As is so often the case with grace, you could not have gotten to where I now was from where I had been.*
Anne Lamott

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s “own” or “real” life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life – the life God is sending one day by day.**
C. S. Lewis

If I’m honest, I wouldn’t
have planned to have arrived here:
What I am doing today has
a lot to do with being nudged, pushed, and
pulled by things I didn’t welcome at the time, and
I’m grateful.

*Anne Lamott’s Dusk Night Dawn;
**Oliver Burkeman’s Meditations For Mortals.

Freedom is not something we “have” and therefore can lose; freedom is what we “are.”*
Viktor Frankl

No one can change everything, but everyone can change something.
Seth Godin

If you were to decide to do
that good thing
you want to make a difference in, there’s
no way I could stop you.

“Initium est dimidium facti” …
“Once you’ve started, you’re halfway there.”^

*Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Powerlessness;
^James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On how to handle idiots, pushing toward growth, and two types of choices in life.

Well, poetry holds what can’t be said. It can’t be paraphrased. It can’t be translated.*
Krista Tippett

However much we might uncover, nature will never cease to be filled with surprise ripe for the reaping.**
Maria Popova

You are more a poem than you know,
Certainly more than prose, and
never allow you or another describe you by
powerpoint.

You are not in nature,
You are nature, full of
SURPRISE! – waiting to be discovered
by yourself and others.

Of course, some want to
be powerpoint,
Off the hook, “Next slide, please,”
But not you.

*Krista Tippett’s Becoming Wise;
**Maria Popova’s The Marginalian blog: Every Loss Reveals What We Are Made of: Blue Bananas, Why Leaves Change Color, and the Ongoing Mystery of Chlorophyll.

I always admire people who marvel at things that anyone could have noticed but didn’t.*
Brian Eno

The experience of touching something timeless can shock a person out of the rhythm of ephemeral experience in daily life.**
Bina Venkataraman

We all notice something more than others do,
It’s how we provide our lives with purpose and direction and delight, but there are
some who seem to have widened their “bandwidth” exponentially –
They enrich my life and motivate me to notice more;
A lot of this is about time and effort and curiosity,^ but if there is anything
magical about becoming a better noticer, it is that everything
is useful to our original purpose and direction and delight.

We won’t be the first to have noticed what catches our attention, and,
Hopefully, because we have turned our gaze towards it,
We won’t be the last.

Everybody’s idea seems obvious to them … maybe what obvious to me is amazing to someone else? … We’re clearly bad judges of our own creations. We should put them out there and let the world decide. Are you holding back something that seems too obvious to share?^^

*Brian Eno’s A Year With Swollen Appendices;
**Bina Venkataraman’s The Optimist’s Telescope;
^All of which can be worked on.
^^Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah Or No.

It is our responsibility to set our future self up for as much opportunity, success, and joy as possible. This is how you become the person and create the life you want, rather than becoming someone with regret. Describe your future self.*
Ben Hardy

The voice is an inner whisper not obvious or known to others outside. It receives little attention and is not usually highlighted among a person’s abilities. Yet so much depends on that small voice. The truth of its whisper marks the line between honour an egoism, kindness and chaos.**
John O’Donohue

If we go for what Ben Hardy espouses –
And this is what my work with people is about –
Then we must make sure that we are also
developing the inner voice John O’Donohue writes about;
It happened that I read the two books together
four years ago, which feels
significant: as I read Hardy’s words again today, there,
Too, was the small voice desiring we
proceed with caution, always setting ourselves up for
honour and kindness over ego and chaos.

*Ben Hardy’s Personality Isn’t Permanent;
**John O’Donohue’s Divine Beauty

When a man can control his life, his physical needs, his lower self, he elevates himself.*
Muhammad Ali

These are the characteristics of the rational soul: self-awareness, self-examination, and self-determination. It reaps its own harvest … It succeeds in its own purpose.**
Marcus Aurelius

The fourth elemental truth states:
You are not in control,^ but
there is more detail to this we need to explore:
Whilst we can’t control things out there, we can
control things in here – the most
important place – meaning we can control
our response to everything out there –
This is Viktor Frankl‘s point;
Marcus Aurelius wrote wise words to himself, but
we get to benefit: we are each capable of developing
awareness and
examination and
determination^^
of the self, leading to some interesting results –
The more we control ourselves, beginning with the
basics, the more we can
affect our surroundings …
Though in a more profound, more helpful, even
more beautiful way.

When an artist says “Trust the Soup” she means let go of the need to control (which we can’t do anyway) and put your faith instead in the Source, the Mystery, the Quantum Soup.*^

*Ryan Holiday’s Discipline is Destiny;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic;
^Richard Rohr’s Adam’s Return;
^^More than being self-aware, we descend deeper by self-examining, and build our power to self-determine so that we can travel further in the outer world;
*^Steven Pressfield’s Do the Work.

May you see in what you do the beauty of your soul.*
John O’Donohue

The self is always under construction. The multiplicity of selves is what allows change.**
Peter Turchi

All the people
I have ever been are
still here, collaborating and
vying,^ helping today’s me not only
figure out who
I want to be and what
I want to do, but also how
to bring these towards some
greater oneness and fullness.

*John O’Donohue’s Benedictus: For Work;
**Peter Turchi’s A Muse and A Maze;
^There are some of my past “me”s that I don’t want to be again, and that’s how they help me.

Characterisation is achieved … through a process that opens up and releases mysteries of the human spirit. The object is not to “solve” a character – to expose some hidden secret – but instead to deepen and enlarge the riddle itself.*
Tim O’Brien

There are aspects of ourselves that are hidden from ourselves as well as others. We are more complex and multifaceted than we think. From time to time something unknown rises to the surface from our unconscious – for example in a dream.**
Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler

We never reach the end of the mystery of
who someone is, whether
ourselves or others;
This is so for every person, best
not to give up on anyone too soon,
Especially yourself –
I’m most interested in how
we can change and change
again and again, and how
life keeps opening up to us when we do:
Why would we want to stop now –
Maybe it’s only just beginning?

*Peter Turchi’s A Muse and A Maze;
**Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler’s The Decision Book; this is a description of the fourth quadrant of the Johari Window: first quadrant – what we know about ourselves and share with others; second – what we know about ourselves, but do not disclose; three – what we do not know about ourselves, but others see clearly. As for the fourth quadrant, when we meet new people, try new things, go to new places, we discover more about ourselves; so, too, as we develop openness, learning, discipline, and experimentation.

This is the truth of who I am: weird, beautiful, hobbled, beloved.*
Anne Lamott

Don’t let the hope of finding a better way prevent you from starting down the best path you know of right now. This day won’t come again.**
James Clear

We are all contradictions wrapped up
in a lifetime: we ought not to think that we are
therefore disqualified from
magnificence, and significance for
someone somewhere – who knows what
the best we have will be open up to if
we embrace it?;^
Everything doesn’t have to happen right now:
Time is simply nature’s way of
making sure that everything doesn’t happen
all at once.^^

*Anne Lamott’s Dusk Night Dawn;
**James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: On good genes, personal responsibility, and how to appreciate your precious time;
^My work is to help people find the best path they have, and it is always greater than they believe, always iridescent in some way;
^^Seth Godin’s This is Strategy.

Now there is something in everybody that waits for the sound of the genuine in other people … I must wait and listen for the sound of the genuine in you. I must wait. For if I cannot hear it, then in my scheme of things, you are not even present. And everybody wants to feel that everybody else knows that she is there.*
Howard Thurman

In a surprisingly short time this doctor succeeded in explaining to the man that freedom is not ‘freedom from’ but a ‘freedom to’ – a freedom to accept responsibility.**
Viktor Frankl

If we are not taking up our
responsibility, if we are not
free to do this, then can we say that
we are fully present, genuine, whether
here or there –
And if not, then
where are we?

What must we do before
we have to give back this
borrowed life?;
There is no easy, pain-free way, only
choice and practise –
Which is what life is all about
in the end.

I will not die an unlived life,
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise…^

*Brian McLaren’s Faith After Doubt;
**Viktor Frankl’s The Doctor and the Soul;
^Dawna Markova, from The Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.