Grain Formula

I am now one month into this whole fatherhood lifestyle. I am preventing the imminent dad bod. I have relatively successfully transitioned back to work.

With all of the change, it has been a relatively smooth transition. However, it has not been without its fair share of expected difficulties. Really, any time I experience a major life change it has difficulties, both expected and unexpected. These difficulties are what smooth the edges. They smooth me down like a rock in a river bed. It is really quite tedious when you think about it. Each stone is made smooth in the river bed.

The stone is not smoothed out quickly it is very slow.
Ridiculously slow.
Ludicrously slow for some.

The rough stone is made smooth one grain of sand at a time.

One grain of sand at a time.

One
Grain
At
A
Time.

So too, my son is developed one grain of sand at a time. Right now we are in the slow process of helping him develop past screaming every time his primal appetite barks (we have quite a bit of time before this is a reality.) We are in the process of letting each day be more passing water and slowly but surely his rough edges will smooth.

Slowly but surely my rough edges will smooth.

What rough edges are being smoothed out in you? How patient are you with others as they are smoothed out one grain of sand at a time?

Engrained,

–JT

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Insight to Progress

This week is a mixed bag of emotions for everyone. Some people are excited for the new opportunities in their elected candidate. Other people are depressed by their candidate not being elected.

Whether or not your candidate is set to be sworn in next January, remember what they cannot create laws against.

Love. You cannot outlaw love.
Joy. The worst they can do is accuse you of being too nice and friendly.
Peace. How do you respond when they incite you to riot?
Patience. When you do not get your way, will you continue to fight on?
Kindness. The other side of the “aisle” has a different opinion than you. How do you treat them?
Goodness. How does who wants more goodness act in the face of opposition?
Gentleness. A soft touch and a soft heart are appealing and incite progress.
Self-control. Stay focused on your goals, priorities, and ethics. Have any of these since November 7th?

Against these things there is no law. These are the catalysts to growing as a nation.

Will you let the news, politics, and election decide your emotions? Or will you choose your actions intentionally?

Intentionally,
–JT

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Butterfly Actual

The butterfly effect is a termed coined by Edward Lorenz. He was working on some weather models as he was trying to help the world get better at predicting weather patterns (something we would all appreciate.)

He was running a model he had run before but wanted to run it again from the middle of the model as computing power in 1961 was a tad bit slower than it is now. In order to run the model from the middle, he input the data from the previous model’s sheet he had from the previous run through and hit go. He let the machine do the work it needed and probably went to go get some coffee or take a smoke break. Meanwhile, the computer ran the model and spit out the data.

When he returned to the data, it was drastically different from what it was on the previous run through.

The new data was practically based on a completely different set of data points. He assessed and reassessed the data looking for a bug or an error and found one. Edward input one of his data points as ‘.506’ rather than the original data point of ‘.506127’. Quite literally, he rounded. He rounded off three points of data that were completely useless in his mind.

Unfortunately for him, those three points of data created a whole new weather system.
Hence, he revealed his findings to the scientific community. He traveled and spoke on his findings. He began calling it the butterfly effect because you never would have thought something so small like positions 4, 5, and 6 of a decimal point could cause such a huge difference in outcome. He compared it to a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a tornado or a hurricane. In his mind, the significance of those three decimal points were as significant as a butterfly’s wings and he never could have predicted their importance.

He never could have predicted the importance of something so small.

In Lorenz’s mind, the butterfly effect was about how the seemingly mundane results unpredictably in the monolithic.

I never know what detail I might change and what effect it might actually have in my life. I must give even the smallest details significance as they play a part of the whole.

What details do you need to give more significance as they play a part of the whole of your life?

Attributing,
–JT

Don't Stop Believing

I listen to a lot of podcasts about self improvement, self growth, and general social psychology/anthropology. For better or for worse, I listen to it all and have about 3 months worth of backlog I’ve been plowing through (Pokémon Go and PokéWalks have been a huge help.) But most recently I have been noticing a lot of conversations on my podcasts about getting to this goal or that goal or this point or that point and the necessity of getting a certain status/position.

Status and position is wonderful and useful. We need a certain amount of both to pay our bills. We need this position at a company to make enough money to eat, have a home, and occasionally take a vacation. We need this amount of status in order to be taken seriously within a community of people who we support and support us. We need a little bit of both.

However, neither one is the point. The point is the perpetual process of growing and learning. Even when I get to the goal or status or position. I am not done. I am only turning the corner on this leg of the journey. Getting a new job, getting married, having a kid, and graduating college are all turning points in life, not destinations. New cars, houses, couches, boats, lakefront property, are all amenities, not last stops. In life, there are no destinations. There are only turning points, roadside diners, and rest areas.

My journey is not over because I reach a certain point. My journey is turning a corner and preparing me for what comes next. Part of achieving a certain goal is the assumption of liability of what the next leg of the journey carries and assessing the responsibilities of a certain status or position before I set or achieve the next goal.

What goals are you working towards? What problems do you expect these goals to mitigate? What are some of the drawbacks of a new position? What are some of the perks of a new status? What is your assessment rubric for what you really need and want in life?

Journeying,

–JT

TEAM

Team. There is no I in team, but there is a t-e-a-m. As if we’ve always overlooked what team can offer versus what it should not be. Team cannot consist of one person working for their own best. But it should consist of a group of people willing to be committed to a common goal. A team does need trust. We need to be able to rely on one another and after we ask each other for help or to get something done, we need to be able to know it will happen and not have to check, double check, and triple check whether or not it will happen.

A team needs to have a common definition of excellence. What does it look like to succeed? What does the goal look like and where will we not make any sacrifices or compromises? We are working together. We are committed not only to the success of each other but also the success of our collective whole. A team knows what a win looks like and what excellence looks like within the win.

A team should also hold each other accountable. When someone on the team is not measuring up, we call it out and help them see how they can do it better for the sake of the team. It is not a personal attack, it is a minor course correction for a ship or making sure the nuts and bolts are tightened all the way. Accountability is also a celebration of success. It is a calling out of places where a team member and the team have been able to step out and succeed in ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Being able to have accountability on the team makes excellence that much better and encourages the trust to continue.

Finally, a team needs members. Not warm bodies. Members. People who are sold out and committed to the team. People who are willing to take a hit every once in a while so the team can win. People who are taken care of by the other members when life has them down. Members of a team are sold out and are willing to sign up to be trustworthy. They agree with the common goal of excellence for the team, and they are willing to subject themselves to the accountability of the team and hold others to the standard of excellence the team has agreed to uphold.

Team is much more than a fun word not containing the letter, ‘i’. Team is built on trust, excellence, accountability, and members. T.E.A.M. There is much more to be said on these four elements and these four elements and far more to be said of what makes a team. These are, by far, not even the tip of the iceberg in reference to teams and teamwork. But these are the four elements I have and continue to experience and therefore these are four elements I can account for the value of them.

What team are you on? Which element do you struggle with maintaining? Do you have a clear picture of what excellence looks like for your team? Do you struggle with holding other people accountable (both positive and negative)? Can you trust your teammates? Do they know you trust them? Is someone on your team not a fully committed member? Is it time to help them find a new place to be a member or show them what it means to escalate their commitment and investment to the team as a fully fledged member?

Teammate,

–JT

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Roles

Being in a new role now, I have much to learn. A new team, new responsibilities, and new processes galore. I have so much to learn and it is everything I can do not to go crazy learning it all. It is not so much the process of learning or the learning that is killing me. It is the feeling of being so new. The feeling of being semi inept at everything and relying on everyone around me to bail me out at every turn because of my inexperience. I will get over it. However, I long to never forget what it is like and how it feels to be working through a new role. How there are volumes of information to learn and my only tool for learning them is time.

In the most different of ways, my patience is being tested. My patience with myself is being tested. I usually have no problem being patient with other people. But, now I have to be patient with myself. I have to wait for everything to become engrained in my mind so that I do not forget it. And, in the event I choose not to be patient, I am handicapping myself and making the learning almost impossible because I will be trying to shortcut the process, skip steps, and potentially break something.

Ultimately, I have to be patient or I will not last in what I am doing.
What are you learning? How patient are you being with yourself as you learn it? How patient are you with others who are learning around you?

Patiently,

–JT

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Building Blocks for Life

I love legos for more reasons than I can count. They have some of the best methods around. I am truly impressed by their ability to take bags of plastic and give me the ability to build complex structures using only pictures. They give me the power to reproduce miniaturized versions of my favorite scenes and structures.

And they use no words.

Not even once.

They are cross cultural, international, and multilingual without a single word of translation.

They use pictures to describe how to take thousands of pieces from baggies to buildings.

What in your life are you over-complicating?

Piece-fully,

–JT

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Performance Review

Having gone through the hiring process recently, I had an odd revelation. “If I was my own boss, would I hire me to be me.” It was a question of self reflection. Would I actually hire me to be me or would I pass me over? When it comes to growth/improvement, quality, and consistency, would I hire me to do be me, or would I keep looking for someone else to do the job? It was an odd question, but it really made me step back and take a look at how good of a job I have been doing what I might expect from someone in my stage of life.

Then I rearranged my into a new question, If I were my boss and I was up for a review, what would my review look like? Would it be a good review? Would I be pleased with how I am doing? Would I be succeeding in my role? What would my growth plan look like?

How about you, would you hire you to be you? If you were your boss and you had to create a growth plan for yourself, what would the growth plan look like? What would the deadlines and measurable be? Where are you succeeding? What are the areas you have that might fall into the category of ‘needs improvement’?

Reviewing,

–JT

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Teaching

Teaching is one of the noble careers I appreciate. Natural teachers are some of my favorite people to be around. They are so adept at bringing learning into their whole life and sharing new knowledge with me and everyone around them.

However, I so forget how much it takes to be a teacher. I was trying to document my processes and systems for how I do what I do and I realized how much it really takes to teach. The visuals so people can see things the way I see them. The endless words strewn across pages and pages to describe my actions.

Then, at the end of the day, the people I am trying to teach still have completely different mental filters and life experiences between the two of us getting in the way of our filters and conversations. We have no way to cross these hurtles without standing in the same room together and talking it all through.

I had forgotten how much it really takes to teach people what I was doing. I had also forgotten how much it had taken for me to get to be doing what I do. How many layers of the onion had grown on top of one another to develop into the job I was doing.
It was very humbling to not be able to document the layers of the onion. I did not need to document how or why things had gotten to be they way they are. I only needed to document how to do the what needs to be done. And though, it was important to have a process through which these processes could improve, it was not necessary in least to document the evolution of how things came to be how they are.

I realized the necessity of having things be the way they are is good, but I had too often been trying to protect things and keep them the way they were because of the process to get them to be the way they were and I was not fighting for everything to get better because it needed to be better.

I was trying to protect the inner layers of the onion meanwhile the outermost layer of the onion was rotting away and couldn’t grow or improve.

What are you needlessly fighting to protect? If you were to document how you do what you do, how much time would you have to spend defending the process to get to where you are? Is the process to get to where you are as important as the destination? Where is your pride getting in the way?

Humbly,

–JT

Cranking Away

Given all of the changes and upcoming changes in my life. I am looking at a lot of turbulent times as far as my regular schedule goes. My schedule is actually becoming much more dynamic than it has been. Between my work schedule being variable and then you add a baby into the mix. I hear these babies like schedules but take some time to get into a rhythm and the amount of time it takes is relatively indeterminate.

Knowing these changes are not controllable, I have to pay attention to my priorities. I have to pay attention to the importance of my marriage, my health choices, and relationship choices. It is going to take discipline to maintain some semblance of sanity while I am in the midst of having my world rocked and yet trying to maintain these priorities.

As a matter-of-fact, I believe it is going to take me focusing on discipline to make sure I do not let myself give up my priorities in the midst of the change. All the change is going to test my resolve to whether or not I actually do prioritize these things or if I have only been giving them lip service while things are easy.

What other way do I have to prove how important these things are than when they are tested in the midst of the fire?

What do you prioritize? When was the last time your priorities were tested? Did the testing show your actual priorities to line up with your stated priorities? What needs to change?

Priortizing,

–JT

We Are All Homeschooled

Every once in a while I stumble across someone else saying something I could not say better in a million years and I could not ever scratch the surface of it. This time, Seth Godin nails it for me. I love his thoughts in this post, “We Are All Homeschooled”

As both I am both a person struggling with trying to figure out how to better interact with other people. And I am standing on the precipice of fatherhood, this one is too good and too perfect.

Schooled,
–JT
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Expectations

Stress is too common in my life. The stress comes from inside me and outside of me. Sometimes the stress is real and other times the stress if fictional. However, stress still affects steals years of my life far too easily. The worst kind of stress is the kind originating from inside of me. The worst kind of stress is the kind of stress spawning from assumptions I have made about a situation or assumptions I have made about other people.

This stress is built on me assuming it is my responsibility to fulfill the unspoken needs and expectations of other people. But there-in lies the problem. The needs are unspoken and assumed. First, I am making assumptions I know other people as well as I know myself. Second, I am guessing what their expectations are for me, which means I am putting myself into shoes I have never walked in and under hats I have never worn. Third I am then trying to fulfill these imaginary expectations and they have never spoken a word about any of it.

Quite literally, I have started telling complete stories and fictions about what they are thinking about me and what they want from me. All they are doing is trying to have a conversation with me.

It is so funny how quickly it went from trying to have a friendly conversation in a group or one on one, to me being solely responsible for keeping the conversation going. The whole thing ends up with me being underneath a pile of imaginary stresses that all started inside my head and ended by shaving years off my life. How different it could have been if I had stopped, took a deep breath, and asked about the expectations? How different could I be to set said the expectations and focus on the value of the person across from me?
What stresses do you have in your life? Where do they originate from? Have you recently asked others about these stresses? What do they think about your stresses?
Relaxed,
–JT
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Fear, Excitement, & 🍗

Recently, my wife and I were able to announce we are pregnant. Woo hoo! We are both definitely excited and looking forward to bringing our baby into the world. Given we are due in November, I am even going to give the baby an emoji in order to have a way to reference the baby. I’ll refer to the baby as 🍗. This seems to make the most sense since our little 🍗 could be born on Thanksgiving day.

However, plenty of life change comes with plenty of reflection. The part of all this I have been reflecting on most is my inability to get excited about this phase of the pregnancy. Last year, we were pregnant and we experienced a miscarriage. Before we miscarried, I was pretty much over the moon with excited for the next phase of our lives. This time, not so much. And my lack of excitement has been weighing on me.

As a matter of fact, I was even a little mad at myself for not being excited or overjoyed yet. I could not figure it out. I thought to myself, “I am having a child and I am not even excited about it. What is wrong with me?” Before I realized a couple things.

One, I am still a little hurt and afraid we will lose this baby too. My fears have mostly subsided given we are approximately eighteen weeks along. There are still some irrational fears in my mind. It hurt quite a bit to go through that pain. I will always look back on the end of last summer and remember the pain we went through. I am not crippled by the pain and it still does not control me. Obviously, I have been able to heal from the pain we felt and we are moving forward with our lives. The pain has left me timid but not destroyed and together, my wife and I have been able to overcome the pain and move on with our lives. The loss has left a mark on me.

Second, I am I do not have to be over the moon just because everyone thinks I should be and I do not have to conform to what everyone thinks is normal. I am who I am and I feel how I feel. I am excited. I am not excited to tell the whole world the ‘big news’ in my life. I am excited for this next phase of life. I never have been excited to share with a bunch of people the big or little things going on in my life. I am relatively private person. I am also a little too independent for my own good and one way it shows up is not wanting to share everything going on in my life, whether good, bad, big, or small.

Realizing these two things has set me free. I am now more excited to be a dad and to bring our little 🍗 into the world. I am still not excited to tell people, but I am getting better at telling people.

I am on a good trajectory and I am excited to see what the next chapter has for me as everything is about to change.

What pain do you carry? What does your pain stop you from doing? What does your pain hold you back from enjoying? How do you do with sharing what is going on in your life? Who do you share what is going on in your life with? Are there people you trust enough and you tell them everything going on with you and they reciprocate? Do you tell too many people? Do you tell not enough people?

Excited,

–JT

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Rotary Phone

In 1844 people started working on inventing the telephone. By 1876, Alexander Graham Bell finished the invention and 1915 brought the first coast-to-coast long-distance telephone call. From this invention, we progressively ended up with more and more telephones. From one in every town until there was one in every household and finally, one in every pocket.

Once upon a time, these things were important. When they rang, they were answered. There was almost never a reason to not answer one. If someone was calling, then it was for a reason and a purpose. There was no spam in a phone call for quite some time. The phone ringing has previously meant so much to our culture. People would answer every phone call coming into their homes. People would never make frivolous calls and telemarketers did not exist. It was an importance ingrained into their minds.

Today, phone calls are not so important. The phone is as much for talking as it is watching videos, sending emails, and checking sports scores. Today, when my phone rings, I am about almost more likely to ignore it than answer it. Most everyone who knows me will text or Facebook message me long before they would ever call. Almost no-one will call me anymore. And I am totally content with not being called.

However, what if I did treat my phone the same way people treated phones in 1915. What if everything happening on my phone was as important as it was in 1915. What if, every time my phone beeped, chimed, or lit up, I had to react immediately? What sort of craziness would I be subjecting myself to!? What sort of craziness would I be subjecting the people around me to!?
The brilliance of the phone evolving is actually lost when I treat it the same way it was treated 101 years ago. 101 years ago no-one would even consider calling you for no reason at all.

Do you give your phone a 2016 job to be done or a 1915 job to be done? Do you treat it as if it was developed today or more than 100 years ago? What are you making more important than you should?

Phoned,

–JT

Moments

Moments. Life is made up of them. I cannot escape living them and they are always followed up by another one. The older I get, the more each one loses significance. Each moment becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of my life. And yet, some of them are far more significant than any other.

I am currently in a phase of life where I have so many significant moments, but in 20 years will I remember them? Will I have them jotted down in my brain in such a way that I can reread them and remember what I am experiencing? Laugh at my naiveté? Celebrate my maturity? Or shake my head at my lack of acknowledgement of what really matters in the situation?

When I run into someone else going through what I am going through, will I be able to remember what I went through? How I felt? What I did to cope with it?

What do you remember? What significant moments do you have the details of stored away for yourself? How can you store away more moments to reflect on later in life?

Momentarily,

–JT

Role Switching

I am not one to dump carte blanche categorization of people as a way to understand the world; but, I did recently have a realization of types of people who are involved in a product. I see these three lenses of understanding myself and others as an opportunity to better understand how I can best work with other people. These roles are dynamic depending on the situation and in some regards, I think we all play one of these roles more often than the other two and any one of these roles can be a full time profession.

The first person I see is the Creator. They are the designer of the product. The person who makes it, has the idea, develops the idea. Maybe even brings the idea to market. The Creator’s goal is to get the product in the hands of someone to use it and love it and the Creator uses it and loves it and they want people to never stop using their product and they will do anything to make it better for the Customer.

The second person I see is the User of the product. The person who interacts with the product’s creation process or back end every day. They are not the Customer. They keep the product working. The systems the product relies on are used by the User every day. The User is the fuel to the system and the maintainer of the processes. The product continues because of the User and the systems they perpetuate. Maybe they are on the manufacturing team of an assembly line or the coding team of an an application. Usually, they have more contact with either the Designer and less contact with the Customer or more contact with the Customer and less contact with the Creator. The User’s goal is to have a fine tuned product and an equally fine tuned process to keep the product going.

Finally, there is the Customer. This is the person who is the perfect target market. They see the product, put their hard earned resources on the line in exchange for taking the product home. They are meant to be with the product and the product is meant for them. They usually have almost no contact with the Designer and they only have contact with the User at best. Truly, the Customer is the target for the product.

The breakdown comes in when the members of this arc forget their place. The Creator, for instance, generally should not be the one to fill in the role of the User. The Creator is meant to have an idea and share an idea with someone who can do it better than they can. They are meant to be the origin point and let the User do their job. The flaw of the Creator is their ideas about how the Customer will use the product. The Creator generally thinks the customer will use the product one way and, generally speaking, the Customer will actually use the in a vastly different manner all together.

The User cannot forget their role either. They cannot start to fill in for the Creator and filter the feedback from the Customer. They need to make sure to always keep the Customer’s best interest first. They too easily get lost in what works best for the User and not what works best for the Customer. When the User starts to get too carried away with designing for themselves, they start to do what is best for them and their needs and the Customer’s are lost in the fray. Ultimately, the Customer will leave the product because the User is so busy maximizing the product’s processes to meet their own needs and not the needs of the Customer.

Finally, The Customer should be the simplest; but too often, the Customer forgets their role and starts to try and act like the Creator and forgets they only have a piece of the picture. When the Customer forgets their role they start trying to tell the User what to do not knowing how their decisions actually alter the process and derail the overall picture the User is orchestrating on their behalf as the Creator is designing and innovating in their product.

Ultimately, we must have all three roles in order to bring a product to our customers. And the products will vary. Maybe you work for a university and your customers are the students, you are the User, and the Designer is the university’s leadership. Or perhaps you love going to a certain restaurant or buying from a certain tech vendor, thus making you the Customer. Your server is then your User, and the cook or owner/menu selector is the creator.

For me, I have begun to realize my role in all of this. I have started remembering my place, not to over extend into other people’s areas but instead encourage them to succeed at what they do well that I might be able to succeed at what I do well.

Which role do you identify most with? Which role do you overextend into the most often? What can you do to help the people you overextend into instead of suffocating them with your overextension?

Extended,

–JT

Resources Ltd.

I was listening to a newer podcast I like and it assesses Apple and their ability to succeed in the face of difficult circumstances. They were assessing numbers and viability and market share and all the products Apple sells.

One of the things they were talking about was how Apple was moving to be more service and subscription based and less product based. In their discussion, they asked a pivotal question about what will people be talking about in twenty years regarding Apple and their sustainability and their success and what made them great. They even asked about Apple’s longevity and whether or not they would still be in business in twenty years and whether or not their current products and services would be necessary.

All of this questioning made me ask and question how a company could still last in twenty years. How could a company sustain itself for so long? What products can we guarantee will be around in twenty years and they are around today?

I came up with a few different products. But only one of those products really hit me in the gut.

Time.

Time is the globally universal product we all have. We spend it. We steal it. We lose. We find it. We try to make it. We never have enough of it. And too often we waste it.

Time is limited and I trade it too easily.

Time is limited and I give it away at the drop of a hat.

What is your time worth? How do you spend your time? In twenty years, do you want to look back and say you spend your time this way? Who can help you stay on track for spending your time better?

Timely,

–JT

Filler

I was sitting on my couch wondering what to do next. So, I picked up my phone and checked twitter…nope, zero tweets behind. Popped open my email, nope, zero new emails. Popped open Clash Royale, nope, nothing to do there.

…nothing I can think of to do.

…nothing truly, needing done.

…but I am always doing something.

Literally, even when I am sitting wondering what to do next, I am doing just that. I am wondering what to do next is doing something. I will always be doing something. How well will I choose what to do? How well will I choose how to spend my time and not allow twitter, email, or Clash to choose what I do?

If I do not choose what I am doing, someone or something else will choose for me. I will be riding along on the rails of someone or something else.

I need to choose how I spend my time not let myself be told by technology or other people. I choose what fills my time and I choose to spend my time doing something that matters and adds value to me. Or I can decide to fill my time with whatever is close at hand.

Just like the food I eat. I eat what is at hand and what is easy. When all I have around me is junk food. I eat junk food. When all I have around me is quick media and cheap entertainment. I spend all my time on quick media and cheap entertainment.

How do you spend your time? When was the last time you assessed how you spend your time? Where are you choosing to spend your time? Where is someone/something else chasing for you? Who will help you use your time better?

Choosing,

–JT

Historical Precedence

There are many things in my life I have done over the years. I have quite the list of things I do and do not do quite simply because at some point in my life I decided this is how I do what I do. Lately, I have grown tired of doing things a certain way because I have always done them this way. I have also grown incredibly impatient with change for the sake of change.

I find myself standing at a crossroads of analyzing how and what I do in order to improve at being who I am. For some of what I do, after a while, I have to start explaining what I do or why I do what I do the way I do it. Most situations in life do not require me to do what I do a certain way. Most situations in life have a normalized way of doing things and those methods work for most people and I do not need to specialize how I do things.

Specializing how I do things can be good when necessary, but if I find myself having to explain myself more and more, then maybe I need to reevaluate how I do what I do.

The most important part is to do what I do the way I do it for a reason.

What do you do in a crazy way? When was the last time you assessed how you do what you do? Do you have reasons for doing what you do the way you do it? Who can help you figure out a better way to do what you do?

Purposefully,

–JT

Circumstantial Disabilities

I was recently helping a friend with a project and noticed how he talked about a circumstance in his life. He talked about his circumstances as if there is no way he could overcome them. He was trapped and saw no way out. I started thinking about my own life and how I can often feel trapped, especially when I am not trapped at all.

I started thinking about opportunity and future. I started to reflect on what I can do to get out of the harder circumstances I have, not to say they are significant on an absolute scale. In the midst of the conversation, the key phrase in my mind, the one thing really sticking with me, was:

My circumstances are not a disability.

I have been found waiting for a miracle at times to cure my circumstances. I knew immediately how insane I was. I shared my realization with my friend and he accepted it and the midst of the conversation and continued the conversation onward.

However, even now the statement sticks with me. My circumstances do not control me. I can change them. I can get out of bad circumstances. My circumstances can also upgrade or degrade based on my decisions.

What circumstances are holding you back? Where do you need to make better decisions to improve your circumstances? Who is going to help you make these better decisions?

Enabled not disabled,

–JT