The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs.*
Student of Viktor Frankl

The first step is to imagine what the people you serve want and care about it. The second is to figure out why they don’t have it yet.**
Seth Godin

If we don’t enjoy or value the meaning of our lives,
The good news is, we can come up with another one –
This is what we do:
We are meaning-making creatures;
Make this about others and
you’ll be on to a winner.

*Jonah Lehrer’s A Book About Love;
**Seth Godin’s blog: Dreams and roadblocks;
^Tu propósito es mi propósito – Your purpose is my purpose.

Our lifetimes are specks in the universe, but they are the longest and only spans of time we will ever know.*
Beth Pickens

As Rilke says: Hier zu sein ist so viel – to be here is immense.**
John O’Donohue

We must be here twice:
Once is the sheer miracle of being here at all –
Something we had no choice in or control of,
Twice is being here in a uniquely messy but wonderful way
that only each of us can be,
Not to be played upon – though our time here will
involve plenty of this,
But, also to be a player,
To make your difference,
To bring your imperfect beauty:
The point is to master the habits
of showing up.^

What are your habits,
And how will you use them today?

*Beth Picken’s Make Your Art No Matter What;
**John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us;
^James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

Today we don’t have the stasis that is required for the formation of a mythic tradition. The rolling stone gathers no moss. Myth is moss. So not you’ve got to do it yourself, ad lib … We’re all without dependable guides.*
Joseph Campbell

Instead of threats and scarcity, and instead of compliance and control, we have the opportunity to help people become significant.**
Seth Godin

Myth adapts because we need it to,
We need our guiding stories despite our science;
Resourced by thousands of years of megamyths,
We’re discovering our personal chronicles of meaning and purpose.

It is quite normal for us to uncover our story
through struggle and challenge and failure,
As we come to understand and appreciate
these are the lively elements of a myth.

We not only find our path to follow,
We also become guides for others as they seek their own way;
As we understand the importance of myth and story for human existence,
A new generation of guides are appearing – you may be one of these.^

It’s our interpretation of, and approach to, our past that generates resilience … “Do not be a victim of your past.^^

*Joseph Campbell’s Pathways to Bliss;
**Seth Godin’s The Song of Significance;
^My friend and guide Alex McManus is preparing to publish his new book FutureU – I’ll be sharing more when it appears;
^^Victor Strecher’s Life On Purpose, quoting Henry Nyombi.

Once you’ve truly settled into the anaesthetising effects of boredom, you find yourself enroute to discovery. … You let your mind wander and follow it where it goes.*
Pamela Paul

Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake.**
Wallace Stevens

It doesn’t have to be a walk around a lake,
But admitting you’re bored is the first part
of a great gift:
The possibility of an adventure –
Read a book, call a friend, buy some plants –
The list is endless, and, after all,
Saying that you’re bored already means
you have the time.

*Pamela Paul’s article: nytimes.com: Let Children Get Bored Again;
**Robert Macfarlane’s The Old Ways.

I’ll tell you how people can prove their words to be their own – by putting into practice what they’ve been preaching.*
Seneca

*Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.

A “flamboyant” worker, exuberant and excited, is willing to risk control over his or her work: machines break down when they lost control, whereas people make discoveries, stumble on happy accidents.*
Richard Sennett

Attention is like energy in that without it no work can be done and in doing work it is dissipated. We create ourselves by how we invest this energy, memories, thoughts, and feelings are all shaped by it.**
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

There’s someone who works for you,
Full of ideas, loads of energy, bright eyes,
And they come to you to ask if they could try something out –
In a controlled way to mitigate risk
and for a limited time so that it can be evaluated:
What do you say?

We can’t/we don’t do it that way? –
How crazy would that be? – or,
Ever tried?
Ever failed?
No matter.
Try again.
Fail better.^

*Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman;
**Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow;
^Samuel Beckett, from Jonathan Hoban’s Walk With Your Wolf.

It’s time to stop blaming others, and start taking responsibility for your actions.*
Jonathan Hoban

It’s time to let go. It may be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you may become who you might become, instead of staying who you are.**
Jordan Peterson

You may be waiting for others to change,
Or something in the world to change –
You may be waiting for a long time;
Of course, if you change, then you can begin to move on,
Start changing things for the better, discover more beyond
the life you thought you wanted to hold on to,
Finding that there’s more to you than meets the eye.

Over the years,
Journaling has been a critical part of this letting go and letting come
for me:
Why does confessing to a journal make you feel better?
The main benefit of catharsis is that it give people
the opportunity to shape a new narrative.^

*Jonathan Hoban’s Walk With Your Wolf;
**Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life;
^Jonah Lehrer’s A Book About Love.

We imitate the habits of three groups in particular:
1. The close
2. The many
3. The powerful
James Clear

The point of curating trends is to see what others don’t and to predict a future that can inspire new thinking.**
Rohit Bhargava

The close, the many, and the powerful
are the popular places to be –
They are what they are because there’s a lot of repitition –
A lot of people are looking there and nowhere else;
New thinking, unimagined possibilities, lie elsewhere,
And if we seek them,
We may have to be the unpopular ones –
But there’s a fascinating world out there, and what can we do?

*James Clear’s Atomic Habits;
**Rohit Bhargava’s Non Obvious 2019.

The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energises below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.*
William James

Finding your way in life is like unlocking the combination of a safe. You have to go forwards and backwards. Life is not a direct march from A to B. The twists and turns are progress, not regression. What feels like a setback in the moment is later revealed to have been part of the path all along. Each move was necessary to get to your end goal.**
James Clear

Within each of us there exists
a call to transcendence, to become more than we know or imagine;
The journey begins with who we are and what we have, and
what we know in this moment,
Faithfully, daily giving simple expression to these no matter what
the to and fro might be –
Though at the time it just feels hard,
Over time, we’ll be surprised by how far we have travelled,
Even into the depths of wisdom.

*Angela Duckworth’s Grit;
**James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter: How to find your way in life, the power of quiet weeks, and the problem with smart people.

To walk the spiritual path is to continually step into the unknown.*
Wallace Huey

You are strong, self-sufficient, you make time for reading, thinking, quiet contemplation, meditation, or prayer. This need not cost a penny.**
Tom Hodgkinson

To be spiritual is not to be religious,
It is to be human,
We not only step out into the unknown,
We also step into the magnificent unknownness
of our personal humanity …
At no extra cost,
Out of which we discover the truer extent
of our generativeness and creativity,
Being comprised by the physical, emotional, cerebral, and spiritual;
Brian McLaren highlights the conflict within us:
Something in us wants to be consistent.
But something in us also wants to keep growing,
and growing often means changing.
So those two desires often conflict.^

Perhaps it’s time to pause and
lean into the conflict,
Noticing it, being prepared to be with it,
Listening to what it is trying to say –
Now you’re meditating.^^

*Jonathan Hoban’s Walk With Your Wolf;
**Tom Hodgkinson’s Business For Bohemians;
^Brian McLaren’s Faith After Doubt;
^^Meditation can look like many things; check out Hugh Macleod doodling while listening to jazz as one example. What is most important is to find the ways that allow us to listen to what is within and without.