7 for Sunday is a weekly serving of 7 things for you to savor. — It’s an email containing my reflections on interesting things I find laying about, seasoned with some quotes from my collection. See https://7forsunday.com/.
I learned then that even when I felt powerless to control my job or education — or anything else that seemed out of my hands — I always had control over my own mind and how I treated others. Even when I had nothing else, I could still be kind, just, generous, honest, loving and compassionate.
~ Susan Fowler
slip:4a1138.
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
slip:4a469.
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind.
~ Marcus Aurelius
slip:4a185.
The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.
~ Tom Waits
slip:4a523.
Knowing about a tool is one thing. Having the guts to use it in a way that brings art to the world is another.
~ Seth Godin from, Tools vs insight
slip:4useto4.
I know my tools. I have the guts to use them. I’m bringing my art to the world.
…know what I cannot figure out? How to be successful—not how to make money, but rather how to feel that what I’ve done and what I’m doing are enough.
ɕ
I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly–you don’t need more criticism, you need more writing.
~ Seth Godin from, Talker’s block
slip:4useta2.
Thank you. …don’t mind if I do. Coming up on 8 years on this blog, and well over 2,000 posts. :)
Writing here has been useful on two fronts: First, when I do have to write something in some random context, le voila! …every day I suck less at writing. Second, writing clarifies my thinking. (My thinking needs a lot of clarifying.)
ɕ
I am unafraid as I prepare myself for that day when the artifices and disguises will be stripped away and I shall make judgment of myself. Is it just brave talk, or do I mean what I say? Were they for real, those defiant words I spoke against fortune, or were they just theatre – Just acting a part?
~ Seneca
slip:4a111.
…if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical… You’ve got it half-licked.
~ Henry Miller
slip:4a493.
Some day, in the years to come, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now … NOW it is being decided whether in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long continued process.
~ Phillips Brooks
slip:4a246.
Most of our mental development and study discipline comes through formal education. But as soon as we leave the external discipline of school, many of us let our minds atrophy. We don’t do any more serious reading, we don’t explore new subjects in any real depth outside our action fields, we don’t think analytically, we don’t write — at least not critically or in a way that tests our ability to express ourselves in distilled, clear, and concise language. Instead we spend our time watching TV.
~ Stephen Covey
slip:4a526.
You’ll feel much less of a need to control outcomes, which — in a brilliant instance of irony — frees your capacity to control your response, and create an outcome you like. If there is some action you want to take, you can take it with grace and cool-headedness instead of frustration and desperation.
~ David Cain from, How to Make Life Agreeable
slip:4uraho8.
This reminds me of my thought about enjoying standing in line at the post office. Not in the sense of, “I’m great, I have this mastered.” Rather in the sense that I recall what it has felt like and I recall the impatience and urge to get away from situations which I had decided were disagreeable.
Obviously I’ve not mastered this; there are still plenty of instances where I judge a situation unworthy and begin my squirming to escape. But, I’m making progress. I’d go so far as to say that I’m getting comfortable sitting in my inability to sit comfortably in situations I’d normally resist.
ɕ
Before you embark on any path ask the question, does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it and then you must choose another path. The trouble is that nobody asks the question. And when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart the path is ready to kill him.
~ Carlos Castaneda
slip:4a231.
If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception it is a prevailing attitude.
~ Colin Powell
slip:4a175.
No such thing as spare time.
~ Henry Rollins
No such thing as free time.
No such thing as down time.
All you got is life time.
Go.
slip:4a294.
Most people have been in some version of this mental stress state so consistently, for so long, that they don’t even know they’re in it. Like gravity, it’s ever present — so much so that those who experience it usually aren’t even aware of the pressure. The only time most of them will realize how much tension they’ve been under is when they get rid of it and notice how different they feel. It’s like the constant buzzing noise in a room you didn’t know was there until it stops.
~ David Allen from, Getting Things Done
slip:4uliwo2.
The key insight for me was once I realized there are two “directions” to thinking: I was always good at vertical thinking, going down thru a project (big or small), planning, organizing and doing. This was simply “thinking”, and how could there be more than one “direction” in which to think?
Unfortunately, I often got stuck when my brain started doing this other direction of thinking for which I had no name; no concept to attach: The horizontal thinking. The hopping from project to project — and I use “project” in the most broad sense of ANY thing involving a goal (“remodel house”, “send holiday cards”), any size (“seven years of projet management and contractors”, “buy stamps, buy cards, stuff, mail” ), and any number of steps. My mind hopped uncontrollably from thing to thing, around and around, across all the open loops, as the same things came up over and over and over.
These days, having a solid capture and review system enables me to close those mental loops. I can often read for a half an hour without my mind once interrupting me with some random, “I need to do this,” or “I need to remember that,” thought. (And if it does interupt me, I simple capture that thought once. Done. Freedom.) In the beginning I used paper notecards, then notebooks, software, and on and on. The exact system does not matter. It only matters that you trust your system. Only when you truly trust your system will your subconscious close all those open loops.
ɕ
Being realistic is the most common path to mediocrity.
~ Will Smith
slip:4a241.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
slip:4a320.
Despite of all this seeming weight, a certain part of ourselves remains unmoored. We don’t lack for tasks, but we do lack meaningful ones. We haven’t made any goals since college. We don’t experience the tension that emerges in “the gap between what one is and what one should become,” because the gap simply doesn’t exist – at a certain point we stopped aiming for anything above paying the bills and checking off to-dos.
We think we want rest and relaxation – the absence of all labor and responsibility – but what we really crave is the presence of meaningful work and interests. We don’t want a complete lack of tension, but a different variety of it.
We don’t need less stress, but more of the right kind.
~ Brett Mckay, from More Load on the Arch
slip:4uaomo1.
This piece is a clear manifesto that coincides with my efforts of the past couple years: “Load the arch intentionally!”
ɕ
Every morning you have two choices: Continue sleeping with your dreams, or wake up and chase them.
~ unknown
slip:4a459.
Long-term consistency trumps short term intensity.
~ Bruce Lee
slip:4a152.