Author Archives: David Truss

Embrace the suck

I’ve been meditating for at least 10 minutes every day for just over 6 months… and I suck at it.

There are days where I can’t concentrate on my breath for more than 3 breaths without my mind wondering off to a myriad of topics from the mundane to the ridiculous. This is when, in the past, I’d just give up. Before this attempt, I’ve never lasted more than a week without getting frustrated and quitting meditation.

Then in a number of podcasts (and audio books) I listen to I kept hearing things like: meditation isn’t about emptying your mind, it’s about bring yourself back when you realize your thoughts have drifted; And, meditation isn’t about a destination, but rather about the journey.

I tried to change my self-talk, but when I’m 9 minutes into a guided meditation and the guide says, “For the last minute I want you to…”, and I feel like I’ve been scattered for the full 9 minutes, the feeling of ‘I suck’ comes back whether I want it to or not.

So, rather than fight it, I decided to embrace it. Six months in, I still suck at meditation, but I’m less and less upset with my distractions. I’m more tolerant with myself when I recognize I’ve drifted into distracted thinking.

I couldn’t convince myself that I was getting better until I accepted and embraced the suck.

**UPDATE: August 12, 2019 – found this image and thought it was worth sharing:

Innovation Lag Time

When you’re innovating, it takes a considerable amount of time before the benefits of that innovation can be seen. What that means is that after the excitement of creating plans, and the thrill of collaborating towards a wonderful vision… You won’t arrive at the benefits of your labour right away. That lag time is not easy. It can be disheartening, discouraging, and even leave you doubting if you’re on the right path.

At some point you’re going to be stuck in an innovation time lag. When that happens, it’s the work ahead of time to create a vision, and to help get everybody on board, that will help to see you through to the rewards.

Vision before perspiration gets you past stagnation and on to elation.

Disruptive Forces

To not use Google is like choosing to use a horse and cart on the information highway.

To not use Wireless is like choosing to use a boat to deliver a trans-continental phone message.

To not use your own devices is like choosing to walk across gravel barefoot while holding your shoes.

We have disruptive forces within our reach and it is exciting to speculate just how far we can go… If we accept that these forces transformative, and use them as such!

11:13pm

I started my run at 11:13pm last night. Jogged for 12 minutes, then did some sprint/walk intervals home. Nothing really special, but critical. Critical because since January 4th, I haven’t had less than 4 workouts in a week and this week I only had 3.

This is all part of my personal health goals that I shared in a video log here.

The same thing happened with my meditations. I haven’t missed a single day. I usually meditate in the morning but there was one night last week that I realized I missed it, and although it was after midnight, I stayed up later to do a meditation.

Why does this matter? Because cheating is a slippery slope… especially when you cheat on yourself.

If you are on a diet that has cheat days, use them, but if you find yourself cheating on other days, well then you are only cheating yourself.

So, last night I started my run at 11:13pm. My streak continues…

It’s time…

I tweeted to Bill Ferriter about how time flies, and that we are getting older saying,

Age is 2 things:

1. A state of mind.

2. A state of the body part that aches the most.

I will often say silly things like, “My mind is 31, my body is 51, and my back is 71″… doing a plus/minus of 20 years (which was 10-15 years when I was in my 40’s).

Here’s the point… I’m not getting younger and more than ever, NOW is the best time to start.

I tried over a decade ago, now I’m going to do it – a short daily blog.

It’s time…

Share it!

A great post by Seth Godin, “Did you publish?“

They (whoever ‘they’ is) made it easy for you to raise your hand. They made it easy for you to put your words online, your song in the cloud, your building designs, business plans and videos out in the world. They made it easy for you to be generous, to connect, and to lead.

Did you?

Maybe today’s the day.

_______________________

The world is filled with people who feel that what they do is not good enough to share… It is!

Why I Blog. Why blog with students?

Sharing and Building Upon by Silvia Tolisano

Sharing: The Moral Imperative by Dean Shareski

another reason to share… by George Couros

One link and a handful of sentences is all I’m sharing that is my own work here. I’m just hoping that I add value to a bigger conversation. The rest, above, is from a network of people that share openly, thoughtfully, and have gotten better at it from regular practice.

Start with an audience of one. Blog, tweet, vlog, share on Pinterest, Facebook, Scoop.It, or any other tool that lets you share ideas and links. Do it just for yourself, but do it publicly so others can benefit.

It doesn’t matter what tool you use, what’s important is sharing. Be generous.

Find your ‘voice’ and share it!

(Oh, and comments on blogs are another nice place to share:)

Goodbye Posterous

I started my Pair-a-Dimes for Your Thoughts blog on Elgg, because a friend invited me there to try out this think called ‘Blogging’. Elgg moved to Eduspaces killing all of my back-links. Frustrating. Eduspaces was being bought out and so I had enough and moved my blog to DavidTruss.com. Once there, and while in China, I decided to move my little-used Posterous site to this address, as a place to easily upload photos of what I thought would be a daily hand-written journal. That didn’t last long.

Daily-Ink-on-Posterous

But Posterous was nice and simple. Put a link to a video in an email, or email a photo, add a few comments in the body of the email, then put the title in the subject line, and even add some tags in brackets if you wanted. Then send the email… instant post.

But then Twitter bought Posterous. Instead of slick integration, like post a Twitter Thread or Storify… Twitter killed Posterous. Sad. Really Sad.

This is why I moved my blog to my own domain. This is why I suggest everyone do the same. Spend some hosting money, and claim your own part of the internet. Use wordpress, it’s free and you can even set up posting by email, although in the ipad/iphone app era, even that isn’t really needed.

I’ve lost archives of student blogs on Elgg, and also on Ning sites after they went from free to fee. I still have links to ‘retagr’ and ‘explode.us’ which were identity pages that are now defunct. But I’ve paid for DavidTruss.com until 2018, and I pay yearly or bi-yearly for web hosting and now I don’t have to worry about big company x buying out cool company y and making it go away because x and y don’t want to create happy formulas together.

Goodbye Posterous. You’ll be missed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to tweet about this post.

Words hurt more than you’ll ever know.

I’ve been pretty quiet on the topic of our loss of Amanda Todd. Mostly because things in the media are so polarized and everything about this story is complex, with interwoven issues that get lost in sensationalism.

But this is a beautiful song, inspired by a beautiful young spirit, whom we lost at too young of an age.

Words hurt more than you’ll ever know. Be kind, and when others are not kind, be brave and speak up.