constructive – From the desk of Adam Thomas

Superficial progress keeps us in place.

When you start digging, it’s easy to notice progress.

The divot in the ground is visible. It’s easy to point to it and tell people “Look, I did that.” At the beginning, the change is visible and easy to share.

The hard part is after you’ve dug for a while. When you tell people about your progress and people say “It looks the same as yesterday.”

It is discouraging.

It’s tempting to start digging another hole and say “I’ll get to that other hole too.”

Odd are, you won’t. The new hole feels better than the other one. Also, the praise is coming in, and it’s easier to show your work.

Resist this temptation, because digging new holes becomes addictive. Whenever you get to the point of the first hole, and the praise starts to level off, you will start a new hole.

Eventually, you have a bunch of holes and nothing constructive to do with them.

Why Why Why

On my commute this morning I started thinking about the word why. It is an interesting word.

I find that this word can cause wars, break up families, and create general havoc in anyones life. Asking why too much is a sin to some people, as we never ask it. Everything that is in the system for us to understand tells us to comply and reform, instead of question and respond. It can open painful wounds. It can destroy the soft fabrics of our rationalizations.

In those same three words you can find the inverse. Why is constructive when implemented with an open mind. It allows us to see our own flaws and build out ways to mitigate them. Instead of sitting on a world where people just react, we can respond to a crisis with enough knowledge about ourselves and the event to make an informed decision.

It takes courage to use the word, especially since it goes against most things we have learned since childhood. It is that courage, that gets us to our greatest potential.