Character
My younger sister recently moved from London to Santiago in Chile. Since I performed a similar relocation to a very different place (London to Beijing) two years ago, I thought I would give her some advice. What was meant to be a few points ended up ballooning into lots of points. Since I haven't written any posts in a while, this is also a chance for me to relate some things I have learned recently. It's written with a reader in the mid-to-late [...]
Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of articles with advice that people would give to their former or younger selves. Most of these lists make sense and have the usual, “save money” and “stop caring about what others think” and often indicate some regret in their chosen paths. Being in my mid-twenties and already following a lot of advice from the old and wise, I started thinking about whether there is any advice I’d give to my future self. What ha [...]
I read this, and I liked it a lot. I hope you do too. Don’t forget to forgive like the little boy: Listen, son; I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside. There are things I was thi [...]
This will be my last post of 2013. It has been a year of huge personal growth for the team at LLB, and I would like to share some of the insights we have picked up during the journey. Life-Life Balance is now nearly one year old and has over 100 posts, which add up to over 60,000 words. That’s about the length of a novel. Now whilst I say that in part to boast, I also say it because we never set out to write that much. We just committed to the pr [...]
I’m just going to go ahead and steal this straight off Jon Jitsu, his blog is well worth checking out if you’re into Martial Arts. After a long day of kicking ass and helping the needy, two Shaolin monks were walking down a path that ran parallel to a river that was swollen and raging from recent storms. Farther down the path, the two monks came upon an old woman who stood at the edge of the river gazing at the remains of a bridge that had washed [...]
In no particular order, some great quotes I’ve come across recently: The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing Marcus Aurelius Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own [...]
I remember hearing about this a while ago, and recently stumbled across the original source. Bronnie Ware worked with terminal patients for years, and documented the regrets she heard the most from those who were brought face-to-face with their time running out. The original article (now a book) is here. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I didn’t work so hard. I wish I’d had t [...]
David Foster Wallace was once described to me as “maybe the greatest literary talent since James Joyce” by one of the world’s foremost experts on Joyce. If you have not read his fiction (and non-fiction), I can’t recommend it enough. I was recently reminded of one of his most poignant speeches which explores the real value of education. Here is the audiolink.If you’re reading this at work, here’s the fulltranscript. A few choice quotes: “[Ed [...]
Abandon your First World Problems mentality. Consciously compare your income to Haitian poverty, your health status to Locked-In Syndrome, your sorrow to that of parent who has lost a child.As Tsunami Bomb tells us, “Be grateful that you have a brain for thinking/ And legs to take you places.” Sometimes it’s good to just take a moment and get a little perspective. The above quote is taken from this great article. [...]
I watched this awesome talk by the late Steve Jobs which highlighted a great motivator: The recognition of our mortality. This got me thinking about why we decided to call our blog “Life-Life Balance”. Obviously it is a tongue-in-cheek play on the phrase “work-life balance”. But so what? When you think about it, the expression “work-life balance” is profoundly sad. It implies that work and life are two different things on either end of a scale, [...]