excerpt from the shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafon

excerpt from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography

a friend made a great observation/addition to my natural gift theory. first, a refresher: to this my friend added that the very most effective, and successful people are those who not only identify and check their personal foe, but also turn it to their favor, using it as fuel for some productive or competitive element. in example, an athlete using a rage issue in their sport or a compulsive person using their obsessions for detailed labors such as art, coding or other creative outlets.

in thinking on this for a moment, it seems this fella is a natural to point this out because when he was in his twenties he swam the english channel and two summers ago, while in his early-forties, he ran an unsupported fifty mile foot-race on the spine of a mountain range. i believe the race was called the devil's backbone. i also believe that in addition to carrying his own water filtration system, he also had to carry a can of bear mace. i guess once you've put your personal demons behind you, a bear on the weekend is nothing but child's play.

i believe all people get dealt one natural gift and one demon. the natural gift is something they can do better than 99% of people without even trying. the demon is some non-positive trait they will struggle with even when exerting great will against the vice. through these i believe one's satisfaction, success, and fulfillment in life comes from one's ability to (1) identify and leverage their gift and (2) tame and control their demon.

while in some regards it's too early to tell for sure, but if i were pressed to guess bella's natural gift, i'd say it is in someway leadership-related. i point to this because of bella's ability to orchestrate, motivate, and move individuals and groups of people, both young and old. i offer the following three examples in support:

bella's grandest demonstration of making things happen occurred two years ago when she put together a stage production of flipper in our front yard using kids from the neighborhood. there was a script, there were rehearsals, as well as (kinda) auditions. adults were summoned and lined up on the sidewalk to watch the drama. some brought lawn chairs to sit in while others leaned against trees. the staging area was in our foyer and mostly involved bella encouraging (and at times threatening) the actors to go out and do their best. it was about a twenty minute affair and i believe that no more than two of the performers cried from the pressure.

bella's most productive example of leadership can be seen in her impromptu selling stands which take advantage of a high traffic footpath near our home. if bella, or her friends or her siblings ever identify something they need money for, bella will have a selling stand in place within the hour. these stands have sold drinks, cookies, books, artwork and toys. bella is currently working on her most ambitious selling stand yet which involves knitting hats and scarves on her own and through knitting parties she plans to organize at our house in the summer months. she is building a stock so on the first snow day next winter she'll put up a stand and sell hand-knitted hats and scarves (and hot-chocolate i'm sure) to the underdressed college kids walking to and from class. she plans to use the money to buy animals for impoverished countries via the heifer fund and such. (ed note: if you don't know or are wondering, bella turned nine last month.)

and lastly, where you will see bella most often ply her powers of persuasion is getting her siblings, neighbors, and classmates to play a game where they (they, not bella) act like dogs. panting, scratching, licking, pawing, thankfully not urinating dogs. bella plays the role of the owner. everyone else plays the role of dog. whenever i see this game happening i completely marvel at how fully these children, these human, willful children give themselves over to this charade. it has now happened with such frequency that its specialness has even been moderately lost on bella. there are times when she appears to tire of the game and will go into another room to start doing something else. these temporary canines will awkwardly trail her, still in character and nudge her leg with their bowed head for notice and attention. bella absentmindedly pats their mane or coos at them for a moment before returning to her other more interesting distraction as if this child-dog has been in our home for years. given her proclivity and skill to make people act like domesticated curs, i predict that as an adult bella will either be a new york city dominatrix or a fortune 500 CEO. truth told, of those two i'm torn on which i prefer because it sure would be nice to have family in NYC.

as for bella's demon, i'd say it's too soon to call. obviously, marty and i still have plenty of years to mar and traumatize the child so the air is rife with possibility.

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or view the side by side comparison to see what's changed in three years

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i recently overheard a story in the office about a young woman who had just earned her phD and was getting ready to embark on her first job. she was understandably nervous about the transition from student to professor and consulted one of her mentors for advice. he was one of the older faculty members on staff and very near retirement. when this skittish girl in her mid-twenties came to him for counsel he said to her ...
has a young woman entering professional adulthood ever received more inspired advice? i confidently think not.

something i didn't mention about our neighbors recent departure from the neighborhood is that they offered us first crack at their house. it is a house that is several pay grades out of our reach but they said if we were interested, they would make it happen. interestingly, this is how we landed in our first house which at the time was also significantly out of reach for us. now here we are ten ye...

quote from dr. wayne dyer's 10 secrets for success and inner peace

everyone is chasing something. everyone that gets out of bed in the morning at least. what people pursue in life varies, but for most it probably falls into one of the obvious categories: money, status, fame, belonging, love, acceptance, comfort. it seems that when you reach a certain mature age, say forty or thereabouts, you look around and if you're still with the pack and feeling nourished, all is good and well and you bear down keeping your eye on the person in front of you and your ears tuned to the person behind. if you find yourself trailing too many in the group, or in the wrong race altogether, you pull up, winded. what a defeated contestant in this state does next is wildly unpredictable but most call the collective actions of these folks a mid-life crisis.

given where i'm at in this race i'm seeing runners throw in the towel in alarming numbers. the disintegration of an adult's life with decades of momentum behind them is a bewildering thing to behold. and when children are involved, a tragedy, for sure.

in my thirties i coveted young people's lithe, able bodies and their ability to stay up all night and work all day. now that i'm forty the only thing i covet is their endless supply of free time. and seeing how so many aimlessly piss it away makes me want to weep.

from merlin mann's inbox zero talk delivered to google employees

merlin is also responsible for something that stands as one of my favorite-ever internet reads titled simply Better.

excerpt from john wooden ted talk titled Coaching for people, not points

i've recently completed my annual hyrum review. this would be the process i spoke of on my reading page in january of last year (10 Natural Laws). a core facet of a hyrum-review (what the process has come to be called in my home) is to create a list of your core values or priorities. the importance of this, in addition to simply knowing what your core values are, is to help you structure your days. for example, lets say a college buddy calls you up and invites you to play golf on saturday. when you look at your calendar you were scheduled to take your son to the park and work on his baseball skills. after a long week of work, a smack-talking golf outing seems more appealing than a tee-ball lesson for a five year old and is what a parent, a father, a man is inclined to choose given the option. but, odds are, deep down, your relationship with your son is of more importance to you than your relationship with old college pals and your golf handicap. so knowing your core values plays a role in making decisions throughout the year when 'conflicts' in time management arise.

to set your values you are to lock yourself away for a long weekend and smoke peyote or sleep in a pilates pose and reach deep inside yourself to discover what is truly most important to you. the reason this is a bit of a thing is you are meant to remove all the noise, static and distractions of daily life so you can get serious about the matter. once your values are set it is recommended you look at them every day to keep yourself pointed in the right direction. additionally, you should revisit the list every year or so to tune it to life's changes. in the last several years the one thing i seem to routinely change deals with my expectations for myself as a father. the rest of the items remain pretty static. this year, i changed the father blurb to:

ENJOY MY CHILDREN
this experience is tragically temporary. do not take my time with my children for granted. they will be gone soon. too soon. create an environment they want to be part of so they may cherish their memories of their father, family and home.

after seven years, i think i'm finally getting to the meat of that one. the credit for this progress goes to marty. in the last few years marty has on a few occasions described people she has met as people who don't seem to enjoy their children. every time i've heard her say that it's made me disproportionately sad. i reckon there's a root for that but i'm less interested in that than i am in making sure it doesn't happen to me.

if you're interested in what a list of values might look like, mine are shared below. some folks consider these quite private but that's not exactly how i roll. so if you'd like to enjoy learning about what makes troy tick read on. if you could care less, click through my brother.

CARE FOR MYSELF
do not deprive myself of my life experience through poor, selfish and gluttonous behaviors. stay healthy. stay fit. stay away from doctors and hospitals through wise living.

CARE FOR MY MARRIAGE
always remember my luck in finding marty. she is the one. cherish her. make her feel special. work to make her dreams come true.

ENJOY MY CHILDREN
this experience is tragically temporary. they will be gone soon. too soon. do not take my time with my children for granted. create an environment they want to be part of so they may cherish their memories of their father, family and home.

EQUIP MY CHILDREN FOR LIFE
treat my children with respect. treat them as i would treat another adult i respect. be consistent. be patient. be kind. be just. don't spoil them to the point of ill-preparing them for the world they will one day enter.

VALUE MY TIME
there are limited minutes in our lives. the clock is ticking. use each day to achieve things that matter. leave a mark.

PROFESSIONAL EXCELLENCE
make my professional contributions be of consequence and import. never let my role be questioned or compromised. control my experience through excellence.

PERSONAL GROWTH
expand and exercise my mind. read every day. be curious.

i have those values printed out and taped onto the back of my PDA. i read them everyday on my way home from work. i find that this forty second review helps me get my head straight before i move from my serene and orderly office to my chaotic and bursting home. if hyrum has taught me anything, it is that often the little things that make the biggest difference. the key is to know what you're looking for.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. philosophies

one of the few downsides of loving your family, work, home and life is that it is extra-hard to do things you don't like doing on the rare occasions such things sneak into your world.

i stopped taking vicodan on saturday. i'd been on them for a week an a half and they certainly handled their business. after leaving the hospital, i never experienced discomfort except once when i got lazy about my pill schedule. reason i had to quit them is they were clouding my thoughts and to my great pleasure i have a job that requires unclouded thought. what i didn't account for was the lingering effects of the narcotic.

when i arrived to work on monday i was still a touch foggy. in my addled and unproductive state, i somehow stumbled upon this guy randy pausch. mid last year randy, a college professor, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given 3-6 months to live. he has three kids, his oldest being one year younger than bella. the stir about him stems from how he has shouldered this tragic development. how everyone found about him was through his Last Lecture. last lectures are a university-ritual and occur when a long-standing prof finally steps down and delivers their final official lecture. randy's last talk, titled Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, focuses not on his field of study, virtual reality, but instead on his life experience. my favorite bit in there was something a female colleague told him about dating: the hour long talk was worth those twenty-seven words alone. intrigued i dug a little deeper and found another, subsequent talk randy gave at another university on time management (he does get to claim a bit of authority on the topic after all). also very informational and inspiring. and if you're still jonsin' for more randy, as was i, there's a diane sawyer interview that is not great, but ok.

his experience is surely adding some perspective to my current state which in comparison would barely rate as a head cold, or maybe even a festering whitehead.

excerpt from hyrum smith's ten natural laws of successful time and life management ... a book i've read this time of year for seven years now.

Leon Botstein, President, Bard College

driving a non-air-conditioned sixteen-year old bmw by yourself, cross-country in august heat, windows down, sunroof open, shirt off, music distortedly loud, and shoeless on a day you'd typically be in the office is the closest glimpse of the fountain of youth i've ever spied. this was my day yesterday and it was exquisite. very, very exquisite.

it was two years ago to the weekend that i last made this pilgrimage south to visit my two best friends. this makes it also two years ago to the weekend that my colleague and friend, joe, died suddenly during a routine mountain-biking outing. joe floats in and out of my thoughts with whimsical unpredictability and did so with heightened frequency yesterday. sample: one day joe asked me to do lunch. when we sat down at a mediterranean eatery he expressed dissatisfaction with his work situation. actually, it was the very first thing he said which made the first thing i said this ... through my monologue, joe wordlessly stared at me like a university student taking in an advanced physics problem. when i finished he burst out laughing. after calming down he shook his still smiling head thoughtfully, picked up the menu in front of him and said, 'yes, we can eat'. he seemed better through the rest of lunch and work matters didn't come up again. after that initial session joe would appear at my desk once or twice a year saying "i need a pep talk' (what we came to call my dissertation) or sometimes it would be 'i really need a pep talk today troy' to which i'd say "you driving?".

i may not be the most conventional life coach out there, but unlike some, i don't get paid by the hour. things are what they are. if you like them, fight to keep them. if you hate them, fight to change them. life isn't forever, feel free to be picky.

the five rules of a marshall dunn tennis clinic:

1. always cock and ready your arm before swinging.
2. never take your eye off the ball.
3. always follow through on your swing.
4. never change a winning game.
5. always change a losing game.

oh, and whenever dispensing this advice he adds that all rules also apply to life itself.

i believe everyone born into this world is given one gift. that is, one thing they can do better than the vast majority of folks with little to no effort.

i also believe everyone born into this world is given one neurosis. that is, one thing that plagues them in life and is hard for them to resist and overcome.

i also believe one's satisfaction with life greatly comes from their ability to identify these two traits and subsequently embrace and wrangle them accordingly.

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several folks asked about the subject line of yesterday's post:

michael, why are the drapes open?

the (i guess obscure) reference is from The Godfather, second installment specifically. this is what kay said to michael corleone moments before bullets rained through their bedroom window in an attempt on his life. the phrase has come to be synonymous with the importance of noticing the little things and how subtle shifts in these seemingly innocuous details can portend matters of great and grave consequence.

you are either better, worse or the same as you were 24 hours earlier. today is a 'better than' day.