Author: Anne

This author has written 802 articles

MOVING TOWARD EASE

“Ease” isn’t the same thing as “easy.”  In fact, they’re often at odds,  Easy work is hardly worth our effort.  It can deaden us instead of giving us the chance to bring our best selves to life.  Ease, on the other hand, is the feeling of doing something worthwhile, and doing it well.

When we choose a project where the stakes are too high, where stress is our fuel, where conflict is at the heart of the work- we’re unlikely to find ease.  Ease is a combination of purpose, effort and skill.  It can feel like confidence, even if we’re not sure it’s going to work.  Especially then.  Change your project, change your future.

FROM:  Seth Godin’s Daily Blog

REFLECTION:

  • Is there a project that will bring your best self to life and is worthwhile doing?  What is it?
  • Does it have the elements of purpose, effort and skill?
  • Do you need to make a shift in a current project?
  • What would that future look like if you did?

LOVE, VALUE, APPRECIATE…

“People say ‘marriage is hard’ all the time.  But I disagree.  I don’t think marriage is hard.  In fact, if you do it right, marriage is the thing that makes everything else easier.  Now you’re wondering how to do it right – right?  Well, you’re lucky.  Because love is something you can learn.  Love is something you can practice.  It’s something you can choose to get good at.  And here’s how you do it.  Appreciate your person.  That’s it.  “Well — first, be sure to choose a good person.  But we’re all good people here.  Choose a good, imperfect person who leaves the cap off the toothpaste, and puts the toilet paper upside down, and loads the dishwasher like a ferret on steroids — and then appreciate the hell out of that person.  Train yourself to see their best, most delightful, most charming qualities.  Focus on everything they’re doing right.  Be grateful – all the time – and laugh the rest off.  And that goes for kids too, by the way – and pets, and waiters, and even our own selves.There it is.  The whole trick to life.  Be aggressively, loudly, unapologetically grateful.”

Lines from THE ROM-COMMERS. by Katherine Center – The father’s toast to his daughter on her wedding day.

REFLECTION:

  • Love is something you can learn….love is something you can get good at… love is something you can practice.  Where is your focus?
  • Do you see the best in your partner?  your kids? your friends?
  • Do you focus on what they do right?
  • Are you grateful for them… for others you cross paths with?
  • How can you “be aggressively, loudly, unapologetically grateful” today?
  • How can you be boldly loving today?

TAKING RISKS

“If you know something’s going to work, it’s not worth working on.  It requires no courage.  It requires no faith.  It requires no skin in the game.  Whether you’re a spy or a teacher or a spouse or a painter or an abuela or an astronaut or a monk or a barista or a board-game designer, the bits that matter are the bits you make matter by putting yourself on the line for them.  The unknown is the foundry where you forge your chips.  Everything important is uncertain.  Sitting with the discomfort of that uncertainty is the hard part, the wedge that can move the world.”

Quote from FOUNDRY by Eliot Peper – https://eliotpeper.com/

REFLECTION:

  • What is a project you need to do that requires courage, faith, skin in the game?
  • Are you willing to put yourself on the line?
  • Can you step into the unknown and “forge your chips?”