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Learning how to stretch makes everything easier.

When it comes to building muscle, length is strength.

Most muscle injuries occur because the muscle is stretched beyond its limit. We reduce our injury risk by gently improving our muscle’s ability to stretch when needed.

We roll around on the floor in weird positions until our muscles are just as confident stretched thin as they are bundled tightly together.

When building ourselves, we must also stretch.

We must stretch ourselves so that when Life stretches us thin, we can pull ourselves together without snapping.

We must set goals that require us to grow — stretch ourselves — to fulfill them.

We must stretch our brains by putting them into strange, uncomfortable positions and exploring for a while.

We must stretch our hearts by welcoming those with spiky edges, even if we don’t think there’s room for them.

And after a little groaning, we’ll often find there is far more room to grow than we thought.

Only fools and kings want war.

In many cases, a foolish king.

No tax can cover the cost of war.

No reparations can clear the debt.

The fool has nothing to lose.

The king has everything to gain.

Only fools and kings want war.

Nobody else can afford it.

Are sportspeople coached on what to say in their post-match interviews?

For a while, I thought so. I’m certain most of them have media training. They all say the same thing:

Yes — we’re very pleased/disappointed with the win/loss.

What’s important is that we worked hard as a team.

Sometimes things happen we can’t control.

We have to play our best and play for each other.

That victory/defeat is in the past now. Our job is to focus on the next game.

We have to put that game behind us and get back on the training ground.

We must prepare for the next game.

Maybe there are PR people behind the scenes telling them what to say. Perhaps they learned it from watching other top performers speak. It might just be how they all think.

But, whether they believe it or not, they all say these things because that’s the mindset it takes to compete at the top,

And saying is believing.

Why do we train?

Why do we spend hours working on our mobility, speed or strength when we are not in competition or paid athletes?

Life isn’t physically very demanding.

Most people barely walk a few thousand steps in a day. The heaviest thing we ever carry is a suitcase — most of which have wheels.

We can go further, faster, by sitting behind the wheel and singing a song (the singing is optional) than anything in history

We never have to worry about picking up something heavy because everything around us is designed to be easy to take home; it’s a grab ‘n go world.

So why do we train? Why do we practice?

We train for the time that Life calls on us to act.

We practice for the moment we don’t have time to think.

We prepare for the day that the people we love need us — and not just for helping our parents carry the shopping (although that’s a decent enough reason).

We train hard so that when Life calls upon us to stand up, to fight, serve, lead, and protect those we love, we can shoulder that burden with ease.

That is why we train.

There’s nothing like a last-gasp chance. 

The clock ticks relentlessly.

The players scramble. 

A disproportionate number of goals, points, games, and matches are won in the final moments. 

Much of the time, the winner isn’t the player or the team with the best skills and the most money. 

The winner — the team that scores the final goal — is the team that plays to the final whistle; The team that fights to the end, regardless of the mounting odds against them; The team that doesn’t lose concentration or relax until the deed is done.

Not to the end of official time. Not to the end of overtime.

We play until the final whistle blows because until the lights go out, we always have a chance to win.

Ever wondered how celebrities are so calm and collected on a chat show interview?

It’s not their natural flair for conversation or some superhuman wit.

Their jokes may seem off-hand; their remarks flippant and spontaneous; their demeanour relaxed.

That is an act—a very well-scripted show crafted solely for our entertainment.

The best of the best don’t just walk out on stage and deliver a hilarious stand-up routine or perform or win a national spelling bee.

People don’t have natural talents. There may be some activities that we are physically more suited for, but physical limitations can rarely hold back a human with a conviction and the discipline to execute it.

People who make it to the highest levels of anything — ANYTHING — spend hours and days and months trying to improve. They create habits and routines and spend almost all their waking hours working towards that goal.

Why don’t they just say that?

Why do they talk about ‘finding your passion’ and ‘talent’ and ‘God’ instead of the countless, boring, repetitive, lonely hours they spent building it?

Well, that would ruin the show, wouldn’t it?

Magicians never reveal their secrets, after all.

Most astounding feats don’t happen overnight. 

We may experience rapid growth once we start training or learning a new skill. 

We call these “beginners gains.”

Going from zero to one can produce some very satisfying results in the short term, but these quickly wear thin.

All the greats — people and businesses alike — must settle for incremental growth at some point.

We must accept that progressing beyond the same stage that anyone can get to requires gradual but constant progress.

Sometimes the increments are so small we cannot measure them day-to-day. 

Nevertheless, over time those little daily steps add up.

They compound. They become us. 

And before we know it, we look back, and all those tiny little gains we eeked out while feeling like we weren’t getting anywhere have amassed into something quite spectacular. 

Incrementality is the only way to reach lofty goals.

Brick by brick. Step by step. Lift by lift.

Day by day.

Good ideas are like London buses.

Big, red, open-ended, and moving obnoxiously fast.

There’s usually a maniac behind the wheel too.

When we want one, there is rarely one around.

But if we stop and wait for a minute or three, several will appear at once — all headed to the same place.

Good ideas come in threes and fours, blocking the highway and disrupting the flow of ideas.

Best to board one or wave them all on as soon as possible, or we’ll end up in creative gridlock.

The other day I tried golf for the first time.

Let’s just say the professionals make it look a lot easier than it is.

Most people have tried crazy golf but that’s hardly the same thing.

We weren’t even playing proper golf under the great big sky, but virtual golf in an underground bar.

The clubs and balls were very real though.

Twisting the body into spring while swinging a pound of metal around your head is not a natural movement.

Then trying to unwind and hit a tiny ball while not bludgeoning yourself or some innocent bystander in the head is virtually impossible.

At least for the first few strokes.

The concentration required to produce anything other than property damage when wielding a golf club makes one realize why people spend so long trying to master it.

And what a great excuse to spend the day walking outside.

I remember one parents evening many years ago when my biology teacher called me out in font of my parents.

She remarked that memorizing and learning were not the same thing.

This was the same teacher who, on the second day of Senior Biology, pointed at me and at the closest seat to her on the front row, perched on the end of the ancient, pen-scratched lab benches and said, “This is where you’re sitting now, loudmouth.”

It took me a long time to figure out what that meant about memorizing. She had been talking about making connections between things. But we weren’t learning for that.

We would slump in the classroom or hunch over a screen and read and listen and when they asked us, “Do you understand?” we would nod our heads and mumble yes and move on to the next thing.

For many years, that and a few more reads was enough to get me through school. Memorizing. And connecting.

But it’s not enough to do well in life. Becoming great at anything requires much more than reading about it.

To be really good at something, we must perform the act of learning.

We must practice.

Occasionally a great idea will pass us by and bump up against us all.

But we have to go out looking for the best ones.

Even the great ones on tv never seem to stick the way we want.

And when we stumble over a good one, we must seize it as quickly as possible.

The best ones never stick around long.

Write them down as quickly as possible.

Even a napkin will do.

There’s a term that marketers and salespeople know that underpins most of the buying decisions we make (or don’t make).

F.U.D.

Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.

When up against another competitor, one tactic is to insert Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt into the prospect’s mind about the capabilities or integrity of the competition.

Business-to-business that seems fair game.

But F.U.D. isn’t limited to the corporate world.

The psychology of selling is fairly simple. People buy when they’re in pain, or they want to feel good.

To move away from pain or move towards pleasure.

Almost all media and content we consume is designed around this concept.

The news job is not to inform us of world events. It’s to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt so that we come back the next day to watch it again.

Putin is a great example of using fear, uncertainty, and doubt to get elected. Trump did a pretty good job of this too.

Halitosis isn’t a medical condition. It’s one of the best uses of F.U.D. in a marketing campaign in modern history.

Next time you see something that makes you doubt yourself or scares you, don’t worry too much.

It’s just business.

Success in life is often misunderstood as our ability to exert our will upon the world.

Any addict will be able to tell you that forcing our will on the world is the fastest way to rock bottom because it’s ego-driven.

The Universe does not care for our ego. Nor does it bend its will.

Due to our seemingly God-like ability to shape the world, we can be forgiven for thinking it does.

But don’t be fooled by the sailor who claims their spells have called up a favourable wind.

Instead, we must surrender the outcome.

We must put up our vision and ask the Universe, how can this become?

Confuscious and his peers called this Wu-Wei: Effortless action; Being at one with what we are doing; getting ‘in the zone;‘ reaching a ‘flow-state.’

That is what Bruce Lee meant when he said we should ‘be like water.’

We follow our road, regardless of how well-paved it is.

We do not let our feelings about the terrain or the obstacles it presents divert us from our path. We are the path.

We don’t build a wall to block the wind.

We build a windmill to harness its power instead.

Good ideas don’t just come from anywhere.

The brain is not a machine.

We can prime it and fuel it and grease the wheels and kick it into gear every day for a year, and we will still draw a blank on some days.

Not every workout feels great; Even the ones where we make progress.

We can’t hit a PB every time.

Even Olympians have bad days. And bad runs.

We can practice a Full-Double-Full-Double Full for four years until it’s perfected, and when it comes to competition day, our legs just don’t want to play.

Life is unpredictable. That’s what keeps it interesting.

Some days, we just need to stick the landing.

There are few things worse than not knowing. 

Our brains have an incredible capacity for imagining the future — imagining several futures all at once. But they are not so good at telling which future is actually happening.

Our partner’s phone is dead.

Our child is late home from school.

The taxman keeps calling.

There’s a weird lump in our armpit.

Suspicious activity was noticed on our account.

Was that chicken cooked properly?

That cough sounds bad.

None of these things are necessarily bad.

They might be bad omens — and certainly are in many stories — but the reality is that these most often prove to be innocuous once we know why or how they happened.

The scary part is the knots our brain will tie itself up in trying to figure out what’s to come next.

Tangled and weaving back over itself, each turn squeezing our frontal cortex tighter and tighter until our temples strain from the pressure.

Once we know, that terrible knot unfurls on the ground into a heap of old rope.

Even when it’s bad, it’s not as bad as the knot of not knowing.

Expectations can be dangerous.

They are one of the most powerful ways to manipulate human behaviour.

If we think something is expected of us, we’re more likely to do it (or not do it). The fruits of these expectations are called ‘societal norms’ and ‘etiquette.’ 

The expectations we hold for the world are so powerful that they even shape our experience of it, regardless of the reality.

Expectations are particularly dangerous when we hold them for other people. We call these expectations ‘biases.’ We are often unaware these are being set.

When we set expectations for ourselves that we can control, we are more likely to live up to them. But often, we are not aware that these expectations are being set either.

When we fail to live up to our personal expectations, we break a promise to ourselves and get depressed.

When we set expectations about how others will behave, we leave ourselves open to frustration and disappointment.

People rarely behave the way we expect because their experiences have created very different maps of expectation in their brains than in ours.

A safe bet is to constantly challenge expectations about ourselves and not expect anything from others.

Yesterday was a dream.

An old shirt donated.

Something created.

Tried to get stronger,

And stretch my legs longer,

And failed at not getting frustrated.

Never mind: that day’s done.

This day has begun.

A new start — unmitigated.

.

People often have trouble recognizing me and it’s probably because of that invisibility spell.

Even my Mother has struggled on occasion.

Maybe people’s mental image of me differs from how I actually look. I wonder if that will be a problem.

It feels like a curse.

That invisibility spell was cast when I was a teen who didn’t want to be judged or attacked.

It felt like being ignored — slipping through life without anyone noticing — would be the safest option. Even if that’s true, it took me a long time to realize that it wouldn’t make me happy.

At some point, we all have to decide whether to keep hiding our individuality to prevent it from getting us into trouble. Or to let it flow out and be judged; To be loved and hated as we love and hate it ourselves.

We can hide and still be judged. And we can reveal all and be completely ignored.

In all likelihood, the reality will involve being both criticized and ignored by some while simultaneously being adored and imitated by others.

I suppose neither really matters — as long as we can live with it.

Some days are easy.

We slip through our tasks like a bar of soap down a slip ‘n slide slathered in coconut oil. 

Other days, we slog. 

The day’s dirt rises in a nipple-high sludge that crushes the ambition from our chests. Beloved beds call us home.

Those days are not for winning.

But we must keep the wheels turning so that tomorrow they may move a little more freely.

Victory those swampy days is living to fight another day.

Battle on.

If there’s one thing we can rely on people to do, it’s find something to argue about.

The most striking thing about all civil wars — at least to everyone watching from the outside — is how similar the two sides fighting are. 

This sketch from Monty Python is funny because of this absurdity. 

All modern religions are variations on the same theme, and the closer they are, the more animosity between them.

It’s human nature to engage in feuds and ridicule those we share borders with. Freud called this the “Narcissism of small differences.”

We spend so much time fighting about whether this means more than that, or which method works best, that we end up killing each other and simultaneously both failing at the thing we’re arguing about.

Take wellness, for example.

A quick search on “how to lose weight” will uncover seventeen different, equally convincing ways to drop the pounds. And they all swear blind that the rest are hacks and scams.

Meanwhile, we are all getting fatter and sicker.

How much progress would we make if our experts stopped arguing about tactical differences and put that energy into improving the world instead?

When was the last time you sat on the floor?

As babies, we spend most of our time on the floor. 

Our bodies are designed to go through all these wonderfully weird movements daily: Squatting, kneeling, rolling over, lying on our back.

Then, at about six or seven years of age, we sit in an office chair (or a miniature one) and don’t get out of it again until we get into our wheelchair to die.

When was the last time your hamstrings touched your bum? 

Our body is designed to squat from the day we’re born until the day before the day we die. 

Isn’t it a shame that we lose that most basic function of these wonderful machines we call home?

Fortunately, we can get it back anytime we want to use it again (although it does take a while to grease the ol’ joints again).

Bend over.

Touch your toes. Hold on to those big juicy ones if you can reach them.

Squat as low as you can go.

Plonk that ass on the grass. 

And get up again.

Do that every day, and you’ll be roly-polying with the toddlers at any age.

What is a treasure hunter without a treasure map?

Lost.

What is an academic without a discipline?

Lonely.

What is a routine without a purpose?

Prison.

In the words of Seneca the Younger — an Italian enslaver 2,000 years ago — “If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favourable.”

Without a port, a destination, a goal to focus on, we are doomed to battle the storms on the high seas forever.

Without direction, we are at the whim of every gust and squall; none can help us on our journey.

We will struggle against them all, with never a breath of wind in our favour.

Even if it seems impossible, even if we’re not sure what awaits us there, we should pick a port so we can hoist the sails with purpose.

Then, only time stands between us and our arrival.

And we have at least a small chance of catching a lucky wind.

We all walk a path.

Some are uphill.

Some wind and wander. 

Some go in circles.

When we find ourselves on the latter path — spiralling and expiring but getting nowhere — we must change direction. 

That path cannot take us where we want to go.

As comforting as the road may feel under our feet, as friendly the scenery may look, that is because it is familiar; We have passed this way many times before.

The only way forward is to strike out on a new path.

Sometimes, that may mean changing our minds completely.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

That’s the best way to be right a lot.

There’s only one way to make lifting a heavy weight easy.

Lift something heavier.

The same goes for work.

The only way to increase your productivity is to be more productive. Note, that doesn’t necessarily mean working longer.

Consistently adding just a little bit more effort, a little heavier a load, makes everything else easier the rest of the time.

Hard road, easy life.

Easy road, hard life.

Keep adding to the weight you bear on your shoulders, and one day you may lift the whole world.

Alcohol.

What a terrible drug.

The more we drink the more we realize what a waste of time and money it is.

Yet somehow, we always manage to forgive it.

Alcohol.

What a terrible drug.

What would life be without you?

For some reason, commercial life is filled with pointless and misused expressions.

Seth Godin would say that jargon helps people demonstrate what tribe they are in — that they’re “people like us.”

Mostly they’re just confusing. 

But sometimes, their etymology is interesting. 

Take this phrase: Out of Pocket. 

I’ve heard people using it when they’re going to be unreachable for a while, which is quite apt. They are taking some of the time out of the company’s pocket and putting it back into theirs.

Time is, after all, our most valuable resource.

Time is how we turn our skills into other things, like money. And we can never get more time.

Every day we make a trade.

We trade one day of our time for whatever we can achieve on that day. We each get about 30,000 days to trade — more if we’re lucky.

And that’s all we get. Time, and a body to experience it.

Spend time wisely. Invest it wisely because it pays out cumulatively.

And make sure you’re not”out of pocket” at the end of the day too often, or there will be nothing left to spend on yourself.

What’s the difference between a manager and a leader?

Leaders must manage. But not all managers lead.

A manager watches over our shoulder and points out when you’re doing it wrong. They set deadlines and tasks and follow up.

A good manager helps us manage our time better. They lend their support when we’re swamped. They help us identify and negotiate what we want and need from a project.

But a leader. Well, they’re a whole different breed.

Leaders ship. They put it out there.

They buy the boat, fill it with hands, sheets, and cargo, and get us fired up about where we’re going.

They stand on the bow, eyes fixed upon the glittering heavens, calculating safe navigation across a swirling, foreign sea.

They holler, “Here be treasure. Who’s coming?”

They leap off the boat and hurtle into the jungle, sword flashing as they gleefully hack through the foliage, sweat dripping from their brow and bellowing for us to join them.

And when they find the spot marked ‘X,’ they fill our pockets with bullion.

What makes a leader?

Leaders ship.

One of the most powerful aspects of Kaizen philosophy is that it asks us to always start with nothing.

That means no materials. But it mostly means no ideology.

Every day is an opportunity to challenge our beliefs.

Every time we pick up a hammer and swing it at our art, we have an opportunity to improve.

Every time someone challenges our ideology we are given an opportunity to learn.

Perhaps our belief will be bolstered by our defence. But it may also crumble and give way to a new, deeper understanding of the world and how we move in it.

Few things are more potent tools for growth than the ability to challenge dogma continuously.

That’s where all the best ideas come from.

Only one small thing separates top-performing students in the world from everybody else. 

It’s not how much they study. 

It’s not some enhanced genetic capacity for memorization.

It’s not even anything to do with their literacy or environment, although I think it’s safe to say those contribute.

The one thing that all top-performers do that others don’t is ask questions. Specifically, they ask Google.

Anytime they don’t know something, they find out immediately.

No “Oh, that’s weird.”

No, “I wonder why that is?”

No, “I don’t know.”

Just a perpetual, “Let’s find out.”

The capacity of humans to ignore the bleeding obvious still amazes me.

It’s a survival tactic.

It’s not productive to ruminate on the environmental disaster we’ve created. Or ignore that changing ourselves to fit into a hierarchy we don’t believe in makes us sick.

Blinkering ourselves is far more than just a survival tactic.

It can help us thrive.

People who excel in one particular area, skill, or task tend to be able to blinker themselves to life’s distractions.

They can focus on one thing and ignore everything else around them until they complete it or burn out.

Most of us want to be left alone so we can look after ourselves and our family and maybe have some fun along the way. So we blinker ourselves to our potential.

That very same trait most people unconsciously use to limit themselves is one of the hardest to apply consciously.

Mastering that skill — self-control — will help us get anything and everything we ever wanted.

The formula for success is confoundingly simple.

So simple that most people don’t believe it.

Start.

And then continue.

That’s it.

Don’t start something else.

Don’t take a holiday.

Just, continue.

And you’re there.

There isn’t much difference between the fool and the hero.

Both stick their head above the parapet.

The fool takes risks with little or no potential for reward.

For jest. For attention. For nothing.

The hero takes risks that have the potential to pay off handsomely. Often they won’t be the person getting rewarded.

That might mean running into a burning building, but often, that’s a fool’s errand.

It takes courage to step out of our comfort zone.

It takes more courage to stand up and demand the best for ourselves.

But the thing that takes the most courage is to stand up for something we believe in or speak out when we see a misdeed.

Nobody likes to be told they need to change. And we like it even less when we are called out for immoral behaviour—intentional or not.

When we put our head above the parapet, there is a very high risk that we will end up with an extra hole in the head.

But there’s also a chance we will make the world a better place for everyone.

That’s what real heroes do.

There’s a lot of fun we can have when we go off the beaten track.

It’s ok to get distracted. To faff about.

Frolic in the long grass.

Stop and smell the flowers.

Chase the butterflies.

Spend an hour reading about something random.

Just don’t lose sight of the path.

Humankind is destined for destruction.

Ask most people what their “perfect day” looks like, and they’ll describe something between an all-inclusive resort and an adventure tour.

Very few people consider that if they were to live that every day, we’d probably get bored.

Bored, and restless. And then, we’d start to go out and cause some trouble.

Dostoevsky said it best when he said: You could drown a human in happiness, give us a perfect life, and we would eventually find a way to mess things up; To demonstrate our individuality; To prove that we have some agency and can leave our mark on the Universe.

“Shower him with all earthly blessings, drown him in happiness completely…[and he will] of sheer ingratitude, out of sheer lampoonery, will do something nasty. He will even risk his gingerbread and wish on purpose for the most pernicious nonsense, the most non-economical meaninglessness, solely to mix into all this positive good sense his pernicious fantastical element.”

Not every day is going to be perfect. But we wouldn’t want it to be.

If it were, we’d find a way to mess it up.

Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about that because Life is a mixed bag as standard.

What’s the difference between a joke and an insult?

Timing? 

Perhaps.

Intent?

Almost certainly. 

But the key difference between a joke and an insult is how we take it. 

Got a message from the haters?

Laugh it off. 

Laugh it all the way to the bank.

Television has a way of taking our day-to-day and turning it into the fantastic.

Take meetings, for example.

Shows like The West Wing and House of Cards turn ordinary meetings into exciting encounters.

The West Wing famously does this by adding movement; the ol’ walk ‘n talk.

The bustle of the White House going on around the walkers is an absorbing backdrop, and the brisk pace of their walk brings a sense of happening to what is typically quite a boring conversation.

Everyone gets to see them being busy. It’s a Very Important Perambulation. Plus, they all get to chalk up a few more steps out of their daily 10k.

In real life, most meetings are just social events. 80% of it is chatter.

The point of a meeting is to meet; To discourse; To get to know each other, or discuss an idea.

If that’s not why we’re meeting, it should probably just go in an email. Or mix it with some much-needed exercise, and do the walk ‘n talk.

Why do we have to be “happy” or “sad”?

Why is there an “unhappy” that means sad but not an “unsad” that means happy?

Why can’t we ever be “unsad?”

Most of the time, that’s where I am.

Not happy. Not sad.

Not unhappy, though. Just alive.

Not doing great.

Nor bad.

But quite happy about it.

Or at least not upset.

Doing alright:

Unsad.

We like to think our ideas are born in our brains, but that’s not where they come from.

Ideas don’t come from anywhere. Ideas are everywhere. They flit around like neutrinos on crack, bumping into each other, smashing together, breaking apart and fusing together again somewhere else.

Occasionally, particularly if we stay still for a moment, an idea will bump against our skull, worm it’s way into our thoughts; Be conceived.

The temptation is to hold on to that idea; To examine it, nurture it; To ruminate upon it until we’re ready to show the world.

That is a mistake. Ideas do not wish to be clung to. They want to be used.

The more ideas we covet without using, the fewer new ideas we receive.

We must open the gates and release our ideas into the world, with as little nurturing as possible.

They will come back. They will bring their friends.

And we will become a river of ideas.

Is it possible to get bored of seeing the sun set?

Spurting flaming fingers into the deepening blue as it nestles down among the mountaintops or slips between the waves.

Tickling the treetops with rosy glints of gold as it drags the day down. Splashing the cottontail clouds with amber and scattering them to the night.

I’m not sure it’s possible to get bored of watching the sun set.

But I suppose if we ever do, we can always get up early, and watch the dawn instead.

Not many people will like hearing this, but few can deny it.

The truth is, most people want to be told what to do.

Those who turn up at work with a neat to-do list ready-made for them have a vastly different job to the person making that list.

When it comes to personal life, where the incentive to compete or complete must be self-sourced, few people take the time to practice the discipline required for success.

That’s 80% of what success is: discipline. The rest is luck.

Unfortunately, the discipline they teach in schools is designed to teach us to follow a system of regulations; To get us used to doing what we’re told or fear punishment.

The aim is not to create people with discipline, but to discipline people, because that is what makes a good worker.

Nobody teaches us how to stick with something boring or hard when there’s no punishment or immediate reward. Why would they?

A pupil with discipline quickly becomes a master.

More importantly, how could they?

True discipline can only come from within; From constant practice.

And once we find it, we’re free.

If you believe the news, the very fabric of society is being nibbled away by a swarm of toxic moths.

Depending on who you read, those moths have different coloured dust on their wings.

Mainly Red or blue. Maybe yellow. Rarely green. But the bites they take are the same size.

Drawing a line and saying, “We’re right, and those moths are wrong,” is the real cause of the problem; the root of our division.

Picking your favourite coloured moth and blaming the destruction on the other colours is as shortsighted as, well, a moth.

Electioneering moths. Gerrymandering moths. Filibustering moths. They’re all damn moths. And they’re eating the rug from under our feet, whichever side you choose.

If we want to protect the fabric of democracy, we don’t need more of either colour; We don’t need moths in new colours, either.

We need mothballs.

And a big bird or two.

We must be careful what we say when we’re alone.

We must be careful what we think.

Lord forbid we write it down,

And cause a grand ol’ stink.

We must beware of what we wish for,

Lest it manifests our fears.

The Universe is listening,

Listening to you; All ears.

“Be like water” is 50% terrible advice. The other half is genius.

Bruce Lee is often credited with this ancient slice of wisdom, but humans have known about it as long as we’ve known anything.

We want to be like water in that we become relentless in our pursuit of a goal: To go around anything blocking our path. To wear away the obstacles we cannot bypass through our persistence.

But water has one trait that we would do very well to avoid: Following the path of least resistance is the quickest way to go downhill.

Water wants to be the sea, but we want to touch the sky.

The easiest way to be successful is to follow the path of most resistance:

Add more weight to the bar.

Always walk up the escalator.

Learn something new and challenging.

Train in the rain.

Go to bed early.

Stop drinking.

Taking the easy road makes a hard life.

Choosing the hard road makes an easy one.

There’s one way to be sure you get your work in by the deadline, and that’s to make the deadline yesterday. 

It won’t be our best work. 

It might not even be average. But it will be finished.

When we set unrealistic deadlines, such as those in the past or the very immediate future, we define the quality work we expect through the timeline we establish. 

How long does it take to make something interesting or noteworthy? 

It’s hard to say exactly, but you can bet it isn’t “as quickly as possible.” 

There’s a type of pressure that only comes when you get to the top of the pile.

When we’re challenging, it’s everybody out for themselves; everyone against each other.

Everyone aiming to reach the top.

When we’re already at the top, the whole pack is out to beat us.

It’s not just us against the next challenger.

It’s us against the world.

Few things are more important than a good night’s sleep.

It’s when our brain makes sense of the day’s events.

It’s when our body repairs all the damage done over the day. 

Without a good night’s sleep, very few things will go to plan the next day. 

The best thing we can do to lose weight, be productive, hit our goals, and generally be a happier, healthier human, is to get into bed an hour or earlier than normal — and actually go to sleep.

Bonne Nuit!

We don’t have to wait for much these days.

It took a whole 25 minutes for some kind gentleman to deliver me a six-pack of IPA at 4.45 on a Monday night in the pouring rain.

Sure, I paid for the privilege. That’s what privilege means.

The next morning we realized we were a blender cup short of an incredibly healthy breakfast smoothie, so we put in an order.

It arrived the next day.

In this age of fast buying and even quicker delivery, why is it that we wait to live our passions?

We’re the only person who can deliver the life we want.

Get pedalling!

How to get more time?

Everybody knows that time flies when we’re having fun.

Some people feel uncomfortable calling work fun, calling it “flow” instead.

It’s the same.

Getting more time isn’t possible, but we can stretch our perception of it by doing the reverse: Something we hate.

The guy that holds the world record for planking must enjoy it.

For everyone else, it’s the easiest way to stretch time.

And there we have it: The secret to a long life — or at least one that feels long — is to be miserable.

Live fast and die young isn’t about the age we die; it’s about how old we feel when you do.

There is no way to get more time.

So, work hard and play hard while it lasts.

And don’t count a second of it.

Some pretty nasty things have happened to those who forgot about the mind-body connection.

First, calling it a link is an understatement.

Mind and body are the same.

The brain doesn’t end at the neck. It extends all the way to our fingertips. Stubbing a toe on a coffee table is a direct hit to the brain.

This pervasiveness is most obvious when we put our bodies through intense change or trauma. The brain uses the body to “store” many of the physical memories we have but are not quite ready to process.

We keep those tough emotions locked in with our routines and jobs and drugs and distractions, but there is nothing to hold them in when we go on a detox.

Our old memories bubble to the surface. Our dreams become vivid with ex-girlfriends and lost battles. We night-sweat out the past traumas that our brain has stashed away into folds of flesh.

Without a break from processing the toxins in our environment, our brains can’t process the poison that sticks in our minds.

The all-time bestselling product is impossible to bottle.

It’s the secret behind some of the biggest brands in the world today.

Coca-Cola doesn’t sell sugar. It sells happiness in a can.

McDonald’s doesn’t sell food. It sells happiness in a box.

“I just want to be happy,” Gary Vaynerchuk proclaims at the start of every video: “Don’t you wanna be happy?”

The answer to that should be no.

We can’t be happy all the time. Nor should we want to be. Even if we could inject happiness (and many people try) it never lasts long. Happiness is not the point.

Happiness is a vague idea — a way to describe the handful of hormones that make us sociable and keep us alive.

One — Dopamine — isn’t related to satisfaction as many people believe. It’s our get-up and go; The hormone that drags us out of bed and on the hunt.

Happiness comes from being unsatisfied; From working towards a goal. It doesn’t even matter what the objective is.

As long as we progress towards a stated goal, even our sadness or dissatisfaction has a purpose. It’s part of the struggle.

That’s why you can’t buy happiness and happiness never lasts.

We live in a time of many conspiracy theories, but nobody is talking about this one.

It may be the most important one of all. It’s certainly the one that we have all experienced.

Maybe it’s The Big Slip. The thread by which all the other conspiracies come undone.

Around the same time as the first COVID-19 lockdown, little signs started to appear on all the traffic lights — often over or above the button pedestrians press to request to cross the road.

The signs read, “Do not press button. Automatic signal.”

Which means the buttons were always automatic. And that means they were only put there to trick us into being more patient; A delusion of agency to appease us.

It’s all I can think about, but nobody else seems to care.

How much agency do we really have?

And what else are they doing to placate us?

Any great craftsperson will tell you that our tools rarely provide exactly what we need.

It’s the same reason someone else’s millionaire routine isn’t going to work for us. Parts of it might. Or it may work for some time.

But success comes from the process of figuring what works for you.

All our funny little habits and desires and tastes need a personalised plan.

Playing around with others’ routines and tools and piecing together one that works for us — that fits the life we want to live — is where all the fun is to be had.

So play away!

There’s one investment that always brings great returns.

It never fails to return your money — often many times over.

It’s never too late to start investing in it. And there are (almost) no management fees.

Even if you only invest a tiny smidgen, it will bring great returns — especially if you invest a little bit every day.

There aren’t any interest rates or expense ratios or deductibles, and you can invest as much or as little as you like, whenever you can.

Because the best place to invest your money, is you.

In yourself. In your dreams. And in your future.

It’s foolproof.

This week, a new generation of robots entered our lives.

Our little fabricant friends get more advanced, smarter, more capable, and more useful every year.

With each new model comes a new funny name to make them seem more human and more likeable; Less of a threat to our existence.

This clever little chap is called the “Labrador Retriever.”

As our species grows and expands into space and technology evolves, our lives will change dramatically, as will our language.

One day in the not-so-distant future, people may not even remember the furry namesake of this little bot.

“A real dog?” Our grandchildren will ask incredulously, “that would fetch things?”

“Well,” we’ll say with a wistful smile, “most of the time, just a ball or a stick.”

And they’ll roll over laughing until the tears trickle down their cheeks.

You may not have noticed, but we already have it all.

Everything the sci-fi writers and politicians of the past proclaimed — and more — we’ve done it.

Instant communication. Flying cars. AI Robots. Mind-reading. Enough food and resources for everyone (if we shared them better).

We have so much time and money on our hands that we have the luxury of being bored — something reserved for the upper classes for almost all of human history.

Next time you’re feeling bored or unsatisfied, make a short list of all the normal, everyday, uninspiring things you’re grateful for — or even just one thing. Almost everything we have today would blow the minds of a Victorian.

Today, I am grateful for the Kiwi fruit I had for breakfast.

It’s travelled halfway around the world to get here, and it cost me about $1.

I ate it with my coffee made from real Columbian beans that also cost me about $1.

Now, you don’t get more privileged than that.

The first time the writing was on the wall, nobody could read it.

The King of Babylon — it was his wall that had been written on — called together all his great scientists and priests to translate it.

When they finally figured out what it said, it was a death threat to the King, who was not in the least bothered by it.

That very night, the King was killed and the empire he so treasured was divided between his enemies.

When the writing is on the wall, we shouldn’t ignore it. That’s why it’s on the wall — often written in blood.

It might say, “Go home.”

It could say, “You’ve failed.”

It often says, “Game over.”

But the message is always the same:

“You need a change.”

Every hero story has a similar structure.

Before the final victory, the hero is always defeated.

The bad guys band together and win the battle, swiping aside our hero at the last minute with a nefarious trick — or a through cruel manipulation of the hero’s Achilles’ heel.

Our hero is dejected, but they have shaken the villain. The hero was stronger than they expected and the victory closer than they would have liked.

The villain believes the hero is vanquished, but we can sense the tide is turning.

As long as our hero finds the strength to pick themselves up, learn their lesson, and try again, we can be sure of one thing:

Next time, defeat is not an option.

How much has life changed in the last 12 months?

How many new things have you tried over the last year?

Restrictions made it a short year in some measures. But in other measures, we’ve experienced far more than a year — and many surprises.

Who else thought they’d be an expert at taking nasal swabs?

Six months from now our lives can and will be different. Many aspects will be the same. Others will look similar, but even those will have changed; Grown or matured or decayed.

Knowing that the change is coming, we can choose to direct it.

This time next year, we can be so much better mentally, physically, and financially — in any way we choose to be. If we chose to take a step down that path every day.

Your next adventure isn’t then or next or later — it’s now!

Tomorrow has arrived.

The key to investing — in yourself or in your future — is to do it for the long haul.

When we’re in it for the long haul, it doesn’t matter if things don’t go our way at first.

We believe something has a bright future ahead, so we understand that comes with its challenges; Challenges that could appear to threaten the existence of the future we’re working toward.

Some days it might feel like we’re going backwards, but the truth is that a rise requires a fall — often several.

If we can stick it out for the long haul, we’re bound to go further than most.

A great man once said that history is measured in millimetres.

A fumbled ball. The kiss of a crossbar. The whistle blown a second too early.

We can do everything up to that point perfectly and a millimetre can make all the difference between win and loss.

That’s luck.

There’s one thing we can be certain we’ll have to do, no matter what kind of success we want in life. 

Fill out forms. 

Society rests upon a stack of forms.

Forms to go to school. Forms to get a doctor. Job applications, grants, mortgages, citizenship, and gym memberships all start with a form.   

Bureaucracy is the first hurdle the Universe throws up to test if you really want something.

Everything we want requires a form.

Being good at filling them out can unlock a lot of doors.

The past is history.

We move on from it.

The future is destiny.

We move on to it.

In the present we steadily, endlessly,

Move.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t know our limits.

And to be fair, how can we be expected to know our limits without first having pushed them as far as they will go?

Pushing the limits doesn’t always turn out well. And it’s always uncomfortable.

But we often find we can squeeze in a little more than we think, if we take a deep breath and enjoy it slowly — one morsel at a time.

This morning I find the dog waiting eagerly outside the living room door, which is strange because that’s where he sleeps.

He catches my eye as I return from the bathroom and wags his tail.

“Is it time to unwrap the presents yet?”

I duck under the tree to turn on the lights, and the thumping of his tail increases. 

“Not yet, mate,” I mutter, before stumbling away to the kitchen to make a coffee. The dog lets out a little whine.

He doesn’t get many presents, but that’s not what he is excited about. He only cares about the gift wrap. 

Later, as always, he leaps on every scrunched ball of paper we produce with a gleeful snarl, methodically shredding each sheet into a thousand damp scraps.

I guess that’s the part of getting a present that he enjoys the most: unwrapping it.

And sometimes, I think he might be right.

The forces of good and evil are at constant war.

The line between them runs straight down the middle of the human heart.

We can influence that battle every day. We can change the world one good deed at a time.

A truly selfless act always spawns another. One small act of kindness can trigger a wave of goodwill that spreads far further than we will ever know.

When you put a hand out to one, you lift us all.

Ideas don’t just pop into existence.

The brain doesn’t work linearly — only our conscious does. We can’t keep track of more than one thing at once, but our brains are gently mulling things over behind the scenes.

Every time we think or read more about an idea, we throw a few more ingredients into the pot. Maybe it still doesn’t taste right. We add a little stir. We look back at the recipe and maybe add a little more of something.

Even when we spend time thinking or doing other things — or better still, sleeping — those ideas are gently simmering on the back burner.

Sometimes it’s a flash fry.

But often, the best ideas are slow-cooked.

The laws of the universe say that energy doesn’t disappear — it just gets turned into another type of energy.

To do something like getting out of bed we need to find the energy somewhere, and it’s rarely under the pillow.

We can’t get more energy. We can facilitate more energy flowing through us.

Don’t try and store energy because it will become stagnant.

Instead, find ways to spread energy to those around you, and you’ll see the flood gates open and wash you out of bed.

There’s a great YouTube channel called “What Could Go Wrong?” with videos of people attempting everyday tasks that go hilariously wrong.

It’s a great avenue for content because we all tend to trip ourselves up by imagining the worst. This is our worst fears come true — but it’s funny because it’s someone else.

The amygdala — our inner eeyore — is primed to fantasize about the worst case scenarios.

So we often spin our wheels in a turmoil of deaths and disaster that only rarely occur.

Life is random as hell. But far too infrequently we ask ourselves the other side of that coin: What Could Go Right?

And the list of things under that is even longer than the one under “WCGW.”

Something changes in us when we step up to take responsibility.

The more people we serve, the larger the responsibility, and the greater the pressure.

There are fewer opportunities to take time off and far less time for ourselves.

Everything revolves around that responsibility.

Not everyone steps up to manage community organizations. Most people don’t want the responsibility and the work involved in managing a group of half-interested people.

Many people can run a business but shy from the pressure of having people’s livelihood depend on their decisions.

The cost of service is the responsibility we carry for those we serve.

Grab a snack.

Put your feet up.

Stare at the ceiling.

Watch something funny again.

Take a nap.

Relax. It’s in the plan.

Every gift you give comes with a little stamp from the Universe.

You probably don’t even notice, but it’s always there.

It’s purpose is to make sure a little portion of that gift gets returned back to you — a morsel of gratitude and goodwil; Even if you don’t get a thank you card

The more you give, the more smidgens of love whizz their way back to you.

Sometimes they just take a little while to find their way.

Even the best tennis players in the world hit the net occasionally.

It happens so often that they even let them retake their serve. Tennis would be a very different game if they didn’t.

The first time we try something new or make a piece of art we might not enjoy it as much as we expect.

It’s novel and challenging and it almost always doesn’t turn out how we expect — especially when we’re trying something new.

That’s why it’s always worth another go; a second serve; an edit.

We may enjoy it more the second time. And it always turns out better.

Human brains read each other all the time — it’s the most fundamental way we learn.

Our ‘mirror neurons’ are gently mimicking everyone around us, all the time.

There are several reasons that someone falling over is funny, and one of them is these mirror neurons.

When we fall over or get surprised, our brains send out flashes of electrons, thrashing about just as we flail our arms when we trip.

When we see someone fall, some of our neurons fire as if we were the person falling over. We experience the ghost of it in our subconscious — our brain is ‘tickled’ by theirs.

So even when we fall, we create a little spark of joy.

Sometimes it takes the worst of situations to remind us how lucky we are.

We all had a taste of disaster recently. A little reminder that things go wrong; fortune misses; luck runs out.

Most of us escaped the worst of it with only a small scar — a lingering reminder that it could have been worse.

A reminder that things don’t just happen to other people. They happen to people like us, on days like today.

Whether we like to admit it or not, we’re all in this life together. Bad luck isn’t picky, it can claim any of us in a moment.

Which is reassuring, because we wouldn’t want good luck to be choosy either.

There’s a lot of great science to help us make our brains happy.

One of the most powerful tools that science has discovered to help make us happy is gratitude — but not the kind of gratitude that most people think.

Being thankful for what we have creates a spark.

Being thanked for what we’ve done sets our brains on fire.

The action of helping — and the gratitude that it brings — is a potent way to improve our brains, our environment, and the lives of others around us. And it immediately comes back around to help us.

Thanks for reading!

I hated cardio until someone taught me how to do it properly.

For many years, obsessed with burning as many calories as possible, I’d hit the treadmill or the rower with gusto, pounding away until I was a dripping mess in motion.

Heart pounding and back drenched seemed the only way to reverse the laziness of the rest of the day; Flagellation for failure to be fit.

Of course, that never lasted long. After a few weeks, your body gives up and finds a way to sabotage the sweat fest.

My latest coach advised me that the only way to keep it up was to keep it LISS: Low-Intensity Steady State.

It’s the opposite of HIIT.

It’s just walking. Sometimes on a steep gradient. Sometimes a shallow one.

Heart rate stays consistently low. You can still talk (or write).

There’s no rush. No fuss. No sprints.

You just put one foot in front of the other, moving one step at a time towards the goal. Focusing on each step and relaxed all the way.

Now that, I can do every day.

Everyone starts out on a new adventure with the same confidence.

We’ll just put our foot down and arrive in now time.

Never mind the statistics that most diet changes fail; the weight never stays off; most new enterprises fail; we’re still surprised when we fall off.

Failure is not the problem. The problem is the rush of self-flagellating that follows.

We beat ourselves up and continue to wallow off the wagon.

One of the hardest lessons to learn is to correct those stinging, self-doubting thoughts.

They’re what holds us back more than anything. We have to learn how to make room for the things we want to do, without punishing ourselves for them.

We all need to take some time off from driving the wagon.

Play in the mud for a bit. Stop to sniff the daisies on the roadside.

Just don’t let the wagon get out of sight.

Blink and you’ll miss it.

Thoughts flood forward and choke us.

A moment’s hesitation – caught in the headlines – and life changes forever.

Often the consequences are not too dire. Maybe we pay a little more. Sometimes we miss the train or the plane.

But occasionally we escape death or fortune by a whisker; often without knowing it.

The word hesitation comes from the Latin for “stuck.”

We train and practice so that it’s easier to get unstuck when the need arrives. We have values and visions for the same reason:

Hesitate and it’s too late.

There’s a little bit of magic I learned about that can make you rich.

Not instantly rich or jaw-droppingly rich, but rich enough to do whatever you want. 

They teach us about it in school but often not in a way that makes practical sense. If we don’t learn it, it really can screw us over very quickly. Some say it’s the most important algorithm: the Master Key.

The magic of cumulative interest is the same magic that makes kaizen so powerful.

It works like 100 plus 1% is 101. That’s all fine and normal.

But 101 plus 1% is 102.1%. That extra 0.1% is where the magic happens.

Over time, say once every day for a year, that little decimal grows into a monstrous magnifier.

101 plus 1% every day for 365 days isn’t 365.

It’s 36,868.65.

And when we do that for thirty years?

It’s impossible not to be rich.

Something strange happens when we leave a place.

Our brains wrap up all our memories of a place and tucks them away safely.

When we return to that place later, the bubble unfolds, and all the memories we have stashed away unravel.

At first glance, it’s almost as if no time has passed at all.

A week away and a year away feel pretty similar to the person who went away.

That’s why it’s often a shock to find quite a lot has changed while we weren’t around.

Does time pass us by, or do we pass through times?

The list is long.

There’s a lot going on.

We’re not really sure that we’ll make it.

Our bags still unpacked.

The odds ever-stacked.

If it’s positive we’ll have to forsake it.

When that test is done,

Tie another one on.

Who knows what they’re trying to measure.

It’s a bi-lateral scoop.

So it must be foolproof.

Just be glad you can pay for the pleasure.

We like to think that we know what will happen next — or at least we have an inkling.

Most of the time, we’re not too far off. But the truth is that there’s nothing more uncertain than what will occur with the passing of time.

The future is little more than what we hope and work towards; it rarely wants to play with the same ball as we’ve been practicing.

That race we’re preparing to win might be a lesson in humility in disguise.

That mountain we’re scaling may be about to teach us how to fall.

The treasure we’re hoarding might only be there to teach us how to lose it all.

We can dream and hope, pray and labour, fret, wail, and shake. But we just don’t know what the words on the next page say until we turn it over.

And we never will.

The best way to keep yourself young is to switch it up regularly.

Eat a dish you’ve never tried before.

Make something different from the normal.

Take a chance. Place a bet.

Don’t just shuffle the playlist. Try a completely new genre.

Move across the country. Travel around the world.

Make a new ambitious goal you have no idea how to achieve.

Break your routine on the river banks of Comfort, put it all together again on the other side, and you’ll never stop growing.

That’s all young people do; grow.

There’s no secret to getting what you want.

There’s no special path or magic juice.

You might need a slice of luck now and again.

But the best way to find that is to set a goal, work hard towards it, and don’t stop until you arrive.

It’s no secret. It’s usually not even as hard as we might think.

But it does always take hard work.

It’s not every morning you wake up to discover you’re a mass murderer. But that’s what happened this morning.

Go back 600 millions years and we find the ancestor we share with the insect world — probably some sort of a slug with limbs.

That slug had feelings. Feelings of joy upon finding a dirty great pile of rotting foliage. Maybe fear whenever the local sulphur geyser erupted.

Those emotional states — it turns out — are just as present in their modern day arthropod descendants; The same as they’re present in us.

Bugs don’t just feel pain. They feel anxious. They get depressed. They experience hope and desire; If not exactly as we do, then pretty close.

Maybe the only thing that’s surprising about this discovery is how long it took us to notice.

Let’s just hope the afterlife isn’t full of dead bugs.

There’s nothing like a shot of tequila and a waft of pheromones to really get to know someone. 

The more of either the merrier!

 

 

Never underestimate the power of environment on one’s behaviour.

We like to think we’re fully in control, but often we’ve just been subconsciously reacting to the space around us, forming habits in association with it.

If we’re smart, consciously moulding it to help us reach our goals. And that’s been doing more of the lifting than we realize.

Change the space and suddenly, we’re back to square one.

The French say that we eat with our eyes but I think that’s just so they can get away with smaller, prettier portions.

How we present ourselves or the things we’ve made to the world matters, as much as we might hate to admit it.

We’re giving the world something to feast on, so make sure it doesn’t need too much extra seasoning to make it palatable.

.

The whistle shrieks.

The bells rings

Jump aboard.

Grab your coats.

Sprint or you’ll miss it.

It’s time to go home.

Good descriptions are like lingerie.

That’s why the characters we love in books never look how we imagine when we see them on the silver screen.

It’s not some casting agent’s preference or the director’s mate or the need for a star to lead the line — although those can be reasons.

The main reason is that there wasn’t much of a description in the first place.

That was probably the best lesson I ever learnt about writing character descriptions: Don’t.

A sentence is often more than enough:

Small and pale, with a mess of black hair and a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.

Her hair fell over a sheer cliff of cheekbones in a soft golden wave, rising gently to curl against a blood-red purse of lips.

He was a giant of a man, with calloused, hairy hands and a voice like a gravel driveway.

Everything else happens in the reader’s mind.

That’s why nobody likes to read those overly lengthy, dense descriptions slung with similes.

They’re probably fantastic examples of communication, but they don’t leave much to the imagination.

Something happens after the third day “off the wagon.”

The links between the chain of habits, especially when it’s a new one, stretches past breaking point.

It’s no longer a cheat day or a recovery weekend or whatever you want to call it to justify it at the time.

After three days, the old habits ambush the new ones, and generally they win.

One day is ok. Three days is pushing the limit.

On the fourth, it takes exponentially more energy to get back on the wagon. It’s travelled too far since we took a tumble.

It’s not impossible but you’ll have to work pretty hard to catch it up.

It’s not eating too much or eating the wrong thing.

It’s that feeling the next day that I should have eaten more of those goodies while I had the chance.

There’s an easy way to find out how somebody feels about that big secret you’ve been hiding.

Tell them.

They might not like what you have to say.

And you might not like their response.

But it’ll be a damn sight easier — and 100% more accurate — than not saying anything and leaving it to your imagination.

The most dangerous time to be on a sailing boat is when it’s barely moving at all.

When the boat is ripping along at full pace, sails stretched full, hull creaking and humming under the pull of the wind, it’s relatively safe.

But when a sailboat turns, it slows to a stop. The sails shiver. There’s a brief lull when the only sound is the clinking of rigging and the groan of momentum soaking the hull.

Then there’s a whistle and a loud crack, as the huge pole hung along the bottom of the sail swings across the boat. That pole is called a ‘boom’ because of the sound it makes when it moves.

Many men have heard that whistle — the devil’s catcall — but not the boom that follows.

The most dangerous time to be on a sailing boat is when it’s changing course.

If you don’t have all hands on deck, aware of what’s going on and ready to haul on the right ropes, someone is likely to get cracked in the skull.

The hardest questions in life often have the simplest answers.

Most of the time, we already know the answer. We just don’t want to hear it.

The fantastic Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, calls these “VCR questions.”

Questions where the answer is in the question.

Things like, “How can I talk to her?”

“How do I move out of my parents’ house?”

“How do I drop out of med school?”

“How do I stop smoking?”

“How do I lose weight?”

The answer is painfully obvious when someone else is asking. I bet you could tell me the answer to any of those questions right now.

But there’s a jungle of emotion between us and where we want to be, and it’s full of whispering lies about epic embarrassment.

We are not scared.

We just feel scared, and that can and will pass.

After a few brutal, hacking steps, we almost always find that the brambles only block the entrance to the path.

There’s a very clear route behind them.

We had the best car growing up.

It was a yellow Fiat saloon.

The seats were walnut brown. The interior was various shades of mud and sun-kissed polyvinyl.

Rust-red paint licked out from the wheel arches, giving the car a “just fled the battlefield” vibe. This paint was designed to prevent any further rust from forming out of sheer pity.

The paintwork was faded. The chrome was flecked. But the car moved, and that little yellow tub took us all over the country.

We’d squeeze in, Dad would slot in a Massive Attack tape, and we’d hurtle on to the A406 in a puff of smoke.

By the time we hit the motorway, the driveshaft would be clanking in time to track four, and we’d holler out the opening lines of one of the greatest songs ever:

“Though you may not drive…a great big Cadillac…”

Whenever we arrived after a long journey, Mum would pat the dashboard and say, “Thanks, little car.”

And she meant it. 

We loved that heap of shit so much that when it finally limped to the scrapyard, Dad found the only other one still puttering around and bought it.

We loved that one even more.

Everything was different a year ago today.

But three hundred sixty-five spins later, some things are the same; I’m still sitting here, still writing.

Every year has its changes, but this year feels a little longer than most, now there’s a post to mark each day.

No longer am I bobbing aimlessly at the mouth of the stream, waiting for the journey to begin; Undecided.

Now the words flow past. When I look back, I have made it further upstream than seemed possible just a few short months ago.

There is much paddling to do yet.

Hesitation will only whirl me back downstream.

But today, in between strokes, I can celebrate a little; Mark this little milestone on my riverbank.

And paddle on till tomorrow.