And in the end

It’s great to live a life of courage and compassion… but all the courage and compassion in the world doesn’t make any of it any easier. All it can do is hopefully make it more meaningful, somehow.

~ Hugh MacLeod from, https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2022/07/12/the-one-choice-all-fulfilled-people-make/

I’d go further: The more courage and compassion I muster, the harder it gets. Compassion gives me a big “why” that burns inside, driving me to the next, harder challenge. Courage begets more courage; With each win won through courage, it becomes easier to again deploy courage intentionally. It seems that courage and compassion lead to the tackling of increasing great and difficult challenges. Meaning is great, but I haven’t yet figured out how to use any of it to pay the proverbial rent.

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Fair winds

Somehow these less-than-ideal conditions raised his game, spurred him on to greatness. There’s a definite lesson here. Fair winds do not a great captain make. We dream of finding our own greatness one day, but we want it to happen when the sun is shining.

~ Hugh Macleod

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A big ol’ distraction

Quit your yakkin’ and get busy. Quit wasting time obsessing about pimping your ass and checking your stats. Instead, MAKE stuff. Make AMAZING stuff. Make stuff that is so good that people have no choice but to find out about it. Otherwise, you REALLY are just wasting your time. This game is already TOO hard and TOO BIG a time suck to fritter away on what is, for the most part, a big ol’ distraction.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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Grit

(Part 72 of 72 in series, My Journey)

Don’t let ease tempt you. Don’t fall for its false promises. What you gain in ease, you lose in meaning. What you gain in ease, you lose in excellence.

~ Hugh MacLeod from, https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2022/07/08/follow-the-yellowbri-road-to-greatness/

This topic came up today in an outdoor Parkour class. Being outside, training, sweating, and overcoming challenges with friends old and new is always a treat. (“If this isn’t nice…“)

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Going full circle

No matter where your adventure takes you, most of what is truly meaningful is still to be found revolving around the mundane stuff you did before you embarked on your adventure. The stuff that’ll be still be going on long after you and I are both dead, long after our contribution to the world is forgotten.But often, one needs to have that big adventure before truly appreciating this. Going full circle. Exactly.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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Otherwise life feels empty

So I make it really simple. I’d say art is: “That which you have no choice but to do, because your soul demands it”.

Yes, it’s a fairly flawed definition. But it illustrates something that most people don’t get about artists or entrepreneurs. We do it, because if we don’t, life feels empty. The downside being, it doesn’t exactly come with an easy life.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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One day

One day I’ll be a filmmaker! One day I’ll be a famous artist! One day I’ll be a CEO! One day I’ll be a Creative Director! One day I’ll be a Venture Capitalist! And so forth.

Then you get to a certain age and you realize that the time for “One Day” is over. You’re either doing it, or you’re not. And if you’re not, a feeling of bitter disappointment starts hitting you deep into the marrow. Which explains why we all know so many people in their 30s and 40s having mid-life crisis’.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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Personal summit

Everybody has their own private Mount Everest they were put on this earth to climb.You may never reach the summit; for that you will be forgiven. But if you don’t make at least one serious attempt to get above the snow-line, years later you will find yourself lying on your deathbed, and all you will feel is emptiness.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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Feelings scare us

You don’t know if your idea is any good the moment it’s created. Neither does anyone else. The most you can hope for is a strong gut feeling that it is. And trusting your feelings is not as easy as the optimists say it is. There’s a reason why feelings scare us—because what they tell us and what the rest of the world tells us are often two different things.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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World class or bust

Gillard had a very simple ethos: “If your stuff isn’t world-class, you’re not going to make it”.

~ Hugh MacLeod from, https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2021/03/19/world-class-or-bust/

The other day I was in a Zoom break-out room with a few other podcasters. I was talking about how for 2021 I’m focusing on doing in-person interviews. How being a slave to a weekly schedule was (is, would continue to be,) putting pressure on creating podcast episodes. Most podcasters—well, every single one that I know of, but there must be some out there who aren’t, so I’m writing “most”… Most podcasters are willing to (happy to?) record virtually as that enables them to stay on their weekly production schedules.

Aside: Everyone believes that regular production is critical for podcast success. I disagree. “What’s one important truth that most people would disagree with you about?” is a good question, and this is currently the best answer that I have.

There are millions of podcast shows and many more millions of episodes. I don’t want to make a single episode of Movers Mindset unless it has some particular value or is special in some way; The human race doesn’t need simply, “one more podcast episode.” I believe that in-person, with the right guest, and with me doing my best work I can co-create something of value to humanity.

And “do it every week” doesn’t figure into that formula at all.

The idea of trying to do something at a world-class-or-bust level is a fairly new one for me. I have lots of hobbies and mostly I don’t care about being world class. But I do care about the Movers Mindset podcast being world class.

Do you have anything you’re intentionally pushing to that level?

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Achieving greatness

So you want to achieve greatness. You’ve decided that ho-hum mediocrity is not for you. Alrighty then. Well, if you’re going to do that, you have to make a choice: whether to take The Big Road or The Little Road.

~ Hugh MacLeod from, https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2020/09/18/go-big-go-small-just-go/

It turns out that this rhymes with my vision and mission. (Please start here if you just thought, “what vision and mission?”) I was deep in the workshop trying to find my vision and mission, when this post from MacLeod drifted through my sphere of awareness. I think if I hadn’t already been in the middle of doing the hard work of orienteering, this post would have tipped me into starting the hard work.

So my question for today is: If you don’t feel like you have a clear vision and mission, what would you have to expose yourself to which would be likely to make you tip into being compelled to find them?

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The difficulty setting

But a strong work ethic will keep on opening doors for you, again and again, for years to come.

~ Hugh MacLeod from, https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2018/04/05/its-not-what-you-do-its-how-you-do-it/

MacLeod’s point about work ethic is spot-on. A certain type and quantity of work ethic is necessary for success; however you wish to define success for yourself, you’ll need work ethic to succeed. It’s necessary.

But it’s not sufficient. The game of life has initial difficulty settings, and we each have little control over that.

Are you born in a country that protects your rights? Are you raised by people who care for you, and create an environment where you flourish? Were you lucky enough to inherit good DNA (as opposed to having a genetic disorder)? Did you grow up in a safe and healthy community (or did people steal your things, threaten you with violence, etc.)?

Work ethic and initiative can enable you to overcome almost all of the challenges the random initial conditions of life might set up for you. You can even change the difficulty level of your own game. But it’s harder.

You’re probably not responsible for more than a handful of people (children, parents, family, etc.) You do not need to sacrifice yourself for others. But if you have extra time, extra resources, extra skill, extra knowledge, or extra ability, what happens to the world if you choose to try to change the difficulty setting for others?

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Bootstraps

The parents’ duty to their children is not to cram as many social advantages as possible into their first eighteen years. The parents’ duty is to make sure that when it comes time for the child to pull himself up by his bootstraps, he actually has the bootstraps to pull up.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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