You are only as smart as the people you meet and talk to. Everyone is your teacher.
Advice
Time travel
“How to stop time: kiss.
How to travel in time: read.
How to escape time: music.
How to feel time: write.
How to release time: breathe.”
Matt Haig , Reasons to Stay Alive
Commit
When you cross the river, get rid of the boat.
Go
If you think you need all the information before you make a decision then you’ll never act. There are always more data points to analyze. It’s infinite. The trick is to be decisive in the face of incomplete information…and it’s always incomplete.
Compound Beauty Part 2 of 2
In the previous post I wrote about my neighbor and her beautiful garden. She’s always working on it. Her clippers are always in her right hand as she wanders through the garden. She’s a quick draw and will snip a dead shrub or feral branch in the blink of an eye. Her clippers are close at hand and she’s prepared.
Here’s lesson number two: Part of constant tweaking and improving is that you got to be prepared with the right tools. Make it easy to improve and tweak. Structure your day so that you have time to exercise, eat a good breakfast so you don’t snack on junk during the day, buy healthy food so that when you want to snack you have good food close by, set up filters on your email so that you give full attention to the right people.
Equip yourself with the right tools and it’s easier to improve day to day.
Compound Beauty Part 1 of 2
I have a neighbor with a green thumb. Her garden is wonderful. It’s like the one in the film The Secret Garden, but in California. It’s full of flowers and trees like roses, maples and nasturtiums. With the flowers come humming birds, dragon flies and bumbles bees. It’s a beautiful place to just sit and be. Here’s what I’ve learnt from her style of gardening: Always be improving. Whenever she’s out in the garden she does a little weeding, clips a branch here and there, tames an unwieldy mint patch or waters a thirsty lemon tree. Maintaining her garden isn’t done once a week, it’s an ongoing labor of love. The result is a wonderful living and breathing sacred place.
It’s a good lesson for work and relationships. Always be clipping and making small improvements. Small improvements accumulate like compound interest – it starts to gain it’s own momentum. Next time you are mindlessly checking Facebook, stop and ask yourself a question: Instead of infinitely scrolling to nowhere, where could you be clipping, weeding or watering in your own life?
Reverse the flow
The hunger to satisfy and fulfill yourself dissolves the moment you change the question from ‘what can I get?’ to ‘what can I give?’
Change the markers on your trip
Ever gone on a long road trip? I've done a couple from San Francisco to LA. On long trips it's funny how the time between leaving San Francisco and the first couple of towns goes by in a flash. On any other day, heading down south from San Francisco to a meeting in a place like Palo Alto feels like the great trek. Distance is all relative. The same can be applied to learning a new skill, starting a new career, building a business, friendships or moving to a new city.
Seeing something as part of a grander plan makes me more patient and gets me out of the rush rush 'I need it all now' mindset. Change the scale and be patient. Life is a road trip not a day trip.
Morning Mantras #1
A good mantra for any day:
The universe is beautiful and just and perfect
Square breathing ◻️
My brother @socratixsw1 introduced me to a incredibly powerful deep breathing practice. It’s a relaxant after stretching or before bed.
Inhale for 5 seconds; hold your breath for 5 seconds; exhale for 5 seconds; when you’ve emptied your lungs, don’t breathe in again for 5 seconds; then inhale for 5 seconds. Repeat for 1 minute or 3 cycles.
5 seconds in, 5 seconds hold, 5 seconds out, 5 seconds no breath. Draw the square in your head – 4 sides of 5 seconds each.
Start out with 3 sets which gets you to 1 minute. The 3 sets will turn into 6 sets pretty effortlessly once you find your stride.
markbartels.org 