Notes for Me & You

[dehto5]

Showing up is easy. Building systems that work without you being there is harder - and far more meaningful.

[dehto5]

On piece of mind and acting with integrity

Act like everyone’s watching and everything’s on the record all the time.

[dehto5]

seeing is believing, but it is also called waiting.

[dehto5]

If the problem can be solved, why worry? And if the problem can't be solved, then worrying will do you no good.

[dehto5]

Comprehend and copy nature.

[dehto5]

Reminder for myself: failure is better than inaction.

[dehto5]

Never put your "but" in the face of an angry person.

[dehto5]

Minute Particulars

If one is to do good, it must be done in the minute particulars. General good is the plea of the hypocrite, the scoundrel, and the flatterer.

[dehto5]

Learning

Learning through experience, through doing, through being present is not only the way for us to combat inequality and inequity, but is also the key to our future success and our future economy.

The alternative (to the current system) is creating generations of people who seek possibility, who engage with each other, who learn to program, as opposed to being programmed, who figure out how to be the ones who solve interesting problems and lead.

Access to information is insufficient. It must be accompanied by possibility, belief and passion to go to the next level. And that means getting at the heart of the stories that parents tell themselves, and the stories that parents tell their kids. And most of all, the story the kids tell each other and that they hear from their teachers.

[dehto5]

Scarcity

Scarcity creates tension, tension creates value, and it also creates action.

Scarcity of connection, scarcity of being seen. The scarcity of status.

[dehto5]

There is no perfection, only progress. Done is much better than perfect.

[dehto5]

Meaning makes a great many things endurable – perhaps everything.

[dehto5]

Can you remember who you were before the world told you who to be?

[dehto5]

What's next is what's always next - we redefine what better means.

[dehto5]

I care about your suffering

When someone says to us, as Thich Nhat Hanh suggests, "Darling, I care about your suffering," a deep healing begins.

We might quite readily offer such care to others, but we can learn to offer this same kind of gentle attention to ourselves. With the tenderness we might bring to stroking the cheek of a sleeping child, we can softly place a hand on our own cheek or heart. We can comfort ourselves with words of kindness and understanding.

Offering ourselves such care might feel strange and unfamiliar at first. Sometimes extending compassion to ourselves in this way feels downright embarrassing. It can trigger a sense of shame about being needy and undeserving, shame about being self-indulgent. But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.

[dehto5]

You are responsible for the effort, not the result.

[dehto5]

What is the worst that could happen?