Tag Archives: Life Lessons

Making good choices

Sometimes there are big choices to make, and they are hard. Some things aren’t cut-and-dry and easy to determine that, ‘this is the best choice to make’. These big decisions are often literally about cutting away possibilities. The good and right choice isn’t always clear.

But there are other choices we make that don’t demand a lot of choice and energy. They are tiny moments of little thought, not big decisive moments… yet they can make a huge difference.

A car slows down in front of you causing you to break, then they put their indicator on just before turning. Do you aggressively attack your car horn? Do you swear and call the driver a foul name? Or do you take a deep breath, and go on your merry way.

You have an exchange with a coworker that doesn’t go well. Do you gossip behind their back? Stay angry all day? Go back to try to resolve the issue? Seek advice? Or even just move on, not allowing a small issue to grow larger in your mind?

You wake up and your morning doesn’t go as planned. Do you decide it’s just going to be a crappy day? Do something to make yourself feel better? Or just decide that it’s still going to be a great day despite the small issue that didn’t go as planned?

We spend a lot of time thinking about the big decisions in life and often don’t realize the 1,000 little decisions that we don’t think as much about matter just as much or more.

Often we build up habits of mind that make these decisions for us. I don’t want to curse at the idiot driving in front of me but when I pull up behind someone at a red light, in the left lane of a two lane road with no left turn lane, and then they put their left turn indicator on only after the light turns green, profanity escapes my mouth. I don’t even think about it, but then I drive away angry.

This isn’t a good choice to make, but it’s like it is made for me… decided in the moment without choice. Times like this are when good choices are hard, but healthy. Good choices sometimes need to be intentional. Good choices take effort when the choices in similar situations beforehand led to less than desirable choices.

We can build a good life by focussing on choosing better small choices throughout the day, and interestingly enough, this can help us choose the right path when the bigger, harder choices come our way.

Good doesn’t have to be enjoyable

I said this to my massage therapist one day when she had her elbow pressed deep into my back, “Good doesn’t have to be enjoyable”. It was uncomfortable. In no way was it enjoyable. But it was so, so good! She was working out a knot in my upper back very slowly, with a whole lot of pressure. The feeling verged on pain, but it was really good. I knew that in the coming days I would feel a lot of relief thanks to my muscles being worked over in a slow, hard, methodical way.

I think it can be easy to forget that some things are good for you, even if they aren’t fun. Ask any athlete who is stuck just below the skill level required to do a challenging move. Ask a student who is stuck on a concept, but keeps working to figure it out. Ask someone new to a an enjoyable job but the work itself is challenging to do well. Ask a person in the gym working a muscle group to fatigue and their spotter pushing them to do 3 more assisted reps, when their body wants to quit… good doesn’t have to be enjoyable.

There are many things in life that are good to do, that involve some level of uncomfortableness or discomfort, yet are absolutely worth doing. Difficult conversations are another excellent example. Very often people avoid hard but necessary conversations and the lack of communication either allows discomfort and upset to continue or actually makes matters worse. It really isn’t enjoyable having hard but necessary conversation and yet it is so valuable to have these conversations rather than avoid them.

Enjoyment isn’t a necessary byproduct of doing something that is good for you. Immediate enjoyment might not even be desirable. Sometimes it is valuable to take pleasure and enjoyment out of the equation if you want to push yourself to do something that is good for you in the long run.

I think sports is a good place to learn this as a kid. Running faster helps you play better, but that means doing tiring drills. Repeating an action over and over again can be boring, but when you use that skill properly in a game you are rewarded.

Mottos like ‘Just do it’ and ‘No pain, no gain’ come to mind. Doing something well or that’s good for you doesn’t always have an immediate reward, and so it might not be fun to do, even if it’s good for you.

A Quote on Judgement

“We judge others by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions.”

I saw this quote and wondered who said it? I was lead by my search to Stephen Covey, “We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.”

This made me think about all the things I have the good intention to say and to do, but I don’t follow through. Looking at this from the outside, there is no action, just unrealized intention. For example, I wanted to show my appreciation or write a thank you card, but never got around to it; good intentions, but to anyone else, no action. In fact, lack of action could actually be judged as lack of appreciation. My intentions were good but…

We very often don’t know another person’s intentions. We judge their behaviours and actions (or lack there of) and assume their intentions. And we know our intentions and don’t always see that our actions don’t represent what those intentions are.

This quote is a reminder not just to think about what another person’s intentions are, but also for us to think about how our actions truly represent our behaviours and actions to others. Are we living a congruent life where are actions demonstrate our intentions? Because good intentions are not enough if we aren’t expressing them.

Big lessons from little ones

We can learn a lot from being around small kids:

• The delight and joy they find in the smallest of things.

• The ability to adapt rules to find greater joy in a game.

• The freedom to use a toy or a tool in an unintended and imaginative way.

• The way they can be completely honest without malice, shame, or ill intent.

• The comfort that they feel with their bodies and their appearance.

• The easy way in which they share love and affection with people they care about.

• The curiosity and desire to know, to understand, and to question.

It’s a shame that as adults we have let some of these little life lessons slip away.

Updating my profile picture

When you live it, you don’t see it. Maybe you feel it… we are all getting older. I had my photo taken for work recently and realized that I look quite a bit different from my online profile pictures I have been using.

The one on the left is not from too long ago (2018 or 2019), but long enough that I’m no longer that guy. More grey, higher hairline, a few deeper lines. These things are beyond my control.

What is within my control is that I’m fitter than that guy. He had about 15 unwanted pounds on him and yet weighed less than I do now. I’ve lost the unhealthy weight and added muscle.

I can’t stop time, and my face will show my age in the coming decade much more than it did in the past decade. I accept that. But I’m working on being Younger Next Year, and slowing down the ravages of time on my physical and mental health. Part of that is not pretending I’m something that I’m not… so a new profile picture is something I plan to do a bit more frequently than every 3-4 years.

Wait for it

Anticipation is a funny thing. When you look forward to something that you are excited about, the anticipation can work in your favour or against you. It can be a big part of the event, the buildup actually becomes part of the experience. It can be more fun than the actual event, like planning a surprise party for someone else where the organizing and conspiring brings great joy. It could also ruin the event when expectations exceed outcomes.

I have never been someone that gets overly excited in anticipation, and so it always fascinates me to see others build up anticipation. When my kids were young, I used to fake anticipation to play along with theirs. I didn’t want my lack of anticipation to be something that took away their joy in looking forward to an event.

I remember when we lived in China, my wife and her sister planned to surprise our kids on a visit to Thailand. My sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and their two kids were going to meet us in Chang Mai, and our kids didn’t know. The day came after a lot of excited planning and we went to a night market knowing they would be there too. The surprise was amazing. It was a wonderful reunion!

After the holiday we were flying home and one of my daughters said, “I wish that I knew they were coming so that I could have been excited longer.” I wasn’t expecting to hear this. Upon reflection of the surprise, she thought it would have been more fun to know in advance and be thrilled in the knowing. It wasn’t like she was sad, she really loved the time together, she just wished the knowing and anticipatory waiting was part of the event rather than the surprise.

That little conversation helped me appreciate the value of anticipation more. It helped me see that if you don’t build it up too much anticipation could be part of the fun. They say good things come to those who wait, but maybe sometimes the wait itself is a good thing.

The examined life

“The unexamined life is not worth living” is a famous dictum supposedly uttered by Socrates at his trial for impiety and corrupting youth, for which he was subsequently sentenced to death. The dictum is recorded in Plato’s Apology (38a5–6) as ho dè anexétastos bíos ou biōtòs anthrṓpōi (ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ). Wikipedia

Taking away the life or death scenario, and focusing more on the pursuit of wisdom or understanding of ourselves, why is an examined life so much more meaningful, and worth living for?

‘What is the examined life?’

I don’t think the answer is navel gazing and the pursuit of knowledge. It’s not just about analyzing the wave, it’s about getting on the surfboard. It’s not about understanding the nutritional value of food, it’s about enjoying the taste, and even finding joy in the preparation of a meal. It’s not just about the absorption of information but the joy of learning something new. And it’s not just about psychology or understanding the behaviour of others, it’s about being in a loving relationship and the companionship of family and friends.

An examined life is as much about the living of a good life as it is about the examination. Because examination itself does not create value unless the examination leads to living a life worth living.

An examined life isn’t just the life of an examiner. It’s living a life that when examined is viewed with a desire to give, to share, to contribute, and/or to strive to be accomplished at something. The examined life is one of action not just thought, of participation not just observation. This is what makes it worth living.

In preparation

How much time do we spend in preparation for something that is coming up? A simple example is a meal, and all the prep work that needs to be done before the meal is made. There is also tidy up time before guests arrive, reading to do before a meeting, personal grooming, and travel time. It occurred to me that we spend a lot of time preparing for events, and in some cases we spend more time in preparation than we do at the actual event we prepared for.

Two thoughts come to mind. First, we ought to find joy in preparation. Cooking is an excellent example of this, it’s not just the consuming of the final product but the joy of getting all the ingredients cut and cooked that we can savour. Can a fun event start for us as we shower and shave, and get ourselves ready? If we are going to spend so much of our lives in preparation for something upcoming, how can we find more joy in this time?

The second thought is about daily exercise. When we aren’t athletes training for, preparing for, an upcoming event, how do we perceive such activity? Exercise is really just preparation for a better tomorrow. It is the accumulation of a healthy lifestyle that pays dividends in the future. It is the preparation for a future life that is more active and vibrant than a sedentary life would promise.

We spend a lot of time in preparation for something else, this preparation time is an opportunity to find joy, to feel accomplishment, and not just a chore to get through on the way to something else. Cooking prep isn’t work, it’s putting love into the food you make for people you care about. Workouts are work, and if done right they are hard, but you can find joy in pushing yourself to new goals, and feel the endorphins a good workout can bring. Life is not about preparation for other things, life is found in the preparation.

Old friends

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen each other for months or years, when you connect with long-time friends both time and distance melt away. There is no awkward silence, no getting up to speed, the friendship just moves forward as if it was just yesterday that you last connected.

I don’t have many friends like this, but I cherish the ones that I have. They are my family, just not by blood. As I get older, I value these connections more… Maybe because they happen less frequently, maybe because I see how precious such friendships are. Moments spent with good lifelong friends are moments that accumulate to keep life feeling rich and fulfilled.

The trick is not to wait for special events to get you together. Find opportunities to meet, to holiday, to connect for no other reason than to be together. Special events don’t happen often enough, and while distance and time may disappear when you connect weather it has been a short or long time apart, the longer apart you spend, the less time you’ll have together. So, make the time for the friends that matter.

Being rudderless

The idea of being rudderless suggests being at the whim of the tides; of not being in control. But have you ever meet anyone who just goes with the flow and everything just works out for them? One person has something challenging happen and they become a ‘Karen’, whining and complaining, and making a scene. Another person has a very similar situation occur, and not only does it not bother them, but they end up getting better assistance or service than would be expected.

For some people bring rudderless means floundering and being a victim of circumstance. For others, being rudderless means they get to ride the waves and travel to places most others only dream of going.

Our societies and cultures teach us to be driven and to steer our way through life, but sometimes I think we spend too much time trying to steer and not enough time going with the flow. We need to have a rudder, but maybe we don’t need to use it so aggressively… Let the universe lead us where we need to go.