Daily Yamabushi

It always comes down to the same thing: Acceptance. No matter how hard the problem, this is the one thing that can help make everything right. Of course it isn’t always easy, nor does it always seem right, but acceptance helps lead us in a new direction, it frees us to do new things, and at the same time it helps us from being stuck in the past.

Never easy, always right.

Acceptance.

Subtle is smooth, smooth is good.

It takes a lot more effort to be subtle. Every move you make is scrutinized, and you either have to focus entirely on the subtlety, or let your mind go completely and let your body take over. Practice enough and it becomes second nature.

Small sharp movements can have huge repercussions, so subtlety is king. But we can’t be so subtle that we don’t move. It’s about finding that balance of still moving, but almost doing it by stealth.

There’s no need to be showy. Just turn up every day and with subtle movements that build up over time before long you will find what you were after all along.

If you’ve ever seen my Instagram stories, you would know that I love my coffee. I try to get a variety of coffee to try so I can know what I like and dislike, and I have discovered a few really good ones that I like (Mocha Gesha from Ethiopia and Andes Mountain from Ecuador, namely).

The thing is, to know the good ones, you need to know the bad ones. It is precisely because we have a lot of data points that we know what the good ones are. If you aren’t constantly trying new things, you lack data, and could be missing out on the good ones.

Next time you’re on a train in Japan, take a look at what that conductors do. Often you will see them pointing at things to mentally (or not) check them off a checklist. At first I saw this and thought it was a silly thing to do, but then I learned that it’s actually quite effective at reducing errors.

So I’ve gone and implemented it into my night checks too.

Now every night before I go to bed, I ‘point check’ the things that need point checking. This has saved me from forgetting things like medicine and the dishwasher at least once, and I think it’s a great system to put in place.

No matter the odds, you always have to have how can you could possibly win in the back of your mind.

One time I was playing the game of cricket in darts (if you know it, you know it, if you don’t, it’s great! You should try it sometime!). Much like cricket in real life, getting a lot bullseyes is a way to gain a huge advantage (like getting wickets), although it is difficult to pull off, and is therefore very unorthodox (another cricket term!).

The game was very much over. I was almost guaranteed to lose, but then I remembered that I could still barely win by getting bullseyes.

In the end I failed miserably, but not before my opponent realised what I was up to and said ‘damn you sports people who always know how to go for the win’.

Of course we should play the game to enjoy it, but we also need to play to win, otherwise we’d just be wasting our time, right? Plus it’s a bit disrespectful to your opponent if you don’t give it your all.

So, no matter the odds, always play to win! Who knows, you just might pull it off!

Do it even if it sucks is the secret to consistency.

If you’re going to be good at something, you have to put in the work, which means you have to suck at it first. Being ok with that, and being ok with how people react (or not) to that is how you put the work in.

Caring but not caring.

That’s how you build consistency.

Those who love walking will go further than those who love the destination.

Anonymous

You’re still on the path. You’re still wandering and wondering. The path doesn’t end till it ends. Learn as much as you can on the way there, and don’t get transfixed by the destination. Focus on being better than the day before, and you’ll get there in due time.

Back yourself, or at least strive to put yourself in a position where you can back yourself. That way you can try new things with less risk.

Confidence in yourself is security. If you are confident that you can overcome any challenge, if you are confident that you can adapt to any situation, if you are confident that you can see things through, then you have security.

Confidence means security, which means you have space to try new things.

Confidence is key.

Give your projects finite terms. Give them a deadline to have reached a certain milestone by. Having a finite term in which to do so means there is less chance of the project dragging on, and it helps you for future projects as well.

This helps you in setting goals, and it also gives you the chance to refresh, to rethink things through a different lens when it comes time to start something new. Not only will you have learned skills from the previous project, you would have learned what sort of approach to take to new projects as well.

Generally speaking, you want to go in head first. You want to be able to give the project your all so that you have the best chance of achieving your goals within the determined time frame. Depending on how well that goes you can adjust your goals for future projects as well.

Yoga has taught me a lot of things, but perhaps the biggest discovery, at least in recent times, is that I could do a much better job at relaxing.

We always finish with the corpse pose where you simply lie down and consciously release all the energy in your muscles. Well, I’ve started to notice myself doing that throughout the day, and I have to say, I’m pretty tense.

It made me wonder that if I’m like that, someone who consciously focuses on their breath to get through the day at times, then other people might be in a similar situation.

So I hope you take this as an opportunity to check in on your body, and if you notice yourself tensing up, have a go at releasing the energy. You’ll feel much better for it, I guarantee!

Are you currently giving your best effort? Are you currently trying the best method?

You+1 means going out of your comfort zone. It means pushing yourself to be a better version of your yesterday self.

This theory can be used on yourself. It helps if someone has laid out the roadmap for whatever it is you are trying to achieve, but sometimes a roadmap simply doesn’t exist.

The alternative is stagnation.

In pedagogy, there is a famous theory called the Zone of Proximal Development that was developed by a man who goes by the name of Vygotsky. If my memory serves me well, there is where the student is currently at, and there is where they could be, what’s in between is the Zone of Proximal Development.

It’s the teacher’s role to somehow get the student from A to B, but of course B is a moving target. B being a moving target isn’t the issue, the issue is what you can do to bridge the gap in any given situation.

One way to do this, at least in theory, is to challenge the students with a +1, something that is only just out of their current ability.

Either way, we are at risk of stagnating if we don’t constantly have a you+1 to work on. If you find you are getting stuck, you are either not trying hard enough (so try harder) or you are trying the wrong thing (so try another approach).

Beware the stagnation.

Are you making things, or are you making things with love? How much of you is present in whatever it is you are making? The real trick to getting the best work out of yourself is to do it with love. Do it for the sake of being generous, for the sake of sharing a part of you.

Doing things with love requires exposing yourself to the elements. It requires you to try new things. It requires you to be bold. That’s how you get the best out of yourself.

Made with love.

It all adds up, so it’s a matter of finding the right things to make it add up.

Sometimes the things you think you are adding up aren’t actually adding up. This happens when we get complacent and simply go through the motions.

Homeostasis is the enemy. You regularly need to challenge yourself to do something better, even if you can’t quite do it yet. The challenge puts you one step closer to being able to doing it, and you never know, you may just be able to do it. You just need to give yourself a chance, because of course, it all adds up.

We can’t see tomorrow, it’s in an invisible world, a world that doesn’t exist. We don’t know exactly what tomorrow will be like, of course we can make some general guesses, but we never know exactly until it comes.

Tomorrow could certainly be wonderful, and it could certainly not be, but we don’t know until we get there, so there’s not much point worrying about it.

Any day you can go to the pool, is a day you go to the pool.

This is my general rule when it comes to things like swimming or things that are inherently good. If you can do it, do it, basically. Erring on the side of action.

Of course there are limits to this, such as harmful actions, but for the most part it’s better to have done something than not.

*This post contains talk about death. If that makes you uncomfortable, go read something else (and get a reality check while you’re at it).

Today when I was at the pool, one of the regulars, who has got to be in his 70s or perhaps 80s, was proudly showing me all manner of scars on his back and stomach from recently going through surgery for various kinds (plural) of cancer. He told me he had just gotten out of surgery on the 18th (I’m not sure how true this was). This guy was smiling the whole time as he showed off his scars, and didn’t seem fussed that there was a chance that they would get infected.

And then I watched him swim 100m, relatively quick for an old dude too.

Needless to say, this guy will be laughing to his grave. In a good way, mind you.

As it so happens, today marks 6 days since my dad died. ANZAC Day 2016.

I’ve thought about whether I’d would like to die like my dad did, heart attack without much fuss at all, or slowly like this old man at the pool.

Either way, I know one thing for sure.

I want to die laughing.

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Here’s a video I made in honour of Dad a few years ago now. It’s aged quite a bit already 🙂

If you’re anything like me, you hate having unread emails in your inbox. I know it’s a trivial thing, but it just feels so much better to have a zero in the unread column.

And yet I still manage to forget to reply to people that I really should. I still read emails and make a mental note to reply to them later, but never get around to it.

My solution? Use the ‘mark as unread’ function. I’ve started marking emails I’ve read and need to reply to as unread, and leaving them as such until I’m ready to reply to them.

This gives me enough incentive to get out a reply, and means that I now do a better job of getting back to people (at least in theory).

(Also, a reminder to periodically check your spam folder. I recently almost missed an opportunity to appear in a magazine article, more on that in due time)

If you’re not doing what gives you joy, what are you doing?

Sure not everything we do should give us complete joy, we still have bills to pay and mouths that need feeding, but if there is a total lack of doing things that give you joy, you’re doing the wrong thing.

At the very least you should be moving to a posture that allows you to do the things that give you joy as often as possible.

Now, if you’re unsure of what exactly it is that gives you joy, don’t sit there wondering. Get out there and explore the world, at the very least you’ll discover what doesn’t give you joy. That puts you right on the way to discovering what does, and discovering more of what you need to be doing.

It’s much easier to practice when you have a set goal you are working towards. However, in recent years a lot of those goals have been taken away from us, meaning it takes much more to get motivated.

When it comes to something like exercise or even writing a blog, I like to think of it as being able to pounce when you need to. It’s about getting as ready as possible for when the big moment comes. Equally, it is about creating these opportunities for the big moment to come, or at least putting yourself in the position that you can take advantage of them when they arise.

The difference between the great and the greatest?

Showing up.

Show up, even when you don’t want to. It may mean that you don’t give it your best effort and you don’t produce your best work, but showing up gives you the opportunity to build valuable experience that you won’t get the opportunity to build otherwise.

Not showing up gets you nowhere.

I’ve been reading Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management by Mark Forster. It was recommended to me by someone who ironically doesn’t follow the principles (it’s quite funny actually), and in the first chapter Forster talks about Thought – Decision – Action versus Stimulus – Response, in response to prompts such as a shower of emails or a sudden phone call.

The Thought – Decision – Action is when you essentially already have a default option in place for a given prompt. Once a task appears, you make plans to complete it, or when you get an email, you make sure to either respond right away, or set a time to respond, for example. Stimulus – Response is when you don’t have a default, or a certain stimulus makes you do something you hadn’t really planned for. Stimulus – Response is when you put off responding to an email to a later date, and then inevitably forget about it (I’m really bad at this!!!).

Obviously the Thought – Decision – Action sequence is much more efficient at helping you manage your time, and I’ve been trying to incorporate it more and more into my day. It basically means being more aware of what you do when you are prompted, and then making sure that these prompts lead to action. In other words, Thought – Decision – Action is like building reflexes in your brain. These default options take the time and effort given to decision making out of the equation, the thinking has already been thought, and make it much easier to just get out there and do what needs to be done.

Action over thinking, not overthinking action.

Sometimes all you can do is laugh at the hilarity of the situation. How did things get this bad? You say to yourself. How could things be this bad in the first place? No one could ever imagine getting into this situation.

Until you find yourself there.

Along with being able to laugh at yourself, being able to laugh at the situation is a sign of strength.

Woe is me.

But not for pity, for strength.

You’ve found yourself in extraordinary circumstances.

Now to get out of them, and ensure that hilarity does not ensue.

When inspiration strikes, you need to be able to take advantage of it. This means that you have practiced whatever it is you intend to get your inspiration out as.

Ironically (or not), practice means you have a higher chance of inspiration striking.

So get practicing!

I’m often reminded of eating meals at a zen monastery nearby when they always say, not good, not bad, just is.

The negative only feels negative because we place that particular meaning on it. Likewise, the positive only feels positive because we place that particular meaning on it.

But then there’s also the thought (from a different practitioner of Buddhism I know), that the positive only feels positive precisely because we’ve experienced the negative, and vice versa.

The thing is, you can’t have the positive without the negative. The negative make the positive positive. So I’m not going to give you something negative to think about, but I will say, it all really is a matter of perspective.

It then becomes a matter of convincing yourself that it is so. That is truly difficult, but with time and perspective, you truly do begin to see things in a different light (that’s why it’s called perspective I guess).

So, we need to give ourselves time to process things. It may take days, it may take months, it may take years, but in the meantime, things are not good, nor bad, just is.

The last spurt.

The last part of the race is all about what you’ve done until then, it’s all about how much energy you’ve got in the tank, it’s all about whether you can truly push yourself to the limit.

When it gets to that point, a lot of the time you’re running on adrenaline, so in a way everything is in preparation for the last spurt. Everything is hoping that by the time it came around, you’d have the energy left to push through.

If you’ve made it this far, you can make the rest. Stay calm and steady and win the race.

P.s. Of the words to become Japanese this is one of the weirdest.

There’s a peak halfway up the trail to Mt. Gassan if you start at the eighth station called ‘Omowashiyama’. This name translates into English as ‘the mountain that tricks you’. This is because the peak is just high enough that from the angle you hike, it blocks your view of the summit, and leads you to believe that it is in fact the summit. The peak sure would have fooled many hundreds of people along the way (not to mention yours truly) over the centuries.

On Sunday when we were climbing Mt. Yamuki, it was a similar situation. We got to a clearing that could have easily been the summit. But when I looked at the map, I realised we were about 10m off the actual height of the summit. The summit was still another 10 or so minutes away. We (I) had been fooled!

But I would not have known that had I not been using the Yamap app. I would have stopped then and there and happily claimed this summit as the real summit.

And I think that’s perfectly fine.

What’s good enough for you is good enough for you. If it satisfies you, then that’s great! No need to go out chasing the next big thing.

The problem is with me, I’m always searching for that next peak. So much so that I like to make sure I have enough energy to reach the next peak if I need to. This means I’m not always giving 100%.

And that’s perfectly fine too! As long as you’re reaching the milestones.

Always having something to reach for, but always being able to be satisfied with what you’ve already achieved, I think this is a great way to go about things! Don’t you?

It’s usually much easier to think of ideas when something is already pitched. Say you’re unsure which restaurant to go to or which book to read. If you already have something to compare to, it makes it easier to make a decision. If you like the first idea, that’s great too!

So when you’re in a situation where an idea is necessary, bring something, anything, to the table. Suggest a restaurant or two, and that way you’ll have something to work with from the offset.