else for all of the year 2020. Truthfully, it's been very difficult to ignore. I've spent an unusually amount of time consuming news this year. After all this consumption, I know one thing for sure, it hasn't improved my quality of life or thinking one bit. In fact the more I consume, the less my quality of thinking and life seems to go down. I'm not sure if I would be any worse off had I ignored the news all year to date. Just an interesting thing to consider :) 

Today was my wife and sisters birthday! Happy birthday to them both! It got me thinking about gifts. The best gifts we can give is of ourselves. Our time, our love and our care.  Those are the best gifts we can give. 

"Wow, that escalated quickly" is a phrase I've said a few times this year to myself. Things can quickly escalate into violence and hate. It sometimes only takes one person or one situation to set off a war. Instead of fighting for a particular side, maybe we should aim for peace more often than not. Some things are definitely worth fighting for. But fighting for things that aren't worth it makes everyone a loser. Aim for peace rather than winning. (this thought was mostly stolen from a Jordan Peterson lecture)

Honesty is a superpower. Especially honesty to our selves. We’re the easiest person to lie to and the one it does most damage to.  Start by being honest with yourself. 

We have really good neighbours. On either side of our house. Sometimes in the winter we will find our sidewalks all shovelled by one of them. They always shovel a few extra feet into our sidewalk to make it a bit easier on me. And I return the favour to them. They also help by cutting the lawn a bit into our yard and reducing my work! I notice and appreciate it. The go the extra bit and therefore I do to. It's like paying it forward. Be that type of a person. The person who always exceeds what's expected of them. Two things will happen: 1. You will get further than you would by just doing the bare minimum. 2. You will end up getting back what you've given and likely some extra. Go the extra mile when giving, it's always worth it.

You will be shaken, and when that happens, who you really are will be revealed.  So work on being the best possible version of yourself. 

Better is a handful of quietness than two hands full of toil and a striving after wind. - Ecclesiastes There’s not much worse than toiling and striving after something that isn’t relevant.  It’s easy to get caught up in every single thing that happens in your community, on the job or in the world.  But you may be striving after wind. You don’t have to engage in every issue. 

I’m old enough to remember when different viewpoints was a good thing. Our society wants diversity of everything except thinking. Censorship by private corporations or by the government does little to overcome “bad” or “different” opinions. It only buries they where they can no longer be seen until they reappear in form of a violent revolution. The best arbitrator of ideas is the free and open market where bad ideas can be brought forward, debated and then superseded by a better idea. So share your ideas. And then listen to feedback. It may or not be a good idea. But you won't really know until it's been processed by people. 

Today I remembered the oft used phrase, “no pain, no gain”.  It’s impossible to get stronger without going throughout the pain or discomfort. It’s uncomfortable strengthening your cardio. It hurts to strengthen your muscles. You go through pain to strengthen your mind mind and emotions.  With all the pain in the world right now, there’s much opportunity for strengthening. Bonds of love can be strengthened. Resolve can be strengthened. Hurts can be mended and relationships strengthened. 

Free speech is effectively gone. People are getting cancelled legally over for expressing an opinion. Even factual opinions are being shut down. But the most effective thing we can speak is love. And that’s not cancelled nor will be. You can always speak and show love. Even if you have to keep your opinion to yourself. You can still spread love.

We're living in cancel culture. I wonder if the future will belong to the cancelled. They will no longer have to worry about being cancelled and they can speak the truth more freely.

A reminder that things are much more complex than we often realize. Take the current world focus on racism. You cannot come to a single sentence conclusion on the situation. It's complex and solutions are complex. Beware of people who have it all figured out. It likely means they don't really understand what's going on.

Your opinion matters. But get an informed opinion. Don't regurgitate everything your friends are saying. Don't adopt the same opinion as the media has. Don't be pressured into an opinion. Don't be feared into an opinion. Come to an opinion based on doing your own research and thinking. When you let other people do your thinking we end up with something called group think. It's okay to share your closest friends' opinions, but make sure it's informed and been thought through. And learn how to articulate the opinion clearly. That's just as important. If you have an informed opinion, the best thing you can do is be persuasive and better yet, informative with it.

I have often advocated on this blog for listening. It's super important. We learn a lot more when we listen. Here's two important things about how to listen: 1. We need to be willing to hear other opinions and ideas 2. We need speak and listen on both or all sides of a matter. You won't get a proper view without all sides being able to fairly speak and all sides intently listening.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Being worried about what the court of public opinion will say is similar to being incarcerated. It’s a form of mental incarceration. We’ve never lived in a time where people are more afraid to speak out. Where people are so afraid to go against narratives. The best way to reach people on the other side of the narrative is through love and kindness.

All humans need accountability. The people that reject accountability end up in horrible places. The people who accept accountability will become better people. Much better people.

It's hard to un-convince yourself. And for good reason. The conclusions you've come to probably came through some real life experiences. It's hard to deprogram ourselves. How do we do it? The best way is by listening to others. And a diverse amount of others.

We're hearing lots of pictures and stories about what should be.  Right now the most important questions are "how do we get there?". It's easy to point out what's wrong and how things should be. It's a lot more difficult to figure out how to get there.