The Vs. Studio Blog

Time is a factor so it’s time that counts
Count not the negative actions of one
Speakers of soul say it’s time to shout
Three forms the soul to a positive sum
Dance to this fix and flex every muscle
Space can be filled if you rise like my lumber
Advance to the tune but don’t do the hustle
Shake, rattle, roll to my magic number -De La Soul, song “Magic Number”

Today (on the eve of my birthday which is some pretty cool synchronicity) marks my 1,000th blog post.

1,000 was my magic number. Seth Godin, my virtual mentor and who inspired me to start this blog, occasionally gives a shout out to people who’ve written 1,000 posts. I remember thinking, “That’s it. That’s the number. 1,000. I’d like to get to that someday.”

And I did it.

WE did it.

Some gratitude is in order…

First and foremost, thank you dear reader from the bottom of my heart for reading this blog, for commenting, for encouraging, for sharing the posts, for sending me notes when something resonated. It was all very meaningful and kept me going, especially through the difficult days, and there have been some of those.

Thank you Seth for all the incredible work you do and always responding to my emails. You’re awesome. Everyone, sign up for Seth’s blog Here. (I think he’s written over 10,000 posts now.) Or listen to his podcast Here. Or get any of his books (if you care at all about our planet, start with The Carbon Almanac) as well as all his other work Here. You’ll be glad you did. Trust me.

Thanks to all my other great virtual mentors out there whose work I consistently interact with and think about. Ryan Holiday, Margo Aaron, Tim Ferriss, Susan Cain, Bishop Robert Baron, Shane Parrish, Mark Duplass, Ethan Hawke, James Clear, Gabe The Bass Player, Tara Brach, Andre Gregory, Fr. Mike Schmitz, Maria Popova, Arthur Brooks, Brene Brown and Richard Rohr come to mind. Be sure to check out their work.

Also thanks to some of those giants who’ve come before us. Their quotes and thoughts routinely show up in this blog…Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, Epictetus, Lao-Tzu, Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Shakespeare, Sam Shepard, August Wilson and Anton Chekhov, to name a few.

Thank you to my family and friends. My wife Amy for being my rock. My boys, Callum and Truman for allowing me to be your dad. I learn stuff every day by watching and hanging out with you two.

Finally, thanks to the O.G. My dad. My hero. My best friend. My number one fan. He loved reading these posts and talking to me in depth about them. Love you and miss you every day, big guy.

So, what do you think?…Should we try for 2,000?

P.S. – As De La Soul would advise, the real magic number is Three. It’s impossible to listen to this song and not immediately be in a good mood.

“I don’t know.”

There are many times and moments when those three words are the most honest words you can say.

If someone asks for your knowledge on a particular subject and you have little or none…”I don’t know.”

If someone is suffering and you haven’t been in their shoes…”I don’t know.”

If you, yourself, are faced with a massive challenge or unexpected obstacle and wondering how you’ll overcome it…”I don’t know.”

If you’re trying to answer life’s biggest questions (who am I? why am I here? what’s my purpose?)…”I don’t know.”

Don’t bullshit.

Just admit it.

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know” is honest, authentic, unapologetic, vulnerable and utterly human.

It’s also an amazing and empowering place to start.

Because from there, you can move to…

“I don’t know…But, I trust and will do everything I possibly can to find out. To help. To learn. To serve. To know.”

Everyone wants to feel needed (and wanted).

But no one wants to be around someone who’s needy.

“This is happening” should be your mindset when recruiting collaborators for your passion project. They’ll see your passion and commitment to excellence by how far you’ve already taken it solo. They’ll know you’re going to do it no matter what.

But…

To make the project the best it possibly can be, you need and want them. Because you’ve seen they’re work and are lit up by it. Let them know that.

Just like you’re not needy, they’re not needy.

But all of you are needed and wanted.

“The things that we love tell us what we are.” -Saint Thomas Aquinas

“If you want to know who you are, you can make a case, a very compelling case that God is telling you who you are by what you love. And if you get close to what you love, what you love expands. In the pursuit of excellence, in any talent that you are given, in the expression of excellence at it, you do honor to your maker.” -Ethan Hawke, WOF Podcast, Understanding Flannery O’Connor

“You must cultivate activities that you love. You must discover work that you do, not for its utility, but for itself, whether it succeeds or not, whether you are praised for it or not, whether you are loved and rewarded for it or not, whether people know about it and are grateful to you for it or not. How many activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are your passport to freedom and to love.” -Anthony de Mello, The Way To Love

When no one is around, love will always love you -Cat Power, song “Say”

If you’re searching, if you’re trying to answer the big questions, if you’re struggling to figure out your purpose, look no further than who and what you love. Once you’ve identified that love, do it to the very best of your abilities. For the love of doing it, and no other reason.

You were made from love and made to love. There is no higher calling than the pursuit of excellence.

“It gets dark as I sit here, and the fireflies add wonderful effects to the flowerbeds. The birds of the air, the flowers of the field–was ever Solomon in all his glory arrayed as one of these?…There are so many of those brief moments of waiting in our lives. It is wonderful how sweet these notes are to the heart, though often while one is taking them down they seem like commonplaces. But when they are read over again, they have a distilled sweetness. It seems to be God speaking.” – Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage

“We should remember that even Nature’s inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.
Or how ripe figs begin to burst.
And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty.
Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar’s mouth.
And other things. If you look at them in isolation there’s nothing beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. He’ll find the jaws of live animals as beautiful as painted ones or sculptures. He’ll look calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him constantly—things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home with Nature and its works.” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.”
― Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor

First we need to take time to notice. The more we notice, the more we realize how much (including the everyday, quotidian) we can be grateful for. And the more we practice gratitude, the more room we have for grace to enter our lives. Which then leads to acts of love. It’s a virtuous and unending cycle of joy.

Anne Lamott writes beautifully about this in her book Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. An excerpt is below…

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior…. We mysteriously find ourselves willing to pick up litter in the street, or let others go first in traffic….

When we go from rashy and clenched to grateful, we sometimes get to note the experience of grace, in knowing that we could not have gotten ourselves from where we were stuck, in hate or self-righteousness or self-loathing (which are the same thing), to freedom. The movement of grace in our lives toward freedom is the mystery. So we simply say “Thanks.” Something had to open, something had to give, and I don’t have a clue how to get things to do that. But they did, or grace did.

Saying and meaning “Thanks” leads to a crazy thought: What more can I give? We take the action first, by giving—and then the insight follows, that this fills us. Sin is not the adult bookstore on the corner. It is the hard heart, the lack of generosity, and all the isms, racism and sexism and so forth. But is there a crack where a ribbon of light might get in, might sneak past all the roadblocks and piles of stones, mental and emotional and cultural?…

How can something so simple be so profound, letting others go first, in traffic or in line at Starbucks, and even if no one cares or notices? Because for the most part, people won’t care—they’re late, they haven’t heard back from their new boyfriend, or they’re fixated on the stock market. And they won’t notice that you let them go ahead of you.

They take it as their due.

But you’ll know. And it can change your whole day, which could be a way to change your whole life. There really is only today, although luckily that is also the eternal now. And maybe one person in the car in the lane next to you or in line at the bank or at your kid’s baseball game will notice your casual generosity and will be touched, lifted, encouraged—in other words, slightly changed for the better—and later will let someone else go first. And this will be quantum.

The movement of grace toward gratitude brings us from the package of self-obsessed madness to a spiritual awakening. Gratitude is peace.

P.S. – Speaking of grace and gratitude…Happy Veterans Day to all those who’ve served and sacrificed for our country. We can never say “thank you” enough.

“After enlightenment, one is still the same as one was before. One is simply free from unreality and delusion. The ordinary person’s mind is the same as the sage’s, because Original Mind is perfect and complete in itself. After you’ve had this recognition, please don’t lose it.” – Pai-chang

“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’- that is the motto of enlightenment.”
― Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?

“The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.”
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

When you’re enlightened (or lit up by passion), you see something that no one else sees. Therefore, be wary of telling others what it is you see and expecting their assent. They won’t, because they don’t see it. And you risk falling into discouragement and inertia when that happens.

Instead, trust in your vision. And go execute on it.

Eventually, the right people will “see it” too.

It’s never going to be “the right time” to make your art.

You’ll always have some other distraction, let alone responsibility or need that requires your attention.

Stop waiting. Just decide that the right time is now. And start.

You’ll be amazed at how everything then falls into place and the universe cooperates with that single decision. It’s an inflection point.

Now is the exact, right time. It always is, always was, and always will be.

“Good checklists are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything–a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps–the ones that even the highly skilled professional using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical…

We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness. There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money. It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us—those we aspire to be—handle situations of high stakes and complexity. The truly great are daring. They improvise. They do not have protocols and checklists. Maybe our idea of heroism needs updating.” -Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto

So come on and chickity-check yo’ self before you wreck yo’ self
Chickity-check yo’ self before you wreck yo’ self
-Ice Cube, “Check Yo Self”

One of the many useful things about checklists is they take emotion out of decision-making. They’re straightforward. All you have to do is follow the list. (Or don’t, at your own risk.)

Seth Godin’s recent post about “project resistance” is magnificent. You can read it Here. If you’re wondering if your work isn’t good enough or you’re just facing “the resistance”, as Steven Pressfield brilliantly termed it in The War Of Art, consider all the possible symptoms Seth lists. Maybe print out and keep close at hand. It can serve as a checklist every time the resistance rears its ugly head. And rest assured, if you’re trying for something great, it will.

“Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.” -Steve Prefontaine

What makes my good friend Joe one of the world’s best handicappers is that he can evaluate how well a horse ACTUALLY ran a race. As opposed to how they finished. He uses tools like Beyer ratings, Sheets numbers, Pace figures, etc..as well as watching replays of past races. All that and more factor in to his analysis of a horse’s quality. He’ll be the first to tell you that a horse can finish second or third or even out of the money and run an incredible race (for example, maybe it had a bad jump or was boxed in or the jockey gave it a bad trip).

A great scene in the movie WITHOUT LIMITS–which is about the legendary distance runner, Steve Prefontaine–involves Pre and his coach, Bill Bowerman. Bowerman repeatedly challenges Pre to run from behind in order to conserve energy and win more easily. But that’s not Pre’s style. He only wants to sprint out front and win wire to wire. It’s his art.

But…Pre does listen to his coach one time for a big race.

Unfortunately it’s not a good outcome. Pre gets boxed in by the other runners and can’t make a closing move until it’s way too late.

But he does try. Coming from waaaay back, he runs the fastest single lap time ever recorded in the event; it’s an almost inhuman time. But not enough for the win and Pre is distraught. An apologetic Bowerman says he just ran the greatest race he’s ever seen in his life. And that he’s so proud to be his coach. From then on, Bowerman will let Pre be Pre.

You can’t control if you win the race. There are way too many other factors beyond your control that determine the outcome. But you can control your effort. Always, always, always.

Win the effort race.

“The first principle is not to fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.” -Richard P. Feynman

General William T. Sherman: “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?”

General Ulysses S. Grant: “Yes…Lick ’em tomorrow, though.” – Conversation between the two generals after the first day of the Battle of Shiloh during the American Civil War

“I did the best I could” is an admirable goal and something we should all shoot for. But at the end of the day it’s just a feeling. It’s entirely subjective and up to you.

Don’t fool or lie to yourself.

If at the end of the day, you feel you came up short, analyze why. Then forgive yourself. Turn the page. And go get after it tomorrow.