Category: reflections

  • Don’t Neglect Small Contributions

    This post is going to be short. It’s my small contribution for the day to people everywhere. I could have chosen to NOT write this post, because it’s really going to be too brief to matter. No one will share links to it claiming it’s a comprehensive guide or the most robust resource available. 

    But I logged into my dashboard and began typing this out because… well, because you exist. You’re out there. And, like me, you might need just a quick shot in the arm this morning. 

    Failure To Start Is Your Enemy

    There are GOOD reasons to not do small tasks. After all, small tasks really don’t create big changes. 

    Or do they? 

    Think of saving money. I’ve always had trouble setting aside $20, $50, or $100 for savings each month because the amount seems so small that it’s not worth the effort. Do you know how long it would take to save enough money to buy a car? Or even just an iPhone? 

    We fail to take small steps because we can’t see what the sum total of those steps will amount to. But if we could peer into the future, we’d see cars purchased, books published, songs recorded, marriages established, and careers launched. 

    It Costs So Little

    Since it costs you so little, why not spend the next 20 minutes writing that page of jumbled words? Why not clean the dishes for the person who has worked a long day? Why not think of something admirable you see in someone and speak it to them?

    100 of those actions leads to a habit. A repeated consisted habit leads to a lifestyle. And a lifestyle shift is what you and I need to accomplish the next great thing in our lives. 

    And it begins today.


  • You Have More Free Time Than You Think

    If there’s any positive I can take from this pandemic, it’s that the mandatory shifts in behavior have jarred me out of my comfort zone enough to allow me to see missed personal opportunities. 

    Everywhere I look, there are things I don’t do because of the things I choose to do. 

    Kris Vallotton shares a story of learning to prune vines in a vineyard when he was much younger, and he reminds us that vines will keep growing and expanding in all directions if left unchecked. 

    Those new branches won’t bear fruit, though, and the whole vine will produce far fewer grapes, unless you prune off the unnecessary growths. 

    The vine uses all its energy producing new vines, and the nutrients and energy are wasted on outward expansion instead of fruit production. 

    grapevines need to be tended and pruned

    Pruning Distractions

    You and me, we’re the same way. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WeChat, Email, text, Netflix, mobile games, Amazon, Pinterest, blogging, shopping, schmoozing… there are endless opportunities to occupy our time. Our time and our focus are the limited nutrients we must choose wisely how to use. 

    If we constantly rush back and forth between this social media app to that, from this game to that streaming video to this selfie, we use that precious time on outward expansion that doesn’t bear fruit. 

    Pruning is saying no

    In this case, pruning is the choice of saying no to distracting activities. You preserve the nutrients of focus and time by pruning off the distractions.

    At one point, I had 15 different blogs on the Web. Fifteen! My wife, on the other hand, has only ever had one blog. How often did she add valuable content to her blog? Several times a week. Guess how often all 15 of my blogs were updated with fresh content? Some never made it past week two post-launch. 

    What I learned is that I am a limited resource. Me. My being, my attention, my effort, my time, and my contribution. These are limited resources. This isn’t like the 90s film Multiplicity where Michael Keaton keeps cloning himself to do more of the daily chores. 

    There’s only one me. There’s only one you. Every time you say “Yes” to something, you say “No” to everything else. In that moment. YES, I will check my Facebook page. That means NO, I will not be writing a new blog post or optimizing our website. YES I will watch a tv show means NO I will not be reading a book. YES I will try to keep up 15 blogs means NO I will not have one blog that is well-developed and full of rich content. 

    YES I will binge an entire season of my favorite show on Netflix means NO I will not take an online course that enhances my professional knowledge base. 

    What will you do with the free time you have available?

    I’m not here to tell you what to do with your free time. That decision is entirely yours. No, I’m here to tell you that you are already making that decision every day, but probably not acknowledging it. And acknowledging reality matters because it empowers you to consider making changes that alter the course of your life.


  • Even In Dark Depression, Hope Springs

    Life introduced me to depression in the second grade. My parents decided to pull us out of the only school I’d ever known and move us to another city. Halfway through the school year. I was placed in an unsafe environment and I was clearly marked as the enemy. 

    Both boys and girls picked on me and started fights at recess. I felt completely alone. I withdrew inside myself.

    I lived in full-fledged depression starting my 8th grade year. I joined the football team a quarter of the way into the season, hoping to fit in better if I was “one of the guys”. Instead, they targeted me during practice and tried to hurt me every chance they could .

    It got so bad I left school to homeschool halfway through the year. I spent the next four months watching ten year old videos of a class in Florida and eating microwaveable mac and cheese. The only upside was getting to watch Mama’s Family and WKRP during lunch.

    I tried another school in 9th grade because my one and only friend was going there. But he became popular quickly and stopped talking to me. I crawled into a little hole and stopped allowing people to know me.

    I demonstrated my depression by choosing the empty table in the cafeteria and refusing to allow sympathetic older girls to pity me. But I was alone. And I knew it. No friends anywhere.

    I had a couple moments of popularity years after high school, but they didn’t last.

    I spent most of college being sneered at by other guys. I honestly don’t know what it was about me. Maybe I wore rejection on my face and that encouraged guys to pounce. 


  • Speak Your Truth, Even If You’re Not Sure What It Is

    Sometimes it’s too hard to find the right words, and you have to just step out and speak your truth regardless.

    I wake up every morning in pain. Not life threatening pain. Just pain that makes it a burden to get up. He kind of pain that many people would consider a valid reason for staying on the couch all day long. Chronic, every step is painful pain. 

    It gets better after I acclimate. Longer than 10 minutes of an activity and my body gets warmed up and he pain lessens. 

    Pain is not my focus, though. Wondering every single day what I SHOULD DO is. That’s the question I ask each and every day, and never really answer. 

    What am I supposed to be doing? After God has declared a general purpose or theme for your life, how do you find your way? 

    Seems like prayer would pay off and bring the answers. But it’s often a mixed bag. Sometimes it seems like there’s no one out there listening. Sometimes it seems like I’m being intentionally refused. 

    And yet each day has to be lived. Whether you know what you’re doing or not. Whether you have a master plan or you don’t.


  • The Most Freedom You’ll Ever Feel Publishing…

    … Is For A Blog That No One Reads

    I know because I’ve been blogging since 2005 – when the rest of you were still designing your MySpace pages (or wetting your diapers). 

    I know because I’ve been blogging for 15 years and this is where I am. Yet another website, but this time completely off grid and unprompted. Literally no one knows that I own this domain. 

    I’m not going for total anonymity. But it’s nice to know that no one on my Facebook page is going to tell me that they can’t believe I’m ___________. 

    I know that blogging is a multi-billion dollar industry. I just also know that all I ever wanted was to connect to other people in a meaningful way without the awkward and unnecessary filtering we do based on physical mannerisms and tone. 

    I’m glad you’re here.


  • The Layman’s Definition of Self-Awareness

    I spent two weeks searching Twitter for regular people talking about self-awareness, and you know what? Basically everyone talking about self-awareness is selling something. 

    Does that surprise you? It does and it doesn’t surprise me. It does, because I wondered what other words regular people are using when they talk about being self-aware. But it doesn’t surprise me because no one I know actually talks about self-awareness. 

    It’s a topic that applies to everyone somehow or another. But we don’t use the official terminology. We talk about self-awareness without using the term. We say things like, 

    • He’s clueless
    • She’s a sensory person, not an intuitive. 
    • He has no clue what’s going on inside his own head. 
    • He’s not emotionally intelligent. 
    • She knows what she wants. 
    • He knows what he’s about. 
    • She’s a people pleaser. 

    These phrases indicate that we are aware of self and self’s effect on other people. We can judge another person as “clueless”, “oblivious”, or “unaware”. But do we really know what the opposite form looks like? 

    Defining Self-Awareness

    Without getting overly institutional, I’ll provide a definition here: Self-awareness is the presence of mind to observe and then evaluate your own motives, prejudices, feelings, desires, beliefs, and ideas.

    A person lacking in self-awareness might rush into decision making without analysis, or avoid resolving conflicts because they don’t know why they said what they said. 

    We need self-awareness in order to be more than pure instinct. It’s not enough to have a logical conversation about a topic and call it a day. We need to have the “why” and “how” and an “are you sure it’s a good idea” conversations with ourselves. 

    Checks and balances. It’s how we take what we’ve learned objectively and apply it to our real daily lives. 

    Self-Awareness Informs Trust 

    Trust is the most critical factor in social interaction. I have to trust your personal values and decision making enough to cohabit the same space without a kevlar vest. I don’t know you on the inside, so how do I know that I can trust you? 

    We make assumptions every single day and hang our lives on these assumptions. We trust that our neighbor won’t lose their mind over a trash can that fell over into their yard and start firing their shotgun at the neighboring houses. We trust that the children next door won’t assault ours as soon as they’re together outside. We trust that the policeman won’t attack us or steal from us when we obediently pull our vehicles over to the shoulder. [tweet_box]Self-Awareness is the presence of mind to observe and then evaluate your own motives, prejudices, feelings, desires, beliefs, and ideas. #selfawareness #aselfobserved[/tweet_box]

    Trust is what allows us to share space and resources with others. Without trust, society cannot function. And when you become aware that a person lacks self-awareness, your ability to trust them declines dramatically. 

    You wouldn’t put your baby in a zoo cage with a gorilla. You wouldn’t put your family’s savings in the hand of a thief. You wouldn’t allow your daughter to go on a date with a criminal. You wouldn’t sign a contract with someone who doesn’t honor their word. 

    Trust is the foundation of society. The presence of self-awareness is the currency by which we decide to give someone a chance to prove themselves trustworthy. 

    I have dedicated my life to self-awareness because I watched young men behave like fools to impress young women, and I saw right through their flattery and promises. I wished that the most outgoing and confident among us would also be the most honest and trustworthy. Sadly, that has never proven to be the case. 

    If you are reading these words, then I pray you will examine your motives, your choices, your responses, and your avoidances, and after investigating the why and cross examining them, determine with all sincerity whether your approach needs to change.


  • COVID-19 Has Proven How Similar We All Are To Celebrities

    I’m watching Megyn Kelly interview Tara Reade on Instagram. Earlier I watched clips of late night show hosts talk informally from their homes. There’s something about simple video production that makes celebrities seem so much more normal. 

    The angles, lighting, and overall quality are much closer to what we all experience when we share our own lives on social media. And these are the cream of the crop, reduced to FB Live and ZOOM calls for publicity. 

    The world feels just a little bit smaller. The gap between the haves and have nots just a little bit smaller. We’re all human after all. 

    My life doesn’t change knowing that. But I’m not as second-class as I once felt. 

    So there’s that.


  • Do You Overshare or Undershare Your Feelings?

    During the stay-at-home orders, it’s easier to see which side of the emotion sharing fence people live on. More than ever, neighbors and friends are calling each other to check in and see how the people in their lives are doing. 

    But who’s really telling the truth? How many people out there are one week away from no groceries or a month away from foreclosure and they never say a word? 

    On the other hand, there are people you and I follow who share every possible problem, concern, or discomfort they feel. Oversharers is what I call them. Their oversharing is not limited to emotional venting, but it’s the most uncomfortable part. 

    Do I need to know that your neighbors won’t park on the driveway? Or that the organic produce you ordered was delivered overripe? 

    Even if we’ve never defined it, I think we all carry an awareness of some sort of unspoken rule about how much sharing is too much. But maybe our measuring sticks are just really different. 

    How Much Sharing Is Too Much?

    There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to how much is too much. Some comedians make a career from complaining about mundane details and personality quirks. New moms are another group who probably should be granted a free pass. Even if we don’t want to know every detail, you’ve been through enough to earn a pass. 

    But rather than assigning a random measurement of oversharing, let’s cover some basic rules to consider: 

    If you are guilty or think you might be guilty of Oversharing: 

    • Are your friends going to lose respect for you after seeing your update? 
    • Will you feel embarrassed later when someone mentions it? 
    • Will your closest friends or family feel disrespected by what you’re sharing? 

    Start with those three. If you can eliminate those three types of posts, you’ve made signifiant strides toward eliminating Oversharing. 

    How Much Sharing Is Too Little? 

    I know some people who are week-to-week right now. They’re not sure what they’ll get to eat next week, and they’re not talking about it. 

    You ever have neighbors offer to help you move into your new house, but instead of taking them up on it, you either moved by yourself or paid to have total strangers do it for you? 

    Is that pride or dignity? 

    Could be either. 

    But if you are struggling right now and people are reaching out to check on you, don’t act like everything is fine if it’s not. There is a healthy middle ground between asking for handouts and never acknowledging weakness. 

    Remember: Sharing IS caring.


  • When I don’t express my gratitude in any given situation, it’s not because I can’t. I’m never forcibly prohibited from thankfulness. It’s a choice. I used to tell myself that I couldn’t be thankful during the bad times. Whether because I feel like it’s not fair, it’s not just, or it’s not kind. Or I tell myself that I’m not glad this is happening. So what? 

    I don’t HAVE to NOT be thankful. So when I’m not, it’s because I choose to not be. And since thankfulness is ALWAYS within my power, there is no limit to the things I can choose to be thankful for. 

    It’s up to me.

    Daniel Dessinger


  • Is It Love? Or Blood Sugar?

    Have you ever felt a sudden swoon of warmth and affection and immediately professed your love and affection to someone? You know, sometimes it’s so hard to feel the affection you’ve felt before for a spouse, child, or loved one. Sometimes affection seems so easy and close at hand. Others, it’s a distant memory you try to reinstitute through ritual or practice.

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