Desire – Encouragement is Personal

Aggressive Confusion

What happens when someone leads with their confusion?

It’s easy to be confused.

To be unclear about new information.

To ask for more explanations.

To need more practice.

But what happens when someone leads with their confusion, defending themselves behind a shield of doubt and uncertainty?

What if they wield their confusion like a weapon, merely to strengthen their grip on the status quo?

Is their objective to understand an idea or to avoid any responsibility for it?

Exploration (of anything) is a journey into the unknown and unexpected. It can be overwhelming, even confusing. It should be. Finding our way through the confusion is how we grow.

We make the choices:

Will we decide to push through our confusion?
Will we put in the effort to find new clarity?
Will we choose to grow?

Or, do we prefer to hide in our comfortable bubble of confusion?

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

Come on in, the water’s warm!

Back in the day, we used to grab our boogie boards and take the bus down to Seal Beach (in California). It cost 25 cents each way. Perfect for a budget-minded 6^th grader and his buddies.

Side note: nobody thought it was the least bit strange for a bunch of 6^th and 7^th graders to go to the beach on a public bus without their parents…my how times have changed in 40 years.

That first step into the waves was always the coldest. It never failed that a wave would break right on shore, just as we were trying to slowly enter the water.

We always knew that the moment the water hit our stomachs, we might as well just dive in and swim out through the waves.

Within about thirty seconds, we were used to the water temperature. We didn’t think about it for the rest of the day. All we were thinking about was catching the next wave and buying a hot dog and a Coke for something like a dollar at lunch time.

We humans have an incredible ability to adapt. Sure, we feel the shock of a new challenge deep in our gut at first. We’ll wonder how in the world we’re going to deal with this new set of problems. But, give us a little time, and we have what it takes to not only adapt, but to overcome.

The only question is whether we choose to adapt.

It’s our choice.

We decide whether we’ll dive into the cold waves and paddle out, or retreat to the warm safety of the beach.

The beach may be safe, but the waves we’re trying to catch are out in the water.

Time to dive in and start paddling.

Photo Credit: That’s our grandson, Charlie. He’s riding his first wave on a boogie board, at Beach 69 on the Big Island, a few weeks ago. He turns 4 this weekend. Cowabunga, Charlie!

Desire and Appreciation

When was the last time you purposely spent time appreciating your life and the people you love?

“…people are programmed to desire, not to appreciate.” –Matt Ridley

Imagine if we had the ability to appreciate as much as we desire.

Imagine if the things we appreciated were all that we desire.

We might not get as much accomplished, but we’d probably be a little happier. Maybe, a little more content.

As infants, we’re 99.99% desire. It’s the only way we can survive, connect, learn, and thrive.

As we grow, our desires get more advanced. We visualize, fantasize, dream, and hope. We talk about the things we’re going to do, the places we’ll see, the people we’ll meet, the mountains we’ll climb.

In all of this, there’s little time for appreciation. We don’t have time to reflect. We’re too busy fulfilling our dreams, finding the next challenge, quenching our desire.

When was the last time you purposely spent time appreciating your life and the people you love?

When was the last time you purposely spent time appreciating yourself and the positive impact you have on the world?

Maybe it’s time.

Desire, with all its motivation and energy, is critical to our success.

But appreciation brings meaning to that success. It makes our success (however we define it) matter.

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash