Coaches and teachers are usually able to provide the knowledge and skills to perform, but the great coaches and teachers help to find the right why in their protégés.*
Victor Strecher
Before you step out
into the day
it is a good thing to recall
your talents and the
enriching environments
you make happen
and especially
the values you live for–
your path to tread.
*Victor Stretcher’s Life On Purpose.
I fill my senses with reality: wind blowing, waves crashing, plants and animals doing their thing. This place was about the same a million years ago, and a million years from now, when people are gone. Humans are just another chattering species, making noise like birds and dogs.**
Derek Sivers
We are not separate from the cosmos; we are its unfolding logic. Our atoms, expelled from volcanic eruptions of distant dying stars, have assembled into thought, love, and longing, What we call life is matter waking up. And just to be clear, life does not emerge from matter. Life manifests through it.**
AleXander McManus
Whilst we are here
we get to be something
beautiful–
Perhaps giving ourselves
in helping one another
live within our significant imperfections,
Each making some glorious chatter.
If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.^
*Derek Sivers’ Useful Not True;
**AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
^Mother Teresa, quoted in Ryan Holiday’s Right Thing, Right Now.
Better to have a stomach full of butterflies than to feel like your life is passing by.*
Rob Bell
It requires deep contemplation and commitment to living a real life, full of unsolvable secrets, puzzling riddles, unexplainable bliss, and terrible suffering.**
Arthur Brooks
At the Indian restaurant
we thought that we had to
choose from the dishes on the menu–
But it was a ten-course meal–
And it was wonderful.
-OR-
I sometimes wish
I didn’t get so nervous,
Double-guessing my decisions,
Thoughts taking over if I wake at night–
But I know I am alive.
*Rob Bell’s How To Be Here;
**Arthur Brooks’ The Meaning of Your Life.
The unintelligent jump to conclusions.
The wise just observe.*
Derek Sivers
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery…
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.**
Constantin Cavafy
Wisdom comes
to us as we journey–
Each of us
will inevitably reach our conclusion–
Before this–
Vastness through noticing–
*Derek Siver’s How To Live;
**Constantin Cavafy’s Ithaka.
“I want to find my passion.”
That my is killing us.*
Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
Every day we expend time, and we expend effort. Do you end up with more valuable tools at the end of the day, or have you simply performed tasks for someone else?**
Seth Godin
Passion–
Something out there
we search for–
Passionate–
Something in here
brought to all we do–
Talents–
Filled with passion
and honed when we play–
*Bill Burnett and Dave Evans’ How To Live A Meaningful Life;
**Seth Godin’s This Is Strategy.
Remember, for most challenges, there’s a solution and a mentor to guide you.*
AleXander McManus
You can bind up my leg, but not even Zeus has the power to break my freedom of choice.**
Epictetus
In the beginning,
Identify if this is your challenge–
And if it is, welcome
those who come your way to help–
And if it is your challenge,
Nothing will stop you, though
one caution–
be open to the possibility
that you may be
your first problem.
*AleXander McManus’ FutureU;
**Quoted in Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.
The system has called our bluff. If you want to learn, learn. But we pay for it with effort.*
Seth Godin
I am ignorant
but open,
I am incompetent
but passionate.
*Seth Godin’s blog: Education is free, learning is expensive.
We do it because being kind is the more courageous thing in a cynical world. We do it because it is right – because people deserve kindness and because kindness makes us better.*
Ryan Holiday
No time to waste. Of course there isn’t. Time is all we’ve got. Time is all there is.**
Seth Godin
How adaptable
kindness is–
In reacting and responding
to needs,
Growing into seeking
opportunities,
Not only for solving
problems, but,
Given air to breathe,
Becoming ever-present–
In thinking
in words spoken
and in actions,
And sometimes
in simply being there
in this moment–
I don’t need it
courier-delivered
and can begin
to use it right now,
In some way
for this person
in this task–
Everyone
and everything
becoming better
with kindness–
Even me.
*Ryan Holiday’s Right Thing, Right Now;
**Seth Godin’s This Is Strategy.
In my tradition, our story of creation is one that takes four days to tell…at its centre is the most crucial concept: that you are the universe, that everything the creator went through, you’ve gone through, too…I am not Jasper Young Bear. I am the creator, and believing that I am the creator is the only way I can do this work.*
Jasper Young Bear
The soul is not only the breath of human life. It is the breath of all life, the anima mundi, the animating life force of the universe. It is the vital spark in all things, distinct by not separate from our physicalness.**
Philip Newell
A story we need to hear,
A character we need to be,
A making we need to bring,
A breathing–
It’s deeper lore,
Strange to our ears–
When we breathe
the world lives,
When we hold our breath,
Earth gasps.
*From, Suleika Jaouad’s The Book Of Alchemy;
**Philip Newell’s The Great Search.
Don’t worship your heroes. Surpass them.**
Derek Sivers
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.^
W. H. Murray
It just may be
that you will bring something
wonderful into the world
if you go original
rather than copy–
*A little Chesney Hawkes to accompany the blog;
**Derek Sivers’ How To Live;
^Quoted in Jean ~Houston’s The Wizard Of Us.
THIN|SILENCE 
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