“Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it.” -Tao Te Ching by Lao-Tzu (Stephen Mitchell translation)
“Be like water my friend.” -Bruce Lee
Take the most amazing, miraculous, purest element in the world–water–yet remove it’s ability to flow, and it too will eventually rot.
Gotta move. Action. Action. Action.
Towards the very end of the movie “Saving Private Ryan”, Captain John Miller (played by Tom Hanks) who’s about to die, tells the young Private James Ryan (played by Matt Damon) to “Earn This…Earn it.”
Make no mistake, we’re here because of the sacrifices so many people made that came before us. In some cases, with their lives. As well as the sacrifices that people make today, day in, day out with no attention, thanks or praise.
To honor all those sacrifices, let us earn this next day, this next hour, this next minute, this next second.
Earn this. Earn it.
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” -Ernest Hemingway
“Sleep is the best meditation.” — Dalai Lama
Put away the ice cream, turn off the television and the phone and go the f*ck to sleep.
And when you wake up in the morning, read this excellent article from Ryan Holiday on why you should prioritize sleep. There’s no better performance booster and mood enhancer than getting a good night’s rest.
“For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, ‘Now, I’ve arrived!’ Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.” -Alan Watts
Life is not a flatline. It’s peaks and valleys. Realize wherever you are now is just a snapshot, a moment in time. It’s ephemeral. We think we’d like to know what lies ahead so that we can adequately prepare for good times or bad. For the peaks and valleys. But where’s the fun in that?
The fact that every day, every single moment is different?….“Yea, that’s the ticket!”
Lean into not knowing.
“It’s more than a feeling (more than a feeling)
When I hear that old song they used to play (more than a feeling)
I begin dreaming (more than a feeling)” -Boston, “More Than A Feeling”
“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” -Shakespeare, Sonnet 73
My favorite definition of love comes from Saint Thomas Aquinas: “Love is to will the good of the other, as other.”
Love is more than a feeling that comes and goes like the wind. It is a decision. A choice. An act. A verb. You will something to happen. In the case of love, you are willing a good outcome for someone else. Not for what they can do for you. Just for simply being who they are.
One way to love is to make your art. To look deep inside, figure out what you’re passionate about and commit to expressing that passion with excellence and generosity throughout. When you do that, we as the audience are the grateful recipients of your will. Of your love. We are “consumed with that which it was nourish’d by.”
“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going ’till we get there.’
‘Where we going, man?’
‘I don’t know but we gotta go.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
When it comes to making your art, either go fast or go slow. Nothing in between will do.
When you go fast, you’ve got energy on your side. You don’t have time to think and the subconscious takes over. It might be a mess, but there’s a good chance of capturing some magic. Producing something memorable. Kerouac’s “On The Road” comes to mind.
When you go slow, you can take your time and perfect every moment. Get it to exactly where you want it to be. Maybe even exceed your expectations. Produce a new masterpiece. A stone cold classic.
There’s a story about the famous theatre director Jerzy Grotowski who wanted nine months to rehearse a production prior to opening. The producers told him no way, they just didn’t have the budget for that long a rehearsal process.
Grotowski answered back, “Okay. Give me the weekend.”
So many of the greatest books ever written from the Bible to “Meditations” to “War And Peace” to “Man’s Search For Meaning” share a common theme. That is: we can’t control our circumstances, we can only control our response.
If that’s true, shouldn’t we spend far less time insulating or distracting ourselves from circumstances? And far more time training ourselves to be ready for them? That way, when adversity hits–and it will–we can be proud of how we responded. How we kept our cool. How we helped. How we loved. How we made a difference.
“We can spend our whole lives escaping from the monsters of our minds.” -Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
One of the central tenets of Buddhism is an emphasis on being present to our experiences in the here and now. The problem though is that .we’re almost always somewhere else. We’re either reprocessing the past or worrying about the future. If we watch our mind, it doesn’t actually think many original thoughts. We just keep thinking in the same problematic ways that our minds love to operate. Some call this “the monkey mind.” All spiritual teaching is about showing us how to be present to the moment. When we’re present, we experience “the presence” and in so doing, we can tame the monkey mind.
Pema Chodron writes in her excellent book “When Things Fall Apart” about Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a Buddhist monk and international teacher. Following in the ancient tradition of wandering ascetics, Rinpoche left his post as abbott of the monastery to spend several years on a retreat journey. Below is part of the letter he left for his students before departing:
In parting, I would like to give you one small piece of advice to keep in your heart. You may have heard me say this before, but it is the key point of the entire path, so it bears repeating: All that we are looking for in life—all the happiness, contentment, and peace of mind—is right here in the present moment. Our very own awareness is itself fundamentally pure and good. The only problem is that we get so caught up in the ups and downs of life that we don’t take the time to pause and notice what we already have.
Don’t forget to make space in your life to recognize the richness of your basic nature, to see the purity of your being and let its innate qualities of love, compassion, and wisdom naturally emerge. Nurture this recognition as you would a small seedling. Allow it to grow and flourish. . . .
Keep this teaching at the heart of your practice. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, pause from time to time and relax your mind. You don’t have to change anything about your experience. You can let thoughts and feelings come and go freely, and leave your senses wide open. Make friends with your experience and see if you can notice the spacious awareness that is with you all the time. Everything you ever wanted is right here in this present moment of awareness.
“There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it.” -Michael Singer, The Untethered Soul
“We are all unreliable narrators, not just in the way we tell our stories to others, but how we tell them to ourselves.” -Deb Caletti
“If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talked to you, you’d quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much of your time as you do, they’d fire her. If an organization developed its employees as poorly as you are developing yourself, it would soon go under.” -Seth Godin
Think of the most annoying roommate you’ve ever had. That person pales in comparison with the roommate inside your head. The one who never stops talking, never stops worrying, never allows you one second of peace or focus. Kinda like this scene from the movie “Adaptation.”
Michael Singer writes about this in his excellent book “The Untethered Soul” which I highly recommend…
How would you feel if someone outside really started talking to you the way your inner voice does? How would you relate to a person who opened their mouth to say everything your mental voice says? After a very short period of time, you would tell them to leave and never come back. But when your inner friend continuously speaks up, you don’t ever tell it to leave. No matter how much trouble it causes, you listen.
The solution? First, you must realize that you are not your thoughts. You are the one who hears your thoughts.
This simple, yet profound shift, is the beginning of everything. Transformative growth starts there.
It’s time to wake up and say goodbye to that annoying roommate forever.
“When the archer shoots for no particular prize, he has all his skills; when he shoots to win a brass buckle, he is already nervous; when he shoots for a gold prize, he goes blind, sees two targets, and is out of his mind. His skill has not changed, but the prize divides him. He cares! He thinks more of winning than of shooting, and the need to win drains him of power.” -Tranxu, a great Chinese sage
Do it because you love it.
If you concentrate solely on the “love” part, everything else takes care of itself.
The Vs. Studio Blog