An endless fascination with learning

The idea that you should push past your comfort zone is prescribed as if Advil for a headache. This pushing will lead to “growth” and “facing challenges.” It will lead to strength and new adventures.

No one asks themselves why they believe this is true. Who asks you to push? And why do they ask?

Sometimes you’ll find that not pushing, or not doing, makes you feel just as good, and leads to other adventures. Sometimes you’ll find that listening to your body and embracing fear, rather than pushing against it, as if in conflict, allows you to understand that leaps are only beneficial if you think they are.

In “business”, (I put quotes around business because it’s often referred to as if it’s some separate arena in life, when it’s not), perception seems to overtake many other things. So many of my colleagues in law go above and beyond to mention that they have been “mentioned” or “quoted” in publications, on websites, etc. This, in some very odd and old fashioned metric, is to somehow display authority, or knowledge. You pay people for this. Lots of money. And, theoretically, because other people will see that you have been prominently (usually, at most, a sentence) featured in one of the hundreds of articles published daily (pushed) by this site, YouTube channel,etc., they will then turn to you and hire you.

Or.

Or you could just treat your existing base extravagantly well. You can foster trust and a real relationship. You can work on issues both present and not and you make yourself so indispensable that they have no choice but to hire you.

The first option is taking an Omega 3 pill in hopes of staving off dementia and heart disease. You don’t really know if it’s working but you feel as if you’re doing something, and it’s pretty easy to just take the pill. The second option is a progressive daily workout, even on days that you don’t want to work out, that will no doubt show you it’s effectiveness over a defined period of time.

You always have a choice between these two. Between fostering real connection with those you work with or trying to create a mystique of authority. Between creating relationships where you can help others and they can help others or prominently displaying your own name in some made up zero sum game. Many, many people choose the latter. The easy. The immediate. The few that choose the former are the quiet ones. You may not hear from them, but they tend to survive for much, much longer.

A good exercise is to really think about your own mortality. Not in some distant future decades and decades away, but now. Right now. Next 2 months. Next two weeks. You don’t know what to do with it. It’s frightening and some say illuminating, but most of the exercises center around what you find “valuable” in this. To discover where you spend your time. This is fine, but, recently, I’ve begun to hone in more on the visceral aspect of it. What’s it like to not see the couch again. To not taste water. To not be stuck in traffic. I focus, more and more, on the ordinary, and how much I will miss the ordinary things. A bird call. Getting the mail. Walking into a movie. A wave crashing. All of these things things will be gone forever. They will have been extinguished for you. This needn’t result in some huge epiphany or quitting your job or some goal; you put too much pressure on yourself when you do that. Instead, just think about what you are aware of every day and how you won’t be aware of those things anymore, at some point, hopefully decades away, but maybe just a few seconds away. Be aware of what’s in front of you. The light at the intersection. Wind. The feeling of humidity. A beeping of a cash register. Smiles. All of these things are here for maybe an instant. You, again, don’t have to do a thing with any of this, but simply notice it. Your alive simply by doing so.

The aim of this blog is to share thoughts about consciousness, life, business, time, mortality, wisdom, and truth. Frankly, there is no aim. I just wanted to write my thoughts and put them somewhere.