Daily Dose of Positivity: Time Vs Money

If we see someone throwing money away, we call that person crazy. Money has value. Wasting it seems nuts. And yet we see others—and ourselves—throw away something far more valuable every day: Time.

Unlike the predictable reaction we have to someone throwing away money (they’re crazy), we often fail to think of the person who wastes time as crazy. Yet time is a finite resource. While the amount of time we get is uncertain, we know it’s limited. We can’t make any more of it when it runs out.

 

“A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of his life.” — Charles Darwin

 

The Roman philosopher Seneca said it well in a letter to Paulinus: It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—

 

the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it.

 

When you think about the reason most of us want to get wealthy, you will see it’s not for the money it’s for the time. We want a clean schedule. We want other people to do the things we don’t want to do. We want to spend money to buy time.

 

You will never be wealthy as long as you are spending time to create money. Wealth is best expressed by spending money to create time.

-          https://fs.blog/2017/03/seneca-on-the-shortness-of-time/

Daily Dose of Positivity: Our ambitions

"External ambitions are never satisfied because there’s always something more to achieve. There is an aesthetic joy we feel when we see morally good action, when we run across someone who is quiet and humble and good, when we see that however old we are, there are lots to do ahead. 

The stumbler doesn’t build her life by being better than others, but by being better than she used to be."

— Moral Bucket List

Daily Dose of Positivity: Teachings of pain

“You can’t outrun your pain. You are strong enough to face whatever is in front of you. Medicating your pain will only bring more pain. The only genuine shortcut life offers is facing your feelings. They won’t kill you. Feelings are your soul’s way of communicating. Pain is trying to teach you something, and if you don’t listen now, it will speak louder and louder until it is heard."

 — Jewel in Never Broken (p. 377)

Daily Dose of Positivity: What you think of others

It’s easy to see why leaders’ personal struggles get overlooked; when we face difficult situations or setbacks, it's human nature to think of our own point of view first. We tend to focus on how everything affects us, rather than thinking about others.  

Always take a step back to think about what you can control and where you might be able to take ownership. An ownership mindset helps others and empowers you as well.  

When you step outside your own perspective and consider what others are going through, you’ll not just treat others better, but you may establish a deeper and more personal connection that will endure through your life and career.

“The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Daily Dose of Positivity – Raising the bar of excellence

 Intelligence is now defined as the ability to rethink and unlearn.

Research reveals that the higher you score on an IQ test, the more likely you are to fall for ste­reotypes because you’re faster at recognizing patterns. And recent experiments suggest that the smarter you are, the more you might struggle to update your beliefs.

The curse of knowledge is that it closes your mind to what you don’t know. Good judgment depends on having the skill— and the will— to open your mind. A hallmark of wisdom is knowing when it’s time to abandon some of the most cherished parts of your identity."

One thing that is seen with emerging leaders across many aspects of business, family, and life is the temptation to lower expectations at the first sign of struggle.

Too many of us settle for being the second leader because it is more comfortable when we should want to be the third. 

One of the greatest feelings is accomplishing something we once considered impossible. When we lower the bar, we deprive others of experiencing that feeling.

“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.” – Stephen R. Covey

When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”

— Jeff Bezos on the importance of what’s not going to change