Quotes of the Week from Me:

“From family, life is running; from family, life is coming.”

“You have to drop the bat to jog the bases.”

“Dare to chase what others don’t understand.”

“I could play forever. And I think I will.”

“It’s too easy to tell others what they need and don’t based on what you have and haven’t had.”

Quotes of the Week from Someone Else:

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

-Umberto Eco

“It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”

-Arthur Schopenhauer

“What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.”

– Haruki Murakami

“The show doesn’t go on because it is ready; it goes on because it’s eleven-thirty… You have to try your hardest to be at the top of your game and improve every joke you can until the last possible second, and then you have to let it go, you can’t be that kid standing at the top of the water slide, overthinking it. You have to let people see what you wrote.”

– Tina Fey

“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.”

– Arthur Rubinstein

Quick Optimism

Challenge Your Qualifications

Being a father requires a commitment to improvisation, to figuring it out one day at a time. The same goes for being a mother, sibling, and friend. The same goes for your career and all the changes you experience in life. It applies to being a human being.

One job does not always qualify you for another. Being a friend doesn’t prepare you for friendship with everyone. I found out very quickly that being a father to my son did not qualify me for being a father to my daughter; being a father to one did not qualify me for being a father to two.

The focus is not about your lack of qualifications or lack of preparation, but what you should take on confidently as new challenges emerge.

What are you capable of that you tell yourself you are not? That others say you cannot do?

New questions will arise. You don’t need the answers or the prior experience to thrive in your current situation. Learn on the spot. Find a way.

Full Newsletter

This week I’ve got a random collage of thoughts written down for you. I had a lot of fun “typing out loud” and I hope you enjoy it.

Collage Piece Number 1: Marketing

The name “Full Newsletter” for this section has been a thorn in my side for weeks. My nature is modest, and most people I know agree, but when it comes to clever names, puns, and marketing ideas, I usually find a streak of brilliance. I came up with the cover of our graduation pamphlet in middle school, I won best team name idea at summer camp back in the day, I implement all of the business development outreach for my team at work, and I recently came up with a company name for a knife-making company that my friend started. He lives in Hamilton, Virginia, on an acre of land, and is making knives. So naturally, HAK Knife Co. made sense (Hamilton, Acre, Knife, and what do you do with knives? Hack things). He also lives in a brick house so I came up with Brick House Blades. Maybe not as brilliant…

I’ll even throw this one in. My wife, Taylor, and I signed up for a running and biking race next weekend. We had to submit a team name so I came up with “Where There’s a Will, There’s a Tay” – another streak of brilliance. In all honesty, I actually came up with this around 3 years ago when we were choosing a wedding theme. We ended up not using a theme at all, which I think was for the best.

However, I am down and out on naming this section. The whole newsletter is the “full newsletter”. I know you get the point. There is a quotes section, a quick takeaway section, and a longer section, but the name doesn’t feel creative enough.

The above is an example of my perfectionist OCD, which thankfully makes up roughly 0.2 percent of how I operate. But as always, there is a lesson between the lines of an otherwise mundane story: you can’t always rely on your strengths, let alone weaknesses. Your brightest ideas will hide at times. Keep pushing. Stay confident.

Collage Piece Number 2: Defining Happiness

In a moment of clarity, aka a conversation with a close friend, I have come up with a momentary definition of happiness for myself. And I am satisfied with the answer. It has led to more questions but I think it makes sense. It’s a bit of a doozy topic wise, so it requires a conversation. It requires more than a definition.

Happiness by comparison is merely our perception of what we think makes others happy, followed by thinking we also need those things to make us happy. For example, most people associate success with money and/or status, and then the rest of the things: health, family, friends, love, purpose, fulfillment, and other layers (not everyone, but a surprising amount according to research. Especially those in the range of 18-35 years old).

Happiness in reality is having the resources (health, wealth, time, love) to pursue a purpose. It is having the resources to change your mind about that purpose, while maintaining your own version of a quality lifestyle. Happiness is more than money. It is more than companionship. It is more than comfort or working too much or having too much free time. Happiness is the imbalance of life that allows opposing emotions, circumstances, and experiences that make their opposites more vibrant and special.

In addition, happiness is leaning on experiences and reminding ourselves to check in on how we are doing. Literally ask yourself, “What is making me happy right now?” Look at your morning, your day, and the last year overall. It is easier to identify happiness when we can try things that we think will make us happy and reevaluate from there.

As seen in the quotes section above, “It’s too easy to tell others what they need and don’t based on what you have and haven’t had.”

This week I watched a video of Mike Tyson tell someone that all the money in the world won’t make you happy. I am sure a lot of people would like to experience that and decide for themselves before they take Tyson’s word for it. I also heard a story that Tyson used to meet women while out partying and take them to BMW dealerships to buy them each a car with cash. I am sure in the grand scheme of things these decisions did not lead to happiness. But he had the chance to experience it and learn from it.

I also read a story about how going to concerts is overrated. Probably not for people without the health, resources, or friends to experience it with.

Happiness will never be constant, but the freedom to explore a variety of interests, emotions, and experiences can be. I think that’s a good start.

How I live happily:

1. Time with family
2. Exercise
3. Good food
4. Alone time
5. Learning, writing, creating

Collage Piece Number 3: Finding the Positive

I found out that some people read 250 books per year. 200 is a lot. Even 50 is a lot. I just finished Jordan Peterson’s, 12 Rules for Life, and I didn’t realize it at first but it took me about 6 months to push through it. I read a couple other books in between as breaks, but still.

When I started reading it, it sounded pessimistic and negative. Every other word is about death or deceit, caution or impending doom. He isn’t wrong that these things exist in the world, but he uses such dark, dense language that I couldn’t grasp what he was saying at times.

In one sentence, Peterson’s work explains that there are problems in the world that lead to more problems, and we have to toughen up, take them on, and demand self-respect in the process.

Find faith, find love worth fighting for, have the hard conversations, and let hard work and truth be your compass. Those are the other themes. But he also explains that these positive things are nearly impossible to maintain, especially today.  

From his idea that, “solving problems leads to more problems,” check out an excerpt from Peterson’s book below.

The fact that automobiles pollute only becomes a problem of sufficient magnitude to attract public attention when the far worse problems that the internal combustion engine solves have vanished from view. People stricken with poverty don’t care about carbon dioxide. It’s not precisely that CO2 levels are irrelevant. It’s that they’re irrelevant when you’re working yourself to death, starving, scraping a bare living from the stony, unyielding, thorn-and-thistle-infested ground. It’s that they’re irrelevant until after the tractor is invented and hundreds of millions stop starving.” (p. 187)

Find the positive. Do you see more problems? Or do you see the opportunity for more solutions?

Solving problems becomes a cycle. When one problem is solved, another arises. Instead of thinking, “solving problems leads to more problems,” think, “solving problems leads to more opportunities for finding more solutions.”

Solutions are the mask that hide old problems. They are the mask that hold new, lesser problems, with too much credibility and significance. Appreciate progress made. Seek progress moving forward. Lastly, in the paraphrased words of many, the past is gone. Your last thought, your last breath, your last second, and the last decade. They are gone. The future is impossible to promise in the same regard because it is not here yet. All we have is right now.

I learned a lot this week. I learned from the books I am reading, the “parenting” I am “doing”, the shows I am watching, and the life I am living. If you read 5 books per year or 500, I have realized that it is difficult to move away from certain topics because they will always be relevant. Questions about happiness, success, and our purpose will always come back. Taking the time to grapple with these conversations in different ways will only sharpen our understanding and ability to learn. I am starting to feel comfortable writing about the same thing twice as new experiences change my perspective. Don’t be afraid to read the same thing twice. It’s kind of like eating spinach every day. The benefits don’t change because you already ate it the day before. It might get boring and overly repetitive. But when you change the meal you eat it with, you might experience additional benefits.  

Make it a productive Monday!