“The habitual tendency when things get tough is that we protect ourselves, we get hard, we get rigid. But…that’s the time to soften and see how we might play or dance with the situation.”
— Jeff Bridges
Soften
Progress
“Never discourage anyone who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.”
— Plato
The Unkown
“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”
— Rebecca Solnit
The Things You Care About
“Fight for the things that you are about,
but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Truth
“Why do you run around looking for the truth? Be still, and there it is—in the mountain, in the pine, in yourself.”
– Lao Tzu, Conscious Arrival
(via Libby)
Pain
“The cure for pain is in the pain.”
— Rumi
Get The Inside Right
“If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.”
— Eckhart Tolle
At Peace
“One who is at peace naturally improves the world just by being.”
— Paul Ferrini
Glorious Mess
“Embrace the glorious mess that you are.”
— Elizabeth Gilbert
My Relationship With The Entire World
“My relationship with the entire world in this moment depends entirely on the relationship I have with myself.“
– Paul Ferrini
Wish I would have realized this in my 20s. I took this from a talk Paul Ferrini gave in 2013. You can watch it here.
Water Has Three States
“Water has three states, but you know, not really only three—clouds, fogs, mist, rain, and many others. A rainbow is related to water. Our bodies are 70% water, and our planet is also 70% water on the surface. We’re almost like a puddle of water. As you know, those different states of water can look very beautiful, but sometimes they can be very violent, like a tsunami.”
– Ryuichi Sakamoto
I Miss My Desk
“Even more importantly, desks enable collaboration. To be at your desk is to be present, in the world, at a place in time – to be available for an impromptu brainstorm, feedback session, or gut check. That face-to-face cooperation brings a human touch to our work that can’t be replaced by all the Slack messages, Zoom calls, or Google Docs in the world. It’s why (at least during normal times) so many freelance professionals choose to pay for a desk in a coworking space. With others around it, a desk becomes more than a desk; it becomes a community. Desks are how we interface. The things placed, whether carefully or incidentally, on their surface – the books, tools, decorations, pictures, half-eaten salads, and unopened mail – serve as ambient communication to co-workers about our lives.”
I Miss My Desk (and So Should You), by Brandon Lori
Self-directed, Project-basedLearning
“We now have a chance to turn this fall’s back-to-school (in the Northern Hemisphere) into self-directed, project-based learning instead of a rush toward compliance and butts in chairs and pencils on tests. Shipping the project, proving it works and then doing it again. Learning by doing. Self-direction unlocks our ability to contribute for a lifetime, whereas preparing for the test ensures that we will always be at the mercy of the person who is giving the test. People are not entitled to their own facts–and understanding helps us discover the ones that matter.”
Self-directed, project-based learning, by Seth Godin
A Soul on Fire
“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”
— Ferdinand Foch
Exit To Community
“If you’re forming a startup, there are generally two kinds of stories to choose from about what the startup is for. Keep in mind that startups are companies that are trying to take over some subsection of the world. It’s ambitious stuff, so they tend to take on lots of early investment. They get somebody to give them a lot of money so they can hit the market with disproportionate force. And in order to pay that investment back, they need what’s called an “exit,” which usually comes in two forms: You’re either acquired by a larger company or you go public, selling your company on a market where people can trade your shares based on their speculations about what it’s worth. In both cases, you’re passing the company that you’ve worked to build off to new owners, who in turn might be buying it just to convince future buyers to pay even more for it later. It’s a weirdly normal pyramid scheme of capitalism.
What if there were another way? What if a startup that successfully builds a community could opt for an exit to ownership by that community?”
This is a fascinating read: Exit To Community, by Nathan Schneider
Purpose
“Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill. Whatever you choose for a career path, remember, the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose.”
— Chadwick Boseman
Call me Trim Tab
“Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Elizabeth — the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there’s a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab. It’s a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it’s going right by you, that it’s left you altogether. But if you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go. So I said, “Call me Trim Tab.”
The truth is that you get the low pressure to do things, rather than getting on the other side and trying to push the bow of the ship around. And you build that low pressure by getting rid of a little nonsense, getting rid of things that don’t work and aren’t true until you start to get that trim-tab motion. It works every time. That’s the grand strategy you’re going for. So I’m positive that what you do with yourself, just the little things you do yourself, these are the things that count. To be a real trim tab, you’ve got to start with yourself, and soon you’ll feel that low pressure, and suddenly things begin to work in a beautiful way.”
— Buckminster Fuller
Water Has Three States
“Water has three states, but you know, not really only three—clouds, fogs, mist, rain, and many others. A rainbow is related to water. Our bodies are 70% water, and our planet is also 70% water on the surface. We’re almost like a puddle of water. As you know, those different states of water can look very beautiful, but sometimes they can be very violent, like a tsunami.”
– Ryuichi Sakamoto
Care A Whole Awful Lot
“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
— Dr. Seuss
How Much Heart People Invest
“The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.”
― Ted Hughes
New Yorkers Do Not Crave Comfort
“New yorkers temperamentally do not crave comfort and convenience – if they did they would live elsewhere.”
— E. B White 1949
(via)
Ben Ichinose
“Nothing happens *to* you. It happens *through* you.”
— Ben Ichinose
(via John)
Ambiguous Loss
That means reckoning with what’s called ambiguous loss: any loss that’s unclear and lacks a resolution. It can be physical, such as a missing person or the loss of a limb or organ, or psychological, such as a family member with dementia or a serious addiction.
“In this case, it is a loss of a way of life, of the ability to meet up with your friends and extended family,” Boss says. “It is perhaps a loss of trust in our government. It’s the loss of our freedom to move about in our daily life as we used to.” It’s also the loss of high-quality education, or the overall educational experience we’re used to, given school closures, modified openings and virtual schooling. It’s the loss of rituals, such weddings, graduations, and funerals, and even lesser “rituals,” such as going to gym. One of the toughest losses for me to adapt to is no longer doing my research and writing in coffee shops as I’ve done for most of my life, dating back to junior high.
“These were all things we were attached to and fond of, and they’re gone right now, so the loss is ambiguous. It’s not a death, but it’s a major, major loss,” says Boss. “What we used to have has been taken away from us.”
Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful, by Tara Haelle