9:00AM
This is the 58th straight writing that I have started on time. In a way, I’m shocked. After going quite a few years without a steady 9-5 job, I’ve been able to keep myself on track, hitting precise deadlines 3 times per day for the last 19 days.
On the other hand, I’m not shocked—when I set my mind to something, I can be incredibly disciplined. Maybe as I said in a previous entry, too disciplined.
As I may have said, or at least thought, at lot through this process is that after writing, sometimes I don’t feel very proud of the way in which I wrote something. The words feel off, the typos overwhelm, or something just feels unnatural and needing a little shaping. However, I have felt proud of the messages that come through—that someway, somehow, I’ve been able to communicate much of the gist of what I’ve been thinking and feeling.
Last night, this got me thinking about how in the short-term, I may make mistakes, may not do as much as I wanted to, may not convey what I hope to convey, but that in the long-term, when one zooms out, I am achieving many things.
I reflected on how this applied to the writing of yesterday, about being a world leader. In the short-term, I may perceive myself to be doing very little in the world, helping very few people. However, when I zoom out and see the long-term focus, I think about all the people I’ve helped formally through the tools I’ve built and trainings I’ve run, and informally through me just being me.
I also thought about the long-term going forward and how…I just heard the sump pump almost choke to death and now I’m quite worried what happened. All has seemed to return to calm, so I’ll go back to writing and check on that in a few minutes.
I thought about the long-term going forward as it relates to being a world leader and in a way, my body relaxed. While I may not be doing so much now, I trust that I will help many in the long-term. While people may not read these writings now or when the book comes out, I trust that more will in the long-term. While I may not know how to deal with a variety of situations of being a public figure now, I trust that I will learn in the long-term.
There is something that just calms my soul when I step back from the short-term pressure and give myself long-term faith. Perhaps this was influenced by watching Warren Buffett give his investors’ meeting the other day, in which he talked about the importance of long-term investing and not looking at the stock market prices going up and down every day. In the long-term, things will work out. In the short-term, it may be a rough ride.
Maybe it’s about focusing on the short-term efforts but remembering the long-term impacts. I don’t know. I just know that I feel more relaxed.
9:10AM
