1,2,3 for Week #25

Bringing a new week to you. This week was a great week of intentional studies and learning. I know that will show up here. Personal development is probably a forethought for most of us.

What if you were wrong. This was my proposal over at the The Well for this week’s podcast. Everything seems right, right now. Right career. Right family. Right partner. But, what if it was all wrong. Being wrong is definitely a normal and dare I say, inevitable part of our world. Most of the time we don’t explore it though, we wait until we’re proven wrong. Sometimes we even dig in, despite the facts in front of us, to hold off being wrong in front of ourselves or others. During this past election as an example, relationships and families were ended over it because people just wouldn’t relent on either side in their wrongness. Putting ourselves in front of this train of being wrong on purpose, not something we would do to ourselves or seek out willingly. I find though doing that exact thing is a great thing to do. Over time and practice of exploring the “wrong perspective” new things can be found. We may find ourselves completely course correcting because we discover a flaw. Exploring possible failure then, creates an opportunity for us to learn, to discover, and to become better. Get uncomfortable. Accept that fact that you will one day be incredibly wrong. Why not explore a little to find out when that may happen, learn from it before it has permanently damaged you, and find the strength to do something different.
Little morbid on the first article from Who.Int The Top 10 Causes of Death. But, perfect for the main theme in exploring where we could be deadly wrong in our endeavors. Interesting a lot of it has to do with how healthy we are. Are you leading a life right now so wrong that it could create a stroke, heart disease, diabetes or anything that can create a noncommunicable event because we’re so bad at taking care of ourselves? Possibly. What If You Could Do It All Over Again from Joshua over at the New Yorker is a piece that explores second chances. But, those can only be taken when we explore two possible paths by pausing and reflecting on them. A wrong one or a right one. Put yourself as an exercise in another life. Project yourself. Is that the right path?
The quotes I tried to pull bring all this together. Hope they stick with you like they did with me:

“Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.” – Seneca
Is it really luck after all? Or, where we there already and opportunity finally jumped into view?

“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius
Control what you can control. When you need the strength it will be in tons or reserves, ready. Not all depleted because you tried to put it all into something outside of your control. Or, you just refused to be wrong, spent all your energy fending off any other sentiment about yourself. Exhausting. Don’t be.

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” – Aldous Huxley
Incredible experiences are all around us, all the time. It’s our failure to see them because we can not be still enough to notice them. We’re all caught up in what is happening to us. Who hates us. Who hurt us. Who owes us. We need to focus on what we can do with what we got, time we got, love we have, and people in our lives that mean the most to us.

I’ll be on a vacation next week. Not sure what I will have access to. Probably good you get a break anyway. Hope a great week comes your way.

✌🏻 Shawn