Happy Friday Folks,
I hope you fine people are well.
I can't remember now if I mentioned whether or not I was doing some traveling currently but either way, I gotta a couple of fun facts about being on the move that might be helpful or relevant to the bigger journey we are all traveling on.
The hard fact of the matter is that old habits die hard. You can run but you can’t hide. There is a Bible passage somewhere about the guy who had a demon cast out and then just a few days later seven more of them came back to him, yikes.
Miami Vice is a tv show that I have not actually seen and also the name of a drink that I have seen and drank a lot of as it happens… but that’s another story and that was another trip.
It was more the relevance of the phrase as it pertains to personal vices that peeked my interest and as I had a chance to be geographically aligned with the city the title seemed appropriate.
The gist of the matter is I got to visit Miami and then drive down the Florida Keys which is the southernmost point of the states.
It was cool, but this is not really a travel blog so I will spare you the details.
The point is that even when we make resolutions and commitments to change and we move on so to speak these things often have a way of chasing us down or finding us out, sometimes in a much worse way and far more quickly than we thought possible. Take the guy who got rid of one demon only to end up with seven more, what a shitty surprise that was!
Or maybe it wasn’t a surprise… or shouldn’t have been a surprise… you see at the end of the day we are pretty good at deluding ourselves and pretty naive when it comes to our expectations around resolutions.
We are fallen humans and as such the struggle never really goes away… from a place of pride this depressing news but from a place of humility it is actually really great.
The term “growth mindset” has been kind of beaten like a dead horse in current self-development circles but it’s the same sort of idea.
So yea whether you're in Miami or anywhere else your vices are not gonna just up and leave and if it seems that way then watch out because maybe they just went to get some friends.
I feel like this is shaping up to suggest that I did something terrible in Miami so sorry to disappoint but there is not a whole lot to report other than the fact that I met some cool people who I am excited to be doing some writing for (if you can check out the brand here) but the point is I do fall short of my standards quite often as I suppose we all do…
But this brings me to the “keys” part of this journey. A wise man once said that the obstacle is the way, actually, it’s the name of his book (which is worth checking out) but the thing I am getting at is that as discouraging as our faults can be there is also a beautiful paradox at play (love em or hate em, the human experience is always filled with wonderful, albeit often frustrating, paradoxes).
You see it’s not just in avoiding our faults that we become free of them but rather by accepting them. Not in a giving up sort of way but in a humble sort of way. And the weird thing is when we assume this attitude then it becomes a lot easier to actually improve. Not only that but in some strange ways our vices can actually end up making us better people, they can call us to something greater and maybe even be the key to reaching our ultimate destination.
That’s my take anyway, so whether you are sunny and 75 or 30 below and buried in snow don’t be naive and don’t beat yourself up, there is always a way forward sometimes it’s just a bit slower and a bit more humbling than we would like.
Keep up the fight and don’t be surprised if things get better for a bit and then get worse, the story doesn’t end there, it’s probably just time for a different approach,
Yours in the virtue and the vice,
Ben
P.S. If the side hustle content is what you are here for I got some cool stuff coming soon but for now if you are in business or want to be in business (yes even if you are just a fledgling wantrepreneur!) then you absolutely, positivly need to drop everything and go grab this book right now, it’s only 99 cents, and it very well may change the course of your life.