Everyday Open Doors

The journey of a thousand miles and all that.

The smallest deed is better than the greatest intention.

 John Burroughs

There are opportunities everywhere, and most of them are the simple choices right in front of us. We all like those "swing for the fences" type moments, but they are rare and can have serious consequences if we swing and miss.

Big, bold opportunities are the exception rather than the rule in life. We cannot spend our time looking for once-in-a-lifetime opportunities because focusing on something that rare will paralyze us.

 It would be like someone refusing to date anyone until the person they want to marry comes along - the purpose of dating is trying to find that person. If you say no to everybody who asks you out, you’ll probably wind up alone. The chances of a romantic comedy moment where you bump into the perfect person coming out of the elevator are nearly nonexistent.

Waiting for big, life-changing moments before doing anything is a form of self-sabotage. Here are two easy open doors you can walk through today that will slowly start to change your life if you keep choosing them.

Small Acts of Kindness

We do not need to wait until Thanksgiving or Christmas to do nice things for people. There are thousands of small actions we can take every day for the people in our lives or even for strangers.

I like doing things for my wife and my kids.

I try to do my laundry and the kids' laundry on Fridays so that the washer and dryer are open for my wife on the weekend. I make the coffee every night and bring it to her in bed in the morning. I make the kids' lunches and try to have everything packed up for them so that she can get out the door and take them to school with the least amount of hassle possible. I keep the things she regularly needs on subscription from Amazon so she doesn’t run out.

These are small things, but she runs herself ragged in real estate, so they make a difference for her. They take almost no effort on my part but help someone I love.

I try to do the same for my kids. I don’t want them to be spoiled, but I want them to know they matter.

I try to keep things on hand that they like to eat (Max literally eats ham every day). I try to pack special things in their lunch. I make sure that I'm involved in whatever interests them so that we can talk about it. I make sure they always have comfortable socks. I make them breakfast before school.

We are all three playing a Ninja Turtles game on the PS5 right now. It’s a simple game but they really enjoy it. Once again, these are all small things, but they add up.

This benefits me as much as them. Training myself to look for little things that I can do for my people keeps the focus off myself. I tend toward self-absorption, and this helps with that.

There are small acts of kindness we can engage in throughout the day this slowly build up to a larger way of being in the world as well. Greeting people, making eye contact, asking them about their lives, holding the door, or maybe just smiling at people starts to shift the way we see the world and starts to make it seem like a friendlier place.

I have a tendency to see other people as a threat or the enemy, so I adopted the practice of praying for the people around me in my head. It's strange, but it makes it feel like we are on the same team when I do this, and the world feels just a little friendlier. If someone cuts me off and I pray for their safety and happiness, I'm now invested in their day and in them in a very small way. It's subtle, but it changes how I see them, and I wind up in fights on the side of the road.

It's a lot easier to take advantage of larger opportunities when you feel like you're doing so in a friendly universe rather than a hostile one. Do things that make the world friendlier.

Change Your Environment

One of the most amazing things about humans is how we can adapt to anything. This is why we live on every continent; it's why we've been to the moon, and it's why we've survived on this planet for as long as we have. Adaptability is an asset, but we can also become habituated to the things in our lives that are not healthy without realizing it.

You can shake up your environment at any moment without any real effort.

Leave your house and take a walk. If you already do this and you have a normal path, choose something different. Just walking your normal path in reverse changes your perspective.

Shop at a different grocery store.

Go to a new restaurant that serves food you are unfamiliar with.

Watch a show that is outside your normal range.

Learn about something new that has never interested you before.

The options are endless.

Shaking up your environment, both internally and externally, opens different perspectives and sometimes highlights just how unhealthy some of the habits we've fallen into might be.

Sometimes, the little inconveniences of life can highlight this for us. The electricity or the Internet going out might show us how complacent we've become with these things or maybe even how reliant we are on them. Making challenges for ourselves where we intentionally remove these things from our lives can change our environment in a positive way, even if it's difficult at first

I've recently begun using something called The Brick. It's a little 3D printed cube that I tap my phone on to shut off all my non-work-related apps. I know you can use screen time settings do the same thing, but I've found a lot of utility in having to walk all the way upstairs and out to my workshop (that's where I keep it) to turn my apps on when I instinctively reach for my phone.

Here's something cool I've learned from this: I get these random waves of despair while I’m working that derail me throughout the day. They aren’t related to anything in particular; I think sometimes I just get overwhelmed, and quite a few people have told me this is related to ADHD. It's in those moments that I tend to shift tasks or grab my phone. By not having it near me, I've recognized this thing in my life, and now I'm responding to it differently.

You don't have to change your external environment to shake things up internally. You don't have to take a trip, you don't have to change jobs, you don't have to end a relationship. Sometimes all you need to do is shake up your habits and see what's underneath them.

There are a lot of opportunities we miss out on because we've gotten caught in a sort of tunnel vision in our thinking and in our behavior. Changing your environment can shake that up and it opens up new possibilities for you.

Journal Prompts

·      What small acts of kindness can I do today to focus on others and make their lives a little better? 

·      How do I feel when I focus on others instead of myself, and what does this tell me about my priorities? 

·      What small changes can I make in my environment right now to create a fresh perspective or shake up my routine? 

·      What habits or patterns in my life have I become too comfortable with, and how can I challenge them today? 

·      What smaller doors have I walked through in the past that led to bigger changes in my life, and what does this teach me about opportunities? 

·      How can I remind myself to stay open to the simple opportunities that quietly shape the course of my life? 

Housekeeping

I have decided to take this blog back to being free again, so I have turned off all auto-renewals to avoid anybody getting billed. I will always be grateful to those of you who invested financially and for how that allowed me to put a lot of time and energy into figuring out what I wanted this to look like. Knowing that people were willing to invest in what I do made it a lot easier to step into this new project.

I'm still planning to post regularly, but I have realized I need a little bit of breathing room as far as the schedule goes to help me free up time for other projects. I appreciate all of you who read this and send me emails and share this with others more than I can tell you, thank you.

Until Next Time

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. I hope you are able to enjoy your time off if work allows that, I hope you have easy days at your job if not.

Take care,

James