“Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins
When you begin, nothing is certain save the drive to create something worth the effort. The more certain you are of the answer or the outcome in advance, the more likely it is to have been done already—to be derivative—and the less anyone will care, including you. Anything certain has already been done. But the possibility of loss is also a signpost that what you’re doing really matters, that you’re vested in both the process and the outcome. Knowing that fuels a deeper commitment to action and to striving not just to create something, but to create something amazing. Risk of loss has to be there. You cannot create genius without having skin in the game. Kill the risk of loss and you destroy meaning and one of the core motivations for action Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance by Jonathan Fields
“For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.” “Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.” ― Carlos Castaneda
“If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior’s approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency.” ― Chögyam Trungpa
The world rarely goes as you plan.
It never does.
It is amazing how hard we each work at remaining where we already are, doing the same things over and over, and how little time we spend trying to change everything. To go where we want to go.
Everything changes and yet we spend hours trying to believe it does not and trying to stop it from happening.
We resist, and then the world changes anyway, often not the way we like, and I now believe that you need to not just embrace change, you need to drive change. You need to make it happen.
Change is a train, and you can lay tracks to guide that change in the general direction you want, or you can sit fearfully and hope the change goes where you want it to. Trust me, change never goes where you want. Never.
It is smarter for you to make the change happen, to make a conscious decision about what you want and then work hard to make it happen.
The secret to success is simple,
and success does not go to the smartest or the best;
It goes to the person who tried, who experimented and tried new things, and took risks
It goes to the person who focused on making it happen, who took single minded action.
It goes to the person who networked and made friends, and helped and gave to others,
And victory always goes to the one who didn't give up.
The world is full of people who want something better, but are afraid to change, or can't commit to the work, to the discipline.
You will do the work, you will get the job done, you will make things change.
Never give up. Ever.
D
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” “Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them-a desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have the skill, and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill.” "Inside of a ring or out, ain't nothing wrong with going down. It's staying down that's wrong." ― Muhammad Ali
“I've often thought there ought to be a manual to hand to little kids, telling them what kind of planet they're on, why they don't fall off it, how much time they've probably got here, how to avoid poison ivy, and so on. I tried to write one once. It was called Welcome to Earth. But I got stuck on explaining why we don't fall off the planet. Gravity is just a word. It doesn't explain anything. If I could get past gravity, I'd tell them how we reproduce, how long we've been here, apparently, and a little bit about evolution. I didn't learn until I was in college about all the other cultures, and I should have learned that in the first grade. A first grader should understand that his or her culture isn't a rational invention; that there are thousands of other cultures and they all work pretty well; that all cultures function on faith rather than truth; that there are lots of alternatives to our own society. Cultural relativity is defensible and attractive. It's also a source of hope. It means we don't have to continue this way if we don't like it.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
How many of us live our lives on our terms,how many live the lives we want?
Listen.
There are groups of people in this big beautiful world who have managed to live design and choose how they live so that it is true and interesting and theirs. They are what they chose to be, and how many of us can say that?
Too often we create lives which are, at best, sad attempts at raising our material status, bettering our standard of living, so we buy things, we choose things, and at the worst, we simply let things happen to us without making any choices.
I know I spend too much of my life not choosing, accepting whatever floats my way, and not doing all I can to mke my life mine, and to do those things I have always wanted to do, but have always pushed back.
I do things. I am busy. I do well.
But there is a risk of crossing the line and becoming a simple cog. I make other things function, but cogs do not make, they do not create.
It is time to make something.
I have waited too long, we all have, but not too late.
It is time to get building, writing, fighting, creating, struggling, kicking up to the light, and we have to use all our heart, leaving none out, fighting dirty if we have to make it real, and to make it now.
To not choose a path is to let the world choose for you, so you can be what they want you to be, not all you can be.
Time to take risks.
What I like about literature is that it shows the potential of a person can be, the infinite choice, the potential. Time to write large.
I once read somewhere letting the world know you too well, is to let them define, to create expectations.
It is better to unexpected, ill defined, messy, and awesomely great.
Allow yourself not a life, but to live.
Today;
Make choices
Take Risks
Go the next step
Repeat.
D
Rituals matter.
Habits are inportant.
Those daily rituals that we do define our life. What we are at the moment is a reflection of the decisions and actions that are por daily habits.
We are what we made ourselves.
If you have the habit of working out every day, you and your life reflects that choice. Your body shows that choice.
If you meditate fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening, how you react to the world, how you think, literally how your brain is configured and wired will be a reflection of that ritual or habit. Studies show that meditators literlly change how their brain functions, and that is a very enpowering thing.
No more can you say that is just how you are, everything csn change, you can change your thinking, your actions, and your life. How you think changes your life, and you control how you think. What you do daily builds your life, and you control your daily actions, your habits.
Change your habits you change your life.
Create new daily rituals and you create a new you.
If you change what you want to do, and you deciee how you want to be, and you want it enough to build your life around it, you will become it.
Pick your rituals carefully.
Don't use negative thinking, focus on positive actions, on those habits that will make you what you want to be, and eliminate what habits do not help you become what you want to be.
Eliminate the nonessential and become what matters.
D
We are raised, all of us, being asked or being told what it is that we will do once we are older. What will we be. Korean's have a ceremony where a one year old child has to pick from a collection of objects, each chosen by the parent to represent a possible future for the child. Everyone wants to predict the future, everyone wants to know it, to see it, but no one wants to create it.
We are convinced that there is some ultimate goal for each of us, that we each have some special skill that will set us apart if we could just find that one niche or career where we will shine. Everything would be good, things would just click right into place. We would lead happy purposeful lives fulfilling our destiny.
None of that is true , none of it is real, and it is harmful to believe and harmful to follow.
There is no ideal you.
There is no ultimate goal or plan for you, no one has a master design for you. You will never find that point of being perfect, and never have to change.
And that is good.
To postpone your life, put it on hold, while you figure it all out, while you find your real calling is a waste of your precious life and time. You can always find a way to make money, or find a new job, get more things, hire more people, but no one can buy themselves extra time. Your time is what it is. It is finite for all of us.
So the idea is not to be the perfect you, or to find the perfect goal, the plan is to make the perfect path.
You need to consciously design how you live, choose what you do, right this minute, going right into the next minute, and find a way that is perfect for the present you and your life at this minute in time.
Do things today that make your time and life matter today.
Every day we live our life, our way, is a perfect day.
Don't worry about the future you, that will be handled by respecting the present moment in time.
There is no final you, ever.
It is your calling to make your life yours, that gives it meaning, that makes you interested.
There is no perfect job, just the perfect moment.
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