Tag Archives: Life Lessons

Where are my keys?

My wife and I are constantly asking questions like this since we started our main floor renovation. We usually have our spots for things as we enter the door and those spots have been replaced by plywood and empty rooms. This morning it was, “Where’s my wallet?”

But as I internally asked myself that question, I wondered whose voice do I here and who am I asking? Do I really need to verbalize that question to myself? Yes, I do. But why?

Our minds are fascinating. And they don’t come with a user guide. One important thing that I’ve learned about it though is that minds are powerful answering machines. My mind may not know where my keys or my wallet are, but it immediately starts to think of a possible answer when I ask.

So are we asking the right questions? I’m not sure we are most of the time?

Why do I always lose my keys?

Why do these things always happen to me?

What’s wrong with me?

Why me?

Ask and ye shall receive. Seek and ye shall find.

Ask the wrong questions, and your amazing brain will do its job and find you an answer.

So, are you asking your brain empowering questions, or are you asking it questions that undermine you, and give you reason to believe you deserve less, are worthless, (worth less)?

What did I do with my keys after I came through the front door?

What will make this situation better?

What can I ask myself, so that my brain gives me a worthy and self-enriching answer?

It’s time to find the key.

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Crossing the Thin Line

Have you ever noticed that sometimes it feels like the days slip by. You follow a routine filled only with preparing for work, work, preparing and eating meals, your commute, and preparing for the next day? Sometimes there is a thin line between existing and living. This line separates what feels like a Groundhog Day from some simple things that make life great.

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Crossing the Thin Line

A genuine laugh.

A shared smile.

A deep conversation.

A thoughtful contemplation.

A short walk.

A long reflective pause.

A delicious lunch.

A worthy cause.

A kind gesture.

A little surprise.

A random purchase.

A twinkle in someone’s eye.

It can be internally driven, it can be externally motivated.

It can be deliberately sought after, it can be accidentally activated.

It’s not a chasm to cross, just a simple fine line… Between a day lost simply existing, and a life sublime.

The most powerful paradoxes of life

I just read this thread of tweets by Sahil Bloom and it needs to be shared! Click on the tweet and read them all. More than one will speak to you. These are indeed paradoxes that you will have experienced and understood intuitively at some point in your life.

Beyond that, I’ll let them speak for themselves:

Pause and think

A few days ago a quote was said in my morning meditation,

“Mindfulness is a pause – The space between stimulus and response: That’s where choice lies.” ~ Tara Brach

It’s amazing how seldom we give ourselves the time and space to pause, especially when we are making decisions. We feel the urge to respond, to fix, to appease, to vent, to impose, and most of all to decide… without a lot of thought, without reflection, and without hesitation… without being mindful.

“Let me think about that.”

“I’m not sure, give me a bit of time.”

“Let me ask a few people how they’ve handled situations like this.”

“I’ll get you an answer by the end of the day.”

Often a thoughtful delay brings a far better response than a knee-jerk reaction. Gut instinct can work, but our gut need not be the default decision-maker, when contemplation can provide us with insights not immediately available to us.

Sometimes a slow and thoughtful response can help things settle down a bit and reduce the tension or the anxiety around addressing the actual problem, rather than creating more problems by dealing with the symptoms of an issue and not the underlying problem itself… a problem that would be easy to solve, if we just allowed ourselves a little time to think.

A short clip on kindness

Take a couple minutes out of your day and enjoy this story by @therichb on TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8xFUYDm/

It’s amazing how small acts of kindness can spread joy, not just for the person receiving the kindness, but for the giver as well… even if it’s done without recognition.

Here’s another video to make your day:

Spread love and kindness, it’s good for you!

We live in a time warp

When you are 10, 5 years is half a lifetime. 10 years is half your life at 20, and 20 years is half your life at 40.

By the time you hit 40, your first 20 years are a distant memory, and you remember choice moments, but you don’t remember those years like when you were younger. The distance in time causes you to lose your ability to hold on to old memories. You can’t hold an ever accumulating amount of memories, and so some fade away. So time stretches the past into a distance too far to see everything.

Meanwhile, 1 year at 10 used to be 1/10 of your life. A year at 20 is 1/20th of your life and a year at 40 is 1/40th of your life. Each year, the lengths of a year as compared to the rest of your life diminishes. So time also shrinks the future while it stretches the past. We live in a time warp, and time goes by faster every day.

Sometimes it’s good to reflect on this, if only just to appreciate the fleeting moments in a day, and know that unless we appreciate the time we have, we can only appreciate the memories that we know will fade away.

I’d rather tell you than smell you

I started my career teaching middle schoolers for 9 years. Every spring I had a chat with the kids about how their bodies were changing and it was time for them to start showering more frequently, if they didn’t already shower every day. And if they weren’t already using deodorant, it was time to talk to their parents about getting some… and then actually using it every day.

I always started with the same line, “I’d rather tell you than smell you.” I would follow up with, “…and if I tell you, I’m doing you a favour, because I don’t get as close to you as your friends do, and so if I smell you, your friends can smell you too. And because I’m doing you a favour, I’m not going to be embarrassed about telling you.”

I will admit that a few times over the years I chose to have a female teacher address this with a female student. This was because in these circumstances I thought it would be devastating to the child if I said it, and the intent is to help them, not horrify them.

Now that I’m in a high school I still use that line. I said it last Monday as we started weight club, and I’ll share it again in the spring. I had the conversation with a boy in Grade 10 a few years ago, and he thanked me publicly, in front of friends and their families in a grad speech. That was something I never expected.

It’s not mean, it’s an uncomfortable thing to share, but not as uncomfortable as the student’s friends would feel, sitting all day next to someone that could use a shower or some deodorant. It’s easier for me to say something, than it is for their friends.

Favourite food on the menu

When you find that one dish that you love having at a restaurant, don’t deviate. Order it every time. Why? Because if you decide to try something else, more than 9/10 times you will be disappointed.

I am a huge fan of food from all over the world. I take chances with food. I eat ‘street food’ when I travel. I like variety. But when I find a food I like at a restaurant, I mean really like, then I don’t stray from it.

Why take a low risk for a small reward? I already really like a dish, so why try something new and get disappointed? Even if there is that one dish that might be slightly better, the reward is small since I’m already enjoying a favourite. And besides, more than likely the different dish won’t be as good, and I’d leave the restaurant feeling let down.

When you find a favourite, stick to it. Enjoy and savour it, knowing you aren’t missing out, you are getting exactly what you like. Save the experimentation for new restaurants, or restaurants where you don’t already have a favourite.

Choosing not to act

There are moments in your life when doing nothing is better than doing something. These are seldom moments when nothing feels like the right thing to do, but then time and reflection allow you to see that you made the right decision. Here are a few examples:

  • You are in an incident where someone is displaying road rage. They get out of the car and want to confront you. You keep your windows up and doors locked and drive away.
  • You own shares and the whole market does a dive (not just your stocks), and rather than selling low, you do nothing. A week and a half later your stock prices are where they were before the crash.
  • Your child tells you about a very bad choice they made, but they chose to tell you rather than to hide it from you. You want to punish him/her but know that this could cost you the relationship where they feel they can come to you.

Choosing not to act is different than passively doing nothing. That’s the fundamental difference: One is a choice, the other is a lack of choice. Knowing and understanding the difference, that comes with experience, and a good dose of reflection. Because choosing not to act doesn’t always feel right, and only after looking back at the experience later can you truly see if non-action was the best, or at least a good, choice.

Lesson not learned

In February I broke my bow. I carelessly shot it without an arrow in it. When you dry shoot a compound bow, the force that usually goes to push the arrow forward ends up reverberating up the strings and the cams get the full brunt of the force. It sounds like a gunshot as the string gets stretched to great tension and breaks. I know this sound well because yesterday I heard it (and felt it) again.

Two days ago I planned to shoot after work. I had a dental cleaning then went back to shoot in my empty gym. But when I got back to work I kept working until almost 7pm and got too hungry to stay and shoot. At my dental cleaning I found out I had lost a small filling and was able to book another appointment yesterday.

So yesterday before my late appointment, I got my ‘to do’ list done at work and raced to squeeze in some archery before the appointment. I was going to have to rush to get a scoring round in. Rushing was a bad idea. I didn’t do my ritual setup when I took the bow out of the case. So I got to the shooting line and realized that I had not adjusted my sight scope, something usual done well before this point.

Instead of stepping away from the shooting line, to do my setup, I stood there and made the adjustment. At this point my usual shooting procedure was completely broken. I made the adjustment, then fired my bow, in the rush I was in, to get a scoring round in.

Bang, ow. I instantly knew my mistake.

I’ll go to the archery store this weekend to see if my bow cams are salvageable or not. If they aren’t, I know the lower cam is not available to be replaced… it’s the same brand and model as my old bow, not made anymore. If I have to buy a new bow, I’ll be sure to buy one that has been dry shot tested, some of the newer bows don’t explode when you make this mistake.

Both times I did this, I was in a rush and careless. Both times I have reminded myself that I’m still a rookie. But most archers don’t make this mistake, and even less make it twice. It’s an expensive lesson that I hope I have finally learned.