My childhood of learning new things from my dad involved holding a flash light and getting yelled at because it wasn’t pointed in the right direction. Lucky for me, this seems to have been a common occurrence among my friends.

However, watching him at work was witnessing a master of his craft.

His intuition for how to problem solve, work and get the job done was uncanny. What would take me hours to do was a drop in the hat for him.

Therefore, I fixated on getting things done faster.

Yet, had I slowed down and learned to do it right, an overly-exaggerated slow way, that would have been the catalyst to pick up speed later.

This was a lesson to be re-learned as a professional magician.

The slower you practice the techniques (or “moves”), the more ingrained it becomes in your mind. In due course, the technique is mastered and runs smoothly, unnoticed by the audience.

It was also a lesson to be re-learned as a writer.

The secret to picking up speed was not learning how to type faster, or training myself to dictate (although both are helpful endeavours for many other areas), it was to slow down and get it right the first time. Spend more, consistent time, actually practicing until you hit a level of mastery of being able to write a story in a bookstore window and win awards without a single round of editing (that’s not me, yet).

It appears the faster we want to learn things, the slower we need to go.

“I want to go on the swing.”

Helping her hop on, I slowly built the momentum for my daughter to climb higher. Her small legs kicked out with each push forward and swung back as she returned, laughing as the bottoms of her boots kicked me slightly.

“Higher!”

With each push, the laughter increased.

I’ve spent a lot of time chasing happiness. Many years in deep contemplative study, retreats, talks with trusted people, prayer, meditation, reading, pursuing my dreams, wealth, relationships and the long road to self-enlightenment.

And even if I spend the next thirty years still going down that road, stripping away all is unnecessary and pursuing only those things that will bring me the greatest joy…

it will still pale in comparison to my daughter on that swing.

I dare you to find a person who has more joy in their heart than a child with a house full of love.

The best lesson I learned from being a magician is the magic is for the audience. It’s about them and their experience.

They are not your props to satisfy your own ego.

In the classroom, the best lesson I learned is everything should be attuned so the class is about the students. Not what I want, but what they need.

The second you make anything about yourself, it’s only a matter of time before it all falls.

One wrong move, one bad decision or one mishap in your past and everything comes down with you. How often have we seen that happen in the last few years?

If, however, you make it about something beyond yourself…

beyond your own ego…

then you will have built something worth talking about.

A day may come when you will get everything you always wanted in life…

and you will not be able to get out of bed because of how miserable you are.

It’s funny how all the things you’ve wanted in life, or rather the things you need, are enough to satisfy, yet don’t. This is baffling to all of us considering that even someone in the ‘lower’ strata of a developed nation today has access to food, education and technology that is vastly superior to a monarch a hundred and fifty years ago.

Maybe the things we’re seeking aren’t the things we really wanted.

Sometimes life can feel like dancing in a minefield, waiting for the inevitable chaos to ensue all around you.

Other times, it’s the entrails of the past that won’t let go. They snag your mind and root itself into your daily outlook. It infiltrates every decision whether you desire it or not.

In a world where so much is out of our control, the one thing we can choose is joy.

It can be so difficult, especially with the mess that life can be—its randomness of events that seemingly come out of nowhere, forcing you to question whether the universe actually cares if we are here.

Choosing joy is our opportunity to look right back into it… and smile.

I have a very low, what Hemingway called, “bulls*** threshold.”

Harlan Ellison

Whatever our level is at right now, I think it’s about time we lower it further.

Talk less, listen more and be extremely wary of those who are trying to sell you something you “need.”

48…49…50!

It was a moment of elation recently when I did my 50th burpee in a row. Putting off the need to do any sort of physical exercise had taken its toll and I was working at something physical to counteract the measure.

The interesting part is 50 was the rep number for my warmup as a martial-artist when I was younger:

50 burpees, 50 push-ups, 50 sit-ups.

It was an easy baseline to keep because it was consistent.

And now, it’s taking a lot longer to work back up to the baseline I once had for myself.

As the laws of physics remind us, an object in motion is easier to move than one that is at a standstill. The challenge is getting that object in motion in the first place and then, the hard part, keeping it in motion until there is no force to stop it.

Because once it stops, it takes a lot of effort to get it going again.

And that effort only increases as we get older.

I was the slowest eater growing up.

My mother threatened to record a tape of herself yelling “Mangia!” (eat) on loop for an hour and just have it running every time I sat at the table.

My dad would joke that I should start breakfast the night before so I would finish at the same time as everyone else in the morning.

It took me forever, but I did eat. It was slow… painfully slow… but the food eventually disappeared. This would continue until the illustrious time of puberty when a plate of food couldn’t be inhaled fast enough.

And now, I have to force myself to slow down.
Pay attention.
Join the conversation at the table.
Take my food one bite at a time while being present to the world around my plate.

It seems the slow pace of life I had as a child is really the life I long to bring back as an adult. One bite at a time, I suppose I could.

“My my Vito. You’re very industrious.”

It was the comment from my roommate during my graduate degree as I came back from the weekend and saw the sink piled up with plates. They were stacked high, almost falling over and I realized they will probably be left there for another day.

Putting my bags down, I went to work right away at clearing out the sink, eliciting the comment and amusing the people who knew me in my early twenties:

Consummate procrastinator, full of excuses and never willing to just do the work. Big dreams full of shortcuts that never pan out.

That kitchen sink was my kitchen sink at one point.

The issue is I had run out of excuses and time was not moving any slower. I had to do the work because there was no other choice. That particular year was a busy one with me living in two cities, working on the weekends, school during the week, teaching twice a week and planning a wedding.

And yet, I still managed to finish my thesis ahead of schedule, with plenty of time to enjoy a summer trip with my fiancée.
(Side note: You know what’s harder than writing a thesis? Everything.)

It took many years to get to that point (and another decade after that for it to really settle in) where you realize how you do one thing is how you do everything.

Outcomes in life are based on attitudes and actions.

It may not be the outcome you want, but it will be the one that represents who you are.

You listen because you don’t have anything to say.

You speak because you like hearing yourself.

You speak because you think you have something important to say.

You speak because you think other people care what you have to say.

You speak up when you actually have something to say.

You only speak when prompted.

You stop speaking because people aren’t listening.

You stop listening because you’ve heard it all before.