I Don’t Know

Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go. – T.S. Eliot What we can do and what we think we can do are so often far apart. The problem is 1) we are (generally/overwhelmingly) so wrong about what we’re truly capable of and 2) we take our…

It just occurred to me that maybe I’ve never really understood “motivation.” Oh sure, I’ve learned that it’s better to be inspired than motivated and better to motivated than coerced. But what is motivation, really? Motivation isn’t something real or actual. It’s a word that describes what happens when one puts a motive into action….

I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis…

“People die of fright and live of confidence.” – Thoreau I think Thoreau, among other things, was speaking of courage here. Confidence is what results when courage (being afraid, but taking a reasonable risk anyway) is combined with purpose (the energy that comes from knowing what we want and why we want it). Is courage…

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way. You become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions. – Aristotle What we do makes us. The idea of “muscle-memory” applies to character and life skills as much as it does to playing tennis or baseball….

The most important person you can keep your word to is yourself. I had a thought the other day, and didn’t capture it at the time (bad Matt . . . !), but want to (try to) re-construct it now. The gist was that we have many of the troubles we do in life because we…