I find myself doing it all the time. It is habitual, at least it seems to be for me.

I have a task that needs to get done I never seem to jump to doing it right away. I love to procrastinate, to think of something better to do. To not finish a project or not meet a deadline. Those things happen and I can come up with reason after reason about why I became distracted, why I didn’t finish the job I started. Reasons I always called them. My Dad always called them excuses.

I think he was closer to the truth.

All these reasons, these excuses were so rehearsed, so planned that I began to believe them. I bought into them until they were the reality and I wasn’t able to see past them. Was it out of guilt that I bought in so hard? So I may be able to live with the fact I failed? Maybe. I think It was just impossible to think in terms of failure.

Sometimes we need to realize those failures to get up and move forward. And the one thing that I have realized is that I can choose what to buy. I can buy the lies I tell myself  about not being able to finish or I can fight to the goal and not let my own head get in the way.

Attitude is everything. Focusing on the “how” will always get you further than dwelling on the “why not”

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” -Aristotle

Habits are interesting.

They way we cling to a certain thing, as it slowly becomes our life. (Or at least a major part of it) I also find it funny the way one habit builds off of a current one.

Like the way I made it a habit to sleep in. Then the habit of laziness formed. Then the habit of lowering expectations. I have heard it said that “You are what your repeatedly do”. Then at this moment I am a lot of things I do not want to be. And the funny thing is, that the person I am is the one who needs to break me out of those.  And I think I am ready.

We will find by what I repeatedly do, wont we?

Many people say they want to be successful, I would go out on a limb and say that all people want to be successful, at something. I for example want to be successful at many things, like being a great friend or a good student. Someday I would love to be a successful Dad and husband. The key to all of this coming true is confidence.

Think about it. It is impossible to be successful for any substantial amount of time if you are not confident.

I often talk to people who are darn good at what they do however the often approach talking about themselves and their work as sub-par. This I believe comes from a few places. First is that we are all our own worst critics, obviously. Every blog post I put up or song I write I know is not my best work, or should i say the best work I will put out. Many people try so hard to reach the ideal of the best they will ever be right now. The fact of the matter is that you will not do your best, right now. You have room to grow, room to stretch your talents and abilities to get them to a better place in the future.

Secondly, it is because of what I call “Misguided humility”. You have people that think it is humble to call the things they put out trash and garbage and “not really all that great” as they avoid eye contact with their hands in their pockets and playing with the dirt with their foot. Not is not being humble. You can be confident and humble, it is an interesting pair, but the two together are something no one can stop. If you wrote something and you are proud of it, show it to people. When you finish a song, play it for people. Don’t look them in the eye and say “this is the best thing you will ever hear, better than anything you can come up with.” But a little confidence goes a long way.

Henry Ford said it best. “Whether you think you can’t or you think you can; you’re right.” Many people are successful at failing, and those are the people most confident in the fact they will fail.

Confidence is not the only thing you need to succeed, but apart from it, real success rarely happens.

Got it?

That thing, that passion and love, the thing you enjoy more than anything else. Is it always easy to do? Is it always simple and effortless? I think we all know the answer to that question is no. If it is not always easy and sometimes a struggle than why do we do it?

I was having a conversation this week with a friend of mine and we got to talking about learning new things, things we love to do and getting better at them. his example was language and mine music. When you are learning to speak a new language, it is difficult. You love the speaking in a different tongue, the communication with people you otherwise would have no way of communicating with, but it hurts. At first it is fine, you can ask for the bathroom and rattle off verbs in a sentence that make you sound like you know, but if you want to be fluent, it takes more. You have headaches after speaking like that for a whole day because your brain can not just coast at first. You are constantly in thought, constantly thinking.

I am learning to play the guitar. It is fun, easy at first. I have a few chords and with the help of a capo I can cheat to make those 4 sound different enough that I seem to be better than I am. That isn’t good enough though. I love music and I want to play more so I play and play and play. Hands cramping, fingers bleeding. It hurts and I don’t want to pick it up again, but I do. Why? Why do you speak in another language the day after you went to bed with a headache from trying so hard the previous day? When the honeymoon of something “new” is over, why push it to where it could hurt.

I would say it is because the things that are worth fighting for hurt. They can be painful. They can make your head throb and your hands bleed. However, in the end, you are glad you did.

Discipline has never been one of my strong suits. I am not one who is known for following through on commitments, I tend to let people down. It is something I live with, daily. I have failed more endeavors than I can count and I was beginning to think that was the definition of me, but something in me looks out at all the people accomplishing things. Not just things, they are living their dreams, finishing goals. Pushing past the pain and into the land of victory. Now somethings are never totally past the point of pain, there is always work to be done to push forward, but I haven’t seen that land and I am ready to step in.

I am pushing through, the honeymoon is over and I am okay with that. The fulfillment comes after the honeymoon anyway.

This may not seems super impressive to anyone and maybe this is just me rambling on something everyone knows. Well hopefully it will be a reminder.

Love matters. Love is important. We are creatures that need love.

I realized those things this week in the celebration of my birthday, I just turned 24 and I had a party on Friday night to celebrate. Now I did not put this party on it was my sister that did it, and there was a large group of people who came. We had pizza, beer and lots of music. I have never in my whole life felt as loved as I did that night. Think back on my birthday this year I realize that I have received the least amount of gifts compared to any other birthday and yet it has been the best birthday that I have ever had.

Love abounded and I felt it.

We all need love, we all crave it and we search for it in many different ways. It is my belief that love is a communicable attribute that we share with God. We have love because he is complete love, pure love. We reflect that imperfectly (because we are imperfect) but we do our best to reflect love. I have felt the love being reflected from many people and I want to continue reflecting it on.

Love is a quality that should always abound. I hope you get the chance to experience it too.

Yes, I do.

Thinking back to the past 23 years of my life I realize there are few times where I have just taken an issue and accepted it. Especially when the issue is a wrong or a problem in the world, I am not able to just accept and turn on auto pilot. My mind will not allow for me to be fed the “right” answer, I have to figure things out for myself. To stumble, struggle, wrestle with the truth to find out what it actually is.

Now this is not something for everyone, not all people are built this way. There is nothing wrong with being easier to accept, God has made us all different ways. What I am saying is that I love the struggle and I need it to come to the answers I feel are my own. I know there are issues that are black and white, some things are cut and dry and I am not trying to question those things. What I am trying to do is take the grey area in the middle and stand there, get dirty, and figure out the best answer to the questions posed. I am trying to pose questions to continually grow.

The more you work, struggle and fight against the preconceived notions the stronger you get. There are things I have been through, times of my life that sucked and were hard, but I would not give those up for anything. I am a stronger, smarter person because of that. I had to struggle, I needed to experience the struggle.

I am never going to be done wrestling, struggling or fighting. I will always have something that is going to be requiring my attention because I am not going to be one to atrophy and grow lazy. Nor do I want to be the one who builds up walls to keep other people out. I am ever-growing.

Ever learning.

Ever struggling.

creativity.

As I was sitting in the lawn of Kuyper today, I saw a group of kids hanging out. They were running around, climbing trees and just having a good time. I heard one little girl tell her older sister to be the out of towner coming around a new place, the little brother was going to be the house help and she was going to be the head of the house hold. They played out that scenario for a while and then they were running around and hunting in the woods for an invisible animal and calling out to each other in a language they made up.

These kids could be looked at as weird (it kinda was at times), but I saw it as amazing. They were role-playing, having fun. Going into a world in their head and committing 100% to what they were doing; having fun.

We can’t be kids at all times, but we need to find the moments to get back to playing in the grass. My Dad did this last night, at a concert in Grand Ledge. A group preformed a jingle medley and ended with asking the crowd to join in with them singing the old Faygo jingle. I had no clue what the tune was, but as I looked over my mom to see my Dad, mouthing every word. He had this smile across his face and his eyes were brighter than the lights shining on the people on stage. I pictured my Dad in 1973; a 9-year-old kid in overalls, sitting on the shag carpet indian style, singing along with the TV, waiting for his favorite show to come back on. He was a kid in that moment and went from Fred to Freddy and the joy was visible.

Lately I feel like I have personally been getting back to the kid in me. I have been focusing on the things that bring joy to my life and committing to them 100%. Now I know I am not able to be in “kid mode” all the time, but in the past month I have seen live music, rolled down a hill, played frisbee, looked at clouds and played in the rain.

Take time to be a kid. Bang on pots and pans. Blow bubbles in your milk. Fly a kite.

Do that and try not to smile; it’s harder than you think.

That night I was meeting them at this little place called The Meanwhile in Grand Rapids and I am living about a 30 minute walk away from there. I made the decision that i was going to walk there instead of asking for a lift and I set out on my journey and was surprised at the things I was beginning to notice on my way. Houses that I had never seen, people who were interesting to watch, businesses I never knew existed. I have driven down this road many times, ran down it as well but i was so focused on my end goal, I lost sight of what was in front of me.

sit and be.

This morning in the park there was a man watching the water, sitting on a stool, next to the bike he rode there. This man was breathing it in. He was sitting and being. Just being.

Now I know I talk a lot about going and doing, not sitting and relaxing, but this is not me talking from a point of doing it right all the time. This is me saying that I need at times to breathe deep and I think you could too.

That is what I am doing at this moment, pondering the question, “How did I get here?” And I am just in awe of the way that things have been weaved together in my life.

The technical theological term is the Sovereignty of God: the way God has weaved things together to bring me to the place I am today. The thing I love is that it is not void of my choices, as a matter of fact I think it is made completely of my choices. Little by little and big by big, these choices have shaped the man who I am right now, living in the place that I am living in right now.

Want your mind blown? Think of your job right now (or school choice right now for those not working). How did you choose that job? What choices did you make to get you to know about that job (or school) in the first place? What if you wouldn’t have talked to that person at the party and they wouldn’t have told you about the job opening? Or what if you would not have chosen to talk to that guy in your Comm class freshman year that invited you to that party, where you talked to that guy, who told you about the job opportunity, that you applied for, took the job, moved to Arizona, found a better job, where you then met your wife?

All hypothetical, but still the little choices we make end up effecting the next choices. Each decision has multiple decisions that come along with it. And you close of some paths with that decision.

None of this is anything new to most of you, but I am in awe as to how little things do make a difference. It makes me want to be even more intentional with my life. Nothing is separate from anything else; everything is connected. Some decisions have a small ripple and some make a big splash, but nothing is completely separate from the next thing. While we can not play at exactly what each decision may mean, I hope we at least can realize that we need to not fall too quickly into auto-pilot because things do matter.

Be intentional. It is the best decision you can make today.

Don’t trust me? Just ask Princeton, they did the study.

But seriously, think about it for a second. You grab things from the people you hang out with, if it is a mannerism, a phrase or even a belief or state of mind. If you have friends that love music and have a passion to look for new music, you in turn are affected by that and may look for new music. If you have friends that use certain terminology (the phrase Cowabunga for instance), you tend to pick that up.

All that is good, but what about the deep stuff? If you hang out with someone who has a drive towards goals, will that rub off? What if you hang out with people who have the ability to find the silver lining, or are self-sacrificing? Do you take those trends? Or even if you have glass-half-empty people surrounding you–the type that consistently complain and seem to find no fulfillment in anything–do  you start to adapt to them?

The answer to all of this is yes.

And that adds a level of responsibility that we all have, but few of us take seriously. We are all incredibly contagious and, unlike a disease that may have the same ability to be passed on, we can choose what we pass on. I have said it before, the power of the mind is an amazing thing and we can not take this for granted.

You have the ability everyday to choose how you will affect the 7 people around you. Choose to be the good kind of contagious.