RESOLUTIONS

Stillness.
Set aside time consistently to BE STILL.
Do not separate resolutions from the day-to-day or from ‘work’. It must be an all-the-time thing. It’d be better to iterate these resolutions once a month, but to keep them steadily in practice, than it would be to utter them daily, and never live any of outwardly.
Be intentional about everything — “thought” is the exception, as we can’t necessarily change it in the immediate, nor can we change our emotional response to it all the time, but we can decide how to respond thereafter, once our biology has run its autonomous response.
Truth, Discipline, and Courage are the only necessary things (traits, tools) to fulfill my individual potential.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish, Stay Curious, Stay Observant
Never let goals distract or overwhelm via fear and anxiety. Live in open and complete engagement with the world
Understand how insignificant that our worries will be 50 or 100 years from now compared to what your success and failures might teach as lessons for generations to come. Hard lessons learned can transcend generations — this is how to build an excellent world.
Never speak ill of another person — speak of negative things only in the factual sense AND only when necessary for the ultimate greater good, and do so with stoicism in mind, and not from self-focused emotion / ego.
NONE of us can understand any other much more than 1% as much as each of us understands ourselves. Think of all the thoughts that run through your mind through an entire day, multiplied by how many days you’ve been alive, and then subtract however much of that you believe that everyone around you understands on the same deeply thoughtful level that you do… essentially, nobody knows you like you know you. This has a lot of implications that follow, but it’s an important resolution just to understand and remember how difficult it is to communicate to another person TRULY how you feel and why you have the perspective that you do.
Be a GIVER. Humbly accept that you don’t need THINGS as much as you need PEOPLE.
BE PRESENT: phone away, engage people, live in the moment.
Take action at the point of inspiration. DO NOT wait for desperation. — but if you are already feeling desperate, then don’t give up trying to find a way forward.
Be a kid. — remember what it means to maintain ‘the ignorance of a child’ (link to post?).
Leave the world better than you entered it.
Let your reputation precede you. Don’t talk about yourself unless prompted to do so. THEN, share honestly and in as much detail as the listener is willing to engage with.
Stay composed at all times.
Silence is powerful.
Patience is not a single act. It’s the embodiment of an ideology that involves not-wanting or -longing for things to happen sooner than the cosmic calendar has them scheduled.
Have a voice so profound and wise that it does not need to be raised to be heard.
Maintain your mystery.
Smile. Laugh.
Do not hold grudges… ever.
Be a part of something greater than yourself and greater than anything that even your best self could offer/accomplish alone.
We write our story with our actions and our intentional thoughts. What narrative are you writing? You’re the story teller of what it means to be a young man, what it means to be a coach, what it means to be a father. A leader. A builder of spaces. A speaker of truths. What story are you writing right now, today?
Have some certainty about yourself — like you know where you’re headed, without a doubt. And if you don’t know where you’re headed (physically, tangibly), then commit to the values as guide, and then follow them diligently until the path becomes clearer.
Charisma.
Freedom (might be) the ability to pursue my own thoughts and to facilitate them if able, without the influence of an outside force — objectivism.
Work harder than you would ever expect anyone else you’re involved with to work.
Get out of my comfort zone as often as possible.
Take risks. — it’s better if they are calculated.
Be 100% honest with myself and others. Absolute commitment.
Speak as if the truth might kill the person you’re telling it to. Speak truths tenderly, and in the most effective and benevolent way possible.
To be a great writer, you only need a few basic principles to stick in my mind: 1) that I approach the notebook with committed time to write, and 2) that I tell about the most fascinating, interesting, and pressing things on my mind that day, in as much detail as needed to convey my REAL experience to the reader. Nothing else really matters after that. Write well, or as well as is possible or necessary.
Writer’s becomes writers by writing.
You will never have “all-of” anything. This is a great cause of anxiety for many people: that they’ll not have all of, or even most of, any person or thing – be they their spouse or child, or of thing-ownership — homes, cars, land, and even intellectual property such as an idea, for that, like all of it, eludes our grasp in time. You know full-well that if it’s kept a secret in my head, then it will certainly remain incomplete. You cannot ‘have it’ because the rest of it is still elsewhere, and if shared with anyone else, the idea becomes theres’s too. As such, it takes on a multiplicity of extensions and meanings that you cannot ‘have’ any sort of control over.
Plant trees.
Do not live to eat. Eat to live. Food is sustenance.
Don’t take life too seriously. Your effort is enough. Don’t shred your sanity chasing material things.
Respect EVERYONE. You never know another person’s lifetime experience, or what’s often more crucial to our interactions with another person — their experience lately.
Be honest with people. Integrity first, though. The goal is NET POSITIVITY. The truth, if difficult to hear, is best told in good timing, good faith, and proper preparation.
Don’t be afraid to identify, admit, and even highlight your failures.
Let ACTION-TOWARD-EXCELLENCE serve as the standard of your success. Outcomes have more to do with circumstance, but your actions are yours. Act wisely and kindly.
Live with the least necessary effort. It’s not that hard. Life can be made simpler, and thus, less effortful, with only a few quick adjustments (not easy in practice, but certainly easy in theory).
“Jake’s Secret Stuff” – Like MJ’s Secret Stuff in Space Jam
- Adventure, Fear, Positivity, Selfless service, Gratitude, Rhythm, Discipline, Laughter, Humility, Perspective
Areté – do everything in a spirit of excellence. We ought to be proud of every waking moment.
Perspectives, new and old, are all we need to stay composed – repeat this mantra often, even multiple times
Keep the bottom line in mind. What’s the truth at the end of the day?
Don’t get low on the lows. Every failure has hidden in it an opportunity to learn and improve.
Keep your eyes wide open to opportunities, always.
Every new thought brings with it a new choice. The next one is the only that matters.
HWYBR
HBDYWI
Do it now, or forever wish you had.