'No doubt I should have begun hunting a job at once, but I was hungry for books, anxious to be learning, so I rented a room in a small hotel close to the library and divided my time between it and the shelves of second - hand bookstores close by.'
Louis L'Amour, Education of a Wandering Man: A Memoir
'Win the morning, Win the day,' so says Gary Keller, leader in chief of the largest Real Estate Company in the present world, time stamp April 9, 2023. Currently employed there, we spend quite a bit of our days, searching for the key to success-- not just financial, but in all aspects of life. It is not mistake that I enjoy the work I do that is daily shaped by the question, 'what are you reading?' At Christmas, our Market Center owner's, Brian & Marci Fair, graciously bestowed a stack of 10 of the most amazing books upon each of the members of the Leadership Teams from each of their owned KW Market Centers. My current read: 1000+ Little Things Happy Successful People Do Differently was one of those 10 books. A book of lists is not my usual jam, but Marci (who selects the books) knows her stuff-- this book is excellent. Snippets of thought, plugged in like a daily flip calendar. I've been daily reading just a couple of pages at a time. It's excellent.
I've also been using the Bible App on my phone to encourage the habit of daily reading. I didn't complete the read-in-a-year program, so I've just gone back and filled in what I missed, days I missed. But sticking with it, just reading.
The aspect of a daily 'check list' is not lost on me. For years, throughout school, I had a flip steno pad, used as a daily assignment list. It worked. Working full-time now, with technology leading the way, I'm continually challenged, going back and forth between lists I write down and lists I put in my 'Keep' in google. But progress. Working towards efficiency, faster without losing the quality.
I am reminded that 'We memorize to contemplate,
Learning moves at a different pace. The concept of learning by heart, memory, internalizing a concept or a precept. But does it? Those who operate and work at high production or at a high level in leadership will tell you, it's the daily habit that defines the trajectory of one's life. Always being in a hurry does not a successful outcome make. The correlations are visible to who knows what concept can be found on what page of the MREA, and on what page the solution can be found in SHIFT. And how we all lean into Atomic Habits.
Ultimately, we realize, every subject has a liturgy. And if we do not carefully choose the tools we use to measure our learning or consider carefully our ultimate purpose in the learning of a given subject, our efforts may not meet the objective we were ultimately hoping to achieve. Perhaps our objectives are deeper understanding of life, in order to live more in accordance with what God would have us be. Perhaps our objective is to leave a poor choice of habit behind, and our focus must be to eliminate- and we focus on what will fill that void.
No matter what it is is-- it must have a point where the passion of the soul is stirred, where one must touch the inner most of the mind, and experiences the letting go of the schedule, the list, the box checking. Where one let's go of everything else in order to grab hold of that One Thing. One of the Andrew's describes the common error best:
'In our rush for output, we skip the non-quantifiable, but essential step of contemplation.'
And another of the Andrew's(Kern) conversing with Wes Callahan,
'We memorize to contemplate, not to show off.'
from 'A Perpetual Feast, 2018.
In all of the How, the habits, the schedules, the letting go-- I will suggest that the WHAT and WHO matter as well. To be focused just on methodology is lacking if the object of our affection is poorly chosen. To know how we learn best, the depths of our mind's capability and the capacity of our heart- and not KNOW the ONE WHO designed and made us is of the Greatest importance.
Just because something is old doesn't make it important-- but something that gives greater connectivity to Ancient and Transcendent-- this is the What and the WHO worth our time.
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Today, my mind is skipping about. And that's ok. It is Easter. It is Dad's birthday. It is Sunday. Transitions of life are everywhere. All the memes that speak to me are about aging and gray hair. I enjoy holding my cat and changing out the cute seasonal yard signs like old women do. But the enemy is at the gate, and it is far from time to resign responsibility and purposeful action. The HOW matters. The WHAT is self-evident. The WHO has always been and will always be.
Keep reading, friends.
