Category: The Way of Life

• Busy Going Nowhere

  Do not brag about how busy you are.

  Busy is often a means of hiding.

  It is a way of distracting yourself and avoiding what is most important.

  Busy has no correlation to achievement.

  To be busy does not mean that you have direction.

  And to be busy with no direction means that you are doing a lot of nothing.

  What you should be after is not busyness for the sake of busyness, but purposeful action in a clearly defined direction.

  If you can take all of the energy that you spend being busy and focus it on something productive, there is no limit to how far you can go.

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  December 12, 2023

  busy, direction, goals, purpose

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• Time To Wonder

  There is not enough wonder in the world anymore.

  There are too many answers and not enough open-ended questions.

  Not everything needs to be or should be known to everyone all of the time.

  Sometimes it is better to not know certain things.

  Some things are better left a mystery or a curiosity.

  Knowing anything and everything you want and having the answer to every single question, does not necessarily make your life better.

  Much of what makes life worth living is the not knowing, the wondering, and the seeking.

  Take some time to ponder the possibilities.

  Leave some space for the unknown and the unknowable.

  You may find that you are happier when you remain open to the mystery of it all than you are when you try to know it all.

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  December 11, 2023

  mystery, open mindedness, possibility, wonder

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• Lessons For Progress

  Failure is only failure if there is no lesson in it.

  It is up to you to figure out what that lesson is.

  It may not be obvious or may be as simple as needing to be better prepared, to try harder, or to pursue a different course of action in the future.

  This is not a prescription for delusion or groundless optimism, however.

  Some failures are difficult to reconcile.

  Simply looking for the bright side is not the same as being honest with yourself, digging into the root cause of your failure, and doing the necessary work to make failure’s lessons worthwhile.

  But as long as you can find some way to turn your failure into fodder for growth, you have made progress.

  And in the end, progress is all that any of us can really hope for.

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  December 10, 2023

  failure, growth, improvement, lessons, progress

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• What You Can

  It is okay to dream beyond your means.

  Doing so can give you the hope and motivation you need to work toward a better life.

  You do not have to stay where you are.

  Nor do you have to accept the life you have been given as your fate.

  But is also okay to simply do what you can, in this moment, with what you have.

  If aspiring beyond what you can do now causes you stress, frustration, or despair, it is not useful to do so.

  As long as you are making progress by doing what you can, there is no sense in making yourself feel bad for what you cannot.

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  December 9, 2023

  aspirations, dreams, hopes

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• Working On Yourself

  Every time you focus on someone else’s shortcomings, you miss an opportunity to work on your own.

  No one is perfect.

  Every one is extremely, perhaps tragically, flawed.

  You are no exception.

  And no matter how hard you try, you will never be perfect.

  Regardless of how much you work on yourself, you will always come up short in some way.

  This is as true for you as it is for everyone else.

  The time and energy you spend focusing on someone else’s mistakes, flaws, and shortcomings is time and energy you will never get back.

  It is also time and energy spent not working on yourself, trying to improve upon your mistakes, flaws, and shortcomings.

  Of course, you should be helpful wherever and whenever possible, but there is a big difference between being helpful and being unnecessarily critical or judgmental.

  Next time you feel tempted to point out where someone else is wrong, ask yourself if your time and energy would be more wisely used working on yourself.

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  December 8, 2023

  criticism, judgemental, self care, self improvement

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