“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” —Chinese proverb I have committed to writing a blog post everyday for a year. Without months, I would be 31/365 of the way done. This sounds daunting to me and makes me feel far from the finish line. But since there are months, I …
Monthly Archives: January 2020
It’s a long game.
In volleyball, you’re allowed a maximum of three touches before hitting it back over the net. Sometimes, to be sneaky, setters will dump the ball over on the second touch instead of setting up a hitter. It can be an easy point if it catches the other team off guard. I was playing against a …
You say tomato
Americans peel bananas from the opposite end that Chinese people peel them from. Australians scrape butter horizontally off the top of a stick of butter rather than slice downward to make pats. In Ecuador, I rode a bus that didn’t have set stops, just a route, and it picked up people wherever they were along …
You get what you tolerate.
“You get what you tolerate.” I read that somewhere once. One area of my life where I think that’s true is tidiness. I have a certain threshold for mess and disorder and once I reach the limit, I spend some time cleaning up the mess. I don’t do anything until it bothers me. If you …
Slicing bread
If you slice a baguette from the top to make hors d’oeuvres, then it means that you can’t slice it sideways and make a long sandwich. If you want to do that, then you’ll need another baguette. Sometimes you can choose only one path. And there’s no going back. Choose carefully.
$500 to get to Hawaii
Many of us exchange our time for money. We’re paid by the hour, or by the year. There’s another way to be paid, which is by the piece, or by the outcome of the value. When you sell a painting, no one asks you how long it took you to paint it—they think about how …
As fast as you can
Roses don’t smell better when you smell them as fast as you can. Food doesn’t taste better when you eat it as fast as you can. You shouldn’t try to mull something over and make a big decision as fast as you can. You’re not more creative when you try to be creative as fast …
Give yourself some extra space.
If you follow the car driving in front of you too closely, it’s stressful and you have to spend all of your energy and attention watching the car in front of you in case it slows down suddenly and you have to react quickly. If you don’t do this, it frees you up to look …
Don’t believe everything you think.
One of the hardest places to see where things could be different is in our own head. Our thoughts. The story we tell ourselves. Sometimes there’s an uninvited narrator or commentator in there who we can disagree with if we like. The trick is to see that commentator. When someone suggested that I consider taking …
“I want something else.”
One day my toddler said to me as he was watching TV, “I want something else.” This wasn’t always an obvious thought to have for him. He learned quickly that there are different channels and episodes and now it’s obvious to him that there are other possibilities. It got me thinking. This is an extremely …