It’s Already There

The path to a better life is more of a mining operation than a manufacturing one. – George Pransky

What I think Pransky is saying here is that having a better life (which comes from being (behaving as) a better person) comes not from getting something from outside yourself or making yourself into something else, but from finding the amazing and pure and whole and loving and creative parts of you.

The parts of you covered by the sh!t of family, school, friend/peer and popular-culture conditioning.

The mistake so many of us — myself included at times — is that we need to be different to be better, or good, or loved.

That’s not true.

What we need to be is more what we really are.

At our core, we are perfect. There’s nothing to added or removed. Nothing to be fixed or upgraded.

It is only our behavior that need to be different.

When we behave better, we experience better.

There’s nothing to make, we need only reclaim our essence.

Sort of like mining: digging up a bunch of dirt and rock and removing the “sh!t” to reveal the valuable and precious.

Similar Posts

  • Know Your Priorities

    “The key is not to prioritize what is on the schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey The critical bit here is you must know your priorities to schedule them. Not: what’s demanding your attention from moment-to-moment, or the pressing thing, or what you want right now because you think it’ll make you…

  • The Wastefulness (and Impossibility) of Multi-Tasking

    Here’s some ancient wisdom: “To do two things at once is to do neither.” – Publius Syrus And some modern “validation:” People confuse “rapid-switching” with multi-tasking [NPR article] And Peter Bregman explains that trying to multi-task makes us less-smart, less-productive and less-competent [HBR Blogs] I’m convinced (of course I already knew that trying to multi-task was…

  • Choose Fear

    Every time we choose safety, we reinforce fear. – Cheri Huber Huh? Has Matt gone mad!? Nope, just wanted to get your attention. Now that, I hope, I have it, I’ll make my point. When we choose the safe and known over what we fear (and “fear” includes: merely being uncomfortable, a little anxious, a…

  • Speed and Road Choice

    That might seem like an odd title, or perhaps a not very helpful one. But it will soon make sense. A mentor of mine sent me a message that contained the following line: If I am on the wrong road it doesn’t matter how good I get at speeding down the road. It’s the wrong…