Peter: “There seems to be an absence of an ornothological piece… A headline regarding mass awareness of a certain avian variety…”
In the spirit of Thirty and Thirty-Five comes the following awesome, beautiful, and creative web of thoughts that occupy my brain.
On 11/11/11, it goes to 11.
It is ON !!! Time to celebrate !!!
Totals:
We’re on a mission from God… Hit it!
I want to be truly great.
I want to do something great.
So the question is, how do we become excellent?
You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process. ~ xkcd 896
Interconnectedness takes me from that illustration, to a place that makes me want to watch a Tony Robbins video.
Tony says being great depends on tiny differences that put a person in a state of certainty, confidence, and flow.
To be excellent, we train ourselves emotionally. Get rituals.
Incantations, not affirmations, embody what we want.
Incantations help us navigate MUSTs vs SHOULDs.
As we move from within our own minds out to interactions with others, influence is essential.
Because when two people are having a conversation, the one who is more certain is going to influence the one who is less certain. Always.
This is why I’ve been thinking a lot about conversations lately.
And conversations are the foundation of 106 Miles.
106 Miles recently had a conversation of greatness, which inspired me to find 11 great quotes…
11) “Greatness doesn’t take two months, or even a year. It takes years of focused practice to achieve even an ounce of it.” ~ Trizle
10) “Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” ~ Albert Einstein
9) “On the road to great achievement, the late bloomer will resemble a failure.” ~ Malcolm Gladwell
8) “Success is moving from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” ~ Winston Churchill
7) “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” ~ Will Durant, not Aristotle
6) “Excellence is not a skill; it is an attitude.” ~ Ralph Marston
5) “You do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don’t exist. (Sorry, Warren Buffett.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that’s demanding and painful.” ~ Geoffrey Colvin
4) “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3) “Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.” ~ Swami Sivananda
2) “It’s not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness.” ~ Edward Gardner
1) “It’s not where you take things from; it’s where you take them to.” ~ Jim Jarmusch
Now, I am incanting to take excellence to me.
I want PandaWhale to be excellent.
I want 106 Miles to be excellent.
I want my favorite pizza place to be excellent, too. (This will take time. Right now, people hate us on Yelp.)
And in my state of incantation, I include greatness.
As if I’m climbing the Ron Swanson pyramid of greatness.
Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
Don’t just be excellent. Be excellent to each other.
Be excellent. Go beyond a limit.
This takes my mind to an epic night. A really epic night.
After a party like that, it’s difficult to focus.
I want to hear Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory“!!!
I’m on the edge… of glory…
And I’m hanging on a moment of truth…
And I’m dancing like no one’s watching!!!
Did YouTube invent Lady Gaga or vice versa?
No worries. Hakuna matata!! Or is that…
Um.
Where was I?
Oh, right, dividing my attention.
Unlike attention, happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided. (Thank you, @aaker @padmasree @paulocoehlo!)
Now, where does motivation come from again?
Tony Robbins says understanding motivation is the key to happiness.
Daniel Pink says we are happiest and most motivated in our work when we have the opportunity for mastery.
Now, I’ve been told it takes 10,000 hours to master something.
That said, being good at something makes us like it more.
And there is much power in perseverance aka “grit”.
Thinking about all of this puts my mind into a state of flow.
Which brings us back to where we started: xkcd 896.
Repeat after me: Do something so hard that you become great in the process.
Ashley tweeted, “We make friends by wasting time with them.“
So I tweeted it too. Which made me want to dance.
“What does it feel like when you’re dancing?”
“Sorta feels good. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going… then I, like, forget everything. And… sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole body. And I’ve got this fire in my body. I’m just there.”
There are shortcuts to happiness, and dancing is one of them.
Which brings us to Oprah.
Oprah opined, “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.“
Which surfaced my love for The Little Prince, Chapter 21…
It was then that the fox appeared.
“Good morning,” said the fox.
“Good morning,” the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.
“I am right here,” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”
“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”
“I am a fox,” the fox said.
“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”
“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”
“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.
But, after some thought, he added:
“What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”
“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”
“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean–‘tame’?“
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”
“‘To establish ties’?”
“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .“
“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”
“It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”
“Oh, but this is not on the Earth!” said the little prince.
The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.
“On another planet?”
“Yes.”
“Are there hunters on that planet?”
“No.”
“Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?”
“No.”
“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.
But he came back to his idea.
“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
“Please–tame me!” he said.
“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”
“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”
“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .”
The next day the little prince came back.
“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . .”
“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.
“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–
“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”
“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“Then it has done you no good at all!”
“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:
“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.“
And the roses were very much embarassed.
“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose. “
And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.“
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
“M
en have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”
“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
That secret to life I tweeted from Daymond John on Shark Tank.
It reminded me that 80 percent of success is showing up.
And that happiness is correlated with success. Additionally…
“True happiness involves the pursuit of worthy goals,” Csikszentmihalyi said. “Without dreams, without risks, only a trivial semblance of living can be achieved.”
We believe in the interconnectedness of all things.
I’m very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic’ refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson. Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson? No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye.— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency
We believe in the interconnectedness of all things.
Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged —
people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t.
Everything is deeply intertwingled.
Samantha Graham wrote to me today because I was down about the death last week and funeral tomorrow of a loved one, and how grateful I am to be alive. Sam texted:
Be grateful for every breath you take!
The yogic breath … when you breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth … in Sanskrit is ‘ham sa‘ … which literally means ‘that I am‘ …
Breathe deeply, with cleansing, soothing breaths…
When I say “that I am”, I hear “be here now“…
Sam continued:
In Sanskrit the meaning of Om is avati or raksati. It is used as a symbol that must be revisited to be learned.
Raksati means ‘one who protects, sustains‘.
Om is the name of the lord who is everything.
How do we connect with everything? We’ll see.
By the way, this is the first posterous post I’ve composed entirely on the Sprint Evo phone. I wrote it sitting on a porch in southwestern Virginia where cell coverage is roamy but 3G coverage is decent! Thank you Sprint Evo. That it is. Beautiful.
The basis of most physical human confusion, is this: Everything is about the law of attraction.
Which means, simply, everything is about ‘inclusion.’ I repeat: There is no such thing as ‘exclusion’… You can’t look at something and say no, no, I want that NOT… and have it go away. Because your attention to it, causes you to vibrate WITH IT and by law of attraction, it then comes to you… So when you say YES to something, it comes. When you say NO to something, it comes. There is no such thing as NO in this universe. Get up. Everything is about inclusion. And so, your work as a deliberate creator is to sift through the data and define or decipher or DECIDE or choose… those things you are WANTING TO INCLUDE in your experience.(Source: Abraham Hicks, Ask and It Is Given, referred to me via Michelle Thedaker; the book tells us to make notes and post them where we’ll see them often…)
To which I add:
Be excellent.
Let everything else go.
Today’s lessons are about happiness in life. And every day is today. So simplify. And dance. And reflect. And stop, collaborate and listen.
“Whoever is happy will make others happy, too.” I couldn’t find the true source of this quote, which has been attributed to Mark Twain at times, Anne Frank at other times. In any case, I believe it.
There is no way to happiness. Happiness *is* the way.
I also believe that true happiness comes from within. It’s one of the most important values I have learned and continue to learn. Life, the universe, and everything regularly emphasize that lesson.
When it comes to true happiness, lessons are repeated until they are learned:
ifindkarma. elegance is refusal. 