Sometimes, only our best is good enough … but the idea we can [or should] always be at our best is not only impossible, it’s unhealthy. We’re humans. We have good days and bad days. Sometimes we’re on top form … and at other times – not so much. Now, if we’re having a stinker, that doesn’t mean we inflict our bad day on everyone around us, but pretending we’re always at our best is
The picture is taken from the top of Sri Pada in Sri Lanka, November 2005, at just after 6am. A month before, I had been physically exhausted, mentally stressed and spiritually empty, after a run of challenges in both my work and personal life. Some were undoubtedly my responsibility … others, not so much. I was also stretched far beyond my financial limits, and so decided to sell my home, clear all the debts, and
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit Will Durant, American author It’s that time of year when many of us start to feel guilty because we’ve already given up on our New Year’s Resolutions. If that sounds like you, then I have a suggestion – try thinking about establishing new habits, rather than setting bold resolutions. Almost everything we do is a habit. Some of them do
In 1999, I took part in a cycling trip across Cuba. 26 year old me was 100% certain of himself – convinced he knew everything, and that anyone who saw things differently simply needed to be ‘educated’ with the ‘facts’ [as I saw them], and that if those ‘facts’ didn’t change your mind, then you must be an idiot. [Yeah – 26 year old me was a dick.] Anyway – on the bike tour, about
After surviving Nazi concentration camps, Viktor Frankl famously talked about the gap between stimulus and response. What he called “the last of the human freedoms” is our ability to choose our response to any given situation. I recently came across a variation of this idea in an interview with Harvard professor Sheila Heen, an expert on communication and negotiation. She spoke about how the key to managing difficult conversations is understanding that our reaction to
In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a huge fan of Tim Ferriss. Tim calls himself a human guinea pig, and is constantly looking for hacks in every area of life, from work to health to learning. If you’re unfamiliar with Tim’s work, a book like ‘The 4-Hour Body’ contains advice on everything from medical tourism to running ultra marathons. Throughout, his aim is to find the most efficient and effective way
I seem to have been getting the same message from a few different places this week! I’ve been reading ‘The One Thing’, a practical book about getting things done by focusing on one single task at a time. In order to work out which task we should be doing, authors Gary Keller and Jay Papasan suggest that we need to start by thinking big – good advice that you will hear in virtually every goal
“Humility is the most over-rated of human emotions.” So says Harvey Mackay in his book, “Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive”, and Mackay is a very well respected author and businessman. When I read that, I was horrified. The people I admire all have a degree of humility about them – along with integrity, it’s one of the things that I think are fundamental to living a good life. Cultural historian Warren Susman
I have been interested in Chinese martial arts for as long as I can remember – and whether I was watching the ‘Kung Fu’ TV series, or Bruce Lee in ‘Enter the Dragon’, it was always the philosophy that caught my attention more than the physical side. I’ve been re-reading “The Shaolin Grandmaster’s Text”, and there’s an interesting point in there about how if you ever find yourself in a confrontation, in their view this is
Study a flower – it’s the imperfections that make it beautiful. When we work on something that we care about, knowing when to stop can be hard. We tell ourselves to keep editing … to keep making those infinitesimal changes that only we can see, because we care – we want it to be absolutely perfect before anyone else reads/hears/sees our work. But of course nothing is ever perfect – everything can be improved …
Weekly [digital] email to help navigate the [analogue] world …
Weekly [digital] email to help navigate the [analogue] world …
