Jonathan Torrey

Avid Learner. Enthusiastic Sharer.

Quotes, January 2017

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“If we’re going to put ourselves out there and love with our whole hearts, we’re going to experience heartbreak. If we’re going to try new, innovative things, we’re going to fail. If we’re going to risk caring and engaging, we’re going to experience disappointment. It doesn’t matter if our hurt is caused by a painful breakup or we’re struggling with something smaller . . . If we can learn how to feel our way through these experience and own our stories of struggle, we can write our own brave endings.” – Brene Brown 

This resonates with me quite a bit. We inherently want to avoid painful experiences. Sometimes this avoidance is effective, but don’t let it limit you in your life experience. Work on getting yourself more comfortable with failure, heartbreak, disappointment, etc. As you experience more of it, you’ll get stronger, you’ll reach higher and you’ll get comfortable enough with the lows that it won’t hurt so much. Imagine living a life unbridled by fear of failure and shortcomings. 

“Vulnerability [is] the willingness to show up and be seen with no guarantee of outcome— it is the only path to more love, belonging, creativity, and joy.” – Brene Brown

“The only way to survive is to admit you are on your own, learn to make your own decisions, and trust your judgement.” – Robert Greene

People will constantly project onto you the way they think life should be lived. It makes them insecure if you do something they wouldn’t do. Only you know enough about yourself and the situation you find yourself in. Whatever choices you make, what happens is on you. Don’t let other people make choices for you. 

“Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“Risk means more things can happen than will happen.” – Elroy Dimson

“History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.” – Julian Barnes

Think back to your last activity with some of your closest friends. Think about how you tell the story, the details, who said what, how each person reacted, etc. Then, ask your friends to separately recount. You’ll be surprised to see how the same experience can be interpreted in different ways. 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou

“The problems you know you have are almost never the problems that sink you. It’s the problems you don’t know you have … that destroy you.” – Tucker Max

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – Mark Twain

“If you wish to persuade, appeal to interest, rather than reason.” – Ben Franklin

“Opportunities multiply as they are seized.” – Sun Tzu

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

“I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to sit quietly in his room.” — Blaise Pascal

My Theme For 2017: Maximum Effort

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Maximum effort.

That’s my theme / saying / tagline for 2017. Yes, you fellow super-hero nerd, it IS directly taken from the Deadpool movie and I have good reason for choosing it.

Before I get into that, I’ll just comment that for 2016 my maxim was “be more intentional.” Ultimately, that boiled down to me learning to keep a clear head, to be more honest with myself, and to proactively decide how I allocate my time.

I didn’t shed that theme for a new one, but rather worked on it hard enough to make it a habit, with room to improve as I move on to bigger and broader transformations. You can’t tackle everything at once, but you also can’t forget about what led you to where you are today.

Now, back to my super-awesome, super-hero tagline that I want to be my overarching driver for 2017 and why I chose it.

I’ve thought a lot about it, and found that it applies to me in so many ways. At its core, it means not being afraid to put all of my chips on the table. High risk = high reward.

That risk / reward has a range. Something as simple as sitting in a meeting over lunch today, that ran late, so late that I zoned out and could only think about food, and avoiding the pizza in the room to eat a healthy lunch, sticking to my 10-day cleanse challenge. Maximum effort.

It also means being vulnerable: not being afraid to ask for what you want or what you want of people, sharing your fears, trying new things, taking chances with new people, telling people no when you need to but don’t want to, not listening to people who say you’ll fail and instead trudge on with what you belief in. Maximum effort.

Throughout my year, I expect it to take on many different meanings in many situations in my life. Our worlds are constantly changing. People come and go. Talents and abilities wax and wane. Opportunities come knockin’. Opportunities quickly leave before you have a chance to grab hold of one.

It’s a constant ebb and flow; a challenge. I don’t want to give up at the first set-back. It’s okay to feel discouraged, angry, sad and any other range of emotions at times, but I want to remind myself to drive forward, to know I am taking the right smalls steps that add up to the big goals I want to accomplish. Maximum effort.

In closing, my goal is to internalize this concept. To recognize that, at times, I will fail. I will be too tired, my willpower will be depleted, things won’t go my way, but that’s happened before and it doesn’t define me. I will bounce back, I will adapt and I will find a way. Maximum effort.

Red Flag Syndrome

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Lately, I’ve been coming across, and reading, a lot of “red flag” articles. You know, those articles titled “If he doesn’t do these 15 things, break up with him now” or “5 red flags to determine if your girlfriend is crazy.”

Some of them more serious than others, but I think we can agree that all of us, at some point, are obsessed with finding the “right” person. On a long enough timeline, ending up with the “wrong” person, missing those red flags over and over again, can be tiring, costly and even fatal.

But at what point does actively seeking red flags and becoming guarded actually begin to hinder us from finding, or seeing what’s right in front of us for what it is? Does it begin to cloud our judgement to the point where all we see are red flags and can no longer distinguish which actually matter?

Honesty, I have no idea. I think most sane people have had a few relationships in their lifetime, inevitably, one, or a few not going so well. Naturally we would want to guard against the behaviors that caused us issue and avoid new people who have them all together.

It’s hard to just look at someone one-dimensionally, though. Maybe s/he does have full-fledged road rage and hates cats, but is a wonderful cook and a detail-oriented planner. And yet another person might have some mix of red flag but also wonderful qualities. I think we all do.

That’s just it. In a lot of ways, the majority of us are pretty similar, but at the fringe, that small percentage of what’s different between us, matters so much more and what matters is so unique to us.

I heard this quotation somewhere, but unfortunately can’t cite it, so I’ll paraphrase because I think it sums it up nicely: “Human beings are 90% the same, but it’s that 10% variance that makes you utterly unique and different from the person next to you.”

So how do you see that 10% and figure out if one person’s 10% matches your 10% enough that you’ll have a successful relationship?

I think it comes with learning to be honest with ourselves (raise your hand if you’ve ever dated someone only because you were lonely but convinced yourself of other reasons) about what we want, which comes with experience over time. It comes with shutting out others’ opinions and being in true touch with emotions and physiological responses.

There are books upon books, articles upon articles, opinion upon opinion, but I don’t think anything could ever trump personal experience and the ability to calm the mind, feel what arises, and make sense of it.

That means coming from a strong place – if we subconsciously desire something out of fear, it can cloud our judgement and ability to be honest with ourselves.

That might not be the answer anyone is looking for. It’s not a formula. You might even say it’s not that tangible. Really, it’s just the interpretation and theory of an average guy trying to solve his own problems.

But, I think it’s clear – be honest with yourself about what you want, what you are okay with and not okay with. It might not be an intellectual decision, but more emotional. What behaviors do you actually lose it over? Communicate it.

And remember, there are plenty of wonderful people out there in the world!