increase...............

 

4.  Where no oxen are, the manger is clean,

     But much increase comes by the strength of the ox.

-The Holy Bible, Proverbs 14:4

Your ownself.......................

 

I never met my greatest mentor.  I wanted so much to be like him.  But his message was the opposite.  Be yourself, with passionate intensity. . . .

Your goal in life is to find the people, business, project, or art that needs you the most.  There is something out there just for you.  What you don't want to do is build checklists and decision frameworks built on what other people are doing.  You're never going to be them.  You'll never be good at being somebody else.

-Naval Ravikant/Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant

connections.......................

 

We are social beings, designed to live, work, and thrive within a community.  Our greatest joys, deepest sorrows, and most significant achievements gain meaning through our connections with others.

     As you contemplate your own path, remember this: You were made for connection.  You were made to be part of a team—whether it's a family by blood, a family by choice, or both.  You were made to support and be supported, to love and be loved, to challenge and be challenged. 

      You were made to build a team that lifts you up, celebrates your victories, and helps you become the best version of yourself.  A team that keeps you grounded and helps you navigate life's complexities.

     You were made to be part of something bigger than yourself—a family, a community, a legacy that extends beyond your individual achievements.

-George Raveling, What You're Made For

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

a nice pat on the head...........

 

     In Ken Blanchard's book The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, Blanchard calls these types of situations "other people's monkey."  As a leader, you must ensure you aren't accidentally taking on other people's monkeys (problems or projects).  Adam was (probably unintentionally) trying to put his monkey on my back.  I gave the monkey a nice pat on the head and told him to go back home.

     That's the basis for transformational leadership: start with the premise that this isn't your job, it's theirs.  You shouldn't be telling them how to do it because that is their role, and they own it.  Instead, they should be explaining to you the best way to solve it.

-Dan Martell, Buy Back Your Time

In the background.................

     softly with these songs:   the best of Roberta Flack

 

Fourteen.................................

 

...........................................choices.

A virtuous cycle....................

 

Regular meditation will support better sleep. Better sleep will allow deeper and more profound meditation.

-Nicholas Bate

opportunity........................

 

While we tend to think of inspiration as bolt-from-the-blue, God-given brilliance, this instant form of ideation tends to be much rarer than the other kinds—plenary, moral, mechanical, and dynamical—that the medieval intellectuals listed.  But most often, an opportunity begins as a failure.  That's why most of us miss it.

-Jay Heinrichs, Aristotle's Guide to Self-Persuasion

Yes..................

 

Isn't it essential precisely to refuse to embrace limitation, so as to surpass the status quo, to demolish the assumption that life as we know it is as good as we should ever expect it to get?

-Oliver Burkeman, Meditations for Mortals

It's personal.....................

 

My observation of people has forced me to the conclusion that personal initiative is largely based on personal desires and ambitions.  The man who appears to have no individual initiative, awakens and moves under his own initiative in a hurry when he becomes obsessed with some definite strong desire or purpose.

-Andrew Carnegie, as quoted here

The art .................................

 

..........................................of living well.

Choices..........................

     The prior writes back, overflowing as ever with spirit and new ideas.  "Like love, sometimes hope is a choice," he writes.  "Of course you will know the great Cornel West quote about that, yes?  The difference between hope and optimism?"  The former is a leap beyond all evidence while the other is simply an attempt to work with what it knows.

     "It's a choice I make," he continues, "There's a beautiful album I heard the other day on Spotify, mostly flute, a little vocal.  Called 'I Will Not Be Sad in This World.'"

-Pico Iyer, Aflame: Learning From Silence

a prisoner of hope....................

 

Hope and optimism are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there to believe things are gonna be better, much more rational, deeply secular, whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, "It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds, no guarantee whatsoever." That's hope. I'm a prisoner of hope, though. Gonna die a prisoner of hope.

-Cornel West,  couldn't find the source of this quote, but it follows the same vein as this commencement address

Let me count the ways..............

 

Condorcet wrote as though social progress is inevitable, and wars and revolutions were just Europe's way of sorting itself out.

     His serene assurance arose from the conviction that culture is governed by laws as exact as those of physics.  We need only understand them, he wrote, to keep humanity on its predestined course to a more perfect social order ruled by science and secular philosophy. . . .

     Condorcet, however mistaken in details and hopelessly trusting of human nature, made a major contribution to thought through his insistence that history is an evolving material process.  "The sole foundation for belief in the natural sciences," he declared, "is the idea that the general laws directing the phenomena of the universe, known or unknown, are necessary and constant.  Why should this principle be any less true for the development of the intellectual and moral faculties of man than for other operations of nature."

-Edward O. Wilson, Consilience:  The Unity of Knowledge

Smarts.......................

 

The smartest person in the room, I’ve learned, is usually the person who knows how to tap into the intelligence of every person in the room.

-Scott Kelly, as quoted here

Scenes from the back yard................

 

Highly recommended........................

 

bred...........................

 

      There were many specific events that pushed Franklin across the line to rebellion: personal slights, dashed hopes, betrayals, and the accretion of hostile British acts.  But it is also important to take note of the core causes of Franklin's evolution and, but extension, that of a people he had come to exemplify.

      When Englishmen such as his father had immigrated to a new land, they had bred a new type of people.  As Franklin repeatedly stressed in his letters to his son, America should not replicate the rigid ruling hierarchies of the Old World, the aristocratic structures and feudal social orders based on birth rather than merit.  Instead, its strength would be its creation of a proud middling people, a class of frugal and industrious shopkeepers and tradesmen who were assertive of their rights and proud of their status.

     Like many of these new Americans, Franklin chafed at authority, which is why he had run away from his brother's print shop in Boston.  He was not awed by establishment elites, whether they be the Mathers or the Penns or the peers in the House of Lords.  He was cheeky in his writings and rebellious in his manner.  And he had imbibed the philosophy of the new Enlightenment thinkers, who believed that liberty and tolerance were the foundation for a civil society.

     For a long time he had cherished vision of imperial harmony in which Britain and America could both flourish in one great expanding empire.  But he felt that it would work only if Britain stopped subjugating Americans through mercantile trading rules and taxes imposed from afar.  Once it was clear that Britain remained intent of subordinating its colonies, the only course left was independence.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

one archetype......................

 

     Over the years, Franklin had been developing a social outlook that, in its mixture of liberal, populist, and conservative ideas, would become one archetype of American middle-class philosophy.  He exalted hard work, individual enterprise, frugality, and self-reliance. On the other hand, he also pushed for civic cooperation, social compassion, and voluntary community improvement schemes.  He was equally distrustful of the elite and the rabble, of ceding power to the well-born establishment or to an unruly mob.  With his shopkeeper's values he cringed at class warfare.  Bred into his bones was a belief in social mobility and the bootstrap values of rising through hard work.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life