Sometimes that is all you need to do. Ask for help, an item, for directions, for advice, or even a hand in marriage. There is a lot of power in the simple act of asking.
Sandman Beckons
When your mind and body say it’s time to sleep, don’t fight it. Either power nap or get to bed.
Success Habits Are Hard
Being unsuccessful is relatively easy. At least it is at first. Laze around, do little to no work and spend money you don’t earn or have. the consequences mean it does get much harder as the months and years go by though.
Building up your success habits is another story though. Eating less and better food takes discipline. Exercising or going to the gym takes discipline and it can be hard. Studying is rarely easy. Same with doing your work, dishes, and laundry. Saving and investing is also quite difficult near the start.
There are a lot of things you need to do to be successful. The sooner you get each one under control, the better off you’ll be!
Seek And You’ll Find
If you choose to believe people are bad, you’ll look for evidence of it. And you’ll find it. Sometimes it’s one anecdotal event or word. Or you might bend words or slightly misinterpret actions to fit your desired perspective.
You can also look for the good in people.
As everyone holds good and bad characteristics, looking for the good ones may make life more enjoyable.
Pursuing Perfection At What Cost?
If something is moving along reasonably well, tinkering around with it can make things worse as much as they can make things better.
Progress pushed too far can turn into regress. This can be seen particularly well in social settings. If you try to manufacture the world how you would like to have it run, there may be negative consequences beyond a certain point.
This may be some of the reason why we see political parties in power for four to eight years before they are voted out for the opposing group for a similar amount of time.
You can move a patient and accommodating person quite some way along towards your desired endgame. However, just as you gain confidence that you’ll be able to shift them to the end, they may reach a resistance point. And all the progress you thought you made, might start to unwind.
You may find yourself back where you started. Or, perhaps the momentum will take you back past the starting point to places you wished you’d never disturbed.
So sometimes you may be better off with some good progress and leaving it there. In pursuing perfection, you may pay a much higher cost than you could have imagined.
Schedule
Schedule your day. Try to be accurate with the time allocated to each item. Leave two half hour slots open in the late morning and mid afternoon to deal with unexpected items or the inevitable meeting drift.
Try to create the schedule and build the discipline to stick with it. Keep practicing daily. This one skill will do more for your success than any other.
Best Of Lists
I usually find these lists quite exciting and interesting. Someone has gone out and done all the research for you and they’ve provided a ranking and review to make your large choice much easier.
The one that struck me today was a list for the best salt & vinegar chips in the UK. It’s very easy to think the top ranked crisps are ‘the best’. Yet, they are only the best for that one person providing the ranking and reviews.
Their top choice might be light on the salt yet heavy on the vinegar with a significant apple flavoured element. That may not be how you like your crisps. And they may prefer ruffles to baked or thick cut not wafer thin.
There are often lots of other elements than just what is reviewed but regardless, make sure you’re clear on all the reasons and details that went into the list-makers decision. It’s nice to have a list but not so much when it’s opposite to how you would have ranked them.
Stay Aware
As tensions increase and the likelihood of violent encounters grows, remain vigilant and keep your eyes and wits about you. Some people value life and liberty far less than you do and are willing to risk everything to get their own way.
In a twisted irony, you may find yourself fighting for peace.
Naming Your Child
Why did you choose the name you did for your child? Since you didn’t choose all the other names available, are you a bad person?
Humans select for preference. That means the non-selected options could be viewed as non-selected, second place or rejected. Or the name chosen could be viewed as being preferential. What’s interesting is that people prefer names for a wide variety of reasons. The name could be selected because of a father, grandmother, favourite aunt, old friend, famous actor, old boyfriend, a movie character or an ice cream flavour, to name a few influences.
When only one option can go forward, out of two options, it would be easy and very simple to deduce that the second was rejected, which feels worse than non-selected.
Selection is tricky as it often depends on so many factors. Rarely is one factor the 100% reason for something.there are often several reasons for any decision, though lots of studies and discussions want to boil it down to one.
Seeing What You Want To See
Having verbal conversations can be tricky. Everyone sees, in their mind, what they want to see. Because the bias comes in and words spoken can be misinterpreted, misunderstood, summarised or even misused, it can work better if things are written down. A desire to find the truth of a specific reality, regardless of your personal position, will also help you ask good questions and make progress on the topic.