Essential, Random and Frivolous Thoughts of a Cabinet Maker

The most precious and beautiful things in life are quite simple; a hummingbird, a sunset, a towering tree, a fleeting moment of laughter with a Loved one, a whisper of unselfishness or a gesture of kindness to another.

We need not complicate the matter by overthinking it. In fact, simplifying our lives is always the answer to clarity and often times our happiness. It’s not the complication of things – the adding to – but rather the stripping away of all the non-essentials.

We don’t need much to thrive in this world, even though we’re being barraged with an overload of advice telling us what we must have or do. No. It’s rather simple.

Just the essentials please. We know what they are if we listen.

There are a handful of things in my life that are meaningful enough to me that I’ve committed to the Long Haul. A partial list is: my marriage, the relationship with my children, my health – which includes growth (spiritually/mentally/physically) and investing my time to those of my close family members.

Besides that, there’s not a whole lot that I’m dedicated to. I’m not proud of it, but one of those things is my art. I guess it’s not that my creativity isn’t important to me, it’s just that I wish I gave it more priority in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I participate in some sort of creative endeavor almost every day, but I certainly don’t prioritize it.

Why? I’m not sure.

We have to do what it takes to support ourselves and our family, but I must remind myself often to remember what’s important in my life. And for me, creativity is right up there with oxygen, water and Love.

Remember that, Jim.

The beauty of getting older is understanding the difference between activities that add value to your life and one’s that don’t

Time in front of the TV or on social media for most of us is not adding any sort of value to our lives. Don’t get me wrong, I understand ‘down time’ is a legit way to refuel, but most of us don’t us those devices and that time in that way. And I’m as guilty as anyone.

I just recently got back from a long weekend hanging out with my childhood friends. The three of us haven’t been together in over 10 years. It was the perfect setting where the activities involved: pickleball, swimming, boating, cooking by campfire, listening to music, staring at the views of the Puget Sound and of course quality conversations.

There were moments of laughter, sincerity, vulnerability and a whole lot of tom foolery.

Boom! Value added.

I’ve come to realize that I’m in a place in my life where there’s a lot of repetition in my day. The activities/tasks are not numerous – just a few or maybe several, but I do them over and over again.

Work, exercise, creative endeavors, hobby’s, etc. It’s only 4-5 different activities, but I repeat them over and over and over again. It’s all good, but the other day I received a compliment on how proficient I was while doing one of my very intentional activities. I was thrilled to hear as it came from a very qualified person in that field.

It just validated all the time and effort I’d been putting in over the last few years. I felt great about my progress.

We need to see how far we’ve come every once in a while in order to get some perspective. You know, come out of the trees to see the entire forest kind of thing.

It’s not a new idea by any means, but I just heard Darren Hardy recently discuss the idea of breaking down old and conformed ways of thinking about problems by using First Principle Thinking. And I think I’m in love.

One thing that humans tend to get caught up on is continuous improvement. Now, there is nothing wrong with continued improvement, but what if the seed of that “solution” is inherently flawed. We continue to spend our time improving a flawed idea.

Maybe we can start with the fundamentals and build our idea from the ground up. Maybe we can take a more of scientific approach and identify facts instead of basing our strategy of attack on assumptions.

I love this idea! Besides, creatively it gets us out of our own patterns of thinking that seem to be based on what everyone before us has done.

Maybe this gives us an opportunity to strike out with a fresh new approach to age-old problems. I hope!