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.

It’s tempting to dumb down your work or go for a shortcut or a quick hit. Worst of all, to give up. Please don’t.*
Seth Godin

Ah, thirty-eight to forty-two. They were the hardest years of my life. I almost left ministry.**
Older pastor

Ideas come to us with a simple joy,
But reality makes everything so much more complex,
Even unrelenting and utterly perplexing,
Yet, if we are able to push through,
Discovering, Growing – becoming agents, not victims,
We come through to a place of harmony,
When good and bad, joy and pain
come together to show the next step.

I was thirty nine –
I kept going – but upping
the learning and exploring;
And, though I realised that it wasn’t what I really wanted to be about,
The crucible for dreamwhispering,
When I left, it was with greater clarity and a purpose –
I was leaving for something,
Rather than from something.

*Seth Godin’s blog: Crickets;
**Brian McLaren’s Faith After Doubt.

We don’t win our depth and our inner form and our texture and our truth without the fire. Ordeal by fire.*
M. C. Richards

Apply yourself to thinking through difficulties – hard times can be softened, tight squeezes widened, and heavy loads made lighter for those who can apply the right pressure.**
Seneca

Not the path you saw yourself walking? –
There are limitations to our lives that come with being who and where we are,
Restrictions within and without,
But that’s not the end of the matter,
We still have a mighty lot of choice,
Having within us unique ways of applying pressure
as only we can;
Identifying and valuing and developing just what these are
changes everything:
Learning creates possibility.
Once we learn to see how the world works,
we can show up to make things better^ –
It may even be the path you did’t want to be on
is exactly the one you delight in.

*M. C. Richards’ Centering;
**Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic;
^Seth Godin’s blog: Learning in August.

Peace of mind is an inside job, unrelated to fame, fortune, or whether your partner loves you.*
Anne Lamott

Where there is peace, there is no fear. Where there is fear, there is no peace. So then, the journey for peace begins within our hearts … When you have won the battle, you now carry within you what the world desperately needs.**
Erwin McManus

I’m trying to live into my name Geoffrey,
It means Peace of God;
There will always be more battles without unless
I win the battle for peace within,
To become a person of connection and generous
in mercy and grace,
Slow to anger, steadfast in love –
Some list!,
My hardest work
across a lifetime, but I hope that one day,
You will be able to call me by my name.

It doesn’t have to begin with a name,
Only our desire to bring something precious into the world
for the prospering of others.

*Anne Lamott’s Almost Everything;
**Erwin McManus’ The Way of the Warrior.