Speak the Same Understanding

Hi, 

In my undergrad, I studied history, and I was thinking about one of my favorite moments with a professor today. So I thought I would share. 

I found myself reflecting on this story as I navigate being back in the traditional working world. Before I left corporate America to work full-time on The Hero’s Journal, I had a lot of rules for my mornings. 

• Be awake before 6am. 

• Don’t look at your messages or notifications before 7am. 

• Listen to Music with no words.

• Read. 

• Move your body. 

• Coffee with no sugar. 

Honestly, these were all pretty great morning rules, but as I worked for myself they all started to drift away. I would have periods where I held onto them, and others where they were nonexistent. 

The issue wasn’t just dealing with having complete autonomy, the issue was remembering the rules, but not re-understanding why I put them into place in the first place. 

When I worked for someone else, I was adamant on one thing, “if I own my morning, it is impossible for me to have a bad day because I already had a good day by the time the ‘bad thing’ happened.”

As the structure faded away, so did my understanding of the necessity of the rules and the ethos for how I wanted to live my days. 

Now, do ethos’ change? Of course, there may be principles that guided you well for a period that no longer apply. That’s perfectly normal, and honestly a good thing. 

Some of my above rules don’t apply to me anymore, such as getting up before 6am. I start work at 5am so if I didn’t do that I wouldn’t have a job anymore. I am still doing it, but if I didn’t I wouldn’t have a job. 

Coffee with no sugar? Sometimes I like to make a latte, I didn’t have an espresso machine when I first made that rule. 

You get the idea. 

I am going to end with this.

There are going to be times in your life where you have to do things that are different from your norm. Sometimes they will be more difficult, sometimes they will be more lenient. One day after those moments, you will look back and remember those actions, but you may not be considering why you had to do the things you were doing. 

If you are demonizing your current self based on previous actions, you are not re-understanding the context that made those actions necessary. 

When you lack understanding, you lack connection, when you lack connection you misinterpret, when you misinterpret you make ill-informed decisions or judgements. 

Remember, in the same way that your future self may misunderstand your current situation, your current self has no way to understand your future circumstances. 

Be kind to your current self, your past self, and your future self. They are doing the best they can with their current understanding. 

I got an A- on that paper in case any of you were wondering. 

Hope you had a great weekend, 

Kyle