Today is my birthday.
In recent years, my birthday day has seemed to become a day of review and introspection.
I put a lot of weight on the actual day. I guess that’s ok. But I do similar things to many other days in my life. I ask myself, “What is the best use of my time at this very moment.” There are so many “bests” that I’m never totally satisfied with any of my choices.
So today, for example, “best” could include:
Reading the New York Times.
Doing some personal videos.
Writing this blog.
Working on my survival kit.
Doing something special with Rocky and Indy.
Possibly painting something.
Shooting photography.
Those are just the things that are off the top of my head. I’m sure that list could continue on and on.
I’ve chosen to sit at Angel Falls reviewing my life.
So here it is:
34
Strengths
34 is representative of the best my life has ever been. SageRock is more successful than ever. Indy is happy and healthy. Rocky is amazing. I feel good about my business acumen. I’m doing toastmasters and I can feel my public speaking skills getting stronger. I’m getting a good amount of sleep. I’m eating well. I’m on a pursuit of some sort of spirituality which has been a long under cared for part of my life.
Weaknesses
I’m a little low on energy. Part of me wonders how long I can keep this all up. I’m not sure I’m taking care of myself mentally. When things are going well, I feel fine. But when things go wrong, I get easily beaten down. I’m not exercising right now. I think that might be a big problem. I think I have an anger problem that I didn’t really know about. I think I might be more addicted to anger than I know.
The weight of my life right now is taking some getting used to. I feel that I’m in the heart of my life right now. I sort of imagine that will be the case for the next 10 years. 35-45 are probably going to be my biggest producing years. That’s cool and all. But it’s also oppressive. I’ve got to try to stay loose. Meditation and exercise… those are the biggest missing pieces of my life. I think the are crucial for me to keep up with what’s ahead of me.
Opportunities
SageRock
Rocky
Indy
That’s the trilogy of my life right now.
Balancing those is the true trick. But ultimately, balance is what will be the measure of my own success.
SageRock… 15 people is the goal. Branching out into other services is the question. There are complicated pros and cons for answering that question. I think that hasn’t been flushed out as well as it should.
Rocky… She too is under a lot of pressure as a woman and mother in America. Helping her stay happy and continue to grow is a delicate balance. I think my roll is primarily to be supportive and encouraging.
Indy… Being a good dad is the holy grail of my life. If there is anything that matters in my life, being a good father matters. To me, the number 1 thing I can do to be a good dad is to love his mom. Any advice, wisdom or direction I offer is second to that. Finally, he has to feel that I love and respect him.
Threats
Even though I’m 3 and 1/3 years away from quitting drinking and smoking, I’m always going to have to be aware of the potential pitfalls. I know that I am more productive, successful and happy because I’m not drinking and smoking.
Supporting SageRock. In order for SageRock to survive and continue to thrive at it’s size and the size I want it to be, marketing and sales must be strong. I have to be the best marketing strategist I can be. If SageRock fails or falters it will be because of marketing and sales.
I can’t get too obsessed with work. I have to be carefull of balancing work and family. Being constantly plugged in can often help this. But it can also be overwhelming. I have to be present in my family life.
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All in all, my life is at its peak. I think I still have room to grow.
Exercise and meditation are the big items I need to work on this year personally.
Being supportive and encouraging are the key elements I need to continue to work on in my family life.
Marketing and growth are the areas I need to continue to master and ponder in business.
I’m a little nervous that life has never been better… that makes going down a much easier possibility. But fortunately, I feel there is still plenty of room to continue up.
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Here’s to a fresh start as a 35 year old.
And here’s an idea I have about doing an addiction speaker series or DVD series.
Sage was 225 pounds, a pack-a-day smoker, drank 2 pots of coffee a day, had 12 beers on Wednesdays, 18+ beers on Fridays, and quit it all one night 3 years ago.
He didn’t find God. He didn’t check himself into a rehab clinic. He just wanted to quit and develop a plan to do it.
He can show you how.
http://www.amaravati.org/abm/english/documents/4noble2/data/04first.html#mor
With this formula of the First Noble Truth, even if we have had a pretty miserable life, what we are looking at is not that suffering which comes from out there, but what we create in our own minds around it. This is an awakening in a person — an awakening to the Truth of suffering. And it is a Noble Truth because it is no longer blaming the suffering that we are experiencing on others. Thus, the Buddhist approach is quite unique with respect to other religions because the emphasis is on the way out of suffering through wisdom, freedom from all delusion, rather than the attainment of some blissful state of union with the Ultimate.
When the sense of ‘what I want’ and ‘what I think should and should not be’ arises, and we wish to delight in all the pleasures of life, we inevitably get upset because life seems so hopeless and everything seems to go wrong. We just get whirled about by life — just running around in states of fear and desire.
That’s dukkha; if you want to hold on to something which is beautiful because you don’t want to be separated from it — that is suffering.
http://www.amaravati.org/abm/english/documents/4noble2/data/03intro.html
First Noble Truth: There is suffering.
First Insight of the First Noble Truth: The insight is simply the acknowledgment that there is this suffering without making it personal.
All life is suffering (dukkha)
That acknowledgment is an important insight; just looking at mental anguish or physical pain and seeing it as dukkha rather than as personal misery — just seeing it as dukkha and not reacting to it in a habitual way.
Second Insight of the First Noble Truth: One should understand dukkha, not just try to get rid of it.
With any form of suffering — physical or mental - we usually just react, but with understanding we can really look at suffering; really accept it, really hold it and embrace it.
The Third Insight of the First Noble Truth is: “Suffering has been understood.” When you have actually practised with suffering - looking at it, accepting it, knowing it and letting it be the way it is — then there is the third aspect.
This is the pattern for the three aspects of each Noble Truth. There is the statement, then the prescription and then the result of having practised.
http://www.amaravati.org/abm/english/documents/4noble2/data/04first.html
When we talk about our human suffering, it brings out our compassionate tendencies. But when we talk about our opinions, about what I think and what you think about politics and religion, then we can get into wars.
If anything unpleasant arises we say, ‘Run away!’ If anyone gets in our way we say, ‘Kill him!’ This tendency is often apparent in what our governments do.
(I left off at this section: MORALITY AND COMPASSION)
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/intro_bud.htm
The problem is that the “world out there” is constantly changing, everything is impermanent and it is impossible to make a permanent relationship with anything, at all.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/5minbud.htm
Buddhism teaches that the solutions to our problems are within ourselves not outside.
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/intro_bud.htm
It is only when we completely abandon clinging that we feel any relief from our queasiness.
We suffer because we are constantly struggling to survive. We are constantly trying to prove our existence.
The harder we struggle to establish ourselves and our relationships, the more painful our experience becomes.
Our struggle to survive, our effort to prove ourselves and solidify our relationships is unnecessary.
We could just be a simple, direct and straight-forward person. We could form a simple relationship with our world, our coffee, spouse and friend. We do this by abandoning our expectations about how we think things should be.
We practice being mindful of all the things that we use to torture ourselves with. We become mindful by abandoning our expectations about the way we think things should be and, out of our mindfulness, we begin to develop awareness about the way things really are. We begin to develop the insight that things are really quite simple, that we can handle ourselves, and our relationships, very well as soon as we stop being so manipulative and complex.
“in the beginning” things were going along quite well. At some point, however, there was a loss of confidence in the way things were going. There was a kind of primordial panic which produced confusion about what was happening. Rather than acknowledging this loss of confidence, there was an identification with the panic and confusion. Ego began to form.
The first point is called right view — the right way to view the world. Wrong view occurs when we impose our expectations onto things; expectations about how we hope things will be, or about how we are afraid things might be. Right view occurs when we see things simply, as they are. It is an open and accommodating attitude. We abandon hope and fear and take joy in a simple straight-forward approach to life.
Right livelihood is the fifth step on the path. The truth is, that we should be glad of our job, whatever it is. We should form a simple relationship with it. We need to perform it properly, with attention to detail.
Actually, nirvana simply means cessation. It is the cessation of passion, aggression and ignorance; the cessation of the struggle to prove our existence to the world, to survive. We don’t have to struggle to survive after all. We have already survived. We survive now; the struggle was just an extra complication that we added to our lives because we had lost our confidence in the way things are. We no longer need to manipulate things as they are into things as we would like them to be.
I was reading an article. It asked me to answer these questions:
What do I want out of life?
I want an exciting, busy life where I was able to make the lives of a few people better.
My defining role is: Father.
What do I want our of SageRock?
I want it to be the greatest place in the world to work.
I want it to allow me to be creative.
I want it to give me the opportunity to purue many challenging goals.
What kind of person do I want to be?
I want to be giving.
I want to be used by the world.
Here’s my take on why people don’t delegate:
You might ask… Who cares if I delgate or not. Delegation is one of those doors in life that opens up whole new worlds for you. There is no one in the world that couldn’t delegate something which in turn would make their life better.
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