If you want quality time with someone, spend lots of time with them. Not only will some of that time be quality, but the investment of hours is what leads to the connection.
No matter what you want “quality over quantity” of, it rarely works that way. Getting quality is work. Worthy work, but work. But in the hours, and reap the best ones.
When you hear a criticism, what you’re really hearing is an admission. The person is telling you what affects them, what concerns them, what they feel emotionally bothered by. They’re telling you what affects them. Remember what they say, but also remember what it means.
When I say that something is an important responsibility, that isn’t me telling you that I think you should do it and you’re somehow a failure if you don’t. That’s me saying to you: “This thing is important, so if you need help with it, I am very willing to share that burden with you.”
It’s easy to admonish others for what they should do while you stand on the sidelines of their life. But a principle I hold dearly in my heart is that I can’t give anyone flak for anything I’m unwilling to help with.
When we hear someone tell us that we should be doing something that we’re not, it’s easy to interpret that as judgment and admonishment – because for most people, that’s exactly what it is. But not from me. I may forget to say the words, “So how can I help?” But that’s what I mean.
Sometimes major plans in your life will change. You’ll need to adapt to discomfort in order to preserve what truly matters. Pay attention to who supports you during these times. That information is worth its weight in gold.
The best reason to try new things when things are going well is that you can try weird things.
As an example: Most people don’t look for or apply to a new job until they’re forced to. But when you’re desperate, you play it safe because you don’t want to risk your opportunities. But this can close you off from the very best opportunities out there, and the best ways to win them!
When you’re not desperate, you have the security to try unusual approaches or bold moves. And that’s how you discover all sorts of amazing things!
So, pick an area of your life that’s going well right now, and use that safety to try something new, something different – something weird!
When you get very good at something, there are a few traps you can accidentally lay for yourself:
When you’re a true whiz at something, that’s a valuable quality! Don’t undermine it with these mistakes. Embrace your skill and its value!
It seems like simple advice, but in practice it’s hard to follow:
If plans you made get disrupted, examine how you feel? If you’re relieved, then make a note of it for the future! Life is too short to do things you don’t want to do if you don’t have to. If, on the other hand, you’re disappointed? Let that motivate you! Don’t let opportunity slip by – put in the effort to reschedule or replace the activity.
Easy in theory, but mood and fatigue get in the way often. So note that too! Maybe the plans were a great idea, but you didn’t align them well with when you’d want to do them. Learn and adapt, my friend! And have fun!
Whenever I meet someone who says that they’ve dreamed about their profession or career path since they were a little kid, I’m amazed. It’s not just the perseverance that impresses me (though it does!), it’s the fact that they had desires and goals that were that persistent.
When I was a kid, I had no idea what I wanted to do – and the things I did want, I’m certainly glad I don’t do now. I’m very happy with my life, but I got here in a long series of experiments and adjustments as I figured things out. That’s a valid path, of course! But so is the other way, and it impresses me because it’s not my way.
Today I took my kids to a real fossil dig site (I happen to live in a part of the world that’s well-known for being a hotbed of paleontology). My middle child has dreamed of becoming a paleontologist since she could understand what a dinosaur was. And while she was there, starry-eyed at all the real paleontologists she got to interact with as she dug up fossils, she made everyone laugh several times with small comments. They all said: “She’s exactly like we were at her age. She belongs here.”
She’s 8. I don’t know if that’s really where she’ll end up, of course. But I see in her something I never saw in myself at that age. A dream with a path. A joy in a pursuit that makes sense in the world. If she doesn’t go that route, c’est la vie. But if she does… Well, let’s just say I’ll be joyously impressed.
Today, multiple things happened that derailed my son’s after-school plans. He had wanted to go to the park with a friend, but the friend was sick, it rained, and the toy we’d ordered that he was going to play with didn’t arrive in time.
Here’s the thing though: any one of those things would have derailed his plans. So all the others were just “free” bad luck! They were misfortunes that didn’t add any additional burden or ruin anything else. One piece of bad luck essentially immunized him from the others!
It can feel overwhelming when multiple bad things happen in quick succession, but often the “concentrated bad luck” is better than the same misfortunes spread out. So enjoy the freedom of a statistically better tomorrow!
My father and I watched the news of Hurricane Katrina together. One particular piece of information caught my father’s attention: with all the damage to infrastructure, most people were without power. Generators were the only source of electricity, but the supply lines for gasoline were similarly hindered. As a result, gasoline was going for more than forty dollars a gallon in that area.
The gears started turning in my father’s head, and he said to me, “You know, if we left in the morning, we could be in New Orleans by tomorrow night. I’ve got the truck and trailer – we could fit probably three or four hundred gallon containers in there and haul ’em down ourselves. After our costs, we could probably still net ten or fifteen grand for a couple of days’ driving.”
It sounded like a great idea to me – we bring gas to people who need it, and we make good money in the process! We set our alarms for early in the morning and hitched the trailer to the truck in preparation for the morning drive.
Except in the morning, the plans changed. A new news story was on that put a stop to our idea. Apparently someone had done exactly that the day before, and had been arrested. Somebody who lived a little closer than we did filled up a truck with gas cans and when he started selling them, he got arrested for violating price-gouging laws.
So a guy who’d done nothing wrong got arrested and lost whatever money he’d sunk in trying to help people, and a bunch of people who needed gas to run generators in a blacked-out city didn’t get it. I’ll never know how many more people might have driven in to help like my father and I were going to had it not been for that effect.
Look, some solutions are messy. Someone hears about gas going for forty dollars a gallon when people need it and they get upset. But gas was that expensive because there was a desperate need for it! That price is exactly the solution; it wouldn’t have stayed at forty dollars for long if people could respond by bringing in gas from other areas like we were going to. Instead, those figurative walls were put up and the shortage – and resulting crisis – lasted weeks. People died.
Solutions to emergencies often look messy. Think about a paramedic cutting the clothes off of a gunshot victim instead of carefully removing them. Yes, you’d prefer the clothes not be destroyed, but that’s not the crisis. It’s just part of the messy – and best – solution.
The Opportunity Machine 