Sunday, January 31, 2016

The Build Vs. Throwing Away Life

(If you received this via email, click on the title to see the rest of the post.)

When we just wander through life, living it randomly as we go, we get no better at it and we miss all that we could harvest at the higher levels.

Instead, we can do "the build" and "get better at it".

If we don't get better at it, it (life) won't be better.

If we don't build a life, if we don't build a platform that rises higher and higher, we will not be able to reach the higher points.  If we still stay at ground level in life, we are fooling ourselves if we think we can reach for stars and have some kind of fantasy fulfillment.  If we keep our capability so low that we cannot manage our lives and we continue to be run by fears, emotions, the whimsy of the primitive brain, we will not rise to the level where we can reach some of the available stars. 

If we, instead, build our platform higher and higher, we can pick off the fruit (and the stars) at the higher levels of the tree of life and not just settle for the "low hanging fruit" that is easy to reach when we are still "small".  (Notice whether you are "playing small in life" and decide if you want to keep on doing so.)  And then we no longer have to wish or fantasize, for we will be able to have in our lives those things that we can actually reach, with assurety - and life gets better and better - and we become more and more confident, more and more satisfied, more and more at peace, free of the anxiety of "wishing thinking" (hoping we will somehow get it other than through hard work).

We then, more and more, as we learn life, become truly the master of our lives, "at cause in the matter of our life", which is one of the foundational "musts" for living a good life.  If one is not at cause, one is "at effect", dependent on others and on circumstances to get what one wants in life - and that condition really sucks! 

Now, it does take patience and wisdom to stop and do the "build", just as it takes patience and work for the lumberjack to sharpen his saw, but we will be so much more able to harvest life (and cut down more and bigger trees).

Those who build take everything that comes along that has sufficient potential long term value and they install it for available use. 

They even take notes, in a findable place for use as needed, as to what procedures to use to get a particular result.  For instance, if they learn something about GMail that might not stick, they write down what they learned about it, so that next time they need some procedure, they can just look there (and harvest all the work they did in learning it and putting it into that form of memory (outside the head).  See the story of The Lady Who Prospered From Procedurizing in Procedures And Checklists For Maximum Productivity, Greater Ease, Greater Effectiveness

They especially take notes and set up systems (reminder systems especially) to do what works for lowering stress and anxiety, for more stable blood sugar or a better weight management program, for a system of recovery and rest, etc.  And they do that instead of the normal complaining and being the victim of the effects of not fixing and installing the systems. 

When you start "documenting" systems, procedures, ways of doing things, rules, etc., you are doing part of the "completing" process, following the rule of assuring that there are no open loops (undones for the future) left littering one's life - one assures that one actually harvests whatever he/she is working on or decides to throw it away - but leaves nothing to chance, nothing to pile up and burden ourselves with.  Follow that rule and your life will be much better - violate it and you will keep on getting the consequences of not doing it - which are far greater than people initially believe. 


Follow the principle of "building" and you'll have a strong, rising foundation for getting more and more out of life.  Don't do it and you'll be stuck in wishing or regretting or "shoulding yourself to death"....

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