Ask Better Questions

No one drifts to their desired destination. The process of creating a meaningful life requires two things: intention; and focused energy applied in the direction of our intention, otherwise known as focused attention.

How do we get started in determining our intention? Sometimes it helps to ask better questions. What do I mean by “better” questions? In moments when we become aware that we’re adrift in our own life, it’s tempting to ask unhelpful questions, like “Why is this happening to me?” Or “What’s wrong with me?” Or “Why is so-and-so doing so well, but I can’t seem to get ahead?” Or “Why do I even exist?”

At times like that, it can be helpful to shift our focus to different kinds of questions: questions that help us evaluate where we are, where we want to go, and how to get from here to there.

Ready? Here’s a sample.

How do I show up in life? Do people light up when I enter a room? Or when I leave it? How aware am I of the way I engage with others? With the way I speak? Behave? If the way I do things is as important as the things I do, how am I doing? Am I even aware that the way I show up in life - in relation to other people and in relation to myself - is a choice? Do I need to shift the way I show up? What are small things I can do to that end?

Am I moving forward in my life & purpose? Am I connecting & contributing? Am I living out my role as a creative contributor? Or am I merely existing as a consumer? Isolated in escapism? Am I engaging my life? Or am I trying to escape it? Do I need to shift? How can I shift from escapism to engagement?

Am I stuck? Am I coasting? Am I cycling in stasis, repeating patterns from the past? Am I hoping things will get better? Or am I making them better? What actions am I taking to produce the results I want? Am I willing to make the leap if it means moving towards my goals?

How do I approach my problems? With doom & gloom? With paralyzing anxiety? With resignation that they’ll never get better? Or with a sense of optimism that my thoughts, words and actions can make a difference?

What does an optimally functional & effective life look like? How about marriage? Vocation? Spiritual life? Relationships with friends & extended family? On a scale of 1-10, how “optimally functional & effective” would I rate all these areas? How can I move the needle in these areas of my life? In all areas of my life?

Where do I actively focus my attention? Where do I passively allow my attention to drift? If our neurology is shaped and built in response to the way we focus our attention, what kind of brain am I building?

What about inputs & influences? What books am I reading? Who am I surrounding myself with? If we become the books we read and the people we associate with, who am I becoming? Do I need to cut ties with anyone? Do I need to seek out wise counsel or better friends? Do I need to read better books?

When it comes down to it, the way we show up in life is a choice: we can make the leap, put in the work, take the actions necessary to move our lives forward, and live life in crescendo, knowing that the best is yet to come; or we can play it safe, assume the role of the victim, stay stuck in past patterns, and drift into entropy, resigning ourselves to the “fact” that the best days of our lives are behind us.

The choice is ours.

Reflections of Grit

Grit (noun): the tendency to work strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress. (Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit).

Most of us think we have grit.  Certainly we can recognize its value when it comes to the pursuit of personal accomplishments and, well, anything else worth having.

Career.  Relationships.  Health.

But once in a while it's good to look outside of ourselves to see what Grit looks like from someone else's perspective.

Enter Peter Kraft Sr. (age 50) and Peter Kraft Jr. (age 20), from Gainesville, FL.  This father & son team just finished the Tour Divide, but not before it nearly finished them.

The Tour Divide is a grassroots mountain bike race tour that begins in Banff, Canada, and follows the continental divide to the Mexican border.  2700+ miles, and over 200,000 feet in elevation (i.e. climbing).  Anyone who finishes this non-race has some considerable measure of grit.

This year's event began on June 14th.  The guy who finished first, Mike Hall, did it in less than 15 days.

Grit.

Forest Baker and Eric Foster are going for the so-called triple crown of endurance mountain biking: having already completed the Arizona Trail Race in April, they've finished the Tour Divide, and are now headed to the starting line of the Colorado Trail Race, which starts on July 21st.

Double serving of Grit.

Peter Kraft Sr. & Jr?  They rolled up to the Mexican border last night around 9 p.m., 31 days after they left Banff.  Not exactly a course record.

Grit?

Consider that these two have been preparing for this event for three years.  Anyone who makes it to the starting line deserves a medal, and these two lined up in Banff with the rest of the pack.  Then they rode for 2000+ miles to New Mexico, where disaster struck.  First, Kraft Sr. crashed.  Kraft Jr. accompanies Sr. in the ambulance for the hour-plus ride to the hospital, where Sr. is stitched back up.  Then, they hitch a ride back to the course, get back on the bikes, and they KEEP GOING.  Then, Kraft Jr. gets violently ill.  Throwing-up-all-night ill.  In the middle of nowhere.  They find a park ranger, who assesses the damage and tells them they're in trouble.  Another ambulance ride to another hospital.

At this point, I'm almost hoping they throw in the towel.  "It's been a heck of a ride boys.  You've earned your battle scars.  Now go on home and lick your wounds."

Do they quit?  Nope.

Jr. recovers.

     The go back to the course.

          They get back on the bikes.

              And they finish the race.

Grit?

Off the charts.  They ought to make a movie about these two.

Well done Krafts.  Whenever I think about bailing on, well, anything, I'm gonna remember the name Kraft, and think again.

-David

Mad Men: Character vs. Plot

So recently we discovered Mad Men.

Not discover as in "Oh hey, what's this?"  Discover as in, toodle on down to the library, pick up season one, and proceed to watch all thirteen episodes pretty much back to back.

I'm hooked.

Not hooked as in "Can't wait to see what happens next!"  Hooked as in "Can't wait to see these characters again!"  Because besides the cigarettes and alcohol, Mad Men is its characters.  And that's it.

More recently, my wife went to see World War Z.  Her take?  "Meh.  Rather watch Mad Men."

As someone who is interested in Story, I find this fascinating.  Normally, a story has to start somewhere and end somewhere and somewhere in between a bunch of stuff happens to 'move the story forward.'  Plot.  Kinda like WWZ, and most other summer tent poles.  Even TV shows have plot.

Not Mad Men.  Mad Men is unique, because plot - the sequential progression of events - is irrelevant.  Mad Men is entirely about the characters: their contradictions, their secrets, lies & deceits, scars & fears, prejudices, addictions & escapes, their agendas and ambitions.  I can drop in on an episode, and never feel like I have to backtrack to find out what happened.  It's simply intriguing to see these characters forced to exist in each other's world, to see them seek some resolution in one area of their life, only to see some other area spin out of control.  The creators simply put two (or more) of these characters in a room and set them loose on each other.  I can't look away.

I realize this is what most nighttime dramas (i.e. soaps) aspire to, but it seems to me like other shows cling to plot more than the creators of Mad Men, no?  Much to process and apply to my own notion of Story.

Is that the library calling?  Time to go pick up season two!