133 posts tagged with "personal"

Having goals and stretching yourself makes life worthwhile, exciting, challenging and fulfilling.

But if it costs you, a measure of enjoyment you could never have, before of after the pursuit of these goals- what is the point exactly?

This is not a question to be answered by anyone, and there's nothing wrong with the question. It needs to be asked. And then, you will need to really look at the whole picture, and answer it.

It's not to say, don't pursue. Or even, don't extend.

It's just saying, long term thinking will steady your course.

And in it, find humility for an ongoing and imperfect journey towards the end.

Don't burn out.

Life is a series of trade off's you would do well to get good at.

Knowing the weighted value of every action, interaction and opportunity.

They don't all weigh the same, and the weight:value ratio is subjective at best.

Do your best.

"If you have rights and no responsibility, you get entitlement. If you have responsibility and no rights, you get enslavement."

Wanting the benefit, or advantage, privilege without the hard or messy part might be chalked up to human nature (I might disagree). But the "path of least resistence" behaviour never leads anywhere worth being.

Time and again we will see examples of what people turn into when they get everything they want, easily and immediately.

If it sucks, it sucks. It might not be your best work, it's probably not going to be great. But you'll do your best, you'll work as hard as you need to, and it will get done. Don't worry so much about it, nobody's going to die.

Jaron Lanier said this on a podcast

"Perpectual annoyance is the cost of freedom". (or something to this effect)

He goes on to explain that people are annoying, and that true freedom isn't about doing whatever you want and avoiding people. It's about what you're able to do, in communion- however annoying that may be- with people.

People who want to take the "politics" out of every day society tend to be the people who try to take the "people" out of society (at least, the ones they don't like).

So be wary of these types of people.

The Buddha says "Desire is the root of suffering" and stocism, via Epictetus says "Freedom isn't secured by filling up on your hearts desires but by removing desire.".

We feel some sort of pain, loss or lacking when we desire something. Desiring meaning it's not within our means, whatever those "means" need be to acquire the object of our desire. So we have no object, but only the desire of it.

And the space between what we have, and what we don't have, is desire.

How useless. And knowing it's of no use to us, why keep it? Throw it away, be done with it and push it aside.

It serves you in no good way, so if you must lose something in the time from now, til then- lose the desire to suffer.

Long-term thinking.

The phrase goes "take it one day at at time". Which is great advice, really is.

It means to focus on the "single step" in saying "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". To not take on any more than that, because why would you? What does taking on more than is necessary accomplish?

It's certainly not efficient, or sustainable.

When you have lived long enough, you can look back and remember how many times you started again.

Another life, another relationship, another fitness program or schedule you used to keep.

I say "another" and not "a new", because by this stage "e leai se mea fou i lalo le la" (there is nothing new under the Sun).

You know what works for you, not because you've theorised it as a teenager, but you've done numerous seasons of this thing that got you the result and you've tweaked most of the "fat" off it, and it runs lean.

But you stopped doing it. For whatever reason.

So, we start again. Maybe this time reviewing our history, and helping the weight of that knowledge, those memories, help us forge it this time, in iron.

The known saying is "Perfect is the enemy of good". Which is good enough, I guess.

But there's so many things "lacking" behind this concept of wanting something to be perfect before you release it, post it, publish it, say it, share it.

Yes, there are things that need care and consideration ahead of release, but that list I'll argue is very small.

And the many things that get caught up in perfection really has no business, and benefits no-one with its delay.

Another saying that relates very well to this perfection idea is "there is no substitute for experience".

How is that even related?

This is not a new concept, and something I'm going to going over, repeatedly as I reconfigure my world currently.

When you focus on less things, you produce **more.

A certain amount of knowledge required to reach a "critical mass" which then produces something- an insight, a thought, an idea- that is deeply more valuable than anything else you could possibly create from a very superficial depth of knowledge on any given topic.

Always "doing more" actually ends up doing things "by halves" and ultimately, like multi-tasking, you become efficient at generating lots of low-worth, mediocre things.

Do less and get more.

** more = given you do the other necessary parts to make this true.