Tag Archives: attitude

Disposition over position

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Listen to this wonderful quote by comedian Jimmy Carr:

“Disposition is more important than position”

I’ve only ever known Jimmy Carr as a one-liner comedian. His podcast with Steven Bartlett on Dairy of a CEO has changed my mind. There are so many gems that he shares and it’s worth taking an hour and a half to listen.

It’s fitting that wisdom like this comes from an unexpected place. Even with Steven’s glowing introduction my bar of expectation was still low and I was very pleasantly surprised.

Yesterday morning I listened to the last 30 minutes while on the treadmill, and when Jimmy said this it really hit me.

“You are not the worst thing you’ve ever done.” ~ Jimmy Carr

How many people are measured on social media by the worst thing they have said or done? I’ve written around 2,000 blog posts since I started sharing online 18 years ago. I think I have a pretty decent record of being a pretty decent person, and yet I am keenly aware that I’m one careless sentence or one unpopular opinion away from potentially being ‘cancelled’… of being attacked as rude, biased, or some other derogatory adjective.

I’m not famous and it might not be that big of a deal to others, but it would matter to me. I remember years ago when I was attacked in a comment for being racist. It was very upsetting. Ironically it was on a post that I still consider one of my favourite things I’ve ever written, and to this day it’s the only non-spam comment I ever deleted. But before I did, I checked with people to see if I was off base. I really questioned myself and my perspective. I found out later who wrote that comment, even met him, and I believe changed his mind, but that’s a story for another time.

Going back to the podcast, I enjoyed listening to this enough that I’ll probably end up listening to Jimmy’s book. He really is a fascinating guy and I think I have more to learn from him. On that note, take some time to listen to the Diary of a CEO podcast. Steven interviews some fascinating people and he is an excellent interviewer.

And finally, back to the quote above about disposition, I am reminded of another quote, “It’s not what happens, it’s what you do that makes the difference.” I learned this in an NLP class over 30 years ago, but it actually dates back to Epictetus: “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

We all have an incredible ability to create our own reality… to take what happens to us and frame it in a way that is positive, that teaches us, that helps us grow.

“Disposition is more important than position. ”

A Simple Shift in Perspective

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I woke up just after 4am this morning and thought to myself, ‘Nice, almost an hour more to sleep.’ Then I had this little inkling to check my alarm…

What? It’s not on?

Thinking for some reason it was a Tuesday rather than a Saturday, I turned on my 5am alarm and made sure the volume was low before snoozing until it buzzed in about 55 minutes. When it went off I hit the stop button quickly, but my wife still woke up, “Why are you getting up so early on a Saturday?” She asked curiously.

‘It’s Saturday?’

I had no idea. I was going to do my typical weekday morning routine, and head off to work. I wasn’t upset about this, it was just another normal school day in my head. I got up anyway, did my morning meditation and went back to sleep on the couch for a bit before heading to meet my buddy first our Saturday morning walk.

My buddy, also named Dave, inspired this Daily-Ink. He told me he struggled to be motivated to do our walk this morning, and I responded that I was excited to come, having realized that it was Saturday and not Tuesday. I’m not great at rehashing conversations, but this was Dave’s message in a nutshell:

‘Isn’t it interesting how that shifts your perspective. Think of how much better every day would be if you framed it the same way. What if next Tuesday you thought about what a great day it is, and ask yourself, who can I show gratitude to? Or, how can I make someone’s day great today?’

Pick any day in the last week, week day or weekend, and imagine redoing that day, but with a shift in perspective of how rich, engaging, and rewarding that day was going to be… What’s to stop us from doing this daily?

Headspace when alone

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My family started watching season 6 of Alone. 10 contestants are left alone in the wild way up north on Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The challenge ends when just one remains. The contestants have to fully fend for themselves, and they battle two significant battles, starvation and boredom.

Watching this reminds me of how important our self talk is to our overall mental health. We don’t have to face the challenges of these contestants. We don’t go days being hungry. We don’t go for endless hours with no entertainment and no one to interact with. But we still spend most of our time in our own heads.

We can be our own biggest cheerleader or our own worst enemy. We have incredible power to influence our own thinking. The most important thing we can do for ourselves is appreciate that we are doing the best we can with the resources we have. We need to be kind with ourselves… especially when we find ourselves alone.

Winter blues

It’s still 17 days away to the shortest day of the year, but we are already at the point of seeing almost no sun outside of working hours. This is a time of year that I really wished I lived somewhere closer to the equator. It’s not just a trip to the shortest day, it’s also a trip to cold, wet, and sometimes snowy days for the next couple months.

This is when routines really matter, when motivation to exercise is really low, but the exercise itself is more important than ever. This is when eating well is challenging with Christmas festivities, and time off work for the winter break becomes an easy time to break your fitness and eating routine.

I’ve tried a new routine of writing at night so as not to squeeze my morning routine, but I didn’t really develop the habit and I’m back to writing in the morning. Except on weekends. Weekends are already slower and I haven’t written my posts on a weekend morning in weeks. Thus, I know the holidays will be a challenge to maintain my habits.

It’s a really busy week ahead, and I’ll be home late most nights. It will feel like besides my morning routine, the only things on my agenda are work and sleep… and dark, rainy, gloomy skies… and the cold. Yuck.

I need to remember to find moments of joy at work and at home. I need to make sure I’m eating well and taking my vitamins. And most of all, I need to remember that before I realize it, spring will be here. Every year seems shorter, faster, and so winter will be but a distant memory soon enough… the trick is finding, no creating, memories of this winter beyond the darkness, wet, and cold.

As my coffee mug says, “What a great day it is today!”

Do the thing

“Preparing to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Scheduling time to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Making a to-do list for the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Telling people you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Messaging friends who may or may not be doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Writing a banger tweet about how you’re going to do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Hating on yourself for not doing the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on other people who have done the thing isn’t doing the thing. Hating on the obstacles in the way of doing the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Fantasizing about all of the adoration you’ll receive once you do the thing isn’t doing the thing.

Reading about how to do the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading about how other people did the thing isn’t doing the thing. Reading this essay isn’t doing the thing.

The only thing that is doing the thing is doing the thing.” ~ Strangest Loop

It doesn’t matter if it’s a workout, a phone call, a challenging conversation, or even a blog post. The task won’t get done unless you actually do it. That said, if you want it done, it’s good to schedule it, it’s good to add it to your tasks, and it’s good to tell people and make the thing public. The quote above doesn’t dismiss doing these preparatory things, it just identifies that these aren’t enough.

The only thing that is enough is doing the thing.

Here comes the rain

Living in the Vancouver Lower Mainland, I miss the rainy season in Barbados. When the rainy season hits on this tropical island, it meant a morning rainstorm with water droplets the size of coins soaking you in seconds, followed by the cloud cover passing you and the rain stopping almost instantly. After that there was 20-30 minutes of uncomfortable humidity as the hot sun evaporated the rainwater. Maybe this would happen again later, but often it wasn’t until the next day.

Occasionally you’d get a cloudy, cool day that lasted the whole day with intermittent rainfall, but there might only be 5-10 days like that the whole season. Maybe I’m underplaying it, after all I was 9 when I left, but I remember a rainy season I could easily handle.

Today was a reminder that BC rain is nothing like that. I spent over an hour outside in misty rain, putting our above ground pool away. It was damp, and there was a constant drizzle or mist. It was gloomy. There was hardly a time during the day that I could tell you where the sun was due to the heavy cloud cover… And the season is just starting.

The worst two months of weather here are usually November and February. But the gloominess starts now. I’ll make the most of the grey days to come, even heading to and from work in the dark. I’ll continue to take my Vitamin D, and I’ll use my sunlight desk lamp at school. But I have to admit that I’d take the rainy season in Barbados any time over the rainy season in Vancouver.

Through what lens?

There is a saying that, ‘if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. We all see the world differently in different circumstances, but the same circumstances don’t always elicit the same reactions. Someone with a metaphorical hammer might see the world as nails… but another person might see the world as filled with fragile material and think the hammer is a tool of destruction. Another person with only a hammer, who sees the world as fragile, might be upset that they only have a hammer and feel helpless and limited.

In a world of hammers, while one person might see nails to be hammered in, another might see value in using the other end of the hammer to pull nails out… to remove them. Same hammer used to different ends (literally and metaphorically).

Moving from hammers to glasses. People really see the world through different coloured lenses. I think this is a good thing, but we shouldn’t be set on just one colour. We shouldn’t fixate on seeing the world in monochrome, but rather change our lenses frequently. A bad situation can be changed simply by changing our lens on the situation.

A traffic jam gives us more time to listen to an audio book. A miscommunication can lead to laughs. A mistake in an order can be a point of frustration or a moment to be gracefully corrected, or even an opportunity to try something new. What lens we choose determines our lived experience.

What saddens me is when people get stuck seeing the world through narrow, gloomy lenses. People victimize themselves, they see harm where no harm was intended. They feel the world is out to get them. They see the world through a lens of malice, hurt, and negative intent. They don’t see themselves as having a hammer, they see themselves as being nails. This isn’t a healthy way to live.

Still others get stuck seeing their past through just one lens. Trauma will do that to people. Recovery from an addiction becomes a lifelong battle, not something concurred, or replaced with new meaning. A moment in the past can define someone’s lenses in the future… limiting their future perspective.

How do we give ourselves more choice? How do we find more tools than just a hammer, and how do we see the world as not just nails? How do we change our lenses? Isn’t it interesting that we wear glasses to fix our focus, but not what we focus on… pick a good lens.

Energy flow

Some things take a lot of energy to perform, and some things give you energy.

Here are a couple opposing examples:

Meeting new people can take a lot of energy. There is the nervousness of not being sure what to say, the struggle to find common interests, the uncomfortableness of awkward silence. Meeting new people can be draining.

Working out requires a lot of energy output, but at the same time there is an endorphin surge that provides a positive feeling. The net energy you have after a good workout is fulfilling.

While both of these experiences require energy, one leaves you feeling depleted, sucking your energy batteries dry, while the other replenishes your batters and leaves you feeling charged and ready to go.

In a way, the cumulative sum of draining versus charging activities determines what kind of day you have. At the end of the day you can feel like the day wiped you out or it left you with some reserves.

You can do challenging things emotionally or physically (or both) and end your day feeling very accomplished or just exhausted. The big question is, did the day just happen to you, were you just a victim of the positive and negative energy flows, or did you help to determine them?

In other words, did you seek to perform more positive energy experiences than negative ones? Did you find moments in your day where you filled your batteries? Did you feed your mind and body with joyful moments that charged your energy reserves? Sometimes it doesn’t take much: a delicious meal, a shared joke, a 5 minute walk, a deliberate conversation, a compliment given, even a few deep breaths.

Simple, intentional things that bring you energy rather than drain energy can be the difference between coming home feeling accomplished and coming home with an empty tank. Be intentional in seeking out things that give you a positive flow of energy during the day.

Oh, can’t complain

Today on a stroll through a Saturday Farmer’s Market I passed an interesting character. He was on the obese side of heavy, in a motorized wheelchair, in loud checkered pants, and a colourful muscle shirt that revealed his diabetes monitor on his arm. Just as I was passing him, he bumped into someone he knew and I heard his response to her question, “Oh, can’t complain.”

I find it fascinating that people who suffer the most, and need the most, are often the most optimistic and generous. I worked in a school for very high needs students, many of whom came from very needy families, yet their parents were far more likely to donate their time to a shelter or volunteer kitchen than at any other school I’ve ever worked at.

My thought of the day, “Quit yer bitch’in.”

So many people have so much more to worry about and yet they live a life where they ‘can’t complain’… so really, what do we have to complain about?

Life is amazing, there is so much to appreciate, so much to value and cherish. Live, laugh, love, and for your sake more than anyone else’s… stop complaining.

Long slow road

I know it’s going to take time. I know I have to go slow. My herniated disc no longer hurts and I’ve been completely off meds for a week and a half. But I can tell that the pinched nerve in my neck is still an issue. My left arm is still very weak, and I get an annoying tingling sensation in my forearm that feels like a bug landed on me. It happens in the same spot every time and I still slap it like it’s a bug every time I feel it.

I’m back to doing my cardio. I’m stretching every day. But I was on a great path physically that was completely disrupted. I regretfully redistributed some weight that took me 2.5 years to get in the right places, and with my careful path forward it will probably be a year to year and a half to put it back where it belongs.

That’s a bit of a hard realization, although I know it’s the smart thing to do. Younger me would have been determined to speed that up. Younger me would probably have re-injured my disc in the attempt to ‘recover’ faster. The challenge now is to stay the course, keep my positive habits, and stay motivated even when the improvements are too small to see.

I am the tortoise not the hare. The road ahead is long and slow. And there isn’t a finish line as much as there is a healthy and hopefully pain free lifestyle to enjoy along the way.