My Riffs

It's advantageous to confront things early. But you don't have to become a confrontational person to do that. With tact and wisdom you can learn to confront things and nip them in the bud. The long you leave issues, the bigger they will get. You don't want to be the person going around putting everyone in their place. That's not what this is about. But you do want to be the person managing your problems before they get too large.

If you fight fire with fire, that’s a great escalation strategy.  If you want to deescalate though, fight with the opposite approach. Fight fire with kindness.  Fight anger with calmness.  Fight lies with truth.  Fight injustice with justice.  Fight partiality with impartiality. 

Here’s an interesting thought experiment.  What if we treated everyone with a need as if they were our neighbour? Of course we don’t have unlimited resources to help an unlimited amount of people. But what about the people we know, what if we treated them as neighbours? I think our circles would be a lot stronger. A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link. What if the chain strengthened that weakest link? The whole chain would be stronger. 

What would be the human equivalent of a steering wheel? I think the heart is the steering wheel of human beings. What our heart desires it will eventually get. Even if it takes a long time. Our hearts desires will manifest themselves.  A wise man once said (Solomon in his Proverbs) “above all else guard the heart, for it determines the course of your life”. 

There’s no denying we’re in a bad season right now. But you can’t have a good season without a bad one.  And this bad season will pass, you just have to hold on and do your best go get through it. It will make the good season all the much more better. 

Your actual life will never be better than your thought life. It's important to get your thought life right. If it's not right, your life won't be right. Even if things aren't going great in real life, you have to get your thought life right. Because it can make all the difference when things aren't going right. Get the mind right and other things will follow.

You can’t bridge gaps is you’re constantly taking sides. Don’t feel forced to take a side on every issue. When you’ve taken a side it’s very hard to reach someone on the other side. 

We want easy. Who ever choses the hard path? But the value isn't really in the easy. The value is in the hard. Currently, times could be looked at as hard. That means there is so much to glean right now. When it's easy street, there's little to glean. Confront the hard things are you will gain the most value.

I think goals are important. Goals are things we aim at. If you're not aiming at something, you're going to be in big trouble. You need short term and long term goals. A long term goal will seem impossible without some short term goals. But short terms goals will seem futile without a larger long term goal. So have both! Make them realistic but big! Then aim for them. Make sure they align with your passions and skills. You will do great things if you line these things up.

How do you find your blind spots? Through real honest and maybe tough conversations with people who love you. 

Learning isn’t a linear task. There’s stops, starts, ups and downs. There’s setbacks and trip ups.  But I’m each of those scenarios there’s always room to keep learning and growing. 

If I decide to have joy (and joy is a decision) nothing or nobody can take that away.

We’re told laughter is the best medicine. Life’s too short to spend around miserable people.  Spend it with happy people so you can easily laugh. 

We see icebergs. Only about 10% of icebergs are visible. We see something and assume we know everything about it, but we don't. We've only seen 10%. You can only make few assumptions when you are seeing 10% of a picture. If we dig we can see a bigger part of the picture and make better judgments. In every situation, in every person, it's good to remember you're only seeing 10% of the picture. If you speak and walk with them you may see a larger part. Walk a mile in their shoes and then complete the picture you have of them.

People are imitators. We imitate those closest to us. The saying I've heard goes something like "show me your three closest friends and I'll show you who are". You will imitate those you are closest to. So make sure those closest to you are worth imitating.

If you wrote down the things you consistently do, you will find out who you are. I mean the things you do almost every single day. Those are the most important things you do. Not the one-off's but the little things you do every single day. Those are the most important things.

From Wikipedia: The illusion of control is the tendency for people to overestimate their ability to control events. We are beings who enjoy being in control. We're uncomfortable with the unknown. We're uncomfortable with things that are beyond out control. We like to think we can control things, but many things are out of out control. We sometimes lie to ourselves and think we can control something. This is sort of like the illusion of control. The moral of this post is that much is out of our control, no matter how hard we try.  But our actions, thoughts and words are always in our control.  We can't control what happens around us, but we can control what happens within and what comes out from us. Don't try and act like you can control things you can't, control yourself and by that you are exercising ultimate power.

My 7 year old daughter will sometimes tell me she’s bored. I say to her “good!”  Boredom can lead to creativity.  But don’t let boredom lead to idleness. Idleness is where you can get in some big trouble.  Turn boredom into creativity, exploring or learning. 

I am once again reminded how good things can become bad. Too much of a good thing isn't endless goodness. At some point it loses what made it good. Case in point, social justice. Of course social justice is important. I don't think you would find a sane person to deny that. However, what is being done in the name of social justice today isn't productive or even good. A good cause has gone too far. Be cautious when you find something good. You may drive the good right into a ditch if it's not carefully used.

Some good advice from "12 Rules For Life" by Jordan Peterson. "Aim up. Pay attention. Fix what you can fix. Don't be arrogant in your knowledge. Strive for humility, because totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance, oppression, torture and death. Become aware of your own insufficiency - your cowardice, malevolence, resentment and hatred. Consider the murderousness of your own spirit before you dare accuse others, and before you attempt to repair the fabric of the world. Maybe it's not the world that's at fault. Maybe it's you. You've failed to make the mark. You've missed the target. You've fallen short of the glory of God. You've sinned. And all of that is your contribution to the insufficiency and evil of the world. And, above all, don't lie. Don't lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell." 

"If you don’t rule your mind it can rule you" - Eliud Kipchoge (world record holder for fastest marathon time)

Everything is too easy for the guy who doesn't have to do it.

Weeds are much easier to deal with when they first appear. They grow fast and choke the good things you're trying to grow. If you let the weeds grow they will soon overtake everything else you're growing. Eventually they will kill everything else you're growing. Learn to deal with the weeds in life quickly, before they kill the good things in your life. Weeds are bad habits. Weeds are bad attitudes. Weeds are bitterness. Weeds are resentment. 

Try to use precise speech. Avoid hyperbole. If you want people to trust what you say, avoid using hyperbole. Practice using very precise speech. Not only will people tend to trust you more, you will be a better communicator.

Don't get drawn into battles that aren't your own. Help people who need help. But don't get drawn into meaningless battles that you don't need to. There's battles happening everywhere right now. If you get drawn into them you will waste all your energy on something that likely you can't even make a difference in.

So many things we think won't happen to us. But they could. Live life like it could end at any time.

A leaders job isn't to win. It's to do what's right and best. Politicians try to win. But leaders don't worry about votes and winning. They care about doing the right thing. In that, they can't ever win. Whatever they do will be criticized, no matter what. There will always be someone who doesn't like what you've done or said, but you still do the right thing. The trick to winning, say nothing and do nothing :) Which isn't a very good plan at all.

Society has taken a turn. It used to be innocent until proven guilty, but now many are guilty until proven innocent. If they even get a chance at defence. This will lead to many bad things. When and where you have influence, believe the best in people. Let them be innocent until proven guilty. There's always more to every story than you see or immediately can know. And remember, you're not perfect either. Even if they're guilty, are they willing to change or make amends?

I'm hearing a lot about erasing history recently. It's a horrible idea. Good or bad, history is important. We can either build from it or learn from it. Erasing it removes the ability to learn or build from it. The same people wanting to erase history are the ones trying to dig up all the mistakes from peoples history and cancel them.  This is history being used wrong. The past is the past. Learn from it, move on. If apologies need to be made, make them! We're stuck with our history, so make the best of it. If we've made mistakes, use the history to warn people to not make them again. Don't use history to malign people. Don't erase history that doesn't resonate with your ethos or values even. Learn how to use history for the betterment of yourself and society.

Eventually cooler heads will prevail.  The ones with level heads have a huge advantage against those who don't.

Happy Canada Day! Our country isn't perfect, no country is. But we're doing a lot of things right. It's easy to be a critic, it's a lot harder to solve problems. If you're not going to be a problem solver, don't bother being a critic. It seems in lot's of free countries people are taking for granted how good they have it. We're seeing it turn into hatred against the country they've been raised in, simply because the Country isn't perfect. Do people want to move to your country from less fortunate countries? Then you're probably doing a lot of things right.  I'm thankful for our Country today. I'm concerned about many things, but nonetheless grateful.