go hard lightly
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“It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling… “
Aldous Huxley
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Life truths.
Hard and lightly.
Haste with patience.
Forward diagonally.
Happy and sad.
Success and failure.
Right and wrong.
Thinking and doing.
Dreams and hard work.
Whew. This means that the truly great things in Life may be a coin you can put in your pocket — a coin made up of two sides and two faces.
Yeah. Life is usually a combination of opposites fighting a tug of war moment to moment. I bet no one told you that when you were growing up.
Far too often we are told the secret to life is one thing.
Far too often someone is not telling is the truth <or maybe they don’t really know the secret to life?>.
Th truth is Life <and business also> is a wonderful, maddening blob of inconsistency.
The only way to survive , and not be totally boring, inept or a hermit, is to steal a little of something from both sides and do your best to proportion it all out in the end.
Proportional?
I need some sadness to recognize true joy <only I certainly don’t want to dwell on sadness nor walk around as Happy the Clown every minute of the day>.
I want a leader who is energetic and demanding and cajoling, pushing, shoving, pulling, inspiring people toward a horizon < but I want the moments of idle strength and compassion intertwined>.
I want to work hard … so hard the muscles, brain and/or physical, are strained and hurt … and get to maybe get a glimpse of one of my dreams on occasion <so I can dream a little when not working hard>.
I want people to play hard and play to win <in any endeavor> … but do so with grace in victory & loss, with sportsmanship & fairness and respect for the game.
I want, well, it doesn’t matter what I want. Pick your ‘hard-lightly’ Life combination. I guarantee you will find the most interesting people, most interesting experiences, most interesting moments, most interesting anythings are a reflection of this ying-yang combination. Life is meant to be lived, and experienced, hard & lightly.
Now. By the way.
Just because Life is meant to be lived this way doesn’t mean it is easy to actually live it that way. Living hard, or living lightly, is not only addictive, but also often generates a sense of ‘lostness’ when shelved for a bit.
Why lostness?
Well. It is mostly fear that we will not refind or regain it therefore we hesitate to ever let it go from the way we currently live our Life.
So what do we do? We ‘take a break.’
We ‘get away from it all.’ In other words instead of seeking some ‘how we actually live’ balance in our lives we just step away from the way we live our Life by simply not going lightly <if we typically go hard> or not going go hard <if we typically go lightly> and we don’t do anything other than how we live our Life so, ultimately, we just choose to do nothing to ‘recharge.’
I would suggest that you don’t need to ‘take a break’ to recharge, but rather if you seek the proportional ‘yang’ to your ‘ying’, well, you will find additional purpose as well as your ‘ying’ takes on an entirely new image n your eyes & mind.
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*** note: proportional versus balance: I purposefully use proportional rather than balance because on an individual, person to person, basis it is rarely a 50/50 split – even over time. everyone customizes their life between hard & lightly as is appropriate to their personality, ambition and life desires. once again, this is rarely 50/50 and everyone should just seek what their optimal proportional mix is.
Regardless, just approaching Life one way means you miss out on what is most interesting in life – going hard & lightly.
Aw shit. Look. All I really know if that if you can figure out how to go hard and tread lightly at the same time, you will most likely be successful in business & in Life. You will most likely be appreciated, respected, sometimes liked and certainly not hated. I know … I know … the ‘tread lightly’ part is really really hard if you like to live Life going hard.
But.
As I just told someone go hard for the things you want and dreams you seek to reach toward and if you continue to do these things for you, knowing that your moral compass is set correctly and that your instincts with regard to ‘what is right’ versus ‘what is wrong’ are good, you will be happier and the people around you will rarely be disappointed.
Ponder.
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