Be Useful
If you haven’t heard, there is a new AI platform where you can ask the system anything you want and they will write you a detailed report, article, or proposal within seconds. It is pretty accurate and is, quite honestly, a bit of a marvel. The fact that the computer can spew out just about any content you want may seem super cool to many people, but I find it downright scary.
Saving Your Life: Read
If I told you that reading could save your life, would you do it?
We’ve lost our way and much of it is because we don’t read. We all know that we are addicted to devices and we’ve seen how they dictate our lives. We mindlessly stare at our screens watching other people live their lives or scroll endlessly in the hopes of finding something new and stimulating. But, our minds are not stimulated at all.
Smile From Within
I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions. I have no issue with someone who wants to try new things like dieting or traveling more. These are admirable initiatives, but you cannot change how happy you are without committing to tried and true values of the past. New experiences matter but the values of kindness, hard work and honesty go back to the dawn of time.
Have a Heart
While many of us hide behind our digital devices, we also tend to hide behind the idea that we are powerful leaders. Usually this means maintaining authority by directing, controlling, keeping it together and always having the answers. This may seem to check all the boxes of a good leader but when we lead in uncertain times it can actually cause issues.
Shedding Our Skins
David Brooks, author and columnist, talks a great deal about a moral ecology in the world. Specifically, he believes that the conscious ideas and values are what shape us. Whether it be the rewards we seek or the peers we hang out with, much of who we are is based on the narrative of the environment rather than something deep within us.
Rediscover You
I am a little concerned that we’ve lost ourselves. Or maybe it is better put that we have buried ourselves so that nobody sees who we truly are. What I am trying to say is that we tend to view success largely based on superficial stuff and on-the-surface measurements. Money and fame and any other detail that is the narrative of society at large seems to be our focus. As time passes, I can’t help but think that real success is more about the inner mind, our unconscious reality, our intuitions and our character.
Back to Basics
Ignorance is not always blissful. I, for one, think that we could use a healthy dose of ignorance. I don’t subscribe to the need to know every little thing that happens in the world at a moment’s notice. In fact, if you turned off all of the digital noise for a couple of days, I suspect you would still know if anything really important occurred. Since when did it become everybody’s business to know everybody else’s business? It just seems like we simply know too much . And yet it is possible that we are more ignorant than we have ever been.
The Bedrock of Culture
There is an old adage that “Adversity does not build character, it reveals it.” And while nobody in the world would dispute the chaotic landscape we find ourselves within, a little look in the mirror for all of us might be in order. The events of the past four months have been awful, but I wonder if maybe the problems are exacerbated by the culture we have collectively built the past couple of decades.
We Don’t Know
We really don’t know what the world will look like in the weeks, months or years ahead. We are yearning for things to feel a bit normal again, but our reality is that we simply don’t know how things are going to play out.
Play Time
I love to tell my kids about all of my friends in my neighborhood when I was young. I barrage them with stories about building forts, riding our bikes all over creation and playing capture the flag until dark. As you can imagine, they are both pretty sick and tired of hearing about my amazing childhood and all of my great memories.
