The pause is everything.*
Ryan Holiday

When we embrace flexible, renewable, and diverse approaches, we create actual progress.**
Seth Godin

Before you react,
Or respond, you may want to

pause.

Is this really what you want to
say
do
think
feel?

In the pause, there’s at least a
confirmation that this is best, but,
More likely,
There’s a better
word
action
idea
emotion.

We get to choose,
That’s the point of the pause,
And we all have it, though
it must be used and trained^ to
become the power for life that
it can be.

*Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny;
*Seth Godin’s blog: Strength through resilience;
^We may explore practising silence, stillness, detachment, and noticing as immediate responses, stretching the space between stimulus and response.

Gratitude is how we acknowledge our humble place in the universe, our place in the big dance.*
gapingvoid

Stoic joy – the joy that comes from purpose, excellence, and duty. it’s a serious thing …**
Ryan Holiday

I am grateful to be here, the odds were
stacked against me (and I would have no idea had they won,
But they didn’t); even so ingratitude comes too easily –
I don’t want to be a moaning ninny – so
I work on my thankfulness, I admit my knowledge of
what I can see and hear and touch and smell and taste,
All that is other, all that is more than my casual glance might afford,
I see how I can increase my gratefulness through
purpose and mastery and responsibility, how
I may not only dwell thankfully now, but in my
past and future, too.

Gratitude works.  Gratitude scales.  Gratitude creates a positive cycle of more gratitude.  When in doubt, default to gratitude.^

*gapingvoid’s blog: Count Your Blessings;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic;
^Seth Godin’s blog: If every day were Thanksgiving.

He who cannot howl, will not find his pack.*
Charles Simic

As the tamed horse
still hears the call of her wild brothers
and as the farmed goose flaps hopeful wings
as his sisters fly overhead,
so too, perhaps,
the wild ones amongst us
are our only hope in calling us back
to our true nature.**
Joel McKerrow

Why can’t we be more like the “good” children?
Why can’t we just learn like all the others?
Why all the questions?
Why can’t we fit in?
Why can’t we just do our job?
Why can’t we enjoy having a good time and being comfortable?
Why can’t we admit we’re just too old for that?
Why can’t we not be trouble to others?

howl
Howl
HOWL –
Inside,
Deep down, struggling
to keep it in –
Got to let it out.

I hear your howl,^
Can you hear mine?

*Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ Women Who Run With the Wolves;
**The Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer: meditation for Day 29;
^A howl is my epithet for real possibility for our lives, not normally found on our civilised job lists.

Where do your own real thoughts come from? How can we access them? From what source does our true, authentic self speak?*
Steven Pressfield

How does your ruling reason manage itself? For in that is the key to every thing. Whatever else remains, be it in the power of your choice or not, it is but a corpse and smoke.**
Marcus Aurelius

We have so many thoughts running through our heads –
All the time, thoughts thoughts thoughts.

Take a moment to notice them –
They’re happening without any help from you or me.

There are other thoughts, though,
The ones that belong to this Noticer of thoughts.

Notice what feeds these thoughts, create habits for
exploring and expanding these sources.

When we write these important thoughts down, we separate them from
all the others, to play with them, towards the sentences we want to give life to.

Who knows what will then turn up in
our words and phrases and sentences.

Discovering your Self in language is always an epiphany, even if finding the worlds to describe your inner reality can be an agonising process.^

Revision isn’t only the act of composition.
Revision is thinking applied to language,
An opening and reopening of discovery,
A search for the sentence that says the thing you had
no idea you would say.^^

*Steve Pressfield’s Do the Work;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic;
^Bessel Van de Kolk’s Your Body Keeps the Score;
^^Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing.

A life of obligation and no opportunity is crimped. A life of opportunity and no obligation is hollow. A life that fuses opportunity and obligation is true.**
Daniel Pink

Some people as they grow up become less … Other people as they grow up become more.^
Eugene Peterson

Opportunity creates obligation, and
obligation stimulates opportunity;^^
These we welcome so that we may continue
becoming more no matter our age.

*Number 66 – officially a pensioner;
**Daniel Pink’s The Power of Regret;
^Eugene Peterson’s Run With the Horses;
^^These are two more guises for the dynamic and static goals we need in life, as Christian Schwartz identified them, and as identified by Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi as exploration and home.

The universe is not a closed system, It is open, participatory – unfolding in real time. It does not speak in words, but in patterns and presence. It reveals itself through relation.*
AleXander McManus

One of the simplest ways for us to see more of what we are not seeing is to engage with people who are positioned at other places in the system and are therefore seeing things from different perspectives.**
Adam Kahane

Time for
exploring
awe
gardening
walking
listening
being
opening
conversation
play
discovery
valuing
imagining
collaboration
making
more.

*AleXander McManus’ Blue Moments;
**Adam Kahane’s Everyday Habits For Transforming Systems.

(Something strange happened with the post this morning, so I’m reposting.)

It is here where the synergistic interplay of courage, wisdom, and generosity make us most creative.*
Erwin McManus

The person who is at ease within finds every other space larger and more enjoyable.**
James Clear

May you be your higher self today,
At home with your talents, your
energies, your values, not
having to prove yourself, being selfless
rather than taking risks, generous
instead of vaunting resources, wise
rather than clever.

*Erwin McManus’ Uprising;
**James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On enjoying your own company, what drives change, and editing your habits.

It’s while it’s being alive that life is immortal, while it’s still alive.*
Marguerite Duras

Sufis speak of their nafs, or the false self that takes the place of the soul. Somewhat more complicated than the concept of the ego, the nafs refers to all that in ourselves which has become an object for others or for ourselves. It is our visible self, the tangible, public aspect of a personality.**
James Carse

We will not succumb to the Matrix,
Life is too precious to live behind some prosopon
worn to ourselves and others, nor
will be force others to be less than they can be:
May each of us be unexpected.

*Maria Popova’s The Marginalian blog: The Backdoor to Immortality: Marguerite Duras on What Makes Life Worth Living in the Face of Death;
**James Carse’s Breakfast at the Victory.

Learn how to write anywhere, any time, in any conditions,
Starting from nowhere.
All you really need is your head, the one indispensable
requirement.*
Verlyn Klinkenborg

Why shouldn’t an anonymous career spent quietly helping a few people get to qualify as a meaningful way to spend one’s time? Why shouldn’t an absorbing conversation, an act of kindness, or an exhilarating hike get to count? Why adopt a definition that rules such things out.**
Oliver Burkeman.

Because this is not only about writing, I’ll add
body to head – all we need to begin something;
We learn as we go, we do, we wander in playfulness,
Which leads to more doing, more possibility –
Whatever piques our interest,
Develops our skills,
And makes a difference.

Mind-wandering can derail us from urgent work but offers the gift of making prospection possible. When we successfully imagine the future, it can come alive in our sense in the present.^

*Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several short sentences about writing;
**Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations for Mortals;
^Bina Venkataram’s The Optimist’s Telescope.

They like to say in there military that slow is smooth and smooth is fast.*
Ryan Holiday

Slow is for the long run,
Wisdom doesn’t grow fast.

*Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny.