When you make a promise — how likely are you to keep it?

How about promises to yourself?

For many of us, we’re better at keeping the promises we make to others … and we less reliably keep the promises we make to ourselves.

Or we’re even reluctant to make promises at all.

But the path forward is not through flexibility, loopholes, and revisions. It’s through selective, intentional promises and commitments.

And keeping them.

We don’t get perfect over time.

Yes, we (mostly) learn how to not repeat mistakes.

But ultimately, we’re always learning new ways to err.

How we navigate our ongoing imperfection — that’s the business of life.

Do you keep the unknown, next person in mind?

When we have this general sensibility, we recognize small occasions to practice selfless courtesy.

We push in a chair. We wipe our crumbs off a table. We refill an empty dispenser.

Years ago, when VHS rentals were a thing, one would rewind a tape to the beginning before returning it to the store. For the next person.

Small moments — brief occasions to help to irrigate the fields of kindness in this world.

Anyone can do it. We just have to think of the next person.

What we do communicates our values.

But what we don’t do — what we don’t model, address, consider, solve, engage with — that tells a story too.

Sometimes it’s the latter that speaks louder.

How do you like to work? What’s the ideal space to practice your craft? Some considerations:

• Coffee

• Tea

• Sunlight

• Night

• Music

• Natural sounds

• Silence

• Chaos

• Piles of materials

• Tidy stacks

• Tools on work surfaces and floors

• Tools in cabinets and drawers

• Blank walls

• Walls filled with art

• Partners and coworkers

• Solitude

• Fast and intuitive

• Slow and methodical

For each of us, there are configurations that match our style … and settings that stifle our ability to function.

The important part is in finding what works for you. And it’s different for everyone. (Painters Francis Bacon and Georgia O’Keeffe would not likely have made for good studio mates.)

The way we set our workspaces can have huge impact on our ability to think, create, play, and produce.

Your particular voice deserves a space suited to it. Learn your needs and preferences — and make it so.

Reminder: drinking from a firehose is not a useful way to stay hydrated.

We know this.

Yet we engage with firehoses all the time. News feeds, social media, streaming services, online shopping — even libraries and museums.

Everywhere, there’s more content than we could possibly engage with or consume … even in a thousand lifetimes.

So we take care. We pick and choose. We remind ourselves that we’ll never get to all of it.

Simply: we curate our inputs.

Firehoses will do what they do. But we get to choose how we engage.

In waiting for an event, we can become fixated on the T-minus indicator. Like a countdown until liftoff.

T-minus one week until I improve my diet. T-minus one year until I apply to grad school. T-minus one dependent until I write a book.

But this isn’t aerospace. Often, there’s no need to wait. We can skip straight to liftoff if we choose.

Then, we’re counting the T-plus — the mission elapsed time.

T-plus two weeks since I began therapy. T-plus one month since I started exercising. T-plus a year since I started sharing my work with others.

We only begin to see what happens after we let ourselves depart from the launchpad.

Sometimes we can get a sense that there is a hole in our life. And if we could just find the right thing to fill that void, everything would fall into place.

In truth, things fall into place when we begin to see ourselves as already whole and complete.

In 1871, Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke wrote, “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces. Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent implementation of an original thought that has been considered in advance in every detail and retained to the end.”

In 1987, boxer Mike Tyson had a pithier version: “Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time.”

However you like to say it, the principle is the same: even the best plans require a level of flexibility, adaptation, and awareness of changing conditions.

Plans in hand, we still have to think on our feet.

“Stay the course” is great advice. Until it’s not.

It can be a striking realization, that our entire life spans just a brief moment in time. That the world existed well before us and it will exist well after us.

And yet, that same realization can be a relief.

In the meantime, we get to make ripples.

Get curious about yourself. When you’re in a rough spot or you’re worked up about something, don’t be harsh or judgmental. Pause and be curious.

Wonder about yourself. What’s beneath the surface? What are the feelings causing the feelings?

Be gentle with what you discover.

It’s been said that you’re the average of the five people with whom you spend most of your time. Debatable, but still an interesting concept.

What if your disposition is the average of the fifty news stories you most recently consumed?

Or the average of the five books you’ve read most often?

Or the average of the last fifty videos you’ve watched?

Immerse yourself in a certain kind of thing and it will inevitably change you.

“I gave it a try.”

This is a variable, highly contextual, personal statement.

What does it mean to try? For how long? At what level of commitment? With what tenacity? With what margin for error? With what expectations?

The act of trying is neither universal nor easily quantifiable. But indeed, trying is essential to many of our endeavors.

When we’re tight under deadline, feeling pressure, and pulling out all the stops — relying on our complete set of skills — it’s exhilarating. We feel fully alive.

When we are intentionally still, having released every other concern, and we focus solely on our breath … it’s exhilarating. We feel fully alive.

We don’t live at the extremes, but it’s useful to visit there to bring ourselves into a more vibrant wakefulness.

Be kind to yourself.

An encouraging self-coach. A kind companion. A curious observer. A forgiving friend. A generous mentor. The gentlest of critics.

Even if you have to practice. (Because you might not be very good at this at first.)

The world will give you plenty of tough love and unvarnished critique. You don’t have to join in.

Words we could use more often:

Cultivate
Manifest
Embody
Nurture

Even better: they’re actions we can take.

Arlo Guthrie is known to have said something like, “Songs are like fish. You just gotta have your line in the water. And it’s a bad idea to fish downstream from Bob Dylan.”

Much of creativity is like this (aside from the part about Dylan).

For us to engage with our creative spirit, we have to find ways to have our lines in the water. To watch. To listen. To be open. To be receptive.

And we can extend the metaphor, too. We have to find time to go to the water. To engage with it, float upon its surface, wade into it.

The fish are out there, but we won’t catch any if we’re far from the water’s edge with our hands in our pockets.

The constancy of time can be a kind of comfort.

Even when we’re overwhelmed by the busyness of life. Tasks, responsibilities, interests … all of it.

Whether we get it all done or not, time continues to move. It doesn’t panic. It doesn’t worry. It doesn’t slow in sympathy or rush in impatience.

It merely continues on as it always has.

We can fight it, but better to accept it as a loyal companion.

Many will hear the sounds.
Few will listen for the cadence.
Still fewer will contribute rhythms of their own.

We exist within a living symphony. We can choose to listen and participate, or we can hear it all as noise. The choice is ours.

Consider some of the voices you regularly allow into your day.

What is their temperament? What’s their worldview? How do they navigate challenge and diversity? How might you describe their sense of humor, joy, and curiosity?

Not just in our personal interactions, but in the materials we read, the news we consume, and the feeds we follow … we’re continually hosting a gathering.

The invitations matter. The gate crashers matter. The place of honor matters.

We can’t live our lives in ignorance and bliss … like a rosy Pollyanna-themed dream. But when it comes to our mental space, we can choose who gets invited, who gets a microphone, and who we politely (maybe just occasionally) leave out of the mix.