This is one thing you cannot avoid, is "doing the work".

Many inspirational stories, given various constraints, can only really illustrate the time and effort involved in achieving the "thing".

And you get an idea. But like anything related to "experience", you really have to live the experience yourself to truly know the weight, size, scale of the effort involved in doing this work.

You may be inspired and make your best estimation of what this effort may cost you, what price you may have to pay to achieve such feats. But you will never really know until you attempt it.

To achieve the thing, you do the work.

You do the work, you (have a much better chance to) achieve the thing.

The bit before the work- deciding what you're going to do, and even the bit about the work- how you go about doing the work- are negotiable, debatable, configurable- the only bit where no quarter is given, is that there will always be "the work" to be done, and there is no getting around it.

So you might as well do it.

"Chop wood, carry water".

Otherwise known as a compromise, or an accepted cost, risk or price.

Having an ideology is good, it helps guide your way. It lets you determine what's important and what's not.

But as nothing is perfect, the "rubber meeting the road" of living out an ideology, is where you deal with trade-offs.

Trade-offs are real, and I would argue, necessary.

They don't have to be a bad thing if you know who you are, and what you're doing.

One of my mum's favourite sayings to us growing up was "Time and Tide wait for no man".

This brilliant video, an illustration of an Alan Watts monologue entitled "The Illusion of Money, Time and Ego" brought this saying back to mind.

"Time and tide..." one a mental construct, the other a physical phenomenon of nature.

And neither of them wait for you.

They both keep marching on, and the only thing that distinguishes this point in a timeline, from one in the future, is what happens in it i.e. what you do.

So, maybe "get busy living".

This saying came to mind as I thought about todays daily blog post:

"I am not your guru."

In a twitter space today, another leader in a specific tech space said to Kelsey Hightower that his position on a thing "made him sad".

To which Kelsey said, "..don't be. It's an opinion and position, you don't need to be sad about it, we need to discuss it."

And therein lies, in my opinion, the dangers of creating guru's and putting them on pedestals.

Why do you think you need a guru? Why did you need to make it personally sensitive to you?

And why are you conflating the person with the purpose?

This is not a new idea. And it's something we can understand and relate to.

So why am I thinking about it now?

I've been thinking about (and working on) how we perceive the things we focus on, and how it affects us.

I often have a lot of deep & meaningful talks with my brothers about mindset, and how it first colours your thoughts, and then your entire world.

And we can't change reality- but we can definitely change perception.

Everything you want to know is on the other side of "doing".

This is something my brother would always say to me when contemplating the things I wanted to do with my life.

We can sit and ponder all possibilities, risks, rewards, certainties and uncertainties until "the cows come home".

But nothing really answers your questions like doing the thing, and it provides the answers to you.

Jocko Willink isn't the type of person usually on my "motivational" radar.

But credit where credit's due, and this idea, this concept of "Discipline equals freedom" is one that resonates- not with the conservative side of me, but the wild side.

The side that is reckless and self-destructive. It resonates because that side is out of control, it serves only itself and will see the 'whole' ruined. You think it's free. Free to do whatever it feels like doing.

But that's not freedom. It's a prison by another name.

I've been listening to Seth Godin's wisdom on how we define and determine what our focus is and ultimately what becomes the result of our actions.

He asks "Is it a Hobby? Or is it work?"... because "if it's work, its for other people"

How does that change what we do and how we do it?

"...to the rules of the game".

This line is quoted in Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows.

Everything is a game. Not in that it should be trivialised, but that modeling the world around us in terms of a game can help us "play" it better.

Or, at least gain some power or control of the "games" we may find ourselves in.

Politics, Corporations, Police, Local Council, Parking tickets, Taxes, Insurance.

They all have elements of a game, to be played.

We already know the ritual, the same thing has happened time and again and nothing changes.

The "song and dance", the hand-wringing and platitudes. And nothing will change.

That's not being cynical, or "realistic" or "pessimistic".

It's an observation followed by a logical conclusion.