Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

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Ducks

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Tomorrow, you’ll get started. You’ll finally have enough information. You just need a little more time. A little more knowledge. Less fear. More courage.

Tomorrow that person will be helpful. The world around you will organize itself in way that the stars, your stars, are aligned.

Then you’ll have the insight. The pattern will finally be clear. The ducks will be in a row.

If you’re waiting for tomorrow, then you can be sure of 2 things:

1. It will never come

2. You will waste today.

A row of ducks, after all, is imperfect. So you may as well start today, because the only thing tomorrow has that today doesn’t, is your attention.

The ceiling and the walls

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Most people know about the ceiling, but whether you realize it or not, the walls are there too.

We don’t hear much about the walls because we’re often looking up, hoping for height, when perhaps a little breadth might do the trick.

The ceiling may be high, and the walls are harder to move. But hard isn’t impossible, and the walls can still close in on you.

The first thing to keep in mind is that you can design your room however you choose – after all a beautiful space that people appreciate will do more for you than one smeared in frantic, haphazard colors of protest.

But if your ceiling is low, and your walls are close, and then someone starts to critique your design, the second thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to live in someone else’s house, you can build your own.

Hints

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It took me a while to trust my gut. After I’d make a choice, there seemed to be something there that would agree or disagree. It’d be wrong to call it a whisper that grew louder. It feels more accurate to call it an ambient sense that, once I paid attention to it, became a trust-worthy hint.

Interestingly, as I trust it more, and as I concurrently learn and develop skills, so too do the hints seem to improve. I also learned I don’t need more information or more hints to do a thing, but I do find that hints stick around if ignore them. If the hints are sticky, that tends to mean I need to take action on them.

Sometimes the hint is that I should call or text someone. Sometimes it’s that I should step away from a reaction. Still other times the hint has a grandiose plan or a minuscule inclination – either way the outcomes are interesting.

If you’re like me – you know hints don’t make things easier. Hints aren’t short-cuts and sometimes they cause introspection that is both necessary and scary.

These days though, I’m glad to get hints either way.