There is enough for everyone. People think that there isn’t enough, so they get as much as they can, so many people don’t get enough.

R Buckminster Fuller

photo credit: saschapohflepp

Friday Quote – R. Buckminster Fuller

Walker, there is no path; the path is made by walking. ~ Antonio Machado by way of Big Think

Friday Quote by Antonio Machado

I didn’t want to jump on the Steve Jobs bandwagon even though he may have been an amazing man. But I ran across this quote and thought it was important enough to share it with you.

“When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

Steve Jobs

Friday Quote – Steve Jobs

There are domains in which expertise is not possible. Stock picking is a good example. And in long-term political strategic forecasting, it’s been shown that experts are just not better than a dice-throwing monkey.

Daniel Kahneman in Time Magazine

Daniel Kahneman on Expertise

“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
Remarks at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, November 1, 1977, Congressional Record, November 4, 1977, vol 123, p. 37287

Friday Quote: The Moral Test of Government…

I have a small fitness space in my building. Trouble is, the equipment is at least 30 years old. Have you ever tried to use a universal gym where the cables are frayed and the pullies creek. I makes a hundred pound lift feel like double that.

So I finally broke down, plopped down some money to join a gym. I used to belong to one and let the membership lapse because they are so far away. I joined a Snap Fitness Center right here in Northeast Minneapolis. All I have to do to get there is walk across the street. I like the idea of exercising on quality equipment. There is something motivating about that in itself.

So, I will keep you posted on my progress. Here I am, at 63, working to get back into shape. And I think I’m ready for it. I’m adding weightlifting to my walking every other day. You can follow my progress on that by connecting on Twitter at @ThisOldBrain.

You can stay current on everything that goes on this blog by subscribing. See that place up in the right hand corner. Just put in your name and email address and I will keep you updated. I promise I won’t stuff your email box with a bunch of crap and you will get a free copy of my eBook The Power of Positive Practice.

My New Fitness Quest

H is struggling with something or, perhaps, reading an article. She asks me a question about a particular issue. Most often her question is rhetorical; she’s simply thinking out loud.

Nevertheless, I am compelled to have an answer.

Not by her, but by my own mixed up mind.

I wonder often why this is the case. And I wonder if your experience is similar.

It’s stressful, to say the least, to always need to be right, to be on, to have the answer. Is this a guy thing? Or at least a ‘guy our age’ thing?

Here’s one thing I do get about it. From my experience in counseling and coaching men – and I know i’ve mentioned this before – there is truly a ghost of the the rugged individualist myth that’s alive and well.

Man’s Gotta Do What a Man’s Gotta Do

You know what I mean. I know you do. We, way too often, believe that old workhorse phrase “a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

Right?

Yes? Well, what the hell does that mean? What is it that a man’s ‘gotta’ do? There was a lot of that going around during the last election, the challenge to ‘man up.’

Strange thing about that is there were some instances of women saying it to women. So, it must mean something, at the very least to the psyche of the public of which we are part.

As time goes on, I realize more and more that much of what a man’s gotta do rarely really has to be done. It’s a phrase that, looking at it with a critical eye, most of all got a lot of guys in a lot of trouble.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s not better to let ourselves be a little more vulnerable. A little more human, maybe?

What do you think?

The Perilous Need to Be Right

I read a lot of other blogs. I read a number of blogs about blogging. Always room for improvement, you know!

One of the subjects that comes up a lot is the following.

Be Authentic

What does that even mean?

I know I struggle with understanding it all the time. Being authentic has to include being a chameleon. It has to.

I’m not the same person at night that I am in the morning. Don’t worry, neither are you.

I’m not the same person when I am tired as when I am energized. Or when I am feeling loving as opposed to feeling irritable.

I Contain Multitudes

So what does it mean to be authentic?

At times, aren’t we of two minds?

I know I am. Even when I am writing, I can be ambivalent about what I am writing about. So I do my best to write the way I see life at the given moment. But I might not feel the same way a few minutes after that.

We may be of even more than two minds. Walt Whitman, in his poem Song of Life, writes …

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

Isn’t that the case? Don’t we all contain multitudes?

Can I say this? I am a chameleon. I am inconsistent. I am authentic.

I think we all can.

I do my best to be authentic, to be the real deal, the real me. The trouble is this changes from time to time, from morning to night, from mood to mood

How about you?

photo credit: ilkerender

The Authentic Chamelon Strikes Again

I’d bet you feel like this sometimes.

At least I hope you do. If not, I am going to feel pretty odd.

Here’s what I’m talking about. Life sometimes feels like I’m in free-fall.

So there it is. Today we are about half-way through September and yesterday (so it seems) was January 1st. Time is a blur.

Time Marches; Then It Runs

As a kid it seemed like time stood still – especially in some of those embarrassing moments of adolescence. Change came slowly.

When I was a younger man, I was vaguely aware of time marching on.

At some point in my life, maybe in my forties, time and change had decidedly broken into a bit of a jog.

Lately time is a flat-out foot race. Change seems constant

I get the psychological reason for this. I really do. It just doesn’t help all that much.

When I was five years old, I remember a summer that literally felt like if was endless. Looking back now, it makes perfect sense. Think about the period of a year when we are that age. At five years old, a year is 20% of a life.

As we grow older, time, as a fraction of life gets smaller and smaller. We experience life as being shorter and shorter and time as faster and faster.

By the time we are 50 years old, a year is a mere 2% of our life. Think about the comparison – 20% down to 2%. Years begin leapfrogging over each other.

Precious Time, Precious Moments

This makes every moment of life more valuable. Time is precious, more and more precious as we progress in life. Change is inevitable. And now is the time to take charge of all the changes we can control.

How do we spend this precious, limited resource and change for the better?

That’s a question I have asked myself a lot lately. Especially not that I’ve received the gift of a little more of it.

How about you?

How do you plan on spending your time well?

How could you spend it 10% better?

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Time Marches On, Then It Runs

I’m not out of the woods.

Don’t know if I ever will be. The haunting of cancer will probably always be with me.

But for now, fortune shines on me. I’m not any worse than I was three months ago.

The Mind is a Powerful Entity

I thought I was having liver pains over the last few weeks. It was something my mind was working hard to convince me was true.

Now what I think I have learned is something a little different.

I have gained a little weight – that’s gotta change – and because of that my surgery scars have been stretching and straining. That seems to be what is causing my phantom pain.

I would have sworn the pain was coming from the inside. Thankfully, it was not.

So…I have my new three-month reprieve – again!

photo credit: linh.ngân

Reprieve