What I’ve Learned So Far

“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”

–Henry David Thoreau

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(Photo by HDC Photography, used under a CC-Noncommercial license.)

“A long dispute means that both parties are wrong.”

–Voltaire

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(Image by Mercedes Ramirez Guerrero.)

“The problem of availability is something that seems increasingly to have been solved. To view or to read well is another kind of problem.”

–From “Slow Reading” at if:book.
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(Image by rana ossama, used under a CC-Share Alike license.)

“Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.”

–The 14th Dalai Lama
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(Image by watchsmart.)

“Reflect upon your present blessings,
of which every man has plenty;
not on your past misfortunes,
of which all men have some.”

–Charles Dickens

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(Photo by Arturo Donate.)

We’d all do well to heed it.

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.

That comes from an excellent profile of Ebert, whose bouts of cancer have cost him the ability to eat or speak for the past four years, in the current issue of Esquire. The article has just been made available online; it’s well worth a read.

I’ve been cleaning out my direct-message (DM) file on Twitter. DMs are the tweet-length messages that only your friends can send you privately; basically they function as a back channel of communication that runs in parallel to the publicly-viewable stream on Twitter.

DMs are super-short, like a text message, so there’s only so much you can say in one. But recently I pinged a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while, asked her how 2010 was going. She told me, in a few words, and then said:

“love your posts, you’re doing a great job”

That hit the spot. For all that I write and talk and tweet and blah blah blah all day every day, and for all that I’ve been at it for years now, I still don’t get enough of that feedback to fill my tank. Mind you, I’m not exactly suffering, and I forge ahead secure in the knowledge that I’m probably doing an okay job with my writing . . . but sometimes you just want to hear it.

Think about it: Who could use a kind word or two from you? Who could use a little bit of encouragement? Who might benefit from hearing the good news about themselves, spelled out in so many words?

Drop that person a line today, eh?

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(Photo by sj_sanders, used under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.)

If you want to be successful, you will rearrange your priorities, and put your focus where it belongs: on the one thing you want to obtain. Results will follow.

–Dave Tate, powerlifter and fitness entrepreneur

Be advised: the page just linked has foul language, plus a gory picture of a soldier’s arm after it got shredded by a bomb in Afghanistan. If that doesn’t put you off, the story of the soldier’s recovery and return to powerlifting is an inspiring one.

That’s a picture of Tate on the right. His philosophy is uncompromising both because that’s how he’s wired, and because that’s what has worked to make him successful as a strength athlete and a businessman. As he says elsewhere, “I don’t do moderation.”

You can find out more about Tate, and sample from his highly knowledgeable but frequently R-rated observations on strength training and life, via TMuscle, EliteFTS, and the “One Movement” series of weightlifting videos.

Real training means committing to the process: showing up at the keyboard or behind the lens or in the ring or on the rope, and doing it religiously, even when you’re tired, even when you’ve got nothing to say, even when it’s too cold, too hot, too hard.

People wish they had talent. They see it as a practice-free ticket to crowd-stunning skill. But talent doesn’t exist. “Talent” doesn’t get results; practice and devotion do.

–Scott Semple

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Updated, Thursday evening: Thanks to Semple himself for providing the link to the original — I’ve corrected it above. I originally came across his essay “The Talent Myth” on the Gym Jones site.

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(Photo by lecercle, used under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.)

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

–Robert A. Heinlein

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Related post:

• More good advice on writing.

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(Inspiration via Shane Kinkennon; image via Wikipedia, used under a CC-Share Alike license.)