Hello, I’m continuing with my garden series, as I’ve called it. So today, the weather has gone down to 13 degrees, first thing in the morning. So we had 39 degrees the other day.
During the day, global warming is upon us, obviously, to 13 degrees to begin this morning. So it’s chilly, and this is July in Poland, so it’s hard to believe, isn’t it? Well, I finished some work.
My friend has a tomato hothouse, and so I weeded everything. And when I had finished, it took me the better part of four or five hours. When I finished, I was left with a real sense of accomplishment, a very small task, but it made me feel good.
So I thought we’d talk a little bit today about a sense of accomplishment. And I read increasingly that a lot of us feel like victims, if you will. Life is not fair.
So at 22 years of age or so, when I gain consciousness, I gain a sense of existential angst, which we’ve discussed before. I’m afraid. I was too.
Now what? What am I going to do with my piece of life? Well, the easy answer is I’m going to get an education, I’m going to meet a girl and all of those things.
But they don’t really answer the question, do they? No, they don’t answer the question about me, what I am going to do. That’s what you’re going to do, perhaps.
But that’s not really what I want to do. I think I want something else along the way. So once again, I’m going to get my notebook out and I’m going to document my thoughts, my critical thoughts on a daily basis, of course, right?
And slowly, what I’m supposed to accomplish, my mission, if you will, in my life will unfold. And maybe I make some mistakes, maybe this is the wrong mission initially, takes a couple of years to figure out the correct mission, but that’s okay.
That’s okay because eventually you’re going to get on the right path. But along this path, who is talking to you?
And of course, your boss is talking to you, your girlfriend or your wife or your husband or boyfriend, they’re talking to you, you’re getting a lot of praise.
But if you’re not really accepting that praise, you don’t really have a sense of accomplishment, do you? Right? Something that makes my efforts feel good.
Like I really did achieve a minor goal or a major goal in life. So I think we need to develop this dialogue with the self.
Why, once again, there is no one like me. There never has been and there never will be. Now, this seems like a repetitive, idle bit of chatter that I often say, but I really believe this.
And I think if you really reflect for a moment, you know this, you’re unique.
And so in this dialogue that you’re going to have to learn to develop with yourself, you’re going to have to go along, I believe, and learn to accept that sometimes you have done a good job. And people say, no, not good enough or the opposite.
It’s too good. It’s too good a job for what the task at hand was meant to be. That’s also a little bit bizarre, isn’t it?
So if you develop this dialogue with yourself, I think slowly but surely, you will be able to appraise your efforts. And in our very first book, we discussed this concept in one of our latter chapters, Always Excellence. Why not?
The book was a grandfather’s going to die, right? So grandfather is going to give us some wisdom when he’s alive and we want to take it in.
But in that chapter, I think it sums up what Aristotle basically was telling us, that excellence is something we nurture and something we inevitably learn by a repetitive task.
And I’m a big believer in the routine, getting up in the morning, spending a few minutes talking to yourself, consoling yourself that you’re a wonderful person, truly the sense of gratitude that God has given me and another day of consciousness.
Then I, of course, make my bed. In my case, I shave, write in my notebook, have some breakfast, begin the day. A routine.
A routine, I believe, leads itself to excellence. And in my journal, in my daily notebook, I do write down what are my tasks for today. And then at the very end, what did I learn today?
What books am I reading? And I think we consciously have to push ourselves towards excellence, of course, along the way. But this is all summed up by giving yourself a sense of accomplishment every now and then.
Right? Small task, like the tomatoes, like I was discussing, right? Weeding.
Somehow I’m quite a good weeder as such. In my home, when I was growing up, my parents were very black and white. Religious people, but lovely people.
But everyone had a task. So the aspect of taking it easy, or just killing time, or all these expressions, in my world did not exist. Because the little bit of time that you were allowed was also controlled time.
Because I’m of the generation that we got a television, a television, when I was six years old. Now my children don’t believe me. But it’s true.
Six years old. I can still remember the two programs that were on television at that time. The Jetsons, which talked about the future world, and the Lone Ranger.
You can look up these two programs. They’re short stories, if you will, a series that was going on. Really amusing.
But one was promoting the American Dream, of course, and the other was promoting the future. Great stuff for the late 50s, early 60s. And then things, of course, changed.
So now most people are dealing with the technology in AI that is beyond imagination. Today, I was talking to my AI. I’ve named her Zoe, of all things, and we spoke in Polish, in French, and in English, simultaneously, virtually.
So you can see the capacity of what you can do with these new skills. Just amazing.
But this is all based on feeling good about you. I think it’s very important, this concept of self-worth, self-aggrandizement, all these things, without vanity, of course. Hubris is a very dangerous phenomenon.
We see many world leaders, Hitler being one, stumbling into this, to great destruction in the end. We don’t want this, we want to be wise people. But we still want to say, I’ve accomplished something today.
And at the end of the day, many people say we should say some prayers closing the day. Thank you, God, Gaia or the universe, for another day, another day. This evening, just to share, I went to a Catholic church.
And in Poland, these churches are magnificent and they’re full of people, as I’ve mentioned before. It’s amazing, the religious level of this country.
And I don’t quite have the same kind of overall mindset, but regardless, they are impressive to be a part of, right? They really are.
So when you go there, you can say your bit of prayer, and you’re left with a sense of accomplishment for having sat down for a moment, right? So think about this. Every day, I’m going to express gratitude to myself.
I’m going to set out a plan. I’m going to look for something to accomplish, which I will really do my best, always excellence. Why not?
So think of accomplishment. And you know what they say. You know what they say.
Critical thinking is everything, especially if you’re going to find your own sense of accomplishment, because you deserve to have accomplishment. We all do. And critical thinking is great, truly great.
You take care. God bless. Bye bye.