Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – You Don’t Need Motivation to do What You Love

Tags

Commitment, Dedication, Exercising, Focus, Learning, Meditating, motivation, passion, Reading, Writing

Image by rawpixel from Pixabay

Happy Monday!

What do you have planned this week? I had a great conversation with my wife yesterday. She just placed 2nd and 5th in two different bodybuilding categories at a competition in Las Vegas. I asked her what she did to get into the shape she got into for the competition. Here’s a bit.

Two workout sessions each day in the final 8 weeks. She does 1 hour of cardio (treadmill) followed by 45 minutes in the Sauna. She eats only chicken, rice, oatmeal (dry), protein shake, and egg whites. In the last 4 days, prior to the competition, she ate only chicken with ¼ cup of rice in the evening. Her weight training sessions are an hour to an hour and a half after a long day of work (she’s a special education teacher). She eats about 1.5 lbs of chicken each day. The only thing she can drink is water. No coffee, no tea, no soda, no protein shakes, nothing.

Sounds tough right? Not if you are driven, dedicated, and motivated and love what you are doing. My wife loves exercise and lifting and competing. To her this is not that big of a deal. She inspires me.

The picture above is in Las Vegas this last Saturday. So proud of my wife!!!

So what do you want to do, but can’t seem to get yourself to do? Take a measure of your motivation. Do you really want to do this? Is there something else you would rather do? Find something that really motivates you. Maybe your drives lead you to writing a book, starting a business, learning a new language, traveling, or something else. Find that thing. Find the thing you can dedicate your time to without breaking yourself against your own willpower.

We all need to exercise and eat right. These are a given, but we don’t need to put ourselves into a situation like my wife does. She does it because she loves it. Find that thing that you need to put a little effort into, but is really effortless. We all have that one or two things that we are excited about.

Here are the things I enjoy every day. I love exercising, reading, writing, meditating, and learning. I also love video games, movies, and music. I exercise every day. I read every day. I write every day. I meditate every day (twice), and I love learning (I’m learning computer programming via Codecademy). Initially, I had to figure out how to get all these things into my day. Once I figured out how to get all of these things into my day, I moved to tracking them by putting them on a to-do list that repeats indefinitely. I used Google tasks for this process. Google tasks is available in your Gmail account, can be displayed to the right of Google calendar, and is an app you can download to your phone. Since most of my work is on my computer, I keep track of what I’ve done and what I haven’t done on my computer using the task list in Google Calendar.

Start small, especially if you are trying something new. When I built my reading habit, it was literally reading just a few pages each day. Now I’m up to a chapter a day. I read a few pages in my Bible and then I read a chapter.

What about scheduling you ask? Well, that depends on your life. I’m retired so my schedule is a little more dynamic. I tend to just tackle what I need to in no specific order. My exercise routine used to be first thing in the morning, but that’s tough when either my Mom or I have to be home to take care of my Dad. He has “episodes” where he literally passes out and someone must be here every day with him to make sure we are around to revive him if this happens. So, I have to work around my Mom’s errands and such so one of us can be with Dad. No problem. I can exercise with my exercise bands, I can use one of my exercise apps. The rest is all at my computer, so not a big deal.

You may be working, so you’ll have to look at what you want to do daily and physically schedule this stuff in on your calendar at specific times. Find out what you are truly passionate about and get to work.

Here’s my plan for the upcoming week:

• Read 1 chapter daily
• Write one section in my book daily
• Read my Bible daily
• Exercise – Cardio and Weights, Bands, or Calisthenics daily
• Meditate 2x daily
• Complete one lesson on Codecademy daily

I hope each of you has a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

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Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Persistence

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Exercise, Insomnia, Learning, My week, Persistence, Reading, Spiritual Work, Writing

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison

Hello, folks! Happy Monday!

I found this quote and felt it was exactly in alignment with what I wanted to talk about today–persistence. Persistence is what gets you through anything. It helps you when you doubt what you are doing. It helps when the obstacles to your progress pile up. It is supported by faith. The faith that you do have what it takes to succeed. We all have this capability. We just have to stick with what we are doing to get to where we want to go.

I try to keep my life simple. Read daily, write daily, learn daily, exercise daily, and spiritual exercises daily. This is it. Where I have fallen down this year is in the exercise arena. I go, then I don’t go, I start this program and then I stop this program. Today, I’m revamping my exercise routine and starting again. Exercise is important to me and once in a while I’ll lose track of that key point. I’m not into exercising for aesthetic purposes. I don’t care about posting an infinite amount of selfies showing off this or that. For me, it is just about feeling good, sleeping well, and taking care of myself.

For a few weeks, I was going through some horrific insomnia. I couldn’t sleep. One of the primary causes for this insomnia was my lack of consistent exercise. You see, I have always been hyperactive. If I don’t get rid of some energy doing yard work, exercise, and some actual brain work every day, I am not tired at all when I go to bed. I just lay there tossing and turning. I realize some folks suffer a form of insomnia because of worry. I do not fall into this category. My life is pretty calm, without too much drama. I feel for you if you cannot sleep because of excessive worry. This is a horrible place to be.

Ok. This week, we’ll be hitting it hard in the gym (check my workouts on my Workout Routine posts). I’ll be doing some work on my book, continue to post here, and work through an NLP course I signed up for on Udemy. I’ve also got my daily yard work to do, pending the weather. I hope each of you has a terrific week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursday – It’s Great to Learn New Things

Tags

Coursera, family, God, Learning, Life, Reading, Udemy, Writing

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Today I am grateful for the ability to read, write, and learn. Think about some people on the planet that are illiterate or have suffered from a traumatic brain injury or a learning disability that precludes them from learning the same way you and I learn. My wife is a special education teacher, and she works with these kids every day.

I am grateful for my interest in learning new things. I truly enjoy learning something I didn’t know yesterday. I enjoy taking a trip with an author and walking through the mental libraries they have created in their books. “Look here”, they say. “Look there. This is really important.” I am also grateful for the free repositories of books online and my local library. So many books to read and so little time.

Online learning is also a terrific thing. Think about it. You can learn a great deal by reading other people’s blogs, reading books, and attending classes and webinars, most of which are absolutely free. Why learn you ask? It adds to you. It provides you with skills that you can continue to earn a living with. It gives you a wide berth of experiences through other’s eyes that you may not have the ability to do on your own.

I recently read a book about finding out what you love to do. Think about how many people are in jobs they hate. Can you imagine going to a job that stressed you out and made you unhappy? We all have to make a living one way or another. People who are trapped in a job they hate is a really bad place to be in. Yet, many do not take advantage of the learning opportunities that are available to them. I am grateful that I am not one of these people.

I am always looking to improve. I want to improve my physical body; I want to improve my spiritual practice; I want to improve my skill set, and I want to build my knowledge. I am grateful I have that drive to do these things, day in and day out. Recently, I started listening to albums on Spotify, starting with various jazz artists. I also enjoy the classics, but wanted to start with Jazz. I listened to albums by Miles Davis and Bill Brubeck. Wow! What a treat. I am going to listen to Dizzy Gillespie next. It will be a nice treat. When I listen I put in my earphones, close my eyes, and picture myself in some speakeasy, listening and watching the band and the people there. It is terrific how music takes you places when it is really good.

I hope each of you can find things in your lives you are grateful for. It is a great feeling to sit back and think about all the things that contribute to your life and how nice it is to have them. Gratitude for God, for family, for your life, with all of its difficulties, and the rich experiences each of our lives contain, if we only look and appreciate them. Life is too short to be pissed off or afraid all the time. Take some time each day to express your gratitude for even the smallest thing. It will change the way you engage with the world and interestingly, when you have cultivated the gratitude habit, the world will give you more things to be grateful for.

Life is grand.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – Learning with the Written Word

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Amazon KIndle, Christina DesMarais, Confucius, Freebooksy, Goodreads, Inc.com, Nook, Reading, Scribd

“You cannot open a book without learning something.” – Confucius

Image by Eli Digital Creative from Pixabay 

Do you have a reading habit? I read voraciously every day. I read to learn new things, explore different historical periods, and analyze why an author did this or that to get his or her point across. I can’t imagine a day without reading. I truly enjoy it.

According to Inc.com contributor, Christina DesMarais, “reading fiction can help you be more open-minded and creative” and help you live longer. How much should you read? Well, it is really about what you prioritize during your day. It is possible to read 12 books a year, without too much work (that’s one book a month). I like to make a game out of it. If you haven’t seen this yet, Goodreads.com has a free reading challenge you can participate in every year. Just create a free account and click on reading challenge. You can select the number of books you want to read this year and it will keep track of that for you as long as you keep your list updated. Luckily, the Amazon Kindle helps you by linking directly to your Goodreads account. Click Goodreads if you’d like to check this out.

I read predominantly online because it is easier on my eyes. I also use a few services to get access to books. I have a library card for anything I want to get my hands on that is not available on the Amazon Kindle. I also use Scribd (which costs about $8/month). To get access to a lot of free books by Indie authors, I use a service called Freebooksy. Click Scribd to check out their services. Click Freebooksy to check out this amazing service. Scribd has saved me a lot of money by offering books I would normally have to pay for individually, because many of the books that were offered a year or so ago make their way to Scribd as a means of building a following beyond the initial hype associated with a book’s initial launch. Freebooksy will deliver a list of titles you can download for free. Scribd has a huge repository of books, magazines, audible books, and comic books for your use as part of your membership. There is a limit to how many books you can download, but I have not breached my limit yet. I’m not too big into audible books yet, but in the future when my eyes degrade enough, audible books may be another option I used to satisfy me.

If you are one of those people that have not fully embraced digital content, because you like the feel of a book in your hands or enjoy the smell of a new book you pick up at a bookstore, no problem. I would utilize your local library for those needs. I would challenge you to adapt to the digital world. You have so much more access to many books you will not find at your local library or that are available in print without a lot of cost. Many Indie authors will offer a Kindle-version of their book for free and charge a pretty penny for a hardcover or paperback version of their book. This is because Amazon will print on demand the books people order from them. One word of caution: Please read a few books by an Indie author in digital form first. I’ve run across some really great talent in the Indie space, but have also run across some really bad ones too. It’s better to find out that a book is bad in digital form that was bad vs. spending your hard-earned money on an untested author.

There are some other great resources for books that are out of print, rare, or really old. Check out these services if you’d like to find some real gems. The links are:

The HathiTrust Organization

The Gutenberg Project

The Literature Network

Authorama

All of these sites offer e-books that are compatible with the Kindle, Nook (Barnes & Noble), and most e-reader apps you may be using from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. The link I’m most familiar with is The Gutenberg Project. I’ve read quite a few books from this site and they were terrific.

Well, I hope this helps some of you who may have been looking for some resources to help you get started on your reading quest. I truly enjoy reading and learn something new every day. Sometimes, just getting that one new idea from a book can provide untold benefits that will help you with your business, your writing career, your blogging, or even learning a new skill. I can’t recommend starting a new reading habit enough.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – New Schedule and Exercise Routine

Tags

Bradley Whitford, Brainy Quote, Exercise, Goals, journaling, Learning, Reading, Writing

“Infuse your life with action. Don’t wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love. And whatever your beliefs, honor your creator, not by passively waiting for grace to come down from upon high, but by doing what you can to make grace happen… yourself, right now, right down here on Earth.” Bradley Whitford Read more at: From Brainy Quote

Happy Monday, folks!

This week will be full of activity. I’m taking a course on Neuro Linguistic Programming and a course on Politics. I am working on my recruiting book. I am also doing a lot of reading. My exercise routine will involve a new 6-day split. Today, I got back into the gym.

My 6-day workout plan is: Monday (Chest, Triceps, and Abs and 20 minutes cardio), Tuesday (Back, Biceps, and Calves and 20 minutes cardio), Wednesday (Shoulders, forearms, 20 minutes cardio), Thursday (Quads, Abs, and 20 minutes cardio), Friday (Hamstrings, calves, 20 minutes cardio), Saturday (Chest, Back, Shoulders, and 20 minutes cardio). I typically do 3 sets of exercises per body part.

It felt good to get back in the gym after a 4-month respite. I also adjusted my schedule. I now start my day at 6 am. Then I tackle my day in 2-hour increments starting with journaling, then reading, then learning, and then writing. In the evening I get my relax time with Netflix, Hulu, and some game time on my XBOX.

What are your plans this week? What are you trying to accomplish? Where are you with your New Year’s resolutions? Today, is the day to get all of that back on track. We’re in the 2^nd Quarter and you have a lot of time left before the end of the year.

If you are interested, leave a comment about one of your goals you’re struggling with. I’d like to offer suggestions. Well, that’s it for today, folks! Have a great week!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Motivation Monday – Making Adjustments

Tags

Exercise, Goals, Learning, Losing traction, Reading, Resolutions, Slipping, Writing

Hey, folks!

What’s the game plan for my week? I’m glad you asked. I’ll be working on the 3rd re-write of my book, shooting for a chapter a day. I’m hitting it hard in the home gym with a mix of cardio, abdominal work, leg work, chest work, Pilates, and Yoga. I’m also taking a Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) course on Udemy. I’m still going strong with intermittent fasting. This week I’m also learning AJAX within the Web Development Path at Codecademy. Finally, I raised the bar on my meditation practice. I’m up to an hour daily.

What do you have scheduled this week? How are you progressing on this year’s goals? Are you on track or are you missing milestones? If you’re off track, don’t lose sleep. Figure out where you are, retool your plan and get back at it. You can’t lose if you don’t quit, right?

I lost my motivation for book writing a few weeks ago. I discovered my motivation fell away because my process lacked detail. The rewriting process was the culprit. So, I sat down one day and thought it through, retooled, and got back to work. Since this is my first book, my process still needs to ironing out, but I’m back on track again.

If you’re stuck or losing momentum on a goal or resolution you set in December, try this. Think about why you set the goal. Think about what caused you to resolve to do whatever you resolved to do. You still have 8 months to achieve it.

Striving for goals or changes in your life are hard. If they were easy, everyone would accomplish what they set out to do. Don’t be a quitter. Don’t stop. Don’t come up with excuses. You wanted to achieve a goal. Achieve it. Maybe you are doing too much. Maybe you need to whittle down what you’re doing every day. The way to keep going is to keep taking steps towards your goal. Even if they are microscopic steps, continue. It may take you a while but you will succeed. You have it in you.

I hope all of you are making great strides toward your projects and goals. I’m cheering for you! See you at the finish line!

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursday

Tags

Aesop, Appreciation, Conversations, followers, Gratitude, Learning, Reading, Thankful, Thanks

“Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.”—Aesop

Thank you for following Daily Ramblings. I am honored, humbled, and blessed by all of you. I hope your week is going well.

This week has been terrific, so far. We had friends over yesterday. It was nice to catch up and hang out over coffee in our living room, watching the rain on the first day of Spring. Have I mentioned how much I enjoy snow and rain? It is so comforting to hear the rain pitter patter on the window and roof as I enjoy a warm cup of coffee and my new slippers.

On Saturday we are heading to Flint to hang out with another family friend. He enjoys Thai food, so we always meet with him at his favorite restaurant and hang out for a few hours catching up and enjoying our conversation with a great Thai meal. They have the best homemade ice cream.

I really enjoy reading. I put my kindle through is paces. I enjoy reading multiple books at once and strive to continue this throughout the year. I find reading to be informative, relaxing, and joyful. When I read, I am transported to a new world, learn new things, and revisit past battlegrounds and places.

I also enjoy reading because I can see how an author uses the language to describe scenes, dialogue between characters, and move these characters through their plot. I learned last week that an author should read books within their genre. This allows them to see how their fellow authors put together stories and learn about the various ways they build their fantasy worlds, crime stories, or outer space adventures.

I enjoy learning and grateful for the many resources that are available today. Websites like Hillsdale.edu, Coursera.com, and others provide access to schools like Harvard, Yale, and the University of Michigan. It is a terrific, free resource that is beneficial. I also enjoy a website called Codecademy, which I am using to learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Thank God for these programming sites so guys like me can pursue my 3^rd career.

I’m also thankful for some folks that interacted with me this week. I really enjoy comments on my postings and interacting with others in the blogosphere. I look for new blogger sites and comment on Sundays. It is a lot of fun to read the posts of people worldwide.

Well, that’s all I got today folks. Thank you to all my new followers this week. I appreciate your patronage.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Wisdom Wednesday – The Simple Things

Tags

Peace, Reading, rituals, Simple Things, solitude, Tranquility, wisdom, Writing

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”―Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

I took quite a few years to realize the wisdom Paulo Coelho refers to in this quote. Like, all young men, I sought fame, glory, and riches. I had a terrific military career in the Army, spanning 20 years. When I retired, I transitioned into technical recruiting, my second career. This career was very lucrative and set me up for an early retirement. Now I am pursuing a third career in writing, teaching, and writing programs for the web and mobile devices.

I enjoyed making a lot of money but discovered it was empty, at least for me. When my Dad’s illness kicked in, I returned home to help my folks. My days are simple, yet productive. I work through my daily routine, enjoy a few cups of coffee and good meals (I love to cook), and really enjoy the solitude and peacefulness that accompany my morning journaling. During the winter months it is even more special because the warmth of my coffee is a stark contrast to the cold on the other side of my living room window.

I used to use a desktop computer only for my work. Now I find my laptop to be a better companion. It allows me to enjoy different parts of my home as I work through my daily rituals. My core activities are exercise, meditation, journaling, working on my book projects, and working through various online courses, pursuing my varied areas of interest. I take my laptop everywhere, especially the coffee shops I enjoy going to.

My life is simple but rich. I take comfort in my routines and my little joys. I enjoy a warm cup of coffee in the morning. I enjoy the peace that accompanies my writing. I am engaged when I am learning new coding techniques and other topics. One of my greatest joys is relaxing while I read. Reading is a true joy, particularly when I am learning something new, or engrossed in a story.

When you slow down, you notice the little things that make life a grand experience. Petting the family dog, eating a meal with your family, conversations in the morning over coffee, looking at the snow, and enjoying those moments you realize how terrific life is. The simple things in life are the things that make life worth living.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Thankful Thursday – Journals and Rituals

Tags

Grateful, Gratitude, habits, journaling, Journals, Learning, Reading, rituals, Thanks, Writing

A big thank you to all the new followers this week. I finally hit my 500-follower goal and now I am off to hit 1000. I appreciate all my readers and hope you find my daily inputs to your day fruitful and interesting. Today, I’ll be revisiting an important aspect of my day—gratitude journaling.

I work with three journals currently. One is my daily journal where I do a daily mind dump of all my thoughts first thing in the morning. Second is my dream journal, which I write in as soon as I awake. Finally, I add to my gratitude and affirmations journal.

My gratitude journal starts with my daily affirmations. As you all know, I am working monthly to build my character in the same way Benjamin Franklin did during his day. Each month I add one more character trait and these in turn are part of my daily affirmations. Following this I write about all the things I am grateful for.

My gratitude extends to my family and friends, my learning, my pets, and the many aspects of my life. I like taking the time to consider all the great things I have in my life, along with the wondrous experiences I am grateful for. This morning journaling sets a terrific tone for the rest of my day.

Over time you would think that this exercise would get boring, trivial, or lose its meaning. Surprisingly, it does not. It took me a while to build the habit but performing the act daily has made this a well-earned ritual I perform religiously.

Speaking of rituals, I tend to keep like habits with like habits. I do most of my writing in the morning in and around my journaling. Next, I move to reading. After my daily reading is completed, I move to my learning habits, running through the online courses I am enrolled in, my coding exercises, and the YouTube lectures I am working through. Then I do my religious studies, getting in a meditation session and reading my religious discourses for the month. Exercise comes later in the day after my first meal, which is around 4 PM. I eat late because I do intermittent fasting daily. My schedule is from 12 midnight to 4 PM daily. The only thing I consume is water, coffee, tea, or a pre-workout drink. Some say drinking the pre-workout during the fasting period breaks the fast, but I don’t care. It is healthy and is a great start to my day.

These daily rituals formed all by themselves. Over time it just made sense to move through my daily habits in an organized fashion so I could stay within certain contexts that would provide more efficiency to my day. Rituals are the best description for this behavior because they literally guide each action, within the confines of the context they fall under.

Well, folks that’s it for today. I hope all of you have a terrific Thursday.

Until next time…

Dave

Daily Ramblings – Spiritual Saturday

Tags

Brad Henry, Dialogue, Evaluating, Extrinsic Motivation, Intrinsic Motivation, Learning, Reading

“A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.” – Brad Henry

Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/brad_henry_167806?src=t_learning

Teachers come in all shapes and sizes. Our pets can teach us. Our children can teach us. Our parents can teach us. Our brothers, sisters, and friends can teach us. I think our learning is limited when we have to seek out someone who calls themselves a teacher and we limit our learning to one source.

I love to read. I love to read stories, I love to learn new things, I love to experience other places in different time periods. I love to gain perspective by experiencing what others have experienced. Dialogue is an important aspect of learning. We can have a dialogue with other people, not just by talking to them but also by reading what they write.

This is why blogging is so important. When we post something to our blog, we are initiating a conversation. We are telling others what we think. To tell someone what we think we have to have a dialogue with ourselves. I was watching a YouTube video that addressed how each of us changes every time we have a dialogue with another person. Each time you read something that causes you to rethink what your view of the world is, a part of you dies so that new perspective can add itself to who you are. I find this one fact to be startling.

Currently, I have a goal to read some of the world’s great philosophers. I am currently reading Nietzsche. Some of his ideas are really out there. Nonetheless, his thoughts are a great way to witness how an individual takes the philosophy of his time and questions it. He interjects what he believes to be true and refutes some of the thinking of his time. I think it is important to read the works of these people because they show us how to think, not what to think necessarily.

One of the character traits I continue to work on is tolerance. One of the aspects of tolerance is the ability to keep an open mind. Open mindedness requires us to weigh what we think against what we take in. If we are close-minded, we will never learn anything new. Sometimes we have to come face-to-face with someone’s point of view that is opposite of ours. How did they come to their conclusions? What are they proposing? Do these things make sense or are these points just drivel?

Besides literature, I am always interested in reading self-improvement or self-help books. Interestingly, some of these books are worthless. They are merely regurgitating the same ideas that someone else has already claimed. Interestingly, if you read enough of them, you do come across a novel idea from time to time that is really helpful.

Mini-habits is a book I read every year. It is a book that was created by Stephen Guise. Mini-habits is a novel idea, but some folks will not benefit from the wisdom in his book, particularly if they only do the bare minimum. The purpose of mini-habits is to develop a habit by doing something so ridiculously small that a person’s internal resistance to change will not pose a factor. The challenge, however, is when a person merely does the bare minimum and never increases their capability to do more. This is where mini-habits fail. But is it failure?

Mini-habits help us do something. That something can result in more if we keep doing them. Where I think they fail is when there is no motivation to do more than just the mini-habit over time. Take writing for example. Let’s say a person obligates themselves to write one word a day. It is obvious how ridiculous this mini-habit is. Subsequently, for mini-habits to truly be effective, the person has to set a standard where some progress can be made.

The premise of mini-habits is to do something that will edge you forward in a meaningful way to achieve some end. That end could be related to fitness, eating, reading, writing, or any other number of activities that would benefit the individual that wants to improve some area of their life. There has to be some drive to improve something. This leads us to a discussion about the two types of motivation.

Intrinsic motivation is the motivation we have internally. This motivation drives us to do something because we truly want to do something. The other type of motivation is extrinsic. Extrinsic motivation comes from the outside. This type of motivation is a boss at work, a social pressure if you will. When we are motivated by outside circumstances or forces, it only works as long as those outer pressures exist. Subsequently, intrinsic motivation is more beneficial to us over the long term. If we are intrinsically motivated to do something, we have a greater chance at success because this internal drive will never leave us.

We have a lot of intrinsic motivation when it comes to survival. If we are hungry, we are motivated to eat. If we are tired, we are motivated to sleep. Unfortunately, the things that can provide real meaning in our lives are those that are not necessarily related to our intrinsic motivations of survival. These have to be cultivated. We have to draw on others for these motivations.

Why is it a good thing to take care of ourselves physically? Why is it important to learn new things? Why is it important to interact socially with other people? Why is it important to create things? Why is it important to be charitable? These are the things that can make our lives meaningful but also require that we do something about them to truly benefit from them.

We can learn about these things by reading. We can read about people who show us the benefits of physical health. We can read about people who failed miserably at life. We can read about people who overcame great challenges and still ended up on top. When we read, we get inside of the author’s head. We learn how things were at a particular place and time. We learn what to do and what not to do. More importantly, we learn a set of standards by which we can live by.

Reading can be entertaining, informative, and challenging. When we read, we reflect on what we think we know and then, decide whether that thinking was right or whether it was wrong. This is where the growth occurs. The moment we discover a particular belief or value fails, and replace it with something new, we grow.

Read. Read for the enjoyment of reading. Read to learn. Read to experience things through the lens of someone else’s mind. The adventures that await you are endless.

Have a great Saturday everyone!

Until next time…

Dave