Daily Yamabushi

Is what’s good for me

What’s good for me is how we get back at the people who have done us wrong, the people that underestimated us, the people that treated us like dirt.

What’s good for me is how we find our place in the world. It’s how we know we can contribute, and it’s what we do. Because what’s good for me, is what’s good for me.

Get it done

I got it done. I started it, and I finished it.

Here it is.

Once you’ve done something, you can take credit for it. Once you’ve acted on your idea, it’s out in the world, and you’ve done everything you can to make it be, well, you’re done.

I did the thing is what champions say. It’s what those who beat the Resistance and got something done that had never been done before say.

And it’s what you should say. It’s what you should wake up to tomorrow.

Get it done.

Always have a camera at hand

They say the best camera in the world is the one in your hand. The best camera in the world is the one in your hand with the footage you’ve just taken. It’s the one that clearly has the results of your actions on it.

That’s your starting point. That’s where you jump off.

If getting it right gets in the way of simply getting it, you’ve got a problem on your hands.

Too often we get stuck in a loop of ‘when the time is right’, ‘when I have the right gear’, ‘when I am ready’, and so on, and so on. The trick is to start before these things. The trick is to get out there and get it, no matter how small or how big ‘it’ is.

The trick is to always have a camera in your hands.

Only a select few seem to be realising the powerhouse of production we all have in our pockets.

None of the above

When I was at a crossroads a few years back deciding what I. Wanted to do I couldn’t choose between becoming an English teacher at a university here, or becoming a translator. So, I took the middle road and got a master’s degree in applied linguistics. My thinking at the time was that this degree would give me options. If one thing didn’t work, I always had the other to fall back on.

You always have both options. And even more than that, there is also a third option.

None of the above.

Your road doesn’t have to be decided by a decision you made decades ago, and it doesn’t have to be set in concrete either. Giving yourself more options in the future may sound like a good plan, but you always have the option of more options. You always have the option of the third road.

Well, unless you limit your thinking that is.

What it means. What it takes.

Professionals are very good at the basics. The first thing a professional learns, the first thing they care about, is what the common pitfalls are, and how to avoid them. Professionals are very good at seeing where things could go wrong, and nipping potential problems in the bud.

Including in themselves.

Including when they don’t feel like it, or when the situation calls for a special effort. The professional is able to take themselves out of the equation when and if necessary. And if they aren’t able to, they know when to step down.

That’s what it means to be a professional. That’s what it takes to be professional.

Just as designed

The beauty of it is when you think you understand things enough, then out of left field something comes and switches things up, yet this is exactly as designed.

When you understand the beauty of it, you understand unpredictable things are part of the package. You understand that unpredictable things are what makes things the way they are. That it is this unpredictability that gives things its beauty in the first place.

That’s the beauty of it.

Take a moment in the moment

Roll with the punches enough and you start to realise, some of the punches weren’t actually punches. Some of the punches you have been giving an outsized amount of weight, and that just compounds to make things worse.

Of course in the moment you aren’t sure which are which. You just have to take them all. But if you are probably overreacting, well, that’s all the more reason to try and calm yourself down, and give yourself enough space and time to see how the dust settles.

Hard to do in the moment, sure, but better than just letting everything compound and get you down.

Movers and shakers. It doesn’t matter when.

I believe that an early movers’ bias exists. I believe that if you get in there before everyone else, you gain the advantage of having previous work to call upon that can help any new work you make. I believe that since your work was the only one to exist, at the start at least, that it made it up to the top.

Those early movers also have another bias. A Movers’ Bias.

They were the ones to put the pedal to the metal and move. They were the ones that ignored all the naysayers. They were the ones that ignored all the voices in their heads telling them whatever they did would be futile. They were the ones who got started. They just happened to be earlier than everyone else.

But being early and getting started are two different things. Sure, there is an advantage to be made by being the first one to start, but there is also an advantage to be made simply by starting.

Plus, for all we know, if you get started now, and you stick to what’s uniquely you, who knows? You may well still be able to gain from the early movers’ bias. At the very least, you’ll definitely be able to gain from the Movers’ Bias.

How will you use this experience?

You had the experience. Nothing can change that. And either way, it has shaped you. So then the question becomes, how could you use this experience? How are you going to use this experience?

The choice is simple. For something helpful? Or otherwise?

Unnecessarily

Sometimes the difference between knowing unequivocally and not is simply action. Some things are up in the air when they really don’t have to be.

Get rid of the uncertainty. Get rid of the constant fear and anxiety by getting out there and doing.

Don’t leave things up in the air. You’ll do yourself a world of good.

Is your excuse really one?

Is your excuse really one? Or are you just choosing the option of not doing the thing?

Some excuses are genuine. Some excuses are things that truly cannot be helped.

For everything else though, question whether the excuse you’re giving is actually one. What you find might frighten you.

Don’t be ok with normal

When you live somewhere long enough, when you’ve been there and done that, the novel becomes the normal. By definition, the normal is unexciting, uninteresting, unimportant.

The normal is a lack of curiosity. A lack of curiosity is a lack of desire for the new, it’s a lack of imagination, and a lack of motivation for not only finding out but also for creating what’s next.

We have to do all we can to stop things from becoming normal. We have to find new ways to see things so that what once excited us, still excites us. We have to make it so what was once novel, remains novel.

The normal is boring. The normal is the path to mediocrity. Don’t be ok with the normal.

Take your theory and run with it

Have a theory about how it’s done?

You’re most likely wrong.

But there’s no harm in testing it. For all you know, you may well be right. Or, you may only be slightly wrong.

There’s only one way to find out.

What if the things you think you can’t do, were the things you had done?

What if it’s not because you can’t, but because you don’t.

How many things in your life can you say this about? How many things in your life do you think about doing, but you think about it too much, and that thinking just stays as thinking?

I am certainly a victim of this. And at times it can be debilitating. So then I like to look at it like this:

What if the things you think you can’t do, were the things that you did? Or even better, had done?

Better than not even starting, and not as bad as you’d think.

You aren’t always starting from scratch, and even if you were, it’s not exactly a bad place to be. Your experiences to date can by no means be completely discounted. Plus, coming in with a beginner’s mind can often lead to insights that more seasoned professionals have either overlooked, or simply didn’t realise.

Starting from scratch is an opportunity to try something new. It’s a chance to see things from a different perspective, and to bring a different perspective to the way things are done.

That in itself is as worthy a reason of anything of starting, even from scratch.

For the now.

For the sake of now.

We exist in this time and space, and this time and space is all that exists.

For now.

Treat it as such.

Get to better

Hang your thoughts out to dry.

Sure, some of them may wither up and turn to tatters, but that’s how you get to the real gems. That’s how you discover the truly valuable.

Hanging your thoughts out to dry needn’t be in the eyes of the public. It needn’t be where everyone can see.

However, they do need to be let out to dry for you to take full advantage of them. They do need to be in a place where at the very least you can examine them, and ideally, work to improve them. Then you’re well on the way to better.

Time has a way of making decisions for you.

If you don’t make the decision, no biggie. Time has a way of making decisions for you.

If you can’t bear not having a decision made in your favour, well, you’re going to have to make the decision. It’s as simple as that. But you shouldn’t worry once that decision is made. By then it’s in the past.

The worst thing you can do is have the decision be half-made. Perhaps by only going partly in, or by leaving the door open for more in the future. Then you truly are leaving things up to chance, and you are giving time all the time it needs to make the decision for you.

Which, again, is no biggie. If it really was important to you, you would have made the decision.

Try this first.

Want to predict the future?

Want to know what’s going to happen next?

Put your trust into the now. Be fully focused and fully aware of the present. Get good at knowing the present. Get good at, as Seth Godin puts it, dancing with the fear. Learn to trust your gut, and have confidence to barge ahead not fully knowing what’s in store.

And most of all, the best way to predict the future is to create it:

“The future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented,” -Nobel Prize winner Dennis Gabor.

Just not yet.

The secret ingredient

If you find your work is substandard, if you find you’re not doing things as well as you could, or should be doing, ask yourself:

Where is the love?

With the love comes care and passion. With the love comes unprecedented dedication. With the love comes, well, love.

Think back to why you love it in the first place. What is it about it that gets you up in the morning? What gets your motor running?

If you find it’s lacking, well, it may be time to hang up your boots, but it’s definitely worth getting back under the hood and doing things you once did again to see if that love is still there, however small.

Either way, the question is the same. Is this made with love?

And building habits

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” -Aristotle.

What better reason to try your best at whatever you set out to do. Sure, it’s not always easy. Yet habits are things we can build. They are things we work towards, and just like the path or way, there is no natural end. Now is as good a time as any to make lasting change.

Right now.

Some starting points are obvious; a birth, starting at a new school, a wedding, for example.

Others not so much. However, they become more and more apparent as time goes on.

You may not know it in the moment, but you definitely know it later on.

There’s no reason why right now can’t be a starting point. There’s no reason why right now can’t be the moment of change. The moment you put your foot down. The moment you set out on a new adventure, or make a lasting change.

Right now.

The starting point.

Full force. And then some.

All guns blazing. So hard they won’t know what hit them. Full force, and then some.

Sometimes you have no choice but to go on the offensive, to go all out and see what happens.

What if you had to do that all the time? What if you had to give it everything you’ve got?

Newsflash, you do.

Stop procrastinating

There’s a few things I have been putting off. Not for any particular reason, just plain old procrastination. Well, one of them I finally did. It was of course much easier than I had anticipated, and now my only feeling is that I should have done it earlier.

Have something you need to do but are putting off? If it’s not on the calendar, it doesn’t exist. Find the next blank space in your calendar, and put it there.

Then do it when the time comes!

There’s no alternative

Show them why they need you. Show them your value. Make them think there is no alternative.

Because there isn’t.

All you’ve got to do is prove it.