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May 2023

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The Best Way to Complain is to Make Things. – James Murphy

In a 1994 Santa Clara Valley Historical Association interview, late founder and ex-CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs observed that:

When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.” –  Former United States president Theodore Roosevelt

Who you hang out with determines what you dream about and what you collide with. And the collisions and the dreams lead to your changes. And the changes are what you become. Change the outcome by changing your circle.- Seth Godin

Remarkable 2:  Convert handwritten notes to typed text,

 They say the best way to complain is to make things better.

Amazon Kindle Scribe

Scribe: First Kindle for reading and writing and allows users to supplement their books and documents with notes, lists, and more.

Dealing with Self-Doubt

My mom was always empowering me. Whenever I doubted myself, she would build me up, saying, “Don’t you know who you are? You’re Tory Robinson! You can do anything.”

“Don’t you know who you are? You’re Tory Robinson! You can do anything.”

Meditation

  • Daily Jay with Jay – Shetty Be Smooth, Not Speedy
    ‘Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast” – NAVY SEAL Mantra
    Pace or Process, Speed or Smoothness.
  • When you’re trying to get things done, priortize process over pace. Moving smoothly is more effective than moving fast.

Faster is Slower – The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter M Senge

“For most American business people the best rate of growth is fast, faster, fastest. Yet, virtually all natural systems, from ecosystems to animals to organizations, have intrinsically optimal rates of growth. The optimal rate is far less than the fastest possible growth. When growth becomes excessive—as it does in cancer—the system itself will seek to compensate by slowing down; perhaps putting the organization’s survival at risk in the process. ”

“The tortoise may be slower, but he wins the race.”

  • Daily Calm with Tamara Levitt – Shared Humanity.
be-kind

“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” ― Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times

  • Daily Trip with Jeff Warren – Anger Management

In Meditations, Marcus Aurelius quipped:

“When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: the people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own – not of the same blood and birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are unnatural.

The Five Hinderances

  • Sensory desire (kāmacchanda): seeking for pleasure through the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and physical feeling.
  • Ill-will (vyāpāda; also spelled byāpāda): feelings of hostility, resentment, hatred and bitterness.
  • Sloth-and-torpor (thīna-middha): half-hearted action with little or no effort or concentration.
  • Restlessness-and-worry (uddhacca-kukkucca): the inability to calm the mind and focus one’s energy.
  • Doubt (vicikiccha): lack of conviction or trust in one’s abilities.

All the best in your quest to get better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.

Across the Microsoft 365 apps, the average employee spends 57% of their time communicating (in meetings, email, and chat) and 43% creating (in documents, spreadsheets, and presentations).

A recently pubished report by Microsoft: The 2023 Work Trend Index: Annual Report, revealed that workers are spending at least full working days (57% of their time communicating in meetings, email, and chat). The report noted an urgent need to make meetings more effective as people report inefficient meetings as their number one productivity disruptor.  The top 5 obstacles to work productivity, according to the Microsoft Work Trend Index Report, are: Having inefficient meetings, Lacking clear goals, Having too many meetings, Feeling uninspired, and Not easily finding the information I need.

Workers spend at least full working days (57% of their time communicating in meetings, email, and chat).

The 45th Stewart McKelvey Fredericton Marathon 2023 was held from May 13 to 14, 2023, in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The Fredericton Marathon was named Best Boston Qualifier – by Canadian Running Magazine. I participated in the full marathon (42.2 km), my second in May 2023 (my first Back-to-Back Full Marathon, I participated in the Toronto Marathon last week). I finished with a time of 3 hours 53 minutes.

Meditation is a practice to calm the brain by paying attention.

I started experimenting with meditation during the COVID-19 global pandemic. The pandemic was a roller coaster of anxiety, trials and tribulations, among other emotions. I had seen the Calm advert on YouTube but decided to check it out after watching an ad campaign featuring the Train Your Mind with LeBron James session. I started with the Lebron meditation on Calm and have been hooked on meditating ever since.

The 2023 Toronto Marathon was held on Sunday, May 7, 2023, and it was my second marathon of the year. The Toronto Marathon was named one of the best Boston Qualifiers – by Canadian Running Magazine. I participated in the Mississauga Half Marathon on April 30. I finished with a time of 4 hours 13 minutes, it was a very tough finish as I had a deep muscle pull at 30 KM, but I dug deep to finish.

toronto-marathon-cn-tower

In It Takes What It Takes: How to Think Neutrally and Gain Control of Your Life, mental conditioning coach to elite performers Trevor Moawad lays out lessons he’s derived from his greatest career successes as well as personal setbacks, the game-changing wisdom he’s earned as the go-to whisperer for elite performers on fields of play and among men and women headed to the battlefield.

The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.

In The Denial of Death, American cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker argues that most human action is taken to ignore or avoid the inevitability of death. The 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book builds on the works of Otto Rank, Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, and Norman O. Brown. It discusses the psychological and philosophical implications of how people and cultures have reacted to the concept of death.

I set a couple of goals at the beginning of the year, such as the 100 Books Reading Challenge, 50 Reports Reading Challenge, 50 Biography Reading Challenge, John C. Maxwell 50 Books Reading Challenge50 Magazine Reading Challenge365 English Podcast Listening Challenge365 French Podcast Listening Challenge etc.

Here is a breakdown of how I faired in executing the above goals in April 2023:

Exercise Regimen for April 2023:

  • Time Spent exercising: 90 Hours 14 Mins
  • Kilometres covered: 157 KM
  • Time spent in the gym: Daily, 30 days (Averaged 3 hours per day)
  • Activities: Swimming, Running, Basketball Shooting, Pickleball, and Outdoor Biking
  • Basketball Shooting: 41 hrs 25 Mins
  • Swimming: 25 hrs 57 Mins
  • Weight Lifting: 13 hrs 37 Mins
  • Outdoor Cycling: 5 hrs 32 Mins
  • Running: 3 hrs 40 Mins

Marathon: 1

I ran a personal best for a half marathon at the 2023 Mississauga Half Marathon held on Sunday, April 30, 2023, with a time of 1hr 39 minutes.

Books read in April 2023 – 9

John Maxwell 50

Biography

Meditation

50 Reports Reading Challenge,

50 Magazine Reading Challenge,

Podcast Listening

All the Best in your quest to get Better. Don’t Settle: Live with Passion.