While I was at the gym listening to a book, The phrase "Celebrate and Recalibrate" resonated with me in regards to making plans and facing the inevitable successes, failures and whatever in between. Obviously, a lot of our problems stem from having expectations about the way things should be, or should have turned out, and unmet expectations inevitably leave us feeling not so great about the situations we face, or the people we deal with. But, our feelings are not reality.
Neither is "success or failure" for that matter, is it?
They are opinions.
Unlike in coding a program succeeds when it does what is expected and fails when it does not, human life is not quite as black and white, and the algorithms and code is complex, not complicated. It means we face a changing landscape of experience and even if we plan and enact the plan "perfectly", it is entering into a dynamic environment that can't be full calculated, and therefore is going to stray from the path of our plan to some degree.
Yeah, sometimes everything goes to plan and we should celebrate our win, but we also shouldn't become too sure of ourselves that it was our plan that was the reason for the success. It is entirely possible that our plan wasn't that great, but the dynamics changed and happened to fall in place to make our bad plan, a success. Similarly, we might have a great plan that is the best plan possible knowing what is known at that point, but it might end up in failure because the dynamics of the environment shift in ways that make a great plan, a bad plan.
None of this is new.
Does it have to be?
We overvalue the new in many cases, because we failed to learn a perfectly good lesson from the old. For instance, a lot of people will jump on a new diet as if it is going to be the one that works and sticks, even though pretty much any of the diets they have previously tried would work and stick - if they were stuck to. Healthy eating isn't a mystery, nor is exercise. If everyone just did the basics of what has been known for a very long time, the majority of us would be in far, far better health. Which leads on to recalibration.
Did the old diet fail?
Or did I fail the diet?
It doesn't matter what information we have or how great our gym trainer is, if we aren't changing our own actions to align with our goals, we are going to "fail" them - right? Or are we actually successful? If I eat a lot of fast food, don't go to the gym, sit on the couch watching TV - I have successfully got the results of the algorithm I am running. My code is succeeding, I am getting exactly what I should expect to get. It would be very strange if I did all of that and then I was still a super fit athlete, who could run marathons, and be on the cover of a fitness magazine with a sixpack.
We are all succeeding at what we do.
This doesn't mean we are getting what we want though, does it? Our actions are what lead us to the result, not our thoughts, but thinking about what we are doing is necessary in order to recalibrate our actions to better align with the results we are after. But, thinking can only take us so far.
Thought. Word. Action.
This is the process of intentional creation as a human, as well as unintentional creation. We create our life based on our thoughts on our experience which create the words that leads to understanding and perspective, which then leads to us acting to build something. This doesn't mean our thoughts or understanding are correct, but our actions will still follow. However, no matter how correct our thoughts and words might be, without action -
Nothing happens.
That is a failure in life, isn't it?
If nothing happened in "life" it would be "death".
All too often I feel that culture today is encouraging us to celebrate the wins, even if the wins are not our own, or they are based on actions that we had no control over. But at the same time, we are not encouraged to recalibrate our actions, and instead we should "accept" ourselves as what we are, and the results we get. But what people fail to understand is, "accepting ourself" isn't the same as liking ourself. There seems to be a lot of people who accept themselves the way they are, but don't like themselves as the way they are. The acceptance is used as an excuse to not recalibrate.
Should we have any expectations?
I don't know. But I do think that if there are at least some healthy expectations, it would be about what we expect from ourselves. Not in terms of results, but in the willingness to try and recalibrate as we go, to always work toward change, a better us and an us that is in harmony with the environment in which we live. This doesn't mean a completely unconflicted life, but when conflict arises, we deal with it with the expectation that we will do our best to improve the situation.
It is great to spend a lot of time thinking about what could and should be done - but time also has to be put into doing it.
Taraz
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