NEED TO BE SPONGES, AGAIN
Monday, August 3, 2020
Life is neither good nor bad.
It’s about being better than it was or worse than it was.
A survival game with a good life as first prize, and death as the participant ribbon. Everyone starts out the same and end up the same.
In this human race, from newborn to corpse, we learn far too slowly for own good what it is we should be doing, or ought to have been doing, to live the better life, the healthier life, the wiser life, and perhaps the longer one. It’s a sprint one day, marathon the next, and cancelled when the runner least expects.
Forming new habits that build continuous improvement is the foundation of building a better future, a better life, and a better success story.
Continuous improvement is a popular theme these days in pop-psychology, self-help books, and the blog-o-sphere, making that a natural bandwagon to hop aboard.
It isn’t about building a new habit, achieving a goal, and then resting. Or coasting. Or boasting.
It’s about relentless improvement. It’s adding ‘one more’ every day, sure, one more pushup, one more lap around the track, one more rep of 10 what-evahs, and we’ll build something better and more sound.
It’s not about the training or the outcome, or the latest advice-book.
It’s the relentlessness.
We get up when we’re knocked down, we try again when we fail – it’s like learning to walk, we keep bouncing back until we master it. Not with help, not with a schematic drawing, podcasts, or personal-trainers – we learned to walk. We learned to talk. We learned to go about in the world. We were exposed to many things and information that came labeled as parenting and teaching – but mostly, we were sponges until we reached the point when we felt we didn’t need to learn anything new or change who we do things and change how we manage our lives.
We learn a few things as well or efficiently as when we learned to walk and talk – and we didn’t give up until we mastered those skills. I believe that is the kind of determination we need all our lives, especially after the half-time show.
This is no time to give up or give in but a time for a return to relentlessness in all things.
There is no time other than our time.