Brady Helps

As Robert Burns writes in To a Mouse, “The best laid plans of mice and men” often go ugly; and they do.You and I plan poorly. We create objectives, we create tasks to hit our objectives, we plan to reflect on our work and improve; but do we truly ever? When Nature hurls chaos upon us, we often don’t know how to respond. We ask, How can this happen - all my best laid plans! In that moment of doubt, when our best laid plans “gang aft agly”, we need to become water.Spend time in nature - especially near a creek. Watch how water effortlessly moves across and around obstacles. Let the sounds of water churning and swirling around rocks to enchant you. Think to yourself, how might I be more like water? How might my life go from being a hurricane to a soft churn and swirl as I move effortlessly around rocks and creek bends? When our best laid plans go ugly and chaos reigns, effortlessly moving around that which gets in our way - like water - is the surest antidote to the stress caused by a fixed and vexed mind.

As your army faces the enemy and the enemy appears powerful, try to attack the enemy in one particular spot. If you are successful in crumbling that one particular spot, leave that spot and attack the next, and so on and so forth, as if you were going down a winding road.” - Myamoto Musashi (1584 - 1645)Myamoto understood productivity and how to get things done. Break the problem into its smallest parts. Then attack the first task.Once you’ve tackled that particular task, go on to the next, and “so on and so forth, as if you were going down a winding road.”

I bought a bag of flour from a local mill. I struggled to open the bag as it had been knitted and knotted tightly. At first, I started to disassemble the knots one at a time. I spent so many minutes figuring out how the string was tied - was it worth it?Then I took a knife to the bag and cut the knots in half. The bag opened effortlessly. What if the complexities life was like a knot and our mind the knife? What if we could cut the knot in half and let it effortlessly unravel? Stop wasting your time.Cut the knot.

“An eagle had perched on the crest of a craggy rock to scan the ground below for hares. Am an shot him with an arrow, which lodged in his flesh. The end of the arrow, feathered with eagle’s feathers, stuck out of him and stared him in the face. Seeing it, he cried out: "‘This is the crowning insult, to die because of the danger I myself presented.’” - Aseop’s Fables, #7: The Eagle Hit by an ArrowHow often are you beat at your game by yourself? Do you make your suffering worse on your own? Too often we are the eagle pierced with an arrow of our own making. What we say and do to ourselves doesn’t need to be so harsh.

If you want to learn how to ride a bike, you will fall… a few times.Eventually you find your balance.In any endeavor, be prepared to fall a few times on your way to finding balance.

Have you read this post about anxiety from February of last year?I experienced that feeling the other day. One way I got myself out of it was to remember the mosaic. To step back from the mosaic and see how beautiful it looks. When we feel ourselves valueless or overwhelmed, its best to step back and get perspective. 95% of my work as a manager involves helping people pause, still their mind, and find perspective. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it’s likely not burning.We’re going to be okay.

“Before anything else you must lose your fear - of death, of the consequences of a bold maneuver, of other people’s opinion of you. That single moment will suddenly open up vistas of possibilities.” - Robert Greene, The 33 Strategies of WarHow many possibilities do we deny ourselves to our fear? How many more will need to slip through our fingers before we start demanding the best for and of ourselves? What is the cost of inaction?

When you’re overwhelmed, try putting a hand in front of your face. Cusp your hand as if you’re holding something adorable. Inside your hand is your fear and stress. Look at it, adore it, wonder about it. Say to it,“Let’s be friends…”

Nothing in life happens in isolation; everything relates to one another.Even when we operate in a silo, our operations have downstream consequences. When we start to see the interconnectedness of things, it’s easier to collaborate and serve others. The silos we operate in might not be real. Instead, we might be concealing, separating, ostracizing, or excommunicating ourselves from others. In any of those cases, our actions will have equal and opposite reactions. It’s science.

In war, “your real enemy is your opponent’s mind. Their armies, their resources, their intelligence, can all be overcome if you can fathom their weakness, the emotional blind spot through which you can deceive, distract, and manipulate them. The most powerful army in the world can be beaten by unhinging the mind of its leader;” from Robert Greene’s, The 33 Strategies of War. Understand: your real enemy may be you - your resistant you.The resistant version of yourself keeps you from doing work that matters. It says you’re not good enough, and causes you to doubt if success is on the horizon, what if you fail? Why bother? That version of you is your enemy; and like any enemy, it has a weak spot. Your resistant you lives off your fear. The more it causes you to fear, the more you won’t try to understand it. To beat the resistance you must face it head on with love and compassion. Yes - you must love that version of yourself. You have to be able to say, thank you for showing up right now, I’m going to be okay. Self love and compassion are your secret weapons. Your real enemy is not your boss, it’s not your weak, it’s not your debt, and it’s not your art. Your real enemy is your self. Show your self love and compassion.