choosing...................

 

You are always responsible because you are always choosing. In every moment, you are choosing how to respond, how to react, how to see things.

-Mark Manson

On waking up................

 

     There is an old saying that goes, "I slept and dreamed that life was beauty; I woke and saw that life was duty."  If you really want to be in control of your life, and if you want other people to be able to depend on you and look to you for leadership, you must wake up from the dream that somebody else will handle the responsibility.  You must accept the responsibility of leading both yourself and others.  No one else can do it for you.  And if you develop the skills of a highly effective leader, not one else can do it as well as you, either.

-Jim Rohn, Leading an Inspired Life

Giving it all away...............

 

Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity.  But this means we then give away our power to that entity, be it "fate" or "society" or the government or the corporation or our boss.  It is for this reason that Erich Fromm so aptly titled his study of Nazism and authoritarianism Escape from Freedom.  In attempting to avoid the pain of responsibility, millions and even billions daily attempt to escape from freedom.

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Leading....................

 

     Leadership isn't a burden—it is an opportunity and obligation.  It affords us power and influence and, as much as is possible, control.  It gives us what we all want most—freedom.  We gain freedom to make decisions, and to determine in every way possible the outcomes of our lives.  Leadership prevents us from being victims.  It's how we mitigate the risks caused by external forces and pressures.  It's how we avoid lying face down in the dirt waiting to die. It's how we win.

     On that day in Iraq, I was lucky.  But relying on luck or hoping circumstances will change on their own is not a good business plan, not a solid approach to leading a team.  And it's definitely not a good way to build a marriage or raise a family.  Your luck will run out at some point, and you will end up a victim to your situation.  The check engine light in your car won't go off on its own—you have to do something to fix it.  The same is true everywhere.  You need a strategy, some plan of action, when the external threats arise.  You need to be leading through each aspect of life,

     So, lead in every situation, under every circumstance, no matter how mild or severe or routine a problem appears.  Don't wait, don't sit back, don't assume you have no course of action and become a victim of the world around you.  Lead.

-Dave Berke, The Need to Lead: A TOPGUN Instructor's Lessons on How Leadership Solves Every Challenge

It is what we allow it to be...............

 

      Although we cannot dictate all the circumstances around us, there is no excuse for being unprepared or irresponsible.  All too often we disregard our ability to influence the outcome because we see a situation as beyond our control.  We casually dismiss our responsibility with the refrain, "It is what it is."

     We need to lead.  Even when circumstances feel completely beyond our control, we must still act.  Only then will we be positioned to exert our influence, which will drive us closer to determining the outcome.  By leading, we can overcome the feeling of victimization and, instead, understand the range of options within our power.

     By taking control of our preparation, reaction, and response to problems, we become leaders.  When we reframe our mindset and see situations through the lens of leadership, we understand that things don't have to remain as they are.

-Dave Berke, The Need to Lead: A TOPGUN Instructor's Lessons on How Leadership Solves Every Challenge

 

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights – the “right” to education, the “right” to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery – hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

-P. J. O'Rourke, as copied from here

The problem is never just the problem..........

.......It's the response to it that defines your team.

from this Tanmay Vora post

gardening...............

     The human mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild.  But whether cultivated or neglected, it must and will bring forth.  If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall, accumulate, and will reproduce their own kind.

     Just as the gardener cultivates the plot, keeping it free from weeds and cultivating the flowers and fruits which are required, so may we tend the garden of our mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts. 

-James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

On the art (and importance)...........

 

............................................of breaking dumb rules.

reforming.....................

 

There is in us a tendency to locate the shaping forces of our existence outside ourselves.  Success and failure are unavoidably related in our minds with the state of things around us.  Hence it is that people with a sense of fulfillment think it a good world and would like to conserve it as it is, while the frustrated favor radical change.  The tendency to look for all causes outside ourselves persists even when it is clear that our state of being is the product of personal qualities such as ability, character, appearance, health and so on.  "If anything ail a man," says Thoreau, "so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even . . . he forthwith sets about reforming—the world."

-Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

If only.................

 

When you claim the merit for all the good that occurs, you incur responsibility for all the harm that arises.

-Frédéric Bastiat,  Economic Sophisms and "What is Seen and What Is Not Seen"

wanting incompatible things.............

 

Individual voters bears essentially no cost for holding inconsistent political beliefs — wanting generous pensions and robust public services and low taxes is essentially free, since no single vote determines the outcome. The irrationality is individually rational and collectively ruinous. Voters are not necessarily confused about what they want; they simply face no price for wanting incompatible things.

-Alex Tabarrok, from read-worthy this post

On fixing wrong turns................

 

The willingness to be corrected, to seek feedback, and to stay a perpetual student is the mechanism of mastery.

-Austin Scholar, from this substack

forgiving, forgetting, and responsibility...........

 

     Confusing forgiving with forgetting sets another trap: We become convinced that mistakes and wrongdoings not only can, but should, be forgotten.  Spiritual tradition sees it as a strange delusion that our problems have to be gotten rid of; instead, the sages and saints suggest, such difficulties are best put to use.  The offense is precisely what must not be forgotten, since it is through the act of facing what has happened and fitting it into a whole by re-membering it that the possibility of atonement (making at-one) occurs and forgiveness comes to fruition.  "Salvation lies in remembrance."

    And so, finally, because the past is important, there can be no "unconditional forgiveness."  Because we are human, and therefore limited, there can be no unconditional anything.  We are not God.  Forgetting that, as is our all-too-human tendency, we commit idolatry by assuming that since God loves and forgives unconditionally, we can be like God and do the same.  But all "idolatry" has ironic consequences, producing the opposite of the goal intended.  Thus the claim to "forgive unconditionally" is the antithesis of benign, for it devalues the one we are supposedly forgiving by implying that he is not responsible for his choices.

     Any understanding of forgiveness must include some notion of responsibility.  Forgiveness, divine or human, does not remove responsibility for our actions.  If we ignore the consequences of irresponsible actions by claiming or asking for unconditional forgiveness, then forgiveness loses its significance—it comes to be interpreted as not caring.  Every human being is responsible for his or her choices: which means, quite simply, that each of us has a need to matter—somehow, to someone.  We especially need to know that our actions have an effect on the people we love.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

paradox........

Perhaps the greatest paradox in the story of spirituality is the mystical insight that we are able to experience release only if we ourselves let go.  This is the paradox of surrender.  Surrender begins with the acceptance that we are not in control of the matter at hand—in fact, we are not in absolute control of anything.

-Kurtz and Ketcham, The Spirituality of Imperfection: Storytelling and the Search for Meaning

a difference maker..........

 

     The way you do anything is the way you do everything, and we found, over and over, that precision in the smallest of details translated into precision in bigger ones.

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Remember: there's often a brilliant idea right behind a bad one.

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     He discovered that when he gave the teams responsibility, they became more responsible; elevated by his trust in them, they stepped up into the role.

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     I've made it my mission to help the people who work for me see what's important about what they do.  Even at MoMA, we didn't see our guests as a bunch of customers looking for lunch; we saw them as museumgoers—people on an adventure, realizing their dream of being inspired at one of the greatest modern art museums on earth.  That simple shift had an automatic and profound impact on how our teams acted, and on the hospitality our guests received. . . .It's the difference between coming to work to do your job and coming to work to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

     Without exception, no matter what you do, you can make a difference in someone's life.  You must be able to name for yourself why your work matters.  And if you are a leader, you need to encourage everyone on your team to do the same.

-Will Guidara, a few excerpts from Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

the other side......................

 

When things don't go well it's easy to wonder, "Why me?" It's easy to point fingers. It's easy to wallow in frustration or defeat.

But it is also easy to ask, "What is this teaching me?"

You can't remove the frustrations from life, but you can always try to come out a little wiser on the other side.

-James Clear, from this edition

sinking or swimming...................

 

I like people coming into any orbit of mine without any experience, particularly without any necessarily expertise, without having been quote, made. And then you give people more responsibility than they qualify for because in that forge you find out who swims and who doesn't. And if you have that kind of environment out of it's going to come pretty good people.

Barry Diller, as quoted in this post

Ultimately.....................

 

Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.  These tasks, and therefore the meaning of live, differ from man to man, and from moment to moment.

-Viktor Frankl

uniquely human..................

 

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed.  For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement.  When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves.

-Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning