Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you (Marcus Aurelius).

 

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More matter with less art (Queen Gertrude in Hamlet)

Marcus Aurelius is a source for great leadership lessons throughout Meditations.

Term 1 has ended at school (finally) and this passage acts as an excellent place to pause for thought:

Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, "How unlucky that this should happen to me!" Not at all! Say instead, "How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint.

I'll be on a study break for two weeks but Marcus will be doling out wisdom until Term 2 starts.

Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham. I wonder to myself - could life ever be sane again? (The Smiths)

Seth Godin makes a great point about surprise and uncertainty:

Until just recently, a solar eclipse wasn’t a tourist event. It was the cause of real panic.

Two reasons that are worth considering:It was a surprise. They were not predicted.
They were unexplained. No one had any idea what was going on.

Eliminate surprise and explain the circumstances and panic starts to fade.

What is life (George Harrison)

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Boyle’s Law

There’s no such thing as work life balance. There’s simply life. And you spend part of your life at work.

High performing teams

Otmar Szafnauer

Recently, I caught a great quote from watching Formula 1 Drive to Survive.

The 2023 Team Principal of the Alpine team, Otmar Szafnauer said:

Species that collaborate survive, species that are selfish go extinct. High performing teams are the same. If you get it wrong it bites you.

Over the mountain watching the watcher, breaking the darkness (Pink Floyd)

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As regular readers of my bogs know, I'm a fanboy for the stoics, so this post from Seth Godin resonated with me.

It’s honest when we acknowledge that just about everything is out of our control. We can work to influence it, we can practice accepting it, but any time we’re engaging with others or with the future, we’re not completely in charge.

Control is elusive. If we accept the parts that are out of our hands, we can focus on the elements where we have leverage and influence instead.

Even that, to my mind, is illusionary. The only control I have, and I firmly believe this, is how I internally deal with the thirst to control from others.

The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing (Walt Disney)

I love this from Seth Godin:

Learning is about becoming incompetent on our way to getting better.

If you’re not open to the tension that is caused by knowing you could do better, it’s unlikely you’re willing to do the work to get better. As you’re doing that work, there’s the satisfaction it brings, but also the knowledge that just a moment ago, you weren’t any good.