Exciting or comforting

If you had to pick between the 2, which one would you go for.

When you think about word association exciting is probably associated with words like fun but also maybe risk.

Comforting on the other hand is probably associated with familiarity and being boring.

Despite what you might think you’d choose, if you look back on your past choices many people find that they choose comfort, over and over again.

I think the reason for this is that even if we can’t admit it, we’d much rather stick with what we know and be bored than take a risk and potentially have it go wrong.

And so the real choice we give ourselves is risk or relief.

Marathons and sprints

At some point in your life you’ll be faced with the decision of taking a break or keep pushing on.

When you’re running a marathon you know from the beginning that you have to pace yourself for the long haul.

But often we live our lives like it’s a sprint. We want the end goal too quickly without being committed for the long haul. Then you run out of steam before you’ve reached your goal and end up feeling like you can’t go on.

Good things take time so, slow down, be patient and focus on the journey more than the goal.

You need to do better

Think of something that you’re currently working on and ask yourself with no judgement, can I do better?

When you’re not getting what you want out of life and things aren’t quite going your way, it’s easy to blame external things.

But sometimes the reason things aren’t working out is because you need to do better.

Maybe you’ve gotten lazy or maybe you weren’t aware of the effort required.

Once you’ve realised you need to do better, do better.

Yes, it really is that simple.

Yes or no questions

All decisions about whether or not you should do something come down to yes or no questions.

Should I move to another city?

Should I cut my hair short?

Should I ask him out to dinner?

The questions on their own are simple but when we add in context, feelings and fears we make it much more complicated. Granted, context can be helpful because if the person you’re considering asking to dinner is in a relationship, it’s probably best not to bother.

However, the added information can also be unhelpful.

Take moving to another city, you might be super excited but also kind of scared because of the uncertainty, even though you feel like you need a change.

When you allow feelings related to fear to be at the forefront of your mind, it can often hinder your ability to make decisions.

So sometimes it’s best to remove all the details and ask yourself a simple question. Answer yes or no, stick with it and move forward.

Is it wrong to have billionaires?

Over the past year or so there has been a lot of conversation around wealth, that those with more should have less.

This isn’t applying to the people earning £200k or even a multi-millionaire but instead to those in the top percentile, those that have amassed more wealth than they could ever imagine.

People say it’s wrong to have billionaires because no person can ever spend that amount of money, people are starving or suffering and they’ve had to exploit other people to gain their wealth.

And so if it is wrong to have billionaires how do you police it and what is the limit?

Do you raise taxes for the wealthy to the point where billionaire status would be impossible?

Do you somehow limit a persons earnings to £999,999,999 or would you make it cap it at much less?

More importantly who would be in charge of it?

Whether having billionaires is or isn’t wrong, I don’t have an answer (and maybe there isn’t one). However, I do think it is a topic worth discussing.

Do unto others…

…as you would have them do unto you.

The idea of treating people as you’d want to be treated is all good and well in theory.

But when it comes down to the crunch, is it what you practice in your day to day life.

When people talk about this topic of how we should treat other people, often they’re thinking of how they want to be treated. Yet the same kindness, respect, honestly, understanding and patience is not extended to others.

It doesn’t mean that you’re cruel to people, it could be something as small as not holding the door open for people but expecting others to do it for you.

Sometimes it’s intentional and sometimes it’s by accident. But when you catch yourself treating someone in a way you would not want to be treated, change your behavior.

5 Quotes from Zig Ziglar

I first came across Zig Ziglar after hearing Seth Godin mention him. I later listened to one his talks on YouTube, This is your brain and here’s how it works.

It was a few years ago but I jotted down a some quotes that I thought were worth sharing:

Positive thinking won’t let you do anything but it it will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
Motivation isn’t permanent.
Opportunity is where you are, most people simply overlook it.
The person you are and the person who people think you are , are many times entirely different people.
You cannot consistently perform in a manner which is inconsistent with the way you see yourself.

Saying what you mean

There’s no need to skirt around the issue.

Being clear with your words might seem like a simple thing to do. Yet if you reflect on conversations you’ve had and the things you’ve said recently you might find times when you haven’t been so clear.

It might have been because you weren’t really thinking in the moment but upon reflection you can see that you should have chose your words more carefully.

However, it could also be that the words you chose in the moment weren’t totally honest. Maybe you were scared to say how you really feel.

Either way what ends up happening is you’re not happy with the response you get from the person you were talking to. It’s not because you didn’t agree with them but instead because their response wasn’t addressing what you really had to say.

Next time try being a little clearer and say what you really mean.

You don’t need more information

You buy more books, attend more events and enroll on more courses.

You think these things will give you the necessary knowledge and tools to pursue the thing you’re interested in.

But how much is too much?

When will you stop gathering information and just start?

We’re often relunctant to accept that we’re ready to jump in and really do the work. Instead we hide behind this great online course that will teach us what we need to know. You probably tell yourself, you’ll start once the course is done.

But then you just end up finding something else to distract yourself.

Of course, there’s no point starting something if you have no knowledge of what you’re trying to purse. But it gets to a point where you’re better off starting with some knowledge and learning along the way than simply consuming more information.

Understanding the vision

When viewing a piece of work it’s important to understand the vision.

What is the intention behind the work?

It’s like when their is a piece of art and people don’t get. They will criticise it and complain about it or say that they don’t understand.

Those thoughts come from the perpective of the viewer.

But if you then think about it from the artists perspective or even read/listen to the artist talk about their work, you might start to understand the vision a little more.

Sometimes it’s easy for a message to get lost in translation, especially when you’re viewing it through the lenses of your own biases, interests and experiences.