Happiness

Generosity Builds Trust

The art of connection aged in a readiness to consistently Show Up and #GiveFirst, often leads the willing to endless opportunity. Let’s explore the why.

Long story short, generosity builds trust. Such benevolence also instills wonderment from others. When our practice includes perennial actions that accelerate others, the ability to deliver on a promise is proven. This earns credibility and allows curiosity to spark new ways to collaborate, which over time, equates to endless opportunity from/with/for people you trust.

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Delivering on a promise sounds heavy, but passing this test can be as simple as suggesting a strategic introduction and following through, arriving on time, or providing the product/service/value a paying customer expects.

At a community level, when more people assume positive intent, tribes are tightened and become able to support more people with bigger ideas. The vulnerability required may introduce new challenges, but the risk is worth the reward when we’re set free to collectively build at the speed of trust. This can be hard to understand for those who have been hardened by the competitive nature of capitalism, but for those who see through the lens of abundance, when more people find their own definition of success, it translates into fresh ways for everyone to thrive.

By Ben McDougal, ago

One & Only

The weight of one is heavy. Something so rare makes us feel like we only have one chance to get it right. If it’s inanimate, we never want it diminished. If it’s alive, we seek the futile tranquility of immortality.

These desires pressed against the tension of time can make the uniqueness of one feel overwhelming. This can devolve into a fear of change and selfish preservation, but perhaps there is freedom within the timeline of now.

Being present is hard when we’re always reflecting on the past and thinking about the future, but what choice do we have? Altering the past is not an option. All we have is now, and yet, the present never stops passing.

Within this endless transition, gratitude provides peace. It invites us to cherish our one and onlys in life. Such appreciation acknowledges the past, allows the present to be a gift, and instills hope for what’s next. For all that is one and only, I say thank you.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Wayfinders

Startups that pay in love are a blank
canvas that comes to life through us.

By nature, parents want to provide the means for children to go beyond their potential. Family requires immeasurable resources, but the love from our kids unlocks more hours in the day. The added productivity comes from seeing the best of ourselves in someone we care so much about. Purpose is renewed and the heart we put into our creative work can make our presence as parents even more interesting.

Summon Stories

Children grow up fast, so we stay in the moment. Everyone tells us to cherish the simple joys of life, but it may be worth getting a little extra creative. One way to enhance your family’s ability to relive memorable moments, is by using multimedia marketing skills to summon family stories.

Every moment is special. As creation becomes second nature, handpicked memories can be stitched together to revisit interactively, any time, with or without you.

Most of us have an endless collection of photos and video on our smartphone, but scrolling around on a digital device doesn’t translate into something a group can enjoy together. It’s easy for good things to get lost in so much noise and spoken storytelling is always merry too, but why not paint more stories with a few added brushes?

Quiet relics like photo slideshows, something printed that sits beautifully on the shelf, a mix of audio recordings, art on the wall, or a cinematic feature film that highlights your adventures. You’re the creator with endless ways to create.

We all do a form of this, because family is our favorite, but the time required is real. A rigid cadence is not required, since any day is a good day to ship this type of of art. In the early days of photos and video, it was only birthdays and Christmas — now everyday is a holiday. No need to rush, but keep producing new surprises. Everyone will love the end result and as more come together, the growing playlist becomes a sequence of stories that follow kids growing up. With our constant collection of content, a good story is always ready to tell, but at a minimum, why not share an annual gift with your kids, partner, and other loved ones?

Along the way, attentive and controlled organization will make a growing collection of relics easier to craft. This takes an ongoing commitment, but file management is easy and helps bring life to life with shared memories.

Your future self will then thank you for an effort to organize this heartfelt content. Share in public if you want, but that can alter the art if it becomes a show. Do it for yourself and your favorite people first. Organize what will be a massive library offline, then, if you want play with the transitory channels of social media, that’s a personal choice.

No matter who resists whatever it may be, time compiling legacy projects will rarely feel wasted. It’s using our real skills to commemorate those we love. Scanned memories may give us content without capturing it in the future. For now, it’s up to us to trap time for personal storytelling.

Compensation is not money, but this does enhance your content creation skills for other areas in life. Technology also makes editing content more productive, but this is not your average task. This is the type of sincere storytelling you enjoy spending time with.

As kids grow up, these projects will have the lowest view counts, but always be your very favorite. Looking ahead, it’s crazy to imagine being a child right now, then receiving such a gift from my parents someday!

You’ve Got Mail

Consider setting up an email for your little one. This inbox can be used as a communication channel to write to your child as they grow up. Whether you start writing before they are born or later in their life, imagine what a gift this inbox will be in the future! This email address can be shared with family and used for online accounts if you want, but at a minimum, this curates a personalized time machine full of thoughtful updates.

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What’s your favorite parenting tip? Share it as a comment or hit me up!

Along with sentimental content, your kids will appreciate an email address that can be used after childhood. First and last name with your preferred email provider should stand the test of time. This is also a good chance to register a URL using their first and last name. This can connect to their email or support a personal website someday.

Avoid Routine

“Time flies” and “they grow up so fast” is accurate, but avoiding routine may slow down time.

The freedom to be spontaneous is a privilege and everyone will define such flexibility differently, but a proven path to explore such a reality is entrepreneurship. Boundless hard work, dedication, and resiliency are what this lifestyle takes, but suffering provides a stronger sense of purpose.

As this purpose is layered in later stages of life, experiential wisdom can be channeled into more treasured time doing things that make us happy. While hardship is part of the deal, children make their parents happy. Perhaps a reward for parents who lead by example, is the opportunity to share everything with those who matter most.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Lone Wolves

A common misconception is that you must have a team to be successful. There is a limit to your own capacity, but it is possible to build rewarding endeavors all by yourself. Solving complex problems may require co-founders and a larger team, but your passionate dedication is all you need to get started.

Lasting energy is required to forge this path, but without the need to answer to anyone, you can stay nimble and be more efficient by eliminating internal delays. To avoid burnout, you must stay mindful of your personal bandwidth. Self-awareness will help you avoid market disconnects, The Headline Trap, and relationship problems as well.

To coordinate new initiatives into your career portfolio, consider how the project connects to your current work. Clear overlaps can be good, but can also cause unwanted tension. A project less related to your existing work actually makes everything easier to shuffle. Even when projects affect different industries, it’s still you making things happen. The option to build into what motivates you in different ways will energize your work on all fronts. Action on one project will provide fresh momentum for others. Learn when to say yes and no, then wisely activate your time on each front.

As a lone wolf, it’s easy to go hard toward your own dream, but know when you need help. The freedom of working alone is within reach, but execution still requires collaboration. The world is full of friends, community allies, and contractors eager to help. Outside assistance may slow you down, but it won’t dilute equity, and it may be the key to a new reality.

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Need someone to bounce ideas off of? Let’s have coffee.

If you venture out alone, prepare for intoxicating highs and crushing loneliness. The consuming nature of building by yourself will incite grit, but don’t let it blind you. It’s easy to build too far into the wrong direction without a team. This is why community and customer discovery are even more important for lone wolves.

By Ben McDougal, ago

39

It’s my 39th birthday!

I love using birthdays to reflect on what was learned, trying something new, or appreciating memorable moments from the past year. I also like to craft recaps (e.g. 33rd birthday / 2014 recap) for my future self to read. This year, YDNTB is quite the relic to always remember this moment in my life so instead of a personal narrative highlighting the past, let’s lean into the future by exploring the idea of retirement.

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“Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow.” –Naval

I always told myself I wanted to retire in my thirties. Financial advisors are quick to remind us that the golden years of middle class leisure will require around $1 million in savings, but perhaps there’s more to this story.

Yes, the traditional path to retirement is all about earning enough money to cover the burn rate of your life. A second option to realizing financial freedom is to reduce your burn rate to zero, but not many people are cut out to be a monk.

I prefer early retirement in the form of leveraging what you love to do. Similar to what I describe as Career Nirvana, peaceful satisfaction can be achieved when you do something you love so much that it’s not about the money anymore. This doesn’t mean the work stops or that the responsibilities of life fade away. It’s quite the opposite, as more opportunities tend to present themselves when you figure out what you’re best at and map that to what society wants. This forges an abundance of innovative energy you can’t buy. As you collaborate with those who feed off this energy, you soon realize that nobody can compete with being you.

As you build towards such transcendence and realize that a neon future awaits us all, I’ll close with a toast. May the best of your todays be the worst of your tomorrows. Cheers!

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Good, better, best;
Never let it rest,
‘Til your good is better,
And your better is best.

By Ben McDougal, ago