selflesscentrism
Today is Mr. X's Birthday. Part of the following examples are gleaned by paying attention to him. Remembering this date without a CRM reminder is a dividend earned from the investment of attention paid to him over the past decade. Gratitude is bliss. Succeed at Failing
Protect Others from Harm When Sacrificing Ourselves for our Purpose or Higher Calling. We inevitably hurt ourselves in our deep work and that’s acceptable. Maybe it’s only a few blisters along the way or perhaps as harmful as compromising our health and wellbeing with lack of rest, exercise and/or proper nutrition. We might even face an outright financial collapse. No matter what, we will sacrifice ourselves in some ways. Among the biggest sacrifices we’ll make for a higher calling is failed relationships or simply foregoing them in the first place. A short list of historic figures reveals exemplars who either never married or, if they did, stayed away from home and kept few, if any, friends in the midst of deliberate practice. We may fail in many ways on a great path but most of us will simply fail to succeed at failing-and this keeps us from realizing our greatness. Closely studying historic examples of great failures are helpful but we have to look harder for those because they are the success stories seldom told. Much closer to home are the more obvious cases. A sampling of our peers, family and friends offer examples of squandered lives not lived to full potential because these people, quite simply, failed to accept failure as a gift. Instead, the stigma, fear and rejection of our imminent failures stop us from trying to succeed- this wisdom is as well documented as it is ignored but the point of this example is go one step further. We must protect others from collateral harm when we fail as much so as when we succeed. It's okay if we squash our bodies or cut a decade off our life expectancies and even finish our life in poverty. The only big regret of a great life well-lived may be our leaving a wake of other lives affected or harmed by the marks we’ve made on history. Simple examples include missing our childrens’ school events, leaving our successors to suffer in financial ruin or that our life’s great work and its benefit on society dies with us. Maintain Eye-Level Contact Indiscriminately with others Eye-level means in the figurative sense while making literal eye contact. And it means becoming acutely aware of our tendency to classify people into groups by status and hierarchies. When we come face to face with a hero or someone we should normally “look up to”, we’ll do us both the favor of not looking up or down to the other, being star struck or holding one up on a figurative pedestal. Instead, we’ll practice looking and talking to each other like our equal. Don’t mistake this for a manipulative power tactic to control the dynamics of the engagement. Instead, we look at each other equally as a dignified display of basic human respect, the kind that we are born with, not the kind that we can earn and lose. "The reason why this practice is valuable is because it is extremely rare" Starting off at “eye-level” will put most all others at ease while establishing mutual respect and rapport for both of us. This is an uncommon practice and, as such, needs to be deliberate and disciplined as it is formed into our habit. The best way to develop this habit is the reciprocal- when we come face to face with others in any other supposed level or hierarchy. Whether we are in the presence of our company CEO or we ARE the CEO, an Olympic gold medalist, astronaut or homeless person. Look at and speak with all others at eye-level, including minor children. Our social behavioral tendency is to demonstrate our subservient position to “higher-ups” when we greet and engage with them and we are habitualized into this. Conversely, the tendency is to put others in subservient positions when they are seemingly lower down on the hierarchical food chain. Action Verbs: Pay, Hold & Give Attention When we pay for and exchange our money & time for “things”, we forfeit our time and money for them. When we pay for and give our disciplined attention to people, nature and things we multiply, make and keep more of it. The value of disciplined attention is a sustainable resource. Time and money are divisible, become scarce and depleted. Real property wears under the sun and gets weathered with the seasons or potentially destroyed in natural disasters. The values of capital assets such as stocks and bonds are marked to market, subject to dilution, involuntary mergers and acquisitions and divestiture. The value of supposedly “material” things and tangible assets are measurable however uncertain. Trust your Truth Because it’s Inescapable When it’s suddenly dark or stormy, as it inevitably is or will be, we can lose our way from our true path looking for quick shelter or following the nearest light. We can be distracted by false targets and forget our truth, our purpose or calling. Our energy can become diverted and our attention gets divided & distracted when we find ourselves in turbulence. When doubt arises we question our purpose and can feel a sense of loneliness. This is the most important time when we need to remember that we have our purpose, to think of protecting others now and to pay acute attention to the moment instead of striving for temporary light and shelter. We must have faith that no matter what scrutiny or cynicism we face from others and doubts that evoke within that our true intentions will will come to light within and illuminate from within. This is how the truth saves and frees us and why we need to trust it. Know Why. Or At Least Keep Curious Whenever in Doubt How we are doing is more important than what we are doing. Why we are doing is more important than how or what we are doing and even more important than who we are serving. When we consider the profound importance of asking “who am I serving” we can further see the value of what, how and why.
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How Biased Are Your Google Search Results? Image you’re visiting a landfill. You’re at the dump and looking around at an abundance of refuse, waste that other people have discarded and left behind in large piles. It all looks collectively worthless and without value. The individual pieces of garbage- parts of plastic, wood, paper, metals and glass- each appears to be valueless on its own. Close your eyes for a moment and picture yourself at the landfill while you try to remember the last time you were in such a place. Can you image the sights, sounds and smells?
Now imagine the last Google search you clicked and the way those search results appeared on the page as a collection of words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs. Can you consider those results similarly to the piles of trash and waste you imagined at the landfill? Let’s improve on this by considering how these certain, individual pieces of trash that seem totally unwanted and without value might actually have value-either individually or collectively. You might consider how pieces of wood, paper and cardboard could be collected and burned in a campfire, to be used for heating or to cook food. Can you think of how aluminum cans or plastic bottles have value when they are collected, sorted and delivered to a recycling center and exchanged for cash? It takes some effort and energy to actually do this or to even think about these objects in this manner. As you imagine yourself at the stinky landfill can you try to appreciate how the next Google search result you generate has a similar implied lack of value? It’s pretty easy to consider the similarities of a Google search result to a pile of refuse left behind at your local county dump. The point is to realize the stark differences between implied values of each of these examples on their face. A stinky dump is full of worthless crap that nobody wants nor has any use for. But how is a Google search result any more valuable than the piles of waste at a landfill? There is no correct answer and this isn't a trick question. Imagine now that tomorrow you will visit the same landfill and you notice things have changed overnight. You can see that a team of workers has rearranged everything and there are new piles of trash organized into stacks and heaps. There are a few piles of only wood pieces next to a few piles of glass pieces and then another few piles of aluminum pieces. You are so lucky to have had this work completed for you without you having to expend any energy, time or effort to do so yourself. Is this a good way for us to look at our next Google search result? How have the order of results been rearranged for us and how might my results be rearranged differently than your results? Finally, what if there were a way for us to reshuffle the entire contents of the results in random order? Would that be much different than looking at a giant heap of garbage at our local landfill? |
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March 2024
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