Better Today Than Yesterday

"Even bad fortune is fickle. Perhaps it will come, perhaps not; in the meantime, it is not. So, look forward to better things." (Seneca) Hi friend, Here are a couple of thoughts from me: * Good or bad, most things are not permanent. Enjoy the good. Don’t overreact to the bad. * We can spend our energy complaining or changing. Only one can make things better tomorrow. * Lead with trust. You have to...

"Dying is easy. Living is the trick." (Red Smith) Hi friend, Have you ever wondered who drinks the most coffee? This coffee party started in Ethiopia, and now you can find it growing in 70 countries and drank almost everywhere. Brazil produces the most coffee, and Finland drinks the most coffee at four cups daily. Our Scandinavian friends consume about 25 pounds of coffee per capita compared to th...

"To me, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don’t even play the game, who rise above it. Those are the people who have such internal mental and self-control and self-awareness, they need nothing from anybody else." (Naval Ravikant) Rare for apple trees, it stands by itself. With two branches jutting at a 45-degree angle, it’s not pretty. I often wonder if the more...

“Because here's another sneaky little truth about life. You can't be an important and life-changing presence for some people without also being a joke and an embarrassment to others. You just can’t.” -Mark Manson Watch, Listen, or Read :) Hey friends, My time in the army taught me a lot. How to carry a rucksack is at the top of that list. Big bag, pack it full of bullets, beans, bandaids and walk....

"The deliberate envisioning of loss supplies the perspective necessary to appreciate the gifts in your life because you can only truly understand how something is serving you once you know both its presence and its absence." -David Cain Do you get sick often? Once a year? Four times a year? Every couple of years? I don’t know about you, but I hate being sick. Sore throat, headache, whatever. The d...

“Like everyone, you think you are rational, but you are not. Rationality is not a power you are born with but one you acquire through training and practice. Generally, what causes us to go astray in the first place, what leads to bad decisions and miscalculations, is our deep-rooted irrationality, the extent to which our minds are governed by emotion.” -Robert Greene Emotion is good. It is the fue...

“In the course of a week, he became to me a brother, a father, a friend, and the most worthy of confidence. His uniform good temper, coolness in danger, and resources in difficulties, his prudence, fortitude, and perseverance, under the most trying circumstances, render him a most valuable character." -William Clark talking about his friend Meriwether Lewis. In 1804, two remarkable explorers and l...

“Our stupidity may be clearly proved by the fact that we hold that “buying” refers only to the objects for which we pay cash, and we regard as free gifts the things for which we spend our very selves. We are eager to attain them at the cost of anxiety, danger, lost honor, personal freedom, and time; so true it is that each man regards nothing as cheaper than himself.” -Seneca Alonzo Fields was Pre...

"We forge our truest identity by putting our heads into the mouths of the scariest demons, the realities of our lives. Only by facing our fears, our prejudices, our passions, can we transform the energy that is the source of our aggression, the source of our confusion, the source of our struggle." (Jerry Colonna, Reboot) I’ve always wondered why I tend to see the 1% wrong when 99% is right, whethe...

"Listening is suspending disbelief." (Rick Rubin, The Creative Act) Though I didn’t know it then, the back door was like most. The cement was smooth and discolored by the thousands of bags of trash dragged, pushed, and willed outside—a dumpster to the right and a pile of cigarette butts to the left. After swinging and slamming for over a decade, the metal door sounded like most metal doors. It was...

Humans think in stories, and we try to make sense of the world by telling stories . The truly unique trait of 'Sapiens' is our ability to create and believe fiction. All other animals use their communication system to describe reality. We use our communication system to create new realities. - Yuval Noah Harari Hi friends, What does success mean? That’s been on my mind lately. Well, that’s not tru...

"I was too tense to appreciate the beauty around me, too preoccupied to listen inwardly or enjoy the people I love." -Tara Brach Hi friends, Last weekend, three teenagers stood on a small lake beach. They watched me while I willed my muscles to remember how to rig up a little sailboat—a sunfish. I’d done it 1,000 times before, but that was thirty years ago. I was sure going into this that we would...

"Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth; having hearts that are never moved and therefore never set on fire. These are the things to fear, said the headmaster." (Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, Totto-Chan) The table was glass with dimples and a metal frame. The ones from my childhood —a cheap table on a patio, and we were almost in the pa...

" No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good." - Marcus Aurelius Here are a few words I’m considering this week. I was reflecting on where I need to lean in or make a change. These are important words but not exhaustive. Some I get right, others I get wrong. I’m just a work in progress and thought I’d share in case you find them helpful too. I’m including my thoughts about the word...

“Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.“ -General Colin Powell Teams exist to do what individuals cannot. Leaders exist to maximize team performance. Here is an acronym I use daily to remind myself what my job is as a leader - C.A.R.E. Clarity Central to the execution of anything is clarity. W...

"Leaning back in my recliner each night, staring at the ceiling, I tried to settle myself. I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die." -Phil Knight Hey friend, I graduated from the infantry school at Ft. Benning two decades ago. Next week, a dear friend’s son will do the same. While our time there was likely very different, there are similarities. The pain, the push-ups, the heat, and the...

"Our narrative defeats our surroundings. Every time." -Seth Godin We find ourselves in a magnificent era where it is increasingly easier to create — first paper, then the printing press, then computers, and now almost independent machines. The future is bright. Creating is easy. Deleting it is hard. To delete the long-held beliefs about ourselves, the world, status, money, fear, love, or insert yo...

“It’s hard enough to create something good deliberately and with intention. And it’s no guarantee just because we believe something can happen, it will happen. But we know that unless we believe something can happen, it will not happen inadvertently by itself. And so it becomes really important that we imagine a world that we want, that we imagine solutions we want and believe that we can make the...

If a person gave away your body to some passerby, you’d be furious. Yet you hand over your mind to anyone who comes along, so they may abuse you, leaving it disturbed and troubled—have you no shame in that? —EPICTETUS A little one in our family was playing the other day. It was reckless in all the good ways. High energy and relentless in the pursuit of his interests. The world’s pressures, expecta...

“In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn’t read all the time – none, zero .” -Charlie Munger They say we are the sum of the five people we spend the most time with. I say we are the sum of what we consume—food, relationships, entertainment, and media. For the first time, the number of people who did not read a book in the last 12 months eclipsed 50% of the US population. I understan...

"The true price of leadership is the willingness to place the needs of others above your own. Great leaders truly care about those they are privileged to lead and understand that the cost of leadership privilege comes at the expense of self-interest.” —GEORGE J. FLYNN, LIEUTENANT GENERAL, U.S. MARINE CORPS (RET.) With the right paperwork signed and physicals completed, replete with 77 X-rays (that...

"When circumstances scare us, our imagination tends to take over, filling our minds with endless anxieties." This gem is from Robert Greene’s book The 33 Strategies of War . Knee deep in this massive volume of stories and lessons, I was delightfully surprised when Kindle recommended another book by Greene, The 50th Law. Robert Greene’s books are big, deep, and well-researched. You may know his oth...

A message came in that asked for a document only I had. While walking, I found the file on my phone (a 42-page document), attached it to a teams message, and hit send. Please take a moment. That is some Jetson’s level stuff. It’s incredible, and there is a man that, in many ways, made it possible. Andy Grove, a first-generation immigrant, arrived in the US in his early 20s. In his memoir, he descr...

Hi friend, Edvard Munch. If you don’t know that name, you probably know his most famous piece—The Scream. Painted in 1893, The Scream has widely been interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of modern man. A pastel version would sell for $119 Million 68 years after Munch’s death. Munch described his inspiration for the piece this way, I was walking along the road with two friends – the su...

Hi Friend, Last summer, the family was off doing their own thing, and I found myself at home alone with three hairy and very barky friends. I didn’t feel obligated to participate in what they were doing. In truth, I wasn’t invited. That allowed me to be alone without pressures, family responsibilities, email, calendars, or other distractions - all guilt-free. But I wasn’t alone. I was in solitude....