The imprint of acts of kindness by others can be powerful. On the trip this past weekend, one person gave a homeless person a $1. It may have been a small amount, but it's the intention with which they gave it. I almost then felt bad for not contributing something. My next instinct was to pray for that homeless person and have that $1 of positive energy be transferred and flowed onwards. Reminds me of something I saw on IG recently: A genuine act of kindness isn't meant to be repaid, it's meant to be passed on. Someone going out of their way to help me on their own without me asking for a favor is energy that flowed towards me. It then should flow freely and fully towards anything and anyone else, and so on. The imprint of this one person in a 5-person van has a network effect of 5x. It's been planted in 4 others' minds (as well as their own). It's that much more likely to be passed on, especially when done with a 100% genuine intention. The goal is to make that as instinctive as possible. Don't even think of it as service.
Hmm lol. Everything these days is X-as-a-service. SaaS, PaaS, etc. What if we made it something else? What if we want to make service as a part of our being? As a part of our identity? So X-as-an-identity. aaI. HaaI. Happiness as an identity. LaaI. Love as an identity. GaaI. Growth as an identity. SaaI. Service as an identity. PaaI. Philanthropy as an identity. All these things and many more we want to become a part of us, a part of who we fundamentally are. So let's think of practices, habits, activities, work, play, etc. as vital parts of our holistic identity.
On Monday, I failed again! I've been challenged again to be better in meetings that I lead. To level up myself. To lead by example across the company. I want to fail more! I think in the past I've not failed as much because I haven't put myself in positions to fail enough. I'm starting to gradually change my connotation and feeling of the word failure so that I look forward to it. Every failure is an opportunity to learn. 'Failure' and 'success' have the same amount of potential in them to learn from. I'm doing a disservice to myself if I don't realize as much of it as I can from each instance of success and failure. I think I may have had a block of not realizing how much there is to realize in a success as well. 'If I've succeeded, then I don't have as much to learn' was my thought process. I only wanted 'negative' feedback. But there's just as much to learn in those 'winning' moments. Each instance of success and failure is an important data point on the upward path. "A failure is a failure only if we don't learn from it. A success is a success only if we learn from it.." - Me lol. So I just need people to tell me when I'm succeeding and when I'm failing. Then I can ponder on it and keep growing.
I was in a very temporary internal defensive and despondent mood after receiving feedback. I need to allow time to myself to regain clarity when someone gives me feedback so I can actually learn from it. Going from a mental failure to a physical success helped me Monday. Moving some boxes from the lobby to upstairs and finishing off inventory gave me physical momentum to bring with me to the rest of the day. Lets me bounce back that much quicker when I can be aware of what my mind, body, and soul need to rediscover balance.
Every day essentially then I should be failing on some level. Mental failure. Physical failure. Emotional failure. Spiritual failure. Lol what even is spiritual failure?? Might be a question for another time. Then stack that failure with success of a different type / domain. The overall score is basically that then in my list journal. The score is how much I succeeded and the gap from the score to 100 is how much I failed. So every day, if I'm doing both, I should never actually be having a 100 overall day lol.
The word of failure has had a bad rap because of the school system. The worst grade, F, is synonymous with failure. So we don't want to fail. Let's get rid of that mindset. Let's unlearn what failure has meant within the definitions that society has constructed. Let's redefine what failure will mean for each of us going forward. Sometimes we ask "What does success look like in X years?" We should also be asking "What does failure look like in X years?" That definition and answer will be different for everyone. But that's the point. Because society tried standardizing success and failure for everyone. When in actuality success and failure are individualistic measures. They inherently cannot be standardized. That is the failure of the system. But that's okay, because we're learning from it. :)
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