Brandon Nelson
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There’s more to life
This past week I listened to a classic Brian Tracy book-on-CD. It’s called “Eat That Frog” and it’s about spending more time and energy on high-value things in work, family, life in general, and less time and energy on low-value things. It’s not about eliminating procrastination — an inevitable behavior for everyone– just about shifting it to the right (lower value) things.
The most successful people in society aren’t necessarily “better” than anyone else, he writes. They have simply mastered the art of “procrastination shift.” A generation or two ago, I think they called it ”prioritizing.”
In the book, Brian Tracy begins by acknowledging that, now more than ever, in this fast-paced (and getting faster) world, the concept of being “caught up” is an illusion.
“You’ll never be ‘caught up’,” he says. I actually smiled when I heard that, and thought, “Ahh… thank goodness. I’m not behind… I’m normal.”
To help us swallow that truth, that law of nature, he asks a simple question that brought the concept into perfect clarity for me: “When a tight-rope walker is on a tight-rope, how often do you think he is actively balancing?”
The balancing doesn’t cease. Ever.
Yet, as a society, there is no question that we are accelerating in everything we do. We are a “now society.” We want it right freeking now or, preferably, sooner.
And yes, I’m one of the lead offenders. The most painful half-hour of my month, without question, every month, is when I visit the U.S. Post Office for a roll of stamps. I’m still trying to work out why they built the extra, always-empty 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th booths.
In the interest of learning more patience, and so I may set a good example for Hayden as he grows into this accelerating but insanely-precious, beautiful and rewarding world, I share with you this quote from our man Mahatma Ghandi, that it may dawn on us before we reach 186,000 miles per second:
“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”
Have a slow Sunday, all.
