I hope you both are taking advantage of the long weekend and getting some down-time and recovery. That's an important part of the whole human energy equation.
Today, I'm adding on to where I started in last post.
Did you know that you can make the clock stop? As in ... time stands still!
Today's title is "Life at the Speed of Light." What the heck am I getting at? Quite simply this; Einstein showed us (111 years ago) that time is relative to how fast you are moving ... and for things moving really fast, time appears to move slower than it does for slower moving things ... at least relative to the slower moving things. The fastest that anything can move is the speed of light. But here's the thing ... at that speed, time doesn't move. You can't really wrap your head around it you just have to understand the math and then accept that truth. For a photon of light moving at its unique speed, time stands still ... it is always in the present ... there is no past or future. Weird, I know.
Well there is a time, when, for we human beings, time can really slow down ... and sometimes, almost appear to be stopped. It is when we are doing something at which we are highly skilled, and our task is also highly challenging ... but just a bit more challenging than our skill permits us to accomplish without extreme concentration.
What I just described is a mental state in which you are fully immersed in doing something and you have an intense or energized focus. This condition, named "flow," by Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has been described by many (myself included) as being amongst life's peak experiences. You might have heard it described another way: "being in the zone."
In flow, your emotions are not just contained and channeled, but they are actually energized in a way that aligns with the task you are doing. Your focus is so completely drawn into your activity that you are unaware of anything else, including yourself ... and it's as if time is standing still.
It is a spectacularly joyful experience. I believe that we were made this way so that we would enjoy mission-oriented activities ... especially when we understand the mission that we are on (more on this in the next couple of weeks).
You may know the Law of Architecture ... that, "form follows function." This is very logical; a building's form should be dictated by it's function. That's why an outhouse looks like it does and why an airplane hangar looks like it does and why a hockey rink looks like it does; they are all designed according to the function that they will serve.
The Law of People is exactly the opposite ... function follows form. Anyone who argues with this simply hasn't lived long enough to get it, or they have never experienced flow. The function we serve does not dictate how we have been formed. How we are formed dictates the function we should serve. This is how we properly define strengths and weaknesses: a strength isn't something that you are good at ... a strength is something that strengthens you and makes you come alive when you do it. And, of course, if an activity is highly enjoyable then you are more likely to spend more time doing it ... and after enough time you will get very good at it just out of sheer practice. Your high skill in that activity now makes it possible to get "into the zone" when doing it if you tackle things that are just a bit harder than your skill permits.
Therefore my children ... as much as possible ... put your efforts into building skills in areas that are already personal strengths (things that jazz you). It was this thinking that dictated my planned early retirement and has taken me on a very different (and joyful) journey over the last decade, beginning before I even retired.
Let me leave you with this image below ... I created it a decade ago when I first stumbled on this teaching. The annotations are mine but the main image can be found on the Wiki site called, "Flow."
I love you ... see ya in 2 weeks when I look at, "Owing Little Dried Grapes."
Dad
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I have also discovered
