Be set free to sing or hum along

No. 9 | “If only” is a dangerous and perilous path.  It is a road to nowhere or at least a road to nowhere any of us should want to go.  “If only” may not be a road at all, but more an ever-expanding and deepening hole one digs, the dark bottom from which the climb out seems more and more impossible with each passing day.   

I wish that I did not know what that hole-darkness can feel like.  “If only” is powerlessness.  It is to take up residence in victoms-ville.  It is a place you can go alone for sure. Unfortunately, we often find a community of like-minded sorrow wallowers there with whom to commiserate.  That community if we find it does us no favors.  

To ruminate on the thoughts that tend to accompany these words is to sentence ourselves to continue in whatever discontent in which we find ourselves.  It is a terrible and circular self-fulfilling prophecy, a tail-chasing endeavor. 

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No. 8 | I am a big proponent of self-improvement.  I have not always been.  I have often referred to myself as the late-bloomer of late-bloomers.  It is a curious thing to look back and wonder at how this perspective change came about.  Looking back, there were many moving parts.  

One experience early on was a comment made in a class that I was taking.  My employer had sent me to this class; the topic was selling.  Early on in my work-life, I worked in sales.  This fellow teaching this class said, “Have any of you heard that old statement, ‘You are earning exactly the amount of money you have decided to earn?’”  Those may not be his precise words, but that was the gist of the statement he made.  

Once he had raised the point, others in the class started talking about a “famous audio piece” by some speaker with an especially memorable voice.  Many of the more seasoned salespeople in the group were familiar with this recording and the idea.  None of them recalled who this speaker was or the name of the talk.  

Nobody in the group spoke out against the idea.  I was likely the youngest in the group, and I did not like the idea being expressed and expounded. I did not like it at all.  I was unsettled, to say the least.  I did not feel that I was earning the amount of money that I had “decided” to earn. 

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No. 7 | I have a true and cherished friend who does rest well.  At least from my vantage point, he seems to do it well, far better than I.  I need to take some lessons from him, follow his good and instructive example.  

It is early morning, pre-sunrise on the Saturday of a three-day holiday weekend, and I have awoken thinking about how with just a little more time in, I can make the work project I finished up after hours yesterday some small percent better.  

Making things whatever percent better is a worthwhile cause.  We should be doing so.  We were made to strive.  This is true.  

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