Before you overthink things, try what’s simple and within reach.

While you might like a vacation and all your broken relationships to be mended and all your business headaches to be resolved …

The thing that might provide immediate relief is a few hours of rest. Or lunch with a loved one. Or fifteen minutes at an overlook. Or five minutes of mindful breathing. Or a thirty second hug.

There are often simple things we can do that will make everything else just a little better.

You don’t need a catastrophe to prompt a change. You don’t need to hit rock bottom. You don’t need a crisis.

You can change right now. In small ways or in not-so-small ways.

Change doesn’t have to be forced upon you.

You can make the choice.

Even now.

It annoys me when a customer service agent is unable to help me, but still ends the call by saying, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

I know the line scripted. But still, it’s the kind of phrase that should come after a win, not after a loss.

* * *

Nine separate customer service agents have been unable to solve a credit issue in one of my accounts. Today, I spoke to number ten. Her response surprised me.

“I can’t correct this immediately, but I know who to contact. And I will do that. I’m a resolutionist. I don’t pass problems on to the next person. You know? I make sure to see it through. And I can guarantee: if you’re patient with me, we will get this sorted out. Give me 48 hours.”

“Resolutionist.” I like that. One employee with that kind of attitude is worth a dozen others who’d rather pass the buck.

Unfortunately, the drafts don’t count.

Yes, they’re important. Yes, they serve a purpose.

But they’re preliminary.

What matters is what we show. What we ship. What we share.

All the preparation is for naught unless we’re willing to put our work out there.

I had a long conversation where, regrettably, I did not use the words, “I want …”

I knew what I wanted, but I didn’t use the phrase directly.

Now that the conversation has passed, I think about how much better it might have been had I stated clearly:

Here’s what I want to happen.

or

This is what I want.

It’s easy to get caught up in laying out facts and explaining situations — so much so that we forget to state what we want.

Sometimes the most useful thing to do is to just come out and say it.

Part of the artist’s challenge is knowing when to insert punctuation.

Is this project ongoing? Is there more here? Is it finished? Should I keep going? Should I start over? Or start a new version? Or answer a different question?

A song. A painting. A performance. A photograph. A paragraph.

When is its expression complete? How do we know?

It’s all part of the artist’s journey.

And we’re all artists.

If you’re going to imagine, imagine.

Stop pre-filtering ideas. Stop your mental version of spell check and autocorrect.

Just. Imagine.

You don’t have to do. You don’t have to act. You don’t have to be reasonable, practical, or logical. Not when you’re imagining.

Just let it go. Let it come. Let it play.

When you discover something worth capturing, you’ll know it.

In the meantime, you have to allow it to happen. Filters off. Unfettered. Free.

While I was in a waiting room, a television played commercials. It was noise and my brain ignored it.

Until there was a pause in the audio. Mid-sentence. Total silence.

I looked up to see what was happening.

My attention had been captured.

Sometimes it’s not the noise that grabs us. Sometimes it’s the sudden silence.

Sudden silence: perhaps a tool for us to use judiciously.

I recently walked across a slackline. More accurately, I recently tried to walk across a slackline.

I was surprised by how bad I was. But it was fun for me to try. Even more fun for those who were watching.

Trying something completely new can bring quick awareness to our weaknesses — like balance — but sometimes it can uncover hidden strengths too. (My daughter walked across the same slackline and she was great on her first try.)

* * *

Something else I learned: it only takes fifteen or twenty minutes of practice on the slackline to start getting better.

Often, if we embrace the difficulty and awkwardness for just a short while, we can improve dramatically. The problem is, we don’t usually have the patience to be uncomfortable … even for a short while.

A dear friend was kind to point out that when I recently wrote about gatekeepers, saying, “Odds are, you won’t be anointed,” I had forgotten an important truth: we are already anointed.

That our purpose is deep within us and it always has been.

That because of our many gifts, we have thrilling potential in everything we do.

We don’t need to be selected for a journey; we’re already on one.

H/T: Ajike

It’s too risky to wait.

Odds are, the gatekeeper isn’t coming to pick you.

Odds are, the influential power broker isn’t going to discover you.

Odds are, you’re not going to be anointed, and you won’t be famous to the masses.

But you will be famous to some — and that matters.

The strategy is to focus on the practice. To focus on doing good work. To focus on making things better. To serve the smallest viable audience.

The long shot is just that: a long shot. Planning for the long shot is not a strategy.

If you’re going to ask someone to check, “Is this even?” or, “Is this fair?” or “Is this level?” … you’d better make sure you agree about what’s even, fair, and level.

And there’s almost always some margin of error. Better make sure you’re on the same page about that, too.

Celebrate someone you love.

You can wait until a birthday. Or a special occasion. Or just the right moment.

But you don’t have to.

You can celebrate now. You can voice your gratitude now. You can show your appreciation now.

Whether it’s quiet and private or jubilant and public … put words and actions to what is in your heart.

Don’t wait to do it. Celebrate now.

Remember: learning to pronounce the words is not the goal.

The goal is to sing. Not just to say the words, but to sing them.

Don’t get so caught up in the saying that you forget about the singing.

(This notion can be applied as broadly as you’d like.)

Life doesn’t have a GPS whose voice announces, “You’ve arrived at your destination.” So there are times we may wonder, “Have I arrived? Am I in the right place?”

Only we can answer those questions — and we must be patient with ourselves.

But while we wait for the answers, we can live the questions.

And whether we’ve arrived or not, we can appreciate the concept of “you are here.” That much is always true.

For the past two weeks, I’ve had a friendly wrestling match with a piece of piano sheet music. (My sight reading is woefully novice.) I’m learning a lot from committing to learning the notes as the composer has written them.

Of the many takeaways, here’s one: it’s often the notes beside the expected notes that open up a sound. A slight shift up or down the keyboard and the voices take on new shapes and new depth.

It’s this way with many things. Sounds, flavors, colors, shapes … Just a slight, skillfully intentional shift and everything becomes richer and more beautiful.

Stop worrying about your “best by” date.

You’re good until you expire — and there’s no set date for that.

Not cooking lessons. That’s when someone teaches you to cook.

Cooking learnings: things you learn while you cook.

In a recipe, the word “meanwhile” causes me a little anxiety. The more meanwhiles, the more anxiety.

It’s because meanwhile means that you have to do more than one thing at a time. Get one thing started, then move on to another, but don’t forget about the first thing. Add another meanwhile, and now you have three things to monitor.

It turns out, life has a lot of meanwhiles. That’s perhaps why life can be so challenging: all the meanwhiles.

Another learning: the cleanup sometimes takes longer than the cooking.

It’s this way with a lot of creative activity. The cleanup can be extensive — and it’s just as much part of the work.

Which also means that if you’re the one cleaning up, you’re doing important work in service of creativity (even if it’s your own).

The human body is never at rest.

Even when we’re settled. Even when we’re still. Our blood flows. Our chest rises and falls. Our synapses fire. Our physical selves persist.

We are restless creatures.

How are you harnessing that restlessness today?

Toward what worthy cause are you directing it?

Of the many things art can do, it can ask us to pause with wonder and awe.

The Lightning Field by Walter de Maria — a sculpture meant to be walked, viewed, and experienced — is an arrangement of 400 stainless steel poles, each over 20 feet in height, spread in a grid across a square mile of western New Mexico desert.

With or without lightning, the installation calls viewers to experience and appreciate nature in a new way.

Like many great works of art, it asks us questions and allows us to find our own answers — or to just sit quietly with the questions.

Even without traveling to New Mexico, perhaps just knowing about The Lightning Field will help us to pause with a different kind of reverence the next time we see a streak of electricity spanning the sky.