Tag: post

What got you here …

What got you here won’t get you there…

a known phrase in business…

also applies to life I believe.

You want to see someone wilt in front of you, become defensive, and just shut down…

criticise them.

It’s been called a lot of things,

Nagging, henpecked, micromanaging…

But what about the voice used when talking to oneself?

I was good at this one thing …

But what got me here won’t get me there…where I aim to be and where I’ve set my goal…

I must become good and go from good to great and this means growth…

I have to undertake difficult things…uncomfortable things…

——-

Everyday there’s countless distractions, grooming us on how important we are…and how much more we deserve …

We have the best economy in the world, the global 1 percent is us…30k something a year and that’s the GLOBAL 1 percent …

We’ve never had it better…

But am I aware or am I just coasting on autopilot?

Just showing up …waiting for my annual raise …

Just showing up …

Waiting for my annual vacation

Just showing up waiting on my “passive income.”

Just showing up …

Like I did in baseball

Knowing I’ll get a photo and a trophy at the end of the year …

Just show up …

Where’s the burden ?

The weight

The work …

Hard conversations …

The practice field where the sweat and the blood and the scars and the bad habits are broken and new ones formed…

Practicing basics …

so well understood …

That we don’t move or compromise on them …

This is where values are forged

This is where we don’t compromise

This is where we look at ourselves and we understand …

Life is a series of stages …

What got us here won’t get us there…

We must be growing …

What else is there?

– E

Repair

“And some from among you shall build the old waste places; raising up the foundations of many generations; and be called The repairers of the breach, The restorers of paths to dwell in.”

  • Isaiah 58:12
  • “far be it from me that I should sin against the LORD by failing to pray for you.”
  • 1 Samuel 12

There’s always going to be plenty of excuses…
If you’re looking for them you’ll find an endless supply of them…
There’s takers in life
People who wait for some hero to come along …
Or you can be someone that is a problem solver…
Someone who gives back …
Builds up those around them …
Someone who takes initiative …
Dreams dreams even…
It’s ok to understand reality…
Yes, it will take longer than you think…
Be harder than you want …
But the reward is so much greater than you dreamed…
You can’t live in a harvest time all the time …but you can sow seed…
You can prepare…
you can see a need and meet it …
You can build back what’s been forgotten…
Walk firmly and gently in what you can control …
You can give …

  • E

Intentional

History repeats itself …

Short term debt cycles
Long term debt cycles
Our habits and our emotions drive us …
Consuming for what we want right now
Credit and credit cards
Increased power to purchase
without increased income
Betting that our future self will pay it off…
Inflation
Recession
10 years
40 years
The middle class gets squeezed
Stops spending money
Starts paying off their debts
Driving inflation up
And recession
The poor just try to survive
The wealthy have assets
So they are still able to get loans etc
When the banks foreclose or call on debts
They are able to pick up the pieces
Capitalism is the consumer….
There is no evil entity
70 percent of our economy is small business and consumer habits…
Be intentional
Know where you are going and why
Control your future
Or your habits will control you …
——
If you’re calm
Constant
Consistent
Know where you’re going
The long nights
The early mornings
They all will be worth it
——
Watch the morning
The fall come in
Watch the seasons change
You’re making your future
You’re arriving
You built this
Together
With changing habits
——
I’ve been fortunate
I haven’t always been the best I could be
I was dishonest
I lied
I drank
I wasn’t my best
I’ve been forgiven of much
I didn’t go to college
I worked since I was 14
And with my father before that …
But I’ve been given second chances
I have a family
I have a home
I’m building
And I’m thankful ….

What else is there?

-E

Shipwrecks

Bob Dylan

Strange things have happened
It’s all happened here before
It’s just the ghost of old shipwrecks
Passing by your doors
—-
Sleep in peace tonight
There’s nothing new under the sun
Take your hand from your gun
This too shall pass
Sleep in peace tonight
The wolves are howling
The nightmare is crawling
Over your back pages
It’s gonna leave its mark
And these passages soon will be read
The world is not falling
It’s only turning
the ghost of the past
That old hangman
That old dust bowl
That famine
And recession
The flies that nag
The dog that bites
The tempers flared
Like shots at the moon
The stars are falling
Falling over Alabama tonight
It’s all been done before
Look out kid
They’re digging up the interstate again…
This too shall pass
Keep you hand off your gun
Do right be right
Don’t take short cuts
You will short yourself in the end …
Do right be right kid …
You’re just in the foyer
The world is just beginning …
Strange things have happened
Where’s all our Dylan’s
Standing by the road …
Do right be right kid
The words will come and they will go…
The Phoenix destroyed your kitchen stove
Cut down a tree with its fist
Its words you dismissed
Don’t short yourself
There’s no easy way out
There’s only to endure and be true
And let the words come
And when they come
Thank them
And let the words go …

-E

Legacy

It takes vision
——
Only you can see it…
So you have to carry it
And cast it everyday
——-
Why’s it so hard?
Why’s it everyday?
Why’s it changing me?
Why’s it breaking me and rebuilding me?
Why does it ask so much of me?
——
Because it’s not about today …
——
Well,
You’re not getting …
——-
It’s not about today…
——-
But you should be …
——
It’s not about today…
——
You deserve ….
——
It’s not about today ….
——-
It’s about the back end…
It’s about the future…
You’re fighting against yourself
Your future self
Your humanity
——
It’s going to take everything you’ve got and then some…
Fresh fire
Fresh faith
Fresh discipline
Fresh vision
daily
To get you there …
This is about the future
Your future
——
Are you building leaders?
Are you adding value
Or are you watering down your values
Your principles
Your vision ?
——
Stay the course !
This is your future
Your vision
No one else has it
No one else sees it
Because it’s you…
Your family
Your children
Your future
——
It’s not about today…
It’s about the future …
The legacy you’re leaving behind
You’re building that daily…
Start building …
——
What else is there?
——

-E

The courage to continue

President Kennedy was living daily with so much pain, from his Addison’s disease and colitis, along with back pain from a deteriorating spine and back surgery, that it took over 12 medications and seven injections a day along with a back brace, just to keep him going …

He couldn’t even bend over to put his shoes on…

The fact that he even got out of bed was a miracle …

I often find my self thinking about how he projected youth and vitality and strength and change…

This ability to challenge people to be better…

He refused to wear an overcoat on his Inauguration Day

Needing to project youth and strength…

He understood probably better than any of us the power of images and what they do

And the power of

Media ….

This was before an assassination

And before America lost touch with itself

And lost faith in itself

We know how the story ends

We know all the things that he started

However he is forever fixed in our minds as he worked so hard to be fixed …

Young and filled with hope.

Change is something uncomfortable

Courage, Virtue and faith is something vital to our existence …

As Joan Didion said the center is not holding…

It seems we’ve lost ourselves

And our faith

We don’t trust even our own instinct

From my side of the mountain

After struggling with Crohn’s

Divorce

Moving and changing careers

Getting sober…

I can only say

I’m writing this on the side of new beginnings

And the shadows we fight against

Just within ourselves

The urge to run

To just forget about the cost

To just forget about the thing

To cop out…

The ability to rebuild yourself

To trust yourself

To reach for change

To stay true to your convictions

Is courageous in and of itself

But it is a future worth fighting for

Worth staying for

Worth getting up in the morning for …

So keep your hope

And build

Brick by brick

And line by line

Create a future

And a home

You would like your children to come home to…

Because it’s worth the fight

Even if you hide your shadows and your struggles

Your pain…

You can still build …

It is the courage to continue in the face of everything ….that counts…

Love on the line

When the stars come out tonight
No one is gonna deny the moon her right to shine …
No one is gonna love her in private
She’s gonna sit up there in the heavens
Chandelier in the night
Burning with all her might
——
Rather be a warrior in a garden
Than a garden in a war
High patience to the throttle
You’ve got the cards but you’ve got to play them just right
——
You want to get it fast
I’d rather make it last
That kind of love takes seasons
That kind of love takes time
——
We drink a little bit of the mountain
Give it back with our blood in the soil
We all had to struggle
But someday
We have to take inventory of how we spend our days
——
I know you’re used to
Good ole boys
Kicking down your door
With high velocity love
Drinking by 9
Punching holes in your heart around midnight
Numbing their minds on smoke and whiskey
And blaming your car alarm heart
For the way they choose to live their lives
—-
and I know we all could have been the dead beats and the losers
Standing on the side lines
But
——
When the stars come out tonight
No one is gonna deny the moon her right to shine …
No one is gonna love her in private
She’s gonna sit up there in the heavens
Chandelier in the night
Burning with all her might

-E
Regardingsamuel.com

Light

I don’t think any of us knows where it comes from, not really. You can set yourself up to be ready for it but you can’t always make it happen.
Nora Ephron said writers are cannibals.
We eat our own.
I’ve always said we were vampires.
Dottie Rambo believed in keeping notebooks near her and being ready always.
It just comes to you, the writing, and you turn it over and see how many lines you can get from a single ray of light.
You try to make it as clear as possible,
So the reader sees what you see, hears what you hear, feels what you feel.
You try to understand it.
What it is to be alive…
To be living…

-E
Regardingsamuel.com

Autumn

When you’re young
You believe you can be everything to everyone
But it’s hard enough to be something to just one …
It takes all of us
We all need each other
——
In terms of art
Drink the shot of bourbon
Leave your mark
Drive the open roads in the place you grew up in
Let the soil take root
And give you your soul back
——
In terms of the heart
I can offer you my hand
These arms to hold you
To walk with you
And I can
Do my best to love you
——
She counted my whiskey bottles
15 empty and 3 full
“Are you an alcoholic?”
“Nah, functioning, functioning”
“I have alcoholic friends I don’t need another one …”
I thought about it for a few days
She never said another word
But I poured it all down the drain
I had a good job
My money was finally right
Everything has to have balance
Moderation
It’s easy to lose your lane
Get a chip on your shoulder
Think you know
——
I prayed while looking over my bluff
Hoping I somehow make this place softer for someone
If even just myself
The leaves are changing again
Like our hearts
Like our minds
Like our bodies
Softer
Softer
Softer

-E
Regardingsamuel.com

Living

I’ve lived just long enough
To know
There is so much
I don’t know,
I’m my own worst critic.
——
There was a community excited
For a new grocery store
Because now they can get new apartments
And new businesses
won’t have to walk as far
Or drive as far
So they have, suddenly, on the horizon
More time and better opportunities in five years than someone minutes or hours away…
This is perspective…
Competition isn’t a bad thing …
Think of your customers, your employees as people,
families you’ve personally impacted in some way….
I’ve been humbled and honored by understanding
By
living and losing and winning.
——
I know we can hurt deeply,
we can change in an instant,
For better or worse –
We are not saints
Or even fallen angels
We are creations
We are weather and seasons
We can become what we dream of or what we hate …
I’ve returned to this southern soil
And I’ve prayed
For it to do what it must
To root the soul
In this heart of flesh…
To ease these bones that shake …
How we treat those around us,
How we grow…
We are restless,
Inside these minds like magnets
Inside cages…

—-

I knew a girl,
She refused to let Love die, she boxed her lover with gloves and a mouth piece
And demanded the truth
Always the truth…
anything less
Anything trivial was left in the dust ….
——-
I’ve lived just long enough …
To know…
They will tell you
You have endless opportunity
For lovers and careers and cities and dreams …
Well,
You do,
But there is a thing called time
And it is always running
It is always clearing the house
while you sleep …
And they will tell you it is an illusion
But when it’s gone it’s gone …
I used to beg for things and people to see me or let me love them…
I don’t do that anymore
If they can’t be here
I thank them
I just let things go
I have to keep moving forward…
If you find one who sees you, pushes you and makes you better,
If they care for you and demand the truth from you…
If you can nurture eachother
And shelter eachother
If you can love deeply
And know how much is on the line…
Really…really on the line ….
To love deeply
To hurt deeply
To pay attention ….
——
I want to
love in a way that you understand
To listen
To build
To protect
To shelter
To not see just potential or an idea
But to really see you
Really be here with you
I want to love you better
——-
I want to live better
I want to
Not take this lightly
We are here
We are here
And this is our responsibility
To ourselves
We are here
And we are living
And we have lived just long enough
To know
we can change in an instant,
For better or worse
But I will love you
Better
I will protect you
Better
I will shelter
And I will keep
And I will
Hold deeply
And love in a way you can understand
So you know….

We are here
We are here
And we are living

-E
Regardingsamuel.com