How Ordinary Lives Create Extraordinary Good

 

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Grandma Vera wasn’t much taller than the organ she loved to play that sat in her living room. Grandma seated at the organ is a recurrent childhood memory.

She’d been playing the organ since she was a young girl, and even as an adult her hands were so small she had to stretch to reach the chords she loved. She played the organ at home all the time, but it was her service in her church that is a hallmark of her life.

Over the years, her music became the soundtrack of people’s grief and remembrance. I think the final count was seventy-two funerals. Seventy-two families that wept while she played, her music sustaining them in their loss. She never asked for thanks. She just showed up, sat down, and played.

Cancer finally took Grandma’s ability to play, but not before her final arrangement. At her own funeral, her recorded sounds played for the seventy-third time.

My grandma was never famous. She never really even sought recognition. Yet thousands of people left those funerals feeling comfort, peace, or just the warmth of grandma’s gift as she sat behind the organ.

For some time before she passed away, I had the privilege of living with Grandpa Tom and Grandma Vera. They, like their son (my dad), are some of my heroes.

Applause doesn’t typically accompany the music at funerals, but Grandma’s music was never about applause; it was about showing up for the people who needed her. That’s really the power of ordinary lives: their influence is rarely seen, but never insignificant.

The Power of Unseen Influence

Quiet, unassuming people, like Grandma Vera, are often the ones whose unseen efforts hold the world together. They give, serve, and love without expectation of recognition, yet their quiet influence supports almost everyone who has accomplished great things.

In Middlemarch, George Eliot wrote:

…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

The Myth of Monumental Achievement

We remember and celebrate the names that fill history books, but they aren’t the only ones who shape the world. It’s also built by the millions “who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

If you’ve ever stayed to watch the credits of a blockbuster movie, you can see that thousands of people work to make those movies a success. In a movie like Avengers: End Game, people are going to remember the performances of the major on-screen characters, but nobody outside of Amanda Akins’ family and friends will remember her role as dimmer tech on that film, yet important aspects of the movie’s lighting would be off without someone filling her role.

Multiply Ms. Akins’ role almost 3,000 times and you have the crew required to make Avengers: End Game a reality. Great as the actors may be (or not), the movie wouldn’t exist without the efforts of thousands of mostly anonymous people.

The world loves a hero’s journey, and because the stories appear to involve relatively few people, they’re easier to remember, but perhaps we’ve had it backwards all along. The world, for the most part, doesn’t run on heroes. It runs on ordinary, faithful lives, and always has.

The Ripple Effect of a Hidden Life

Now, just because most people won’t be remembered by millions (or even hundreds) doesn’t mean their influence disappears. Just like ripples in a pond, their quiet contributions extend far beyond what they or we ever see.

Grandma Vera had a profound impact on me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been dutiful about making my bed, but Grandma Vera taught me how to really make a bed. She could easily have taught a masterclass to hotel staff about how to make a bed look crisp.

I also learned a lot from her about quiet, anonymous acts of service. Apart from the time she spent playing to organ for so many funerals, Grandma was active in the community and could often be found taking her aging friends to this or that doctor’s appointment.

Grandma V died just two days before Christmas in 2006, but I think about her all time. I think about how much she loved all her grandchildren. Her love extended far and wide, but so many of the people she touched never even knew her name.

Grandma Vera

Redefining Success and Legacy

Like him or hate him, I’m impressed by what Bill Gates has accomplished in his life. I’ve just started reading his memoire Source Code. While I admire him, I’ve never met him nor do I suppose I ever will. Bill Gates probably won’t ever know my name and he certainly wouldn’t mourn for me when I die.

It’s fine to be influenced and inspired by the accomplishments of great people, but I think it’s time for us to refocus our energy on remembering the people who have made the biggest difference in our lives. When I consider the depth of impact, the influence of Grandma V on my life reaches broader and deeper than any celebrity ever could.

Looking forward, perhaps it’s time to realize that success isn’t about how widely known we are, but about the profound influence we have on others. Success is also in remembering the sacrifices that were made by others, our own unsung heroes, to get us where we are.

Stop Asking for Permission. Start Acting.

 

Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

Michael Lim once wrote, “Asking for permission is fear disguised as a question.”

October 30, 2024, dawned cold. I woke up at my habitually early hour and sent the following message to my partners at the company I helped found as the minority owner.

A text is not the way to deliver this news but I want to give you both some time to process before we’re together.

I’m tendering my resignation with my last day of employment set at January 31, 2025. You’ll have my resignation letter by Monday at the latest.

I’d been sitting on this text for weeks before I sent it. Of course, a text isn’t the right way to resign from a company you helped found, but I’m not good with confrontation, and I worried how my business partner of fifteen years would take it if I dropped that bombshell on him in person. I knew he was going to need time to process without me in the room, so I settled on the text.

Truth is, I’ve wanted to start a software development company since before I met my current business partners. An awarded software project and a few circumstances at the day job precipitated the text after months of trying to juggle essentially two full-time jobs.

There were times when I felt stuck in my job, doing so much work relative to my compensation. I begged for help for more than fifteen months before we finally hired someone to help me do my job. Now, there are ten people doing the jobs I was doing alone less than two years ago.

I can’t call what happened between June and October 2024 a leap. It was more like a crawl toward doing what I’ve wanted to do for a decade and a half. If I’m honest with myself, I was waiting for someone to give me permission. Fear kept me stuck, waiting for a green light that was never going to come on its own.

I spent weeks drafting that simple text message, hesitating over and over to send it. But, waiting for the perfect way to leave would have meant not leaving.

The Drive to Do Something Else

The something else doesn’t have to be about work. Perhaps it’s about getting back in shape or fixing a troubled relationship. For me, I spent a long time telling myself I was building toward something, that eventually the time would be right. Financial security is important, and with five children — one getting married soon — that security has been more important than ever. Really, though, that’s just an excuse. I wasn’t somehow going to be more ready. I was waiting for someone to tell me that it was okay to go.

No one ever would.

So it was that I sat with that text, typing and deleting, drafting and redrafting. It was a single message, but in a way, it was my permission. The minute I sent it, I wasn’t waiting anymore.

I was acting.

The Reality of Taking Action

With age comes acceptance of the reality that rarely will anyone tell you when it’s time to take action. You just have to decide for yourself.

The minute I sent that text, I felt a rush of relief accompanied by something I didn’t expect. It was a weird mix of liberation and uncertainty. I was at peace with my decision, but had I just made the best decision of my career or my worst? Maybe both.

I went to the office that morning after giving the message some time to sink in. There was plenty of awkwardness in the office that day. Later, however, I had the chance to visit with my partners. I got to explain my motivations.

We’ve worked together a long time and have, for the most part, gotten along pretty well. So, it was hard for both of them to hear that news but they were both supportive of my decision. We’ve done things to smooth the transition even more and they’ve continued to be happy for me.

The morning following that conversation, I woke up at the same early hour, but something was different. I wasn’t beholden to the same obligations, but not because the work had changed at all. It’s because I knew my partners and I were already starting to make plans for my transition away. No new requests were piling up that I knew I would never get the resources to accomplish.

I’m approaching 50 years old, but I still won’t pretend that acting without permission is easy for me. It’s uncomfortable. It’s uncertain. It’s a bit like standing on the edge of a cliff about to jump into deep water with no idea how cold it is. But, you know you have to jump. Hesitating only prolongs the inevitable.

As I said, no one was ever going to give me permission to leave. No one was ever going to tell me, “Now is the time.” That moment only arrived when I chose to create it myself.

Question is: are you waiting for a green light that will never come? If you are, maybe it’s time to stop asking and start acting.

What Will You Do When You Achieve Failure?

 

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash

My first bicycle was pink.

After some upgrades and a paint job, my bike and I became inseparable. I rode that bike everywhere. There were vast fields to the west of my childhood home where I could ride that bike into the foothills of the Oquirrh Mountains.

On a particular afternoon, I came racing home from somewhere. I remember having feelings of elation though the reason for my abundant happiness has been lost to time.

I was riding my bike down the hill by my home, pumping my fists in the air — neither hand on the handlebars. Momentum steered my bike in a straight course right up to the instant I hit some loose gravel in the street.

Faster than I could react, my front tire flipped hard to the right and I found myself flying through the air. Somehow, I got my left arm in front of me before I hit the road. I slid perhaps ten or fifteen feet with my left palm, elbow, and left knee pressed firmly against the road.

Incredibly, my head never hit the ground which was good because bike helmets were not commonplace at that time.

No bones broke and no stitches were required. I did have some gnarly-looking road rash on my elbow for several weeks following the incident and I remember my mom having to pick and dig rocks out from under my skin.

It was the most spectacular crash I ever had on that bike, but it certainly wasn’t the last.

That wreck taught me a valuable lesson: some times were safer than others to ride without hands on the handlebars. I also learned how bad it hurts to have someone dig rocks out of your skin.

Of course, those aren’t lessons I anticipated learning that day in that way. Otherwise, I probably would have kept my hands on the handlebars. Physics is a brutal teacher sometimes and often when least expected.

We don’t often think of achieving failure. However, when failure becomes a mode of learning and progressing, it is an achievement of sorts. It’s the failure that results in giving up that’s the only real failure.

After that crash, I didn’t give up riding. I healed, I learned some important lessons, and I rode again. That failure wasn’t an end for me. It was a checkpoint. I knew there was freedom that came from riding a bike, and that meant enough to me to get back on the bike as soon as my injuries had healed.

The same holds true well beyond childhood scrapes and bruises. In life, we hit gravel we didn’t see coming often. We get thrown off course. Sometimes, we walk away with nothing more than a few scrapes. Other times, we feel like we’ve crashed so hard that getting up seems too painful or even seems impossible.

Just like that wreck, though, failure isn’t always the disaster it seems in the moment. Sometimes, it’s the thing that teaches us what we wouldn’t have learned otherwise — the hard, unavoidable lessons that can shape us. And if we let it, failure becomes part of the ride rather than the reason we stop pedaling.

We spend so much time chasing success that we rarely stop to consider what happens when we achieve failure: when our best efforts don’t work, when the plan falls apart, when the outcome we were afraid of becomes reality. Does failure mean we’ve reached an end — the end — or does it open doors we never would have seen otherwise?

Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, The Help, was rejected 60 times before it finally got published. Many authors would have given up after the first dozen rejections, but she kept revising, submitting, and improving. When the book was finally published, it spent more than 100 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and became an Academy Award-winning film.

Vera Wang was once a competitive figure skater with dreams of making the U.S. Olympic team. She trained relentlessly, but despite her best efforts, she failed to qualify. Heartbroken, she shifted her focus to fashion, eventually becoming one of the most influential bridal designers in history. If she had succeeded in figure skating, the world may never have seen her groundbreaking designs.

Crashing my bike didn’t lead me to some great discovery, but the point is that there are lessons to learn from our failures. Rarely do those lessons have widespread impact on others as in the eventual successes of Stockett and Wang. Most of the time, they become the vast array of experiences that make us who we are.

Failure isn’t just something to endure — it’s something to use. It’s a checkpoint, not a conclusion. Stockett didn’t let 60 rejections define her writing career. Vera Wang didn’t let a missed Olympic dream keep her from finding another path. They weren’t chasing failure, but when they achieved it, they used the momentum to push them toward something else. They adapted and learned, then they moved forward.

That’s the choice we all face.

We will fail. At something. At many things. We will hit gravel we didn’t see coming, and sometimes, we’ll go flying. The question isn’t if we’ll fail. It’s what we’ll do next.

I don’t recall thinking about not getting back on that bike. My friends and I rode our bikes everywhere, and I instinctively knew that not getting back on that bike meant missing out on a lot of opportunities.

So, when you achieve failure, whenever it comes, the big question is what will you do with it?

Are You As Indecisive as Buridan’s Donkey?

 

Photo by Diana Rafira on Unsplash

In the 14th century French countryside, a man named Jean Buridan owned a donkey his children had affectionately named Alain. Wanting the very best for Alain — to keep his children happy and Alain working hard on their small farm — Jean brought Alain to two identical piles of hay. Jean left Alain there, precisely between the two piles of hay, and went about his work.

Jean hooked his wagon of goods to the stronger mules he used to move his wares from town to town and left without giving Alain another thought. Upon his return some days later, Jean found Alain’s lifeless corpse between the two piles of hay.

You see, Alain had no rational basis for choosing one pile over the other, so there he stood until indecision caused him to starve.

As far as I know, there’s no truth to the story of Buridan’s Donkey. The paradox highlights the problems of decision-making when faced with perfectly balanced (or not) choices. It critiques the idea that purely rational beings would always act optimally. That is, when faced with two apparently equal choices, just pick one.

Seems simple, right?

Not so much.

Why is it that so many of us, even when faced with decisions that both likely have favorable outcomes, get stuck in indecision? We reach the figurative fork in the road and stay stuck, afraid to make the wrong choice.

The Problem of Indecision

For fifteen years, I’ve talked about starting my own business. Fifteen years is a long time. I talked about it with family and friends so often that they stopped believing it would ever happen.

In June 2024, I was given a wonderful opportunity to start my software development company. But it wasn’t until a terrible experience with my boss in November that I finally made the leap. I’d had a few bad experiences with my boss before, but the one in November gave me the anger and courage to move forward.

Looking back is tricky. It makes us wonder, “What if things had been different?” It’s a bit like the grandfather paradox in time travel — if I could go back and change the past, would I really get the outcome I wanted? Or would I end up wishing I’d stuck with the path I originally took?

Did I miss opportunities by not making the decision to start my company fifteen years ago? Of course, but had I started my company fifteen years ago, I would have missed all the opportunities that I’ve enjoyed in the last fifteen years.

It’s easy to see how we can get stuck in a mental loop — analyzing, second-guessing, and convincing ourselves that the “right moment” is always just ahead.

Why We Get Stuck

So often, we hesitate not because we lack options but because we’re afraid of making the wrong choice. We overanalyze, waiting for certainty. We tell ourselves we need more information, more confidence, or better timing. While we stand between the proverbial piles of hay, we forget that indecision has a cost: while we’re standing still, opportunities are passing us by.

Decision paralysis is often induced by having too many options as well. Ever spent 20 minutes scrolling through Netflix, unable to pick a movie, only to give up and watch something you’ve already seen? The more options we have, the harder it is to commit, because we’re afraid of missing out on something better. So we delay, revisit, rethink, and often, we end up making no decision at all.

How to Get Unstuck

If the problem is indecision, the solution isn’t finding the “perfect” choice. The solution is making a choice. Instead of waiting for certainty, we need to build habits that help us move forward. Here’s how:

1. Set a decision deadline. Give yourself a set amount of time to choose whether it’s five minutes for small decisions or a week for bigger ones. When the deadline hits, go with what you think is the best option and move forward. Action always beats endless deliberation.
2. Flip the script on fear. Instead of asking, “What if I make the wrong choice?” ask, “What if I do nothing?” Fear of failure can keep us on track, but regret from inaction is just as real. If the risk is low and the upside exists, take the leap.
3. Limit your choices. Too many options lead to decision paralysis. Narrow down the options to your two or three favorites. That forces you to pick from a smaller set. If you’re stuck between two nearly equal choices, they’re probably both good, so just choose and go.
4. Focus on progress, not perfection. Instead of trying to make the perfect coice, aim for the next best step. Even if it doesn’t lead to the ultimate solution, movement creates momentum, even when it’s small. One small step forward is better than staying stuck in place.

The Power of Moving Forward

Alain the donkey starved because he refused to choose. We don’t have to suffer the same fate.

Indecision isn’t always about not knowing what to do. It’s often about fearing what might happen after the choice is made. But standing still has a cost, too. The truth is, most decisions aren’t irreversible. Even when they don’t turn out as expected, they teach us something, move us forward, and open doors we never could have anticipated.

If you’re stuck between two choices, just pick one. If you’re drowning in options, simplify. If you’re waiting for certainty, accept that it probably won’t come. The worst decision isn’t the wrong one — it’s making none at all.

Slowing Down to Move Forward

 

Photo by William Phipps on Unsplash

My kids often joke that the three-toed sloth is my spirit animal. I’ve fallen into the trap far too often in my life that busyness = productivity when in fact busyness is often the enemy of productivity.

Bertrand Russell or John Lennon or someone else said, “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”

In his essay In Praise of Idleness (1932), Mr. Russell does say, “I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.”

Mr. Russell isn’t advocating that we all lay around all the time and do nothing but eat BonBons and watch Netflix. He is, however, trying to help us understand (from 1932) that we’ve been sold the idea that success means constantly moving (the hustle culture), but progress often starts when we slow down and reassess where we’re going.

The Hustle Culture Myth

Somewhere along the way, like so many people, I started to measure my success by how many items were on my to do list and how full my calendar was. Long hours, little sleep, and constant activity have been the hallmark of my life for way too many years. I’ve worn them as a badge of honor, but I have begun to question my own narrative a lot recently.

Way back in 2007, I tracked what I was able to accomplish by hour on a spreadsheet. It was painfully obvious that after 8 hours of continuous work, my productivity dropped, but I convinced myself that it just meant I needed to work more hours to get the work done.

Another missive from Bertrand’s In Praise of Idleness, “A great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief that efficiency is the supreme virtue, and that idleness is a vice.”

Not all activity is progress, and not all stillness is wasted time.

The Power of Strategic Pauses

In 1921, a 14-year-old boy named Philo Taylor Farnsworth was plowing a potato field in Rigby, Idaho, when inspiration struck. As he looked at the parallel lines of freshly tilled soil, he imagined a way to transmit images electronically by scanning them line by line, much like how a field is plowed in rows. This idea laid the foundation for what would become the first fully electronic television.

To conceptualize something as complex as the “image dissector tube” as a 14-year-old, Philo must have been a bright young man. Yet, he didn’t conceive of that transformative technology in a lab. In fact, Philo would later have to do battle with the behemoth Radio Corporation of America (RCA) over patent rights to his invention.

A pause in a potato field led to the invention of the most remarkable thing produced in the 20th century.

A moment of stillness, wherever and whenever it occurs, can spark breakthroughs that relentless effort regularly fails to produce.

The Science of Rest and Reflection

I’m not a neuroscientist, but I’ve skimmed enough studies to know what we all instinctively get — our brains need a break. When we step back, we get better at problem-solving, creativity kicks in, and we actually work smarter, not harder.

Yet, hustle culture, especially in the Western world, has convinced us that grinding non-stop is the only way to succeed. Research says otherwise. Studies on the default mode network (DMN) — the part of the brain that fires up when we’re not laser-focused — show that when we unplug, we give our minds space to form new ideas, connect the dots, and make sense of everything we’ve taken in.

That’s why some of our best ideas show up in the shower, during a walk, or right before we fall asleep. Our brains don’t shut down when we stop working — they recalibrate, sifting through everything in the background.

Bertrand Russell said it best, “The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.”

If giving our minds room to breathe makes us sharper, then slowing down on purpose might just be the smartest thing we do.

Practical Ways to Keep Momentum While Slowing Down

Slowing down doesn’t mean abandoning progress — it means making room for better progress. For me, the problem has always been slowing down without feeling like I’m falling behind. FOMO is a real thing.

Time-blocking for reflection. Most people treat thinking as an afterthought, squeezing it in between tasks or expecting inspiration to strike at random. But what if strategic thinking had a dedicated spot on your calendar? Set aside time — whether 15 minutes or an hour — just to reflect, brainstorm, or assess your next steps. Some of the most effective leaders schedule “no-meeting” mornings or block out time to process ideas, ensuring they’re working on the right things rather than just checking off tasks.

Intentional disengagement. I’m guilty of not following this one. A few days ago I noticed that I was checking my phone up to 20 times an hour, stealing glances at it constantly (I literally just did it subconsciously while writing that sentence.) Constant connectivity makes focus a rare commodity. Set up tech-free windows in your day — no emails, no instant messaging, no notifications — to let your mind process without interruption. This could be as simple as leaving your phone behind during lunch, designating the first hour of your morning as a quiet work zone, or even going offline entirely one day every month. I might be surprised by the clarity I gain in these moments.

Micro-pauses. Suppose you find it completely impractical to leave your phone behind for even an hour. Stepping away doesn’t have to mean taking a week-long retreat or even putting your phone in the freezer for an hour. Even a few minutes of disengagement can reset your mind. Close your laptop and step outside for five minutes. Stand up, stretch, grab a glass of water. Studies show that short breaks enhance focus, reduce mental fatigue, and improve decision-making. If you feel stuck on a problem, don’t force an answer — walk away, let your brain reset, and come back with fresh eyes.

Reframing “wasted time” as an investment. Productivity culture has convinced us that every minute must be accounted for, but some of the best investments in creativity and long-term success look, on the surface, like doing nothing. Leisure — reading, taking an aimless walk, enjoying a hobby — feeds problem-solving, fuels inspiration, and prevents burnout. The next time you feel guilty about stepping away from “real work,” remember that the mind does some of its best work when it’s not actively trying.

Small, intentional pauses don’t slow you down. They prevent burnout and wasted effort, making sure that every step forward is in the right direction.

Look, slowing down isn’t failure — it’s strategy. Learning when to pause can make the difference between running in mental circles and moving forward clearly and with purpose. It doesn’t mean losing momentum. It means making sure you’re running in the right direction.