How to Live, How to Grow: Be Kind to Yourself and to Others

Time is the only real assetFranz Kafka wrote quotThe meaning of life is that it stopsquot In the future the ritual of the ordinary day will be special just as we have come to realize after months of a new way of living that the simple pleasures of free movement meeting friends sitting in a crowded bar and watching a sports game were so specialLife does not have to be lived forward and understood backward if we decide to pay attention Two quotes capture what many may feel looking back and looking aheadquotHow we spend our days is of course how we spend our livesquot Anne DillardquotTell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious lifequot Mary OliverLife is a journey through reality and time in search of meaningMost growth comes from the three Ls Loss Love and LearningLoss is central to the human experience in three ways The first is we often lose in our attempts to succeed We lose pitches clients jobs and opportunities Many times we win Some people win little and others win a lot But we all lose These losses are not the big ones The second bigger losses are the losses we will face either because relationships end or death comes Our final loss is that of our livesHow we live amidst this loss defines a large part of life The joy we make is because time is precious and this moment of victory may not last forever Given that loss is part of human existence it pays to be kind and to think about how to help those in loss Do not ask for whom the bell tolls since it tolls for youA big part of what makes life worth living despite the guarantee of loss is the hope of love and joy of learning Love of people of work of art of culture Love may not compute but computers do not love There is a great deal of progress made over generations on who one can love the ability to do things one loves and because of modern technology to be exposed to new worlds horizons and things to loveLearning is particularly joyous Learning in its first form is building knowledge With great knowledge and practice we build skills and craftsmanship Learning to see things from other perspectives gives us understanding Sometimes if we are lucky we can graduate from knowledge skills and understanding to wisdomTo grow use time as a competitive advantageThree behaviorsbeliefs that are common to most successful individuals and firmsThe Power of Compound InterestCompound Improvement The most powerful concept in gaining wealth or knowledge is continuous growth over a sustained timeSee early what others see late Almost every successful person or company recognized a trend when it was a little stream rather than a gushing river and then committed to align with itPersistence Successful people just keep on going through adversity and setback and they remember Queen Elizabeth the First who said quotTime dissolves more problems than man solvesquotLeverage these learnings to plan your career over decadesEarly years a Find the least sucky job or opportunity you can b ideally in an industry which is growing c be realistic that most jobs are miserable a third of the time d so do not quit or make moves with a shortterm horizon and e compete with yourself to become better every day rather than compete with othersMiddle years a Who you work for is more important than the company you work with b it39s key to find something you love doing and fit well with and c invest in building a personal brandLate years a Unlearn reinvent and transform because in a changing world what brought you to success will probably not keep you there b plan an elegant exit since every career has a midnight hour and the smart people leave at five to twelve and c start to build a portfolio career that expands from a job to one that includes a passion consulting advising and giving back since you are likely to work for decades after you quotstop workingquotCombine roots and wingsTo succeed as an individual or as a firm one must have roots and wingsRoots provide stability a place to stand a passed along tradition and a sense of history But roots alone which are important to ensure one does not get blown away by the winds of change might anchor one too much to the past and to a status quo which may no longer be relevantThus the importance of wings The ability to raise oneself and see above the horizon to look down with new perspectives and to ensure that the roots which feed us do not wither by failing to adapt to a new worldRoots nourish via what we were and where we came from and what we did Wings encourage us to go where we need to and to blaze new trails which will lay down tomorrow39s roots and are a highway to what we will accomplishMindset ArchitectureWhile one may not agree with Hamlet39s statement that quotthere is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it soquotamp160our mindsets matter a lot in how we perceive life how we are perceived and the degree of success we may have in our varied endeavorsIn rapidly changing and chaotic times an agile mindset can be critical to success While there are many personal trainers to help sculpt our bodies into somewhat supple forms there is a scarcity in those who can show us how to exercise our minds to be as flexible as they need to beThe ability to change one39s mindset and see feel and think differently about an issue is often the key differentiator between those who succeed and those who do notA few ways to ensure an elegant architecture for your mind include building an opposite case for what you believe since this will both stretch your skills and in today39s polarized world ensure that the selfreinforcing feedback loops due to your algorithmic feeds media choices or close friends do not lead you to believe that your flatulence smells like Chanel 5To grow learn to repairGrowth is not continuous and often there are many setbacks detours shocks and surprisesquotEverything that has a shape breaksquot Japanese ProverbquotThe world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken placesquot Ernest HemingwayquotRepair is the creative destruction of brokennessquot Elizabeth SpelmanThere are many ways to repair oneself including time and friendsIn addition to these simple and free herbs exist to assuage and heal1 Poetry Poems restore us to what is deepest in ourselves Poetry finds the perfect words in the perfect order The greatest poetry is written at the borders of what can be said The best poetry is about persevering and resurrecting and restoring oneself through the ups and downs of life while never losing our internal melody2 Water Flowing water whether it be rainfall a stream a river or the tides of a lake or ocean has a certain timelessness to its biological rhythms The human internal compass draws us to water as a place of rest rejuvenation and repair3 Gardens One prescription for the pressures and challenges we face is to take a walk in a garden Every individual is creative and we have a garden within ourselves that we need to tend to so that we can heal selfrepair and always bloomMind the GapToday in the Instagram age so many of us try to be pixel perfect But life is not pixel perfect In fact most of life is quotminding the gapquotThe gap between who we are and what we want to beThe gap in communication between any two peopleThe gap between what we sayproject externally and what we believelive with internallyThe most contented people tend to be those who have narrowed this gap or being aware of it find ways to accept that life is incomplete imperfect and often incomprehensibleThey are authentic trustworthy happy within themselves do not need constant external validation and have strong relationships and connections with people They are vulnerable empathetic and constantly growing often making mistakes as they doThere are others who project power fame and wealth but you begin to see that often many have the warmth of a toilet seat All the external validation they have or seek does not fill the chasm of emptiness that echoes with hollowness and this truth burns and eats them on the inside even as they smile and blow kisses on the outsideSo what to doGeorge Saunders the author said quotErr in the direction of kindnessquotToday in the world we have much rage So best to be kind Kind to others and to yourselfClick the social buttons to share this content with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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How to Live, How to Grow: Be Kind to Yourself and to Others

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Rishad Tobaccowala

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