2017.11.30 On Risk-Taking

“I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.” – Jeanette Winterson

When faced with a big decision, I often feel a little paralyzed. The peacekeeper between my reason and my passion paces full force back and forth in my mind, trying to find a way out of the mess.

I long for clarity. I crave a clear path. I desire security.

But I know there is none.

The future is and will be uncertain. I can not control the outcome. All I know is that I have the strength to endure, great love to give, and the longing to live a loud, exuberant life.

To change careers. To move across country. To love again.
These things change lives, and I must open myself to them if I am going to change mine.

Picard and a Key Lesson on Leadership

“My favorite Star Trek episode is “Attached.” 

Dr. Crusher and Captain Picard can hear each others thoughts. They’re lost in a desert. Picard stops, he looks around, and confidently proclaims, “This way.” Dr. Crusher knows that the Captain has no clue which way to go and she calls him on it. Captain Picard doles out some great advice. He tells her that being Captain doesn’t mean he has all the answers but it does mean that he has to lead. Even if he doesn’t know which way to go right now, he must decide. The point is, he has the confidence to know that he’ll figure it out soon.”

-Biz Stone

Closing Circles – Paulo Coelho

“One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened.
You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.

Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home.

Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them.
Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose.

Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood.

Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.”

Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back.
Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need.

This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life.

Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.

Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

“While investing deeply in one person, one place, one job, one activity might deny us the breadth of experience we’d like, pursuing a breadth of experience denies us the opportunity to experience the rewards of depth of experience. There are some experiences that you can have only when you’ve lived in the same place for five years, when you’ve been with the same person for over a decade, when you’ve been working on the same skill or craft for half your lifetime. Now that I’m in my thirties, I can finally recognize that commitment, in its own way, offers a wealth of opportunity and experiences that would otherwise never be available to me, no matter where I went or what I did.” – Mark Mason