The recurring theme I find in life is people’s generally good intentions that fail to end in actual positive results? You will often find me stating that I don’t believe that anyone gets up in the morning with an intention of
- How can I be a terrible parent
- How can I eat unhealthily
- What is the best path to gaining weight
- How can I upset my neighbor
- What is the fastest way to upset everyone around me
Before anyone jumps in to tell me that not everyone is positive and many struggles with this perspective – I understand that and would suggest that even in the direst impossible circumstances we want to see the bright or positive aspects of situations.
What is it that causes the deviation from the positive goals and intentions we have each and every day? Well, the one thing for sure is this has been a challenge faced by humans for millennia. Take the basic struggle of getting out of bed each morning, something that many have written is a key asset for anyone who wants to be successful (10 highly successful people who wake up before 6 am, This is When Successful People Wake up, and 21 successful people who wake up incredibly early).
The struggle with this basic challenge was recognized by Marcus Aurelius (formally Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus) and can be found in his personal musings written in part during his reign that contain deep and thoughtful insights.
On those mornings you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind — I am awakening to the work of a human being. Why then am I annoyed that I am going to do what I’m made for, the very things for which I was put into this world? Or was I made for this, to snuggle under the covers and keep warm? It’s so pleasurable. Were you then made for pleasure? In short, to be coddled or to exert yourself?”
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations 5.1
So even back in 150 AD, there was the same struggle to get out of bed each morning!
Reading Meditations can be challenging but a worthwhile endeavor and one that is a recurrent activity with Bill Clinton said to read it at least once per year along with many others who re-read it multiple times). My copy came to me from my son with a strong recommendation to read it.
Getting There
Life is hard but we only get one so finding a path that works is essential. It what at first sight might appear a morbid focus, Stoicism which forms the tenets of much of Marcus Aurelius focus and behavior, leans heavily on our mortality and death as a guiding star. But not as something to b feared but rather a measure or test stick with which we can measure our lives and behavior. We don’t all have experiences like Ric Elias (@RicElias) – a survivor of the US Airways 1549 (Miracle on the Hudson or “Sully”) but his realization that he details in this TED Talk is one we could all benefit from.
We are racing against the clock
Asking yourself this question every day
Am I being the most productive, successful version of me possible?
If you are not happy with the answer then dig in and find out why and what you can do about it. Like many of us, especially at the younger age of the spectrum, we fall victim to the notion that we will never die and by the time we realize that is not true for many it can be too late. The earlier you can attain that sense of urgency around time and choices made the better for you, your lief and those around you
Incremental Steps to Better Health
This path is not just about better health but ultimately better life as one is linked to the other. It starts long before the alarm goes off at 5am with planning and importantly getting to bed at a reasonable time, with sleep being not just a pillar of health but the foundation of health (my incremental suggestions for getting a good night’s sleep). Focusing on what is important and removing the rest remains a daily challenge for me but some of the things that have helped me and may help you include
- Developing habits takes at least 4 weeks and sometimes more – so creating an environment where anything I try I press hard to complete for at least a month. Case in point changing my diet to plant-based started with a 30-day vegan challenge
- Start Meditating – there are plenty of apps and tools to help (My videos on the topic with incremental steps to meditation)
- Not enough time – try cutting Television out of your world or at least reducing how much you watch (this includes on your mobile devices) (in 2018 it averaged 6 hours per day). I cut the cord this past year and while it was a terrible decision with Liverpool on fire and set to bring home a slew of trophies hopefully to include the Barclays Premier League Title my default position of vegetating and channel surfing has freed up lots of time.
- Speaking of freed up time – add or revitalize your reading activity as nourishment for the mind – you might be surprised at the voracious appetite of many highly successful people when it comes to reading, besides the discovery of all this great content and stories to be read and absorbed
- Above all – believe you can and will change. Journeys of change don’t start with can’t or won’t but with “Can” and “Will”
Those that know me well will recognize both the incongruence of me a, historically a committed carnivore that has turned plant-based. This is not the only significant change in the world that finds me a regular participant in Yoga. This, as my wife pointed out recently, would have been unthinkable when we first met! The idea of asking me to join a Yoga class 20 years ago would have likely been met with derision. If I had regrets, and for the most part I have gotten better at seeing things in the past as I like to put it “The Branch Behind”, then it would be my delay in starting Yoga in life! Neither may be right for you and to be clear I am not totally plant-based, but my diet and preferences have changed with meat no longer the focus of every plate and meal.
But there is no better example of the possibility of change and course correction. One of my favorite images is this one:
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!
A quote from Hunter Thomson: The Proud Highway
I will leave you with Marcus Aurelius outlook for each day:
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.”
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations 2.1
