Tag Archives: perspective

Count your blessings

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Every day someone gets in an accident that they had no control over. Someone else gets a diagnosis they aren’t expecting. Someone else thinks they have job security, and then suddenly they don’t. This, and worse, happens every day.

Sometimes it’s hard to appreciate what you’ve got when nothing changes. You are just going through days ranging from appreciating, to accepting, to dealing with, to tolerating daily events, completely oblivious to how much harder things could be. Unaware of the challenges others just like you face. Ignorant of how fortunate you are to simply not have faced a more unlucky path.

You don’t need good news to count your blessings, you just need to recognize that the lack of bad news is actually something to be thankful for. And when less positive news does come, when things seem unfair, when hard times surface, there is strength in knowing that you’ve had blessed moments in your life.

The challenge is that it’s hard to appreciate how lucky, how blessed you’ve been, when times are tough… So pause and take a moment to build up your resilience by appreciating everything that’s good right now.

Hold on to the good weather

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I had a summer ritual of sitting for 10 minutes in the morning sun over the summer. Shirt off, eyes closed, listening to a meditation. Today I went in the hot tub after my morning walk and then the sun came out from behind the clouds.

I paused and took full advantage. The sun won’t be up and warm enough in the morning much longer as we head into fall, so I’ve got to take every opportunity I’ve got. I’m going to eke out these sunny morning moments before the fall rains come.

I’m also going to keep finding joy in the little things, like holding on to the good weather while we’ve got it.

Uncivility

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The statements that I wholeheartedly disagreed with almost everything Charlie Kirk stood for, AND that I am deeply saddened and appalled that he was gunned down, murdered, are not contradictory. In fact, put together, these two statements make another statement: They say that violence is not an answer to disagreement in a civil society.

Violence is uncivil.

When societies accept violence as a natural consequence to disagreements, they lose site of what it means to be a free society. They permit further violence as a solution to disagreement. They invite and incite tyranny, control, and loss of freedoms. They go down a path to being less civil, and more dangerous. And they lead to a society more greatly restricted in both rights and freedoms as citizens.

I’ve said before, “We need a society that allows disagreement. We need to be civil about how we protest. Because there is no civil society where violence and damaging property works one-way… only the way upset people think it should. Societies that tolerate inappropriate protest are inviting responses that are less and less civil. And nobody wins.”

Nobody wins, civility is lost, and rationalizations or justifications of any kind promote the worst kind of tolerance… tolerance to violence.

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Related:

• Appropriate Protest

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Embracing the cycle

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There have been many years where during the summer my fitness has been on cruise control. I do just enough so that I do not fall too far behind in gains. This summer was different. I pushed hard, stayed very healthy, and even moved in the right direction.

Now I’m back at work, and I’m just going through the motions, doing the bare minimum to check the box that I did a workout. That’s just where I am right now. Normally this would bug the crap out of me, but I’m actually accepting this as part of the cycle. It’s really hard to be pushing for improvements all the time. It’s hard to stay motivated.

Sometimes just showing up is a win. Putting the time in, without giving 100% is still putting the time in. Some days that’s all I’ve got. And the reality is, that’s a lot more than not showing up at all. That’s a lot more than many people do.

It might be a few more days, it might be a week or two, but I’ll get back into a cycle where I push myself. Until then I’ll still get on the treadmill, I’ll still stretch, I’ll still move weights around… and more importantly, I won’t beat myself up for not doing enough.

Goodish

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I was texting to a friend and asked how things were going. His response, ‘Goodish’. This word hit a chord with me. I get it. It’s a sentiment more than descriptor. It’s less than ‘but’, as in ‘I’m good but…’, and yet more than saying satisfactory.

Health is good, a few aches, yet doing well. Family is well too. Work is just fine. Me? Oh, I’m ‘Goodish’.

Time perspective

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The older you get, the faster time flies. I don’t think it’s anything magical, it’s simply perspective. To a 10 year old, 5 years is half of a life. To a 60 year old, 5 years is 1/12th of a life. To a kid waiting for dessert, 5 minutes feels like forever. An adult is practiced at waiting and doesn’t mind a break before dessert.

Yet, even though I know it’s just perspective, I can’t help but be amazed at how quickly time flies by. It’s like I’m on a merry-go-round that is speeding up by tiny increments… completely unnoticeable at any given moment, but clearly obvious when seen over longer periods of time.

It’s a reminder to appreciate the current moment even more, because the next moment goes by more quickly. Appreciate the now, it’s gone soon enough, and it’s being replaced by ever shorter moments later.

OneWord: Pause

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In 2020, I appropriately chose a #OneWord of Resilience. For 2021 I chose Thrive. In January of 2023 I chose ‘Many words, not one word’, and these were: Consistency, Efficiency, Positivity, Vocal, and Gracious.

I’m not waiting for January to pick a new word. The school year starts on Tuesday and I’m picking a special #OneWord to focus on for my final year before retiring. This word is Pause.

The inspiration came on my weekly Coquitlam Crunch walk this morning. The past few weeks were prime blackberry season. They have been ripe for the picking, delicious and abundant. But last week it really seemed like the season was at its end. Today on our walk they were very few on the nearby branches and none were the large juicy variety that we could pick to our heart’s content just a week or two before.

Just like that, the season was over… Or so I thought. At the top of the trail we take a small detour loop through a more wooded area and just as we were about to get back on the main path, we passed a section that was filled with ripe berries ready to be picked. I grabbed one and kept walking. Then I stopped. I paused. I told my buddy to hold up. We paused our fitness trackers and spent a few minutes picking and eating blackberries.

A delicious pause in our day.

And there you have it: Inspiration for my last school year. Pause.

Taking the time to sneak in a final moment to enjoy the last of the blackberry season was my literal example of ‘stopping to smell the roses’. And that’s what I plan to do all year. Pause and appreciate, pause and celebrate, pause and experience.

There is a lot I’m going to miss when I leave this job, what I don’t want to do is miss things while I still have time to enjoy them. I’m going to seek out opportunities to take pause in my day and truly experience the things I cherish.

Short gains, long views

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It’s hard to stick to healthy routines over the summer. It takes a lot more effort than when you have everything dialled in and a schedule to keep. That said, I’m thrilled about how I’ve taken care of myself over the summer. I haven’t just been in maintenance mode. I’ve actually stayed right on top of things and continued with my goals, albeit in tiny increments.

But tiny increments in the right direction still means I’m going in the right direction. The thing to remember is that while the gains are small and hard to see, they are only hard to see when looking short term. I’ve gained muscle this year, and I’ve simultaneously reduced my body fat percentage.

Sure when I compare myself to the start of summer, or even a couple months before that, the gains are small. But when I compare myself to 2 years ago, or better yet when I started my fitness goals 5-and-a-half years ago, the gains are significant!

It’s easy to get frustrated with how small gains can be in the short term, but fitness and wellbeing are lifelong goals and as such gains should be looked at through a longer lens… and I have to say that things are going, looking, and feeling great!

Going beyond ‘Reconnect, Reminisce, and Repeat’.

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I got away with a buddy to go fishing for a couple hours on Wednesday. It was part of a bigger day together, and we didn’t fish for long, or catch anything. But we connected and had an adventurous day. Good food, good company, and good scouting for a future fishing trip.

It’s one of the things he and I talk about, which is the idea of connecting for experiences. When you don’t see a good friend regularly, it might be easy to ‘pick back up where you left off’ and feel connected. But it can also feel like that’s all you do… Reconnect, reminisce, and repeat.

We didn’t plan a whole day of fishing, we took advantage of the resources and time available to us and made the most of it with a new experience. We didn’t just talk about the things we’ve done or hope to do, we had an excursion. Too often we think planing and organizing needs to be a drawn out part of connecting, with an event planned on some distant future date.

Last night another buddy texted to see what I was up to and just over an hour later I was sitting on his balcony. Then we walked to a delicious dinner. This was so refreshing compared to, “What are you doing next week Friday?”

Plans don’t need to be big, and novelty and newness make for great experiences. Also, last minute plans can be so much more fun than the bigger, much more planned events can be. Novelty keeps the experiences new enough that they become the things we talk about years from now.

Visually acclimatized

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I’m sitting in my basement and on the floor in front of me is a framed painting that should be on the wall. It’s one of a pair that used to side-by-side, but they need a couple Velcro strips to get them aligned. Unfortunately the strip unstuck from the one that’s currently on the floor, and I removed it because it looked way too crooked on the wall.

It’s an easy fix, but I haven’t done it yet. It’s interesting that although I’m downstairs a lot, before looking at the painting on the floor just now, I’ve barely noticed the fact that it’s on the floor and missing from next to the matching frame on the wall.

How many things are like that for us? Items sitting inconspicuously in the absolutely wrong spot but we are visually acclimatized to where they sit? We go about our day ignoring the fact that items have a new home in a location they shouldn’t have?

I wonder if that’s the same for our brains and the way we think about things?