Big Picture and all the Small Details

I'm old enough to remember listening to American Top 40 with Casey Kasem. His signoff was always significant to me "Keep your feet on the ground, but keep reaching for the stars." It's a big tangential but related to this post. Because when you look down at your feet, it's not very far away, it's right beneath you. You can see the detail. When you reach for the stars though, it's expansive, limitless, and requires a telescope to see the details.

I told my wife the other day, after a particularly bad decision I made. Please regularly ask me these two questions:

1) Are you keeping the Big Picture in mind?
2) Do you know all the Small Details?

As it has been said, "You need to know where you are going, to figure out how you are going to get there." I'm good at the Big Picture. Projecting, framing, conceptualizing. I'm also pretty good at Small Details. The minutae, the legalese, the things that can trip you up. But I'm sometimes not so good at keeping those two in balance, and context. I can easily get lost in the visioneering, or bogged down in the small details. So I'm happy that I have a wife who will keep me accountable to these two questions, which really help me make decisions, and proceed with my everyday.

After all, its the daily decisions we make that have a cumulative effect of our life's outcome, in technicolor dynamic real-time.

So ask yourself these two questions today.

Maintenance

Turned forty recently, and almost with clockwork precision:

1) Metabolism slowed down
2) Started to go grey
3) Skin not as bouncy as usual.

When you buy a new car, it comes under warranty for a good deal of time. Services are infrequent, and repairs are minor. Come 150,000 miles, and a many years later, maintenance may need to be more frequent, and repairs get more expensive, as do the accompanying parts.....

So what's my point.....as I ponder mortality for the first time in my life, it's come to my attention, that as we get older, we need to more purposefully take care of ourselves, as our physical selves from here on out may decline at an alarming rate without making an effort to keep things working. Yes, I'm talking about eating better, exercising more, and just paying more attention to upkeep.

Take a house for example. You don't even notice the paint flaking at first, but without attention and maintenance, it will quickly deteriorate.

So do something that's good for your body today. Something healthy. Let' live long and healthy lives.

Cheers

LIFE WITHOUT SEAT BELTS

I'm old enough to remember: laying in the back window shelf...yup, where the speakers are behind the rear seats. Usually I would look up at the sky and occassionally, get car sick looking back at the vehicle following us.

Yes I know Princess Di would probably have survived, if she were wearing her seat belt, and Lord knows how many lives have been saved since the advent of mandatory seat belts.

I have a couple of pet hates: the big food/big pharma/big insurance conspiracy, but namely big insurance. I really don't like insurance companies. For those involved in that industry, or have benefitted from having insurance, I don't intentionally want to offend you.

Now insurance feeds off fear. ie. what if negative scenario analysis. Flood, fire, accident......acts of God. Where maiming gets you more money than dying........where they calculate odds to do with your life/death issues.

Yes, seat belts save lives. And your insurance is lower because of them......

But remember life without seat belts? Unbridled, carefree. Think about it. A life without fear. Full of hope. Full of faith. Full of peace.